Its over. I hung onto second place in Div.4-1
I played 3rd place yesterday and somehow beat him 5-0! Biggest margain I had all season. In fact mostly 1-0 wins. I checked his lineup and it was his normal one. Not sure what happened to him. Very strange ending.

Now I have to score 4 goals against the dead team at the bottom of my division so that I can get my goals money. Since the game score doesn't matter I just put all out attack on.

Also, I'll be selling off all my 28yr and older guys at the beginning of the season since I'm clearly gonna be gutted in Div.3.
Add anyone like that on your shortlist and I'll PM you when I'm selling early next season.

The best 2 are Woodthorpe and Hartman, both of who carried me in Div4.1 this season.

[This message has been edited by aggiebones (edited 8/8/2010 4:45p).]

I am proud to announce that Kairos FC has clinched division 3.7 and will be promoting to division 2. This should be fun :-)

HatTrick, pretty much agree with Dre on concentrating on your team and not so much the other squad, the match engine doesn't seem to penalize oddly weighted formations very much (using an ML and OMR, for example). I will occasionally adjust based on their players, however, if I see they're got defenders who are low in heading I'll try attacking from the wings, for example.

Well I drew with the 2nd place team in my league last nite to stay behind them by two points and secure no worse than 4th place.

The team that has locked up the win will be playing the 3rd place team (they lead me by a point) on Tuesday, I will play the 9th place team, and the 2nd place team will play the dead last team. So I need 1, myself, and 18 all to win for promotion. It will be a real long shot but I have too many losses/draws against bottom teams.

first double post in a long time.

[This message has been edited by denied (edited 8/8/2010 8:15p).]

Secured 2nd in 5.36 and will be moving back to Div 4. My team is in pretty good shape and will be in really good shape if my older cheap vets don't retire after this next season coming up. Finally in a good position to start building up the TG/YD with a lot of young players on squad I won't be needed to replace most starters for a while (granted my vets stay).

gaslaw, when did you first go to lvl 1 for YD & TG?

the only money i've spent is on a new coach, 2 scouts (1 youth/1 senior), a few things around the stadium, and lvl 1 north stands. oh and i signed a 16* 70+skill 17 yr old D/DMC on saturday. i haven't fired or sold anyone yet.

i'm thinking about waiting until i get to div 5 or comfortable mid table in div 4 start heavily investing in YD/TG, but wondering if i should at least get to lvl 1-2 before then?

Grats guys. And gaslaw, I'm actually mentoring the team that finished ahead of you...sorry

Hat Trick, I'd dump money into YD/TG right now and don't stop til you get to level 5 of both. I had to slow down around level 6-7 and have now got them at 7 for YD and 9 for TG. I lose money weekly, but season money keeps me afloat. Now I FINALLY have good youth finishing bloom. And I should be a stable club as long as I want to play.
I'd be interested if any successful teams disagree with that.
You should be able to win early with tactics and the occasional bought player. If you just started, then you are likely in a league with youth teams and other newbies. I think you would be fighting with maybe only 4-5 other teams for promotion. Many will drop out.
My first season I was promoted from 5th to 4th division and I bought no players to do it. Now I got stuck in 4th division for awhile, until promotion this season. But my YD has been feeding me good youth for 4-5 seasons now and I'll have a good steady set of youth to use or sell from here on. And that is important for long term survival and success. Winning your first season with old players that you found on the TL will do nothing for you long term. Though getting in a higher division does get you more money. So it is somewhat important. But the competition should not be fierce until you get in 4th division. YD/TG IMHO is more important than players retiring in 2-3 seasons. As even if they get your promoted, you won't be able to sustain anything.

SOB!
I would have probably been closer, if not able to overtaken him had I not just thrown the first 6 fixtures looking for a good deal on a good goalie. He and I have been chatting on pm most of the season, seems like an ok guy. Your protege has not been able to beat yet, fwiw.


