While making money in Football Manager 2023 isn’t as hard as it was in the likes of Football Manager 2021, which reflected a lot of the real life financial issues that clubs were going through, it’s still sometimes difficult to figure out how to get your balance sheets, well, balanced.
Every club’s financial situation is different, of course. Manchester City and Newcastle will almost never have any kind of issue funding a player purchase in any future edition of Football Manager, but beleaguered teams like Derby might struggle to even buy any players outright for a good few years. This is part of the charm of Football Manager: being able to turn around the fortunes of even the most financially embattled clubs, wheeling and dealing your way to the top.
If your balance is constantly in the red in Football Manager 2023, or if you’re just looking for a few million extra to get some transfers over the line, here’s how to add a bit more money to your kitty.
Stop with the 700 Installments & Clauses/Bonuses
This one’s more of a long-term tip, but it will make you a savvier football businessman overall if you try and heed it, as clauses and installments really are the silent killer of any club’s balance sheets. If you can, try to avoid them.
Clauses can really rack up in a player’s contract, especially performance-based bonuses, yearly wage rises, and all things like it. If you can, put together the most basic contract you can and pay a bigger flat fee over the course of his contract to save money in the long run.
Elsewhere, transfers on installments have really come into vogue over the last couple of games, but really they’re just debt that makes you pay more than what a player is worth overall (most of the time). If your owners aren’t giving you a lot of transfer funds, a mass of transfer debt may be why.
Sell Clauses
Basically the inverse of the last tip, you want to stack up as many clauses as you can when you go to sell a player. While this may be difficult if you’re actively trying to get rid of a player, load up your demands with as many clauses whenever you can.
Why? Well, because it’s a steady stream of money for you, especially if you add clauses for things like making the national team or scoring goals for a player you know is good enough to hit those targets.
The best reason to do this, though, is that your board will often negotiate a price for you to sell the clause at that’s slightly cheaper than waiting for it to be triggered. If you need a quick injection of cash in Football Manager 2023 to finalise a transfer, this is your best bet.
Play the Foreign Transfer Market
This is more of an overall tip for Football Manager pretty much every year than specifically one for making money, but there are some markets out there with huge profits to be had on players.
As always, South America is a bit of a goldmine, with countless wonderkids and underrated players available for far cheaper than their domestic peers. However, the Norwegian leagues have an absolute load of cheap, quality players in them this year with very decent returns of investment.
While not every player you buy will be a world beater, sometimes just buying a player in a more illustrious league will see their value skyrocket and make them appear like a better prospect overall. Play them in a few games to spread the word about them a bit, and then “flip” them for a decent profit (while also adding any clauses you can, of course) at the next opportunity.
Ask For More Transfer Money
the old adage “you don’t get when you don’t ask” is a true one, as your board are ultimately trying to give you as little money as they can to make the club run as efficiently as possible. However, it’s also worth just straight up asking for more money.
To ask for more money in FM 23, simply go to Finances > Make Board Request > Finance > Increase Transfer Budget, and they should come back to you shortly with an answer.
Actually getting money off them is easier said than done, however. If your balance sheets are in the red, then you’re almost definitely not getting even an extra penny off of them. Similarly, if you’re playing poorly, they won’t have the faith in you to spend that money wisely. You also may not get anything if you haven’t been manager for long or your reputation isn’t very high.
On the flipside, playing well and winning things (which is actually the best way to earn more money in Football Manager each year) will increase the likelihood of them granting you a bit of extra money. No matter what, though, it’s unlikely to ever be enough to buy Haaland.
Adjust Budget Balance
This one may be very easy to miss for a lot of new players to Football Manager, but it’s actually the most actionable bit of finance tweaking you can do as a player. Sometimes all you need to do is move a slider to the left and right in order to get more money by changing up your wages and transfer budget, with increasing one decreasing the other.
To do so, go to Finance > Make Budget Adjustment, and then slide your budgets either way that you need them to go. If you’re selling a high wage player for cheap or basically nothing, make sure you adjust your budget to give yourself a bit more spending money in the market.
Also, if you see red text talking about your committed spending, this means that you are going over your wage budget and need to re-align it. Make sure you use this slider to do just that and save yourself some headaches in the long run.
Football Manager 2023 is available now.
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