How Will A Young Player Develop?

written by Markov

Question: How do I know how a 15 year old Little League player will develop? What should I train first? Will he have an opportunity to help my club in the future?

My approach to 15 year olds is to first try and figure out what kind of player he will be. Sometimes that is a bit hard. There is a fair amount of random in which potentials increase, and there is a fair amount of random in how effective a player is during training.

When drafted, some might be a borderline flankback/wingback, centre back/full back, striker/OM and so on. In those cases, I usually start training the skills I know he will have a use for in both of his future positions. CO and PA are typically (in this example) such skills. After that, I re-evaluate every player each and every time they increase in a skill from daily training. I never write anything down, and I don't really think about if I think he will be good enough for my senior team until he reaches his (age 19-21) last eligible season for the youth team. Well, I do kick the worst Little League drafts immediately. Low current skills with low potential skills should be kicked and low current skills with high potential skills can (if you choose) be attempted to be sold and then kicked if no team bought him.

If the draft is clearly of a certain type of position, I just start training the relevant skills. To me, it doesn't really matter which of the primary skills I train first, he won't be usable in quite a while anyway, but I tend to try and train primary skills quite evenly if possible. Aim for weak and then dec and so on.

If I want to assess how good he will become, I usually take his currents and add 160 points. (I'm a bit pessimistic and count 70 points current increase as youth, and 15 points each player year after that. I want players to be good enough for subs at least at 27, thus 160 points.) I seldom use any of the youth analyzer tools, I just guess roughly based on experience. I don't think I am very accurate, but at 15 years old, it doesn't really matter.

When the player turns 21, I make a more detailed plan for his future. Potentials will not increase after his 21st birthday, so it's much easier to see where he will be in a few years. If he looks good enough to some day be a player on my senior team, then I try and train him in such a way that he can be a useful substitute on special occasions. This usually means his training is quite unbalanced. Then I will balance him later on, often near the age of 24-25. If he does not look good enough to some day play for my team, I try to guess how I can as quickly train him up to a level (and level up and end training skills at 50, 60, 70 because they show up better on the transfer list) where I will get the most money when selling.

How to make a lineup and buy players

Written by Lee1950

Comment on Tabbing: Do you know how to use your browser’s Tab feature? If so, this would be an excellent time to learn and use it, so you can keep this page open in one tab, while following these steps in another. If you don’t know how to use it, this would be an excellent time to learn, as this ability is very handy.
(I use Internet Explorer, so your browser may work differently, but my guess is they all work similarly. Another suggestion is Firefox.)

If you have a three-button mouse, you can use the center button (instead of the left button) to click on a link, on a player, or on a page and it should open it up in a new tab on your browser.

Alternatively, click using your right button to open a dialogue and click on “Open in New Tab”.

If possible, use the Tab feature and…..

Here is a quick and easy way to win your matches. I call it “Upgrade”.

• Click on "Locker Room" > "Tactics"

Now you are looking at a default lineup for your senior team. Your Assistant does a poor job of this – you are going to improve it: Let’s jump right in!
We’ll stay with the 4-4-2 formation you are looking at. 4 defenders, 4 midfielders and 2 attackers.

• Scroll down and click on the tab “Attackers”
• Click on “R” at the top of the sixth column.

Now you are looking at your best attackers, ranked by the computer from top to bottom, with the best on top. (You should know the Assistant is not as smart at ranking as it thinks it is, but we’ll save that for another day.) We’ll use the Assistant's rankings for now as a guideline.

• If the top two players listed are the same as the two players shown on top of the lineup card, we’ll leave them be. If not, then:

• “Remove” them. By clicking on the red “Remove” text to the left of the player’s name. This will free up a slot for you to add the correct attackers.
• Assign the top listed Attackers to the lineup at the “FW” position. Click on the drop-down box under the word “Player” just above the list of player names. Click on the player’s name you want to assign (it will be on the top two names), and then change his “Pos” to “FW” on that dropdown menu.
• Click on “Submit” under the word “Add” to the left of the “Player” drop-down menu.

Once your two top ranked Attackers are in the lineup, do the same for Midfielders. You will need a Left Midfielder (LW or LM), and Right Midfielder (RW or RM) and two Center Midfielders (OM, CM, or DM). Right-footed players receive a small penalty for playing on the left, and lefties get a small penalty on the right.