Hattrick,

Go ahead get lvl 1-2 for YD/TG as soon as possible. Keep your stadium properly sized but focus on getting your coaches setup. I refused to do much else except spend weeks and money searching for good coaches (I looked for 87%+). This is basically a one time deal. Get good coaches and you don't have to spend anymore on searches so get it while you can pull millions in per week with low maint. I spent a lot of weeks on TL looking for decent young players to set my starting XI and grabbed a couple cheap vets if the price was right. I just finished that stage, myself and now am starting to begin raising my TG/YD. I plan on getting the TG-8 and YD-7 before stopping until my youth pipeline is full of people developing to sale.

Coaching searches can be VERY frustrating, so beware.
They take forever and its a low percentage chance to get a good one. Plus, it takes a season or so to REALLY know what you are looking for.
You'll likely get a solid goalie coach pretty quickly. They are easy.

I disagree with the not knowing what to look for. The dutch have a great information site that provides an excellent guide.

http://www.trophymanager.info/beginEN.htm

Section 5 is relevant to coach searches.
Obviously, there are several ways to get there. We all have our own ideas.

Heh, sorry, I don't know that he puts a ton of time into the game though, I'd imagine you'll pass him next season.

aggiebones, I agree with the exception that a lot of teams go into too much debt too quickly because of youth and training expenses. I've been running TG7/YD 7 in division 3 and it severely eats into my finances, I'm now at TG 8 simply to train up my 20* before selling him.

Moving towards probably a 5/5 or or so is doable for a team in division 4, at lower levels it's pretty inexpensive so at this point I'd upgrade as soon as possible till you're at least at 4/4 or so then evaluate your finances.

thanks for the advice guys. i appreciate all the answers to my noob questions.

i'll probably upgrade to 1/1 today and 2/2 next week just to see how my finances work over the course of a week.

also, when you do coach/scout searches do you pay extra to get more search returns or just do the basic entry level search?

i've been reading up on trexema and i need to download that software but i read that there are now problems with compatibility between the software and the trophymanager website. any helpful links for sorting out the issues?

I've never noticed the expense of TG/YD until now at 7YD/9TG. I don't buy alot of players though on TL. Maybe 3-4 a season.

BTW, as you go, you can't upgrade facilities very quickly. It takes almost a season to upgrade after the first couple.

[This message has been edited by aggiebones (edited 8/9/2010 1:10p).]

Ill be finishing 3rd in div. 4 for the 3rd season in a row now. Last season I lost to second place by a goal diff of 1.

That is uncool. I had that happen last year faltering late and I almost did it again this year, but for a change, finished strong.
I won't be there long though and after getting my team next week, I may be the worst division 3 team ever

Take your lumps in D3, I did twice!!! It was not fun at all in all honesty.

As you saw last night, going with an all out attack is not a good way to score points in bunches. Unless the opposing squad is totally inferior, i.e., a D5 or D6 squad.

____________________________________
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.

My first season in D3 went better than expected. We (Real Albuquerque) promoted with an aging squad with several promising YD players who weren't quite ready to contribute. I ended up selling one of my best youth pulls and used the money to get my TG to 8 and my YD to 7. I still operate on a deficit each week, but it's negligible with my selling of a few youths a year. Plus, I can buy a contributor a season to keep us competitive. That being said, we started off on a tear and were in second place halfway through the season in 3.8. Unfortunately, the wheels fell off for no real reason (no injuries or suspension or roster changes... just TM being TM) and will finish in the 4-6 range for the season.

First team finished 5th in 2.2. Reserve team stays up on merit by finishing 12th in 4.8. I'll take it.

However, my first team finished 13 points behind 2nd in 2.2 so I have a lot of work to do to make up that gap. Fortunately, I have a decent bank account for the NT sale so let's see if I can pick up some quality talent.

Sweet, I hit 6 goals last night, easily clearing the needed 50 for the season.
Two games ago, I need 9 goals to get the VIP award for season goals. Somehow I scored 11 in 2 games and including 5 goals against 3rd place. Very strange end of season output for my team. I scored over 25% of my goals in the last 2 games this season, lol. Weird.

I can't remember how much the reward is. I'm probably getting excited for $1M or something pathetic. lol

I hope I didn't waste alot of goals this season by my tactics. I did slightly switch my tactics by moving my second OMC off and adding my talented young F to have 2 strikers. That would be embarrassing if I should have finished first.

