We all know that when you want to get the player you want in FM you just bid a certain amount, get him, and that’s that. Well in FML this really isn’t the case… How do you get players then? Well there are several different ways and I’ll give you lot an inside look into each.

First up, what happens when you sign up?

Assembling Your Squad

Once you start you get given a provisional wage cap of 100, 000, this is removed once you “confirm” your squad. In other words, you sign players dependant on their wage and pay no transfer fees. However, this means that you can only sign players that are not contracted to another users’ club. “Well that’s crap then, all the good players will be gone!” Au contraire! Au contraire! There is a vast amount of “locked players” in the game’s database. How it works is, is that if you are assembling your squad you can get any of these “locked players”, however teams who have already confirmed their squad do not have access to these locked or hidden players.

Does this mean that if you are an early user of a gameworld you can have anyone? No. When a new person signs up to a gameworld (1000 is the limit of users per gameworld, at the moment there is only one) he unlocks 25 players for those who have confirmed their squad. This basically means that when more people fill up the gameworld, more players are unlocked. Nifty eh?

Getting Players After Your Squad Has Been Assembled

There are two ways in order to get a player, one is the usual transfer system which is apparent in FM, and the other is a silent wage auction.

The Transfer System

Trialists

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You can sign a player for up to 24 hours on trial as long as the player isn’t contracted to any club and isn’t involved in a wage auction. What are the advantages of this? It basically means you can “test drive” the player before deciding to signing up. During the trial you are able to initiate the wage auction (more of that later). Unlike FM though! Anyone you can sign on trial is free to play in any competitions, friendlies so forth as long as the competition organizer doesn’t permit use of trialists. What’s the catch? You just have to pay their expected wage for one day.

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Loans

How can I loan a player? Is it as easy as it is in FM? I would say easier… Clubs are a lot more willing to loan out their star players. Why? They don’t have any games for a while so want to give the player match practise and not pay his crazy wages for a couple days, are in financial trouble but don’t want to sell etc. Anyway, more to the point, how does one find out if a club is willing to loan out their player? Well much like FM there is also a “Loan List.”

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You could also approach one of the players and ask whether he’s willing to loan the player, or just try your luck by putting an offer in to loan one of his players.

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Now from the above screenshot, you can see that you can choose the terms of the loan and so forth and if you want to put a little comment on the bottom in hope of persuading him. You will also see how much his wages will affect your overall wage bill for those days.

What you tend to see is that a lot of youngsters get loaned out as clubs try to get their young ones some match practise.

Transfers

Here is one of the fundamental differences between acquiring players in FM and FML. You don’t put your player up on a transfer list; instead you put him up for auction.

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Now, how does it work for the team who sells? You place your player on auction and you specify the starting bid (lowest amount possible to bid for the player), and the duration of the auction (this tends to be 24 hours). You can also set an instant buy amount (concept is similar to the eBay style auction) where if someone wants the player instantly they can just pay that amount.

How does it work for the team who buys? You find a guy in the auction list, and when you go to make the transfer bid this is what you will see:

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A box where you can put in the amount you want to bid and also a small comment if you want to. As with the trialists and loaners you will see how the player will affect your wage bill but this time you can also see how the transfer fee will affect your cash. If you want to buy him instantly, you just click the instant buy amount and that’s that!

Pretty simple no? Well! What if someone else bids for him! Then the person who has bidded the highest amount at the end of the auction wins. Like eBay, you can see how much the other team has bidded for him and can then decide whether or not you wish to outbid that team.

Here’s a list of the most expensive transfers in the gameworld so far, (the maximum cash any team can have is 25m and the average cash a team has two weeks ago was around 2.2m just to give you an idea on how silly some of these transfers are).

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Wage Auction System:

A player’s contract lasts up to four weeks (soon eight weeks), each team has 5 “locks” which they can use once per month on separate players. These locks ensure that the player’s contract is automatically renewed, soon players will be able to be contracted for eight weeks if one of these locks is applied to them, otherwise its four weeks. Youngsters are excluded, therefore you can auto-extend a player’s contract (as long as he is under 21) at his expected wage.

However, if a player is unhappy he can refuse to auto-extend his contract and then he is put up in a “wage auction.” More about that shortly…

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There you can see that there is a padlock next to each player who has been assigned one of the limited 5 locks.

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If you have used up your locks and still want the player to renew his contract then you will have to place him in a wage auction. From the above screenshot, if you do so it asks you to put in your maximum wage bid. How this works is:

If you are Team A and own Player XY and put in a maximum bid of 20, 000, and Team B puts in a bid of 15, 000 for Player XY you end up paying 15, 001 and not 20, 000 as he was your player to begin with. This helps the owner not rise up his wage bill in hope of hanging onto your players.

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Now, if you want to buy a player via a wage auction you simply have to make a sealed maximum bid. If yours is the highest this WILL be the wage that you have to pay for him. However, you are unable to see what everyone else (if there are other bidders) have offered the player so you have to choose wisely.

Youth Development Fees:

If you have a youngster who is under 21 for two seasons (two months in real life) a youth development fee will be created. This is based on his performances, wages and other such information. If, you happen to lose this player in a wage auction you will get paid his youth development fee by the team who signed him. This is so if someone has poached your youngster, you at least get compensated.

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Hopefully that cleared up some things and expect another installment sometime in September.

Comments and questions are welcome here.