Tips for new joining managers

A few tips to build a title-winning squad for your first season:

1) With the starting 5m+ cash at start, reserve about 2.5m to 3m to buy a 90%+ 18yo AML or AMR FT. Best to acquire the winger with 10T or less, so your remaining budget could buy another 5 young 21-year-old players (18-21yo players who improve fastest could gain 13-15% throughout the season)

2) Build your team with a formation of 4-1-3-1W-1, 4-5v-1 (5 midfielders, with 1 DMC, 2 MCs, 1 AML & 1 AMR) or 4-1-4-1 (if you could get a 18yo FT ST under 15T instead of AML/R). With less attackers but being the best player, it is highly likely the best attacker could get more motm rewards and score most for top scorer award too.

He will remain as 1 of the best scorers in your team for at least 8 years (when maintained well), so please invest wisely onto him and make sure he has 95%+ conditions for all matches (to max chances of scoring late goals with high conditions for more 4% motm rewards).

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3) There is a new 7-day check-in bonus of 5* ST on day 7 from this season, so it would be best to buy some good defenders first and win all matches in first 6 days with a defensive and counter formation (as above), then get the free 5* ST to compliment the team. Would save a lot of Ts and resources this way.

4) Make sure you watch and save the 25 greens everyday and also the other 13 for money (2 other ads are best used to keep team player bonus max)

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5) Upgrade facilities to get youth academy to the next level ASAP, as your team could benefit from having an extra free 18yo youth at the start of next season

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6) Try to unlock and upgrade certain drills earlier - Skill drill (Attack - to minimise conditions lost for team player bonus maintenance), video analysis (probably could get that by middle of season 1 when focusing on getting defensive drills) and upgrade Pass, Go & Shoot ASAP (most attackers and midfielders would improve a lot quicker with this drill earlier)

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7) To maximise training experience gained to level up drills asap and also pre-plan to fulfil next season’s special sponsor tasks (such as new SA, new role [1 of DC, DMC, MC, AMC or ST, until now], 3-5x player-position training together, etc.), it is best to get 1-2 3-flank-roles 40%+ 24-26yo player (can train any att, mid or def with 2 multi-role + 2 of the rest for tpb) and some 5-6 24-26yo 40%+ sole-role DC/DMC/MC/AMC/ST (so they can train for 2 additional roles & SA each until retirement). Budget about 60k max each would be affordable.

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Could make use of current squad of 24-27yo to start the role & SA training (selling them gets so little money vs tasks completion for 5-8 seasons for lots for rewards). 28-34yo should be planned for selling before season end to be replaced by 24-26yo, unless money is running so short that saving money for first teamers is necessary.

Hope the above helps you getting started.

Very important update addition (MUST READ by new clubs):

- Shortly after the initial tutorial is done, the auction function will be available. And from that moment onwards, please ensure you would at least go back to the auction section every 2 minutes at least (or best to just stick to the auction section except going to ‘ground’ once to upgrade a facility which takes 4 hours).

That is because the system will very soon be generating 2 to 6 of 19yo-21yo players of quality from 60% - 99% randomly onto our auction list where only us would be the possible bidders. In addition to the initial 6* 22-24yo 80%-85% MC with SA (You really should keep refreshing app until the auction player is a 22yo MC with playmaker SA), these auction players costing 1T each only will be the core members of our squad with minimal T-cost. Please ensure you have spared sufficient budget to buy a possible 2.5m-3m FT ST (Fast trainer) and other positions to replace those especially weak starting players, when trying to buy the relatively great-value 21yo & 75%+. 19yo may be best avoided to keep more budget in cash for more better players as a team.

It would be really appreciated if you could add my invitation code (within settings):

N1TORD1W8EJG4F

Thanks in advance!

Just bump once for additional must-read update for new clubs.

Best Tip? Leave the game as fast as you can!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by Ralf Ruder

Best Tip? Leave the game as fast as you can!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Absolutely!!!

Sent from my SM-A415F using Tapatalk

Your tips are excellent, really. It seems you can do much better now in the first days than I did when I started playing years ago.

But how many new players will find this forum first, before they decide to start playing? So what is the use of this post for new players?

