Bazman's Blog
01 Nov 2021. [FS] The game is unavailable.
The FootballStrategy website went offline at about 18:00 GMT on 22nd October. I have been informed that the new game owner knows about this. At the moment, I have no information about what caused the outage or when the site might return. A discord channel has been established for FS players to chat, you can join it here: https://discord.gg/fdfnSUuT . If I learn anything further, I'll update this blog post.
At least the outage occurred in Week 15 of season 24, so most of the competitions were resolved and almost all of the scheduled games were played (only the league playoff matches were missed). I obviously can't get the screenshot now, but I was looking forward to blogging about meeting the upper level of all three of my associate targets this season, plus all of the sponsor bonuses. I think I had almost $300m coming my way!
England had a great season too, playing in the World Cup Final in both senior and youth competitions. Both myself and Liverpool Altair (the senior NT manager) were looking forward to the continued fight for World Cup glory.
07 Jul 2021. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 24.
A new season is upon us in Football Strategy and it's time to look at the club salary negotiations again. Before I get to that though, a few moments of self congratulation as the Bandits are celebrating completing the domestic quadruple of League and Cup in both Senior and Youth competitions. The feat has happened before in other FS Nations, but I don't remember it happening in England and it's certainly a first for the club. Bandits' previous best performance was "just" a domestic double and that hasn't been seen since Season 15. A very good season on the international scene too, with the Seniors reaching the Quarter Finals of the International FS Cup and the Youths reaching the Round of 64. Naturally the fans are over the moon with these results and the associates and sponsors are too, paying out a hefty $255 million in subscriptions and bonuses. Ker-ching! Asked what sparked the dramatic up-tick in performance, a club spokesperson said that the squad had been eating more fibre and drinking less lager, however insiders at chief rivals Beautiful Peaches noted that the crown passed across with the transfer of influential NT midfielder Art Anderson.
Of course the downside to the achievements are that both players and staff decide that it's time to ask for hefty pay rises, pointing out just how vital they are to the success of the club. Here are the details of this season's cash-grab bonanza:
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HATELEY | 300593 | 429847 | 129254 | 43 | 33 | APP | +19% matches TP for 1 season |
| LUNDSTRAM | 971819 | 1166182 | 194363 | 20 | 38 | DEC | -1 mark -1 position for 3 seasons |
| LOMBART | 2291820 | 3208548 | 916728 | 40 | 33 | DEC | -1 finish -1 strength for 1 season, -10% matches TP for 2 seasons |
| ANDERSON | 1108915 | 1430500 | 321585 | 29 | 32 | APP | no change |
| REYNOLDS | 1548227 | 1997212 | 448985 | 29 | 38 | DEC | no change |
| WATSON | 874959 | 1076199 | 201240 | 23 | 38 | APP | +18% training TP, permanent |
| FERDINAND | 404349 | 517566 | 113217 | 28 | 33 | APP | +18% training TP for 1 season |
| LAWRENCE | 144912 | 168097 | 23185 | 16 | 34 | APP | +1 potential for 3 seasons |
| [tot. players] | 2348557 | ||||||
| ABADAL | 200645 | 232748 | 32103 | 16 | Staff | APP | +0.50 rating |
| RAHADIAN | 355622 | 401852 | 46230 | 13 | Staff | APP | +0.06 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| BELALCAZAR | 216950 | 271187 | 54237 | 25 | Staff | APP | +0.05 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| BUENO | 217235 | 308473 | 91238 | 42 | Staff | APP | +0.07 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| POLLA | 308304 | 373047 | 64743 | 21 | Staff | DEC | -0.03 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| TREACY | 208447 | 258474 | 50027 | 24 | Staff | APP | +0.06 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| [tot. staff] | 338578 |
As can be seen in comparison to the previous ask, back in March, the player requests have trebled in cash terms whilst the staff requests are up over 15% (it probably would have been more, but several older staff retired at the end of Season 23). As usual, I have accepted more requests than I declined, there will have to be a reckoning with the total salary bill sometime soon, with some bit-part players having to make way for the fat wage demands of the top quality guys.
For the players, eight requests came in, five of which were from senior first teamers and the rest from last season's youth squad. Those last three were easy to agree to as the players don't earn to much to start with, even if their requests are high in percentage terms. The cheapest one, Lawrence, moved up to the senior squad for S24 and instantly paid back his +$23,185 per week by growing his potential by a point for 3 seasons.. with a bit of luck I'll be able to train up six skills to the new potential in that time frame, saving 7,200 TP in total, very nice. Hateley and Ferdinand are still youth team players, but both feature in England U21 games, so their temporary increased training rates will also come in handy for club and country.
