Perma training players

Ever look around and notice that your players don't quite develop as well as somebody else.  you maybe get a double jump from your players in their early years - the other guy gets 2 , on most players. Your players get to 14/15 skill, his get to 17/18.

Way back preemptive training used to be the bees knees but now things have moved on and the way to develop players to their full potential is keeping them in training permanently. With the removal of overtraining this is even more effective.

Perma training?

What this means is you train the player every 5 days - regardless of what their form is on. 20 form - still train them. It guarantees you can catch them as soon as their form stars to drop and 18/19 AF at the end of the season isn't overly rare. Obviously it works better with hard trainer players but the removal of overtraining benefit non-HT players the most.

Costs

This strategy is more suited to private leagues rather than the official league, and especially quicker leagues with shorter seasons, generally leagues with 6-8 teams per division. The costs don't seem massive on the face of it, potentially maybe 2 extra training sessions per season per player, but that can add up to an extra 5m/season in training costs. Obviously you can choose to be selective and only use it on your very best players, or you can include farm players in your squad to help meet the costs. I guess on final approach is selling select players on, and achieving 2 DJs in 4-5 seasons can really inflate player values.

Results

nowadays I only buy hard trainers, which does help. Using this approach pretty much all of my players have managed a 2nd double jump by the age of 26

1 chance, 1 goal - that always happens

It always seems to be the case, you have 4-1 chances and lose 1-0, and the opposition ALWAYS scores from their only chance. I checked through approx 700 matches and charted how many chances equated how many goals.

I restricted the data to matches between teams playing 451, 442, 541 & 352 so it's more mainstream formations and with just 1 or 2 forwards. Here's the raw data for goals/chances for the home side:

	Chances ->	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Goals
0		56	53	27	18	2	3	4			1
1		22	41	37	37	29	23	14	1
2			5	25	31	19	28	19	18	5	5
3				1	16	20	20	16	16	10	13
4						3	6	13	6	8	3
5									4	2	7
6									2	1	1
7											1
Tot Games		78	99	90	102	73	80	66	47	26	31

The chart shows how many games with a given number of chances resulted in a specified number of goals. EG for games with 4 chances 18 ended with 0 goals, 37 games ended with 1 goal scored etc.

Reworking the table to see the percentage of games ending in any given result it looks like the following:

	Chances	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Goals
0		72%	54%	30%	18%	3%	4%	6%			3%
1		28%	41%	41%	36%	40%	29%	21%	2%
2			5%	28%	30%	26%	35%	29%	38%	19%	16%
3				1%	16%	27%	25%	24%	34%	38%	42%
4						4%	8%	20%	13%	31%	10%
5									9%	8%	23%
6									4%	4%	3%

One last chart - what about goal conversion, are they more likely to score from the only chance?

	Chances	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Tot Goals		22	51	90	147	139	163	152	141	88	109
Conversion		28%	26%	33%	36%	38%	34%	33%	38%	38%	35%

The reality is no, when teams have fewer chances they convert less - I guess this is related to teams with fewer chances usually having weaker players.

I guess the reality is most of the time a team has 1 chance they score no goals, it just seems really lucky when they do.

451 "without forwards"

There are a number of experimental team doing the rounds at the moment which are achieving a degree of success - here I look at one of them.

451 with weak forwards

This works on the premise that a strong defence/midfield is the most important part of the team and exploits the 2WAA rule and forward farming to keep the mid/defence stronger than the opposition.

The basic premise is a normal squad designed for 451 but all forward players are farms - 17/4, 16/3 or similar. 

The first advantage of this is 2-3 farm players can generate millions each season which can be used to invest in higher skilled players in other areas. Example an extra 5m from farming each season means you are buying a 17/5 instead of a 17/4 - or a 30/16 instead of a 30/14. 

The second advantage of this approach is that you significantly reduce the age of the attacking part of your team. This lets you play some older players in midfield which can be more skillful and cheaper to buy than youngsters, or just have your midfield performing better because their average age is under 29 rather than over.

Does it work?

