Switching formations

One of the aspects of the game that always gets a bit of disagreement is the issue of switching tactics.

What the rules say:

You are able to prepare your team for how your opponent will play. If you think your opponent will play 4-4-2 you will be able to choose to prepare your team for that by selecting that formation in a dropdown list on the tactics page. The tactical option is possible to save within the default tactics.

If your opponent uses that formation this will have a negative effect on your opponent’s ability to create chances. How much effect it will have depends on how accustomed your opponent is to playing with that formation. That is determined by the formations used by your opponent the last 3 matches (including friendlies). The more matches (out of the past 3 matches) the opponent has played with a certain formation, the better he will be at playing that formation.

In other words this means that if the opponent uses a formation that he has used before and you didn’t prepare for that formation then your opponent will get a boost in his ability to create chances.

If you choose to prepare your team for a formation that the opponent won't use, then your opponent will always get a small positive extra effect on their ability to create chances. If you choose not to prepare your team for any formation then your opponent won't get any extra positive effect other than the experience they have on their formation used in the match.

Pros and cons of varying formations

If you switch formation each time it's likely your opponent will guess the wrong formation and you will gain an advantage because of that. The downside in this respect is you will never get a 3/3 formation so you don't get the maximum advantage available.

You also have the advantage of adjusting your formation to

This strategy may have worked well in the past but one of the big problems nowadays is so few formations are effective. 5 man mids (352/451) are the dominant formations and while 4 man mid formations can work they aren't as strong as 5 man mid. Anything else is just plain rubbish so you have limited options of formations you can switch too.

Advantages to keeping the same formation

One of the big advantages of playing just one or 2 formations all the time is familiarity and experience. You get to know what works so much better than when you are constantly switching all the time.

Another advantage of a single formation is there is no advantage to the opponent guessing how you will play, and if for some reason they guess wrong (it happens) then you gain a significant advantage.

Overall

Personally I tend to stick to just 1 formation with each of my teams. Varying it opens up the risk of the opponent guessing a 1/3 formation and almost always gives them a 2/3 formation advantage and I would much rather remove this variable. I can build my squad around the formation and get familiar with what attacking styles work.

Substitutions

In an earlier blog I wrote how minutes played affected Player DV gained and how using substitutions can be used to increase DV over the season.

Here's a tip for substitutions that may prove useful in a number of situations.

Double substitutions

Sometimes you want to do a double substitution - bring one player on then bring the same player off later. Here's one of my teams and I have 3 young midfielders.

I want to start the game with Luxumburgo, bring on Sampaio after 45 minutes then swap him for Daish after 70 minutes. The system won't let me do this because Sampaio isn't a started so I need to get sneaky.

I set the team up normally and go to substitute Sampaio on for Luxemburgo after 45 minutes - that's all normal.

I then go and alter my lineup to put Sampaio in the team. The substitutions page will now let me substitute Sampaio out so I put my 2nd substitution in. I then go back to lineup and set it back to the original settings. Voila

The old tactics screen

Once upon a time Xpert Eleven used to have a great tactics page - and this was replaced with a prettier, more modern looking page. I guess there was an expected backlash from the older players and so the game has an option to use the old tactics page which most of the top players still do. If you are new to X11 you might not know the old tactics page exists and you are missing out.

Selecting which tactics page to use

Select the Settings option on the profile menu and you will get the page up where you can choose your tactics page.

Using the old screen

Just tick the top button to choose to use the old tactics page. The screen looks like the one below. It's a lot clearer and simpler to use and gives good visibility of your opponent and theur previous games. 

You have separate tabs to select your team, tactics and substitutions but it shouldn't take much effort to work out.

Player injuries

Player injuries - the curse of so many people's lives. There are certain things you can do to help the situation.

Fragile players

Fragile players have more chance of getting injured - but they don't increase the overall chance of the team to get injuries. It's more like they are a magnet for the injury. Certainly having lesser players with fragile can be an advantage because it reduces the chance of your better players to pick up an injury - hooray!

The downside to fragile players is the injuries are supposed to be longer.

Red crosses

The game engine does try to be fair on occasion and one of these situations seems to be with red cross injuries. In my experience it's rare for a team to have more than 2 red cross injuries at a given time.

In teh past I've tried to gain advantage from this by going in to key games with injuries but paying bruise believing the opponent had more chance to sustain an injury than I do.

I've even seen it suggested targetting injured players from the xfer market - a bit extreme and hard to acomplish though.

Training

I always train players to coincide with the day the injury ends. If you train a player who is injured their form will only increase to a maximum of 10 and won't increase if it is already above this.

