Introducing to you all: FC De Snaken

[yndy]

Clowns are hard to find if you're not prepared to pay some serious money. The problem is that the solid leadership skill may be different among the two players and if the contro/solid is higher in leadership than the sympa/solid, you still suffer the bad effects.

Just wait and see if things are getting better.

[Kemal]

I've already put the contro on the transferlist and I'll fire him if he doesn't sell, since he's a pathetic 2 star wingback and I can easily find a replacement for him withpout spending much cash. But the sympa is a decent clown if he were the one to be assigned as clown?

Now that I'm posting this, just one more question then... I'm training goaltending, but would a assistent coach help in increasing my outfield players form? They don't receive any training of course so the assistant isn't useful for that, but I need my players to regain form after the stamina gambit, and so far it hasn't happened even after 2 weeks of general training... so I thought maybe hiring a assistant to increase their background form would help?

[yndy]

As I and others interpret the rules, yes, one or two assistant coaches help maintaining form for outfield players but I have no idea how much.

[Kemal]

Ok, thanks for the info, I've hired one and hopefully he'll be able to do some miracles as currently the average form in my squad is about poor to weak.

[Kemal]

THE STAMINA GAMBIT, KEMAL'S FINAL EVALUATION AND THOUGHTS

With only 2 to 3 PMs that need to be sold now (hopefully they'll be gone tomorrow), the chapter "stamina gambit" is drawing to the close and an inevitable summary of things happened so far to my team's economy and team, as well as my personal view on these past 9 weeks of stamina training, needs to be made and analysed.

I'd like to start off with the most important aspect of course, team finances and the effect the gamble had on it. Like all other team's, Snaken started off with a lousy squad and 300k in the bank, and I'd like to mention that in my case, it stayed at 300K to start with because I sold exactly zero players from my initial squad, they really were that bad, and that had a small negative impact on the gambit's result as I was unable to reach the 50 player limit to train with due to lack of funds early on.
Now, 9 weeks of training later, Snaken assets are much better, we currently have a solid coach employed, and are training one solid and one excellent goalkeeper trainee and still maintain a positive cash balance, and have the youth squad up to weak.

In terms of money, it comes down to about a 900k to 1M euros profit over the past 9 weeks, i.e. about 100k worth of training the week. (See my transfer history for the exact figures).

How it happened...

Of course, first thing to do was to get as many PMs with horrible stamina asap, so I started off by skimming the hattrick transfer list for a few times a day to see if any useful, and affordable, players were coming up, and where I initially was willing to pay around 30K on average for them, I realised after a few sessions that around 20k was doable, and I managed to buy 26 solid PMs (as well as some 17K worth of squad improvements) before i hit the -200K limit and wasn't allowed to bid any further.
Then, we set training to 100% stamina, and guided by our weak starting trainer, the guys started to do shuttle run after shuttle run and stamina began to improve.
Strangely enough, while on average it seems each player levels about 1 level a week with these settings, there was not at all an equal division of skill increase throughout the squad.
For example, while all players had been bought at disastrous-poor level (a few weaks as well but not many), one of the players was ready to be sold (i.e. excellent stamina) after having been only 21 days with the squad (he gained 3 levels at once at one time), while another, when the gambit was ending after 50 days of training, was still at passable(!) level (though he did start at disastrous, he gained only 2 levels after 6 weeks of stamina training).

However, most players reached excellent at about the same time, after 6 or 7 weeks of training, and were ready to be sold.

Selling the players

This turned out to be one of the most difficult parts of the gambit really, and selling these solid playmakers turned out to be quite a hassle. Initial guestimates on prices seemed to suggest that a price at around 100K would be reasonable, but after 1 week of selling no one, I reconfigured my prices, and the selling of players began at around 70-80K a piece, but still quite slowly. To illustrate, you can see on my transfer history that, while most PMs were ready to be sold at the end of september/early october, I only sold 4 players during that time (my best) while plenty of them returned from the transfer list unsold.
Now, the ones I did sell went quite high, but another problem started to take shape... I had finished training stamina but due to low sales, I was still left with little cash, and thus unable to buy other trainees. Precious training time was starting to get lost (I trained general twice in this period to increase form) and therefore i decided to lower prices to around 55-65K and see whether the situation would improve.
From that point on, sales were good and cash started to come in rapidly, though profits of course were a little lower than expected. Still, at an average price of around 60K, that's still 40K profit per player of course (excluding salaries paid).

