Cheap FM 16 Players: How To Sign Any Player On The Cheap

Ever wondered how to turn an expensive player into just another cheap FM 16 bargain? Those days are over, as this guide will explain to you how to get more from your transfer budget. The FM 16 bargains hack means you can sign whoever you want and not have to worry about how it impacts your transfer budget. In the example below, I’ve turned a £35m transfer budget into £79m worth of signings. It’s a great way of making the limited money you have go a lot further. It’s similar to the FIFA hack, whereby you used to be able to loan any player you wanted simply by stating an unrealistic future fee. FIFA have since fixed this, but FM 16 has always had this hack in place.

Put simply, once you learn this hack – it’s a game-changer. How you view transfers in Football Manager will never be the same after this.

A list of other useful FM 16 guides:

FM 16 Bargains Hack

1 – Select the player you wish to sign

Here, I’ve used the example of PSG, who have a maximum transfer budget of £35.89m. I will first try to sign Harry Kane, who’s valued at £27.5m, for £50m. This is of course a ridiculous price to pay for Kane, and not a deal I’d usually seek to pull off but the more extreme the example, the better.

2 – Add a small upfront fee and a large fee via monthly instalments

As you can see, Tottenham want £12m upfront and £38m over 48 months. The option to pay later is what awards you the freedom to sign who you want on FM 16. Clubs are usually receptive to the idea of being paid 4 years down the line (don’t ask why, but 9 times out of 10, the club will accept your offer of delayed payments). So this means is I can sign Kane for £50m, at a cost of just £20m to my transfer budget.

In order to ensure money isn’t taken from your transfer budget right now, use delayed payments. The closer those payments are to the present, the more money will come out of your current season transfer budget. The breakdown is as follows:

Transfer budget cost over months

So, if you bid £1m for a player and spread the cost over 48 months, only £210k will come out of your transfer budget for that season, with the rest will come out of future budgets, as shown below:

Transfer budget deductions

3 – Decide which length of payment best suits you

If you’re only a few million short, then perhaps paying the rest of the fee over a shorter amount of time (12 or 18 months) might make more sense. But generally speaking, I always use the longest time possible (48 months). Why? Because I’m such a nerd at FM, that I know in 4 years time (when that money has to be repaid by), it’s more than likely I would’ve made that money back. If you wish to run a tighter ship, and have more available cash at your club, use a short length of time for your monthly payments.

4 – Keep signing players

As we saw, PSG only have £35m to spend, but I’ve already spent £50m on Harry Kane, and still have ‘£14m’ left. So let’s turn that £14m into something a lot more, and go after another big signing. This time, I’ve gone for Youri Tielemans, whom I have to spend £29m to sign, despite him being worth just £3.9m. I’ve managed to agree another somewhat questionable deal with Anderlecht to sign him for £29m, despite having a budget of just £14m.

Transfer budget spread over months player

So now, with a budget of just £35m, I’ve spent £79m on players, which is more than twice the budget I was allocated at the start. I honestly don’t remember the last time I signed a player on FM and didn’t end up paying the other club the bulk of the fee 4 years down the line. I strongly advise you do the same.

transfer budget player2