Note that the time the player injury shows is in local time so it may show the day before it actually ends (eg in the UK ending on the 25th at 23:00 means training needs to end on the 26th.)

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.

Integrating defence & keeper

Traditional X11 wisdom dictates that the freekicker and the goal keeper are the most important players in the team. Here I'm going to post some thoughts on goalkeepers.

Basics

Keepers all have a save percentage stat, so you can easily check how successful a keeper has been during his career. One thing you have probably noticed is the better keepers don't seem to have massively amazing save percentages. Usually just a few points better than lesser keepers.

Generally speaking a bar of skill translates to about a 3% difference in save percentage. If all the players in both teams are of similar skill levels then 30-35% conversion rate might be typical, so around 65-70% saved. Dropping 2-3 bars on your keeper skill could realistically only be 1-2 goals a season - not necessarily something to get too worked up about.

But it's not that simple....

In the X11 team ratings there is a rating for the defense as a whole but the keeper isn't separated from this, and it appears X11 does treat the keeper and defence as a single unit, and my recent experiences suggest a really strong defender could be more important than a really strong keeper. Part of this is the reduction in chances a stronger defender will give but I also think defenders affect the quality of chances, so the liklihood they will score.

Recently I had a team who were bringing on a youth keeper, 18/5. The overall team strength was around 12/13 bars which was slightly good for the division but nothing special. He ended the season with a save percentage of 65%, which is pretty stunning for a youth keeper. I think the relative strength of the defence helped make the chances less potent somehow.

The team conceded 11 goals in 14 games, but he missed a game where I lost 5-0 (allrounder in goal) so his record was 6 goals conceded in 13 league games. I think big part of keeping the goal count low was  adjusting the style of play to suit the unusual circumstances of a youth keeper.

In most games I dropped the aggression down a notch on how I would usually play a notch less offensive than I usually do (so normal instead of offensive etc). Additionally I tended to play offside traps on marginal referees (S4/S5) in the belief reducing chances was more significant than conversion rate against such a weak keeper. I also didn't cheat in most games where cheating would usually be the case. There's scope for missing out on freekicks, but if you are carrying a very weak keeper I would say  conceding is much more of a risk.

2 of my other sides have started out as long term projects but reached the top as the keeper was on his way out. One was replaced with a 21/10 and the other with a 26/13 - and both sides went on to win the title despite having a disproportionately weak keeper.

A strong keeper is incredibly important for games where free kicks are likely to be significant but otherwise a very strong defender may be a better investment and is certainly a strategy worth testing.

Advanced Tactics: Offside Traps & Playmakers

On with the statistical analysis. I looked at all my games within the last 3 years  and tried to see what I could work out from them. We are talking over 1000 games but I stripped out any friendlies or games where either side was playing any formation other than 352, 451, 442 and 541. These are probably the only formations that are regarded as being competitive in todays environment.

Additionally I only looked at home games. Away games tend to score less and concede more goals so a difference in playing styles in away games would bias the data. note also these figures are based on my teams so half the games I will be home, half away, and also reflect the various home advantages.

Offside Traps

One thing I checked for was offside traps. How much difference does it make, what about with different referees.

TPs v OST	NO	YES	S>=7	S=6	S=5
Chances	275	119	59	22	30
Goals	82	35	16	7	8
Conv	30%	29%	27%	32%	27%
Games	62	32	19	6	6
Cha/Game	4.4	3.7	3.1	3.7	5.0
Goals/Game	1.32	1.09	0.84	1.17	1.33

The above chart shows how effective through plays are in different situations and how many games are in the sample. For this data I only used games where the defence and midfield of the 2 teams was broadly similar strengths.

Playing TPs when the opponent doesn't use offside traps ends up with an average of 1.32 goals a game.    Looking at the games as a whole where the opponent played OST then there are only 1.09 goals/game.
This is not the whole story though. and I have broken down these chances according to the skill of the referee

I often play OST on S6 and S5 refs as a margin call. S6 refs look ok, but with a small sample of data. With S5 refs it really is negligable.

I would like to stress the sample sizes here are tiny, especially on S6/5 refs.

Using a playmaker

I also looked at the benefits of using a playmaker. Same sample data as above except I ONLY checked games where the away side pid a win bonus so I could filter out inactive teams.

When the home side didn't use a PM they scored an average of 0.8 goals/game. Using a playmaker increased this to 1.34 - a significant jump.

I then what happened depending on opponent marking options.

If the away side manages to mark the playmaker they reduce the goals massively to a goal a game. Marking anyone other than the PM helps a little weighing in at 1.3 goals/game conceded. Marking nobody at all is slightly weaker at 1.4 goals/game.