Did you use the all out attack? That is unusual. Don't spend all the bonus money drinking Guinness and whiskey.

____________________________________
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.

No I used the same formation I've been using.
I added in my big pimp striker and removed an OMC a couple weeks ago and haven't lost since, but until the last 2 games, I haven't had output near this. I played normal and balanced attack.
They are tempting me to try next season, but I know Div.3 will crush me.

Well I finished in 3rd place in 5.44, two points out of 2nd (with the same number of GF/GA). I actually went 1-1-0 against the two teams that finished ahead of me so neither got a win on me. I have the league MVP again which is nice, he came in second in goals but tops in productivity and MoM. I also managed to meet all of my season goals again, so that money should be nice for TG/YD upgrades. Really hoping I get a luck promotion and some wins so I can enlarge my stadium.

I would be surprised if you don't promote from Div 5 to 4. Usually there is enough room to move several top performing third place finishers up to fill in the inactive/banned spaces.

So in my first season i finished in second in my div 5 league going 21-6-6

so what happens between now and the next season and how bad am i going to get beat in div 4

Depends on your squad, tactics, and what group you are assigned.

____________________________________
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.

Who's your team rlag? We can take a look and give you some advice.

BTW, if anyone is interested I'm pretty certainly going to be selling my 20* MR in about three weeks (when he turns 18). Currently 17 yrs 9 mo and almost 38k ASI so he's gonna be expensive

Promotion boys

I'll be seeing you guys up top again soon

My team is FC 12th man i am in division 5 group 61

Champion of 5.70

i think our season is done, but we only played 5 games...

is now a good time to upgrade facilities? i can't earn any TV or ticket income, so i'm hesitant to upgrade both YD/TG to lvl 2. if i don't upgrade facilities i'm thinking about buying a DL (i don't have one on roster) and new GK, while selling off an older guy or two that i don't plan on using.

i only have $10M cash now that I've upgraded YD/TG to lvl 1, signed 2 new scouts, a new coach, and currently paying for another coach search.

I have been playing for 6 seasons now, and can't get past mid level of D4. Team name is BSIMTIM FC. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

HatTrick, go ahead and wait till after Monday so that any upgrades you make won't get billed for maintainence on this week's finances. You'll also get a season bonus on Monday (or whenever the site comes back up, usually within 24 hours) so that'll give you a bit of extra cash. Get your YD and TG up to 4 or 5 ASAP though, for the first few levels it's really cheap to maintain.

rlag, you've got a solid starting point there. For now your GK Ramsey is good enough, Waller isn't bad either. You've got some good midfielders and a couple decent strikers, I'd say you might want to look at least one decent DC to start with. Now is a good time to buy, be looking for a guy with good strength, marking, tackling, and heading as well as decent pace.

bstim, one thing you can do is start pruning your youth a bit, anyone over 18 with under 100 ASI can just get fired as they're not going to amount to anything. You've got a few really solid DCs but you need some outside backs to support them, you can pick up some cheap foreign players there who will be decent (look for pace/marking/tackling) and I bet that'll greatly reduce the goals you give up. You could also use a good GK, Mpohoridis is decent but he's probably about to retire. You want a guy who's 14+ in handling and reflexes with decent aerial/pace/1v1 skills too. After that I'd say you really need a goalscorer, Balla is decent but he's a bit lacking in finishing and strength (and he's about to retire).

The big thing to do, as I've been told and learned firsthand over time, is that once you have a solid core in place (good GK/DC/FC) start just upgrading a position at time, find your weakest spot and replace them with someone who will be one of your best players. Then go to the next weakest spot, etc.

I was fortunate to win my final match and survive relegation from 3.6. The good news is that 10 of my starting 11 were under age 24 last season, and as they gain routine they should play more consistently and deliver better results.

Still could use a stud striker but who couldn't?

The other good news is that my reserves side finished third on 72 points with a +37 goal differential in Division 5, so I've got decent depth.

This was my 8th full season in TM and it gets more interesting -- and fun -- the longer I play. My advice to any newbies out there is to stick with it ... TM is a long-term game and it takes awhile to develop a club.