Hattrick Season 67

[UncleIan]

I had to throw my teams together this week, real life interrupted, so didn't have much time to set orders and fine tune things for the cup and league. Still, it looks like I managed to get all my trainees correctly slotted in so that was good.

A quick review of the league game suggested I had the upper hand, certainly possession wise, so I was fairly relaxed about that, not quite a PICable home game, but close, so a PIN 3-5-2 to give a steady back line to their expected 2-5-3 (with rubbish defenders), I bossed possession, and ran out 4-1 winners. On to the cup and first time I looked they seemed far too strong, but on second go turned out I'd actually take midfield comfortably on a PIC with the B team midfield, and with a mix of A team in the rest of the team, I should be okay. I wasn't wrong, for once, rolled out 3-0 winners despite an IM (my worst, luckily) being sent off on 20 minutes, and an A team WB coming off after 21' injured and his replacement was relatively pants. Chances were still 7-4, so a result only slightly harsh on them.

We're now up to third in the table, on six points, as are 4th and 5th. 6-8th all on 3. We have another home match next week against a monster defence CA team, shame my best striker is injured, but it's going to have to be a 2-5-3 banzai against them.

In the cup, gulp, next week's opposition are currently 2nd in II.2. Knocked out former Fool Gillamtasary in the last round, and looking at their ratings, um, well, looks like my cup run is over, "They have the edge"? "They'll pound us to dust" more like. Still, making R6 is not too shabby, nor is two home games. I'll take that.

Ian

[Bink333]

Busy week for me.

On Monday I had my first experience in the Masters and it was brutal. I was facing a team with a near identical m/f plus attack based strategy, so felt I had no option other than to give it everything, and on neutral ground (in Vienna) we had a divine m/f with 54% of the ball.

Both of us had set up in a 2-5-3 with no meaningful defence, so it was about who could score the most, and we missed far too many, as we went from 3-1 up to 3-3, and then a flurry of goals in the last 5 minutes left us out and 6-3 losers. 3 credits spent on a 20x replay (the first time I've ever done that) which concluded that statistically that we'd have won 17/20 with an average goals scored of 5.9 to 3.3.

In the Cup I was playing the team that knocked out fellow Fool Rockingham Arms 2-0 last week, and needed to play PIC to recover from Monday (negative effect of MoTs on TS in the Masters is half that you'd normally experience), so pretty much stuck with a full first team to make sure. Foolish revenge was duly exacted with a 9-0 thrashing of the upstarts. We had 64% with a brilliant m/f, but their m/f was 2-3 levels lower than against Rockingham, which confirmed my theory that they must have MoTsed last week.

Next week looks do'able on a PIC as well.

[UncleIan]

This weekend's opponents were a monster defence team, who nearly always counter attack, irrelevant of respective midfields. They load up one wing attack, and that's it. I knew what I'd be facing, so no real decisions to be made, a 2-5-3 with no CBs, see if a good banzai can break down their wall.

Really, it was a game of missed chances more than anything, first half had three reported misses for each side, 0-0, we had 67% of possession, but attack ratings were only 40%, I'd accidentally set one of my strikers to be defensive despite only having inadequate playmaking, oops. By 75' they'd had four CA chances and fluffed them all, then finally on 80' we banged in free kick. 1-0 final score. Phew! Close one that! Chances were 9-5 to me, so a fair, if low scoring, result.

Meanwhile, away from the normal kind of score lines you get in the real world, another match in our league finished 9-3. Sounds like they both sent the U9 sides out. First place continue their unbeaten march, and we stay third, six points behind, and five ahead of 7th, but there's only 4 points between 2nd and 6th. Still pretty tight. I play 6th and 7th over the next four weeks, I should be, actually, no, I'm not going to make any predictions.

Roll on the Tuesday night cup game, my opponents lost 7-1 at the weekend, hoping that has knocked their confidence, though their defence is also mighty, so while I may have the edge in midfield, I may not, they're quite unpredictable, having played 3-4-3 4-3-3 2-5-3 and 3-5-2 over their last four matches. I guess I should just put out my strongest team, set penalty takers, and hope for the best.

[Bink333]

I was at home to the team in 6th, who'd won a qualifier to promote back into the Prem. They've won the title twice before, and perhaps I should have been a little more in tune with their manager's thinking about avoiding relegation.

I opted for a fairly typical 2-5-3 (playing creative) with 1xDF 2xIMTW 2xWTM combo and two normal (as opposed to offensive CD). The CD decision was based upon an expected 4-5-1 to cover off their central attack ratings. I was confident I'd win possession comfortably.

Turns out I was possibly a little over-confident. At kick off they were in a 3-5-2 and had mythical m/f one sub level above me. After they scored a corner-head SE and a normal chance to go 0-2 up, we replied with a quick SE to claw it back to 1-2 but by then I'd realised I was in a tight spot as I had conditional orders to add to side attack at the expense of m/f in the event of not being ahead after 60.

