First of all, greetings to all. I'll register my team: FC Puddleduck as soon as I get it (Bouncing of the walls with anticipation, when I registered there where 20 in line ... 19 got their teams yesterday, arghhhh!!!!). I'm on vacation this week so I've been doing a lot of reading and research and trying to decide on my openning strategy. Obviously, I'll have to wait and see what series and players I draw to really pick a training, but the other uncertainty for me right now is the state of the market. This is the part of the game I'm most interested in. I've read in the conferences that the PM market is crashing and dragging a lot of valuations down with it. Plus new rules have increased the value of secondary skills. Has this been the experience of BS posters? Or are we just looking at the traditional end of season market retreat as birthday's approach? What do people see as the market's future direction? Should I, as a starting player, look to buy trainies with better secondaries at the cost of youth and/or primaries? Or are my resources simply too slim to compete with all the big boys moving into that market? I'm also considering buying inad 17 yr old strikers and mids w/ at least passable passing and training passing for a season before selling them as inad/solid 18 yr. olds. That seems like a niche that may be underserved at the moment: Markets fear innovation and conventional wisdom says that training passing takes too long. But if you're willing to lose for a season and play a 2-5-3 that is 16 trainies ... guess I probably can't afford to buy that many youngsters ... but it might be an intriquing strategy for someone with more resources. Anyway, I thought this forum could use a thread dedicated to the market, so feel free to post anything related to valuations, trends and trading strategies ... not just responses to my questions.
Wow, you have good Ideas as to what to do BEFORE you even have your team. Secondaries, especially passing, are very important now. As I recently learned the difference between selling a formidable striker with wretched passing and a formidable striker with inadequate or passable passing is HUGE. Buying an inadequate 17 year old with passable or solid passing is a great idea. Starting off you might want to narrow your searched by searching for players with at least weak passing. It might not be feasable to get six trainees with passable/solid passing your first go around but you can definitley get a handful of guys with inadequate/weak passing and maybe a couple with passable or better. I would say, start small. My first trainees cost me an average of 20k (i'm estimating) none of them have particularly great secondaries... but i'm still going to make a good chunk of money off them. With this money I plan on buying trainees with better secondaries. If you decide to train playmakers don't limit yourself to passing secondaries. Look also for players with inadequate or passable defence. and... welcome!
I'm not real sure that the PM market has crashed. It might in fact be depressed. I sold a formidable PM at the beginning of the season for 600k I think.You can easily spend 1M on a Formid striker. Is this reallistic, yes. More people train PM than any other 'discipline'. Odds are there are more PMs than needed. Too much supply, lower prices... I think to say that the PM market has crashed is hyperbole. Strikers will always be highly valued cause you need at least one goal to win a match. Defenders are also highly valued, but I think it's more because of the fewer number of Defender trainers. They can train 10 guys at once! You'd know if there was a glut of defender trainers, but I don't see it. You can't go wrong training PM. You CAN go wrong spending too much for PM trainees that don't yeild as much profit. There is more room for error if you train Scoring/Defending. If you have the discipline, I like the idea of buying young IMs, Ws and Fwds for a season of passing training during your first season. Why not, it's supposedly a losing season anyway, right? And training a season of passing would give you time to really decide which major discipline you wish to train. But maybe you ought to consider 17 yo's who are weak/inadequate with Inadequate+ passing? Most people look for passable or better trainees and overlook the weaks/inads. I think you can buy 17 yo's with weak scoring but solid passing relatively cheap (same for IMs). Oh, and welcome puddleduck!
Thanks D2O and AAGunner3. I can't wait to have access to the market so I can do some real research. That said, there is a long thread going in the global conference on passing training. The content is about 60% - "I don't train passing, but we need X rule change to make it more attractive" 35% - "I don't train passing, passing training sucks" - 5% "Um actually, I train passing and it is profitable under certain circumstances." According to the guy who actually trains passing: it takes 5-7 weeks for 17-19 yr. olds. So comperable to Playmaking, but with 1.4 - 1.8 the number of trainies. However the question is whether there is a training plan with passing that gives at least 75% of PM's return. ie. buy an Inad PM/Inad Pass 17 yr old. Is the market value of an inad pm/solid pass 75% of the value of a solid pm/inad passer? There are of course lots of permutations: start with inad/pass, pass/inad, solid/inad ... etc. Or go a step further: inad/inad -> inad/form vs. form/inad I suspect there may be a sweet spot for wealthy teams buying top notch 17 yr. old play makers (ie. solid), training up their passing and reselling them as solid/solid at 18 to other wealthy teams. That would be a real luxury item: the seed of a truely top-notch IM. Or buy 5 inad/inad defenders and play them in midfield for friendlies. It might be the case that defenders give better return on passing training because of the importance of passing to Counter attacking teams. But since even 14 inad/inad trainies is going to be expensive, I'm seriously doubting that I will go passing to start. Have to look at the real prices. Still one team waiting, no teams assigned yesturday ... sigh.
buy them cheap as 17/18 yr inad or passable pm to train, then when they get to be solid or excellent, you can make a bundle.
