I was wondering if anyone knows more about how the transfer engine works.
e.g. If I admire a player in the press and they react positively how does this change things? Are the club more likely to accept an offer for him or does it just make him easier to negotiate a contract with?
Also, if the club just constantly rejects your offers without even negotiating - how can you get around this?
Quite often clubs seem to want stupid money for average or very young players with not much contract left...
I find the transfer system to be a mine field, probably much like real life.
I'm wondering what you mean by "how it works" because it's such a broad area of the game.
To answer what you've mentioned though, I've tried the admiring of players to get good responses and more often than not it does seem to help once you get to the contract negotiation stage. I can safely say that it is not a guarantee that a player will sign for you though. On more than one occasion I've had positive feedback from a player, had a fee accepted and then not even been able to offer a contract.
My assumption about how this process works would be very much like how a deal works within a formula. I'd guess this includes the prestige of your club compared to player and current club, his current happiness, what his "favourites" are, the stubborness of his agent etc all being rolled together and working out a percentage of chance success. Only this formula could include an increase in chance of success if you've worked well in the media with the player.
The only way to get a club to accept an offer is to offer them what they think the player is worth. I agree about some ridiculous fees for players but do tend to find valuations decrease particularly when a contract is coming to an end.
I don't mind the fact that some clubs demand high fee's for average players, particularly if my rivals are stupid enough to buy them.
I figured out an easy way to know the lowest accepted price. Put a loan offer for a player and set the future fee for a low price and in the answer the opposite club will tell you the their price.
Once I tried to offer the future fee price as a transfer fee but it was rejected. When I set the same price as a future fee in a loan offer it was accepted.
So I think in this way they are telling us the real lowest price without any furter sales or goal bonus.
From what I can tell, the way to get players for a lower transfer fee is to unsettle them enough that they request a transfer. After that happens they should be available for a much lower price. To do that you should give positive comments every now and then, and keep making offers that are reasonable (i.e. above the player's actual value) but lower than the club will accept. Eventually you can drive the price down a lot by doing that, but it can take a while, so you should plan transfers well into the future for this to be really useful.
There was one player who I complimented and he was unhappy and eventually he persuaded his club to transfer list him - but now his club still reject any enquiry even though he's transfer listed.
Enquiries still won't work, you have to make an offer instead. More often than not they'll go for a much lower fee than they would have demanded before. It's not all set in stone though, sometimes they won't let a player go for less even in that situation, I guess you just have to get lucky.
