Hattrick Season 69

[Donut102]

A new season is upon us:

Team

Still in Training mode. Average age of my first XI is just 22, so a few more seasons yet. Currently training PM, but may change to Defending after the cup run.
I have an Excellent Def, Solid Passing youth trainee who will promote in week 6, which will be about the time I'm eliminated from the Cup.
My only other gap in the team is the GK. I currently have £10m saved up, and assuming I change to Def training I'll go out and purchase a Titanic keeper to displace my level 12 goalie. Assuming I can get one aged about 19, the new GK will be part of the training scheme.

League

Still in V, which is fine whilst training. I won the league last season, not because I played particularly well but rivals took points off each other.
If I change to Def training with 5 at the back, I think my fans will be disappointed this season.

Cup

R4 last season - target R5.

HatStats

Record of 348 last season. Hope to achieve 360.

Coach

Excellent coach, inadequate leadership. Plan to replace when he drops to poor, and already have a Solid leadership ready to take the role. This should be start of season 71. I could change start of next season - not really sure when to change. Any insights fools?

Cash

£10m in the bank. Save £3.2m for new coach (worst case), leaves £6.8m for the GK which will be more than enough. Generating profit of ~£1.3m per season, before player trading.
Stadium has 62,000 capacity - about 27 x fan base. A little too big, so no plans to expand. I could destroy capacity to say 25x, which would save £2k/ week or £32k/ season - it doesn't seem worthwhile

[Bink333]

Team in England

This week is week 1 of Training mode. I have bought just 1 trainee, a solid leadership Tunisian 17/35 powerful who will become a powerful forward*. My 6th trainee will also be a powerful forward prospect, but he will not promote from the YA for 22 weeks. Currently training wing, but will be looking to balance training around core skills for the next 22 weeks, before the heavy focus on scoring and PM begins. I think I only need to buy 2 more trainees, ideally English and ideally one will be quick and amazing, the other another powerful.

League

Dropped into II, plan to finish 8th.

Cup

I should get 2 bot rounds, 3 if I'm lucky. I'll target R4.

HatStats

No interest in hatstats in training mode.

Coach

Excellent coach, passable leadership who should drop to inad this season. Plan to replace when he drops past disastrous and reduces coach skill, but the 17y/o shoud be 29 by the time that happens. I have a divine+5 inad leadership home grown to give more experience to for the next rebuild. Other than that the solid leadership interim coach for results post training mode has not as yet been acquired.

Cash

£11.5m in the bank. I've brought in a temporary FD to ensure I can stay above £10m for awhile. Much of this could be spent on trainees, although the Tunisian kid cost me under £400k. I opted out of buying a similarly skilled Lebanese solid leader (unpredictable) before he sold for £1.5m and saw a 'support' spec solid leader sell for £3m at the weekend.

Stadium

Stadium has 61,500 capacity - or will have once my deconstruction order has completed.

* A note on powerful forwards

*I was having an interesting conversation with the Finnish manager over this weekend about powerful forwards. He seemed to think they're 'overpowered'. I asked for more detail and he gave a pretty comprehensive one, suggesting that a properly trained powerful forward could be worth as much as 0.2 goals per game, whereas the quick (best spec under the old SE rules) used to be worth about 0.13 goals per game. He also mentioned that because they''re more likely to have chances to score when your attack is being held off by a good defence, that this makes them particularly useful for unlocking defences to get the 3pts.

Fools take note.

At club level, "properly trained" when facing titanic def/ GK could be approximately magnificent PM/magnificent Scoring, but to keep attack ratings nice I'd suggest 12PM+ -11W-13Ps-14/15Sc as a club level target acquisition. For the NT, I'm probably going to aim for a 16PM 18Sc build with wing+passing=20.

Team in the Pacific

I took the decision last season to switch to Wb training. I have 4, 2 quicks and 2 powerfuls aged approx 21/0. 5% training for the next 5-7 seasons then. The plan this season is to complete the 'quick' value for money SP training on 4xtitanic GK (planned defender training for them all was completed last week), keeping the home grown and selling the other three, using the proceeds to buy 2xquick wings with decent scoring, and a 2quicks+ a powerful forward both quicks with a bit of wing. These players will benefit from passing/PM and the 50% wing training(when I commence the 100% wing training to my Wb) over the coming seasons, and will form the core of an extreme CA team.

