All Youth Teambuilding

Probably half the managers in the game seem to be building all youth sides but a lot of projects aren't successful because managers fail to account for the 2 way average age rule and many of them lack suitable mentor players.

Starting the project

OK so you've cleared out your old players, or the ones you don't want, and it's time to start with a blank canvas. First off you need a strategy - how do you see your team developing.

It is at this stage you need to consider the formation(s) you plan on using in the future and build a team around that structure. You also need to consider what type of team you are going with - you might want  all players of the same age to peak at the same time, or you might want to build a conveyor. The team you want to build will dictate the players you want to buy.

Budget and Choose your players carefully

You have a budget - but this is a long term project (10-15 seasons or more) so you will need cash down the line to pay for training, buy new mentor players, maybe stopgaps. To build a successful side you very likely need 20m+ spare cash after you've bought your initial team. If you only have 30m then you need to budget maybe 10m for players, or consider spending a season generating some cash. More money = better players but a very good side can be built from 18/4 path players (circa 500k each) if done well.

You also need to put in careful consideration to the players you are buying at this time because they will be with you for the long haul. Some managers prefer SQ-laden players on a lower skill path to higher skilled vanilla players. Usually the goalkeeper and a freekicker are seen as the most important players so extra will usually be spent on these.

Evaluate all potential players. On the youth players teamwork isn't such a big deal because they will all converge over time. What you will need to be aware of is divas. Divas converge much more slowly so anything less than "good" teamwork isn't good enough. Teamwork on mentor players is more important so ideally look at good or better teamwork. I discuss the types of mentor players you need to be looking for in an earlier post. Ideally you need your team average age to be 24+.

Building a flat team structure

A flat team structure, where all players are approx the same age, will be the strongest in the long term but it will have a short window where the team is at it's maximum strength before players start to age, the 2 way average age rule affects your performance and then players start to retire. For this type of team you need to buy all your final team players right at the start plus mentor players. This could mean having 6 youth midfielders and 2 mentors. This is a lot of players to give experience to and this team benefits especially from holding some cash back to maybe buy an extra player when the team matures. Having a defender and midfielder with allround SQ can really help later on.

Building a conveyor

I briefly discussed building a conveyor team in an earlier post. With a conveyor you need to stagger the ages between players. As players get older and more skilled they need more games. Building a flat team suffers in this respect in that once everyone gets over about 22 it's very hard to get DV=AF on all the players. With a conveyor you can play more games with the youngsters to get better DV in the early years.

When starting a conveyor it is probably best not to buy all your youngsters in one go. What you can do is buy maybe 2 generations at one time. For example you may buy 2x 20/6 players and 2x 17/4 (or whatever path and ages you are working on  Only having 4 youngsters means they can get more match experience and DV in the earlier seasons which will be beneficial. After 3-4 seasons you can sell one of the developed 20/6s for a profit and buy maybe 1 more 17/4. Again another 3-4 seasons in you add an extra youngster.

Admittedly the first generation might be weaker  but it gets you competitive 3-4 seasons sooner and this approach allows a few seasons of pushing the DV a little harder and also a few investment players along the way to top up the bank balance.

Playing matches

When building a youth side there are 2 rules I always stick to. Firstly never let promotion/relegation get in the way of developing your players. Your team will achieve the success it deserves in time as long as you don't neglect your players.

The second rule is always play to be competitive. Many managers have had brilliant teams that got to the top but they were tactically naive. Play every game like it's important, make sure you are constantly aware of tactical issues. This doesn't necessarily mean paying for scout reports or big win bonuses (50k is always good) in the early days but look at the opposing team, play to get the best result possible. Losing every game badly will make it harder and more expensive to maintain form while gaining promotion will usually give a higher level of opposition helping your players gain DV faster.

Developing Players

To develop players to their best you need high DV and in part that is based on good form. Aim to keep your players form over 17 all the time, and look for 17 DV as a minimum for anybody under 23. Sometimes this means training players with green  form arrows who may look fine - more form is always better but it costs. Never ever be in the position of having to choose which player gets the training because you are short on funds.

Use substitutes. This will let the 2 players share more DV overall per game but also players get a heart after 13 games and this helps them perform better and therefore maintain form better. Even substituting a player on 90 minutes will count as a game for this purpose.

The value of hidden SQs

The XpertEleven rules cover special qualities here, but only in a superficial way. in this post I'm going to cover the hidden SQs in more detail.

 

Fragile is often seen as one of the worst SQs, but this is not the case. The fragile SQ increases the risk and duration of injuries to the specific player, but it does not increase the chance for a team to get an injury as a whole. It acts more like a magnet for increasing the chance of injury to the player with the SQ. From that perspective it reduces the chance of injury to other players in the team so getting 2-3 of your lesser players with this SQ will help protect those who don't have it. 