At half time it was 2 chances each and no change to the scoreline.

It turns out that they too had conditional orders to sacrifice m/f for attack ratings on 70 minutes, so this part of the game became quite a nail-biter as we scored on 50 and then 53 minutes. All it would have taken was a goal from them in reply to hand them a bigger m/f % advantage and irritatingly we'd been missing chances, meaning that they were overdue to get some as the team with more m/f. 60 minutes came and went, with no loss to m/f ratings because we were still in the lead. On 70 minutes they swapped their OCD for a forward giving us a 2 sub-level advantage in m/f.

We bagged another SE in the 73rd minute to take a 4-2 lead (which I theorize to have been the extra SE chance as a result of my playing creative), but we'd now had 7 chances to their 2 at this point, and I figured that their possession should, by rights, give them another 2-3 chances.

Sure enough they got a 3rd chance on 79 minutes to take it to 4-3.

And then the longest thirteen minutes of the season rolled by as no chances were reported. They may have been stiffed on chance allocation but my conversion rates were pretty rubbish scoring 2 of 5 normal chances when my attack ratings were around 60%-69% across the board.

It still feels like I dodged a bullet, my opponent looks to have MoTsed and had identified me as his target to beat (a six pointer) to avoid auto-relegation. Had he won I'd have been just above the relegation line, but as a result of my win, I'm up into 2nd, 1pt behind the leaser (who drew at home).

I also decided to buy myself a man-marker on Sunday morning. He'll make his debut in the cup tonight, and as he's only good for one thing, he'll be doing that.

[Donut102]

Bad luck in the Masters Bink.

I was knocked out of the secondary cup last week, so focus on training now.
Straight forward 6-0 win at home for me. Still in 2nd, 2 points off the leader who I next meet in the last week of season.

Bot next week.

Switched training to Passing from PM for the next 16 weeks or so.

[UncleIan]

The cup. Round 6. Me - 3rd in my IV league v Them, 3rd in thier II league.

I had set a team, but had a little time yesterday, so was carefully looking at previous matches on the very nice "review" page on the match orders, and the little predicted ratings thing on the team orders page...I figured, you know what, I can probably have them in midfield, particularly if I PIN. My relative attack v defence ratings will be pish, but what's this? They lost 7-1 at the weekend? And the ratings didn't suggest they were saving themselves for the cup. So that's their confidence shot. What the hell! Let's roll the dice, see what happens, let's PIN, set penalty takers, give it a whirl. Faint heart never won fair maiden.

After just 11 minutes, my striker had a positive experience event, intercepting a clearance and volleying in a goal. Then we missed a chance, and scored another with a free kick after half an hour. 2-0! Early days though. 2-1 half time, and we had 54% possession. My opponents came out all guns blazing and quickly equalised. A few cards and a missed chance each was the rest of the second half. Extra time! It all kicked off on 97 minutes, when one of their thugs did one of my defenders, his replacement was a youngling, untrained, a poor replacement, but still, a minute later, GET IN! We score! Then a minute after that, we had a negative experience event, the team threatening to wilt under pressure. Yet we didn't buckle, we held firm somehow. 3-2 final score!

Round. Seven. Round SEVEN! We've not been this far for ten seasons! What have we got in store...

Future Intent. Currently 4th in the Premier League. Ah. [goes and looks at previous ratings] Oh. Oh dear. What's this though? They play one Apostrophe Now on Sunday...So if you could soften him up for me Bink? Knobble a few of his eh? I suspect we'd still be dramatically outclassed though. Their midfield was near six full levels (no, not sub levels) ahead of me. Now I'm not sure I was playing all my A team, but even so, even if I go OCD WTM DF etc etc, still not sure I'm going to get a sniff of the ball. Hey ho. Fun while it lasted.

[Eastheath]

a late catch up from me, regarding last week - apologies.

We played a bot and won 7-0 at home on a PIC. erm, thats it. Out of the cups, focused on training again and not losing money...

Still =2nd, or 4th on GD. I expect the GD will be important at the end of the season, as the league leader has 15 pts and 2nd, 3rd and 4th have 12 pts.

Our next game is the other bot, league leader has a bot too.
In rounds 7 and 8 the top 4 all play together in the double headers, 1st vs 3rd and 2nd vs 4th. It will probably weed out the champion elect.

e

[UncleIan]

I was a little worried about this game, away to 6th, but they were only 3 points behind so I couldn't afford to take it easy. They play a 2-5-3 with a decent midfield, so I went with what I thought would be a better midfield and also 2-5-3, let's see who could score the most goals! I was right with my midfield prediction, we had 55%, and both our attacks were outshining the oppositions defence. We had a great spell halfway through the first half, banging three goals in. In the second half they missed a couple of chances, no cards, no injuries, final score 0-3. Chances were 2-5, so a fair result I reckon.

