Bazman's Blog
23 Nov 2020. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 22.
As ever, the new season in Football Strategy comes with a new set of salary negotiations to contend with. Some players and staff come and ask for a pay rise based on what they think is their worth - some of them are probably underpaid and some are just chancing their luck but there is a risk that they'll sulk and underperform if you refuse and a chance that they might overperform in the coming seasons if you grant it. Also, they could just say 'thanks' and continue as normal, whatever you say to them. My list of requests is detailed in the table below, there are some that are either small in cash terms or small in percentage terms that are easy decisions and some absolute bank-busters that need thinking about more carefully.
Now that we're a few seasons into the salary negotiation system, it's become noticeable that some players and staff are serial money-grabbers. It's not clear if this is because they're actually underpaid compared to their talents or if there is some attribute that they have that makes them more likely to put in a request. For instance, Reynolds (player), Calskan and Scheidler (both staff) all put in a request last season and got turned down - now they're back at my door asking again! Reynolds is actually making his 4th request in 5 seasons .. clearly the +47% raise I granted him back in S18 gave him a taste for the high life! The club had a good season in S21, but 20%+ requests on top of already monster salaries are eye-watering. On the other hand, Lombart (player) who is by far the most gifted player to grace the Banditorium ever has only now made his first salary request after 6 seasons of exemplary service. What to do .. what to do?!?!?
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EVANS | 100075 | 101075 | 1000 | 1 | 31 | APP | no change |
| SCHOLES | 68740 | 70114 | 1374 | 2 | 34 | APP | +1 steal, +1 position, +1 strength for 3 seasons |
| LALLANA | 108904 | 116527 | 7623 | 7 | 31 | APP | +1 potential for 2 seasons, +15% training TP, permanent |
| MADELEY | 204562 | 216835 | 12273 | 6 | 38 | APP | +1 mark, +1 position, +1 fitness, permanent, +14% training TP for 1 season |
| FERDINAND | 76818 | 90645 | 13827 | 18 | 32 | APP | +1 potential, permanent, +10% matches TP, permanent |
| MANBY | 578959 | 781594 | 202635 | 35 | 32 | APP | +1 finish, +1 agility, +1 speed for 3 seasons, +19% training TP, permanent |
| REYNOLDS | 1557187 | 1946483 | 389296 | 25 | 30 | DEC | -15% training TP, permanent |
| LOMBART | 1819727 | 2220066 | 400339 | 22 | 30 | APP | +14% matches TP, permanent, +11% training TP for 1 season |
| [tot. players] | 1028367 | ||||||
| CALSKAN | 1253880 | 1542272 | 288392 | 23 | Staff | APP | +0.07 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| SCHEIDLER | 750600 | 900720 | 150120 | 20 | Staff | APP | +0.06 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| ABADAL | 159667 | 162860 | 3193 | 2 | Staff | APP | no change |
| BELALCAZAR | 174960 | 216950 | 41990 | 24 | Staff | APP | +0.05 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| POLLA | 214100 | 308304 | 94204 | 44 | Staff | APP | +0.07 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| [tot. staff] | 577899 |
In the end, with everything considered, I granted all but one of the requests. The younger players (Evans, Scholes, Lallana, Ferdinand) had all made contributions to England U21 securing the silver medal in the Continental Cup last season and thus guaranteed me (and all other English clubs) a fanbase boost at the end of the World Cup cycle - effectively they've already more than paid for their raises. Evans didn't look too bothered by his meagre 1% extra cash but the other three increased their work effort nicely, which should help both club and country in S22. Of the seniors, the Bandits' regular DMC, Madeley put in a modest request which was granted and resulted in an immediate permanent +3 skill points and extra training whilst heavyweight attackers Manby and Lombart came back with both permanent and temporary bonuses. The ever-hungry Reynolds was the only player I turned down as he would be the easiest to cover for if he lost stats. Fortunately his threats are always worse than this actions and he stomped away from the office with a training ground TP penalty - not too worrisome as he gets most of his TP from matches rather than training.
The staff all got approved, against my normal logic of turning them down, the reason being that I have a bunch of staff retirements to deal with and need the seminar slots for bringing the new people up to speed rather than fixing penalties on the older ones. Calskan finally got his big pay-day, but it can't be too long before he decides to retire, so the financial cost wont linger on the books for too long. Ironically, the only staff member not to vow to improve his seminar performance was the one who can actually still benefit from seminars, the other four are all at 10.0 skill with no further learning to do - I have a sneaky suspicion that they knew that before promising to study harder!
