The answer is simply ‘no’, because the players usually have something to add and they seem to always find an element of game which can be improved in any kind of way. Looking further into the parent-feeder club option we see two totally different approaches of fans. There is a group that wants to have bigger control over that feature and there is a group of people who want to leave the decisions in this matter to the board. Actually it is pretty hard to find anyone who thinks that it should be left as it is now.

Well, let’s concentrate on the first group, shall we? Fans would like to see the option of picking the region of the world from which the new parent or feeder club would come. However, some of them go even further. Their proposal is to allow managers to suggest a club which is worth cooperating with or optionally a list of clubs from which the board would pick one (and that means a total change of roles).

The other group suggests that managers should not be allowed to make contacts between the teams. Those less radical have an interesting idea though: parent-feeder club deals ought to be made without manager’s application, but according to his actions. You buy 3rd player from one club in this week? Maybe you loan them another footballer or play another friendly with that team? The board’s reaction should be immediate – proposal of cooperation.

As you see both groups have interesting ideas and picking some of them from both sides may seem a good idea. It would not be too bad if the proposals would be made by manager as well as by the board (with the option of doing things behind our backs; eventually they do it in a bit more important question – transfers).

Actually, the things are not as good as it may seem after reading the text to this paragraph. Players do not only propose things – they also report the bugs and mistakes. Those are mainly raising board auto-canceling our connections between two clubs after one makes it to the higher league, in which the parental club plays. The question is: should it be this way? Does being in the same league mean that two clubs cannot cooperate with each other? After all, those teams may have totally different aims and that does not disturb the parental-feeder club relation. Actually in some leagues this type of club connections are illegal and probably that makes the game act this way. Still – the connection between Arsenal and Birmingham will exist until one of the clubs gets relegated and then promoted (the deal exists in the FM database from the start of the game).

However, the thing that makes players more angry is canceling the cooperation with a brief communicate that the deal was not used in a satisfactory degree. The example of NepentheZ from SI forums shows us that it generally departs from the truth. More than ‘a bit’. To clarify the things: the board decided to end the collaboration between his club and the other one using arguments presented above. It would not be anything special but this player was sending four footballers on loan every year there and he even bought two youngsters. Of course the rest of connections remained untouched despite the fact that the only sign of them was several thousands of pounds less in the club’s account.

This case and the other very similar to the one described made another user of SI forums – Ched – to make an interesting experiment. He decided to save game on 18th June, because the decision about canceling the feeder club connection was about to be made between the 18th and 19th July. Then he loaded the game exactly 60 times. The results are quite surprising. The connection with Watford was cancelled 11 times, but due to unplayable Championship in this game we can ignore those (Watford had a place amongst 3 random clubs to advance). Westerlo connection was annulled 6 times and Dinamo Moscow – 2 times. It is strange because every time the conditions were the same. Besides, the connection with Westerlo was very useful – 9 players of Chelsea got Belgian passports. What can we call a fulfilled relation between two clubs then? Just to add – the Russian club was never used to anything, so connection was only theoretical. The only justification of this is that the collaboration between clubs in FM is a bit random. A bit of randomness may be rational, but there is just too much of it.