The chairman's handbook

The job

You are the chairman, not the manager. The manager picks the team and runs the dressing room; you hire him, sack him, sign his players, build his ground, and answer to three constituencies who can all end you: the fans, the board, and the bank.

The board hands you a mandate — stay up, get promoted, keep wages under a ceiling — reviewed every few seasons. Pass it and the bar rises. Fail it and you're out. In the lower leagues the mandate usually demands the climb; at the top it demands trophies.

The week

Club President runs on a weekly ticker — 52 weeks a season, one press of ▶ Play the week at a time. A week might hold a match, two matches, a transfer window morning, a cup draw, a board letter, or nothing but the books.

• Match weeks go team news → the match → the full-time report → the week closes on the money.
• Window weeks open at the transfer desk — the phones ring before the football starts.
• Quiet weeks just close: costs leave, instalments land, the paper prints if anything happened.

Everything important lands as an overlay in order: board notices first, then the club's own paper, then the week's money, then anything else that needs you. Nothing is ever decided behind your back — every match is played, every score is real.

Matchday

Before kick-off you get team news and a Set-up card: formation, mentality (attacking / balanced / containing), and a one-tap 🔄 Rotate the squad that rests your five most tired starters when depth allows. Against a rival, a red banner warns you that form means nothing in these.

The match plays as a live ticker — every goal, card, crossbar and scramble, minute by minute. Fast-forward 2× and Quick sim ⏩⏩ are always there; the result is identical however you watch. Knockout ties go to extra time and named penalty kicks; two-legged European ties are decided on aggregate.

What a result moves

• Ratings and form — every player gets a match rating; the last five make his form, and form feeds selection.
• Condition — a match costs roughly 30 fitness. One game a week is sustainable; a midweek double-header is not, unless you've built the medical department to absorb it.
• Morale — wins lift the room, defeats cut, derbies cut twice as deep, and a benched senior gets grumpier every idle week.
• Money — home gates bank on the day: tickets, food, drink, hospitality, all scaled by your pricing and the size of the ground.

The money

The books breathe weekly. Broadcast and sponsorship money arrives as instalments (1/52nd a week); wages and running costs leave the same way; gates bank on matchday; cup prize money pays out when a run ends; the summer settlement only trues up what hasn't already landed — merit payments, parachutes, the board's bonus.

When your weekly money moves, the ledger names the reason: climbed four places (merit), a sponsor expired, promotion's TV cliff, a parachute beginning. Watch that banner — it's the story of your income.

The levers

• Matchday pricing (Stadium tab) — five tiers for tickets, food and drink. A flying team forgives high prices; a struggling one plays to empty seats.
• Operating posture (Finance tab) — run the club normally, lean (−7%), or on austerity (−15%). Cuts are real money and real consequences: softer gates, a grumpier dressing room.
• The capital desk — bank loans, a supporter bond, a broadcast advance, or selling a stake to private equity. All cash now, consequences on a schedule. Every loan can be settled early; the stadium debt can be paid down any time.
• Scaling down — closed stands cost nothing to run, unsellable contracts can be terminated by mutual consent (55% of the remainder, paid today), and the five-year projection on the Finance tab warns you which year the books go overdrawn.

Transfer windows

Summer (July–August) and January. Outside them you can watch, list, and talk — but no deal completes.

Buying

• The manager's list — two names the dugout actually wants. Decline a man you can clearly afford and the manager takes it personally.
• The scouting department — brief them by position; quality follows your chief scout.
• The agents' shortlist & the free-agent market — out-of-contract players, no fee, always open for business once the window is.
• Deals are structured packages: cash, add-ons (roughly half ever get triggered — and then they cost you real money at the settlement), and sell-on clauses. Haggle the fee, then agree personal terms. Three rounds and talks die.

Selling

• Incoming bids carry a hidden ceiling — counter under it and they pay your price; insult them and they walk. Many first bids are deliberate lowballs: negotiating a try-on up is the game.
• Half of every sale goes straight back into your transfer budget. Transfer-listing a player quadruples the bids; loan-listing floors the loan offers.
• The budget is the board's sanction, not a pot of cash — deals pay from reserves when they complete. Petition the board to raise the sanction when you've earned the right.

Deadline day is an event: a late flurry of bids, one last trip to the desk, and then midnight.

Scouting

The 🌍 tab is a world map coloured by footballing culture. Hire a chief scout first — his quality decides how far the network reaches and how good the finds are. Then:

• Missions — send scouts to any country for 1–12 weeks. Longer stays find more; strong cultures grow better players; the airfare grows with distance (and shrinks with the size of your club). The reward for a real trip is the underpriced gem — and the raw 🌱 project: a teenager priced on what he is, not what he'll become.
• The ⚡ quick sweep — one week, three honest names at your level. The I-need-a-left-back-now option.
• The free-agent trawl — put an agent on the out-of-contract pool for depth, with the occasional forgotten gem.
• Finds are frozen in the file until a window opens — found in October, signable in January. Free agents eventually sign elsewhere; contracted players wait.

Squad care

• Condition recovers weekly — faster with a physio, a medical wing and youth. Rotate before a double-header, not after.
• Morale is visible on the squad table (😠 under 40). Benched seniors sour week by week; talk to them, play them, loan them, or sell them.
• Everyone talks ⭐ premium — every player, the manager, every staff member opens a private chat. They know the results, they remember what you said, and a good word at the right moment shows up on matchday. Twice a month per person; flattery doesn't work twice.
• Bans: five yellows = one match, a red = two. Injuries scale down with your medical staff.
• The chairman's gestures (🎁) — a warm-weather retreat, watches, cars. One-off morale and freshness levers, priced to your division, with diminishing returns and a board that notices poorly-timed generosity.

