If you could start over...

[Mistfit]

Not a bad pull this week but I doubt I will be able to do much with him.

Michael Jones looks promising. He is 15.37 years old and seems to have something extra.

I would say as an allrounder, he's inadequate. Given the chance to improve his Passing skills, this guy might well reach solid in that department. This player has weak Defending at this point in his career.

After his first match I have this figured out about him:

Keeper: unknown
Defending: weak (max unknown)*top 3 skill
Playmaking: poor (max unknown)
Winger: unknown (max weak)
Passing: unknown (max solid)*top 3 skill
Scoring: unknown
Set pieces: unknown

I am guessing he has inad on his defending so this means that he will not likely get much training as I am attempting to get my other 2 guys up.

I did get a nice bonus on my other 2 guys though. Both Popped to Inad PM this week!!

Rider:
Keeper: unknown (max wretched)
Defending: unknown
Playmaking: inadequate (max solid)
Winger: passable (max solid)
Passing: inadequate (max inadequate)*not maxed yet
Scoring: unknown (max weak)

Schmidt:
Keeper: unknown
Defending: unknown (max weak)
Playmaking: inadequate (max solid)
Winger: (max unknown)
Passing: unknown (max wretched)
Scoring: unknown
Set pieces: unknown

[Mistfit]

Update on current YA. I am training 3 guys basically. 2 are worthwhile and one is likely a 2-10K guy but he is young and fits in with what I am training..

Current Training: PM/PM top 3 skills in bold

Nicholas Rider (7.5 stars as an IM)
15 years and 97 days
Speciality: Head
Keeper unknown / wretched
Defending unknown / unknown
Playmaking inadequate / solid
Winger passable / solid
Passing inadequate / inadequate
Scoring unknown / weak
Set pieces unknown / unknown


Vernon Schmidt (6 stars as IM)
15 years and 64 days
Speciality: Technical
Keeper unknown / unknown
Defending unknown / weak
Playmaking inadequate / solid
Winger poor / unknown
Passing unknown / wretched
Scoring unknown / unknown
Set pieces unknown / unknown


Earl Jackson(5.5 stars as IM)
15 years and 72 days
Keeper unknown / wretched
Defending unknown / weak
Playmaking inadequate / unknown
Winger unknown / unknown
Passing unknown / weak
Scoring unknown / unknown
Set pieces unknown / unknown

3rd top sill unknown as of yet




I don't know much about the third guy but he is getting 5.5 stars as an IM so likely worth something... he will just ride the coattails of the other 2 for the time being.

According to HTYC training -


PM/PM:
5.3 ⇒ 7: ≈ 10-11 Matches (Senior Season 47/2 - Senior Season 47/3, Age 16.050 - Age 16.057)

Crossing/short passing:
6.6 ⇒ 7: ≈ 2-3 Matches (Senior Season 46/11 - Senior Season 47/6, Age 16.073 - Age 16.080)

This of course is presuming zero sub skills but this should also give me time to fill them out..

[Mistfit]

Okay, I think I have come up with a long term plan. That is if you consider 5-6 seasons long term I suppose. This plan takes into consideration the new loyalty bonus and need for multi skilled players and salary conservation.

Long term the plan consists of having 10 trainees total and training 7 weeks DEF and 7 weeks PM per season with passing in the off season. Each week I will look at what I will need to win and decide on the training for that week. If I need more PM I will train that for the week. If I need more DEF I will train that. Then I will just put my best 5 of that type of player in the correct spots for that week and play the other 5 on the friendly. I will only need my keeper (which I am training now) a emergency keeper (likely very poor) and 3 forwards for my whole team. I figure if a DEF gets injured I can always pull up my keeper for the friendly spot and if a PM gets injured I can pull a Forward into a spot to help train TDF. If multiple get injured I can try my hand at skill trading for the spot.

Stage One: Now until Week 11 of next season
Training: Keeper

Q. Link 18 yrs 29 days
Keeper: Formid + .98
Defending: Poor
US player

V. Kovalchuk
Keeper: Excellent
Defending: Poor
foreign player

Link will be at Magnificent (12.58) and I will keep him on as my keeper
Kova should (hopefully) be at magnificent and I will sell him to buy my trainees and other players for my squad. $1.8 - $2 million USD


From week 10 of next season to the 1st week of the following season I have 6 players I will pull from my youth squad. Some of them are rather mediocre but with the training speeds the way they are I will just deal with it to garner the 20% wage discount and the 1.5 per skill boost to make up for some of that.

I will need to buy 4 additional players with the monies I have gained from selling my second keeper. These will be defenders as the majority of the players I have in my YA are more suited to PM than DEF.

Once this gets into full effect I should gain about one level of skill on all of my players in both skills (DEF and PM) per season.

