New transfer market regulation – why its wrong

THFA (The Hattrick Football Association) and the PU (Player Union), nice nicks for Hattrick staff, are trying to beat the high rate of buying and selling players. Which in itself in not a bad thing, I think. However the solution they have decided upon is the wrong one. Unfortunately.

Their goal is mainly two things;

• Stop managers that are exploiting the transfer market with buying cheap and selling the next day for a higher price (commonly known as daytrading).
• Stop managers that keep players until skillup and then sell them (skilltrading).

The rule

From next season on, you can’t transfer list a player more times than he has played games for your team. This means a player must have played at least one game for your team to be listed at all.

Why is this wrong again?

The intention is not wrong, the way they try force it through on the other hand, is not ideal. Think about it. In real life football, players are not (usually) bought and sold in the same week. Thats just not how it works. Regulating the number of times a player can be put on the transferlist will have several effects that are not (I believe) the intention. In fear of not selling for the price you hope for, more players will be listed cheaper. There will be more bidding wars during the active parts of the day, and a possibility to pick up players fairly cheap on not so active parts of the day. Which is exactly what they are trying to prevent. Hattrick would surely want to average out the price for similar players, and not distribute the bidding even more unevenly than it is today?

The daytraders and skilltraders

This is what I would do, I would use the players I buy for low price and play them in the spare parts of my reserve team. If I traing playmaking, I would just put the players as attatckers or defenders when they skillup, or if im just waiting to cash in on them. I would do this every week. And if he is good enough I would play him in the first team as well, but not in a training position. This way I can put him on the transferlist as often as I see it fit, and I would not supper much, except that my reserve team will be less good. But there is also a good side to that, because I wouldnt have to invest in players out of training positions on the reserve team.

Overall

The rule will not, I believe, do what it is intended to do. It will just change the positioning and delay the process of meat transfers (as they called it), until you can afford to use an player in a non training position. It will cause dissaray in the transfermarket itself.

Who will suffer the most?

Those who does not play alot. For example players who have a good first team, but dont care to play friendlies or meddle with trainees. If you have one team, and you buy a new player, you have one chance; ONE CHANCE to sell that old player. If you dont sell him the first time around, you actually have to play the old player in order to be able to put him on the transferlist. Thats just wrong.

If you have a large team, consisting of evenly skilled players, maybe because you play around with different formations, or you have in this example a few players which are backup players that you never use, you can transferlist them (one or several) to buy someone better (or younger). This can be a time consuming thing. You have to rotate your team to sell the backups if they never play or if they havent been playing. Thats not what you want. You want to get rid of them.

If you cant buy backups because you have to play them to sell them then the system is inperfect.

Seriously Hattrick; You have to play a player to sell him? Thats the best you could come up with?

You actually implemented a counting system for every player, and compare the number of games played vs number of times transferlisted?

My solution

My solution isnt actually mine. Its Hattrick’s! They already have the system ready to go!

Once again, what is it they are trying to solve? Is it the number of times a player is transfer listed? No its not, not really. They are trying to keep managers from buying and selling players too frequently. So address the problem then! You have it right there!

Agent fees!

Today the agent fees work like this; if you sell a player after 0 days the agent fee will be 12% of the total sales sum. If you sell after 1 day, the agent fee will be 10,45% and so on. So the longer the player has remained in your club, the less the agent fee will be up to the max of 2% after 16 weeks. The agent fee will be taken directly from the money you receive. The buyer never notices anything. The seller gets less money. (Full table in the bottom of the article)

Hattrick; You have the system! You need in increase the values of agent fees to get exactly what you want. Its scalable, its flexible and it does the right thing!

Add a much steeper agent fee. Keep it at 25%  for the first 3 days, then decrease slowly but steadily until the first week has passed. Then speed up until you reach your 16 week (full season) minimum of 2%. A good and calculated agent fee will decrease the profit of selling players just after buying him. This way also players in the middle of pop’s will get more attractive, managers with backup players will not be affected. Daytrading will prove almost impossible. And people can go about business as usual.

Don’t implement a walk-around to solve a problem. Solve the problem.

Agent fee table

Days	Agent fee
0	12%
1	10,45%
2	9,95%
3	9,59
4	9,3%
5	9,05%
6	8,83%
1 week	8,62%
2 weeks	7,55%
3 weeks	6,76%
4 weeks	6,12%
5 weeks	5,57%
6 weeks	5,09%
7 weeks	4,65%
8 weeks	4,24%
9 weeks	3,87%
10 weeks	3,52%
11 weeks	3,19%
12 weeks	2,88%
13 weeks	2,58%
14 weeks	2,3%
15 weeks	2,03%
16 weeks	2%