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Off-Season Primer
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When the date ticks to Round 37, all managers plan their off-season vacation. They instruct their players to take it easy, but stay in shape. They talk to the financial folks in the front office, hoping to sell more tickets so they can buy better players. They talk to the scouts and coaches to dig through the lower ranks to find just one good player to sign for next season. And if everything happens the way it should, you get lots of money, a new stadium, several great players, and everyone returns healthy and happy.
But things rarely go as well as they should. So I am going to give a little insight into the workings that really happen behind the scenes. First is "the System", kinda like "the Man" but it is a machine, so I am calling it "The System". After that, we talk about the club, what happens and what you need to do once that new season starts. And then we talk about the players, the guys who had been given good training routines for off-season practice, but as the tabloids showed us, they didn't stick to it very well - sex romps in Ibiza, a case of malaria in Rio, a motorbike spill in Algiers, and the texting scandal that left your two keepers with bandaged thumbs. And no one wants to know who bought the 1700 cases of pickled herring and why it is on the same bill as the VIP Room retrofit.
"The System"
This is what we all refer to as the servers. But it is much more than that, and it includes the code written for Manager League (ML), the web services, the network, and everything that works to bring ML to your screen, be it computer, PDA, or smartphone.
After Round 37 runs its training, the servers lock out all the managers. At this point Spinner and a band of purple lemurs from the caves in Sao Paolo set to work. Their mission is to get everything set for the next season. This is the time where most hardware gets upgrades, most software has their patches applied, new code (features to you and me) get added into the core ML application, networks get tested, backups of all server information are made. Invariably, purple lemurs are running everywhere. Now, Spinner is often very nice and lets us know what these new features will be in a post. It generally describes everything that is being done, and what features are going to be available.
The best part about all of this is that Spinner will often take suggestions from us managers and apply them in these updates. Often they take several seasons to program and test, but those managers willing to dedicate some time and understand how ML works can often see some of their own ideas applied to ML.
The Club
Well, this is where the money is, and where it comes from. One of the first things that happens is you pay your taxes. Clubs that have earned enough profits pay a fee to the governing body of ML. No one knows what this governing body does with all their money, but I suspect it is used to keep all those bots teams in Div 6 running smoothly. The tax is about 30% of your teams profits (not savings) and starts when a team gets above $3mil in profits (or maybe 2 million). For some, a profit tax is something they choose to avoid by over paying for underdeveloped youth, but generally I find that anytime you make enough profit to pay tax you should be happy. Now, that doesn't mean that I am happy to pay taxes, and there are some things that you can do to avoid paying as much tax. You have to do these before Round 37 ticks by however.
- Pay for your next seasons training camp. Most important is to choose to go overseas in your training camp, as this will improve your morale a great deal when the time comes. And you will probably need as much morale as you can get in the new season.
- Repair any decay on your stadium. This amounts over time, so fix it up before you go on vacation and everything will look nice when you get back.
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- Buy any upgrades that you can. Even if it is a small one, if you can save money by not paying profit taxes, it is like paying less for your upgrade.
When the new season starts, there are a lot of things that need to be done quickly to get yourself moving again. Most of this involves money, but there are some things you need to pay attention to for the team overall.
- Collect your free 10 credits. This is most important because it allows you to buy that new player you need from the teamless list. As well as perform some stadium upgrades, join a few custom cups, and play a few friendlies.
- Choose a sponsor. Not just any one, but look at your division, figure out if you are likely to get into the playoffs, and get one that will pay you the best for finishing where you expect to end up. If you think you will be in the top 10, don't get the sponsor paying a lot of money paying for first place, because you probably won't get it. And if you think you will be relegated, take as much money up-front as possible.
- Set your team training to Morale, Morale, Morale, Morale. Your team morale resets to 50 during the off-season, so you want to get it as high as you can as quickly as you can. Couple of rounds of all morale training will get you there fast. Unless you plan on winning your first 9 matches, morale is probably going to be the most important ability you team needs. That is because your team, coaches, managers, players, and financial backers all have big plans for you and that is a lot of pressure.
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- Check out your new team prospect. The player is totally random, generated by "the System" as the new season begins, and there is little influence you have as to his skills, position, and quality. Of course a good Youth Academy will give you better players on average, if you already have 5 keepers, you have no way of preventing another keeper showing up as your new youth development project.
The main focus is getting your team moving forward again. You have lost a lot of momentum during the off-season, so you need to start out well. Since all teams start at the same morale, you will notice it is a little bit easier to beat those good teams in your department. League matches and cup matches will influence your morale, so plan to win as much as possible as early as possible. You need to remove those feelings of self doubt and get your mind off the tabloid press, those shorts with the hole in the bum just don't matter when it comes to winning. Put Heidi in the DVD player and get your team to watch it until they are all smiling, and you will do much better.
