Subject: big games week 14

Are there any big games to watch tonight? On sokker? Who is going to promote? Who is going to throw their game?

Valiant Partizan was a goalies duel. I had Fichaud, Villa and Alfaro out with reds, seca sportingly sat Ortiz for this one. I got an early goal, and an early red but the inevitably destroy.deja.php had to run and we gave up a late one for the draw. Goalies help a LOT more than they used to, a few levels can make a big difference, I would have lost this one 3 or 4 to 1 with my old keeper.

good riddance to season 14

That is interesting, about the goalies. I assume that you have a divine goalie now. My thought was to keep a brilliant keeper - to keep the wage bill down. I was aiming for a brilliant keeper, incredible pace, excellent passing goalie. But, you say that a divine keeper, diving pace goalie is worth every penny?

I was not too surprised to see that Vancouver threw their game today to avoid autopromotion to the Premier League.

Wow, I see that Snowhares and HL Football lost their games today too. Noone wants to play in the Premier League next season. I will be interested to see the updated promotion table.
The qualification matches may be very interesting as well!

Can you, Deja, or Seca tell me why Partizan got sooo much better ratings than Valiant FC in this game and yet the game was so even - with Valiant actually getting more scoring chances. What do the ratings tell us about the game?

I didn't lost on purpose, I played my B squad like most of the season but I have to make changes to have the new guys in for training purposes.

I did not go all the way to divine, it would have cost way too much. But getting your keeper just above the level of the top strikers in your division seems to work well. My keeper also has incredible passing and solid playmaking :) That raised my passing rating one level.

The ratings thing makes me a bit crazy. My teams have always gotten better ratings than results. Mostly because my players are well rounded, meaning that they have no real weaknesses, but they don't tend to have magical+ skills outside of pace. So most of my players can defend, my midfield can shoot, all have formidable + shooting, actually only one is formidable, the others are higher. I also play a tighter formation to reduce passing errors in general.

What the ratings don't count is execution, or the quality of chances. I think that they are pretty meaningless except to tell how well your players executed individual plays. It tells me whether or not my tactics are effective or not in certain areas of the field. Are my best shooters shooting, best defenders defending, that kind of thing.

So by my count, the candidates for promotion are:

1. New West Stamps - 37 pts
2. Bonavista - 37
3. Real Vancouver - 36
4. HL Football - 35

NWS and Bonavista ended up tied on GD at 75 but NWS got the nod for autopromotion by the second tiebreaker, goals for (91 to Bonavista's 85). That's cutting it close!
And HL would have autopromoted if he had won by playing his A team...

The Q games are:

Jalea vs HL Football
TLAC vs Real Vancouver
Surrey vs Bonavista

Jalea is a lock, but the other games could be close...

Wow newer thought it would end up this way.

it wouldn't be a season in this game if my team didn't underperform, nothing new on this front (:

I assume you are talking about the team ratings? These ratings have alot to do with who is doing what in a given match.

My FK taker doesn't have much shooting - he took 2 shots, which brought my team shooting down.

As Deja mentioned I sat Ortiz - which didn't help the passing rating. I also play a striker in midfield for training reasons. The striker has limited PM-pass and no tackling. So he brings down both of the other ratings. Biron also did (at least attempted) quite a bit of tackling in this match - more pain for the tackling rating.