League

Finished 5th in IV, expect to be in a similar spot this season. We had two bots last season, and none this time, so I'll need to be on my toes.

Cup

Knocked out R2 last season, I'd expect something similar this time.

HatStats

No interest in hatstats in training mode.

Coach

Excellent coach, weak leadership. Plan to replace when he drops past disastrous and reduces coach skill, but the 21y/o should be 29 by the time that happens. The solid leadership interim coach for results post training mode has not as yet been acquired, but I do have a mythical xp passable leadership one I've been sitting on for several seasons.

Cash

£1m in the bank. That's just a buffer, but may come in useful once I've started selling players

Stadium

Stadium has 61,000 capacity.

[UncleIan]

Team

Oh dear, I genuinely can't remember what my plan is. I was training PM, then passing, then did probably six-eight weeks of set pieces, which I'm still doing. I've gone and got some fairly young strikers, so I think I'm switching back to passing for a bit, yeah, let's say that. Then probably some more PM training, trying to slot some of the forwards in there somehow.

League

Down from III is [expletive deleted], vague notion they may have been a Fool at some point, that we've played a couple of friendlies kind of supports that. Anyway, last seasons stats suggest they have a monster midfield and too strong for me, so looks like another season of looking behind me rather than up, looking at the other teams I think I could end up anywhere between 2nd and 6th. That I'll probably get hammered in the first game won't help matters, and actually the first four games are all against the stronger teams, so I shall have to plot fairly cunningly.

Cup


Meh, it's just random. Going out in round 5 would be perfect looking at the fixtures, if a bit optimistic, round 3 would mean probably not trying too hard in a tricky away match.

Cash

£4.1 mill in the bank. That's about one decent player these days. Crazy.

Stadium

I have one of those. Seems to be mostly full a fair amount of the time at 60k. Looking at usage I could probably expand again.

[Donut102]

a properly trained powerful forward could be worth as much as 0.2 goals per game, whereas the quick (best spec under the old SE rules) used to be worth about 0.13 goals per game.

I'm training PNF myself. Currently 15 Score, 8 PM - so some way to go yet.

I'd be interested in how you estimate the value of specs in goals per game. If I take the table below as the comprehensive list of "special events", then:
a) how many of them are there per game (I think 2, but is this higher if playing creatively?)
b) how does the match engine decide which SE occurs
c) who gets the SE - based on possession?

Type of event

Quick score
Quick Pass
Technical goes around a head player
Technical CD or WB creates a non-tactical Counter Attack
Goal Unpredictable long pass
Goal Unpredictable scores on his own
Goal Unpredictable special action
Goal Unpredictable mistake
Unpredictable own goal
Power Forward
Sitting Midfielder
Winger to anyone
Winger to Head
Corner to anyone
Corner: Head specialist
Experienced forward scores
Inexp. defender causes goal
Tired Defender Mistake

[Bink333]

a properly trained powerful forward could be worth as much as 0.2 goals per game, whereas the quick (best spec under the old SE rules) used to be worth about 0.13 goals per game.

I'm training PNF myself. Currently 15 Score, 8 PM - so some way to go yet.

I'd be interested in how you estimate the value of specs in goals per game. If I take the table below as the comprehensive list of "special events", then:
a) how many of them are there per game (I think 2, but is this higher if playing creatively?)
b) how does the match engine decide which SE occurs
c) who gets the SE - based on possession?

Type of event

Quick score
Quick Pass
Technical goes around a head player
Technical CD or WB creates a non-tactical Counter Attack
Goal Unpredictable long pass
Goal Unpredictable scores on his own
Goal Unpredictable special action
Goal Unpredictable mistake
Unpredictable own goal
Power Forward
Sitting Midfielder
Winger to anyone
Winger to Head
Corner to anyone
Corner: Head specialist
Experienced forward scores
Inexp. defender causes goal
Tired Defender Mistake

a) The problem with this question is that the change to the SE engine has made analysis if the data a lot harder to unravel with respect to conversion %, as for many SE this relies upon the scoring ability relative to the opposing GK of the player that receives the SE chance.

