Where Do I Go From Here?

[Ajaxab]

Another advice seeking thread. I've been mired in v.189's purgatory since starting this game 3 calendar years ago and want to finally get outta there. I'd appreciate any help on a next move.

Here's the current line-up for next season (after offseason age changes take effect):

Forwards:
25 yo brill with pass passing
25 yo out with solid passing

Defenders:
25 yo form with poor passing
26 yo from with weak passing
23 yo mag with passable passing

Winger:
22 yo brill with solid playmaking
21 yo mag with pass passing

Keeper:
25 yo wcl

I train middies and will likely sell my 24 yo super early next season.

Here are my ratings from a representative league game:

Midfield: inadequate (low)
Right Defence: excellent (very high)
Central Defence: excellent (low)
Left Defence: excellent (very low)
Right Attack: inadequate (very high)
Central Attack: inadequate (very high)
Left Attack: passable (very high)

Thanks in advance for any input.

[Alf]

your midfield looks very weak compared to your defence. That's very strange for a midfield trainer.

[Tellistto]

I had this conversation with Tim not that long ago. The crux of training midfield is that you have two choices, you either train to be competitive, or you train to be profitable.

The first choice entails training to a point where you outclass your competition, for many IV series that means having a rotation that goes up to ET at a minimum, with one level gaps between each middie going down from ET, so that you have a midfield of Titanic/SN/WC at all times. This also means you have to buy trainees at a higher level than solid.

The second choice is buying young low skill trainees for cheap and selling them at an optimum level for maximum profit, which is normally WC depending on age of player.

I agree with Alf, for a middie trainer your midfield seems very week. This can be for a couple of reasons. Either your rotation isn't high enough on the skill ladder to beat the teams in your series and promote out, or you don't have a coach with leadership to keep your TS high.

Personally, there is only one way I'd ever train middies, that that would be to create the middies that I want to keep long term. Otherwise, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. While it is the quickest way to become competitive for a new team, it's also the toughest way to be competitive in my opinion, because of the costs involved with creating a midfield that's competitive at higher levels.

I haven't looked at your series, but I can guess that your main need is midfield. Your defense is solid enough, as is your attack, though that area could be improved some.

Tell

[Ajaxab]

I've pulled as high as a solid(low) on my midfield, but am typically in the inadequate/passable range.

My coach may be a bit of the problem. He's at poor leadership at the moment. I've been waiting for my 34 yo passable leadership, passable exp player to get to solid exp to upgrade my coach, but it's been 30 friendlies and the guy has yet to pop.

Tellisto, I've been thinking along the same lines in terms of your reason for training middies when it comes to establishing a set for the long term. I'm a season or two away from completing that project after I sell my 24 yo supernatural poor passer leaving me with guys who could get to that pm level with better passing.

The question then becomes, what to switch to when it comes to training. I've been training middies from the outset. Defenders sound intriguing and they're relatively inexpensive, but forwards are more attractive. What do you think?

[Tellistto]

If I were to personally execute such a plan, I'd go for defending at the end of it. Mostly because it offers more tactical options than scoring does. It also depends on whether you care about having a full set of trainees or not. If I were to train defending, for example, I could have 8 trainees if I played any 3** formation in league, and 5** in cup/friendly. Or 7 total if I played 4** in cup/friendly. Either way you go, your getting more trainees than any other program can offer, and you don't have to buy high end trainees to be successful, especially if you've got a midfield and an offense that can carry you to victory a lot of times.

I should clarify something, though. If I was to do a plan to create my own future midfield, it'd be composed entirely of Americans, to save on wages and allow a higher ending point, say mythical.

Tell

[MacroGuru]

Well Ajax, you may not have me to deal with...I am debating believe it or not, on tanking my games to get out, as I just switched to MF training myself due to a couple of factors.