In the senior section, the headline news was Lombart stomping into the manager's office .. the club's highest paid star demanding an additional 40% pay at the same time as announcing his retirement from the game at the end of Season 24. Clearly looking to cash out, Lombart wanted to take his pay from $2.29m per week to $3.21m per week; one of the club accountants actually fainted! Interestingly, no players ever earned over $3m per week in the past, so it may be that somewhere out there, managers are agreeing to such requests, making it more likely that more players will make such requests. I found one pretty easily on the transfer market, you can see the big wage spike on the graph. See Figure 1. Whatever the other managers are up to, such a request is outside of my financial guidelines, so I turned it down. Lombart wasn't impressed and cut his output on Finish and Strength for a season and vowed to take less training for two seasons (even though he'll retire after one).
Fig. 1. Player wage graph showing spikes caused by salary negotiations, one of which raises salary above $3m.
Watson will take over the main striker role from Lombart when he's gone, so his relative modest +201k request was granted and rewarded with a permanent +18% training growth. Anderson asked for $321k and this was also granted as he is key to the offensive midfield right now (plus he is carrying a permanent training penalty from a previous rejection) .. a lot of money for no output benefit, but at least he didn't stack any more penalties. Lundstram and Reynolds are defenders with max values in their main skills and they were both turned away empty handed as the squad is strong in that area right now. Reynolds took it well, but Lundstram dropped a skill point on each of Mark and Position for three seasons. Annoying, but those points can be trained back fairly quickly so no great damage done.
I knew I was in for a tough negotiation with the staff this season, several of them were fairly fresh at the start of last season and have been training up using the seminars .. large staff skill increases are often a catalyst for wage requests. Two staff that I wanted to train up to 10.0 skill made requests, which I was happy with because I'd purposefully given them some seminars but not enough to complete their training, in the hope that they'd get a bonus so that the final part of the training went quicker (and cost less at seminars). This happened with Abadal (scout) and Rahadian (marketer), they dutifully put in requests and then handily responded to my acceptances by gaining 0.5 rating and adding 0.06 points per seminar respectively. Abadal's bonus saved at least $570,000 seminar costs (more if he had to train on second seminars) whilst Rahadian will need perhaps 8 fewer seminars to reach 10.0 skill, a saving of over $720,000. The other four staff put me in a bit of a corner as two of them were youth coaches (the third youth coach retired leaving a gap, so I couldn't really risk them losing skill points while a new third guy trains up) and two were both senior coaches (similarly difficult to risk both taking penalties at the same time when I need to keep the staff skill high and have no spare seminars on my plan for a while). The youth coaches both got the nod, they responded with seminar points gains even though that's pointless while they're on 10.0 skill and it was the same story for Bueno the senior coach. I did note though that for Polla, the senior coach, his request would take him from where Bueno landed ($308k per week) to a massive $373k per week, which seemed a bit high, so he got a refusal. For this, he did adopt a penalty, but only a reduced seminar points gain, which is of little relevance while he's at maximum skill, so no big deal in the end.
15 Mar 2021. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 23.
It's a new season in Football Strategy and as usual, one of the many things to prepare for the new campaign is to deal with the salary negotiation requests from the players and staff. As regular blog readers will know, the results of this can significantly alter the stats, potential and workrate of the player or staff making the request. One thing to say from the off, is that as well as the staff requests appearing in the notifications page in-game, you also get a handy little table of them on the Office=>Overview page when you scroll down to the requests section. Figure 1 shows how mine looks before I made any choices and the Table below shows the requests, my choices and the outcomes of the negotiations.
Fig. 1. Open Requests section of the Overview page of the Office section.
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BEARDSLEY | 65070 | 68323 | 3253 | 5 | 37 | APP | no change |
| LUNDSTRAM | 994374 | 1242967 | 248593 | 25 | 37 | DEC | no change |
| ASTLE | 308301 | 314467 | 6166 | 2 | 37 | APP | +19% training TP, permanent |
| RAPID | 71400 | 72114 | 714 | 1 | 34 | APP | no change |
| CHAPMAN | 755143 | 981685 | 226542 | 30 | 38 | APP | no change |
| MARINER | 742093 | 905353 | 163260 | 22 | 23 | DEC | -14% training TP for 1 season |
| LOBO | 113343 | 117876 | 4533 | 4 | 35 | APP | +11% training TP for 2 seasons. +1 potential for 1 season |
| FERDINAND | 208127 | 264321 | 56194 | 27 | 37 | APP | +18% training TP for 2 seasons |
| [tot. players] | 709255 | ||||||
| RIOFRIO | 529200 | 714420 | 185220 | 35 | Staff | APP | +0.05 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| ERDESIR | 258940 | 310728 | 51788 | 20 | Staff | APP | no change |
| EKEBOM | 184874 | 240336 | 55462 | 30 | Staff | APP | +0.08 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| [tot. staff] | 292470 |
Compared to some other seasons, this round of negotiations saw more players than normal come to the office door but fewer staff - there's always a bit of hit and miss in that regard, it seems to depend on players' current salaries, how well they performed last season and some randomness. There is also always variation in the sizes of the requests, but overall this season, the total ask was just over $1m, which is well down on some seasons. A significant component of the reduced total ask was several players making requests that only amounted to single figure increases in percentage terms, Liam Rapid even made a 1% request, the smallest I've ever seen - the guy needs a better agent!