Nevertheless, I think it is a useful guide for every player that wants to start a new team.

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Originally Posted by Guido van den Berg

Your tips are excellent, really. It seems you can do much better now in the first days than I did when I started playing years ago.

But how many new players will find this forum first, before they decide to start playing? So what is the use of this post for new players?

Nevertheless, I think it is a useful guide for every player that wants to start a new team.

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You are so right that new starters these days get so much free stuff. ie. Free 20yo 75-79% DC & 22-24yo 80%+ MC at start, and then free 84% ST at start of day 7 (which easily costs 15T in auctions for levels 1 & 2 still). Then another extra 1m plus 10+ packs each with the starter event. That’s why my starter freeloader team can even join a gold1 association on day 4 with so much resources to invest in, which is unimaginable by any means before.

Maybe I should post this onto the comment section of TE app, but then those who wants to play football manager would install straightaway as well. Well, I am just trying to update all new and current managers who has just started or will start with the new nice freebies, so they would have their starts easier. Kind of a responsibility as I did learn so much from all the fellow forumers when I started back then. :o

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Originally Posted by HeavensAAA

You are so right that new starters these days get so much free stuff. ie. Free 20yo 75-79% DC & 22-24yo 80%+ MC at start, and then free 84% ST at start of day 7 (which easily costs 15T in auctions for levels 1 & 2 still). Then another extra 1m plus 10+ packs each with the starter event. That’s why my starter freeloader team can even join a gold1 association on day 4 with so much resources to invest in, which is unimaginable by any means before.

Maybe I should post this onto the comment section of TE app, but then those who wants to play football manager would install straightaway as well. Well, I am just trying to update all new and current managers who has just started or will start with the new nice freebies, so they would have their starts easier. Kind of a responsibility as I did learn so much from all the fellow forumers when I started back then. :o

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FB mate I went there before coming here when I first started. Talk to one of the moderators about posting your guides there. My opinion is if you are willing to write such detailed guides, you would probably qualify as a moderator too. Not surprised if they recruit u to join their team to help the community grow

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Originally Posted by Sillybq

FB mate I went there before coming here when I first started. Talk to one of the moderators about posting your guides there. My opinion is if you are willing to write such detailed guides, you would probably qualify as a moderator too. Not surprised if they recruit u to join their team to help the community grow

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The admin team is very dedicated and talented, so maybe I will learn more first. Hehe!

2nd season preparation tips

A steep learning curve in the first season for new joiners, and that probably applies to experienced managers starting new clubs for referral awards (Yes, a level-1 club is short of resources to do what we take it for granted with higher level clubs, so it is not even an easy task to win the league when there are league opponents buying scouts. Hehe!)

You all probably have started to figure out that the rewards from special sponsor event is worth working on, be yourself a freeloader or a premium player. And hopefully you have a good first season and have some proud trophies to show for with your effort put in. :o

You will also be wondering what will happen in the next new season, and more importantly what kind of opponents you will be drawn with soon. Here is a rough guide of what would happen to our teams and some possible in-advance preparations accordingly.

Some key points to note first (point, then followed with suggestion)

1) Promotion to the next level means all our players quality will drop by 20% (1*), so effectively a handy 80% DC could become an easy target in the new season.
a) Players who are not good enough to make first team next season after -20% should be sold before end of season. Their presence in the promoting team would only increase the opponent quality, which makes it counterproductive in keeping them and then also losing 20% value (or more when they are 90%- or worse)

b) When putting players for sale on auctions, please be noted the maximum time required for the sale to go through is 3 hours, so make sure you put them up for sale earlier (preferably right after the last league match).

And there is a max-value rule in auction sale: the sale would only go through when we set the players at the right price (so the players will stay unsold if we set a higher-than-system-acceptable price). General rule is 2,4 & 7 down-clicks from max for 90%-, 80%- & 70%- players. What it means is players of quality 80%-89% can only be sold if we reduce it by 10% (each down-click is about 5% of player value, and system will incur an additional 10% value loss for all players regardless - you could compare the market value and max auction value to confirm), 70%-79% players by 20% and 60%-69% players by 35% [in real terms, these 3 group of players will incur a loss of 20%, 30% & 45%]. You could try it higher (though I did intentionally try many times and failed), but be aware that 3 hours max is needed to sell the players via auctions.