The effects on the squad

Well, the loss of form for players after 7 weeks of training stamina is disastrous, and I still haven't recovered at all even after 2 weeks of training general, my average form is still just below weak.
After the first few weeks things seemed to go okay, sure a few players lost form but there were so many to choose from when selecting a squad, that you always had a few passable (form) midfielders with decent rating available for matches. However, at the third week or so one suddenly notices all players except the goalkeeper, for some reason, being at weak or lower form, and it really costs plenty of stars on the field.

But, looking back at my relegation from divison 8 last season, I don't think no loss of form would have made any difference in my final position in the tables.
I received the team halfway the season with 0 points out of 7, and the safe 6th spot being 6 points out of reach with only 7 games remaining. From those 7 games I played, I won 3 out of 7 games, but I let the last one slip when relegation was already a fact. However, 3 out of 7 teams in the league were virtually unbeatable for starting teams, with several 2.5 to 3.5 star players in key positions, so I think I would have lost to them no matter what had happened. And of those remaining 4 teams, I beat 3 and, as said, let the last one slip on purpose. So, i think when starting on equal footing at the start of the season, I certainly would not have relegated per se.

Furthermore, for certain key matches, there is a very cheap remedy available to get a fast increase of stars. Yndy suggested it as well, when you are in dire need of a decent player it often pays to search for inadequates on the transfer market that are in solid or excellent form. These guys go for 1K (wingers) to about 5K (defenders) a piece, and will have the same stats as much higher skilled players for about 1 to 2 weeks, i.e. you can hire them for your key matches and then fire them again.
It does take quite some time (or at least it took me) to locate these players though, so for those short on time it might not be worth it.

Pros and Cons, my own experiences

Since I have now finished it, having been using it for 10 weeks, I'd like to finish by reporting what I personally found positive and negative about the gambit, and what perhaps I could have done differently instead for better results.

Pro-gambit:

- After buying the initial players, you don't have do to a thing really, so lazy players can easily forget their team for a few weeks, and come back and see their squad fully trained and, more importantly, have made quite some profit from it.

- Starting squad has very little impact, I started out with about the worst squad possible i think, I had no valuable player whatsoever, my solid skills went to passing and stamina so I had no trainee to start with either, but except for a little less cash to invest early on, it made no difference whatsoever.

- Of course, most importantly, it makes your team decent profits! After half a season of stamina gambit, I went from starting with a bunch of losers and a rotten coach, to now training a solid and excellent keeper trainee with a solid coach, and invested the youth squad up to weak, and still have some cash to spend. I don't know much about other early training programs but I'm definitely content with where my team is now compared to 10 weeks ago.

Cons:

- The initial buying rounds can take you quite some time, if you want your players to make a profit. Lots of PMs go for 40K plus even at low levels, but you really need one large group of PMs together within a short amount of time, because they need to level to excellent at about the same time to get good results from the stamina training.

- After the initial buying rounds, the gambit is quite boring for the next 6 to 7 weeks, as it makes no difference who will play for training purposes, and results generally will not be very good, so selecting the squad is a formality, while the cash balance is extremely low (see next point) so there si no point looking at the transfer market for cheap buys or things like that.

- Wages and interest cost become quite a burden on the economy, there is no way a starting team in the lower division can make up for it by attendance or sponsors, so the cash balance drops even further.

(and not really a con but certainly not a pro
- selling the players can be tricky, I spent quite some cash on sending players to the transfer list for too high prices... and I'm still not sure what the best price is really, around 65K probably if you need the cash fast, or 75 or higher if your finances allow you to wait a bit longer with selling.