We stay in third, but first managed to slip up, not sure how they lost 3-0, and not sure how they've gone from a brilliant midfield when they played me at the start of the season to a passable one this week. Oh right yes, 5-4-1 not 4-5-1. They looked a little robbed I'd say, lost possession by 5%, CA with two decent attack ratings, and the opponent should never have scored with their attack v defence percentages about 25/75% Hey ho, I'm only three points behind them now.

The Foolish Box is reserved for tomorrow night's cup game when we entertain premiership opposition. I'll try not to cry as we take a good thrashing.

[Bink333]

Yesterday's game was against an auto-promoting side that has posted divine m/f ratings at home in both previous home fixtures, and although I'd beaten them in the quarter-final of last season's Cup on neutral ground, it was worth bearing in mind that they had set up with a better m/f than me that day as well.

I decided that I'd try to use my man-marking powerful defender that I'd purchased last week to target their IM. Turns out they saw that coming a mile off and played him as an OCD (unaffected by the man-marking order in that position) still helping his team generate a divine m/f while my 3-5-2 was only on 47% instead of the 50% I'd hoped for at kick off.

I was playing 2xOCD, 2xWTM and 2xDF to optimize the m/f and both of us were playing creative. I'd positioned one quick winger as an IM and the other as a WTM on the side I'd guessted wouldn't have an opposing quick Wb. It turns out my guess paid off as the quick IM ran swiftly past the quick Wb on his side (and only a 25% chance to stop him) to open the scoring and went 0-2 up just inside the half hour. They replied with a goal up the middle and an penalty and at half-time it was level with 3 chances each at 2-2.

We took the lead again early in the second half, and although they pulled one back from a SE corner to anyone they'd had 7 chances to my 4 with the score at 3-3 going into the last 15 minutes. It was at this point that I subbed my powerful defender who wasn't marking anyone and replaced him with my UDF. It meant that both teams attack % figures improved although their central attack % was still around 50% whereas it was my left side attack that was in that ball-park with the middle obviously getting a boost.

In that blue of a last 15 minutes they had a further 3 chances, all up the middle and we had 2 also up the middle, and we converted both, and they didn't convert any. They definitely had some bad luck on chance distribution (6 of 10 up the middle) and conversion (1 of those 6, should have been 3) and I convert 4/4 normal chances which I'd usually expect to have converted 2. HTMS assessed my side as having a 17.2% chance to win, but this time, the swings and roundabouts were smiling on me and we won 3-5.

With the top team losing 3-0, that means I've taken over at the top of the Prem table, by a solitary point.

Just need to make sure I don't get caught with my pants down in the Cup now...

[Eastheath]

the bot game went as you'd expect, 0-8, we stay in =2nd, 3rd on goal difference, and 3 pts behind the leader.
So is time for the big back to back games, our first is away to 2nd then home to 2nd. 1st will be at home to 4th then away to 4th.
Nothing less than 2 wins is likely to do, will therefore have to have a good thunk about planning it.

[UncleIan]

Cup adventure over. No surprise there. Didn't realise round 7 was the last 64, and played at a neutral ground. Nice! 94,000 crowd on a dreary Tuesday night? It's hardly the Madrid derby is it? Hmmm, I guess Hattrick never pretended to be realistic. Still, £365k in gate receipts and £120k in prize money definitely not to be sniffed at. I seemed to have forgotten about training to put the best team out I could, ish, I guess I'd already mentally given up on it, so didn't give it my full attention. And pressed. I really don't remember selecting that as a tactic, bit of an odd thing to do. Bit of a shambles all round really. At least I PIC'd. Funny how the mind works, you can't see a way to win so you compound the problem, or deflect the blame, by not really paying attention to it, like you need an excuse for losing to a Prem team - well I wasn't even trying so....and why am I still in IV after all these years? Hmm.

Oh? You want to hear about the match?...Well if you insist...We were, as predicted, outclassed. They were clearly taking it a bit easy, but still had 65% of the ball, racing to a 0-3 lead after just 24'. We got one back, but they scored again and could "smell victory in the air", 1-4 at half time. Second half they only won 0-1 for a 1-5 final scoreline. Chances were 2-9, so I'm happy we scored.

Time to concentrate on the league...and maybe spend some money.

[ChiliMonster]

Hi. I have barely posted on Lemonfool but you may remember me from TMF as Jenkins, owner of Kevsters. Still knocking around in series IV and training gk for a change.

Anyway, here's the question: the last few days my HAM hasn't been working and the lokesoftware.dk site is down. Anyone know anything about this? If this is terminal, what other assistant managers are recommended? I have found tomattrick. Anything else?