Cheat is often a misunderstood SQ. There is a slight negative in that these players will pick up a few extra cards than the normal player. The upsides are many. You will generally play the cheat option in X11 around 50% of the time and when that happens cheating players will get a small advantage. This is especially helpful if you have a player with cheat as your playmaker or a a forward. 

In many people's opinion tough is the worst SQ. Tough is about aggressive play and in no way the opposite to fragile. The upside is a slight bonus to performance when playing bruise. The downsides are a performance reduction when playing careful plus a significant increase to bookings. I find this to be a special nightmare SQ for keepers when playing careful.

On the whole managers probably play careful more often than bruise, but with the recent reduction in long term injuries bruise might start to figure more often and this SQ could become less of a problem.

Diva can be a great SQ. To get the best out of a diva they will need their squad number - but you gain a slight performance boost if you do this. Certainly if you have good teamwork on divas you will be pleased with their match ratings. 

Teamwork was changed to be more significant a year or two back and now a diva needs to have good or excellent teamwork at a minimum. As their teamwork doesn't change much over time then this can be a kind of anchor helping other players converge. 

Hart trainer is undoubtedly the king of SQs. There is plenty known and written about this SQ already. it helps players to maintain form, arguably they need less training sessions. it usually adds significantly to the cost of players, especially youths. over a player's career it's not unusual for a hard trainer to gain 1-2 skillbars more than players without this SQ.

Probably the biggest benefit of a hard trainer is the ability to recover form after a change report. The benefit of this SQ does depend on the league and how many games are being played and it is certainly more useful in leagues with 2 or 3 games a week than 1. The removal of overtraining has probably taken a little shine off this SQ.

Greedy is a highly prized and quite rare SQ. The general idea is players perform better when larger win bonuses are offered. It's a simple to understand SQ but rarely seems to produce the performance boost one might expect. Within the context of developing teams and those not challenging for big trophies this is very much an overrated SQ.

Checking the exact player skill

When yo have a player you are considering selling it's useful to be able to check the exact skill. If the player is high in his band it might be worth holding on for an extra season and trying for a double jump or even selling a player that is an obvious undereval.

You will need to be a VIP but using the Change report Calculator you can do that. Depending on the number of CRs and how much a player has increased by you can get more or less accuracy on the player's actual skill.

Player Skill Rounding

Player skill levels in X11 are rounded to the nearest even number so the skill level is not always obvious. The following examples show how this works:

3.5-4.5     4 skill
4.6-5.4     5 skill
5.5-6.5     6 skill
6.6-7.4     7 skill

Even skill levels cover a range of 1.1 skill points whereas odd skill levels only cover a range of 0.9 skill bars. For this reason it is easier to double jump players on even skill levels but easier to gain a single bar  at odd skill levels.

December 2013 Updates

There were a few key updates at the start of december 2013. Key ones are:

• Changed to random fixture lists when creating new seasons 
• New graphs on the club history page
• Changed so that you can transfer list up to 5 players instead of 3
• Now showing special qualities of an evaluated player in the transfer evaluation list

Changing to random fixtures will happen with the start of the next season so it remains to be seen how well this works.

Being able to list upto 5 players instead of 3 should make the start of the season easier and  compliments the change to 23-man squads in helping farming.

Investment Players

Sometimes you need extra cash and one way of achieving this is to invest in players with a plan to selling them down the line. Brilliant plan but many managers fail to execute it well.

When buying players to sell it is of utmost importance to buy the right players. You need to periodically investigate buying and selling prices, see how much profit you can make per season and pick the best options. 

One thing that never works well is doing the same as everyone else. So many people blindly buy 17/4s and 3 seasons later sell players who have made little more than the training costs. Find you're own niche and equally importantly if it stops working see if you can see why and find another one.

One of the best ways to do this is to look at players, assume you can add 1 bar/season to them and look what they will be in 2-3 seasons. Here are some examples prices in private leagues

17/4 vanilla defender is valued around 900k

17/4 defender (1 SQ) is valued around 2.7m

3 seasons later (sell prices are adjusted down to account for agent fees)

20/7 vanilla defender is valued around 3.9m

20/7 defender (1 SQ) is valued around 4.7m

In most leagues you can count in 1m/season for training fees so a 17/4 vanilla defender will break even over 3 seasons and one with a SQ will lose you money. People blindly buy them, train them and sell them later - and moan they aren't getting rich. They then repeat the cycle.

