Retirement decoys

It's always a pain when your best players in Xpert Eleven decide to retire. Way back this used to happen at the Change Report so you just got an email saying a given player had retired - no warning. It was changed so you get informed they are retiring that season so at least you know what to do with them - but still it's a pain.

There are 2 facts that have been noticed about player retirements:

• There are a maximum of 5 players who can retire each season.
• The retiring players start from the top of your team so goalkeepers first, then defenders, midfielders, forwards

Putting these 2 pieces of information together has spawned the idea of retirement decoys. The idea is buy a lot of old players, 35+, especially keepers or defenders and if enough of these choose to retire your older players may be safe for another season or more.

I tested this out with one of my teams a while back

Obviously you want to be buying the cheapest possible players and >34 is best. I bought these players mid season and I believe none of them chose to retire when I had my CR. 

My opinion is this approach doesn't work. Players generally have a max 50% chance to retire so to keep all your players safe you need an average 10 decoys. Mine didn't retire at all - maybe you need them there from the start of the season to maximise the chance of that. Still some people do try it - perhaps you could use it to your advantage?