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2) Player value now will be dropped by roughly 20% when they age with promotions too, hence high-value non-core 18-20yo players should be sold via auction to gain as much value as possible to save up a large kitty for new season player purchases (especially when we want to buy 1-2 more new 18yo 80%+ FT as our main players)

A) as above, there is always a balance of value gaining (for players 18-21yo) to buy FT for long term players vs T spent for new players in new season to gain those extra 25% (18-21yo should gain 75% in value when obtained by day 3, and sold via auctions would mean a net 60% gain; new season player will cost about 30- 35% more).

It all depends on how much T you have and could save over a season to decide on whether you prefer to keep all, most, or some key players for upcoming seasons. No right or wrong but just the way how we manage our squad for winning as many as possible.

3) Player age from 18-21yo will improve the quickest, then 22-24, 25-27, and the rest. Roughly seasonal improvements from these player groups is about 14-20%, 10-12%, 6-9% and around 4% for the oldest group. This is one of the key factors if we decide to keep or sell some of our current players (there are always exceptions where a few players always over-perform over their quality, and those should be kept even if their quality can only make it onto our bench and could help winning games from behind)

A) Unless players are key personnel, those age 21 & 24 should be sold by season end as they will improve significantly slower in the new season (exceptions are high* reward players who can still be first teamers)

4) Greens should have been saved up throughout the season to about 600+ when we watch the daily 25 ads and attend our all matches. Reds and blues may be running low due to participation of special sponsor events and drains with key title deciders and earlier cup final too.

A) The 14-15 ads we use to get money from should be changed to getting reds (to prepare for next season’s injury) or blues (if totally running out, it may be better to save some for boosting the best finisher to win the first 2 legs of cup round in day 1&2), and then change back to getting money when new season starts.

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5) Quality of opponents in next season’s draw will be based on the AvQ (Average Quality) of the best-14 in our squad plus the upcoming free 18yo youths from our Youth Academy.

A) So when winning early quadruples is still very possible with fairly good teams, it could be a good idea to just keep several key players plus the rest of team to be made up by 24-27yo 40%+ players (special sponsor tasks in new role, new SA, 3-5x certain position training, etc.), and sell off the rest for funds to buy new players in the season instead. That will guarantee an easy draw which means saving greens (can still win matches with slightly poor conditions) and blues (winning matches by 5+ goals is quite easy too).

Further important points:

A) New season refreshes shortly after GMT 2am, so make sure you complete all your player sale a few hours before that.

B) As new season will have all conditions reset, best practice is to exhaust all players to 7.5% (train all players to 31%, then a very easy drill to drop the last %, then 6x very hard drill for the max 22.5% - there is a RNG which could incur a max 1% extra condition loss for drills which costs 3% or more, so the safest way is do it to 31%) right after the last conditions refresh before new season refresh. Easily 1k+ conditions training for the team (0.3-0.5% quality rise) and that is also a lot for levelling up drills.

Needless to say, all players we sell should also have been exhausted this way to gain as many training experience as possible too.

C) This is the last season before new level 1 & 2 managers would join the auction market for all (except level 1 & 2), so it is in your best interest to buy the most important FT at reasonable T-cost in the upcoming start of season 2. That will become a 50T+ market for a FT (value would be 70%+ over base market value, which is unaffordable even for the best money-making managers), so be very wise and snipe up FT and other key players at start of season 2.

D) By now, you probably have settled down with a favourite attacking and another defensive formation after tasting the KoK and tour stages events. You also probably have experienced certain matches when the best finisher goes missing, so that is where you may want to train up a 2nd attacker to compliment the 1st to get results consistently.

Another good option is a GK, DC or DMC. It may be wise to buy a low-T 2nd-choice FT instead when available with luck.

E) Make sure you pick the most needed position for Youth Academy before new season starts. Typically, we should choose DC or MC, as these 2 are the most T-expensive in auctions. Special sponsor rewards could grant extra quality and additional role coach - an improved 75% DC/DMC or MC/DMC is extremely handy to start new seasons.

