Match Strategy / Tactics

Be prepared for this. But by no means accept it.

Congratulations indeed. Now, push the needle plunger a little deeper and let go.....

A good offense seems to be the best defense in HT. That coupled with a good midfield - usually via 3 IMs - will send you far in your series (I haven't really looked at your series). You can't do anything tactically to protect your keeper unless you are going bunker. I don't suggest that unless all of your better players happen to be defenders. Do your best to go on the offensive and get the biggest share of midfield possible. That means 3 IMs and no less than 2 Fwds.

Yup, midfield and good offense is key. Counterattack, automatically reduces your midfield share by 10%. But only if you are already losing midfield. Counterattack requires a good defense and defenders with good passing skills. You likely don't have that. The other thing, counter-attacks are really few and far between, not to mention you need the offense to finish the chance(s) off.

Get your stamina up so that 1) you can get the most out of your current midfielders and 2) that you can more easily 'press' your opponents that you know you have little chance of winning against.

Oh, and be offensive!

 

Tactics -
Scout your opponent. Is he lazy and always uses the same players/formations?
Is his left defense always Weak (Very Low) while the others are Inadequate or better? Then put your best wingers/IM/fwds on the your right side to take advantage of this weakness...


You - Don't be too predictable. Develop 2 formations that you can spring on your opps. You always have the 4-4-2. Last season I began developing experience (by using them) in the 3-4-3 and the 3-5-2. I now have 3 formations that I can throw at my opponents and only sacrifice 1 50% wing training spot - I train playmaking.

I can go offensive in the 3-4-3 (especially in league games where goal differential matters)
I can go for the midfield via the 3-5-2
or I can go defensive using the 4-4-2.

Always set your wingers offensive. Sometimes Normal. Never defensive. Defensive wingers seem to be a waste.

Play your wing backs defensive always for the time being. If your opponent has a strong central attack and abandons the wing on one side, you should consider moving the unopposed wingback into the 2nd CD slot (assuming you are running a 3 defender formation).

IMs - if you got IM's with good passing skills, play them offensively to boost your attack ratings. If it's a defensive mid, I prefer to play him in the xtra IM slot but nothing wrong with putting him in the middle two and set him to defensive. I just prefer two IM's set to offensive and my third in the spare slot.

Forwards, leave them alone but for replacing them with better players.

GKs. Never play a clown as a GK. They goof off in the goal, picking daisies and watching the airplanes, swing from the crossbar like a gorilla, etc... sooner or later they'll cost ya!

 

First, decide what you're going to train. Hopefully, you have a couple of respectable 17-19 year olds you can train. Buy as many 17yo inadequates as necessary to fill out your group of trainees. They should be cheaper than 18 or 19yo passables and you can train them longer.

Once you've decided what you're training, that will narrow down your choices.

Keeper: any formation. Doesn't matter.
Defender: you definitely want to play 5-4-1 or 5-3-2 in friendlies to train as many defenders as possible. In the league match you can either play one of those formations or play 4-5-1 or 4-4-2 in order to help your team compete better while only losing one training spot. But if you're not gonna be competitive anyway and you're able to put together a full complement of 10 defense trainees, you might as well play 5-4-1 or 5-3-2, meaning you may want to counter-attack.
Midfield: You actually have a fairly wide variety of options, since you can play 3 IM's in every formation. If you want to make use of the half-training that wingers get, you'll want to play 3-5-2 or 4-5-1. I train IM's and I use both of those formations--however, I mostly prefer 3-5-2. I'd recommend using 4-5-1 or 3-5-2 in friendlies and only using a formation with fewer midfielders if you want to spring a surprise on your opponent. 4-4-2 is always at excellent experience, so you can always pull that out of nowhere.
Forwards: 4-3-3 or 3-4-3. I think that most forward trainers you'll find play 3-4-3 with 3 IM's. Then they switch the side they have a winger on in an attempt to surprise the opponent.

Try to figure out if you're gonna be demoted to Div VI. If you can beat two other teams in the series, you'll avoid being automatically demoted (I assume you're in Div V). Sometimes you'll be able to win a qualifier, sometimes you won't. You could get a good Div VI team, or you could get a bot.

