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.