The moral of this story - always pick a playmaker, you probably still do better if he's marked than if you don't have one.

PM Marking	None	YES	Mark PM	Mark Any1	None
Chances	257	1258	215	1129	171
Goals	66	390	73	339	53
Conv	26%	31%	34%	30%	31%
Games	84	292	75	267	39
Cha/Game	3.1	4.3	2.9	4.2	4.4
Goals/Game	0.79	1.34	0.97	1.27	1.36

An interesting point is when I ran the data with matches where the home side was significantly stronger. Here's the same chart as above:

PM Marking	None	YES	Mark PM	Mark Any1	None
Chances	347	1088	128	1068	239
Goals	115	403	43	390	86
Conv	33%	37%	34%	37%	36%
Games	70	195	35	193	39
Cha/Game	5.0	5.6	3.7	5.5	6.1
Goals/Game	1.64	2.07	1.23	2.02	2.21

Now the home side gets more chances and scores more goals. Having a PM adds less benefit now than if the sides are close. and if you manage to mark the PM then you gain a MASSIVE benefit. It seems if you are facing significantly weaker opposition then using a PM is potentially more of a risk than it is worth.

Choosing a freekicker

In Xpert the freekicker and goalkeeper are seen as the 2 most important players. Here I examing how much impact a freekick expert can have.  A while back the game underwent changes which mean freekicks aren't given out so easily or often now.

The following analysis comes from the game data for all games in the top 5 tiers of the super league season 31 and Major League S37 and Ultimate League S31 all of which finished recently - this is current data based on the game engine as it works now. I chose the top 5 tiers because that will exclude most unmanaged sides, or sides on really poor form etc. This is a total of 5208 matches.

How often are freekicks given?

Around 74% of free kicks are direct. I decided not to do analysis on set piece free kicks at this time as they are more complicated due to the skill of the player taking the final shot.

Over the sample of games there were 2290 set piece freekicks and 6435 direct free kicks. 1.7 per game. One day I plan on checking out affects creation of freekick chances.

How often do (direct) freekicks go in?

I checked all matches to see how many freekicks were awarded, how many went in. I then plotted the incidence of scoring a goal against the difference in performance between the player taking the FK and the keeper.


NOTE:
This data is based on Direct Freekicks only.
This data is for players who have the FK SQ

Perf Difference	Scored	Missed	Percent
FKer v Keeper
-10	0	13	0%
-9	0	13	0%
-8	0	34	0%
-7	1	43	2%
-6	1	89	1%
-5	3	130	2%
-4	7	161	4%
-3	9	193	4%
-2	19	259	7%
-1	26	281	8%
0	40	389	9%
1	63	345	15%
2	98	373	21%
3	102	339	23%
4	137	326	30%
5	141	229	38%
6	141	174	45%
7	130	159	45%
8	88	118	43%
9	88	66	57%
10	60	36	62%
Total	1154	3770	23%

As you can see if your FKer is less skilled (or plays to less bars) than the defending keeeper there is almost no chance of a direct freekick going in. 

I did try to plot similar data for players with shooting power and vanilla players but I don't have enough sample data to get accurate figures. What I did do is band the data to get the chart below.

Perf Diff	FK	SP	Vanilla
0-3	17%	15%	9%
4-7	38%	32%	8%

As you can see the difference between Free Kick and Shooting Power SQs isn't huge, and it would seem that if you have 2 more bars on a player with shooting power that is a better option - especially if the FKer is less skilled than the keeper.

Vanilla players don't make great FKers - but if you have a high skilled one it will be better than a low skilled FKer.

Set piece Freekicks

NOTE: This was based on the Super & Major leagu data only and i'm too lazy to redo the data at the moment.

With set piece freekicks there was a lot less data and as they are a less significant part of the game I need to present the conclusions differently.

The following table shows the distribution of freekicks according to FKer SQ. Players with Shooting Power have a slightly higher chance of taking direct freekicks and vanilla players almost always do variations (I wonder if this is a bug in the code?)

	Direct	Set Piece	% Direct
Freekick	3216	660	83%
Shooting Power	562	99	85%
Vanilla	311	643	33%

Calculating the conversion rate for set piece freekicks is complicated as it appears both the player taking the freekick and the player having the shot are considered, and if either is poor then the chance seems unlikely to go in. As a rule conversion of set piece freekicks seems slightly lower than for direct freekicks.

Who makes the best freekickers?