My final Verdict
All in all, the cons weren't really that bad to me, I was already in a very bad league position so the results didn't matter that much, and I enjoyed the last half of the season trying to get out of the relegation zone, I almost made it though I failed nevertheless of course. Also, I just spent the first 7 weeks or so to get familiar with hattrick and especially the transfer market in general, which is a good thing as it prevents you from making horible transfer decisions or stadium improvements early on (since there is no cash to spend on it).

So, in general, I'm quite happy with the results of the gambit, it has absolutely been a succesful early approach, and would like to thank yndy for suggesting me to use it as undoubtedly I would have done worse with my own approach at that time.

P.S.:
Something I do like to mention though, is that, while I was looking for my excellent keeper trainee, I also from time to time looked at some poor stamina PMs again, but I never ever even saw one close to costing 30K again, all were going for higher prices which would make the gambit much less profitable. Not sure whether that was because of the time of the season, as I had little problems filling my squad 10 weeks ago...??

And to end my writings here...:
Take care of yourself... and each other. (Ah no those were somebody else's final thoughts of course... ).

[yndy]

Thank you Kemal, and it seems it went very well for you, your profits were actually larger than I thought but you like of course micromanaging.

I’ll adjust my short guide based on your comments in the following days. And some comments on your points

Sorry for missing on the price tag for midfielders, it seems that their current form is affecting the sale price so much because there are many other midfielders to choose from. Surprisingly, when looking to the market, the average price is always above Euro 100k (Yanche just sold one for 120k) and they have bids on but I also saw your players listed for 75k and no one bid on them.

I’m sorry about your general form of players, I know it hurts you for now but really things will become much better from now on, form will mostly go up.

Training the keepers will allow you to make some nice profits in a season and by then you can think of the best approach for training in the future. Good luck and I’m looking forward for your future victories in the league

[Kemal]

Hmm, take a look at the following situation I encountered when checking up on the strength of the no1 in my competition, he had several players for sale, such as:

Bryan Ries (36102582)
27 years, passable form, healthy
A pleasant guy who is calm and upright.
Has weak experience and passable leadership abilities.


Speciality: Powerful

Nationality: Nederland
Total Skill Index (TSI): 450
Wage: 680 €/week
Owner: zwolle hools
Warnings: 0

Stamina: inadequate Goaltending: wretched
Playmaking: inadequate Passing: disastrous
Winger: passable Defending: poor
Scoring: poor Set Pieces: inadequate

Received a bid of 75000 from tuinmannesalliance.

Or,


Jan-Karel Lardinois (36102578)
24 years, poor form, healthy
A controversial person who is balanced and upright.
Has wretched experience and disastrous leadership abilities.

Nationality: Nederland
Total Skill Index (TSI): 100
Wage: 680 €/week
Owner: zwolle hools
Warnings: 0


Stamina: disastrous Goaltending: wretched
Playmaking: weak Passing: poor
Winger: inadequate Defending: poor
Scoring: passable Set Pieces: passable

Career Goals: 1
Career Hattricks: 0
League goals this season: 0
Cup goals this season: 0

Received a bid of 102000 from tuinmannesalliance

Harris de Kreek (36102579)
26 years, passable form, healthy
A sympathetic guy who is calm and honest.
Has poor experience and poor leadership abilities.

Nationality: Nederland
Total Skill Index (TSI): 400
Wage: 560 €/week
Owner: zwolle hools
Warnings: 0


Stamina: weak Goaltending: disastrous
Playmaking: inadequate Passing: passable
Winger: weak Defending: poor
Scoring: poor Set Pieces: solid

Career Goals: 1
Career Hattricks: 0
League goals this season: 0
Cup goals this season: 0

Received a bid of 60000 from tuinmannesalliance.

And the list continues... both come from the same region, overijssel, and tuinmannesalliance even logged in from the same IP address as zwolle hools, or at least it started with the same numbers as it is partially hidden.

What do you guys think? Should I report to the admins?

[Kingreno]

Yep kemal, this guy should be kicked out of hattrick. Definately a cheater.

[akots]

Sure, the prices are ridiculous. It is obviously cheating.

[Kemal]

Case has been reported, lets hope the GMs make swift work of this one.