Of course you can get a double jump. They do happen but it's my experience they aren't as common as people like to think, and sometimes you get players who miss a bar or develop badly. The above 2 players would probably have gained 4m extra if they doubled - which is about the minimum profit I would want.

So how about other options. Well nobody buys 20/6 vanillas to develop do they.

20/6 vanilla defender is valued around 1.1m

23/9 vanilla defender is valued around 5.5m

4.4m/3 seasons. More work maybe but better profit than the standard cash cow 17/4 and a DJ provides an extra bonus.

I'm not going to recommend anything specific, I don't think there's any point. Things change all the time and vary from market to market. The point is look at different options to what everyone else is doing, do your own research and make some cash.

Targetting players to DJ as a niche.

In some teams it's possible to buy players with the specific intention of getting 1 or 2 double jumps as a niche way to develop for cash. To do this you probably need less youths per team, maybe start with 1 in each area. Players that are good for this are 16/2, 16/3 and 17/3 but all probably require good SQs - maybe 16/4 or 17/4s too. Again check the exit price to see what will work. With these players you can aim for maybe 15/16 AF but play so many games each season that 18 DV is your minimum target each season, preferably 19. That might mean playing 2/3 of the games each season but big money can be made this way.

Hidden SQs as a niche

You can have success selling less desirable players but with good hidden SQs. Finding a 18/4 with 2-3 ok visible SQs and HT or greedy for a reasonable price is not a massive problem. Picking up these players for under 1m then selling them 2-3 seasons later for the maximum asking price (1.5x valuation) can work well. You might need to list them several times but eventually the hidden SQs get spotted and you get your price. 

Effect of SQs

Everybody knows SQs add value. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they add profit. It's not hard to get a 20/7 defender with quick for example, no matter how special the seller thinks that is. You can't really charge much over the asking price for these players. What does work well is combinations of SQs. 

A 20/6 defender with heading and quick might be valued less than the 20/7 quick defender, but if you put him on the list for the maximum asking price you are likely to get it. People love SQ combinations and will often pay very highly for them, even on players significantly under skilled.

When/how to sell

In private leages there are usually 2 good times to sell. When the valuetion reaches around 5m you can list the players for a bit more depending on what you feel they might fetch. Playable players in the 5-8m range are very popular, especially with managers who don't have much luck training their own. 

The other very good time to sell is when players become very special, such as maybe 16/5 path. Players like 21/10 will always fetch a fair valuation, but are hard to get over-valuation for. 

ME, DV & Change Reports

See my earlier post if you need to know the nitty gritty of how Development Value works.

In XpertEleven one of the most important times is the change report. It's the culmination of a season's effort training and developing your side but all the important work happens throughout the season.

ME - Match Experience

Players gain match experience from playing in more games. There are certain factors that affect how much ME a player gains throughout a game:

• Player age/skill
• Minutes played
• Mentor players in the player's team area
• The opponent's opposing area's team strength
• Average age of the team as a whole and that area.

Younger players and those with less skill earn more ME for the time they play. Older players and especially the highest skilled in a team section earn less ME.

If there are players of higher skill in a team area then a player will develop better. When developing youths it is advisable to have a player 3+ skill bars better in that team section. 

The opponents team strength affects your ME gained from a game. it is therefore better for development to be playing in as tough a division as possible. In this respect your defence gains from the strength of the opposing attack and vice-versa.

ME related to Minutes Played

X = number of minutes played
ME = Match experience

ME = 100%*(((x/90)^(2/3)))
Please note that this is only applied on players that played less than 90 minutes.
Examples:

1 minute = 5% of a ME for a full game
5 minutes = 15% of a ME for a full game
10 minutes = 23% of a ME for a full game

20 minutes = 37% of a ME for a full game

30 minutes = 48% of a ME for a full game
45 minutes = 63% of a ME for a full game 

60 minutes = 76% of a ME for a full game
70 minutes = 85% of a ME for a full game

80 minutes = 92% of a ME for a full game
85 minutes = 96% of a ME for a full game 

90 minutes = 100% of a ME for a full game 

From the table you can see that substituting a player at 45 minutes in a normal game gives a total of 126% ME split between 2 players. Even substituting a player as late as 70 minutes in gives a combined 121% ME so this is a great way to give more ME to players and gain better CRs.

Average Age affecting ME

ME gained by a player is affected by the team's average age (AA) as a whole but particularly the team section. This also affects that team part's performance and is known as the 2-way Average Age rule. it is detailed fully in the Xpert Daily

http://xperteleven.com/xpertdaily.aspx?DartID=3180&S=3&lang=EN

Put simply the  average age of your lineup needs to ideally be between 25-29 or you will suffer a loss of ME/performance:

Average age / Assimilation of match experience
20 / 80%
25 / 99%
29 / 99%
33 / 80%

The effect of DV on the CR

The increase/decrease at the time of the CR is based on the player's age, the DV and a random factor. Above 10 DV a player will almost always increase in skill and below 10 they will always decrease.