Here's what the rules say about the freekick SQ:

A player with this symbol is a specialist in taking freekicks. Keep in mind though that how good a player is in taking freekicks also depends a lot on his skill level. This means that a player with this quality but with low skill will not be very good in taking freekicks, This quality however makes a player twice as good on freekicks compared to a player of equal skill but without this quality. 

The key factor with players scoring from freekicks is the player's skill relative to the defending team's goalkeeper skill and I believe this "fact" to be misleading at best. Certainly a 10 skill freekicker will virtually never score against a 15 skill keeper, and there are many teams who just use their strongest player with Shooting Power or no SQs as a freekick taker and do equally as well.

The best player to choose obviously depends on your league and what you need. Conidering the above data I would say there is no point ever buying an average free kicker - he needs to be special if you are to pay significantly extra for the SQ, and overall a player with Shooting Power may be a better investment. 

How offensive should you play?

How offensive you play is seen as possibly the most important tactical aspect in Xpert Eleven. Picking the right level isn't a straightforward selection as it will often depend on how aggressive you and the opponent play as well as the formation.


Playing more offensively doesn't necessarily equate to more chances, and if you play too offensive for your team and matchup you can often get overrun and unable to get the ball out of defence. The net effect is you turn a win into a loss. indeed more offensive play can often be seen as making the game more random and many of the top players will tend to play less offensively than less experienced players, especially if they have the stronger team.

Attacking style and formations

With attacking formations like 433, 352, 343 then Cautious/Normal at home and Cautious/Defensive away would be a reasonable starting point against a similarly strong opponent.

Neutral formations like 451 & 442 you can maybe try Normal/Offensive at home and Cautious/Normal away. This is probably a good starting point for defensive formations such as 541, 532, 523.

Tweak according to the opponent

Consider the opponents strength - if they are 1-2 bars stronger than you then consider dropping aggression an extra bar.

Bizarrely the same is probably good advice for teams who are considerbly weaker. Playing more defensively allows you to sit back and control the game, and you can often get double digit chances with defensive style against weaker opposition. Don't take the risks of playing too offensive unless you need to.

Tweak for Aggression

Aggression is an important factor in games. Sometimes cirumstances might dictate you want to play more aggressively than usual with a given referee. When this is the case I often adjust my attacking style up a little, and correspondingly drop it down a notch if I'm playing less aggressively.

There was a recent coach's corner article on playing styles which might also provide useful reading.

Choosing a playmaker

Choosing the right playmaker in XpertEleven can win or lose a game. In truth choosing the wrong playmaker, or having your playmaker marked, is more likely to lose a game. A lot of the decision making process will depend on your team too.

Playmaker rule #1

Rule number 1 with playmakers is don't get your PM marked. Anything too obvious is a bad choice - to the extent you may need to look at your team setup. This is also the area where scouting the opposition manager can help - how obvious are his marking options? Does he always mark the best midfielder, the freekicker, a forward - nobody? having a good idea who they will mark gives more scope for PM selection.

Basic playmaker selection

According to the rules the playmaker should be your strongest midfielder, preferably with intelligence. Unfortunately this is often too obvious a choice, and is a very strong reason not to have a standout midfielder. This can be more problematic with conveyor type teams where players are of varying skill levels than a flat team setup where you might have 5 midfielders with just a bar between them.

When to select a playmaker

You will always get a benefit from having a playmaker, even if all your players are exactly the same skill. The benefit is greater if you have lesser skilled players, eg youngsters, in midfield as you want to bypass these players as much as possible.

The downside is getting your playmaker marked, which can significantly weaken your team. I would suggest that if your team is significantly stronger (especially in midfield) then it might be best not to take the risk of PM selection, and similarly if you have just 1 or 2 significantly strong midfielders - and other times you should probably try to vary playmaker selection and pick one as often as possible.

PM selection & tactical considerations

Picking a PM who has SQs that compliment your style of play will always be beneficial. Heading or quick is great if your team is playing wing plays or through plays. Equally shooting power for playing long range shots. There are also some other SQs which work well with tactical setups.

If you are playing cheat with a referee then any player with the cheat SQ will get a boost, and this is beneficial if your playmaker has cheat. This is especially good because your opponent won't know which players have cheat as it's a hidden SQ.

The stamina SQ is great if you are playing bruise where you gain an advantage to having your PM tire slower than other players. The problem with this is it can be predictable.

Intelligent and cool are always good SQs to have on a playmaker, as is greedy.

Moody can be a massive risk and will often do more harm than good on a playmaker. A bad performance, especially if he is marked, can cost you a game that you should have won easily. Personally I am not a fan of moody on midfielders because it can limit your PM options. The flip side is it could be a selection in a game you expect to lose - where a great game could swing it for you.