Several managers play in this way and have had a degree of success at the highest level. Jesus1983 was previously ranked #1 in the world and played with a 17/4 forward in the XCL final and has adapted his side to this way of playing. Freddy9adu won the major league and the cup and reached the XCL semi final playing predominantly with 16/3 forwards. I reached the XCL QF playing this way after winning the Hattrick cup and have had success in several private leagues including the prestigious Club24.

In Xpert chances are split roughly in a ratio of 1:2:4 between defence, midfield and attack, With a 451 formation your forward will get around 20% of a teams chances (including set pieces), and conversion of those chances will probably be about half. Having a stronger mid will likely give you more than 10% more chances and reduce opposition chances.

I've been playing this way for around 3 years and I think the best thing it gives is scope to maintain the team constantly without having to do rebuilds every few seasons. I much prefer a team that is always challenging rather than one that is occasionally on hiatus in the lower divisions.

Q&A April 14

Here are some general tips and common questions answered:

Q: What are the issues with selling players mid-season?

If you try to sell a player the same season you purchased him there will be a limited number of teams who can bid on him depending on how far progressed their season is. In this instance I would always suggest ask for a minimum price for the player as he likely won't get bid up.

if you are selling an existing player the same season he will get a mini-CR - so on transfer he may increase or decrease in skill. This is based on his DV accrued throughout the season being pro-rated over a whole season. Generally they will get a percentage of a change report based on the percentage of the season they were at your club.

It can be a good tactic to get players high in their band then sell them mid-season with good DV so they will be undereval and generate a high price. 

Q: Oops I bid too much on a player, what can I do?

It is possible to go and reduce your bid down to the current bid. So for example if you bid 5m econ and have the top bid at 1.6m econ you can reduce your bid down to 1.6m or higher. 

Q: Is buying players late in the season a bad thing?

Not always. Even without a full season at your club a player may well still gain a bar at the CR, or even double. If he only played half the season with you then he will gain half a CR worth of change. A lot depends on whether he was high in his skillband when you bought him and what form he comes in on.

For older players the big worry whether they will get adequate DV. This is not as big an issue as it may seem. DV is adusted to reflect only a partial CR so if you buy a player 2/3 of the way through the season he will likely come in on 7-8 DV and pretty much be restricted to within a few points of 10 DV regardless of form or how many games he plays.


Q: My forward never gets goals, should I sell him?

When a chance falls to a forward the main factors dictating the chance of scoring are the forward's skill, SQs relevant to the chance type and the goalkeeper's skill/performance. There is no hidden factor dictating that some forwards score lots of goals and others don't but randomness in X11 does make it seem like this at times.

Typically better forwards generally get more of the chances (relative to other forwards) and convert more into goals, but this isn't always the case. Certainly replacing one 10-skill forward with an equal player likely won't achieve anything. As long as your team is performing adequately I wouldn't worry, and if they aren't then maybe the problems lie elsewhere.


Q: Should I man mark the opponent freekicker?

According to the rules marking a freekicker doesn't affect his freekick ability, just his performance during the match.



Q: How is team value calculated?

The team value is the sum of the value of the players as they would appear on the transfer list - that is to say it includes agents fees (or 19% on top of the price you see as the valuation). EG if the sum of your players adds up to 100m then the team value will be around 119m



Q: I played a player and his DV went down. Why?

When a player plays a game he gains ME (match experience). DV is a function of ME and AF. If the DV is higher than AF then the affect of a form reduction can be more than the extra ME.



Q: Do I get more DV with my players if the game goes to extra time?

According to the rules players will only get DV for the first 90 mnutes they play, so in cup games it may well be an idea to substitute youths at the end of normal time.



Q: How long will it take my player's teamwork to get from poor to excellent?

Player teamwork converges at different rates depending on how many games a team has per season so it is probably best to judge in seasons rather than games. Typically any player apart from divas will get to excellent teamwork within 4-5 seasons. Convergence happens faster the further they are from excellent, so you could regard this as around 1 step (ie poor-fair-good-excellent) per 1-2 seasons.