The amount of skill increase for a whole bar is shown below;

Age                 DV for +1 skill increase

16-20              16

21-22              17

23-25              18

26-28              19

In addition a player who has over 10 DV gains a random skill increase of 0-0.2

The DV increase scale is linear so for 16-20yo players a DV of 19 will result in 1.5 bar increase plus any random factor. 

Note that there can be rounding issues so 16 DV could actually be 15.6 and could cause a young player not to gain a visible increase. Player skill is held to 1dp so that player will be very high in his skillband and a prime candidate for a double jump the following season.

Building a side from scratch

In XpertEleven one of the hardest things to do is start a brand new team from scratch. You typically get an absolute bunch of rubbish. There are certain important things to do whne taking over a brand new side:

• Money management/generation is extremely important
• Get rid of all the dross
• Sell some better players to raise funds
• Buy a few investment players
• Buy mentor players

Money Generation

Basic cash generation in X11 is quite straightforward. Collect your 1m sponsorship money each week and writing a press release of 250+ characters each week will give you an extra 200k on Tuesdays.

Money management

When you have very little money and very few useful assets it is very key to not squander funds.

50k win bonuses help form. Any more is more than you can afford.
Tactics reports cost 35k each - probably give those a miss for a while
Your 1.2m/week income can probably enable you to train 10 players effectively. To err on the side of caution maybe only have 6 the first season who are being developed/trained.

Get rid of the dross

Some players contribute nothing to the team. They have no value. Training them well for 2-3 seasons will still see them with no value. They don't positively age the team.

One of the first things to do with any new team is identify these players. Any player under 27 needs assessing. If they have value it is almost certainly worth transfer listing them to raise seed capital for new players. Anybody over 21 who has no <7 skill and <100k value needs sacking as soon as possible.

Buy investment players

Teams are built from quality youngsters and at the start you can't afford quality. Your initial plans should be to buy players who can be sold in 2-3 season to generate more income. Realistically you want maybe 6 of these kinds of players so that you can afford to train them effectively and get a good CR.

As a simple rule you will want 17/4 vanilla players or 18/4 players with 1+ outfield SQ. By outfield SQ I mean a SQ that adds to the player's valuation so quick/heading/GI/SP/FK. The other visible SQs are all great but won't help the resale value and without an outfield SQ an 18/4 path player will be hard to sell for profit. As you are poor right now it might even be best to avoid evaluations and probably look at <250k per player.

19/5 players with a SQ can be good investments too and I wouldn't worry too much about teamwork at this stage.

Ideally you want to train these youngsters and aim for 15+ AF and 16+ DV on them each season - more if possible.

Buy mentor players

Teams don't perform effectively or get maximum possible ME/DV from each game unless their average age is between 25-29. There is a bit of leeway on that before it becomes a problem but you ideally want each part of a team to be >23.5 AA.

Players will also benefit if there is an older, more skillful, player in their team part. Generally you want to look for players who are 4-5 bars better than your youths and old enough to make the AA viable. typically you should be aiming for around 6 mentor players - a keeper, 2 defenders, 2 mids and a forward.

Working through the maths you are probably looking for 30/9 type players which should be pretty cheaply available (significantly under 500k). Get what you can with your budget.

Running the team

Field a mix of the mentor and youth players to keep your average age viable. I rarely/never train my mentor players as I don't care if they develop and if their skill drops significantly I buy a new player the next season.

You will probably have placeholder players you are unable to sack from the team - no problem just don't waste match experience or training money on them.

After 1 season you may be in a position to afford to buy 2-3 more youngsters and then you can do some effective substitutions to gain extra ME across the team.

After 2-3 seasons some of your players will start to have accrued value and can be sold to fund a 2nd generation of youngsters. This intermediate level will be covered in another post.

Advanced Tactics - Aggression

The Aggression setting is one of the most important setting son the tactics page and can be very significant in deciding the outcome of a match.

There are three aggression settings - in ascending order

• Careful
• Normal
• Bruise

The more aggressive you play the stronger your players perform, challenging harder for each ball. It is generally accepted to be around 10% bonus for each level of aggression. This will generally give more ball possession which can lead to more chances.

Equally more aggressive play can bring risk of bookings, even red cards, and conceding free kicks and penalties.

