Hattrick manager blog

I took the secondary training lineup under scrutiny and made some changes. As I said in the previous post, I downsized Zierlyn. The poor sod was just too much for the budget and too little for the team performance. We got some brave changes for the secondary training lineup and I hope it will bring the best out of the youngsters.

Still too many non-performing players in the team, but Im determined (and drunk) not to boot them. I might have a transfer frenzy in mi hands if I power sell or power fire them. Im pretty sure that couple of old timers will fade away (obviously they dont listen toNeil Young) and give room for young lads. However, training will be a problem. Those rookies will not get suitable training and cant really fill the gaps in the lineup.

Training will not solve the problem, but money will. I can buy my way outta this problem, but there are so many holes to dump that hard earned cash. Hard to make up ones mind. Will it be stadium, players, coach, staff, juniors, or what??? As the stadium price will have scheduled price hike, I might get into that train to tap the opportunity. Anyhoo, this means that I will have some bottlenecks in my lineup. Investment to the future always diminishes present resources. Great many books about this topic has been written in economics (not to mention rest of the sciences).

Mysterious Hattrick manager that has been involved in this game for seasons has given some tentative tips for me. I do not want to win every game that I play so here is a growing list of tips from this behind the scenes manager guru.

More fine tuning of the lineup. What did I do?

ROOKIE TRAINING SWAP
I wasnt completely happy with the development of Jan Ismo so I gave him a better training position that should boost his midfield skills. Lasse Salli goes to the wing and puts his wingman skills to use. Now why didnt I do it earlier? Eh, dreams of grandeur for Salli allowed me to keep him on this non-performing place. You see, I see him as a great future coach that just has to get more experience.

To get experience, I have to have him in my lineup, so I thought that I should quickly develop his most obvious position on the midfield. The thing is, all the money and training Im pumping into this guy just doesnt pay off. The moron just wont improve at all. If this is the case, lets have him on place where he does least damage. He will get experience eventually and has slight chance of development.

WING DEFENDER SWAP
Halonen and Kollin had to change places. This way I have strong supportive players for attacking on the same side of the field. Now Halonen from defense and Severikangas from midfield can form a solid striking weapon with the lead Gottsted (well whatever the guys name is who can keep up with these foreign names).

Todays match will be the first to try it out and despite the fact that guys are going to take it easy, it will be a good opportunity to test the performance of the new lineup and training arrangement.

... and that is why I am going to get rid of it. I have been getting comments but none of them are showing. Constant slow stream of comments coming in, I get the email notifications, but comment count stays at nada. Ok, misery has a constant value and as Im pushing on strong on the field, I need to have trouble off the field.

I haven't been totally straight with you guys. There has been a deepthroath on the background to give me some pointers. I guess that it just normal that even GREAT coaches like yours truly need a mentor. Ive been getting such a tremendous vision from this old time manager that I start to feel guilty not to share those pointers with you guys... Thats why Im gonna start YET ANOTHER subbie for Deepthroath guru advice (ok, ok, I know that Im using some dubious terms, but REALLY it is all football)

This is the list of regularly updated manager or team focused Hattrick sites or blogs. Naturally they are all in English. Just let me know if you want to have your site mentioned here. UPDATED 22.04.2005

General management tips that have been learned the hard way.

Thank you, thank you! ThankyouverymUCH! It happened just as I forsaw. Team pushed very hard and found that extra gear to make it all happen. Maamies did the same old thing and paid the price.

We had full attendance and we made lots of money. Situation for the management could not be any better. Oh, yes... it could, we could have better looking gals as cheerleaders. Ah well, maybe this is not really a football thing but a thing of Americanized sports.

Anyhoo, there are plenty of plans in the works. First of all, all investment and team development except steady training are in the ice. Focus is in making money and making it as much as possible before the season finale. One clear goal to meet this target is to win the league and claim the cash prize. That would fatten my wallet quite nicely. Err, fatten the team's wallet.

To put this money raising vision into concrete goals and practical plans:

That should do it. I can fill my coffers with gold and invest into stadium and team as required at higher level. Also I can take some of this easy money to invest into that seaside villa. Consider it as a down payment. Ok, better go and trim my money making machine.

Importance of money hits to your face from the first rounds of your management career. The best way to make money - and make it fast - is to focus on training and cashing in with the results of training.

Training will increase your resources and build some property that is exchangable for big money. The improvement in the resources boosts your performance against your competitors and makes you more interesting for spectators and sponsors. However this revenue source is quite thin and takes many seasons to develop.

As property builder, training is much better money maker than as a performance improver. Developed property in the form of a skilled player has many advantages over match and sponsor revenue. Not only does property support the performance it also is unaffected by the weather and other conditions that can turn the revenue tide. Even with bad morale that will grind down the match revenues, property goes on strong and can be realized at almost any time. It is like having money in real estate.

So how do you make money fast? Pick a field that you want to develop and stick to it. Improve that one aspect in ongoing basis and only after two seasons, pick the fruits of the training and go on purchase promising rookies to replace the old timers.

If you want to carry on with more sustainable lineup, you must practise two separate core lineups. Choose your speciality and form the royal lineup for league and play with the same lineup in practises, except that this time you use weaker material on the spots that you have focused on training. This way, as you cash in with the better material, you already have reasonably good replacements to jump into the fire and you dont have to go from high to low.

Continue this two phase routine until you have enough money to change your training tactics. It may not sound like fast money, but it is faster than you just rely on match and sponsor revenue.