That's what I want to look into for sure. Have to compare prices and see if he Rate of Return is better than just training PM. Or sense I only care about promotion if I land in an all bot series is RoR best w/ 17/18 yr inad or passable defenders playing in mid-field and training passing? So many questions, so little team. Hopefully tomorrow, otherwise I'll have to wait until Tuesday as I'm out of town until then.
I have noticed the increasing importance of passing too and at the moment I am doing 2.5 seasons Pm training and 0.5 season passing training, with stamina in the off seasons. That's my long term plan, I am think of shifting the ratio to 2 seasons PM and a full season passing. But that depends on how the market fluctuates by the middle of next season when I am due to switch again. Interesting topic, thanks for starting the thread.
For a top-flight or national team IM, what sort of passing do they have? And for a top-flight or national team forward, what sort of passing do they have? puddleduck--a 17yo inad PM/solid pass is a heck of a lot cheaper than a 17yo solid PM/inad pass. To me it seems that in terms of market value starting out with a huge slew of inad PM/solid passers and training them for a few years wouldn't pay very good dividends. Starting out with 17yo solid PM's or even 18yo solids or excellents who have weak or inadequate passing might have better fiscal results. That's just my guess, though.
You'll find that a lot of u-20's or full national team guys were pulled with good passing. A week one 17 year old solid playmaker has a good chance of making the u-20's. I'd say a week one solid/solid is a lock.
For a national-teamer, I would imagine it varies considerably. The key to getting a guy on the national team (at this point in the game's development), IMO, is to train a player way past the point it's practical economically to do so. Your player may pass through the U20 program, but I don't think it's a requirement. For U20, it's a different story -- the age requirements make it essential to use early-season high-quality pulls, and there can be enough of those at some positions that secondaries make all the difference between making the team and getting left off.
What are the advantages to you as a club manager to having your players selected for the U-20's/Nats? I know they get extra experience, anything else? Extra training? Not that I expect to be popping any out mind you ... just curious. btw: This after two days of "currently 1 users on the waiting list for your league. Yesterday no users were given a team in your league" grrr. I guess the waiting list is a little buggy in terms of who's in front of you.
Well, players who play in national team games get huge experience bonuses. Also part of the players wages for the week are paid by the national team. I suppose that comes in handy if you've got a couple of divine playmakers...
Yay! Looks like this was a pretty decent team before it got reset for me: currently #4 in V.124 with a nice 8 point cushion between me and the playoff spots. Now it is ugly, just ugly. My only solid is an IM with wretched stamina ... so he's not even going to be starting for a while. So even if (as seems likely) I lose all my games #5 needs to win 3 out of 4 to catch me. He is however playing the bottom 3 teams so I'm not completely safe. My next two games are against the #1 and #2 teams so I think I'm going to PiC them and train stamina. Then try to win against the #6 and #7 in my last two games to ensure survival. Hopefully I stay up and then the real struggle comes next season. All the teams in my series are actively managed ... so I'd really like to avoid the risk of dropping to a possible bot series. No decisions on training yet ... didn't get any help from my initial players and next season is going to be really tough to survive ... so I'm thinking I may end up training playmaking as a balance between investment return and improving my team in the short run ... or since midfield isn't the worst part of my team maybe GK (since that is the worst). Definately no experimentation with passing I'm afraid.
Thanks, I'm off for the weekend so I won't be able to dig into the market until Tuesday. But I'm looking forward!
Have you had a team before or something? Because, I dunno maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to believe you are just starting this game for the first time after reading all your posts above.
Nope, this is my first team. Like I said I had last week off so I spent the better part of a day reading up on it. Plus I used to be a game designer for online multiplayer games so the mechanics kind of caught my attention. Particularly the market, there is something profoundly cool to me about this kind of artifical market. Just nerdy I guess.
I was thinking about passing training. I'm probably gonna spend another two years training PM, then sell off 3 of my 6 PM trainees. The ones I keep will have weak and inadequate passing. After PM training I'm gonna switch to defending. I'll probably play 5-4-1 or 5-3-2 in friendlies and 4-5-1 in the league, so I'll want 9 trainees. But I probably won't be able to grab the 9 trainees I want right at the very beginning of the season (I'm a big fan of 17yo's). So I can spend the first half of the season training passing with a 3-5-2 formation (14 slots should be enough so I don't have to worry about a 2-5-3). My IM's might not bump up a level, but it should still improve their passing a decent bit. And at least a few of the 17 year olds, depending on how early I buy them, would pop a level in passing. It would probably be useful in terms of resale value, although it might not do much for me tactically. But I would like to have all my IM's have at least inadequate passing. In fact, I may even train passing before I sell my PM trainees if I think it would be more worthwhile in terms of transfer value. A brief search made it seem like extra PM training was more valuable, but the game might be a bit different in two years.