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F) With drills, it will be ideal if we could have both PGS & Press the Play (both 1st drill of attack & defence) to Pro level. It will greatly increase our players improvements for season 2 and also save more greens when we powertrain our new FTs too.

G) Facility- wise, upgrade everything else first before finally doing the stadium. May upgrade youth facility earlier too to gain an extra slot for more free new youths.

H) Our team needs every bit of finance needed, so it is best not to renew any player contracts until necessary. Players who would be out of contract in the season after can sign new 2-year contracts in the first 7 days of a new season (eg. My 90% ST bought in season 1 had an annual wage of 10k, and by the time when he improves to start season 4 at 120% and signed a new 2-year contract at start of season 4, his wage becomes 270k!)

I) Injuries in these last few matchdays to players, except our main FT and few key players we would bring to next season, could be best left untreated and immediately put them for sale on auctions (amount as suggested earlier). The equivalent amount of ads could get another 200k+ in a few days’ time.

All the best of luck for the final matches for league title and enjoy the exciting new season! ;)

2 weeks into 2nd season, and time for a quick few suggestions:

A) With the tour event, it may be very difficult to win the final prize with current squad quality when key players’ best white attributes are still not exceedingly strong (250%+).
Formation suggestion for the 8 stages:
1) 4-4-1-1
2) 4-1-3-AML/R-ST(skewed same side with winger), with midfielder without winger flank slightly pushed forward to control extra MR(L) & AMR(L) area
3) Same as 2), except midfielder without winger flank moves to MC region to mark 1 MC, MC mark another MC to leave our flank with winger free
4) 4-1-4-1AM, 4-1-3-2AM or 4-1-3-1-1 (AMC[s] & ST pulled back to dominate MC & AMC areas, and flat back-4 squeezed central)
5) 4-4-2AM (flat back-4 squeezed central, 2 MC moves slightly back + 2 AMCs to MC region to win via counter via MC area domination)
6) 4-2-3-1AM, 4-1-3-2AM or 4-1-3-1-1; concept similar with 4), but all players move back slightly to compensate further for quality disadvantage
7) 4-2-2-2AM (via central) or 4-1-3-1-1 (similar as 2)
8) 4-2-3-1AMC or 4-1-3-2AMC
(Both level-5 and level-2 teams won first 4 matches with the suggested formations with 4+ goals in all those 8 ties)

Typically I would win the first 4 stages on day 1 or 2 (depends on the full team on 99% conditions and full morale when there is a 1-hour gap between an upcoming match and the last refresh before that, with ideally on-fire status on best attackers gained from previous match). Can decide to claim the free 5-7* player immediately (likely needed for level 1-3 teams; level 4+ could wait to claim on day 13 after asso draw is made to gain a very significant advantage in asso 2nd round with luck of 6-7* player).

Similarly, that is why final 4 stages could be played on either of final 2 days of event when our team quality would improve by up to 4% for a full 18-21yo players team (compared to day 1), hence quality gap would be narrowed from 20% to ‘only’ 15-16% when key white attributes of best few players could also have gone up by 10%, and possibly more for best finisher who may have got multiple motm 4% on key skills too. Can also choose to try luck with special sponsor on-fire status rewards if CL & Cup finals are expected to be easy.

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Luck still is needed for final 3 stages, and if we could win the 8-9* 7-day loan player with a full 28-man squad, then we have the luxury option of only claiming that loan player on day 22 (sell 1 of 28, then sign), so that loan player should help us win the asso 3rd round final, our cup final, CL semis & final, plus last 7 days of a tight league.

B) It is highly likely that special sponsor event would have a task each for 130%+ player(s) to score and assist, as well as a 8-star player, so the most logical and resource-efficient way is to buy a 90%+ 18yo FT at start of each season, then train him to around 128%, so he would definitely get to 130% in week 1 for scoring and assist tasks, as well as 140% by end of season for 8* player task too (best to be ST, AML/R/C, or even ML/R to add special sponsor additional AML/R role to push forward to score & assist)

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C) Similarly, it is very logical to keep a first teamer to a season-ending quality of 120%+ to fulfil the frequent 7* player task as well (train with some extra greens to push to 106% on day 1 of season will do for 18-21yo, or 110% for 22-24yo).

