My favorite thing about hattrick is the long term planning around training schemes and trying to come up with ways to get better returns than the traditional "buy a 17yr old solid and train him as long as possible". If you have an idea for something out of the ordinary I'd like to talk about it and do some analysis. In that spirit, I've come up with the following plan for a possible strategy and I'd love to get some feedback from more experienced players: ----- The product produced would be a crop of 20-21 year old players with formidible playmaking and formidible defense. I currently train playmaking and would like to switch to defense in a couple of seasons. So I am considering buying 17 year old passable playmaking, solid defending trainies and switching to defense once they hit formidible playmaking. However when I look at the lists I see zero formid/formid players on offer. I did see one formid/formid who also had passable passing and who pulled 4 stars as a d-mid and had a wage of $2250/week. I assume they would get similar results played as an offensive CD. The classical approach would be to buy 17yr old solid playmaking trainies w/ no secondaries and sell them as Magnificent playmakers. Such players seem to also pull about 3.5 - 4 stars when played as normal IMs. However their wage is in the $9000/week range. Now it seems like it should be a no brainer which player is worth more: my well balannced players perform as well, are versitile enough to play defense and IM equally well and cost 100k/ season less to have on your team. So the question is, why isn't anyone producing such players? The fact that this market has not yet been established makes me worry that would be that it would be hard to find players willing to bid in the $3 million range (what mag. IM's fetch) for my formid/formid players, even though they would be better than one dimensional playmakers. Anyone have any thoughts on creating new niches in the market? Or experience playing with similar players on your team?
The reason you don’t see players similar to what you envision is that the players have to be played out of position to get that defense training. Very few IMs out there will have higher than solid defense and vice versa. I think a more viable solution would be formidable PM/formidable passing player. Or even higher. The reason being that passing training is quicker than defense and more importantly, you can play an IM in his normal position and he will get the passing training. I have a mid that is excellent PM/solid passing currently. He pulls 3 stars in passable form. That will only go up when his stamina gets to an acceptable level. I’m guessing if I take him to say magnificent PM/excellent passing he’ll get 5+ stars.
Holy font tags batman! Yeah, in my scheme I'd have a time during which my defenders will be formidible PM / solid defending. I'd probably have 5 trainies going this route and 5 traditional single skill trainies for league games. But I think a formidible/solid CD played offensive would be a pretty solid assest for a DIV. 5 team (which is where I'll likely be at that point). As for passing. I should look at it again at some point, but both Danks took hard looks at the market for players with high passing and (while such players may outplay single-skill players w/ comperable amounts of training invested in them) they do not seem to carry a market value that makes them outperform one trick ponies as products in the market. I think players with passing are undervalued because it is perceived as a "secondary skill" and the benefits of passing are harder to quantify when reading match reports. I intend to take advantage of that when buying players.
Another reason you don't see a lot of people doing those things, is because you'd be going a few seasons without selling any trainees, if you have a solid coach, you'd get the passable IM up to formidable by the end of his 18 yo season. I don't know how long you'd have to train his solid defense though, cause I don't know a lot about training defense, but I would assume it'd be at least 2-3 seasons more. That's 4-5 seasons without selling a trainee with that scheme. In the scheme that most people use, they can vary the age of their trainees so that they always have one that they can sell at the end of the season if they want.
I ain't no experienced player but I know what Im gonna after next season. I have in my dear possesion 4 young players, with passable and solid playmaking. But they're being trained as wingers and as soon as they turn 19, I'll be switching to playmaking and reserve 3 full slots for them, when they turn 20, I'll have, if lucky, some outstaning/excellent players for sale. Hopefully, they'll be sold for more than 80,000 freaking dollars!!
Defending and playmaking is not a combination completely without a market (I purchased one earlier this season because I like to use an OCD), but I'm not sure it's in enough demand to be worthwhile... particularly compared to combinations that involve passing, or winger plus playmaking, or winger plus defending for wingbacks.
IMO that's because most people don't understand wingers. instead of looking at the ratings they look at the stars that the player gets. the only secondary that anyone should care about on an offensive winger is playmaking. passing just increases wing attack, but less than winging skill. looks like it is about 3 levels of passing to one level of winging. therefore you might as well just get a winger with weak passing and a level higher winging skill, not least because these players tend to be cheaper. defending is totally irrelevant on an offensive winger - although not on a WTM. people have gone absolutely nuts for passing now, it's almost as if you need inadequate passing or higher to be able to sell your players for a decent amount. i'd never buy a winger or striker with high passing though, they are a waste of money, just get higher scoring / winger skill.
I'm planning on doing about half a season of passing training after I finish my PM training. That way it helps the IM's (even if it only gets pops for a few of them, it still helps their ratings) and the defenders I'm planning on training, since passing is a secondary that's helpful for everyone to have.
Don't forget that passing is a very important factor for using the AIM/AOW tactics. However, I do agree with you. People pay way too much for wingers with passing (or don't they pay enough for players without?). If I can get a magnificent winger with no sidestats for 1.5m, while one with inad pm and passing costs 2.2-2.5m, why would I buy the one with sidestats? I don't agree on the passing on strikers, though. If you train wingers and play 4-5-1, a striker with solid passing can be very nice, because strikers' passing is used only for central attack.
why would anyone play 4-5-1 and train wingers? surely your wing attacks will be your biggest strength, and the second most important factor in wing attacks is the scoring of your forwards. playing a lone striker would blunt your wing attacks. also the contribution of passing to central attack, although theoretically correct is not worth the money you will have to pay for it - an excellent striker with solid passing costs £1m at the moment.
Well, I know a guy who trains wingers and plays 4-5-1 AOW. He ranks 2nd in a div IV. £1m? Maybe half of that, or 17 year olds... I do agree that people pay too much for strikers with passing though, and that's why I train them.
Here's an interesting thought. Offensive wingbacks. Take 17 yo passable+ defenders/wingers and train defending for 3 seasons. Then train winger for the same. Defending should end up about brilliant/magnificent. Winger will be about world class or so. Perfect for those suicide 343 schemes with offensive wingbacks. You won't sacrifice much D and the offense will be pretty potent. And since you will have more defenders than you have training spots for once you switch to winger, you will have some players to sell to bulk up the other spots.
here's a more basic training scheme question -- do you guys expect to train the one area forever...continually selling to upgrade the other areas on the team?? Or switch training after making a big profit and keeping a couple gems?... I've debated that as my strikers reach the outstanding level...do I switch training to another area of the field and keep a couple guys and start young in a diff position.
I'm planning on changing off of keeper training, but mainly because I think it's not profitable enough. (Then again, I'm thinking of switching to winger training, so I'm not sure there really is a point to the exercise...)
I haven't decided what I am doing yet, for the next few seasons I'm sticking with PM, because of my U20 prospect. After that I don't know, I may just stick with PM for a long time, but I enjoyed when I did forward training for a season, so I may go back to that. A lot for me depends on how the game changes and what happens. If midfield goes down more in importance, then I'll likely switch. Either way these things are in the future. like 4-5 seasons in the future.
I'm hoping to develop my current trainess deeper into playmaking. I am supplementing with passing and rarely winger. I am leaning toward winger in the future, to take advantage of my trainees playmaking abilities.