Subject: Coaching questions

Hi gang. I'm a new player with a bundle of questions. This game reminds me somewhat of a fancier version of EEFL which I used to play (by e-mail!) a decade or so ago...

Anyhow, for the moment, let me ask about coaching. I read the newbie guide so I've been coaching stamina up until now.

1. How long should I coach stamina for? (This is my seventh week of coaching coming up.) On my 21-man roster, I got three players to formidable stamina this week and a fourth is incredible; my entire starting 11 is good or better, and in fact only 4 players are worse than good. Am I right in thinking it's (past) time to switch to something else?

2. Should this "something else" be pace?

3. My best pace coach is "good". Is this good enough, or would it be worth my while to hunt down a better coach? (My team's mean pace is between weak and average, with my starting lineup running the gamut from hopeless to solid.)

4. Or should I coach passing? My passing is worse than my pace, but most of my playmakers have decent (to me) passing. When I'm watching matches, it's almost as painful to watch my players kicking the ball in random directions as it is watching them crawl toward the ball at a snail's pace to retrieve it...

5. For the record, I have a very good head coach (Cannavaro), an excellent junior coach (Weeks), and three average assistants. The best in each individual statistic:

incredible of stamina (Cannavaro)
good of pace (Cannavaro)
formidable of technique (Weeks)
very good of passing (Cannavaro)
outstanding of keeper (Weeks)
very good of defender (Weeks)
outstanding of playmaker (Cannavaro)
outstanding of striker (Cannavaro)

I prefer to use Cannavaro because I have some (hopefully) decent junior prospects coming up the pipe and would rather get the better overall coach working on them. I know I'm probably paying a bit too much for coaching, but I slashed my player roster at Week One to control costs, so I'm doing a little better than breakeven at the moment (thanks to my fans buying extra subscriptions every week!).

hehe stop your stamina training :) For deciding on what to do I would look at the skills of your best players under 21 & see what will improve your squad the most. Have a good look at Solís, Santiago & McCarthy (he's your gk though isn't he). Now with this game a player needs many skills to be effective not just one. So training players will take some time. Pace is a good start as you can train quite a few players & would be a good a start until you figure out where you want to lean your team towards. Now if you do plan on training pace I would try & find a coach with the best possible skill in pace. Personally I don't think "good" is adequate enough to max out your training. The specific skill of your head coach pertains the to skill you're actually training, where as your assistants use their overall value. Make any sense?

So you should find a coach that has unearthly skill in pace, which is what you want to train now like raskal says, and a couple of assistants(not more that 3) that are at least "good" overall I would suggest. Another thing I would suggest is buy some younger players, and get rid of the old players, and start building your team that way. Open up a junior school, and get a coach with the ghighest overall rating that you can afford now, and monitor the progress of your juniors for talent (hidden feature of this game). So if it takes a junior 6-7-8 or more weeks to pop he has no talent, if he pops under that it's good, it all depends on your junior coach too

Thank you both so much for taking the time to reply and look over my team!

There's a coach on the transfer list right now who's formidable of pace, outstanding of passing, average overall, $4760/month, and no bids, so I'm going to see if I can snag him. This is significantly better pace and passing coaching than what I have now. It's not unearthly, but at my current level of development I think he's a bargain if I don't have to pay much to sign him. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