Well I hit the transfer market yesterday ... hard. In the end I decided on the following training strategy: 6 weeks stamina followed by at least a season of playmaking and then a look at the market to decide whether or not to switch to passing. I'm no longer convinced that this was the best decision ... I was looking for a balance between making money and improving my team fairly quickly in order to survive in series V next season (assuming I stay up *knocks on own head*). What I think may have been the fundemental error was planning around training stamina for the next 6 weeks. I was thinking that Stamina training effected Team Spirit and not form and so I was counting on the season break to reset most of the negative effects. As is, I will likely have atrocious form going into next season which will make a tough season all the harder. However that error aside, I think I did ok. My initail draw included a three saleable IMs in the 20 - 23 age range with wretched or poor stamina. So I figured my best bet was to train them up to excellent stamina and then sell them to make room for younger blood. The salary cost of ~$4000 should be more than made up for by the difference in valuation for a IM with ready-to-roll stamina, they are: Andy Boyd (40231626) 21 Years Playmaking: solid Andy Coffman (40231629) 26 years Playmaking: passable Passing: inadequate Defending: passable Jack Kendrick (40231625) 20 years Playmaking: passable Defending: inadequate I'm banking on recieving at least $200,000 (total) for these players in about 6 weeks when they will have excellent stamina. For trainies, I bought mostly guys with wretched stamina because they are *so* cheap: ----------- Odd Brudvik (40302560) 17 years, passable form, healthy A pleasant guy who is balanced and infamous. Has disastrous experience and solid leadership abilities. Speciality: Head Playmaking: passable price: $15000 - my worst buy by far. Thought I was getting a cheap clown, but forgot about the popular level of "niceness" ---------- Bobby Afford (40317926) 17 years, passable form, healthy Playmaking: inadequate Passing: inadequate price: $5000 - slightly overpaid I think, but no biggie ---------- Erich Hauser (40318439) 18 years, passable form, healthy Playmaking: inadequate Passing: inadequate Set Pieces: inadequate price: $1000 ---------- Erik Granander (40318771) 18 years, passable form, healthy Playmaking: inadequate Passing: inadequate Set Pieces: inadequate price: $1000 ---------- Patrik Fredriksson (40318778) 17 years, passable form, healthy Playmaking: inadequate Passing: inadequate price: $1000 ---------- Sipke Geerligs (40320592) 17 years, passable form, healthy Playmaking: inadequate Passing: inadequate price: $1000 ---------- Truman Hamlin (40352063) 19 years, passable form, healthy Speciality: Technical Playmaking: inadequate Passing: inadequate Winger: passable Set Pieces: inadequate price: $5000 - bought as much to shore up my weak wings as for investment (although I'm mostly going to play IM's to the center in those spots) I'll sell him when he pops to passable PM. ----------- So that is 7 of my 10 trainies for 29k. I'll look to spend another 100k - 150k on three high-end trainies. I definately need a defensive midfielder and another passable winger would be nice ... for the third I think I'd like a 17yr old with solid PM and passable passing, but that may just be too pricey. ----- Then I did something a little wierd and possibly foolish. Given that I am committed to training stamina for 6 weeks anyway ... I am buying about 10 17yr old passable playmakers with wretched to poor stamina. I'm getting them for $1000 each which, (with wages, listing fees and the agent's cut) means I need to sell them in 4-6 weeks for an average of $7500 as passable Playmakers with Excellent Stamina in order to break even. My research shows that similar players are going in for ~8k now and my guys are over half a season younger than today's 18 yr. olds. Even if I can't sell them at all my total exposure on these guys is only about 60k over the next six weeks. I do expect to at least get my money back and hopefully the market will see a nice upswing in the first couple of weeks of next season. If the market on IM trainies softens I may take a bath, but I expect this guy to even it out or help me make a nice short term return: Fernandes Goulart Andrade (40351090) 19 years, passable form, healthy Speciality: Head Stamina: wretched Playmaking: solid price: $22000 - 20yr old solid playmakers with excellent stamina seem to be fetching in excess of $100,000 ----------- I would definately have done better to buy only 17yr old passables with poor stamina for 1k. I think that is possible and it lowers the required return because I can flip them sooner (less wages) plus players with poor stamina today will be excellent in the first week of the new season whne the market should have a short term peak from people buying all those fresh 17 yr olds (I hope). So let me know if you think I'm making a huge mistake. Honestly half my motivation is just wanting to try something a little different, especially since I feel slightly cheesy for starting this thread only to go with the crowd and train PM.
I don't think you need to train stamina all the way to excellent before you sell. Solid should be good enough as most people spend a week each season training stamina anyway.
I came to the same conclusion, however it seems like the winds are blowing in the direction of increased importance for secondary skills in general so I think this may very well be a smart move in 2-3 seasons time. I definately like your idea training PM and then switching to defense. High level IM's with decent defending seem to sell for a nice premium.
Heheh, the Hattrick name generator cracks me the heck up sometimes........ Panther City FC II.3 - USA