How to get out of Div 5....maybe (pt1) (06/12/2011 00:33)

OK, so my team is still in Div 5 (England Dept 62) but in rnd 15, we're currently 1st with a 4pt lead, have won all our games except one (which we drew) and haven't conceded a single goal in the league or Dept Cup, all in my first FULL season in charge, so I'm pretty confident that we'll finish top, or worst case, second.

So, first of all, let me explain that the technique I've employed to get this far isn't fool proof and that changes in the game that are planned to happen or happen in the future may welll render it useless.  I give no guarantees that this will work for everyone - I've taken calculated gambles with some matches that may have gone badly wrong, but so far have gone my way.  Also, if two or more managers in the same dept decide to employ the same techniques, only one of them can come first and the other may have to endure the agonies of the playoffs.

Another thing I should point out is that the odds are stacked heavily in favour of relegation and not of promotion.  Check out your league table...  only 1 team gets promoted automatically from each division yet 4 get relegated automatically.  Even the play-offs are loaded against you getting promoted, as you have to play a series of knock-out games, all of which you have to win before finally playing a relegation-playoff team from the division above, who only have to win that one match to stay up! 

This is all to facilitate the pyramid system that exists from the top division of every league, ie you can be in Div 6 Dept 598 and stil work your way up to Div 1 Dept 1 (afaik each country's league has only one Div 1, which is Dept 1).  I'll discuss my understanding of the ML pyramid system in a separate blog at some time in the future.

So all this leads to the conclusion that the absolute best method of getting promoted is to finish first in your department.

However, getting promoted as champions doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to hold your own in the division above and you may well find yourself back in the same division a season later with your tail between your legs, so be warned.

This technique should work with lower leagues Div 5 & 6, but may also work well with Div 4 or higher, but without having actually tested it myself, I can't say for sure.

First of all, I'm going to assume that you've just taken over a team in Div 5 or 6 and it's part-way through an existing season - congratulations!  You've just taken charge of (probably) a mid-table or struggling Bot-team!  If you're really lucky, your former bot manager has taken the team to near the top of the table or the season hasn't started yet!  If you've inherited a promotion-destined side, you will probably only need to organise the backroom staff, sponsorship and the stadium as well as tweaking the team to push on for the top of the table - lucky you!

If the season hasn't started yet, then you can try and use this technique to go for promotion in your first season.  The reason I highlighted FULL season in the first paragraph is because you've more than likely inherited a team that for one reason or another isn't going to get promoted even if you win every game until the end of the season 5-0 - that's fine... just think of it as a chance to get used to the game and your players and to determine your best tactics and strategies for the next full season when you will be in with a chance of finishing 1st!

First off, I'm going to use a 4-3-3 formation as an example.  Have you got enough players in your squad at Q68+ to put out a full team in that formation?  If not, you've got three options:-

1. Train your other players up to reach Q68 - this will take a long time (many seasons in some cases) and some of your squad will never reach that level,

2.  Adjust your formation so that you have enough Q68+ players to put out a full squad, eg 4-5-1 or 3-5-2 - this is not ideal as you should be comfortable with the formation that you want,

3. Buy players at Q68+ to make your squad up!  This is the route I took and it paid immediate dividends in terms of results.  HOWEVER, I should make the caveat that ML have introduced a limit of 3 players purchases per season before you start to lose Q pts on the rest of your squad so be warned!  I didn't realise this when I started and subsequently bought 9 new players before my first match - I wouldn't recommend this.  If I started over again, I would have spent more on each of the players and got even better ones, but it worked out OK for me in the end.

Now the key to buying players if you want to get promoted in your first FULL season is to bear in mind that your team isn't Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City, Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan, etc., it's more like Accrington Stanley and so you have a limited budget to work on.  My team had approx $40m in the bank when I took over.  Look at the ML transfer market and you'll see that you can easily spend about half of that on one player with Q68 and ideally you want players with Q72+!

So how do you get quality players on a tight budget?  Simple!  Buy old players!  Players start off at 17yr old and cost about $17m for a half-decent one then get more expensive as their talent matures.  However, they start to slow down as they hit 30.  This plays right into your hands, as it's a lot cheaper to buy a quality player when they're coming to the end of their careers.  The thing to bear in mind is that players can retire without warning although usually from 35+ (39+ for a goal keeper)  so these aren't long term purchases.  What they'll do is fill in the gaps until you can afford to buy the ML equivalent or Ronaldo or Messi.  Buy wisely and don't buy the cheapest or the first one you come across - look at what they've done in the past and see if (for example) the forward you're looking at has scored lots of goals when he was playing regularly (many will have been warming the subs bench for a few seasons, but they may have been a team's top striker in the past).

The only thing about older, good players is that they can still have a bit of pride which means they won't want to move to a Div 5 team with average attendances of one man and his dog, and there's not a lot you can do to persuade them otherwise - by the time you've improved enough for him to want to move to your team, he'll probably be retired or too rubbish to even consider.  Just go back to the transfer market and find another player to try and buy!

That's enough for now.  I'll continue next time when hopefully I'll be much further towards Div 5 dominance!!! :)

MikieC