Hello! I'm still alive, just in case anyone was worried :p
It's just been an even busier time for me IRL than I had expected, and so I've barely logged in this past season. In the end I had to go in to holiday mode to avoid exceeding the AI limit for my league. But the team has suffered, and we've had the worst season I've ever had in my FML career - finishing 17th out of 20th and being relegated. I'm pretty disappointed really, our team was never one of the best in the division but we should have done better than that. But with me not being around, and sometimes even forgetting to set the match plans up, I guess it was perhaps to be expected.
I'm not going to be around much next season either (exams are over but I have a holiday and then a house move coming up!), so I'm making plans accordingly. I've wondered about switching to the Open FA but there are currently no spaces available and I have this weird thing about not wanting different FA's on my club history - it's not very realistic is it?! So that's one to ponder and keep an eye on whether any spots open up.
Team wise, the squad will remain pretty much the same for one more year. A number of players are turning 32 this year so this will probably be the final season I can count on them. But that's fine - I have a few youth players waiting in the wings, and by the end of the season I should have a nice little warchest too (and that despite starting yet another stadium building project). So next off-season when I have some more time I should have the opportunity to completely re-shape my team and take things forward for the next phase.
In the meantime, just need to make sure I avoid a double relegation ;)
Thursday 15 July 2010
Friday 18 June 2010
Consolidation
Once again, apologies for the lack of updates. It's been a busy time for me IRL with both a big exam and a house move coming up, plus of course the small matter of a World Cup to watch...
Fortunately this has co-incided with a pretty slow time for the team in game. We crawled to 12th place in our season 3 top tier qualifier, which I think will be good enough for Championship football in Season 4, but because of the fiendishly complex league reputation system I won't know until after FA lockdown on Sunday. Whilst on the whole I like the shift to 3 season qualifying, I do think this now knowing where you stand is one area that could be improved. I may write a longer post on the qualifying system some other time.
Since the season finished the main news has been the sale of our young starlet striker Israel Santos. Picked up in the starting pool for a 55k AF, he went in transfer auction for just shy of £2.7m plus a 20% future profit clause. I actually thought he might fetch a bit more than that - perhaps the fact I wasn't online much to plug the auction didn't help.
But still the money will be helpful as I move in to the consolidation phase. Those of you who have followed this blog from the start may recall that when the new GW first began I intended to see how things went before deciding on a longer-term strategy, but this quickly went out of the window when I examined the economy more closely and saw the big financial benefits of short-term success that allowed you to buy good players early on and then ride the inflationary wave. At that stage I argued for 2-3 seasons of full-on going for victory to give the team a high rep, followed by some financial consolidation before the big wages kick in and the teams who are still on the edge of their overdrafts get in to some serious trouble.
Well, the time for that consolidation is now. Actually it has been for a little while - I haven't made a major signing for more than a season. But the sale of Santos takes it up a level. The funds are paying for about 80% of a new North stand (named the "Israel Santos Stand" in his honour) - a handy 2 tier Ospitalita II with lots of seats and corporate box slots filled. This will bring The Pearl Stadium's capacity up to close to 19,000 - suitable for a level 12 (i.e. lower mid-table Championship) team. In addition, I am up to three academies and preparing to open a fourth and fifth now that it looks like the system may not be changed for a little while. And the bank balance is around £1m with the projected showing another £1m profit over the next season despite stadium repayments.
So things are looking reasonable. The priority now will be to stay in the Championship whilst I complete this consolidation - and then look to press on in a few seasons time. This does however mean the next few seasons may be a bit dull. Thank goodness for real life ;)
Fortunately this has co-incided with a pretty slow time for the team in game. We crawled to 12th place in our season 3 top tier qualifier, which I think will be good enough for Championship football in Season 4, but because of the fiendishly complex league reputation system I won't know until after FA lockdown on Sunday. Whilst on the whole I like the shift to 3 season qualifying, I do think this now knowing where you stand is one area that could be improved. I may write a longer post on the qualifying system some other time.
Since the season finished the main news has been the sale of our young starlet striker Israel Santos. Picked up in the starting pool for a 55k AF, he went in transfer auction for just shy of £2.7m plus a 20% future profit clause. I actually thought he might fetch a bit more than that - perhaps the fact I wasn't online much to plug the auction didn't help.
