Howdy,
So I'm a N00B in the game. Started my first season. And I immediately became champion. I haven't lost a single game. I did draw quite a few. But I'm still pretty darn happy about that.
Before I continue, here is my team and some stats:
Attachment 7448
Attachment 7449
As you can see, it's not an absolute top team. I just made sure the same eleven played all season. And I never changed formation or tactics. Seemed to work well.
The key points that made this season a success...
I am sure I made mistakes. These are things I'll address in a section below. But here are the things I am sure that contributed to my success in my very first season:
1.) First thing I did, was looking for 3 players in the key positions of my team.
When I started, I didn't read up on the game. So I didn't understand how to calculate if a player was good and so on.
Common sense told me to buy 3 players in 3 key positions though:
Central defence - I bought an older player (30) with 5 stars at my level. I bought him cheap and for a defender, he's been extremely important as he scored quite a few goals and gave a few assists.
Central midfield - I bought a player with 4 stars for the midfield who's 26. Also a bargain and also added some experience. I do think I shouldn't have bought him when I look back.
Striker - He was an 18 year old, 4 starred talent. But looking back, I thought I bought a bargain but I may have bought a cat in the sack. He hasn't improved by even one star. And is an extremely slow trainer. Al though he did make quite a few goals.
Doing the above was pure common sense to me. If you don't have a lot of money, you first need to determine a strategy. Then buy the players for that strategy.
If my strategy would've been to play over the wings, I would've bought different type of players as I did now. Where I decided to play everything through the centre.
2.) I always played in the same formation. And tried to keep the same eleven inside the field. My theory was that they'd get used to eachother and play better and better. Which did seem to work.
3.) Luckily, I had 1 extremely fast trainer. Starting at 3 stars at the beginning of the season, he's now a scout with 6 stars(!). He was my absolute key player involved in pretty close to half of the total goals of the entire team.
Unfortunately, he is now my problem player, too. Which is something I'll get back to later.
However, as soon as I noticed he was training fast, I figured out how to train individual players and i focused a lot of rest points and training on making him better, quickly.
4.) Because I was smart about the way I trained, some players developed quite fast too. And now, by the end of the season, I got several 4 star players who were 3 stars till like 2 or 3 matches before the end.
There are probably a few other things that went right. But I want to keep it to the key things. Which is the above.
My Mistakes...
Oh yeah, I made a few mistakes for sure. Here are the highlights of my mistakes:
- Spending tokens. You probably know it yourself... you get tokens... you don't know how the game works so you start spending tokens on dumb ****. I am honestly sorry I did this. I wasted SO MANY precious tokens on complete BS stuff. And now, at the end of the season, I don't have enough tokens to compete in bidding wars. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
- Spending too many restpoints trying to train the wrong players. To compansate for the slow training, I thought I'd start training my 18 year old talent. Obviously didn't really work out and I spend TOO MUCH restpoints on that. Instead, I should've focused it on the ones that did train fast like my key player mentioned above, who could've had 7 stars now instead, and my keeper who could've been at least one more star up, to.
- Not looking for info about this game before. I only found this forum after I noticed, nearly towards the end of the season (lol), that I didn't have a lot of tokens left. So was searching for ways to get more tokens. And I found this forum.
I picked up a lot of cool extra info here which, if I would've found before, I may have made a few different decisions. Like how I buy players, the token issue and so on.
My (Luxury) Problems...
I got some luxury problems now, too. But also some tough decisions to make. here's the thing:
6 of my players are retiring. I only need to replace 3 though. This is a good thing.
However, now I have my best player, with 6 stars. And I am facing the following challenge:
Despite not having a lot of tokens (like 5 atm), should I sell my star player for the 1.5 million I can get for him and buy a 2 or 3 new players? Or should I keep my star player? And just try to buy 2 or 3 cheaper players?
My star player, even at 20, still trains very fast. When I go up, I know he loses a star but he'll probably gain that star within a few days time.
Also, ditching him would mean ditching the one player who is responsible for half of the goals I made this season with 20 assists total and 12 goals. I am not sure if 2 or 3 4 to 5 star players would really compensate for this loss.
This may not be the best topic to post this. But wanted to present my dillema I'm facing, anyway. as this thread is about my evolvement as a Top Eleven manager. And any suggestions and welcome.
My conclusions...
I made some stupid mistakes. I do feel, however, I made some very correct key choices. And been very focused and disciplined in training my team, making the right players better and keeping an eye on training sessions vs when the match starts. To give them enough time to recover.
However, I am not too proud to hear any suggestions on what I could do better or differently for the next season in a higher league. To make sure I don't go back again after one season. :)
Hope this wasn't too long. And that you're still reading this at this point. If yes... I'd welcome your post in this thread with your point of view. :)
