Starting Skills - How to keep the options open

In my last post I argued that in the new look FML it might be a bit dangerous to have too fixed a starting strategy, and that flexibility would be the key to long-term success. However, I noted that there would be a difficulties in taking a flexible approach for those of us who have bonus skill points to spend - how do we spend those usefully whilst retaining the ability to flex our strategy later on? In this post, I'll look at the different skill areas, and talk about which I'm considering specialising in to gain the maximum benefit for my chosen non-strategy strategy!

Everyone will want physio skills to a certain level, but I think to specialise in them is only really worthwhile if you're going to be a serious contender at the top of the pile. With injuries only going sticky in "major" games, youths are pretty much unaffected, and for a mid-table team you could bring in reserves of a similar quality to your first team reasonably cheaply, and use squad rotation when injuries occur rather than trying to avoid them in the first place. So a physio specialisation is only really a big bonus to a small group of the top teams. Consequently, as I'm not going all out to be top of the pile early doors, I won't be specialising here.

Scouting skills I see as being the reverse, only really helpful to a youth manager - and at that only really helpful to one who intends to sign youths from the free agent list rather than youth academies. JP will be much less powerful in general, and if you're using academies if needs be you can assess the players manually by watching their attribute progression and watching them play in youth matches. Some JP will still be handy, but you can get 3* easily now, and over time even without specialising it should be possible to get 4* - that will do me. So I won't be specialising here although I may get some scouting learning skills to enable me to develop this area quicker in future.

That leaves three areas and I'm seriously torn between them.

Coaching will always come in handy. If you've got a youth team it'll help the youngsters develop more (or does it just help them develop quicker - I've never really got how it works, leave me a comment if you know!), if you've got a team of veteran world beaters it'll help keep their attributes higher for longer. There's also a lot of different coaching skills so you get good value for your specialisation. But the benefits are quite intangible, and I like my skills to produce something I can see. Nonetheless, definitely one to seriously consider.

An Infrastructure specialisation is in many ways the ultimate hedge - one strand of it can be used for building a stadium if you're a successful team with a rapidly rising rep, another strand can be used for building youth academies if you're not so successful and need to go the youth route. Either way it's useful, and in very tangible ways - you can't build more than 1 YA without Academy Operation 5 (basically impossible to get unless you specialise), and 25% off stadium building costs is a major boost for building all those exclusif's. Whether you're succesful early on or not you'll get real benefits from an infrastructure specialism so I'm sorely tempted by this.

Finally, and perhaps most complex of all, come finance/management skills. Finance itself is not that amazing, even at 5* it only gives you a slight boost on your interest rate which is no big deal - indeed in an inflating GW the value of players will still rise faster than the value of cash, so it's not much use at all. But it's what it opens up that is interesting. Historically, people have got excited about the commercial skillset, and with good reason - it has provided big boosts that have sustained many a top team. But with the way finances work post-1.5 I don't believe it's a big boost any more. Commercial 5 costs you 3.16 million skill points on top of those needed to get you Finance 5, for a 25% boost in your general income. But general income is now only around 15% of your club's income - for the best sides that means around 45k a day, so the commercial 5 boost will be around 11k. For a reasonably good side the boost is likely to be around 8k a day. Handy but nothing to write home about especially given the cost.

No, the big prize behind the finance door now is Contract Negotiation 5, which can secure you a whopping 25% off what your players demand if you choose to auto-renew their contracts, as well as the same reduction when signing players in transfer auctions or private deals. Given that 1.5 has raised the wage demands of top players at top clubs this will represent a serious saving (just think, what would be a 250k/day wage bill, will be less than 190k/day with CN5!), and may well mean that if you're a high-flying side you are able to auto-renew players you would otherwise have had to let go to wage auctions. But there are big benefits for someone building up a team from youth as well. If your senior squad isn't doing that well, your rep won't be very high so money will be tight. But as any superstar youths you may be fortunate enough to develop start to break in to the first team and perform well, their wage demands will begin to skyrocket. Contract Negotiation 5 could be the difference between being able to keep them (at least for long enough to sell them on for a huge fee) or losing them for AF.

So finance, coaching and infrastructure all look like good specialisation options at this stage for the manager with skill points to burn but who wants options open later on. I still haven't decided my final two though - I'd be interested to hear your views in the comments...