1) Scoring profits suck I noticed a nat teamer forward sell for 2.6 million and he was Divine, what does that definately say about the forward

2) My MF is horrible, and because the scoring market sucks, it would take a lot for me to build up the income to buy the MF needed.

3) I have been in the series almost as long as you have, and I am just tired of it, no offense, it's fun to beat the snot out of some of the teams and ruin auto promo chances, but because of that, it isn't happening...

So basically, unless I am talked out of it, I am dropping to VI..........

[Ajaxab]

I'm not offended in the least as I've considered doing the same as well. It really isn't a whole lot of fun to see the same teams season after season. I guess it didn't help that Paris Killers escaped only to return to us a season later. It does suck to be mired in our division forever.

IMO, there needs to be an additional promotion spot. I don't see how difficult it could be to implement and it would motivate the middle of the pack teams to forge onward instead of tanking to get 5th/6th for the extra week of training.

[MacroGuru]

I'm not offended in the least as I've considered doing the same as well. It really isn't a whole lot of fun to see the same teams season after season. I guess it didn't help that Paris Killers escaped only to return to us a season later. It does suck to be mired in our division forever.

IMO, there needs to be an additional promotion spot. I don't see how difficult it could be to implement and it would motivate the middle of the pack teams to forge onward instead of tanking to get 5th/6th for the extra week of training.

Yeah, it's definately losing the luster, in fact while I was travelling I decided not to worry about HT at all, and it felt dang nice....who knows, I just might need a small break.

[sterlingice]

If I were to personally execute such a plan, I'd go for defending at the end of it. Mostly because it offers more tactical options than scoring does. It also depends on whether you care about having a full set of trainees or not. If I were to train defending, for example, I could have 8 trainees if I played any 3** formation in league, and 5** in cup/friendly. Or 7 total if I played 4** in cup/friendly. Either way you go, your getting more trainees than any other program can offer, and you don't have to buy high end trainees to be successful, especially if you've got a midfield and an offense that can carry you to victory a lot of times.

I should clarify something, though. If I was to do a plan to create my own future midfield, it'd be composed entirely of Americans, to save on wages and allow a higher ending point, say mythical.

Tell

Problem with that is that you have to do it in stages. At the point he's at right now, he can't just train up a midfield to mythical because he won't have enough cash to churn into the rest of his team to offset the opportunity cost lost from those players aging before you have a team that can catch up in quality.

Remember the little experiment with Doug's team? To get a III level team, it takes roughly $50-60M all at one shot to get one right now. Who knows what it will take down the road.

Looking strictly at the numbers, I really think middie training for profit is probably the best money maker out there so it's not a bad idea. You just have to realize the sacrifices to quality that you make by doing that. However, if you feel like you're stagnating, perhaps it's not the best choice.

Hattrick is a marathon, not a sprint, blah, blah, blah. Basically, just make sure that the moves you make are not short term (ie don't go out and blow $3M on an old, expensive wage sucker who will play well but will eat into your bottom line each week and have no sale value at the end). That's a great scenario if you're FM and going into All Canadian where you have the cash to support that somewhat. It's not such a great idea down in V USA.

SI

[sterlingice]

1) Scoring profits suck I noticed a nat teamer forward sell for 2.6 million and he was Divine, what does that definately say about the forward

2) My MF is horrible, and because the scoring market sucks, it would take a lot for me to build up the income to buy the MF needed.

To be fair (and maybe you're just being glib and it flew right over my head), divines of all types don't sell for very much except keeper since wages make those players not worth their cheaper counterparts 4-5 levels lower.

That's not to say the scoring market is stellar, it's crashed pretty hard but so has everything. Midfield the least, scoring the middle, and, if you want to see sad profit trainers, ask defense trainers what their guys sell for these days and their weekly profit, even at 10 trainees.

SI

[Tellistto]

All good points. I should have gone into more detail, but to be honest I was waiting for you to point all that out. :D My statements and comments were more based on how to get out of his V through the top instead of the bottom.

Tell