The Players
This is where all the questions come up. What happened to my players? Why did everyone lose a Quality point? Why did my old guy lose so much Speed? My youth is horrible, what do I do? Here is the thing to remember, when your players are playing they get better. However, the off-season means that they aren't playing, so they start to decline. How much they decline is almost predictable, and here is how you figure it all out.
Age
Since each season represents one year, all players increase by 1. This always happens and is the easiest to predict.
Fitness
Fitness will improve by 15 points in the off-season. Since there is a training in round 37 just before "the system" locks us out, you can also include the fitness gains you could have had from training. This means +4 if all team training is set to Rest... plus 10% of the players stamina if the player is set to rest. Conceivably, you can regain about 26 fitness between round 36 and Round 1, and is the reason so many managers play a lot of friendlies late in the season. It is a good way to get players an extra skill point or two before they go on vacation.
Skills 50 and under
Any skill that is rated 50 or less will not decline over the off-season. This covers all skills from keeping to perception. A player who has a skill below 50 just can't get much worse. It may be possible with speed to lose so much that it drops below 50, but they need to have had a 51 or higher to lose that much. Even then, it may stop at 50. I don't really know because I don't keep players with a speed that low.
Stamina and Perception
These two skills don't seem to be affected by time away from the pitch or by age. These two skills only improve during play and training, but fortunately they don't decline over the off-season when so many other skills decline. Therefore, good training in these skills will always be maintained and are considered the "best buy" of training.
Keeping, Tackling, Passing, Shooting, Heading
These skills are the core to the performance of your players. Certain positions are more dependent on some of these skills, and you should check to make sure that you are training the best skills for a player in his position. However, in the off-season, all of these skills (above 50) will drop by one point. If they are all above 50, that means a loss of one in each skill for a total of -5. This is normally where Quality declines come from, and it is a very predictable thing.
Some people claim to have not lost a skill point in one of these areas, but I have never confirmed this independently. Generally, I assume the player gained a skill during the Round 37 training and was then lost during the off-season, resulting in a net zero loss. This seems to be the most logical explanation rather than assuming that "the system" has chosen a very small handful of players that won't lose a skill point in a specific area. Plus, it is easier to program, which is always the best reason for making things simple.
Speed
If you haven't noticed before, Speed is a skill used at every position. It is therefore the most "important" skill in the game. While it is not a primary skill for any player, it is important to every player. And it is also the most affected and variable of all the skills to predict during the off-season. Speed can decrease between 1 and 5 points in the off-season, depending on what appears to be 3 factors - age, potential, luck. Age is a visible trait for all players, potential is a hidden skill that can only be guessed at using the scout, and luck is pretty much random. I include luck only because I cannot determine how much of an affect potential has on speed during the off-season.
Speed will decline by 1 point in the off-season (assuming it has a rating of 51 or higher). In addition, it may decline an additional point from bad luck it seems. Age can further reduce this by 1-3 points. A players potential might be able to counter either the luck or age decline by one if it is high enough, or it might add an extra point loss if it is low enough. However, you will lose at least 1 point it seems.
Age seems to have the most affect on speed. The first time I notice that age can affect a player losing more than 1 point of speed seems to come around the age of 27. After age 30, losing 2 points of speed in the off-season seems almost common. And after age 33 it is common to see losses of 3 or more points of speed. I have never maintained a player past age 35, but it would seem likely that they would have very large losses in speed. Often, you will see an aging player lose 2-3 quality in the off-season if they are old enough, with low potential, and have bad luck, since they could lose more speed than all other skills combined.
Summary
It is very easy to predict the skill loses that come about from the off-season. The only variable comes from speed, and even that I can predict within 1 point. The quality loss is reflected by the loss in the skills. The more skills over 51 losing points the more likely that Quality will drop by one. And aging players could lose more depending on the amount of speed lost.
Knowing where your players are likely to start the new season will give you a better chance of preparing for the new season. Look over all their training and make sure they are in the areas you need them for the new season. Players gain quickly in lower skills, so getting a low skill up to playable levels can help a team quickly.
Calculating quality is something only "the System" can do accurately. With enough players of the same position across a large enough range of quality, someone might be able to figure out the algorthym needed to calculate quality. For now it is safe to assume a gain of 3-5 skill points in the right area is sufficient to raise a players quality by 1. Therefore, a loss of 3-5 skill points will generally result in a loss of 1 quality. Therefore, you can assume that every player will lose 1 Q in the off-season.
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