When you’re dealing in the transfer market, you are always looking for the best possible offer. Regardless if you’re intention is to buy or to sell, you want to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible. At this point, you really ought to take the reputation of the various leagues into consideration. Why, you ask?

That’s a fairly decent transfer window, isn’t it? All these players were bought cheap and sold for far more than their actual worth at the time. So besides shrewd negotiating, what’s the secret ingredient here? Why does the market work the way it does? The answer to that question is fairly simple; league reputation…

I intend to show you how you can use it to your adventure when you are navigating the transfer market. It can help you get players cheap and sell them far more expensively than you had ever imagined. All you have to do is factor league reputation into the equation.

So how the hell does this work?

In order to show you what I mean, I have to give you an example of how league reputation influences transfers. Our case study here is Regivan, a Brazilian-Japanese defensive midfielder. He was brought in from Brazilian Serie B club Figueirense for €600k, which is a decent sum for any J-League side. Since the J-League’s reputation is more or less on par with the Brazilian Serie B, this did little for his market value. Various loan spells and subsequent performances for Kawasaki Frontale saw his market value increase to about €1.8 million. When I decided to cash in on Regivan, I managed to get €3.3 million for him.

That’s a 100% markup on his actual market value. Stuttgart had no issue paying that much for a player from the J-League, because they know his value will be reassessed as soon as the deal is completed. Stuttgart is active in the Bundesliga, which has a high reputation. This high reputation will cause the value of players active in such a league to spike, which is what happened.

The day after the transfer took place, Regivan’s transfer value had increased nearly tenfold from €1.8 million to €13.5 million. The AI appears to have no trouble predicting such shifts and spikes in value and therefore has no problem with seemingly overpaying for a player. The league reputation caused a spike and since the AI anticipates them, it takes this future spike into consideration when negotiating a deal buying players.

Since the AI pulls the same stunt when it’s selling players, you have to be careful when you’re scouting. Players on the transfer list or with expiring contracts are ideal targets for transfers if you’re looking to make a quick buck. Investing in youth players can be a costly affair, as their value can unrealistically skyrocket at times.

Just to summarise my approach in such matters…

Especially when you are active in smaller leagues, the market value of your player as determined by FM is kept low by the relatively low reputation of the league you are active in. In reality, similar players playing in the Serie A, La Liga, Premier League or Bundesliga are worth four to five times this value and if you try to sell one, you tend to pay even more for similar players, especially when they are not transfer listed. Whilst that means we can comfortably ask for more cash, it doesn’t mean we just blurt out random numbers, because even the spending power of clubs like PSG or Chelsea has its limits.

You have to do some research before you determine an actual asking price. I generally do this by creating a scouting filter based on the player I am selling and seeing how other players with similar skill-sets compare to my lad. Allow me to show you.

When we create a scouting filter based on Regivan, we can see the values for similar players. As I said before, asking for more is not a bad idea since players with similar qualities are worth a whole lot more. Most of the players on this filter are of a similar age, similar position and when you look at the ones not yet active for an absolute top club in a top league, you can see that I actually made a pretty shit deal. Asking for around €12 million wouldn’t have been unreasonable. This means that just doubling or tripling your asking price still constitutes a fairly good deal for interested clubs, especially since Regivan’s wage at the time (and current one for that matter) was a lot lower than that of his top league counterparts.

If you are looking to sell your players, especially to foreign clubs, the league standard of the potential buyers is a crucial factor in determining a realistic asking price. It’s also a factor many people tend to ignore. If you are wondering why some managers always seem to be able to negotiate good deals for their players, this specific factor might be one of the reasons.

Guido Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.

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