I found myself somewhere I wouldn't have expected to be a season ago: tied for the lead more than halfway through the season. So I decided to some analysis of my series, so that I could share some of my knowledge and opinions and maybe get some advice from members of the forum as to what I should do. Hopefully this will be helpful for other people looking to win a competitive series, or for anyone looking for the best series position, especially those who are trying to decide when to PIC, MOTS, and play normal. It gets somewhat long-winded and perhaps incoherent, but hopefully y'all can get some use out of it. Here's the current table in V.246: Code: 1. Orange Park..............8 35 - 10 17 2. Kiel Kickers.............8 24 - 7 17 [b]3. Metairie United AFC......8 24 - 9 17[/b] 4. Las Vegas Wildfire.......8 12 - 9 13 5. Boise RiverSnakes........8 16 - 7 12 6. Tir Na Nog...............8 14 - 23 9 7. Real Valladolid 1928.....8 9 - 25 6 8. Northwood Bombers........8 2 - 46 0 While the title race is perhaps a 3-horse race between me, OP, and Kiel (Kiel, BTW, is the team that pulled Gregory Green), Las Vegas and Boise are still excellent teams: in fact, if you rank the teams by hatstats ratings (taken through www.akickku.com), this is the result: 1. Orange Park 168.13 2. Boise RiverSnakes 166.13 3. Las Vegas Wildfire 155.88 4. Kiel Kickers 142.13 5. Metairie United AFC 141.88 I am assuming that the other three teams will lose all of their games to the top 5. Tir Na Nog can and has caused trouble, so this assumption may be somewhat faulty. But the other two teams are definitely doormats. My schedule for the rest of the year looks like this: vs. Real @ OP vs. Northwood @ Tir @ Boise vs. Kiel Now I'm trying to set up my mentality for the rest of the year. It's my opinion that the most important thing you can do tactically is alter the mentality. You're pretty much locked into only choosing from a few tactics, based on your training scheme; while you can make slight alterations week to week, and you can use pressing, CA, AOW, and AIM, those only do so much. Getting PIC, normal, and MOTS right does tons more for your team. I can safely pen in PIC's against Real, Northwood, and Tir. Problem is, so can everyone else. Presumably the top three teams will all win these games. Orange Park has already played Northwood twice, so they only have six guaranteed points. But Kiel and I should have 9 guaranteed points, meaning that both of us will end up with at least 26 points. Even if Las Vegas or Boise wins out, Kiel and I would only need 6 points to clinch--that is, we'd control our own destiny and assure ourselves of a title with wins in our other games (against OP and then against each other in the season finale), even if we lose to Las Vegas and Boise. To make a long story short, I don't think that Las Vegas or Boise will win. Chances are that one of the top three teams will win 5 games, putting things out of reach, or Las Vegas or Boise will lose or draw somewhere along the line. So from my personal perspective I have three games that matter: OP, Boise, and Kiel. In our first match (36863801), I beat OP 5-2. I played normal and was able to win the midfield. Presumably OP played PIC in that game. If I PIC and play my usual tactics, I can expect a weak (high) rating--a 15, to put it numerically. OP will probably pull at least a 20--inadequate (very high). If I play normal, I can better that--but if he plays normal, I'm screwed. Fortunately, he has to go on the road to play Kiel the week after I play him. So I can hope he'll just PIC. So if I go normal, I can hope that I will win midfield and neutralize the edge he'll have in attack and defense. Tactically I'm not really sure if I'll do anything different. The last two weeks (and quite possibly, the very last week) will determine whether I win the series. Even if I lose to Orange Park, I'll still have a mathematical shot at the title entering the last two weeks. Nevertheless, let's assume I beat OP and have to worry about Kiel. Kiel gets to PIC matches 12 and 13. That puts me at a TS disadvantage already. Added to that is the fact that he has an inadequate leadership coach and I have a poor one. Since it's the last game of the season, he'll MOTS automatically (I'm assuming everyone in my series will place more weight upon winning the series than upon winning a qualifier). Add it all up and it'll be tough for me to win. Fortunately, I do have the better midfield. He'll need his advantages to neutralize my midfield. In our first match (36863785), I really should've won. Essentially, I can break my games up into two seasons: a four-game season with the only important match against OP, and a two-game season against Boise and Kiel. I won't know what to do for the last two matches until the first four games are done, but at least I've though about it. I will know what I need from the last two matches. The moral of the story: think about when you want to PIC, MOTS, and play normal and start planning for the end of the season. Try to get inside your opponent's head, too--you can expect most teams to MOTS the last game of the season, but things are harder to predict at other times. I think normal is a bit underrated--it can do quite a bit of good, as I've managed to get increases of a full level (i.e. from inadequate (very low) to passable (very low)) of midfield when I've played it this year. Any suggestions, comments, thoughts, etc.?