Playing aggressively affects the chance of players getting injured. The risk is a factor of both teams aggression, so if one team plays careful and the other bruise then the chance is less than if both played bruise but more than if both played careful. The risk of injury is not dependent on which team plays more or less aggressively.

Playing more aggressively tires players out more - especially towards the end of halves. The stamina SQ mitigates this problem to an extent.

Players with the tough SQ will gain a bonus to their performance when playing bruise, but perform below par when playing careful.

Playing to the referees

The textbook way to play aggression is bruise for H1-3 referees, normal for H4-6 refs and careful for H7-9 refs. Playing like this is fine but can often give an advantage to a savvy opponent and so you may wish to play more or less aggressively.

Reasons to play less aggressively

There are a number of reasons to play more carefully. If you wish to avoid injury above competitive advantage then play more carefully.

If the opponent has a very skilled freekicker in comparison to your goal keeper then you may want to reduce your aggression slightly to avoid conceding free kicks. This is more significant if the referee is good for cheating (has a low skill rating).

When playing less aggressively than normal for the referee it is often a good idea to reduce your attacking style a notch.

Playing careful will help your manager ranking - as long as you still get a good result.

Reasons to play more aggressively

There are also good cases for playing more aggressively. If you feel you really need the competitive advantage and the opposition doesn't have a good freekick taker compared to your keeper then playing overly aggressively can offer a big advantage. X11 tends to allocate freekicks to teams who have more possession so while playing aggressively on a whistle friendly referee might be counter intuitive these freekicks won't be near your goal if the opposition doesn't have the strength to attak you effectively.

Playing overly aggressively on a consistent basis can be problematic as yellow cards and increased injuries do tend to stack up and can cause problems.

If you need to know more about XpertEleven Referees see my previous post on the subject.

XpertEleven Updates October 2013

October was a very busy month for changes and the following are some of the bigger changes this last month.

• Added timezone support; you can now choose your local timezone
• Changed transfer deadlines to not only end at midnight
• You can now sack players all the way down to 15 instead of 18 players.
• Added clean sheets to goalkeeper player page
• Added "Kudos" to show appreciation for a press release
• Added total played minutes in league this season on player sheet

Timezones

Timezone support is useful to many people but can be confusing.

Adjusting your timezone to GMT for example sees most events being shown as happening before they will. For example a player due to end training on 4th November will say training ends on 3rd November. According to the system the 4th starts at midnight X11 time, which will be 23.00 GMT on the 3rd. The training will actually finish at 03.00 on 4th.

Players recovering from injuries work int he same way.

Transfer Deadlines

Historically all transfers happened at midnight X11 time which was OK for some countries but disadvantaged others due to sniping. Transfers are now completed at the next half hour after the time the players - how does this change things?

One of the affects of the new change seems to be people forgetting to bid, so bidding early seems to be coming more to the fore and this is indeed reducing the amount of sniping. When listing players it pays to consider who might be online when the player is sold - so times in the middle of the night in Western Europe don't seem too clever.

DV Explained

The old ME System

First an explanation of how the old ME (Match Experience) system used to work.

You had ME and AF (Average Form). You gained an amount of ME each match up to 100%, ME% x AF was what your CR was based on.

New DV system

The ME value is hidden and also is no longer capped at 100%

If you have  <100% ME then DV = ME% x AF. This is pretty much same as before. For example AF=15, DV=11. While DV<AF it is a lot easier to gain DV for each game played.

Reaching a point where DV=AF (termed "100% DV" by some people) changes things significantly.
After "100%" you get very much diminishing returns and the amount of DV you get above AF is based on the difference between AF and 20 - the lower the AF the more benefit for extra games.

EG if 4 games gives you DV=AF then what happens if you play 7 games?

If you have 16 AF you will likely have 17 DV (1 over AF)
If you have 12 AF then you may have 14 DV (2 over AF)

In each instance you might get 25% of (20-AF) added to your DV.

AF is the key to good DV but you can still get an OK CR if you play a lot of of games. There are cases where players ended the season with poor AF, maybe low teens, but still had DV of around 16+.

If you have about 17 AF then it's really hard to get DV much higher - and as each game runs the risk of injury the motivation moves more in the direction of playing other players.

It is a bit different for players bought mid season.

Pre-emptive form training

Pre-emptive training is using the available data to figure out whether a player's form is likely to drop after the next match, and initiating training ahead of that so as to reduce the form drop. The risk in pre-emptive training used to be the risk of overtrains, and the upside was training a player after just 1 red arrow and preventing a large form drop.

In Oct 2013 Xpert11 player overtraining was removed which removed takes away part of the advantage of preemptive training, but hass created something of a culture of "if in doubt... train" which will be successful enough - but very expensive.

