Signing a player on loan means that he will join your club temporarily while still being owned by his parent club. To make a loan offer for a player select Make An Offer from his Transfer drop-down menu, then on the Transfer Offer screen select Loan Offer from the drop-down at the top-left.
Various useful pieces of information are shown on the right of the screen. The top panel provides details of any restrictions on the number of players you can loan and the length of loans. Further down, you will either see details of the wages contribution the club will require if they are interested in loaning out the player, or a message that the club do not believe a loan would be beneficial to them if they are not interested. Also shown is the maximum wage (as an amount and a percentage) that your board will allow you to offer as a contribution.
Benefits of Loan Signings
Loans can enable you to temporarily obtain higher reputation players who are not interested in joining your club permanently or who you cannot afford to buy or pay the wages for.
Furthermore, a loan can be very beneficial if you need a player to temporarily fill a gap in your squad, perhaps because you have failed to find a suitable permanent signing or because you do not have a large enough transfer budget remaining or a large enough wage budget.
In particular, it is advisable to try to loan young players from higher reputation clubs if you manage a lower division team. This will allow you to use players of higher ability than you may otherwise be able to, at little to no cost, thus helping your club to move up through the divisions more quickly. You can even potentially develop good relationships with loan players (with good man management), while the player may also develop a good relationship with the club if his loan spell is a success. Such improved relationships can make it easier to sign the player in the future if he becomes available and is affordable, perhaps after promotions for your club and after further development for the player.
However, you should be careful not to deny first team experience to your own young prospects, as they too can be crucial in helping your club to enjoy success on a small budget as they gain experience and improve while your team potentially moves up through the divisions.
Finding Players Available for Loan
The easiest way to find players available to loan is to use the player search tool to filter players whose transfer status is set to listed for loan. This will show all players in your club’s scouting knowledge range who have been listed for loan by their clubs. This does not guarantee that a loan offer will be accepted, however, as a league rival may be unwilling to deal with you, your club may not have a high enough stature or you may not be able to afford the demands of the club as explained below. A player may also reject an offer even if it is accepted by his club.
To only display realistic loans you can filter out unrealistic fee paying loans and unrealistic regular loans by ticking the relevant checkboxes on the right of the Player Search screen (but you should ensure that unrealistic transfers is unticked). This can also be done without the Transfer Status filter being active, in order to show players who are available for loan but are not actually listed for loan.
In addition, you can ask a member of staff to recommend players that could be realistically loaned on the Transfer Targets section of your clubs Transfer Centre screen.
Furthermore, you may want to manually search higher reputation clubs for players with a squad status of backup or lower. This can enable you to find potential loan signings who might not be found using the other methods.
However, if you are offering to loan a player at the same time as other clubs are offering to buy him, it is very unlikely that your loan offer will succeed.
Loan Offer Options
Basic Terms
The basic terms of a loan offer are the monthly fee to be paid to the parent club, the wages contribution percentage that your club will pay and the duration that the loan will continue for.
The monthly fee is deducted from your transfer budget, while the wages contribution adds to your wage bill and so affects how much you are under or over your wage budget.
The combination of the monthly fee and the wages to be paid each month equals the current monthly contribution to be paid by your club. This is shown at the bottom right of the screen.
If the club is interested in loaning out the player then an expected monthly contribution, which reflects the contribution that the club wants for the player, will be shown at the bottom left of the screen. The monthly fee and wages will be set according to this by default and so the current monthly contribution should equal the expected monthly contribution. As such, if you make a loan offer with the default amounts set then it should be accepted. However, if there have been no offers from other clubs already made for the player then you may be able to agree an offer with a slightly lower monthly contribution.
Your finances may affect what you can actually afford to offer. If you need to offer a lower monthly fee to stay within your transfer budget then you will need to offer a higher wages contribution so that the monthly contribution remains acceptable. Similarly, if you want to offer a lower wages contribution, either to help you stay within your budget or because of your board’s maximum wage restriction, then you will have to offer a higher monthly fee. You may find that your finances are not strong enough to be able to make an offer close to the expected monthly contribution at all, in which case any bid you make will probably be rejected.
You can access the budget adjustment slider by clicking Budget Adjustment on the right. This will enable you to increase your wage budget at the expense of your transfer budget, which will also increase the maximum wage you can offer, or instead increase your transfer budget at the expense of your wage budget, which will lower the maximum wage you can offer.
If the club is not interested in loaning out the player then it is unlikely that a reasonable offer will be accepted.
The duration should generally be set to end of season if you want to loan the player for this long. If not, then you will probably want to ensure that the loan will end during a transfer window applicable to loans so that you can try to loan the player again or find an alternative. You can check your division’s Rules screen to find out the dates of each transfer window. It may be that the club want to negotiate a shorter loan duration following your initial offer.
Loan Clauses
Loan clauses include the squad status you intend to give the player and the preferred position you intend to play him in most often. The club and player will be more likely to agree to the loan if you specify a squad status of first team or key player, as well as promising that you will play the player in one of his natural positions.
You should, however, be honest when setting these clauses as the parent club will not be happy if you do not stick to your agreement.
Another loan clause is the future fee, which allows you to make the offer a loan-to-buy offer. This is discussed below.
Loan Options
The loan options allow you to specify whether the player can play for you in cup matches (as long as he is not already cup-tied in a particular cup competition due to having already played for his current club in that competition), whether he can play in matches against his parent club and whether he can be recalled at any point by his parent club.
You should generally select the options that favour your club, where relevant, unless you have had a bid rejected. It may be that the club requests that certain options be included or excluded in a negotiated offer or that you want to select options to favour them in a final attempt to have a revised offer accepted.
In particular, it is a good idea not to include the can be recalled option if possible so that you can ensure the player stays at your club for the full loan duration.
If the player is cup-tied then there may be no point in including the can play in cup matches option, while if you are unlikely to play against the player’s club then there is little point in including the can play against own team option.
Loan-to-Buy
If you are interested in signing a player on a permanent contract in the future then you can offer a loan-to-buy deal by setting a future fee as part of a loan offer. If the loan deal goes ahead then you will be able to buy the player at any point until the loan ends.
This can be useful in giving you an option of whether or not to buy a player, which will allow you to base your decision on his future performances at your club, how he settles at your club, your future finances and whether or not you find a better alternative player.
However, the future fee does not guarantee that you will be able to sign a player, as even if a player enjoys his loan spell he may not be interested in joining your club permanently, while your remaining transfer budget may not always be large enough to pay the fee.