Cheers

[ChiliMonster]

Hi. I have barely posted on Lemonfool but you may remember me from TMF as Jenkins, owner of Kevsters. Still knocking around in series IV and training gk for a change.

Anyway, here's the question: the last few days my HAM hasn't been working and the lokesoftware.dk site is down. Anyone know anything about this? If this is terminal, what other assistant managers are recommended? I have found tomattrick. Anything else?

Cheers

[ChiliMonster]

Hi. I have barely posted on Lemonfool but you may remember me from TMF as Jenkins, owner of Kevsters. Still knocking around in series IV and training gk for a change.

Anyway, here's the question: the last few days my HAM hasn't been working and the lokesoftware.dk site is down. Anyone know anything about this? If this is terminal, what other assistant managers are recommended? I have found tomattrick. Anything else?

Cheers

[ChiliMonster]

Hi. I have barely posted on Lemonfool but you may remember me from TMF as Jenkins, owner of Kevsters. Still knocking around in series IV and training gk for a change.

Anyway, here's the question: the last few days my HAM hasn't been working and the lokesoftware.dk site is down. Anyone know anything about this? If this is terminal, what other assistant managers are recommended? I have found tomattrick. Anything else?

Cheers

[UncleIan]

Hi. I have barely posted on Lemonfool but you may remember me from TMF as Jenkins, owner of Kevsters. Still knocking around in series IV and training gk for a change.

How do Jenkins/Kevster!

Anyway, here's the question: the last few days my HAM hasn't been working and the lokesoftware.dk site is down. Anyone know anything about this? If this is terminal, what other assistant managers are recommended? I have found tomattrick. Anything else?

No, I just use supporter. Seems to do enough for me. An expensive option these days mind.

This week we were at home to 5th, I forgot about cup hangovers, and thought things would be pretty easy, set myself up on a PIC 2-5-3, first half we'd missed some chances, and had 61% of the ball, but it was 2-2. Looking closer at the ratings, we were comparatively better attack v defence too. Second half we missed another couple of chances, but scored with a free kick, luckily, they got nothing. 3-2 final score, chances 8-3. So it definitely would have been harsh and two points dropped had we only managed a draw.

While first march on, seemingly unstoppably, second did manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, what looked like a sure thing wasn't at all, so we take over in second place with 15 points, just three points behind the leaders. 5th now back on 7 points. First are on 18. I'm looking ahead not back.

Oh my days, we're half way through the season already!

[Donut102]

Hi Kevster

Like Ian, I rely on Gold supporter to track training, training estimation etc. Also use a spreadsheet to help plan matches, but HT supporter does most of the work.

I had a straightforward win, 7-0 at home. Still in 2nd.

One player had a red card, an 18 year old homegrown talent that I'm training to be a Powerful Defensive Midfielder. Just noticed his name is "Guard", which makes me smile in a slightly geeky way.

Noticed Bink won easily, and should get another 3 points next week to consolidate his top of the prem position. Well done!.

[Bink333]

Hi. I have barely posted on Lemonfool but you may remember me from TMF as Jenkins, owner of Kevsters. Still knocking around in series IV and training gk for a change.

Anyway, here's the question: the last few days my HAM hasn't been working and the lokesoftware.dk site is down. Anyone know anything about this? If this is terminal, what other assistant managers are recommended? I have found tomattrick. Anything else?

Cheers

Hi

I use spreadsheets.

I also use http://hattrickportal.pro/Utils/PlayerTraining.aspx to keep track of training data to plug into the spreadhseets, and to make 'plans'.

As Donut mentioned I had a pretty smooth ride yesterday 1st at home to 8th with thankfully no over-confidence event, and an opponent who opted to PIC rather than gamble on me getting an over-confidence event anyway.

The risk of that is still there for next week, and I expect they'll PIN, so I'm not taking anything for granted.the s66 and s65 Champions both won to keep in touch. There's a fair chance they'll both win this week as well.

[Eastheath]

In 2nd, away to 3rd. Tricky banana skin type game.
Fortunately came away with a 2-3 win, having led 0-3 at HT. We lost midfield 51/49, and chances were 7 to 4, so on paper we were fortunate but our attack ratings were much stronger than their defence, which I guess did the trick.
The return leg sees us at home, so a repeat result would do me fine.
League leader stays 3 pts ahead, we will need to address the GD (they are +32 we are +22) and win all remaining games to nick that top spot.

As for HAM, I also note it is down, which is a bit frustrating as I had renewed recently, not that it costs much. Not much on the threads to suggest or confirm what is wrong, last time I looked.

and 'Welcome back', Chilimonster/Jenkins/Kevster.

[ChiliMonster]

HAM is back after a server crash.

Kevster