03 Aug 2020. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 21.
A new season is upon Football Strategy and along with the fresh challenges and hope for league and cup success comes the salary request round. Here, the players and coaching staff petition for extra salary for the coming season based on their performances from last season. Some deserve a raise, some don't, some are just trying their luck, but you have to decide which requests to grant and which to refuse. This season, 9 players and 6 staff were knocking on my door with their hands out. Finances are tight at the moment, and although I achieved all of the sponsor bonuses last season, the club barely broke even with the extreme salaries that top-flight competition demands you to carry. The criteria this season's salary round was fair clear .. small requests (in cash terms) would be granted, large ones would be refused. The only exception to this was made for Dixie Watson as a first choice attacker at club level and to celebrate him passing 100 appearances for England (senior plus youth) in the previous world cup campaign. Here's the table of what happened :
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| THOMPSON | 58509 | 60264 | 1755 | 3 | 21 | APP | +1 potential, permanent, +1 Finish, +1 Dribble, +1 Speed for 1 season |
| BAIN | 58968 | 61916 | 2948 | 5 | 32 | APP | no change |
| LOBO | 82453 | 89873 | 7420 | 9 | 32 | APP | +1 potential for 1 season |
| SWEET | 126309 | 142729 | 16420 | 13 | 33 | APP | +20% matches TP for 1 season |
| ASTLE | 276103 | 281625 | 5522 | 2 | 29 | APP | +12% matches TP, permanent |
| MARINER | 594583 | 784849 | 190266 | 32 | 15 | DEC | -7% matches TP, permanent |
| WATSON | 667438 | 854320 | 186882 | 28 | 23 | APP | no change |
| CHAPMAN | 778207 | 957194 | 178987 | 23 | 33 | DEC | -14% matches TP, permanent |
| REYNOLDS | 1576957 | 2018504 | 441547 | 28 | 34 | DEC | -12% matches TP for 1 season |
| [tot. players] | 1031747 | ||||||
| CALSKAN | 1253880 | 1554811 | 300931 | 24 | Staff | DEC | -0.82 rating |
| SCHEIDLER | 750060 | 930074 | 180014 | 24 | Staff | DEC | -0.68 rating |
| Aa | 230791 | 300028 | 69237 | 30 | Staff | DEC | no change |
| ERDESIR | 258940 | 318496 | 59556 | 23 | Staff | DEC | -0.73 rating |
| BUENO | 217235 | 260682 | 43447 | 20 | Staff | DEC | -0.68 rating |
| TREACY | 208447 | 252220 | 43773 | 21 | Staff | DEC | -0.03 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| [tot. staff] | 696958 |
Overall, not too bad a result. The best bonus for a player went to Thompson, but as he was in his first senior season and surplus to requirements, he was already transfer listed, so a very nice deal for the club that bought him. The 1 season +1 potential for Lobo is valuable too, he currently has 4 skills trained to his regular potential that I'll be able to train up for 1200 TP this season compared to over-training them for 2400 TP any other season. A bit of a lucky outcome on the requests I declined too, just some penalty to gaining TP, no skill or potential losses - phew! For the players, $1.03m per week was asked and 'just' $220k per week was granted whilst all the staff will have to make do with their current salaries with none of the $696k per week that they wanted granted. Naturally, some rating points were lost and will need to be trained back, but that's decidedly cheaper to spend 10 weeks doing that then it would be to pay those requests permanently.
26 Jul 2020. [FS] Rare Prospect Overload.
You know how it is, when things have a random distribution you sometimes see none for a long while and sometimes see many in a short time frame. Rare Prospects in the Football Strategy academy are like that, there are times when I have none of them being trained up and times when a few appear at once. Today seems to have set a new record though and amazingly I have five Rare Prospects at the same time! Figure 1. shows the Rare Prospects in the Bandits academy and the Rare Prospect chance graph that details how I saw very few of them for a long time before seeing many at once. The truly amazing RP pull was the one in the middle of the set that appeared with a 1.40% chance.
For anyone unfamiliar with the system, every club has the chance to get a Rare Prospect player with guaranteed high potential and starting skill if they have available slots in the academy. The chance of getting one is not pure random, but is a weighted random system where the chance grows after each academy Draft Day where you fail to get one. When a Rare Prospect does appear, then the weighted random chance drops back down to the minimum value.
Fig. 1. The Bazman Academy is currently training 5 Rare Prospect players.
Right now, my academy is looking rather fortunate, but it could just as easily be completely empty of Rare Prospects. Most of the time it has either one or none of them training up. As you can see from the image, three of the five have already declared themselves to be defensive players and another is a defensive midfielder. My fingers are crossed that this latest one is a Striker! One final note, for those who have looked carefully at the image .. Marcus Browning is NOT for sale!