For the youth on my squad:
- I bought Solís for 66K; he's a very good defender and a good playmaker. I have no idea whether I was ripped off or not, but I needed another starting non-forward. All my other players came with the club, except Michaels who's so far the only junior I've trained.
- McCarthy is my starting keeper but he's only average (as is my backup Hagan). His pace is solid to Hagan's weak, but honestly I have no clue what's good in a keeper.
- Santiago is an all-rounder, the only things he isn't adequate-to-solid in are technique and keeper.
- Brooks is a solid defender who can't pass worth spit.
- Sikora has the highest pace on my squad (very good) and is adequate at playmaker and striker. Unfortunately he's way off form right now (hopeless, just <B>up!</B> this week) and I've been using him as a sub.
- Stuart is an adequate playmaker and good passer, otherwise weak or worse.
- Wright is an adequate striker with good technique who otherwise does some all-round suckage.
- Li is on probation, I suspect his talent is low (his stamina has popped less often than anybody else's). After stamina, his best stats are average playmaker and weak passing.
- Michaels just graduated juniors two weeks ago and probably should be fired; his best stats are weak in stamina, pace and passing.
- I have two 21-year-olds, Belanger and Cassano, who do most of the centre field work. Belanger is my best playmaker (very good) who has solid pace and technique but weak passing, while Cassano is my best striker (also very good) who is also solid at passing and playmaker, but his pace is poor.

My junior squad consists of 5 juniors:
adequate (14 weeks to go)
average (18 weeks)
good (18 weeks)
adequate (18 weeks)
adequate (23 weeks)
Are these guys okay? Should I send some of them packing? I haven't kept track of pops on these guys yet but I just added them to my spreadsheet, and I figure I still have plenty of time to determine their talent. (I have 9 spots for now, should I add a couple? So far I've never filled up all my spots.)

A few more questions since I'm here:

* Is 21 men too many for my roster? Too few?
* Maybe buy an older better keeper and sell McCarthy?
* Should I bring Sikora back into my starting 11 despite his awful form?
* Does this forum use bbcodes or some equivalent, or do I just code stuff up in HTML?

You want something close to unearthly. It will best for your team. You can look for trainees who need pace training. You'll be able to train 22 players each week with pace. I would look for trainees with solid or better (depending on your cash reserves) in their best skill. Remember middies need pm, passing & technique.

I wouldn't spend money on another keeper just yet. But someone else might direct you differently. As for you juniors I would keep an eye on them & see when the "pop". If it's more than five weeks between raises I would drop them.

In the top right corner when you enter the forums click on FAQ for editing for your posts.

If I'm going to be training pace, should I consider selling players with decent pace and buying players with some other good stat and bad pace then? Or am I thinking too much? (-:

I've just been looking at the transfer list and getting an unearthly pace coach is going to double my coaching wages!

You don't have to buy a coach you can try & obtain your own but yes his wages will be slightly higher :p I wouldn't go selling all your players just yet. It might be worth training some of them up first & then listing them. But I would be in the look out for some decent trainees in the mean time.

Don't be alarmed if you lose some money after the sponsors, you will make up for it when you sell out your stadium....21 players is all right, get rid of some 30+ players( if you have them) on your team and find young trainees....if you don't plan on getting plus, there is a good tool for monitoring your players...it's called Apollo, look for it on the international forum, I'm sure it will help you

Got my pace coach, first crack! Check out the suckage at everything-but-pace!

Myles Minosky, age: 47

wage: 9 680 C$
club: Gresley Rovers, country: Canada
weak coach

Training effectiveness:

weak of stamina
unearthly of pace
hopeless of technique
tragic of passing
weak of keeper
poor of defender
poor of playmaker
unsatisfactory of striker
(edited)

Regarding Apollo: It's only for Windows right? I'm on a Mac. (Is Sokker Organizer worth a try?)

Never used it

Another mac user? I like you even more now :) Yes i've been using sokker organizer & it seems to work fine.

Your coach is perfect for pace.

I am using SO in Linux and in windows (I couldn't convince my boss to change) and I like it

Regarding junior coaching: With an Excellent coach, how many weeks should I wait without a pop before sacking a trainee?

(This week, I snagged a Good prospect with 33 weeks' training ahead, I hope he has talent!)

I would wait 5-6 weeks max. If he pop in that time he's got talent, so if you have some money by then you could upgrade your junior coach to a better one and he might pop more often.
This is my opinion, you can wait more with an excellent coach if he pop after 7 weeks he is still talented.

Good luck with that good 33 weeks prospect.