One of the new features in Football Manager 2011 is the Agents feature, which is one that I’ve been looking forward to test out since hearing about it. Agents are a very big part of football, and we all know the kind of leverage they have with clubs and players, especially players.
I was actually surprised to see agent implications when I just barely started playing the Football Manager 2011 Demo.
I actually didn’t even get to “meet the media” before an agent popped up offering me Ajax’s Sulejmani.
But that’s actually something I love about the agents feature so far. Gone are the days of searching and searching for players, finding the right one, scouting him, and then seeing that he would “not consider a move to your club at the moment”. Now you have the agents promoting players willing to leave to you, in hopes of getting themselves a nice agent’s fee. So this one makes finding players easier, and sometimes they recommend really good players.
Here’s the screenshot of the agent asking me to look at Sulejmani:
It’s cool because they also tell you some quick facts, the price you have to probably bid, and they do a bit of marketing in the end.
Now for the second instance the Agents pop up, negotiating transfers. I bid for Lacina Traore, got accepted and then was given over to the player’s agent.
Here’s what he had to say:
So they give a list of demands, which you can negotiate on. I would never accept their initial demands, but some people might, and lose a lot of money! I actually didn’t change anything from their demands, and still got the message “we need to consider the bigger picture first.” Load of bollocks.
But the whole interface is pretty interesting, I think it’s a big improvement from previous. One version that will suck for the average manager is the agent fee part. Here’s a screenshot of agent fee options:
The agent fee amounts range based on the transfer value. In this case, I offered 3 mil for Skjelbred, which the Agent asked for an almost equally big fee for the transfer. My board rejected the offer, because he was asking for way too much money. That’s a good measure in the game, but it can also cause transfers to fail because the agent doesn’t get too much money.
In the case of Skjelbred, the agent did not reveal the player demands initially. This is also something very new, you’re bidding openly without knowing what the player wants or will accept. This is done by the agent to hopefully get more salary and a bigger agent fee. It could be tricky, as an offer that is too low could cause the transfer to fail.
The final agent implication I saw in my quick 15 minutes of testing new features was the following:
In this case, the agent asked for an improved contract for the player he represents, feeling that he needs a better deal. Look at the message inbox to the left, he asked for the new deal right after Arsenal enquired about the player. This is quite smart, but could force you to give a salary raise every time a big club looks into your youngsters or players. I rejected the raise, got a very negative response from the player, so it’s very bad for player morale.
All in all, the agent feature is quite welcome for me in FM2011. I think it makes the game a bit more realistic. The only cons are the agent fees (which exist in real life, so.. I guess it’s fair) because you will get less players for your money compared to previous versions, and the agents asking for raises in wages as soon as big teams become interested.
More to come with new features from FM2011. There’s really a lot of amazing stuff in the new version of the game.
By the way, if you start with Manchester City, you’ll have 77 mil to spend on players, compared to the 12 of Barcelona.
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