Sunday 13 September 2009

Epic Post:: Clough, Regression & Youths

After the nonsense in Lofthouse and a forum post from a Clough Org that the EFA was set up to protect new teams I moved the account there. It's risky as it's strictly a casual account and the EFA has unforgiving AI penalties but a few games a day is ok.

I'd heard that Clough was busy and market values seem high, it's been hard to get a decent squad in a short window as well. The first season is always a write off anyway as rep increase I think is locked to 1.5 / 2 stars.

Normally I go for cheap waged oldies but with 1.3 on the way and a lack of cheap oldies anyway I was forced to look for players that perhaps were underdeveloped. If there was a glut of one thing it was 21yo's high potentials.

Too old next season for youth teams and no good for most seniors, so I got one of them and just did my best with the rest. I was quite surprised that there was some value in the transfer auctions.

I don't think there is too long left on the sub so not only casual but short term as well:(

Regression
The next big fuss is going to be the oldies fading, I think I should explain my perspective on older players and how it will change in 1.3.

There is no doubt in my mind that some stat(s) continues to improve in older players that you can't see on the screen. You, as a team just end up more consistent with older players, on screen a players peak is often 28/29 but due to something the actual peak performance in 1.2 often comes at 31/32/33, even at 34 or 35 it's still very respectable contribution.

In 1.3 the peak performance doesn't last as long, it's still there but at 32 it's over the regression is coming fast. However the stats you can't see must be holding up so the performance doesn't go completely but at 33 even those hidden stats can't save the player, from 19 pace to 13 changes a player quite a bit!

I wouldn't even do 34 now under any circumstances and aged 35 I can't imagine how bad it would be.

Regression Right or Wrong?
It's odd those with older players seem generally to be saying it's totally wrong and the ones without too many old players are saying f all.

Personally I think it's fine as long as we know but the decreases in wage demand / signing on fee's are not enough. As things stand none of my 32year olds will be kept on.

It certainly will speed things up and make it more of a challenge which I think is a good thing.

I've heard the argument that it will drive youth prices up further but I've seen youth players with no pace / acceleration go for £15k a day in Shearer recently. So you have silly, stupid, plain stupid, raging stupid, suicidal, what comes next does it get any worse than that? :)

Their strategy is that their securing players on high wages and then putting them back in wage auction to lower wage. I've heard quite a few managers state they will bid high but not enough to secure on all high wage youth auctions to force this to fail.

On regression I've heard various thoughts on it, again much like the wage demand saga there are posts saying that everyone is now going to be screwed and doomed to failure. My team is in trouble in Beta that's for sure but then so are many others.

Youth Academies

I can't talk about this too much due to potential beta news. I'm still in the dark as to how it's going to work.

I've seen a lot of great ideas mostly not runners due to the casual manager advantage thing. I thought I had a definitive solution with a regen youth budget, simply you have a total fixed wage budget of say £10k to spend on U17's once that has gone bids get veto'd.

This wasn't my idea it came off the forums but I thought it was almost beautiful in it's simplicity and solved the issue totally. Lets first frame the issue:-

The issue with youth in the first place is not the system we have now, the issue is with the managers pricing the youth.

Youth in my opinion is the best part of FM Live, it's stress free from my point of view as I don't tend to really care about winning, it's about finding the players. I think you find more out from a defeat than a victory and I like being the cold manager going 'no ain't got it he's gone' :)

I've always said that FM Live Managers want to win more then anything, and winning at youth is easier than winning at seniors. The problem arises when managers armed with senior sized budgets use that budget to secure youth players.

The senior managers maybe looking to dabble at youth naturally value a youth relative to their senior team and are amazed at the money being thrown around.

The budget system pretty much forces a max value on a youth and prevents senior sized money being thrown at them. It is drastic but would result in a system that would have no basis on luck but need a lot of skill to find the good regens. You would no longer be able to bid £20k after the first one.

Sadly it looks as if that's not going to run but we are going to see academies, the big question for me is, how much? Currently I spend £4k-£5k a day on the U17 squad in Shearer, their hand picked normally 3.5star potential.

I can't see academies being that cheap, just to recap they need to the same quality as a hand picked bunch squad of regens for £5k a day.

It seems to me like it's going to end up being a lottery, do you want to buy a ticket?

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