The relatively easy bit is to understand what sort of distribution of SE chances there is. In the National teams many teams are still dominated by head specialists because if the old SE engine, but there's a higher proportion of specialists in this competition than in most leagues.

In post numbered 17182032.172 some stats were posted about SE chances that occurred during Q1 for the NT teams. It has to be said that scoring skills on midfield and wingers for most nations is relatively poor, and conversion rates against a typical divine plus 1 GK are estimated to be about 75% on a magical forward, less with less scoring, and I'd suggest that a winger with formidable scoring would have a similar expected conversion figure.

Over the 890 games there were:-

227 corner-head (42% conversion rate)
173 quick + 48 quick stopped = 221 (45% conversion rate)
155 corner-anyone
153 quick (pass) (39% conversion rate)
139 tech vs head (35% conversion rate)
52 Unpredictable (positive)
51 xp (negative)
50 Unpredictable (action)
50 Unpredictable (pass)
38 LS (just one of these was converted - showing the difficulty for converting against NT GK and the lack of scoring on most outfield players)
37 xp (positive)
27 wing-head (100% conversion)
15 Unpredictable negative
10 Powerful normal forward (under-represented as so few teams were using them) with a 90% conversion rate.
1 stamina

Quick players had a total of 374 events, so 42%ish chance of one arising, and a similar conversion rate
Head players had a total of 254 events
Unpredictable players had a total of 152 events going forward, and 15 going backward (the mix between IM/Def and 'own goal' was not clear but the negative conversion rate was 33%) the conversion rate into opponent's nets was approx 50%
Tech players had a total if 139 events

Powerful normal forwards had 10 events, with a 90% conversion rate. Ireland, Luxembourg and Finland all used one, and presumably not in every game.

I've asked for them to provide data on chances squashed by a sitting midfielder.

b-c) How does the match engine decide which SE and who gets them?

From the devblog:-

Each special event has its own initial probabilities. These numbers are dynamic and updated during the match based upon line-ups.This means lower chances of events if you play fewer players with that spec.

Having higher % possession means that team will have higher probability to receive the corner events, or to benefit from the experienced forward or inexperienced defender.

All other events are based on the numbers of players each team fields with the relevant specialties. e.g. If you have more quick players than the opponent you have more chance to receive the quick SE. Once an event has been triggered, the chances for it happening again in that game are reduced, with an increased reduction to negative events compared to normal positive events.

If you play creative, the maximum number of SE chances will increase by 1, and if both teams play creative, by 2. A high tactic skill can double the chances to receive the event compared to the opponent. Passing, to a lesser extent experience determine rating, and unpredictable players can double their contribution to calculate the rating.

[Bink333]

There were 39 sitting midfielder events.

It is worth noting that powerful events are not SE events per se, and so the process for determining whether they take place is the same as for other 'other' events, linked to the team match-ups.

[Donut102]

Thanks Bink. I guess with the lack of data you just need to SE optimise and cross your fingers.

[Eastheath]

Team

Its getting on a bit, especially in defence and midfield. Forwards are young however, as that's what I'm training and have been for years. Might get a refresh if the season looks like theres even a remote chance of staying up.

League

We are back in series IV in what has become a regular IV to V up and down see saw performance. We are #7 on most ratings, so to get a qualifier to stay up will be an achievement and #4 or better does not even register on the scale.

Cup

gone are the days when I could get to round 8. Round 1 was a bot, round 2 we just squeaked through 1-2, round 3 and the oppo is a stronger fella so I'm not hopeful.

Cash
Sitting on £3.3m. Recent sale of a trainee scorer for £1.8m is partly responsible for such a high number (high for me).

Stadium

Its 54,000, last few home games it was nearly full. I guess that will recede as the season wears on....

Training
Scoring, has been for years. Have a couple of slots opening and a couple of trainees coming through that will take them.

