Football Manager has a brilliant new contract calculator, and it will save your club millions

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If you’ve ever tried to stretch your Football Manager transfer budget and ended up on the brink of administration three seasons later, you’re not alone. When you look at your finances and they’re all red, you know you’re in serious, serious trouble. However, now there’s a new fan-made project here to simplify all of that.

Introducing FMnatics Lab, a free and incredibly handy new platform and tool created by Guilherme Lopes. It’s built for FM players who want to make smarter financial decisions in Football Manager without needing to have a PHD in advanced mathematics and expert knowledge of Excel spreadsheets. The first two tools just launched, and they’re seriously impressive. While these tools aren’t as immediately exciting as some of the community’s better regen faces or chaotic match mods, it’s a great addon for the smarter FM players.

You can dive in and have a look at them for yourself here – but I’ll explain what they actually do below

Contract Calculator

The Contract Calculator is created to give you the full financial picture of a player’s deal – not just the wage number that shows up in the negotiation screen. Because if we’re being honest, that’s all that most of us focus on isn’t it. Things included in this snazzy calculator:

  • Fixed Costs: You can enter the player’s weekly or monthly wage, signing-on fee, agent fee, and contract length.
  • Variable Bonuses: Add appearance fees, unused substitute fees, goal bonuses, assist bonuses, shutout bonuses, and even international cap bonuses.
  • Projections: For each type of performance-based bonus, you can also estimate how many times a player will hit that bonus per year (e.g., expected goals or shutouts), so the tool gives a more realistic total cost.

For example, if your new centre-back is asking for £10k/week plus a £5k clean sheet bonus, and you expect 15 cleansheets per season… this calculator will tell you exactly what you’re signing up for over a three-year deal. And it’s all displayed super simply, no PHD in Excel needed! Try it here.

Contract Comparison

Deciding between two players? Wondering if the Brazilian wonderkid is better value than the exact same wonderkid… from Argentina?!

The Contract Comparison tool makes that process painless. You input the same fields for two different contracts, and it lays them out next to each other. The tool then gives you a clear cost comparison, showing not just total value, but also a breakdown of where one deal might be more expensive than the other (e.g. agent fees, performance incentives, wage vs. bonus-heavy structures).

This is especially useful when deciding whether to:

  • Renew a contract or sell the player
  • Sign a cheaper backup vs. a star with higher bonus triggers
  • Promote an academy player on a new deal vs. buying a depth option

It turns the decision-making process from vibes-based to data-driven. And for those managing in lower leagues or trying long-term saves where budgets are tight, that can save your season.

Final Thoughts

If you’re someone who loves long-term saves, running clubs sustainably, or just hates getting burned by a sneaky agent clause, FMnatics Lab is worth a bookmark. Let’s be honest, we’ve all accidentally given a left-back £2m in goal bonuses before. Now we don’t have to. Guilherme also has loads of other stuff on his new FMnatics lab website, like articles on how to revolutionise pre-season in Football Manager or articles on learning how to scout full backs and wing backs in Football Manager using key performance stats and much more. So make sure to check all of his excellent work out. Once again, the game is being completely carried by this incredible community and I love it.

About the Author

William Reid

William is the admin of Out of Context Football Manager, an X account that focuses on FM news. He's worked for LADbible Group and is VG's resident FM expert.

Football Manager 2024

  • Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series X
  • Genre(s): Management, Soccer, Sports
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