Players have a form trend, the change since the last form notation, and this is represented by a green, black or red arrow. In a simplistic world you would train on a red arrow and only on black/green if your form is low. The problem is this green arrow and change in form since the last notation (as shown on the VIP graph) is made from a combination of factors and isn't perfect for judging when to train.

Players also have the form tendency. This is a hidden stat and is how the form is naturally changing and is what we want to base training decisions on. Problem is we can't see it. The tendency is combined with other factors to create the new form value, but if the tendency is negative then it can get more negative after the next game and drop very sharply.

After a match there are several factors that are added to the tendency to calculate the current form:

Player performance in the match

If a player performed over his skill level during the match his form will be adjusted upwards accordingly. if he underperforms his skill level then his form will be adjusted down.

Team part performance during the match

If the team part performs well then there is a positive form adjustment to the player and if the part performed badly then there is a negative adjustment. Team parts have the following roles:

Goalkeeper - stop goals being scored. Typically conceding around 1 goal in 3 chances seems to be the baseline so better/worse than this will accect form accordingly.

Defence - their role is to limit chances. From personal experience I would say 4-5 chances is the benchmark so conceding more/less than this will affect the defenders' form accordingly.

Midfield - their role is to create chances. Similar to defence, around 5 chances seems to be the baseline

Forwards - their role is scoring chances. Scoring around 1 in 3 chances seems to be the benchmark here.

Deciding when to train

There are no defined rules how much player or team part performance affect form so it really comes down to experience and guesswork. You look at how much form changed since the last match, add or subtract maybe 2-3 points for player/team performance and if the form should be higher it implies a negative tendency and you train.

The following examples may help:

In this example our player has basically flat form but that's partly due to his performance of 8 from the last match. Without the boost from a good performance his form would have dropped 1-2 bars. Check the team performance but likely train.

This is a case where the player probably does not need form training. His form is again pretty much unchanged but his last match performance was poor giving him a negative form adjustment after the match.

Similar to the above example there is a slight drop in form here but the poor match performance will have caused the form to dip 1 or 2 bars. Look at the match performance and base your decision on that.

All the above examples are close but in the bottom 2 it is probably not necessary to train. A lot will also depend on the player. If it's a big investment then you might want to aim higher and train more often to help guarantee good form. If it's an older player or money is more of an issue I definitely would leave the last 2 players to see what happened after the next match.

TIP

As the player's performance in a match affects his form slightly many players always have a 50k win bonus even in friendlies. This is a cheap way of slightly affecting the form on 11+ players ina  positive way.

Using the Job Centre

Previously I wrote a post on how XpertEleven Ranking points are accumulated and how that can be used to check the quality of your tactics. When you have a good ranking you may wish to try and find a better team through the job centre.

To use the Job Centre in the official leagues you need to have been with your existing Xpert team for at least a month and have 3 skill bars. When this is achieved you can jump to a new team.

The lesser teams have less/no competition so are easy to get, but ideally you want to be aiming higher and will be competing against other managers for your dream team. Who gets the new job is based on 2  factors: Loyalty Bonus and manager skill

Loyalty Bonus

Loyalty bonus is explained fully in the Xpert Daily here. In brief it is based on how long you have managed your existing team and gives a bonus in number of bars to your skill level. The following are examples of what loyalty bonus you get for a given length of management:

3 months will give a bonus worth 0 skill bars
6 months will give a bonus worth 1.7 skill bars
12 months will give a bonus worth 3.5 skill bars
24 months will give a bonus worth 5.3 skill bars
36 months will give a bonus worth 6.3 skill bars
48 months will give a bonus worth 7.0 skill bars

Manager Skill

Manager skill is measured in bars and can be seen in the lobby or on your profile page. I shall explain manager skill in more detail in another post but briefly you get rating points for each match your official team has played in the last 6 months, and these rating points are converted into skillbars.

Briefly you earn more skill points for winning, especially away, and also for setting what the system decides are good tactics. That means playing to the referee, playing careful is very good for ranking points and general good tactical decisions.

As all matches from the last 6 months are included good cup runs will help your ranking as they get more games in your "cycle"

Win Bonuses

Win bonuses affect a player's performance throughout the game.

The following partial list represents known win bonus amount/benefits:

50k = 5%

100k = 7 % (+2.0)

150k = 8,5 % (+1.5)

200k = 9,5 % (+1.0)

250k = 10 % (+0.5)

300k= 10.4 % (+0.4)

1 mil = 15%

Considering the amount of bonus from a paltry 50k it seems you should always try and pay this minimal amount. Indeed as player match performance positively affects form to a small degree many players will pay a 50k win bonus for friendlies.