I am playing against termites those pesky little critters. Im not taking my Mahogany lounge chair to the field side this time, no sir. I am thinking to pay a visit to the Zoo and grab one of those Aardvarks, which happen to feast with termites. YES! I am the king of the tactics, Emperor of strategy.

Now, as I have won yet another game before it is even played... I grant myself a raise and furthermore Im gonna fly to the Bahamas baby. Or maybe to Canary Islands, hmm, better not all those drunk Finnish formula 1 drivers are party crashing overtime over there over over the top over over, lights out over - you know...

Ok, Geezers Im gonna taxi myself to the airport and fly.

How to count the value of goals? This is a prickly question and the answer lives in constant change. While playing in the mud, down in the league ranks, the quality of every team is under the radar, even the kind of high tech radar stuff that Pentagon and NASA have their fingers on. Down there it is normal to have games with high scoring. Therefore the value of a single goal is very low, as it is normal to have games with over 6 goals and team budgets crawl right beside the team – on the gutter.

What counts in this low league setting is not the attacking end, but defense. Both sides are going to score a lot with poor material so small investment to defense will garner remarkable advantage over other teams. As poor material is able to score against defense it is sensible to invest on goalkeeper and get the best bang for the buck. This will tip the scale and team has good chances to constantly take wins home. It doesn’t matter much if you win 6-1 or 2-1, as you will be able to do that constantly.

Climbing higher in the leagues, more and more teams have made that initial investment on defense, it is therefore harder for strikers to score and race for better attacking material starts. Why is this?

Good defense spells measly number of goals and the value of that definitive winning goal rockets. Team budgets are flying high and win means more money and it can all be counted for the goals that have been delivered. As a result, the value of a goal compared to earlier is stupendous.

In a single sentence, low supply and steady demand for that winning goal meet the increased budgets, making the price of a goal staggering compared to earlier.

It is because of this dynamics that the price of attacking material increases faster than defense material. Defense raises the standard of team but only good attacking material can guarantee the steady advancement of the team. Every goal, especially the winning goal has a price and can be attributed for the maker of the goal. Every saved goal is just speculative and measuring the success of defense is harder to monetize. This can be only done via comparing the for and the against goals. Therefore attacker has direct value for the team and defender has indirect value. Ultimately attacker price is high above defender price.

All of this can be driven from the simple concept of goal value.

Yep, that was one easy match for us. Total dominance, no difficulties at all. Maamies and Epelit played eachother and Epelit lost, clearly worse team out of the two.

Going back in history, our first game was against Epelit and those lucky maggots managed to beat us. Lucky maggots, indeed. We had our best lineup and normal tactics and they won quite clearly. However, the development of Epelit has been dead in the water and there is no chance in hell that they can win us now. Eh, ok, surely there is always the chance, this is football and not some linear mathematic computer game that sums up the numbers and the winner is the one with bigger sum.

Now, Maamies is whole different topic, they have better material in the team and obviously were good enough to level Epelit. On the other hand, we already went head on with each other once and The Troops came out on the top.

Too bad they are both slow in training, they have much more potential than my team ever had, but they have wasted it in rigid development plan.

How will it play out? We will slug it out with Maamies and after brutal match, we are the last troop standing, we have done it earlier, we can do it again, with our systematic training regimen.

Coming out of the match, guys will be tired but then we have couple of easy matches before we blaze with Epelit, more than enough time to rest and gather our strength. So, I claim that Troops will win every left in this season. We will end up on the top and grab the cash. I cant wait my bonus, which is SIZEABLE ah, aint it great being at helm of a winning team?

Better refrase that title so the team wont lynch me. Make shish kebab out of me or shashlik or borsch who the hell knows how to write those anyway. Ill be off to meet the telly. Geezer!

It happens even with best of managers. Leadership didn't fail us, I tell you that. The other guy was just better. Pretty much using the same tactics going head on and here is the result NIL - THREE. Its like I would go against Kasparov in chess. I know the rules, there is no cheating, but I would definately loose because he simply is better.

Never lay down after a lost game get on with the routine. Stick to what you know - Cough - get on with the show. Eh, that rhymed? Yep, as I told earlier, I fine tuned my second lineup and they were in the best possible form.

One thing you can do - buy off the referree, that is what my advesary obviously did. Poor calls fromt that sorry-ass clown. Anyhow it wouldn't have turned the tide... could have been 1 - 2 results or something like that.

So I lost this one - it doesn't matter anymore, because in the next match, we are going to rock and roll. Chew on that! Win, win, win, and win.

Tonight we are going up against someone, no I have not checked yet who they are. All I know that I am going to fine tune the team and get rid of the slackers. Match formation is ok that Ive double checked, but training formation is under utilized. So Ill be doing some changes on that department. I have to see about one guy... seems like he doesnt have a suitable place, so I just might drop kick the poor sod out of the team. I quarantee that nobody would buy such a dud.

Mäntsälä tried to focus on their defence, but it didn't help. My lads are just in too good shape right now. Note that on the second half we managed to push even harder or then team M just got tired and our Duracell loaded troops kept on going.

Good crowd, good money looks like Troops is going to grow out from our stadium. Hey, two yellow cards, what's up with that? Guys played like angels. Next week another muppet, but then it is against the leader. That'll be interesting.

I was wondering what happened to the books, I first suspected my secretary, maybe she had done Psycho and ran off with the money. But no, there she was making the coffee. Then it struck me! I have carelessly doubled my personnel, no wonder there are some idiotic moroons by the training field, I thought my team had turned into a gay icon, so many new faces were there on the side of the field. I am off to do what manager does. Hey, it is not managing, it is leading. Leadership!