D) As a level-2/3 player, the association function would not be available yet. But as long as your account is linked with Facebook, association captains could still invite you to join their associations if your team is 90%+ and looks balanced. Would find it difficult for gold1 associations to accept level -2 clubs at start of season, but should be more than willing to give you a chance to join after round 1 (free points if you win more matches for the association; your club gets a better-than-usual gold1 association ‘trial’ without reward without full 4-rounds participation - win/win scenario).

Should try your very best in private messaging gold1 association captains/vice captains who posted since end of last season to any recent recruitment threads for the very good in-advance opportunity to start earning extra 50T from end of next season.

(My main level-5 account joined a gold1 association at level-1, moved to a platinum at level 2, then relegated in level 3, and again promoted back to platinum this season; new level-2 account replaces main account in current platinum, with main account switching to another platinum; both clubs winning top spot in round 1 of platinum - this is obviously done with lots of prior experience, and new managers should still get to gold1 for seasonal 50T earlier and stay without too much problem.)

3rd season preparation tips

For most new managers, going far into the CL could prove to be the most difficult and it is completely logical to get 3rd in group stage for a far easier route to Super League glory. Not discouraging ambitious challenges at all, but then sometimes it may be more rewarding with our trophy cabinet when being drawn with numerous superior opponents which seems unbeatable (it is more than likely they are 2nd accounts run by very good and experienced managers for referral rewards).

Some important points which may help you:

A) The most striking difference of level 1-2 managers and above is the auction market. As mentioned, it will become an open market for all managers, except level 1 & 2, so it is very obvious the first 2-3 days with auctions is frenzy and very often some final bids for 90%+ players, or even 80%+ on day 1, are way too unreasonably high (mainly because lots of teams need to fill obvious weak spots to try to get through a tough 1st round draw in Cup).

Therefore, when you feel you have got a very winnable Cup first round draw, then if you have a relative tight budget, say 4-5T for a 75%+ 19-21yo player for intended reinforcements, it may be wise to only bid with 5T after others and stop there. Those saved Ts from each bid will slowly but certainly get your FT budget accumulated.

B) It is actually worth spending some time in observing auctions as level 3 & 4 managers:

1) To gradually determine a precise figure in how much T is a reasonable cost for certain quality range of players, say 75%+, 80-85%, 85%-90% & 90%+, with different groups of positions like ST, GK MC & DC, fullbacks & wingers, and wide midfielders, in different day periods of season, say day 1-2, 3-5, 6-8, etc. (so you could instinctively spot a bargain and bid immediately)

2) FT bidding is fantastic to watch, especially when it goes beyond 60T+ ;), and so it also provides an insight of how much you would need to save up and also jump in with a final bid when the T-cost is proportionate to your team’s needs

3) It was close to impossible to add higher level managers as friends before when you could only access to player profiles of the same level. Now you could click onto each bidder to view, and approximately 1 in 40-50 should be under the same server and could request to add (plus you should also view his league table from day 3 to add the title challengers too). Higher level managers would not mind adding a few lower level managers for easy friendly wins for tasks, while lower level managers should gradually aim to add more of those with a high % win, say 80%+ or even 90%+, as friends.

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Their high win rate, usually comes with a shiny trophy cabinet, is a very clear indicator of their team at least doing something very right, at least in players purchase, players training, formation and tactics understanding &/ even intelligent in-match change of orders and use of subs at right time intervals in tight matches. Forumers here can only provide so much info, and real match handling can be best learned from those experienced managers with good records. Watching their hardly-fought quarters and onwards are well worth the time as a new manager in both learning about tactics and also understanding about how to mould our own team into a more efficient and flexible unit.

Those with lower win rates do not necessarily mean they are poor managers, but it would not be time-efficient for us to identify the better ones from them.