Having no playmaker

Going without a playmaker is a viable option if all your midfielders are of a similar level. It removes one of the biggest risks - that of having your playmaker marked. Generally it is a more viable option if you have the stronger side, and all your midfielders are of a similar skill level. Sometimes though it's best to toss a coin or roll a dice if you have a number of equally valid PM options - at least that way you won't be predictable.

Long Ball and Pressure Together

There is a lot of confusion over whether long balls and pressure can be played together so lets clear up a bit of the confusion:

Long balls

Long ball is something you do when are in possession of the ball. Long passes direct from defence or mid to the forwards, somewhat bypassing the passing game and making your midfield strength less relevant - when attacking.

As ever your midfield is your first line of defence and playing long balls won't really help in this regard.

A caveat to longballs is it is a tactic that doesn't seem to work well since stamina changes were introduced around 2011.

Pressure

Pressure is something you do when the other team has the ball. Closing the opposing players down, forcing mistakes and trying to gain possession in midfield. It's more work (& therefore more tiring) than not playing pressure. It effectively boosts your midfield strength.

Longballs and pressure together?

Longballs is something you do while in possession of the ball and pressure is something you do when the opposition has the ball. Indeed pressure is probably more important when you have a weaker midfield.

There is no reason not to use them together other than maybe fatigue. Longballs causes you to give the ball away more, and you tire when you don't have the ball. Pressure makes you more tired too.

Home advantage

In XpertEleven teams have a home advantage factor and this can be a big issue when trying to win competitions. Teams also have an equivalent away disadvantage to their home advantage.

General concensus seems to be that a smaller home advantage is best as home games should be winnable anyway, whereas a large away disadvantage is a massive penalty.

How to identify your home advantage

There are 2 ways you can check how your home/away advantage stack up. The first method is to look at your overall team stats and juist divide home wins by away wins - with enough games in the sample this should give a reasonable estimate of yuor home advantage. Below are 2 examples:

The number of match wins H/A = 84/44 = 1.91. This is very much on the high end and most teams seem to be around 1.6. Compare that with this team:

Compare that with this team where H/A = 83/62 = 1.34 which is a low home advantage. There is also a similar ratio in the number of goals scored home & away by the 2 sides.

Another way of checking for home advantage is to see how many bars the teams play to in home/away games. If your team regularly gets 3+ more bars in midfeld/defence (on the match report) at home than away then you are going to have problems/

How to combat strong home advantage

A strong home advantage could be a massive problem and even stop a team reaching the highest levels in strong leagues. At least if you are aware of the problem maybe you can do something about it. You can try investing more in better defensive players than other parts of your team or dropping the tem offensive rating down a notch away - say play defensive rather than cautious more frequently. Also it may be worth checking out the home advantage of opposition teams prior to matches and any teams you are thinking of applying for.

Tactical substitutions

When substitutions came into X11 they were a great tool in helping to develop younger players. Thye are also a great tool in adjusting the flow of a game, but more often than not they can end up losing you the game.  There are a number of ways of using them effectively:

Sub out stronger players

The first way of substituting is to play your strongest lineup from the start and put in weaker players if you are winning. This is how I started using subs but I felt it cost me a lot of games by subbing in weaker players too early and allowing the opposition to come back. This was especially a problem if a player had previously been injured and the team was already weaker than I expected.

Sub out weaker players

An alternative approach is to play a weakened team from the start then sub in stronger players if they are needed. This sounds silly but it seems to work well. You might start 1-2 weaker players in midfield and defence say. X11 is setup such that around 60% of goals are scored in the 2nd half so having a weaker side at the start is less likely to cost you.

If you are winning all the way from the second half (when you are eligible to bring on subs) then you can leave your developing players on the whole game and gain much more DV. Alternatively if you bring a stronger player on later in the game they won't be fatigued and will likely have more impact.

Multiple layers

I tend to favour an approach where I have multiple sub options. For example I might try and substitute for a stronger player at 45 minutes if I'm losing. I may then increase my expectations and try again at 60 minutes if I have a draw or worse - pushing for the win. I can repeat this at 70/75 minutes incase the opposition pulls a goal back. towards the end of the game I may want to bring a stronger player on just as protection against losing my lead. The picture below shows some examples.

Note there is an alternative sub at 80 minutes for a different development player. This stops the later substitution for the stronger player if we are leading by 2 goals.

Obviously the types of substitution you do will depend on your expectations for the match. if you are facing strong opposition you may also have options to replace a strong players with a weaker one if you are losing and have multiple layers so you can only sub the weaker players on once you are sure you will lose. 

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.

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.

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.

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