With the potential penalties for turning down player salary requests being reduced potential, stats and/or training speed, it's essentially a no-brainer to agree to the small ones unless your club is under severe financial strain. That said, I'll go through my thought processes as blog readers have told me that it helps them with their own decision making. Starting with Liam Rapid, he's currently my 5th highest paid youth player and the highest paid and highest skilled central defender, basically an automatic pick for the youth team if he's fit to play. With a 1% ask, he's the easiest yes to give (APP for approve in the table), but it was no great shakes that he didn't get any bonuses from the move. Robbie Astle's 2% request was also an easy yes, a senior team mainstay (and serial wage requester), he already has permanent training bonuses so the chance to stack more for such a small cost is not to be passed up. Amazingly he rewarded the payment with a permanent extra 19% training ground TP, on top of the +16% he already had making him a training ground beast - just a shame that he's already 33 years old and can only really use it to stop decay rather than for growth. Teddy Lobo has his last season of youth complete now and is on the transfer list as he wont cut it in the Bandits' squad as an unbonused senior, the temporary boost he got to training and potential might help with his sale and give some lucky buyer a good head-start; if no-one buys him then I can train up all his top skills from 18 to 19 cheaply then try to sell again next season. Beardsley was ever-present in the youth squad last season, but will probably struggle to break into the seniors - failing to boost his performance won't be helping his cause.
Onto the heavy hitters, Cyril Ferdinand is a protégé of my academy and has already banked potential and match-training buffs to give him the youth squad's highest salary. I'm hoping that he's going to become an NT star, so a 56k boost looks like a good investment (it's better to award +27% now than when his salary is over $1m). Although temporary, the 2 seasons training ground bonus that he came back with is very welcome and compliments his permanent TP from matches perfectly.
The final three players, I considered in a group as they are all defenders. The biggest earner of the three, Lundstram, is the club's 4th biggest earner and played a big part in my nice run last season (top 3 in the league, finalist in the national cup, 'Round of 16' in the FS cup and the squad climbing to world rank #17), but is he important enough to move up into the million-a-week club? Chapman isn't far behind Lundstram but his slightly lower skills and 1 less potential keep his salary down, however he does have a training points penalty on matches due to an earlier salary refusal. Mariner has more total skill than either of them, but is a wingback player and has those skill points spread across more skills, he has a TP buff to training but a penalty to matches and most seasons he plays less games than Lundstram or Chapman as wingbacks don't always fit into my formations. With the high values involved, it becomes "calculated risk" time - Chapman is the biggest risk to deny because he could get a stacked penalty or he could lose stat points, which would be harder to train back with the penalty he's already carrying. Lundstram is less of a risk as he already maxed out the main skills for a defender, so a training penalty or a potential drop wouldn't stop him getting there and a skill point drop can be trained back relatively quickly. Dropping stat points AND potential wouldn't be any worse for him as his potential is only 18 anyway; dropping stat points and getting a training penalty would be the worst outcome, but not catastrophic. Mariner is the least risky to deny as he plays less matches and has a buff to training ground TP to help repair any losses he may pick up. On the face of it also, Chapman is basically asking to match Lundstram's salary for doing the same job, while Lundstram wants to move into the mega-salary bracket whilst not even being an NT regular. Mariner tends to turn up with his hand out every other season whether he's been playing well or not. Given the risk, the cash involved and not wanting to stretch the budget too far, Chapman got an approval whilst Mariner and Lundstram were denied (DEC for declined in the table). I was actually nervous pressing the buttons, but when Chapman and Lundstram came back with "no changes", I felt like I'd gotten away with something and Mariner's 1 season training ground penalty doesn't hurt too hard either. Overall for players, $709,255 was asked for and $297,402 was granted and it didn't hurt too badly .. one of my better negotiating seasons for players!
The situation with the staff became complicated this season as combined with the salary requests, six staff members handed in their retirement notices and are now on their final season with the club. Erdesir (U21 coach) was one of them and he's at max skill, which gives a 1.00 skill bonus to the staff member that replaces the retiree. It makes little sense risking a skill drop for 51k per week when I'd need to repair it with seminars at 90k or 270k per session. Riofrio (U21 Asst. Manager) and Ekebom (senior coach) were new to the club last season and I've been building them up with seminars ever since, they're definitely underpaid for their skill level and thus likely candidates for skill drops if they are refused their increases. These considerations, together with the need to use the limited number of seminars to prepare for next season's massive retirement party mean that I chose to grant all of the requests for strategic reasons rather than considering only the short term aspects. One of those moments where there's not much to be gained by doing a thing but a lot to be lost by not doing it. Erdesir went out of my office with a huge grin on his face but without promising to work any harder; he's already half way into his pipe and slippers I think! The younger ones both got training boosts which is nice but will only save a small number of seminars as most of their training is already done.
Not a bad negotiation season for me, all in all, now it's time to plot my match strategies!