But still the money will be helpful as I move in to the consolidation phase. Those of you who have followed this blog from the start may recall that when the new GW first began I intended to see how things went before deciding on a longer-term strategy, but this quickly went out of the window when I examined the economy more closely and saw the big financial benefits of short-term success that allowed you to buy good players early on and then ride the inflationary wave. At that stage I argued for 2-3 seasons of full-on going for victory to give the team a high rep, followed by some financial consolidation before the big wages kick in and the teams who are still on the edge of their overdrafts get in to some serious trouble.
Well, the time for that consolidation is now. Actually it has been for a little while - I haven't made a major signing for more than a season. But the sale of Santos takes it up a level. The funds are paying for about 80% of a new North stand (named the "Israel Santos Stand" in his honour) - a handy 2 tier Ospitalita II with lots of seats and corporate box slots filled. This will bring The Pearl Stadium's capacity up to close to 19,000 - suitable for a level 12 (i.e. lower mid-table Championship) team. In addition, I am up to three academies and preparing to open a fourth and fifth now that it looks like the system may not be changed for a little while. And the bank balance is around £1m with the projected showing another £1m profit over the next season despite stadium repayments.
So things are looking reasonable. The priority now will be to stay in the Championship whilst I complete this consolidation - and then look to press on in a few seasons time. This does however mean the next few seasons may be a bit dull. Thank goodness for real life ;)
Saturday 5 June 2010
All quiet on the Eastern Front
Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but there really isn't much to report! Out of both cups at the Last 16 stage, and in the league we're midtable once again. Played 20, Won 6, Drawn 8, Lost 6. At this rate we could be in for another tight finish to achieve our aim of 12th place but until we get a bit closer to the end it's impossible to say.
The only thing that has livened it up a bit was a wonderful psycho keeper moment from Sebastien Martens. Early in the second half of a tense 0-0 game their goalie took a goal-kick and despite all my back four being in position Martens decided to run halfway to the halfway line and handle the ball! He received a red card for his troubles and we went on to lose 1-0, so I was pretty annoyed but in a funny way it actually restored a bit of my faith in the Match Engine. The fact that despite a situation like this happens very very very rarely (this is the first time I've seen it in 15+ years of playing CM/FM) SI have seen fit to code it in does lead me to think they've thought of most things. The ME has many flaws and the intense environment of PvP play shows these up cruelly as many teams look to exploit them, but still it's the best that's out there, and still it has the power to surprise so I've resolved to cut it some slack for a bit. Let's see how long that lasts... :p
The only thing that has livened it up a bit was a wonderful psycho keeper moment from Sebastien Martens. Early in the second half of a tense 0-0 game their goalie took a goal-kick and despite all my back four being in position Martens decided to run halfway to the halfway line and handle the ball! He received a red card for his troubles and we went on to lose 1-0, so I was pretty annoyed but in a funny way it actually restored a bit of my faith in the Match Engine. The fact that despite a situation like this happens very very very rarely (this is the first time I've seen it in 15+ years of playing CM/FM) SI have seen fit to code it in does lead me to think they've thought of most things. The ME has many flaws and the intense environment of PvP play shows these up cruelly as many teams look to exploit them, but still it's the best that's out there, and still it has the power to surprise so I've resolved to cut it some slack for a bit. Let's see how long that lasts... :p
Saturday 29 May 2010
Managing Risk in FML
A very interesting thread on the forums in the past few days started by a guy called Ackter.
Ackter's dilemma - as it shall henceforth be known (!) - was the following... he had a youth whose wage demand had shot up from 1.2k to 6k, and wasn't sure whether or not to auto-extend at that rate or risk a wage auction. This is a dilemma that a lot of managers are going to face in the coming seasons! In the end - since the player wasn't yet really good enough for the first team football he had been getting - Ackter risked a wage auction with a max bid of 3k. But he was overbid by someone else who entered 7.5k, and so the player left with Ackter only receiving 16k compensation from the AQ fee. Ackter's argument is that he should have received more, perhaps with a rate set in a similar manner to the way the tribunal system works in real life. He mentioned the figure of 100k ish plus sell on clause perhaps being reasonable in this case. This prompted an interesting and passionate debate about whether the system should change, but I don't want to comment on that here...
