FML: Player Contracts and Team Management

So as I promised someone in my GW, I am going to post a short and hopefully clear explanation on how player contracts work.
In Football Manager Live there are several ways to obtain players, below I will try to go over these methods:

Transfer Auction: A Transfer auction is a type of auction where the manager trying to sell a player will place that player in the auction using a starting bid value >= 1 pound and can also set a buyout price as well. The seller will be allowed to define how many days it will take the auction to expire which will be the amount of time buyers will have to place their bid (which are open bids), however any manager will be able to buyout the player during that period as long as there is a Buyout price. So as long as you have the winning bid at the time the auction ends you will get that player. The bidding process also has another aspect that is important to take into consideration. When you are bidding an amount for a player, for example 1000 while there is already another bid in place for that player for 900, you will actually only have to pay 901 pounds for that particular player. This means that the winner will always only have to pay x+1 pounds for that player, where x is the value bid by the second highest bidder.

Wage Auctions: Wage auctions are a very special type of transfer. It happens when a player's contract is about to expire and he is not protected (a team can only protect 5 senior players). In that case the player will be put in a wage auction where any manager can put a bid for that particular player. The main difference from this type of auction to the other kind of auction is that in wage auctions you will pay the price you bid, therefore if you bid 1000 on a player's daily wage and another manager bid 500, you will have to pay him a wage of 1000 and not 501. This however is only true if you are trying to bid on another team's player, if you are re-bidding on a player you currently own the x+1 rule applies. There is also another catch, if you are bidding on another team's player you will not only have to pay the wage you are bidding for, but you will also have to pay the player's AF to the current owner of that player, and you will also have to pay 10xwage of the player to the player (a money sink). Therefore you should always consider this in order to calculate the real price of a particular player in wage auction. A lot of times it is cheaper to buy a player through a regular Xfer auction to avoid paying all these extra fees.

Transfer List: In my opinion this is a similar option to transfer auctions, in the sense that a seller will place a player out for sale with a certain starting price and possibly an auto accept price (same as buyout). My opinion is that this option will give the seller a bit more control over the offers but at the same token it will not drive buyers to compete for the player, which often is beneficial to the buyer, since the prices tend to rise significantly that way.

Free Agents: This will likely be the first method of obtaining players for most people. When you first start FML you are asked to pick players to start a team and you are given the option to chose the players yourself or let the computer do it for you. Both of these options will obtain players from the database who are currently out of a contract, hence they are Free Agents. For most players, getting these players will cost you the Aquisition Fee for the player plus 10x their wage very similar to a wage auction. So for example a player that costs 20k and has a demanded wage of 2k will cost 20k+(10*2k) = 40k pounds to obtain. This is a reasonable way to get players and every manager will be using this method at one point or another to get players. The main difference between this system and the wage auction is also the way bids are placed. Once a manager places a bid for a particular player he will have that bid in for 24 hours and he/she will have the option to make his/her bid anonymous. Also here the x+1 rule works as well. Now there is also a bit of information not everyone knows about these types of bids. The Free Agent database is very large and each manager only has access to a certain % of the database (This percentage can be increased through scouting skills). Therefore, if you see a player you want and bid on him, not all managers will be able to try bidding for that player. One strategy when trying to bid on free agents is to actually offer the player a 24hr trial contract (which will cost a days worth of salary) and then make a bid. The advantages of doing this can be quite obvious, for example the manager can find out if the player will do well in his team, as well as allowing this manager to remove the player from the free agent database for 24 hours. This is often seen as a way to hide players from managers, however it does have a catch. When a player signs a trial contract, he is removed from the free agent list but becomes visible to all manager in the GW, meaning now managers that initially couldn't bid on this player will now be able to. Therefore this is a situation you definately want to think carefully before you do it.