There's really no point in PIC'ing all season long. At the very least, you can always bust out an MOTS in the last league game (unless you'll have a qualifier, in which case you'll MOTS the qualifier). Hopefully you'll have some competitive matches during the season, so you should MOTS during those and PIC when you know you're gonna get blown out.

If you have 3 defenders with passable defending and passable passing, that's actually not a bad place to start counterattacking from. You'll want to have 5 defenders, though, and if those good defenders are old and not worth training you might not want to train defense anyway.

To sum it up: worry about training first and let that dictate your tactics.

 

Expand your stadium as soon as you can. Especially before the prices go up. This is worth doing very carefully, too. There's a ratio to keep in mind, as far as terraces to covered seats to VIP seats.

If you're starting out, you probably have a 7,000 seat park? Seriously get that up to 20,000 or so. Don't go ridiculously into debt, but do it before you buy better players, and I mean it. Player prices are going down at the moment, and in any case they're not going to go through the roof like construction costs. It's worth the on-field beating you'll take until training kicks in.

Come to think of it, the prices to expand are really going to punish newer teams, since established teams will have gotten comparative bargains on their huge parks, plus get all the money for extra attendance. Moral: don't be a new team, I guess.

Oh, get that youth program going. It's worth it, trust me. I think that's the only immediate things to recommend. Settle on training, get the youth squad moving, and save every dime for your stadium expansion. You can expand your staff after you build the park.

 

Exaclty, none of us make any money off of our squads... yet... that I'm aware of.

I started PICing very early in my career. Do that so that you can go NORMAL or MOTS on the games you must win. Games you need to win are against what you expect to be the bottom two teams - not counting yourself. You PIC to build up team spirit so that you can use it against those teams and hopefully secure yourself a shot at staying in your current division (I assume DivV).

Three passable defenders with passable passing is pretty darn good to start off with. That will definitely improve your ability to counter attack. But DON'T abandon midfield. The way CA works is that the team that loses possession for the half (after the 10% reduction) might get a special Counter Attack event. Doesn't mean you'll score. If you give up midfield completely, all you wil have is a counter attack or two to rely on for the whole game. Them's not good odds.
Using a 4-3-3, I'd play at least two IM's. Maybe three. You really want possession to be close so that you still get a number (4 of 10?) of regular chances during the game, plus a counter attack or two. Either way, you'll still need good forwards to help you capitalize on those opportunities. I like the idea of the 4-3-3. Good defense and still have 3 forwards for a potentially potent attack.
Never a great idea to play wingers defensively as you will likely lose more in the attack than you'll ever gain in defense. Play them normal if you have to.

Pressing requires good stamina, of all your players. You are trying to deny the opposing team up to two chances to score. Problem is, the pressing algorithm may decide it's one of your chances that gets reduced. You never really know. The idea is that you are playing a superior team, and as a result, they'll command the majority of opportunities. You'll likely ruin 1 or two of their chances. Hopefully that's enough to give you a tie or even luckier the win. At the least you hope to keep the goal differential low enough to give you an edge against your competition in your series standings.


I didn't address training because that should be part of your long term goals, and you said you thought you had a grasp on that. What are you training?

 

Ah, I see you are in div VI - series VI.212
No worry about demotion. Pic if you need or want to. Good idea to get used to it as you'll need to know how to manipulate it in DivV.
PIC the easy games, hope you still win, then use the added team spirit in a Normal/MOTS to surprise someone slightly better than you.

I PICd my first cup match so that I could MOTS the #1 at his arena in the first league match of this season. Now I PICd my second cup match so that I can begin raising my spirit for a wk 3 league showdown.

In your game against Upton Park, you had 46 and 39% possession. Not bad for a new team - keeping in mind this was a friendly. Not bad possession for a counter attack either. You can tell you have stamina issues because you gave up more possession in the second half.

3-4-3? you training scoring?

 

How much is that?

 

Going from a 7k to a 20k seater would put me at -150k. Not worth it?

 

The fans are none the wiser about your team's attitude in the game. They care about results -- particularly, they don't like losing, and they really don't like getting shut out. If losing is inevitable anyway, you might as well make the best of it and build up your team spirit for a match you can win.