13 Apr 2020. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 20.
It's Season 20 in Football Strategy and there's plenty of things to do for the new season. One of the important things is to deal with any salary requests that the players and staff have requested. Finances are getting tighter in the game as costs increase faster than income at high levels, so some hard decisions need to be taken. As usual, I've tabled up the requests I had in my club and the actions I took. Only five players and four staff came with demands this time around, some deserved, some clearly extremely cheeky! :
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HAWKINS | 108336 | 114836 | 6500 | 6 | 30 | APP | +17% training TP, permanent. +1 First Touch, +1 Creativity, +1 Dribble for 1 season |
| DICKINSON | 90898 | 118167 | 27269 | 30 | 30 | APP | +13% matches TP, permanent. +12% training TP for 2 seasons |
| KIEJ | 1101714 | 1421211 | 319497 | 29 | 31* | APP | +14% training TP for 1 season. +19% matches TP, permanent |
| REYNOLDS | 1564081 | 1986382 | 422301 | 27 | 31 | DEC | no change |
| WATSON | 617193 | 691256 | 74063 | 12 | 24 | APP | +14% matches TP, permanent |
| [tot. players] | 849630 | ||||||
| SCHEIDLER | 750600 | 1005804 | 255204 | 34 | Staff | DEC | -0.76 rating |
| TREACY | 208447 | 258474 | 50027 | 24 | Staff | DEC | -0.86 rating |
| BELALCAZAR | 174960 | 239695 | 64735 | 37 | Staff | DEC | -0.61 rating |
| PONOMARENKO | 336960 | 475113 | 138153 | 41 | Staff | DEC | no change |
| [tot. staff] | 508119 |
* Kiej was transferred during the season and only played a couple of games for me, the rest were for his former club.
For the players, the first two in the table were youth players last season and both played NT games for England U21's (the "Games played" column is just club matches though), their requests were relatively modest in cash terms, even if Dickinson's was +30%. I was happy to grant the requests and delighted with the outcomes - both got a permanent bonus AND a temporary bonus. Hawkins' temporary skill boost was especially pleasing as he'd only just lost his last temporary skill boost and the new one should see him continue to get picked for England and be the Bandits' midfield dynamo.
The senior players of course have bigger salaries and demand bigger increases. New signing Kiej wanted a 29% boost of over $300k per week - ouch! Still, when you've shelled out over $40m as a transfer fee for a world class goalie, it makes no sense to risk him dropping stats, training or potential, so it got granted. Kiej will no doubt be buying a new mansion with his cash but in return he's promised a permanent increase in matches training points (TP) and a temporary boost to his training. That in turn has pretty much cemented him as my first choice keeper until the day he retires and probably first pick for the Belgian National Squad for the foreseeable future too... if only the Match Engine would let me send him forward for corners, he'll have enough TP to max out his scoring too!
My home grown players Reynolds and Watson also came to my office with requests. Reynolds wanted a clearly ludicrous $422k to take him to almost $2m per week .. not a hard choice to deny that one and he went away understanding that there was no chance that he could out-earn Belgian mega-striker Lombart in my squad. (Lombart has the top scorer medal for last season's FS Champions Cup and he did that in just 10 appearances!) Reynolds actually has form for big asks, back in Season 18 he came with a +47% request that I granted as money wasn't as tight then. Dixie Watson on the other hand has a relatively modest salary despite being a guaranteed first team pick if he's fit and has made England appearances every season since S13, I granted his request and he returned the favour by developing a permanent bonus for matches.
Four staff came with requests this time around and three of them were youth team trainers (the assistant manager and two coaches). Whether this is random or based on the Bandits having a good youth season isn't clear. Scheidler, the assistant manager wanted $255k per week which would have made him almost as expensive as my senior assistant manager; the youth coaches wanted less and with values that would merely have equalised them with the third youth coach's salary. The cold maths of the situation was that given the number of seasons they might have left, it's cheaper in all cases to train back lost skill points than to pay the extra salary, so all three were turned down. They all took a skill hit, but none got a seminars penalty (less skill gain per seminar), the total loss looks to be about 30 seminars worth, so 15 weeks on the cheap seminars or 7.5 if I use the expensive seminars too. The youth and academy training will take a bit of a hit from this, but with costs mounting, I'll just have to absorb the loss. The last staff member, Ponomarenko, is 10.0 rated scout, but I've got way more scouting skill than I need for my academy, so it was an easy no to his request - happily, he took it with good grace and is still a 10.0 rated scout.
Overall, this has been a good request session, with some powerful boosts gained and manageable losses. Now to double check all my training settings and lineups!