Long term strategies, your best friend and worst enemy

Before you go on a shopping spree, you will need to have a long term strategy to guide you. Your money at hand will be limited, which will make your decitions extremely important i order to succeed. At any point in the game actually, you should ask youself; what is my long term strategy and how am I following that strategy now.

There is no need to beat around the bush, your nr. 1 primary goal should be: $$$$$$$$. There is nothing else actually. Money makes the world go round, as it also is in hattrick. The goal of your strategy should be, how can I earn the most money. I play games to win. Those who play for fun, can certainly join and be left behind in their glory. Forget how can I win matches, focus on how can I earn money.

You are ready to promote when promotion does not affect your trainees

Trainees is the most common term for players you buy and expect to sell to raise more money. Talenting if you like. And the type and number of your talents / trainees, depend on your strategy.

So how do I choose strategy

I cannot dictate how you like to play football. You might have a preffered tactic; you might have a background from a specific position; you might even have a preffered style of play. I will say this though, when you start up your team, you will need to win some matches, and you need to sell your promising youngsters to strengthen your team. To win matches you need strong midfielders in lower divisions. This is why I suggest to start building around that.

Does age matter?

Yes! Age does matter. In the grand scale of things a 19 year old and a 27 year old with the same skillset will perform exatcly the same. So in performance, age doesnt matter. Is the price for a player aged 19 and 27 with the same skillset the same? Hell no! A 19 year old will be much more expensive. Why? Because a 19 year old will train much faster than a 27 year old. And you need your players to train fast, in order to sell them for a nice profit, and improve your team. This is the name of the game. The younger the player, the faster he trains, and the more profit you will get from him.

Trainees

In many strategies you are offered advice to buy 17 year olds, train them in the same thing until he reaches 21 and sell him. The reason behind this advice is that at the age of 21 is training speed will drop significantly. Although this can be considered a good advice, its not the best way to go about it. These are some reasons why this is not the best idea:

1. It takes a loooong time
2. Its quite boring, you want to have action, not wait for 4 seasons before getting anywhere
3. 17 year olds are quite expensive. You need to go down significantly in primary skill, before you can actually buy a player you can afford.
4. You are adviced to get a passable 17 year old, but you are not experienced enough to know the difference between a good passable player, and a bad one. I will explain how TSI can help you with that later, but for now, thats not the way to go
5. You are looking for fast money, not ALOT of money in 4 seasons.
6. The best profit is players that are 19 – 20 year old, and go from solid to excellent within a couple of trainings, AND have a decent passing skill (passable or better). You can make 3 000 000 in two weeks off these players. But note also that you wont get there now. I will create an entire post about beginning strategies and transfers (and yes it does involve young players with passable playmaking skills because thats where you need to start).
7. Even though you need a long term strategy, you also need room to manouvre

Formation

In order to get the most out of your players (first team and trainees both), you need them all to play every week. you can arrange friendlies once every week. Do so. Every week. From now until eternity. It doesnt take long. Choose a formation, and stick to it. I reccomend 3-5-2, as it will give room for 5 midfielders, and you can more easily win the posession and create the most chances, and you can have 3 inner midfielders in your first team and reserve team (a total of 6) players with maximum training each week, and 2 wingers in both teams (a total of 4), to get 50% training effect, each week. That is 10 players total. Potentially 10 players with the ability to generate 3 000 000 each week. you wont be so lucky, but that is the goal anyway. 10 players to help you generate money in the beginning. Thats a good start.

Training

I will keep the training post short for now, but select playmaking with 14% stamina training. That will raise the stamina of all the players that matter over time, and those you train quite fast (since they are young). You need to keep this type of training for a while.

Now you are set for a strategy that will bring income, its time to look at some other aspects of the game you need to look into.

Skills

In order to understand hattrick, you need to get a grasp of playerskills.