And the additional bonus with adding high win-rate managers is they tend to be rather active, and so would be willing to support our matches in return when we actively support theirs (main reason is learning though hehe). This group would be more willing to come on to just support us in semis and finals when we purposefully support theirs.

C) Season 3 draw would be a bit more harder than the previous, so it may be worthwhile to invest in a few good subs to enable an efficient switch from aggressive attacking to ultra-defensive formations, and vice versa, for protecting 1-goal leads in knockouts and final 30-min changes mounting a comeback.

3-5v-2, 3-1-4AM-2 & 3-2MC-3-2 are some of those default panic-button formation switches in last 20 mins for comebacks. (10 mins is too little for comebacks usually)
5-1-3-1AM, 5-2-2-1AM & 4-2DM-3-1AM are also typical ultra-defensive formations for last 20 mins to protect a 1-goal lead, especially against 10-20%+ superior opponents.

Our first teamers should have some flexibility to enable some of these changes within, and with subs to complete the necessary changes at the right time interval. Match management is more important than pre-match formation settings against the best opponents who are mostly very adaptive.

D) 1 more day with current auctions, so it would be wise to buy all those 40%+ sole-role players for tasks (and manipulation if you plan for that), as well as some cheap 95%+ 22-23yo multi-role players (will become 75%+ in day 1 soon, but T-cost of under 10T may still be cheaper than day 3-5 in new season when that player could fill in different gaps for your team in first week to save you even more Ts in rushing to buy a similar sole-role 75% player then)

E) Make sure you increase your ticket price from start of every new season. Will be worth a lot of money income when attendance goes up to a significant level by level 5-6

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F) Some may already have started doing surveys for free tokens (check for the free token option after clicking onto the the packs if not yet), and if you have some extra 80-100T to spare, the assistant manager recommended player of 2-3roles + useful SA 18yo player may be worth considering. These recommended players are 2nd class FT (a bit slower than the typical max value 1st class FT) which comes with base market value would be very useful for some 5 seasons until age 22.

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Not a cheap option with T-cost, but will help the team enormously in the short to medium run of several seasons when our team is still in the process of saving up greens to build long-term FTs.

As always, hopefully you have won some nice trophies and wish you all a new exciting season ahead! :o

This was super helpful as a begginer very detailed and informative, even though a laborious read for sure worth it, had a lot of great advice on here so far

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Top outlaw

This was super helpful as a begginer very detailed and informative, even though a laborious read for sure worth it, had a lot of great advice on here so far

Cheers

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so happy to hear that! and congrats Heavens for an incredibly helpful thread :cool:

3rd season mid-season suggestion

Counter formation suggestion for stages in the currently live event (depending on availability of player positions):
1) 4-3-2w-1, 4-1-3-1L/R-1, 3-5v-2, 3-1-2-3w-1
2) 4-1-3-1-1, 4-2DM-3-1AM, 4-1-2-1-2, 3-1-2-3w-1
3) 4-5v-1, 4-1-3-1L/R-1, 5-2-2W-1, 5-1-2-2AM
4) 4-4-1-1, 4-4-2, 4-1-4-1AM, 4-1-3-1-1
5) 4-1-2-2AML+C-1, 4-1-3-1L-1, 4-1-2-3AM
6) 4-1-3-1-1, 5-1-3-1AM, 4-2-3-1AM
7) 4-1-3-1-1, 4-2-3-1AM, 5-1-3-1AM
8) Same as 7)

Recommendation is based on having a pretty young team who could improve team quality by about 3-4% in 1 week, has a disadvantage of white skills of most players in final 2-3 stages (with the exception of key attackers with 20%+ white skills advantage against defenders), hence getting defensive bonus could get a clean sheet and win by counter goals when best attackers take their chances.

As usual, I would recommend playing the first 4 stages in either of the first 2 days when our best attackers get on-fire status from our 2 daily matches for the free 5-7* player earlier, then complete the last 4 stages later (ideally on final day 21 at the expense of 11 greens to recover from tpb maintenance for the 8-9* loan player if that player is significantly better than our best MC to start in both Cup final, CL semi 2 legs & CL final, and obviously that we are confident to have a good chance of winning that 2nd last stage).

All I was going to provide are already available here.

