[MJ4H]

Using my new team, my first goal is to get onto the World Ranking chart so I can start earning Ranking-income. You probably earn even if you are only provisionally rated, but I don't want to take chances. So I need to play about 10-15 games to get an established rating and ranking.

At the time of night (in USA) I was on at this time, the number of players online is drastically reduced (Europe is sleeping away or getting up for work) so I didn't play as many friendlies as I wanted, and I didn't get much choice of teams to play. My first 7 friendly matches went like this:

Fixtures:
FRIENDLY-
Radnicki Pirot (W 3-0) [UNR]
at Babytta Team (W 7-6) [#152]
Redblacks FC (D 2-2) [#183]
at Italian Stallions (L 2-3) [#107]
Rent Bear Town (L 1-2) [#35]
at Italian Stallions (L 1-3) [#100]
North Hills Galaxy (W 3-1) [#379]


Not a bad start. The second game was insanity at its finest. That game was 4-4 after 23 minutes. I was a little disappointed with the way things went, but not too much so. It looks like breaking into the top 200 might be a little bit more of a challenge than I had hoped. (There are about 615 teams in the beta world now).

The following morning, I played more friendlies. They went like this:

My Face (L 0-2) [#329]
Axis of Evil (L 0-4) [#35]
McRovers (D 0-0) [#243]
Rusty's Dumpy Nuts (L 0-3) [#209]

Yikes! At this point, I knew we had a problem. Four games, no goals. Losing to teams I need be able to beat most of the time to get into the top 200. I decided to upgrade to key positions for my team. I need a better keeper, and I need a better playmaker. I caught a bit of luck because in my game with McRovers, their manager told me he had a bit of a financial crisis and needed to unload some wage bills. He told me to have a look at his team and make some offers.

Now, I was familiar with his situation. Before I restarted, I
ran into some wage bill problems. In this game, players with very high wage bills can be like poison. They are hard to sell because other managers don't like inheriting that kind of recurring problem. If you are willing to take a high-wage
player off of the hands of a team with a problem, you can get them for very low transfer fees.

McRovers had some very high wages on their team, but there were two players that I thought would really help my team. I had to make some changes based on those last 4 matches, so I pulled the trigger. The players I purchased were:

GK Brad Friedel (USA) Age: 36 (15,520)
AMC Marian Aliuta (ROM) Age: 29 (10,500)

I paid 40,000 to buy Brad Friedel, and felt fortunate. The
other manager asked 80k, but I wouldn't go that high because I won't have more than a season or two with him based on his age. I could get lucky and he could play until he's 39 or 40, but he won't be as good and I can't count on it anyway. I need immediate help and 40k is a great price for a good keeper. He is an order of magnitude better than what I have.

I paid 80,000 for Aliuta. This guy is an all around with
exactly the attributes I was looking for (nothing higher than
15, but 15s in a lot of the right places). I had found my new playmaker.

Well, my team really responded, and Marian Aliuta must like his new team. He scored 4 goals in his debut. My next series of friendlies went like this:

Babytta Team (W 5-3) [#136]
Portugal (W 1-0) [#193]
Babytta Team (D 1-1) [#136]

An immediate improvement, but I need to play more to see where we are as a team. The drop-off in output after the first match was a little disappointing, but we are looking at a very small sample-size for the team at this point.