I PICed all but a handful of games last season, and I'm in IV.

 

If you know what size you want to reach, if you can do it in one go, it's better that way -- there's a fixed cost of $30k for each expansion. On the other hand, if you put yourself in debt for much or very long, you could lose that much money in interest, so it's a balancing act.

 

If you play 4-3-3, you have good defense and attack but you concede the midfield; you almost have to CA because your forwards may not get any chances otherwise. Use caution with AIM, be sure that you have enough passing to pull off a good enough rating to be worth the 25% loss you'll suffer in wing defense ratings.

In general, I think you need to be within 55-45 down in midfield to have a good chance at winning; if I expect 60-40 or worse I start thinking about trying to press and close the match down. YMMV -- I don't have a huge number of upsets on my resume.

 

Hattrix doesn't tell you to build enough seats under roof/VIP seats, IMO.

That'll get you by, but I don't guess you'll really be satisfied with it for very long (inadequate primary skills, I mean). Not in your starters, that is, you'll probably have some inadequate backups for a while.

I guess they figure that inflation in income should be offset every now and again by inflation in expenses. The HT economy is constantly in flux, the HT team tries to keep a finger on the pulse and tweak the flow of money into/out of the economy to maintain modest inflation.

You can ignore it if you want. Some people think that's a good idea. I'm noncommittal -- I felt that with my situation, I could afford to fund the YS from the beginning, and it's worked out reasonably well for me even though I've sold a pull for more than $200k. But I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that in the beginning, the money is better spent; a $5k/wk investment doesn't get you much.

 

Like Helg said, whether it pays off immediately depends on if you win a lot this season. But absolutely do it before the end of the season. You should be making a little money this year anyway, what with crowds and sponsors. So if you don't want to go into debt to build it, you can wait a few weeks. As long as you get it done.

I'm in a similar dilemma, since I want to build a stadium that I could hold a crowd I would get even in the most ridiculous circumstances, but don't quite have the money yet to add another 30,000 seats or so. And I hate going into debt. If I have a good Cup run, though, I may break out the red ink for a while.

EDIT on the youth system - sooner or later, it will pay off, and pay off big. Counting a full season as 18 weeks, including the break, it costs you $360,000 a year to fund a maxed out youth system. Eventually, you will pull the player that pays for it all, maybe for several seasons worth. Frequently, you'll pull a guy who pays for a few weeks at a time. And, if you're a new team, you'll pull guys who can actually walk off the youth club and start for you. If you're still doing this a few seasons from now, revamp your training system.

If you're training keepers...hm. You can only train two at a time, so pulling great players week after week doesn't have as much appeal. But there is always, always someone willing to pay for an inadequate keeper, let alone passable or solid. So the ones you don't train are easily saleable, which isn't the case for inadequate forwards. (Trust me, I know.)

If you're a new team, and really, really feeling adventurous...proceed at your own risk. But. Right now, the Hattrick engine favors offense to a significant degree. Defenses can be improved with goalkeepers much more easily than with defenders, and no one seems to have any use for wingers.

What you might think about doing - keep in mind, this is high risk - is anticipate a game engine correction which brings defenders and wingers back into the games. If you have a stable of trainees ready to go when that happens, you will suddenly be a very busy and rich trader.

Or, Hattrick never fixes its game engine, you're stuck with great players on teams that can't get out of D4 and sell for a fraction of the price you would need to get similarly priced forwards. At least the bottom's fallen out of the midfielder market, for the moment.

 

I like your approach with the 4-3-3 here. AIM with 3 IMs. You are NOT conceeding the midfield and will have a very potent center attack. If he's playing a 4-4-2, he might be able to hold you off via his 2 CDs, but you're running 3 forwards. I think this is a good tactic.

Hope your WBs are good enough to counter his wingers.

 

Maybe. I would tend to think so, but have seen nor heard that this is true.

I'd figure MOTS, your guys go all out, so it's more possible.
Would stand to reason that PIC would lower the chances as well.

But like I said, don't really know.

I've had fiery players that never got a red. My first game ever, my 'best' IM who was not fiery got red carded.