Cheers, mate. You just have to do a manipulation, newbies, then you should be Miyagied to the foothills of the Everest.

There is no “playing the right way” in this game. Without a manipulation, it is quite improbable to have the success.

The only one here succeed it within the last five years is Nash. Even I couldn’t do it since the more you are stronger the more your opponents are stronger. Nash was lucky though. Good luck.

-A tip Regarding the formation: DM and AM positions are quite determining in terms of the score.

-Acquire only free loans, buy only the 116% scouts, the young fast trainers from the transfer market and the recommendeds. Even the youths are a rip off.

Update: Edited the posts with additional images for easier reference

4th season additional tips

If you have followed some, or even most, suggestions provided, you should be pretty familiar with how most things work in the game after 3 full seasons.

And here is a few more tips for you to make your team improve even faster and more efficiency, and get more well-drilled in beating opposition easier:

1) Try to max all attack drills and then defensive drills, after unlocking all drills

With seasons of handling a nearly full squad, it is highly likely that most drills are unlocked and very possibly some earlier drills are maxed at world class.

If you look to start powertraining low 40%+ 18-19yo soon, then you should prioritise unlocking all drills;
If you look to do it a few more seasons later, then you should max attacking drills first for max training efficiency as most of our key players are attackers.

2) Change of use of unstorables from cash to conditions recovery

If you have followed my suggestions in buy-train-sell of 1-season players for most of your non-core squad, your team should be having a very healthy cash balance now where you can afford to buy a full team of 21yo 75%+ to compliment your core FTs, plus a surplus of cash to buy 1x 18yo 90% FT as well.

And now when your cash is not as tight, you could stop getting cash from the 15 unstorable ads and switch most of them into conditions recovery instead.

If you prefer to save more greens for powertraining later, then move the unstorables loading time to some time typically in between your 2 daily matches after checking the full fixture schedule, and use most of the 14 (1 for tpb maintenance) to recover players conditions to close to max for the 2nd match of the day;

If you prefer to further boost up your 3-4 key players to make them even better for the medium term of some 5-6 seasons to get most of the titles available, then move the unstorables loading time to either shortly after first daily matches finish or after 2nd match; purposefully overtrain them for 45% (to use 3 unstorables to recover) or 60% (to use 4) with drills which focus on boosting their best key white skills, so over a course of full season they would get even better with an equivalent of some 75-100 greens’ worth of training specified onto making them extremely efficient in their role with enhanced white skills. These few players will become better than the rest of FTs and can play well for 2-3 more seasons with superb performances.

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3) New FA system and rewards

As some managers may have already joined an association earlier for some nice regular T rewards, now we can all join FA early with the implementation of the new system in place (as soon as we reach training level 6, which could be done by day 2 of season 1 with some 23-25yo 40%+ players purchase).

Now rewards will be received after each week, that means we should have even more flexibility in T budget to play with when we like to strengthen our team when T may drop a bit around end of week 1 to start of week 2 when we find quite a few bargains and even FTs with good potentials. With our pretty strong squad, we should aim to join a gold1 association at least or even try platinum when our attackers are becoming well-trained after a few seasons of good performances with decent top scorer awards and motms.

4) Formations, orders, substitutions and animations

With a few seasons in your belt, it is obvious that you have understood the importance of formation and orders: with the right counter, we could have a good chance to beat 10%+ better opposition and even a minor chance against 20%+. As managers, we need to start learning how to set up our team in different kind of defensive shapes of up to 8 defenders plus midfielders in own half to nullify all opposition attacking threats and place our best attackers into the most open opposition space for counter attack and build-up goals. It is an important art we need to learn to be successful in semis and finals when it is very possible we could face very strong opposition when only the right tactics can win us the tie.

Friendly championship is a good training ground where we could try different defensive formations and orders against similar-quality opposition without the pressure of must-wins to allow trials and errors which will help us win the important ties elsewhere. We would always get the 1 green for sub when attending too, so it’s a win-win.

