vacuousplatitudes asked: Is it safe to assume now that Bald John Green will be staying with the Wimbly Womblys for another season? A few weeks ago, Manager John said that he had submitted his transfer papers, but has said nothing on the topic since... I would really like to know the answer to this question because the fact that Bald John Green might leave the club has caused me a great amount of anxiety.

Short answer: yes, Bald John Green should be here at least through the next transfer window. Here’s why. (Hope you like text!)



In the most recent episode of AFC Wimbly Womblys, the current table is shown right at the beginning. Here’s a screencap:





It shows that the season has progressed to Matchday 9. The Football League season starts in early August. (In the real world, it was this weekend, with the first fixture in the Championship happening this past Friday night and featured a 1-1 draw between Blackburn and Cardiff.) The Football League generally does not schedule teams to play more than two league fixtures per week- any more than that and you start to endanger the health of the players, particularly for smaller clubs who can’t rotate their squads as much.



So even if they had two league fixtures every week in August, and did not have to play in the Capital One Cup (which they probably did), it’s reasonable to assume that Matchday 9 is still scheduled for September, when the transfer market is closed. So it looks like we’ve got Baldy for a little while longer.



Obviously John can definitively say whether or not we’re safe on that front. I’m sure we’ll hear the official word once he emerges from the febrile darkness.



This is a little meta, but it may be comforting: when you play in Manager Career Mode in FIFA, which is what John is doing, you get emails in-between games from players, scouts, other clubs who want to buy your players, and the board of directors. All of them are controlled by the game. It’s not unlike SimCity, where you get messages from members of your staff. During the transfer window- which happens in July/August and again in January- you will sometimes get an email from a player demanding a transfer request. Whether or not a player does this or not is totally random. The game just rolls dice in the background and determines whether you get a transfer request and who makes it (although from personal experience it seems to be weighted towards your better players making the request, because life is hard and full of disappointment). Soon after you receive a transfer request is made, the board of directors (which, again, is controlled by the same AI that sent you the player transfer request in the first place) will email you to weigh in on the situation. Sometimes they will give you their backing and leave the decision on whether to sell at your discretion. If they say that, you can just not sell the player. The rest of the time the board will say it’s in the club’s best interest to sell and to please accept the best offer that comes in. You can try to reject offers, but more often than not if you don’t sell in a timely fashion the board of directors will just sell the player behind your back- often on a First Come First Served basis, which means you end up with less money than he’s worth. So basically, in terms of the game, the decision for whether a player demands a transfer (and whether you can deny the request) is essentially random. (Obviously that makes for a less-than-satisfying story, which is why I’m guessing John spun it as BJG feeling remorse for the events of last season.)



Hope this makes sense!