Skills are used to represent how good a player is, in different aspects of a match. Depending on his position on the pitch, one (or several) skills will determine how well that player is going to preform for you. So lets dig into skills first.

SKILLS

All senior players have the following set of skills / attributes:

Stamina

This skill determine how a players ability to perform well during a match. How quick the player gets tired. With a low stamina, the player will loose performance during the game. Note also that the stamina can maximum reach the level of excellent.

Keeper

This reflects the ability for a player to prevent the ball from going into your own net. This skill is only important for goalkeepers, but not the only skill a goalkeeper needs.

Defending

This skill will measure how well the player can prevent opponent attacks, anywhere on the pitch.

Playmaking

This skill is the opposite of defending, namely the players ability to create scoring opportunities.

Winger

The ability to create scoring opportunities by advancing down the wings.

Passing

This skill will more or less give you better chance of scoring once a chance has been produced, but it does not have an impact on how many chances you will create. Only the quality of the chances.

Scoring

The players ability to score goals given the oportunity.

Set pieces

This skill will have an impact on the success of a free kick, corner or penalty.

Skill levels

The scale of skills vary from 0-20, where 20 is the best attainable level. Usually the skill level are describes in words as follows:

20 – divine
19 – utopian
18 – magical
17 – mythical
16 – extra-terrestrial
15 – titanic
14 – supernatural
13 – world class
12 – magnificent
11 – brilliant
10 – outstanding
9 – formidable
8 – excellent
7 – solid
6 – passable
5 – inadequate
4 – weak
3 – poor
2 – wretched
1 – disastrous
0 – non-existent

More thoughts on skills

Ok ,so you have a few skills for each player. Which do you need to pay attention to?

1. Set Pieces: You only _need_ one player with high set pieces skill. One player with a high set pieces skill will take all your corners, free kicks and penalties. Aproximately 10% of the chances in a game are of this nature. That is 10% free goals, which is alot! Iwould reccomend the following formula: SUM(20 – division_level) = needed set pieces skill. In division 6 and 7 you can do well with a brilliant (skill level 11) and better.
2. Stamina: A player cannot reach more than excellent (skill lvl 8 ). For players in your first team, this skill should be from passable (skill lvl 6) to excellent. For other players you can ignore this value. It will increase over time, dont worry. It has other impacts like TSI, but thats another story.
3. Playmaking: In the lower leagues, this is the main skill you want to focus on. The total playmaking sum of your playing midfield (wingers count less than inner midfielders),  will determine how many of the chances will be yours. If you dominate the midfield, you will create more chances than your opponent, and on a normal day win the match. To be successful, you need a strong midfield.
4. Passing: In order to secure that you score more goals than your opponent, the passing skill of your players will determine the quality of the chances you get. So a high passing skill, give you a better chance of scoring. This should be your secondary skill to focus on.
5. Defending: If you manage to both create more chances than you opponent, and with a high defending skill also destroy the opportunities they do have, you will look at happy numbers on the scoreboard. And you are beginning to dominate your matches. Now look, a midfield with high playmaking, passing and defending is expensive. You wont get there in a while. But this should be your goal. With high playmaking and passing midfielders, and a defence with good defending skill is much cheaper. And depending on your long time strategy and training, the players you select should be carefully analyzed before you give them the chance.
6. Scoring: This is in fact not that important in the lower leagues. If your attackers/strikers have excellent (lvl 8) to outstanding (lvl 10) scoring you may be able to win games where you are the underdog (the opponent have more chances than you). But if your opponents have a good defending skill, you wont get enough chances to win anyway.
7. Keeper: Forget it in the lower leagues. Solid is good enough in division 7, excellent good enough in lvl 6, after that you should get a good goalkeeper.

Summary

Your primary target should be to win the possession each game. Possession is calculated by the playmaking skills of your midfielders, and dictates how many chances you will get. The passing skill will determine the quality of the chances you generate. I will get back to what kind of skills you need in the different divisions.