As always, wish you all have a successful season ahead, and even more importantly with a great start with our new FA journey from this season too! :)

Thanks for the great guide! It was interesting to read even though I found it only now while I'm already 4 days into my 2nd season and made some semi-wise investments :rolleyes:

What seems difficult for me is finding these FTs, not because each one is expensive both in T and $, but because you can't know beforehand if he is an FT or not (a higher price for the same % should somehow indicate this, but to what extent?), and can't buy many at once for testing since the budget is limited. So you can't keep non-FT till the end of the season to train and sell for more $ as you need your $ back right now if you want another one, which means wasting money and T (5-10T+ each time) while searching for the One.

For example I tried 66% 18 y.o. ST for 6T + 1.94M$ (which is ~half of my $ budget) but can't tell if this is an FT price or not.
Mixed skills training gave him 58% for 214% condition loss (avg. 3.7% condition per 1% skill),
prioritizing on the world-class PGS takes avg. 3.95% per 1% skill point.

In my opinion this is ok, but not FT (I saw reports of ~3% condition per 1% skills for 4* player). Testing him with the SA or new position seems to be a waste of resources. In this case, should I get rid of him and try another one?

The best thing dont invest for first seasons,save resources and build descent squad.

5th season pre-match and in-match management guide

By now, you have started becoming quite a pretty experienced manager knowing how most basics work and should have assembled a team decent enough to fight for titles and even quad when things go the right way.

With some 4 seasons of matches, you would have come across managers who:
1) only use 1 kind of formation, no matter what
2) uses 2-3 different formations and vary a bit during matches
3) differ in important matches (probably with help) and would actively change tactics against us
4) differ every single match and would significantly change their teams differently and continuously throughout a match (and we could struggle to cope)

Most of you would have understood that formations (macro) and player positioning (micro) play a huge part of the match. However, many of us may not understand how and why the counter formation is derived from. Therefore, here is a simple guide in working out a reasonable basic counter formation:

1) Minimum equal number of our DCs vs opposition STs. Should add extra DC if opposition ST is better, or simply to make our defence more solid (+1 def as abbreviation)
2) When opposition plays wingers (AML &/ AMR), we should also play DR &/ DL to man-mark; could add extra DC or DMC to add defensive power
3) Similarly, when opposition plays AMC, we should play DMC to man-mark
4) We should aim to win the midfield by playing 1 more midfielder than opposition (+1 mid); Exceptions is when opposition plays 4 or 5 midfielders, then we should play matching number of MCs, ignore their wide midfielders and place our attackers into wingers or AMC position along with long ball strategy to bypass midfield line
5) The remaining players after allocating sufficient players to mark opposition then we can place them into the most open space &/ attacking the opposition weakest area or player

With both factors above combined, it is very logical that our best players should be able to play 2 positions to enable change for team shape to be able to form counter formations more effectively.

When we are playing a match, we need to keep checking a few important details (reasons of doing so):
1) match-control bar at the bottom (to identify if change of orders is beneficial to our team)
2) possession advantage (also to identify the same as above, and also would influence on the type of bonus we choose)
3) number of shots (possession advantage should reflect on larger number of shots; if not, our formation &/ orders are not optimal and require changes)
4) proportion of on-target shots (if lower than 35%, it indicates poor attackers’ form, superb opposition defender form &/ unsuitable player positioning - Require formation change, subs &/ orders ASAP)
5) passing success rate (if over 90%+, that means we should go mixed or long for more scoring chances; if under 80%, we should go short to keep better possession to avoid opposition taking control of match)
6) opposition defender ratings (very important indicator - we must change team shape and passing focus to attack areas as far away from that defender as possible when faced with defenders of 7.5+ rating, or else it can be a loss easily)
7) our poorest rating players (so as to prepare earlier half-time, 60-min &/ 77th-min sub)
8) our yellow-carded players (should look to sub asap if suitable [clear exceptions are DC & DMC which are needed to mark key opposition attackers, and our key attackers to maintain threat to opposition - if the live result points to a comfortable win, we should sub them asap to avoid possible suspension or even turning a win to losing with 10-men)
9) opposition formation (so we can change ours to adapt asap too)

Hope the above would help your in formulating formation counters and identify in-match details easier.

Wish you all another fruitful season!