Career
I joined Hattrick 14 years ago, this week. Best ever season I came second in series IV in 2009 season 37. Seems so long ago!

[Eastheath]

Week 2 -
Well that was a bit harsh. After the 0-0 home opener against my closest competitor to claim 8th spot, we suffered a 6-0 away drubbing by one of the six better teams! Hope this isnt a sign of things to come, as we are actually trying....

We are at home again next week but feel we are simply fodder for the big guns.

[Donut102]

Lost 5-3 in week 1 against the number 2 team in the league. I was at home, but playing the 'B' team

Won 3-0 in week 2. Next week is a bot.

So far predictable and a wee bit dull. Cup should liven things up next week.

[Donut102]

Scrapped through 2-1 in the Cup last night.

Interestingly enough I had two SE relating to my PNF (at least I think so - maybe someone more adept at translating HT match speak could confirm). One scored, one failed. But it was enough to take me from extra time & penalties into a 90 minute win.
My PNF has 15 Scoring, but only 8 PM. My opponent played 3 at the back, but crucially only 1 CD and 2 x WB. Per HT Dev Blog, the PNF special event compares the PM of the PNF to the Defending of the CDs.

As Bink suggested earlier perhaps PNF are over powered.

[UncleIan]

Been on me holibobs. Left on the Saturday before the first match, so had made sure I set the team up for the first three matches, and set a standard cup lineup that wasn't full of players that had actually left.

Match 1 was away against the team that came down from III, they looked a bit tasty, and have a massive midfield, but are a bit weak up front, so I went with a 4-5-1 CA, I lost midfield 60/40 and chances were 8-4. Final score 0-1. I think I was more than a bit jammy there, I'll take it though.

Match 2 was at home against one of the promoted teams, didn't have a lot of time to set it up and analyse the opponent so just went with my strongest lineup in a 3-5-2 and hit submit. Should have taken team spirit improvements into account from the cup, but then I might have been out of the cup, so it was probably right to PIN even though that meant I won midfield by a wide margin and while they put up a spirited display for a while, 3-2 at one point, we then cruised to a 6-2 win.

Match 3, this week, and we were away to one of the stronger teams from last season, 4th I think they finished, again, underestimating my own midfield, I set to pressing even though I had most of the possession, but only shaded 54/46%. Looking at the stats it was a coin toss IMHO, chances were 3-5, yet somehow we cruised to 0-3 win. Another rub of the green goes my way. Nice!

So where does this leave us in the league after three matches? Thanks to other matches, I'm two points clear at the top! Six points clear of 5th. Early days, but I'm more than happy with that.

Next up is a top of the table clash at home against 2nd. Bad news is I'm probably going out the cup tomorrow night. I'll do my best but they've got almost twice my TSI and seem to be putting out a very strong cup side. Will have to have a ponder, and hope I get even more rubs of the green, but I suspect I've used up my allotted luck for this season.

In other, boring, finance news, while I was away three of my former charges changed hands again for big bucks and I got nearly £300k in Former Player money. Nice.

[Bink333]

Scrapped through 2-1 in the Cup last night.

Interestingly enough I had two SE relating to my PNF (at least I think so - maybe someone more adept at translating HT match speak could confirm). One scored, one failed. But it was enough to take me from extra time & penalties into a 90 minute win.
My PNF has 15 Scoring, but only 8 PM. My opponent played 3 at the back, but crucially only 1 CD and 2 x WB. Per HT Dev Blog, the PNF special event compares the PM of the PNF to the Defending of the CDs.

As Bink suggested earlier perhaps PNF are over powered.

Yes. both PNF events, but they are not recorded as SE chances but 'other' chances, in the chance distribution summary. As you spotted from the Dev Blog, there can be some games where the opponents usually play 3 CDs and so you might want to have him on the bench for those games, until his PM improves quite a bit, anyway.

Nice to see though, I'm hoping to have a total of 4 PNF's in training when my lad McCoist promotes from the YA midway through next season. I've got 2, but I still splashed out £4m on a 17y/o quick this week, and hope that the powerful I've got my eye on tonight goes for less.