Checking your Xpert team Ranking

One thing everyone in Xpert wants to do is to achieve a good ranking. There are various things that help your ranking but one thing that is crucial is to be able to check how many ranking points you received from a game.

Rating points explained

When managers play games with their official team they receive rating points. The points score in the last 6 months (the player's ranking cycle) are added together and then rankings are calculated based on who has the most points.

Points are also translated into the skill bars you see - but like many things in X11 it's not overly straightforward. Odd number bars have 27 points per bar. Even numbered bars have 33 points per bar - presumably this is X11's even number rounding system. The following table is manager points for the number of bars:

Skill Bars	Manager Points
4	0-32
5	33-59
6	60-92
7	93-119
8	120-152
9	153-179
10	180-212
11	213-239
12	240-272
13	273-299
14	300-332
15	333-359
16	360-392

Obviously it's easy to see how many bars you have and to know the approximate number of points you have, but that's not massively useful. What we need to do is find the exact number of points.

Calculating your exact number of manager points

Calculating the exact number of manager points is fiddly and can take a few minutes but it's not hard. What happens is everyone with the same number of manager points is given the same rank. You need to find how many of these ranking levels there are between you and the next ranking bar below (r above) and you know your exact points.

To do this you need to be a VIP and search for managers by ranking points. Depending on your ranking there could be 100+ people on the same ranking step as you - not much fun to search through so I tend to search for a specific country to reduce the number on the same point. EG if you search for English managers you get approx 1/6 of all managers, reducing that 100 figure to around 17.

Here's an example screen done just for English manages. Note there are approx 30 players each on the same ranking levels. If you look more closely you will see the managers ranked at 1860 have 10 bars whereas the managers at 1826 all have 11 bars. These managers are on the first rung of the 11-bar ladder so have 213 manager points.

This lets you easily check the exact number of manager points you have at any given time. Actually that isn't entirely true - once you get to around 14 bars there isn't always somebody on each rung of the ladder so the system stops working after a while

Calculating manager points from a match

If you are able to calculate your manager points at any given time then you can calculate how many points you gained (or lost) from a given match. You need to be careful for matches coming off your ranking cycle so it's best to check on the day of the match then the following day after rankings are recalculated.

Once you can check how many points you get for a match you can see what formation & tactical options work well for increasing your ranking.

Referees - Basics

In XpertEleven playing to the referee is one of the most important tactical choices. The 3 main areas of tactics that depend on the referee are:

• Aggression
• Cheating
• Offside Traps

The 2 attributes of a referee are Skill (S) and Harshness (H) and these range from 1-9.

Aggression

The general rule of thumb with aggression is you should play Bruise with H1-3, Normal for H4-6 and Careful with a H7-9 referee.

Cheating

Cheating can be more subtle than aggression but a simple rule would be cheat with a referee of S1-5. It is also beneficial fielding players with the cheat SQ, especially as a playmaker.

Offside Traps

OST is again dependent on skill and a general rule would be any referee with skill and hardness both above 5 wil give benefits when playing OST.

Referee List

Al Beback	S6, H3
Al Reddy	S7, H7
Ann Onym	S6, H4
Charlie Fender	S2, H1
Constance Paine	S2, H9
Dick Tator	S8, H8
Donald Scott	S3, H6
Frank Redkard	S4, H8
George Buske	S2, H9
Hans Grüber	S5, H9
Hugh Cango	S2, H2
Ian Hartman	S4, H4
Irre Levant	S5, H6
Justin Thyme	S5, H7
Laura Norder	S7, H4
Luke Bribe	S3, H3
Manuel Ficuz	S2, H8
Michael Steen	S7, H2
Robert Nixon	S8, H6
Seymour Red	S3, H8
Stellan Offsajed	S3, H7
Sten Koll	S9, H5
Tony Nolan	S9, H9
Travis Tee	S6, H4
Wanda Rinn	S7, H2
Warren Peace	S5, H5
Will Taykabribe	S3, H5

Finding underevals in the official leagues

It is possible to actively seek out undereval players in the official leagues - but it does take a lot of effort and patience. If it works out it can be very profitable.

When players are sold they undergo a mini-CR. That is to say thier skill level is adjusted based on the portion of the season played, DV gained etc. As you get a link to the player at their original club (blue link players) it's possible to see much of this information and make in informed judgement before evaluating a player. The following areas need exploring.


Matches played

If a player hasn't played any matches then they have no ME, minimal DV and won't gain a positive mini-CR. Indeed they will likely lose something when transferred. You need to see what proportion of the season a team has played and ideally players need to have played that proportion of the games they need to gain "100% DV".