The academy

A bare academy produces nobody — the environment is the story. The 🌱 office has four levers: the annual budget, centres of excellence in real local places, youth scouts in three age bands (volume, quality, growth), and the training-ground facilities that raise the development ceiling.

• Graduates arrive each summer. Rating follows what you built; a maxed setup produces first-team players, a starved one produces polite letters of release.
• ⬆ Promote a boy any time (no window needed); his wage conversation comes later, through his agent.
• Loans out are the pathway: borrowers pay most of the wage, the boy comes back sharper for real minutes, and you can recall him in a window.

The ground & the campus

Both build screens draw the real thing — stands thicken, cranes go up, the dome appears on the training fields.

• Stadium works: one crew at a time, paid up front, delivered on a schedule. Seats, hospitality, screens, the kop, the roof — capacity feeds gates, home advantage feeds results.
• THE NEW GROUND ladder takes any ground to 8k → 15k → 25k → 40k → 62k — each rung gated on your division and on actually filling the ground you have.
• The training campus feeds recovery, development and the medical bay. Money tight? Mothball a facility (reversible) or sell it off (final).
• Big grounds cost real money per seat to run — closed sections cut the bill when the crowds shrink.

Staff & the dugout

Seven departments, quality one to five stars. Slates rotate every few months; a ★★★★★ appears roughly once a career and only answers big clubs. Every star flows into the machine: coaching → the bench, physio → injuries, academy → intake, scouting → finds, analysis → the bench, psychology → shootouts, commercial → richer deals.

• Courses: send someone away for a few weeks and they come back a star better — far cheaper than hiring the finished article.
• Headhunters call — good staff get offers. Meet the number (permanently) or let them go.
• The dugout: sack the manager and it costs a year's severance; the market is tiered by your standing. Retired club legends re-emerge as managers — appointing one of your own is worth real goodwill.

Cups & Europe

• FA Cup — non-league clubs enter at the qualifying rounds, the EFL at Round One, the top two divisions at Round Three. Every round survived accrues prize money; the cheque clears when the run ends. At non-league level a good run is a season's budget.
• League Cup — all 92 league clubs. FA Trophy — non-league only, and very winnable.
• Europe — finish top five for the Champions League, 6th–7th Europa, 8th Conference, and both domestic cups pay a Europa place. A 36-club league phase, then two-legged knockouts and a one-off final. European nights pay 25% richer gates.

The pyramid

Seven divisions, 160 clubs, and it all moves — promotion and relegation run top to bottom every season, play-offs are played (never simmed), and other clubs rise and fall over the years on their own projects and crises.

• Promotion transforms the books: the TV cliff from the National League to the Premier League is roughly ×450.
• Relegation triggers parachute payments and automatically reprices your sponsors down; the wage bill is yours to shed — sell, loan out, terminate, close the top tier, drop to austerity.
• Sponsorship follows success: Europe, titles and a growing trophy cabinet all raise what the market pays for your shirt.

Staying in the chair

• Watch the board number — results move it, wage-ratio breaches erode it, and letters arrive before coups do. An unread red-spine letter is never good news left unread.
• Watch the trough, not the balance — the five-year projection names the year you go overdrawn. Fix it two windows early, not two weeks late.
• The mandate is the scoreboard — check the Records tab; the review doesn't care about your excuses, only the objective keys.

Premium

• ⏩ Sim to the window — fast-forward whole quiet stretches of the season: every match simmed and committed, every pound counted, stopping at the next window, the rollover, or anything that needs you.
• 🏗️ Any club in the pyramid — mint a playable pack for any of the 160 clubs (3 a day): the AI researches the real current squad, ground and rivalries in about a minute.
• 💬 The private channels — talk to anyone at the club, and put your questions to the 🧠 director of football: who to sell, who's ready, where to strengthen.
• 🛠️ Found your own club — create a brand-new club (AI helps with the identity) and start at step six on the footing you choose.
• 🧪 The modding workshop — rewrite any club's reality: the squad and its ratings, the money, the colours, the ground, even the league it starts in (the name is the one thing that stays). Play your alternate reality or share it with anyone on a link — big takeovers, crisis clubs, you as the best player in the world.
• Multiple careers — free accounts hold one active save across all game modes; premium holds as many as you like.

Ten tips from sacked chairmen

• Hire a chief scout in week one. Everything downstream of the transfer market improves with him.
• Open contract talks the season before the final year — the early-renewal premium is cheaper than the free transfer.
• Counter every lowball. The hidden ceiling is usually near the player's true value.
• Rotate before the double-header. A 70-fitness starter is worse than his fresh understudy.
• Half of every sale returns to the budget — selling one saleable star can fund a whole rebuild window.
• Don't decline the manager's request while visibly rich. He knows the books, and the dressing room hears about it.
• Prize money pays when the run ends — a cup run is a loan against your own elimination. Budget for the season, not the round.
• The academy pays in year three, not year one. Start building it the day you arrive.
• Promotion with a lower-league wage bill is the richest position in the game. Resist the urge to triple wages in August.
• When relegation hits, act in the first window: terminate, sell, close the top tier, go lean. The parachute is a runway, not a salary.