I'm training wing while I'm still in the Cup my oldies may yet get us through to next week, filling the 6 non-training outfield positions. With stamina at 5% some of the oldies still have inadequate stamina, but I've been taking full advantage of my lofty seeding to get some Cup income & experience gains.

I'm sure it won't last long.

I'm being battered every week in the league, but do have a fellow rebuilder to face soon...

[Bink333]

Well I won 4-6 in the end last night to get myself a R5 Cup tie.

The powerful I had my eye on went for just under £5m but scored 27 minutes into his debut for me last night. The £4m lad was injured after just 10 minutes, but will hopefully be fit to play next week.

I'm expecting to switch training this week PM/Sc underlined by next opponent posting 359 hatstats last night, although they do have a home top of the table clash on Sunday. My HoFable old boys together with 4 young wing trainees pulled 249 hatstats, and I think it is time to put up the white flag on being competitive next week, and graciously accept the extra xp, and a share of the gate. It was a 33k full house last night for £78k, and a possible 44k next week, which I suppose will be about £100k?

My wage bill is under £60k this season, and I've completed my transfer market acquisitions for the moment, and will train and sell a few home growns alongside the 3 powerful + 1 quick forward trainee for the next season and a half, until McCoist arrives from the YA. He's 15/95 today has inadequate wing/scoring with passable/solid potential in both, and had quite a few weeks of Passing training. I'm on scoring+wing attacks at the moment, and will move to PM shortly for the best forwards which is a bit annoying as I've 3 solid PM potentials, including one who has solid wing potential.

It's nice to have a glut of potential stars, but the only one I'm really focusing upon is McCoist, and the rest will just have to fit around them. I'm delighted that this week is 'double training' with the end of season changeover, as now I know where McCoist's current levels are in 2 skills, I'm keen to get on with it.

[Eastheath]

Crikey, week 4 already.
Week 3 had gone badly, to add to the week 2 6-0 drubbing. We were at home and scored 316 vs 276 hatstats, but they came out winners 1-5 to dump us into bottom place.

Week 4 we were away to the team in #6 who could pull better hatstats, and they did, 289 vs 278. Knowing we would lose midfield, we did a bog standard response of going 4-3-3 CA. CA hadn't helped in the 6-0 defeat and pressing didnt help in the 1-5 defeat, but what else to do. Anyway they went ahead 1-0, we equalised, and they went ahead again 2-1. Surely with three forwards with magical/magical/extra-terr scoring ratings, we could grab a few CA goals? We did in fact nick two goals in the last 7 minutes to win our first game 2-3. It feels fortuitous.

The win lifts us to 7th, woohoo, equal on 4pts with the teams in #5 and #6. The next league game is also away, this time to the league leader who is pulling 50-100 more hatsats than ourselves. Another CA beckons, or maybe its Press PIC and pray....

In the Cup, we were knocked out in R3, and have since won a round in the Jason Ivy Cup. We are at home in the next round but it looks winnable.

Also got a pleasant surprise of £160k of mother club money for a former player.

roll on week 5....

[UncleIan]

Classic cup hangover this week, yes, as predicted knocked out of the cup last week. We were at home to second, I nearly PICd but figured my strikers would struggle to hit a pig's [expletive deleted] with a banjo, and so it proved to be. I thought we were going to win midfield by about 60% so went for a 2-5-3 to try and maximise my chances. Basically they beat me 60/40 everywhere else, so maybe it was a fair result, but on the other hand we missed sooooo many chances it was unreal. 1-1 final score, 9-3 on chances.

The good news was that the match engine was clearly having a laugh in our series, another match that was 3-9 on chances, though the ratings looked a lot more even than our match, ended up 2-2, that was 5th v 4th, 7th v 6th ended up 1-3 with chances 7-7, but the real kick in the baws was saved for our recent demotee, who was third, playing away to the whipping boys in 8th, chances 3 - 11, ratings looked nailed on for an away win, final score 1-0.

All this insanity means I'm still top of the table by two points, which is nice.

