Transfers
The transfer market is where you strengthen your squad and raise money. Everything is under the Transfers menu: the Transfer Market of players for sale, Player Search to find the player you need, Transfer News of the deals done in your game, and Your Transfers, where you keep track of your own bids and sales.
Buying a player
Find a player on the transfer market or with the player search, open his page and make a bid. Then confirm it by signing the contract on Your Transfers. The selling club decides whether to accept.
The board keeps your bids sensible: it will not let you bid more than the club can afford, or pay a fortune for an unproven player, and derisory offers are turned down out of hand. You cannot bid for a player who is out of contract, out on loan, or whose club will not sell him, or for a player who has only just changed clubs.
Selling a player
Open the player's page and list him on the market. In every game you can list a player:
- For sale at a price you choose, within a range the board will accept. You decide which bid, if any, to accept.
- On open auction, where he goes to the highest bidder. Once he is listed you cannot take him off. A player in the last season of his contract can only be sold this way.
- For loan, saying how many weeks you would like to lend him for. Youth players cannot be loaned.
The premier games give you more ways to sell:
- Fixed sale: he goes straight away to the first club to bid your price.
- Quick sale: he goes to the highest bid above your price at the next processing.
- Swap: list him in exchange for another club's player, saying what you want in return, such as a position, so clubs know which players to offer.
- Release: let him go as a free agent.
You can have up to 3 players listed at a time. The board will not let you sell if your squad is already too small, and a player who has just joined your club cannot be listed again for a few weeks. A listed player stays yours, and can keep playing for you, until the deal goes through.
Loans
You can borrow a player from another club, or lend one of yours, for a set number of weeks. Loans have to be agreed before late in the season. You can have up to 3 players on loan, and no more than 2 from the same club.
How many deals you can do
Each club can complete up to 2 transfers a week, and up to 8 between seasons. A swap in the premier games counts as two. In the free games, a manager new to a club has to wait two days before buying or selling.
Fair play
The FA watches the market to keep it fair for everyone. Transfers between clubs run from the same computer are blocked, and in the free games so are transfers between clubs run from the same building, or that the FA thinks are too closely linked.
The FA can reverse any transfer it thinks is unfair, even seasons later, and it frowns on groups of managers who trade between themselves. A transfer can also be reversed if a manager resigns soon after making it.
When the other manager does not reply
Give a manager a week to answer a bid. If he has logged in since and still not replied, send him a polite message. If a few weeks go by with him logging in but ignoring both your bid and your messages, tell the Tribunal: the player, his club, its manager and what you have tried. Clubs under caretaker management cannot answer bids or messages at all.