Instead, I want to look at strategy within the current system and ask how could Ackter have managed his risk? Basically in the situation he was in he had three options:
1 - Hold his nose and pay the auto-extend rate.
2 - Let it go to wage auction as he did.
3 - Before the player's contract expired put him in a transfer auction.
I want to explore option 3 some more.
Now lots of people don't like using the transfer auction route because they say it guarantees they'll lose the player, whereas in a wage auction they still have a chance of keeping him. And of course it's true that just before the wage auction period can be the worst time to put a player in transfer auction, since prices come down a bit with other managers waiting for wage auctions.
But I want to suggest that a transfer auction can be a great way of testing the waters before a possible wage auction. Take Ackter's case. He knew that he was only willing to bid a maximum of 3k for this player in wage auction. So he would know that a bid of 3.1k would see him lose the player for just 16k compensation. Now someone making a bid of 3.1k for this player would end up paying the 16k AF plus a 31k signing on fee (3.1k x 10) for a total of 47k. Of course Ackter only sees 16k of this money.
So what if Ackter had put the player in a transfer auction with a starting bid of 50k, perhaps throwing in a 10% sell-on clause for good measure? If no-one bid, Ackter could be reasonably confident that no-one was willing to bid more than 3k for the player in wage auction, and could go on to risk it. If somebody bid over 50k then yes Ackter would lose the player - but if this happened he was going to lose the player in wage auction anyway! The difference now is that all of the 50k comes to him, rather than most of it flowing out of the system as a signing on fee. And of course he's got his sell on clause. And there's a chance that multiple managers will bid, and drive up the price, giving him more compensation.
Of course this isn't a risk free system. It assumes that all interested managers see the transfer auction, and furthermore that managers actually sit down and make a calculation about whether a player will be cheaper to sign in transfer or wage auction - not all FML managers are that rational!! But I think it's a reasonable way of managing your risk in these sorts of situations.
Ackter's dilemma - as it shall henceforth be known (!) - was the following... he had a youth whose wage demand had shot up from 1.2k to 6k, and wasn't sure whether or not to auto-extend at that rate or risk a wage auction. This is a dilemma that a lot of managers are going to face in the coming seasons! In the end - since the player wasn't yet really good enough for the first team football he had been getting - Ackter risked a wage auction with a max bid of 3k. But he was overbid by someone else who entered 7.5k, and so the player left with Ackter only receiving 16k compensation from the AQ fee. Ackter's argument is that he should have received more, perhaps with a rate set in a similar manner to the way the tribunal system works in real life. He mentioned the figure of 100k ish plus sell on clause perhaps being reasonable in this case. This prompted an interesting and passionate debate about whether the system should change, but I don't want to comment on that here...
Instead, I want to look at strategy within the current system and ask how could Ackter have managed his risk? Basically in the situation he was in he had three options:
1 - Hold his nose and pay the auto-extend rate.
2 - Let it go to wage auction as he did.
3 - Before the player's contract expired put him in a transfer auction.
I want to explore option 3 some more.
Now lots of people don't like using the transfer auction route because they say it guarantees they'll lose the player, whereas in a wage auction they still have a chance of keeping him. And of course it's true that just before the wage auction period can be the worst time to put a player in transfer auction, since prices come down a bit with other managers waiting for wage auctions.
But I want to suggest that a transfer auction can be a great way of testing the waters before a possible wage auction. Take Ackter's case. He knew that he was only willing to bid a maximum of 3k for this player in wage auction. So he would know that a bid of 3.1k would see him lose the player for just 16k compensation. Now someone making a bid of 3.1k for this player would end up paying the 16k AF plus a 31k signing on fee (3.1k x 10) for a total of 47k. Of course Ackter only sees 16k of this money.
So what if Ackter had put the player in a transfer auction with a starting bid of 50k, perhaps throwing in a 10% sell-on clause for good measure? If no-one bid, Ackter could be reasonably confident that no-one was willing to bid more than 3k for the player in wage auction, and could go on to risk it. If somebody bid over 50k then yes Ackter would lose the player - but if this happened he was going to lose the player in wage auction anyway! The difference now is that all of the 50k comes to him, rather than most of it flowing out of the system as a signing on fee. And of course he's got his sell on clause. And there's a chance that multiple managers will bid, and drive up the price, giving him more compensation.
