Anyone have any suggestions for FM12?
Fix the AI negotiations when they're trying to buy players from you.
Negotiating with the AI works quite well when you're buying the player from the AI. For example, in my Rangers save at the start of the 2016/17 I wanted to buy Nuri Sahin from Man Utd; he'd stopped becoming a regular for them and only had a year left on his contract, so I bidded £5m, his value. This was rejected. I went up to £5.5m. Rejected. Went to £6m. Manchester United asked for £9m. I bid £7m, Man Utd accept. Good negotiations, AI willing to meet me some way in the middle.
Now flip to when the AI wants to buy your players. Sometimes the AI will make an enquiry for a player. I will rebuff this or declare my valuation. The AI then pulls out of the deal (fair enough I'll set some ludicrous asking prices but they merely reflect the fact I don't really want to sell the player.) Alternatively, the AI will bid exactly £2m for my £2m rated young gun. I will either reject this or declare an acceptable value for the player. The AI never ever comes back with an improved offer, or tries to meet me somewhere in the middle, it's as if the AI has decided how much the player is worth when they make their initial bid and won't ever bid above that. Almost no consideration is given to the fact that I might not want to sell the player so the AI needs to start higher.
Add to this the annoyance when AI managers unsettle my players by publically declaring that they will do everything in their power to make player X their player, yet don't submit one single transfer bid for him during the window. It's really annoying. All this combines to make selling players almost impossible.
Agents also annoy me; it's far too easy to annoy them and agents who don't like you allow their personal relationship with you to affect their professional relationship to an unrealistic degree. One of the agents in game has most of the top Scottish talent on his books; one of whom was Leigh Griffiths who I was interested in signing as a backup striker. I'd declared my interest before bidding, and the player indicated he'd do anything to play for Rangers. Bid gets accepted, and the agent who hates me tells me that he wants £26,000 a week. Contract talks swiftly ended when I offered a non-negotiable £12,000 a week, which was rejected. A couple of months later Griffiths signed a new deal at Dundee Utd worth £5k a week. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but an agent who cost you a move you really wanted by acting like a tool and making obscene wage demands before turning down a move that would more than quadruple your current salary would surely get himself fired the next day. I like the whole negotiating with agents aspect they've brought in, but not the way it's currently implemented.
Manager's reputations don't grow properly either; ex-players with absolutely no connection to the club find it far too easy to get top jobs. There's been a bit of a merry go round in England in my save; Mancini is at Man Utd, Ancelotti is at Man City, Javier Aguierre is at Arsenal. All fairly decent, high profile appointments. Liverpool's coach is Andy Watson (Alex McLeish's assistant manager at Hibernian, Rangers and Birmingham, in case you're wondering) and Chelsea's manager is Alan Shearer. Both of which are completely ludicrous. After 4 seasons in my Rangers game, I'd won 4 SPLs, 4 Scottish Cups, 3 League Cups and 2 Champions Leagues, and declared an interest in the Juventus job, as their incumbent manager was rumoured to be heading for the sack. Juventus, for some reason, found this absolutely hilarious and basically said that there would be no chance of me getting the job. 7 seasons in and despite winning 7 titles, 7 Scottish Cups, 6 League Cups and 3 Champions Leagues, I have not had one single job offer from anyone. Surely a manager with that sort of success at a mid-level club would be close to the top of every major club's shortlist? Jose Mourinho and Andre Vilas-Boas had a couple of season's success at Porto before Chelsea snapped them up.
Also speaking of managers, the Old Firm need to be more impatient. I don't know what Rangers' AI board are like as the only game I've played I've gone Rangers, but Celtic have reached 1 solitary cup final in 7 seasons (I've only knocked them out 4 out of 14 possible occasions) and have failed to finish 2nd 3 times in 7 seasons, twice finishing 6th. They've also drawn just 2 out of 33 possible Old Firm games, losing the other 31, some of them very badly. Yet despite all this, Neil Lennon is still the Celtic manager, and has barely had his job under pressure. Even when he has been under pressure and the board have been rumoured to be losing patience, he's gotten away with crap results. All the talk before one Old Firm game was about how a bad result would get Lennon the sack - Celtic promptly came to Ibrox and lost 10-0. Lennon still had a job the next day. In reality, you need a damned good excuse for failing to win the league in your first season and losing 10-0 would see you get fired before you left the ground, never mind 7 seasons of complete and utter mediocrity.