An example might be a 17/4 player in a 10 bar team. The player might need around 300 minutes playtime over the course of the season. If they are sold at the midway point of the season you really need 150+ minutes playtime on them. If they are sold with more matchtime than this then that makes the chances of being undereval higher.

Be wary of teams just after the CR. it may show a player has had a lot of games but in reality they might just have had a CR and not played any games int he current season.


Previous games

Check out the previous games. Many coaches might bring a sub on 5 minutes from the end of several games. This looks liek the player has had 3 or 4 games but in reality he might only have had 20 minutes.

Team form & player performances

For a player to gain a good Cr they need good form. Only the manager of the team knows this but you can have clues. If you look at the team's form and it it high then it's likely that player has high form - and has had throughout the season. Similarly if the team form is low then probably all players have been neglected equally.

If you look at a player's past performances then regularly playing to his skill level or better is an indication of good form. Be wary of vastly fluctuating performances - the often indicate a moody player, not good form.

Look at previous season

Previous seasons can be a big clue to a player's skill level. If a player jumped in skill the last season after just playing 1 or 2 games it's likely they are low in their skill band to begin with. If a player jumped based on 10 games then maybe they had high DV and are high in their band.

Stage of the season

Players rarely jump on transfer in less than 4 matchdays in the official leagues. The later in the season the more chance there is to jump - as long as they have played enough minutes.

Evaluate

If everything looks good evaluate the player. Occasionally players who aren't underevals may still be worth buying as they can be high in their skillband so good DJ candidates.

Farming

Player farming is where you buy an undereval player one season and then try to sell him for a profit the same season. There is a minimum time of 1 month before you can list a player. Usually you need to list a player for below the average price as a lot of leagues may not be able to bid on the player.

Youth Academy Investments

Investing in the Youth Academy (YA) can be an important decision for your team. Generally speaking it's difficult to make a profit from the YA, but that's not the only reason to invest. You might want to invest for roleplaying reasons, for the chance of a great player or because you don't feel comfortable with the transfer market.

The Youth Academy graph from the rules shows the distribution of player skills at 17yo for different

levels of investment. You can see there is a massive benefit in paying just 50k/week into the YA and beyond this it's diminishing returns. Broadly speaking you need to invest around 100k to get a similar return to pre-YA days.

Don't be fooled into thinking it will all be brilliant. Even with a maximum 300k investment 5-star academy only 17% of 17yo youths are 4 skill and under 2% are 5-skill.

X11 terminology

The following are various terms used in X11

Abreviation	Meaning
AA	Average Age
AF	Average Form
2WAA	2-Way Average Age
CR	Change Report
DV	Development Value
LB	Long Balls
ME	Match Experience
OST	Offside Traps
OT	Over train
SQ	Special Qualities
TP	Through Plays
TTC	Tighten The Centre
TTW	Tighten The Wings
UE	Under Evaluated Player
Vanilla	Player with no visible SQs
WP	Wing Plays

Building a conveyor team

Building a conveyor team is a very natural thing to do - it's almost a surprise there is a name for it. The general idea is players come into the team, stay there their whole career and as one player quits, or gets sold at a designated age, you buy a new youth player to replace him.

Example you have the following 5 defenders aged 32, 28, 25, 21, 18.

You can see there are alternating 3/4 year gaps between the players. In 2 seasons you would have defenders aged 34, 30, 27, 23, 20. Round about this time you may want to sell the 34yo defender (if he will go) and buy in a 16yo replacement so your defenders are now 30, 27, 23, 20, 16.

You would do a similar thing with midfield, forwards and keepers adjusting the age so you always have the correct number of players in the team for the formations you play.

Conveyor Pros & Cons

The big advantage of a conveyor is its consistency. The team is always around a similar strength year in year out. Conveyor also fit in nicely with any average age issues and always have suitable mentors for the key players.

The disadvantage is that your team is never all at its peak and in the above example you would typically  be playing a 3 or 4 man defence. With 4 men you have one of your weaker defenders in the team every match and the average defensive skill isn't high.

X11 Updates July 2013

There were some very significant changes to XpertEleven in July and the following are some of the key ones.

• Decreased the length of severe injuries.
• Decreased the form drop from severe injuries.
• Overtraining removed. It won´t happen anymore.

Reducing the length of and form drop from severe injuries is a big change and could help to promote more "bruise" style play.

The removal of overtraining is a massive change. One advantage of hard trainers was that you could risk overtraining as the form hit was reduced compared to normal players. Now than nobody can be overtrained it's less of a risk to train players in more marginal situations. The risk now is you spend much more money training players who possibly don't need it.