So this means at the end of 5 seasons (when they hit 21) I should have 5 pm at Brilliant/Magnificent and 5 Defenders at the same. Many of which will have the full 1.5 skill bonus. They should all have around excellent passing at that point too (dependent upon starting skills of course)

At this point I will decide if I want to do another season to bring them to WC or make the decision to move to wing or forward training or even a season or 2 of passing dependent upon where I am at by then (I hope DIV IV or close to it). Wing might be better as I could train 4 of my current players in those spots and just buy 4 more for profits.

My only income will be from Matches and YA prospects I will be getting along the way but I hope my team will be affordable as 60% will be home grown and the others I hope to try and get from the US.

Well that was rather long winded but it is my plan and unless you guys can show me some serious faults with it I think I shall give it a go.

[socralynnek]

First thing that comes to my mind: Training Def means you have 10 spaces. For PM you also have 10 spaces, but 4 are only at half speed, and you'd be playing without wingers, which means your offense will be limited to the centre.
Maybe, if you plan on buying some young players anyway, that guys should have some winging skill, s.t. you make them to off outer defs during your training process.

Otheriwse I don't see any flaw. Your wages grow quite slowly with your plan (but as your fanbase grows this might match your club's growth quite well), but you won't sell much. It's hard to predict how the transfer market will behave, your plan at least is quite independent from that as you'll mostly train for your team.

On the other hand, if the market skyrockets (maybe rather unlikely), you won't profit from that.

[Mistfit]

I figured I would rotate my people through the wing spots when training PM. I know it is not perfect but some of my youths have 'some' wing on them so I can always play the better ones in those spots during important league.

As I believe it is better than just 'winging' it I will put this plan into action. Just see how well/poorly I do

[akots]

Seems like a plan IMO. It has some faults in it but it should work.

I was never that patient myself and these days, you gain more money for winning matches than for training in the long run. You have to realize what is the goal and how much money you approximately need to reach that goal. Training to magnificient level might bring you to Div4 eventually if you are lucky but it is not that bright of a perspective. Even with bonus, you can get 250 stars at most and your cash is going to be very limited. Living comfortably in Division IV with what you would have is not possible since you would need to invest constantly in the players and salaries but your match income is not that much better than in Division V unless you have a horde of happy supporters. Thus, eventually, you get broke and would have to start over. Which is OK and many people seem to do this in the USA.

My personal interest would be for you to come up with a plan to get to 300+ stars in 8 seasons. I would like to try that type of plan as well. So far, I have not been able to come up with that kind of plan which does not require ridiculous amount of time spent on transfer market buying and selling.

I did follow essentially the same route training keepers (one main to at least around mythical to stay competitive in Div III and others for sale) which saves some money as well because with good keeper you can have not so good defenders. I then trained wingers mostly for sale. But in DivIII and strong DivIV, you cannot train normally. It all has to be sacrificed for the performance since this is the only way to make the ends meet. One bad season run and you'd have to sell the best players and performance drops as a result and you go back to where you started. The cycle is repeated then with no apparent difference.

[BCLG100]

No plan to throw in set pieces for the GK's? That'll make them more valuable and would benefit the team as a whole as well.

[akots]

Bumping up SP for a little does not hurt but it won't make you lose or win unless playing against Aristocats. Defensive CA teams are very few in the USA for some reason. IMO, more value is added by passing and bumping winger in midfielders up to at least formidable level or higher so that they can be fielded as WTM. Passing is actually quite fast training because it goes up from a usually low level to some reasonable solid or excellent level and works even in older players age over 25.

[Mistfit]

I guess I will just have to wait and see what transpires but I do think the plan allows for some flexibility. My plan is to stay in the VIth division for 2 more seasons after this one and then hopefully be able to make the move to the Vth and have a viable team that has staying power there.

I was going to use 5 seasons of training (6 seasons from now) as a benchmark for when I look at the system to see where I am at and what I need at the time. If I decide that having 5 Mag defenders and 5 Mag IM's is not what I need I can train them another season and bring em up to WC. If their DEF and PM skills are high enough I could switch to wing for the extra boost or passing..

As to the question of SP on my keeper I am struggling with that one. I have not made the decision if having team SP is more important than having team passing. I have a couple of seasons to figure it out.

[akots]

Originally Posted by Mistfit

I guess I will just have to wait and see what transpires but I do think the plan allows for some flexibility. My plan is to stay in the VIth division for 2 more seasons after this one and then hopefully be able to make the move to the Vth and have a viable team that has staying power there. ...

IMO, you need to consider moving from Div VI into Div V as soon as you are sure you can stay there. The income from matches is quite different. Actually, Div V is not much worse than Div IV. IMO, Div VI sucks completely with that. The main problem is that you can get to some tough league and even though these leagues are rare, it is still possible. And you don't want to relegate.