Given their importance to you when starting out your Master League career, combined with the difficulty of signing players, I think the concept of Loan Signings needs to be reworked in the next version.
Here's a few of my thoughts:
1. I often have no idea that a player's loan period is up until that message pops up that says "so-and-so will bid us farewell today", at which point they're already gone.
What would be more helpful is if the system alerts you to the fact that the loan period will soon expire and give you the opportunity to either try to negotiate another loan spell or lodge a bid to buy the player.
2. If you do decide to do either of those things (but especially the latter), and the player actually made a fair few appearances for your club during the loan spell, it should increase your chances of a successful bid (or at least the player's openness to the move).
IMO, this would make it much more realistic because, in real life, most players just want to play. If a player goes out on loan and is given a lot more opportunities to play by the loaning club, it seems that they'll generally be keen to stay (unless changes in the squad mean that they will likely have a fair chance of similar levels of playing time back at their parent club of course). If the loaning club had a successful season during the time the player was playing for them, surely this should further increase the chances of a move too?
Currently, it seems that when the loan expires & player goes back to the parent club, no matter have often they played for you, you have no more chance of a successful bid than anyone else. For a small/poor club (who are the ones who generally have to turn to loan signings), this means you often have no chance of signing decent players.
Here's a few of my thoughts:
1. I often have no idea that a player's loan period is up until that message pops up that says "so-and-so will bid us farewell today", at which point they're already gone.
What would be more helpful is if the system alerts you to the fact that the loan period will soon expire and give you the opportunity to either try to negotiate another loan spell or lodge a bid to buy the player.
2. If you do decide to do either of those things (but especially the latter), and the player actually made a fair few appearances for your club during the loan spell, it should increase your chances of a successful bid (or at least the player's openness to the move).
IMO, this would make it much more realistic because, in real life, most players just want to play. If a player goes out on loan and is given a lot more opportunities to play by the loaning club, it seems that they'll generally be keen to stay (unless changes in the squad mean that they will likely have a fair chance of similar levels of playing time back at their parent club of course). If the loaning club had a successful season during the time the player was playing for them, surely this should further increase the chances of a move too?
Currently, it seems that when the loan expires & player goes back to the parent club, no matter have often they played for you, you have no more chance of a successful bid than anyone else. For a small/poor club (who are the ones who generally have to turn to loan signings), this means you often have no chance of signing decent players.