Now set your Defenders: a left-footed player, a righty, and two centers.

Don’t forget your Goalkeeper.

Some basic things to consider about assigning players to positions:
• Attackers generally use SC, OP, BC, and AE.

• Midfielders need PA but benefit from all skills, which tend to dictate their usage
• Middies with higher OP and BC are better at RW/LW/OM
• Middies with higher TA are better at DM
• Middies with higher DP play well on the flanks
• Balanced middies can play anywhere, but may be best at CM

• Defenders generally use DP, TA, and AE
• Flank defenders need some PA to be effective.

• Goalkeepers use all five skills, with RE highest, GP second.

Okay – now that you’ve made an effort to optimize your lineup, you should take a moment to look at the result. Check the “Rating” column on your lineup. See any red “awfuls” or orange “poors”? We don’t really want to go into a match with so many bad players on the pitch. Time to upgrade – let’s go shopping! Make a note of the worst rated positions.

Click on “Office” > “Transfers” > “Search”

This takes us to an interesting screen. This is where you can organize your search for players.
Let us say that you need to upgrade your club’s attackers. Key Skills are SC, OP, BC, and AE.

Let’s set up a search:
• The default Player Type is “Outfielders”, so we can leave this alone. ( You need to change it to search for Goalkeepers.)
• Under “curr” set SC to ‘good’, OP to ‘good’, BC to ‘dec’, AE to ‘dec’ and because we don’t want him to tire too fast, set CO to ‘dec’ also.
• Leave the other setting alone, except for “Time to Deadline”. Since you will want to use your new player for your next match, click on the second drop-down menu to select the appropriate deadline – if you have more than 5 days to your next Senior match (they play Sundays), then you can leave this alone.
• Click on ‘Submit”. Wait a few seconds; presto – like magic, there are a couple of pages of forwards (FW) waiting for you to look at.

First thing you should do is look at the “Status” menu on the left side of your screen. The sixth option there is “Rating”. If it says “Talent”, click on it once to toggle it to “Current”. Since we are going to play these guys right away, you are more interested in their Current skills than in their future Talent.

Too many players? Well you can simply select from the first page and ignore the rest, or you can click on the “Search” tab to redefine your search. You can set “Age” to minimum 20 and maximum 32, and that will shorten the list. Set the maximum ‘Average Bid” to $100. Now “Submit” again and see the list shrink. Make sure you are still set to “Current” skill.

Look at the players rated with a green “5”. Probably they will all be an upgrade to your initial players. Forwards seem to be the cheapest players, so you should be able to get a “5” for just a few dollars. I’d recommend not spending more than $100 each for your first new players. Don’t worry too much about how old they are right now, but you might avoid anyone over 35, - just know that anyone with an orange age will be losing skills over time, and will lose them faster as they get older.

Click on the name of a player that you are interested in bidding on. This opens another page. You can see more information on the player, and you can enter your bid here. To bid, type in the amount you are willing to pay for him in the box labeled “Place bid”. You will always need to enter an amount greater than the current “Average Bid”. Double check that you haven’t typed the wrong number, and click “Submit”. You’ll get a confirmation screen…check it carefully and then click ‘Okay” to make your bid official, or “Cancel” to back out.

Place your bids. Then click on “Office” > “Transfers” to see how the bidding stands. If you get outbid, you can increase your bid, or go back and find another player. At this point you should limit your bids to $100 until you get a bit more comfortable with the game and learn a bit more about how the skills function.

You’ll get a message if you win the bidding. You can also check the “Results” tab to see if you won the bid.

Now go back to “Locker Room” > “Tactics” to put him in your lineup. Go back to the transfer list and pick up a couple more players to upgrade the worst positions in your lineup. I recommend upgrading your weakest midfielder and defender before adding a second attacker. Having three capable attackers won’t do you any good without a midfield that can advance to ball to them. You may need to settle for a “4” midfielder as they are harder to find at a cheap price. Then add a “5” goalkeeper.

You should soon be very competitive in your division. Only the teams that are also actively managed and improving will give you any trouble.

Final advice: Save your money. Watch the match reports. Read the forum's Misc & Newbie section and ask questions. Finish the tutorial for extra money. Read the manual.