For the longest time, I found loan clauses in football manager to be particularly vague as to what they exactly mean. For instance, the difference between loan monthly fee and unused monthly fee. In this article, I will be explaining the difference between the various loan terms as well how to use them to your advantage.
Loan Monthly Fee and Unused Monthly Fee
Loan monthly fee refers to the amount the club loaning a player will be paying to the parent club when the player makes first team appearances each month for the entire period the player will be on loan with them.
The unused monthly fee on the other hand is paid monthly by the loaning club, when the player on loan fails to make first team appearances in a particular month
How Loan Monthly Fees and Unused Monthly Fees are Calculated
Loan monthly fees and unused monthly fees are weighted based on minutes played out of total minutes of match time in a particular month.
For instance, if you have loaned out your striker with a loan monthly fee of 200k and unused monthly fee of 400k. This is how the game will calculate the amount of money you will receive at the end of the month if the player in question played 60% of the available minutes, thereby being unused for the remaining 40%
0.6 x 200k + 0.4 x 400k = 280k
Having a large unused monthly fee is useful since it puts pressure on the club loaning a player to use him, or pay a significantly larger amount of money at the end of each month.
A simple rule of thumb I follow when setting the monthly fee and unused monthly fee is to use a quarter of the player’s weekly wage. If the player is earning 60k a week, I will put 15k to be both the monthly and unused monthly fees. You can probably go higher than a quarter the value of a player’s week’s wages, but I typically do not risk chasing away potential clubs who are willing to develop my wonderkids with demands that they might consider to be too high.
Playing Wage Percentage
The playing wage percentage is the percentage of a player’s salary the loaning club will be paying each month, when the player in question features in the first team.
The unused wage percentage on the other hand is the percentage of the player’s salary the loaning club will be paying when the player in questions fails to feature in the first team.
How Playing Wage Percentage and Unused Wage Percentage are Calculated
Let’s say a player earns 100k a week, and the loan contract stipulates that the loaning club pays 10% playing wage percentage and 50% unused wage percentage. If the player played 60% of the available minutes in a week and remained unused for the other 40%, the game will calculate which club contributes what amount to the player’s salary as follows.
Parent Club – 0.9 x 0.6 x 100k + 0.5 x 0.4 x 100k = 74k
Loaning Club – 0.1 x 0.6 x 100k + 0.5 x 0.4 x 100k = 26k
Therefore, by making the loaning club pay a higher percentage of the wage when the player is not getting any minutes, ensures that they feel the pinch, and it is better if they just play him whenever he is available.
Other Loan Clauses In Football Manager and Their Meaning
- Duration – Refers to the length of the loan contract
- Proposed Playing time – The amount of game time proposed at the club seeking the loan. It is wise to ensure your player is estimated to be a star player, important player or a regular starter at the very least to ensure he gets regular game time for his development.
- Preferred position – The position the loaning club promises to play your player in. It is useful to specify this to prevent your advanced forward from being played out wide, or your shadow striker being trained as a mezzala, maybe because the loaning club does not use a formation with an attacking midfielder.
- Preferred role – Specifies the specific role you want the loaning club to play your player in. It is useful to prevent your inverted wingback from being used as a normal fullback and other such scenarios.
- Can play in cup matches – Allows your player to feature in cup matches while on loan. The only downside to this, is that the player might be cup-tied, preventing from featuring in your team in the same cup competition later in the season if you decide to recall him before the season ends.
- Can be recalled – Allows the parent club to bring back the loaned player at any time in the season. It is useful when you are in the middle of an injury crisis and need some cover or when you want to send the player to a different team because of either not getting enough playing time or he is performing poorly
- Loan cannot be terminated – Prevents the loaning team from cancelling the loan early. Allowing this opens the possibility of you having an extra player you must find playing time for, at least until the next transfer window opens.
- Loan with option to buy / Optional future fee – The transfer fee which the loaning club can opt to pay, if the player they are loaning performs to their expectations. Should they fail to pay this amount, then the player will return to his parent club when the loan duration expires.
- Mandatory Future Fee – Obligates the loaning club to buy the player for the amount specified in the loan contract, once the loan duration has expired.
- Future Fee after matches fee – The loaning club becomes obligated to pay for the agreed transfer fee once the player on loan players for a certain number of games that is agreed upon before the loan.
- Future buyback fee – If the loan move is made permanent by the loaning club, this clause stipulates the amount the parent club can pay in the future if they want the player to go back to playing for them.
You can also read this guide here, on determining whether it is best to send your youngsters out on loan or have them develop in your youth teams.
