Subject: I.1

HK Agresiv invites you to the Easter Tournament, which starts April 22nd.
Floda

I've won my first 4 Cup Winner's Cup games. I should easily beat the dead team and the bad team once more to clinch the playoffs. From there, perhaps I might expend some energy to try for a top seed (hopefully corresponding with easier matchups).

Congrats, that is awesome!

Thanks! Hopefully with some success the United States can come closer to getting 4 international slots.

That would be good. One day I plan on getting to one of these things haha

Hey all, Green Bay Top Flight has a really good 15YO (Seitz), but doesn't yet have top facilities/staff. He's open to selling for a price in about 3 weeks when his tax% goes down. Please contact him if interested.

Thanks - would like to get him to a top developing club to help our National teams. My cash is probably only $25m max, and he'll likely go for more than that.

I've got the cash on hand to land him if he goes on the market. What type of player is he?

Since my team is in win-now mode and I don't have enough talented young players to form the core of a good future team, I'm still going to sell off all my players under 22. I'll probably develop the younger ones until they hit 19 so I get more money unless I pull an extremely promising player as a 15 year old.

My turn on going bankrupt. So sell off is starting on some older players and going to build a team around my young core coming up.

I'm trying to do a pseudo-rebuild also. Don't have a lot of money and can't break out of 12th, so ready to relegate lol.

bankrupt? is it just all the free agents that are costing you too much or what?

yeeaahh... trouble with handball is that the game is so thin (well... all sports are anymore tbh), that even when you relegate, it's actually sort of difficult to make it worth while, because the teams in division 2 are so weak that you just end up back in division 1 the following season. you really need 2-3 seasons in the lower division to make relegation "worth it" imo unfortunately.

Good point. I'm honestly not 100% sure how I'm going to proceed, but I've got the rest of this season to think about it at least lol

honestly... if you're in it for the long haul, I don't think there's any real substitute for investing in infrastructure in this game. the best way to do that is to maximize income while minimizing expenses. And the best way to do THAT is to have an extremely cheap team that wins enough to keep you in the top 3-5 of division II. I'd say, given your current facilities and arena that you'd indeed probably benefit from relegating and "gaming the system" for several seasons. Again... if you're in it for the long haul (if you're not... just play and have fun for as long as you're having fun and then stop).

In general, when you're growing, every team manager's primary goal should be to to finish "1st in the regular season, 3rd in the playoffs" in the highest division you can (you can easily do that in Division II at this stage). I'd go as far as to say that WHEN YOU'RE GROWING, if you're not in the top 4 of your division during the regular season, you should be thinking about trying to relegate.

in order to optimize this though, I recommend that you do the following:

1) sell / get rid of every player that has more than 600 OR. Keep MAYBE 1 player that is better than that. I'd recommend keeping a single offensive back with maybe 800-1200 OR. If you have to buy one on the market, make sure he's u.s. born and look for one that's like 22 or so years old. you shouldn't have to pay more than 50-100k for him.

2) if you have any, or draft any in the future, sell every young player (15-17) that has better than 80 AQ. You don't yet have good enough facilities to train them into star players yourself, and every day that you hold them, they'll become less and less valuable on the market. A late stage team like mine that has been around since season 1 can train a 15 year old with 80 AQ at a rate of at least 200 OR / season. So I can buy a 15 year old with even 250 OR and make him into a viable player if his AQ is high enough. It's for this reason that I'm far more interested in paying money for a 15 year old with 250 OR and 85 AQ than I am in a 17 year old with 500 OR with 85 AQ.

So for the next few seasons at least, try your best to look at these sort of players as "bonus money" and nothing more. getting married to, and investing in young players at the point you're at makes no sense so you might as well sell them when they're worth the most (the younger the better). This is particularly sensible given that you should also ...

3) sell / cut any players that get over 600 OR... they'll just start costing you more, and they'll make it MUCH harder for you to stay in division II so you can fund raise.

4) make sure that you only use u.s. born players (this includes if you buy a few cheaper older guys from the market). They're 25% cheaper per day than foreign players. In this same vein, do NOT use a foreign goalie for ANY reason while you're fund raising. goalies cost more than any other player, and foreign ones are massively expensive over time.

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Remember... sponsors don't look at your goal differential. winning every game by 1 point versus blowing out your opponents makes ZERO difference in the grand scheme. so keep your expenses down and win as many games as you can with the worst team possible.

It takes having a ton of patience, but you'll at least start to see the return very quickly. You'll be shocked at how fast you start growing. I know I was.

Dude, this is amazing! I am definitely in it for the long haul. It might take me a little bit to get to the rebuilding era (I've taken on quite a bit more than I would like salary-wise, and some of them have longer contracts), but I'll get there.