Of course this isn't a risk free system. It assumes that all interested managers see the transfer auction, and furthermore that managers actually sit down and make a calculation about whether a player will be cheaper to sign in transfer or wage auction - not all FML managers are that rational!! But I think it's a reasonable way of managing your risk in these sorts of situations.
Season 3 - Let the building commence
So Season 3 is now underway following a quiet off-season at the Pearl
Stadium. Those who have followed this blog from the start will know
that my strategy was always to spend in the first two seasons in
pursuit of a relatively high league position and then to start the
investment processes designed to secure long term stability and
success and leave me with a good amount of cash just as other teams
run in to financial problems with escalating wages etc.
Stadium. Those who have followed this blog from the start will know
that my strategy was always to spend in the first two seasons in
pursuit of a relatively high league position and then to start the
investment processes designed to secure long term stability and
success and leave me with a good amount of cash just as other teams
run in to financial problems with escalating wages etc.
And so that's what I'm doing! The off-season saw 5 players leave and 3
come in. Of the 3 who arrived only one (a Saudi Arabian LB nabbed in a
wage auction) will start - the other two are backup strikers; a
position in which I have two high quality players but previously had
little cover. I hope this squad should now be pretty much set for 2
seasons - the only real question mark being whether I get an offer I
can't refuse for Israel Santos, my 20y/o star of a Spanish striker
(think the next Torres!).
In the meantime the cash I'm not spending on transfer fees and wages
is going on building work. A new stand with nice seats and corp boxes
behind one goal and extra blocks of cheap seats in one of my other
stands are my first round of stadium work (realistically it's going to
be 5 seasons before I get to redeveloping the 4th stand so this seems
like a worthwhile investment). By the time this is finished the
stadium will be big enough for a Level 10 team (I'm currently L8).
Following the broadly encouraging (or at least not as dispiriting as I
feared!) findings of my youth academy research (see previous post) I
have also started work on 2 new small youth academies in countries
that look like reasonable investments.
Given the lack of on-pitch investment I'm trying not to set my league
expectations too high. I think the Premiership may be a bit tough but
I'm hoping that Championship level football next season is a
reasonable aim. Hard to know what would give me enough rep for that,
but I'd certainly be optimistic that top 10 (of 18) in this year's
qualifying league will do the trick. So far one win and two defeats,
but it's still early days.
Wednesday 26 May 2010
Academies - Worth it after all?
In amongst all the academies fuss, I think I have found some evidence that academies may be worth it after all.
I've done some calculations based on the situation in Voller. I looked at the top 50 countries in the FIFA/Coca Cola world rankings and for each saw how many players there were in the database, and how many of these had acquisition fees of over 100k. I then looked at the number of academies in each country and their star ratings and worked out whether that country was over or under saturated. Using this I was able to work out how much it would cost in terms of academy running fees per "normal" PA player produced (i.e. not 1-1.5* filler players produced to make up the numbers) and how much for a player who would eventually grow to develop a 100k+ AQ fee in today's money. And the results were very interesting.
Firstly, in the case of "normal" PA players. In the ideal completely unsaturated country, it would cost you an average of £25,200 in running costs to produce each one of these players. That's because if you have a 1* academy you get 1 such player every 7 days (4 a season), paying £3600 a day, whereas if you have a 4.5* academy you get 1 such player every 2 days (14 a season), and you're paying £12600 per day. Either way the cost per player is the same (it's just the time that varies).
No country from the FIFA top 50 gave you this ideal outcome, however the top few came close.
Best Country: £27,182
2nd: £31,675
3rd: £35,161
4th: £40,166
5th: £45,850
Now the MV for a standard PA youth at age 16-17 is currently around 100k. So by that measure, you're on to a winner if you have a YA in one of these countries. You are producing players for less than half the cost that you can sell them on for (this doesn't include the fixed costs of building your academy of course, but we can't take that in to account here because the cost involved depends on how big the academy is. Consequently I prefer to look at academy building cost as really being about time - how quickly you want players - not as purely a financial investment).