Next week we're at home to 8th. Hopefully we'll score a hatful. Does the relative position overconfidence "they thought the game was already won" type events depend on having good/exaggerated confidence as well as it being 1st v 8th? Because screwing up next week too will not be a good thing.

[Bink333]

Yes Ian, high confidence means you are more likely to have issues with over-confidence. If you're not ahead at half-time, it disappears though, so if you can be defensive first half and go more attacking second half, that might help?

I'll be going out of the Cup this evening, despite my opponent having a top of the table clash, they clearly look to have PICd on Sunday, and I'm training PM on youngsters this week, having had plenty of pops last week. The £4m lad returned to training yesterday, but I'm not risking him getting a longer injury to his knee, so he's on the bench tonight.

My second team recently managed to sell a mythical GK that I'd trained in defending and more recently in SP, for £8m. I bought him in s65 (3.5 seasons ago) for £4.162m, so after fees etc, he's returned £3.278m, although I probably spent nearly half of that on his wages.

The proceeds were initially earmarked for some quick FTW types, but I couldn't find any that I liked. I've ended up buying two PNFs instead, a 25y/o with 15Sc+12PM and a 22y/o with 13.9Sc+11PM. I'll do a week of scoring at some point to get the pop on the younger one, and otherwise the plan is for half a season of PM (both will pop a level), half a season of passing and 3 seasons of 50% wing training. They'll get their first proper test in the consolation Cup tonight, as the team I'm playing (has a suspended PNF), and plays 5 at the back. I'm expecting both teams to dominate defensively, so it may well come down to SE or other event goals such as the PNF. There should be plenty of failed chances from hopefully around 50/50 possession.

The plan now is to sell one more GK, and invest in a couple of QWb who can train 50% wing in league games, and on the wing when I'm training PM/Pass.

Hopefully the new PNFs can help ensure that I finish in the top 6 (6th after 4 games) in the league as well.

[UncleIan]

Yes Ian, high confidence means you are more likely to have issues with over-confidence. If you're not ahead at half-time, it disappears though, so if you can be defensive first half and go more attacking second half, that might help?

Ahh, it's a combination of both, that's ok then, after going out of the cup and only managing a draw at the weekend, overconfidence is not a problem I'm currently having.

[Bink333]

Well I may have been waving the white flag, but my Cup opponent must have MoTsed or something the previous week, because they set up on a 5-5-0 with less m/f than my 3x17y/o could muster... That must have been one of the lowest hatstats games for a R5 tie I've ever been involved in - 228 to the hosts and 198 from me.

They had a big defence however, and I was expecting it to go to extra time and penalties, until a free kick indirect SP situation which resulted in a goal for 17/18 y/o Steve Lyons. The extra money for us getting to R6 should just about cover his transfer fee, as he wasn't one of the expensive ones.

My second team also won 1-0 in the Oceania consolation Cup, but not as a result of a PNF goal, but instead as a result of a quick SE for my IM (which he took care of himself).

[UncleIan]

Aaaaand straight out of the consolation cup [shrug].

In the league we were at home to 8th. "Cakewalk!" I hear you say, well after a cup exit and a league draw I wasn't so sure, okay, I was fairly sure that I'd probably not get an overconfidence event and that I could PIC and I should be okay. Lined up in a particularly boring 3-5-2, with no repositions at all. By the end of the first half we were 3-0 up, went 4-0 up, all normal chances, then got a penalty, two free kicks, and a corner/header special event goal. If you've not kept up, that's an 8-0 final score, including a hattrick for one of my midfielders. Nice.

Obviously that keeps me top of the league, but it gets weirder, 2nd and 3rd both drew with other teams, so now I'm four points clear of second. The middle season four games are away to 7th then home to 6th then reversed, so I'm thinking, no, no, early days yet, bad luck can strike any time, oh I can't help it, I've just looked, I'm above the auto-promotion line. That's probably cursed it.

Oh, and if anyone wants a golden oldie, be quick, sells at lunchtime. Someone's probably getting a bargain, nearly 32, brilliant def. & pm, solid passing, divine SP. playerId 393908572 Kornel Salyi.