Football Manager 2021 Best Transfer Targets

This is a series of spreadsheets that help you find the best transfer targets in Football Manager 2021 for your team.

This brilliant work is created by u/brahle and shared here with his kind permission.

Looking to show some oomph in the transfer market but your club isn't exactly rolling the dough? After you spent all of the money signing young "affordable" wonderkids like Yusuf Demir, Joao Pedro, and Denys Popov, you still have a gaping hole at left-back? Or do you just want to sign a cheap back-up option for your right-winger in case you get ravaged by injuries in the shortened season? Fret not, for these Spreadsheets can help you.

FM21 Best Transfer Targets - The Lists

So, without further ado, the lists:

Best GK Transfer Targets on FM 2021

Best DL Transfer Targets on FM 2021

Best DC Transfer Targets on FM 21

Best DR Transfer Targets on FM2021

Best WBL Transfer Targets on FM21

Best DM Transfer Targets on FM 2021

Best WBR Transfer Targets on FM 21

Best ML Transfer Targets on FM2021

Best MC Transfer Targets on FM21

Best MR Transfer Targets on FM 2021

Best AML Transfer Targets on FM 21

Best AMC Transfer Targets on FM2021

Best AMR Transfer Targets on FM21

Best STC Transfer Targets on FM 2021

I've rated each player based on the attributes required for a given role and calculated a standard score (also known as z-score), thereby creating a metric that allows you to compare a player to all other players that can play on that same position within the same role. This made it straightforward to find the best transfer targets at the start of the game for various categories of players, as a higher z-score is better so it was just a matter of sorting a given set of players. The players were divided into "tiers", based on their age and their in-game valuation.

Player Tiers

Each spreadsheet has the top 10 players for each role in each of the following "tiers":

• All - the very best players
  
• Free - players for all budgets, since they don't cost anything
  
• Free and U29 - a player that not only does not cost anything but will also give you a few seasons as they are on the good side of 30
  
• <100K - very cheap players
  
• <100K and U29 - very cheap players younger than 30
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score - players that cost less than a 1M GBP
  
• <1M and U29 - players that cost less than a 1M GBP and are also younger than 30
  
• <10M - players that cost less than 10M GBP
  
• <10M and U29 - players that cost less than 10M GBP and are also younger than 30
  
• <30M - players that cost less than 30M GBP
  
• <30M and U29 - players that cost less than 30M GBP and are also younger than 30
  
• U29 - players that are younger than 30
  
• U23 - players that are younger than 24, very talented younger players
  
• U21 - players that are younger than 21, so-called "wonderkids"
  
• U18 - players that are younger than 18, potential future "wonderkids"
  

Currently, the ratings are not including the hidden attributes.

Score Range

The scores are not necessarily limited on either side, but they range from -3 to +5.5 (Messi). The average player who can play a given position will have a score of 0, but the average player is pretty bad since a lot of lower-level players are included.


To get a sense of the distribution of scores (how common a score is), this is the distribution of the best scores for each player. As you can see, there are almost no players with scores higher than 4 and a fairly small number of those with 3+.

How to use the Spreadsheets

There are 14 documents, one per position. Each document has 16 different worksheets. The first worksheet in every document is a list of leagues, and a recommended minimum standard score when looking for a transfer target for a given level (best in the league, title challenge, mid-table, substitute, or backup). The remainder of the sheets shows different tiers of players.

My recommendation for finding the right players is:

1. Decide what position you want to strengthen.
   
2. Optionally, decide what role you want the player to play.
   
3. Find the appropriate player level that you need for success in your league using the first worksheet.
   
4. Go through the tiers and find what players satisfy your search criteria based on the budget.