Next, let's look at the case of those quality youths who will go on to have an AQ fee in excess of 100k. (I reckon this is roughly a 4* rep in old money). Obviously the vast majority of even normal PA players do not fall in to this category, so the figures involved are much higher. Here are the top 5 in terms of cheapest average amount of running costs per high quality player produced:
Best Country: £987,696
2nd: £1,134,831
3rd: £1,154,273
4th: £1,193,756
5th: £1,382,022
So how does this compare? Well, very few players come through to 100k+ AF's in their first season or two, and those who do are generally the serious wonderkids so it wouldn't be fair to look at those. Instead let's consider what happens if you take these players through their youth career up to 21/22. The average 21/22 y/o 100k+ AF player currently has a MV of around £1.1m. So it looks like you're just about breaking even here IF (and it's a big if!) you can keep their wages down during their youth career. In the case of the best placed country I think you'd need to keep wages to about £800/day throughout their youth career to break even. Difficult but not impossible.
Of course, all these are averages, and at the end of the day the system is still a lottery - you might do better than this and you might do worse - as I have! In addition, I have only listed the best countries above - the worst nations on my scale cost £249k per normal PA player and £18.7m per high quality player respectively! But to my mind the figures do indicate that the academy market is actually much closer to equilibrium than many might think.
I've done some calculations based on the situation in Voller. I looked at the top 50 countries in the FIFA/Coca Cola world rankings and for each saw how many players there were in the database, and how many of these had acquisition fees of over 100k. I then looked at the number of academies in each country and their star ratings and worked out whether that country was over or under saturated. Using this I was able to work out how much it would cost in terms of academy running fees per "normal" PA player produced (i.e. not 1-1.5* filler players produced to make up the numbers) and how much for a player who would eventually grow to develop a 100k+ AQ fee in today's money. And the results were very interesting.
Firstly, in the case of "normal" PA players. In the ideal completely unsaturated country, it would cost you an average of £25,200 in running costs to produce each one of these players. That's because if you have a 1* academy you get 1 such player every 7 days (4 a season), paying £3600 a day, whereas if you have a 4.5* academy you get 1 such player every 2 days (14 a season), and you're paying £12600 per day. Either way the cost per player is the same (it's just the time that varies).
No country from the FIFA top 50 gave you this ideal outcome, however the top few came close.
Best Country: £27,182
2nd: £31,675
3rd: £35,161
4th: £40,166
5th: £45,850
Now the MV for a standard PA youth at age 16-17 is currently around 100k. So by that measure, you're on to a winner if you have a YA in one of these countries. You are producing players for less than half the cost that you can sell them on for (this doesn't include the fixed costs of building your academy of course, but we can't take that in to account here because the cost involved depends on how big the academy is. Consequently I prefer to look at academy building cost as really being about time - how quickly you want players - not as purely a financial investment).
Next, let's look at the case of those quality youths who will go on to have an AQ fee in excess of 100k. (I reckon this is roughly a 4* rep in old money). Obviously the vast majority of even normal PA players do not fall in to this category, so the figures involved are much higher. Here are the top 5 in terms of cheapest average amount of running costs per high quality player produced:
Best Country: £987,696
2nd: £1,134,831
3rd: £1,154,273
4th: £1,193,756
5th: £1,382,022
So how does this compare? Well, very few players come through to 100k+ AF's in their first season or two, and those who do are generally the serious wonderkids so it wouldn't be fair to look at those. Instead let's consider what happens if you take these players through their youth career up to 21/22. The average 21/22 y/o 100k+ AF player currently has a MV of around £1.1m. So it looks like you're just about breaking even here IF (and it's a big if!) you can keep their wages down during their youth career. In the case of the best placed country I think you'd need to keep wages to about £800/day throughout their youth career to break even. Difficult but not impossible.
Of course, all these are averages, and at the end of the day the system is still a lottery - you might do better than this and you might do worse - as I have! In addition, I have only listed the best countries above - the worst nations on my scale cost £249k per normal PA player and £18.7m per high quality player respectively! But to my mind the figures do indicate that the academy market is actually much closer to equilibrium than many might think.
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