Subject: II.3

lol.... i have a few times like that where it happens to me to. no matter what the tactics and how even on strength, i can never seem to get points against a few teams

I've managed to get myself in a pretty good position, but burned a little more energy than I wanted to this early

After looking at our league I'm contemplating a fire sale as the season the ends. Sell off all of my high overall players in an attempt to get enough money for facilities and stadium upgrades. Won't be as competitive as before but I should be enough to stay out of relegation and hopefully build back up. Hockey is seems to be so far advanced that facilities and a decent stadium are must to survive or even attempt league I.1.

No one's posted lately so I though I would offer up my random thoughts.

Yeah, i agree to an extent.... Even though i started late in season 1, I didn't manage finances well or understand the importance of all the facilities/stadium upgrades. Money is really the name of the game. Unfortunately PPM has done little to curb some of the people out there that buy/sell hundreds of players a season to generate huge profits, despite the higher %fee they pay.... There is deals in the market place for sure but most people don't have the time, patience, or care enough to sit around all day refreshing the transfer window.

If you blow up your team, and build back up the slow way as intended, realistically you will be looking at 10 years (my own guess/estimate) to compete in D1. Many of the D2 teams that made it to D1 already had top facilities for key areas, and used promotion money to pick up a few players, usually higher rated but older. If you sell off all of your top rated players there will be a significant time to train all of your 15/16 years up to the 1000+ range.

Another idea would be maybe focus more on US players. The foreign guys are far more expensive, which is part of the problem for lower strength teams trying to compete... they pick up these guys in the transfer market to get more competitive, but their higher salaries eat up the teams ability to expand.

I'm in the middle of a similar re-build myself, after three seasons in I.1, so I'll offer a couple thoughts:

I think you're pretty dead-on about the need for top-level facilities and stadium to have a shot in I.1. Without players developing at the rate of the top teams up there, you'll never catch up and have a chance to compete with the top 10 or so teams. And then since you'll be losing a lot more games than you did in this league, your OTR will slowly drop each season, and you'll start seeing less and less money from your sponsors as a result. Really what it meant for me was that my team kind of hit a wall...there was no funding for further improvement, so I didn't really have the opportunity to keep building onto my stadium to get more ticket income, upgrade my HR to get better sponsor offers, or buy players to improve my team's ability to compete with the higher-level teams in the league. And then teams which developed more slowly and were in a slightly better spot moved into the league, I just started winning fewer and fewer games.

For me, it just became painfully obvious that the only way to improve past, say 13th in I.1, was to get my facilities and stadium in a better spot, and start investing in players which have a lot of development room, giving them enough playing time that they're pretty well-experienced by the time they're in their early 20's. I was fortunate to have a good run of luck in my sports academy at about the same time, so I was kind of handed an excellent rebuild roster.

I've pretty much been banking on this being the answer since I started playing. Skimping on my players has left me as only being competitive in Division III instead of allowing me to stay in II, but I've still been able to continually improve my stadium and facilities to help set me up for the long run.

the salary is not necessarily true. We can pick up a 26+ player under "low" salary for 3 seasons since the contract was signed by the original team.

This season i spent all my money to be able to survive in D2. Hopefully next season i can restart building my facilities and stadium.

Games stay pretty boring until Week 30 now...

1-5 still open to each team. Havent gotten down to figuring out who has the hardest schedule as we finish up the season.

It will be close for sure... I dropped a point vs the LA cyclones today. Their goalie finally allowed one in during the last minute of OT. I really have no idea how the playoffs will go. I would imagine the teams with home field will be favored as the strength of the top 7 teams is pretty close. Mobile Rain looks like the strongest but i'm thinking chemistry might be a little low with all the recent acquisitions.

I completely forgot to look at tactics today- glad I was able to at least salvage a point.

Hoping I can stay in the top 8 for the playoffs- but that's probably as far as I would be able to make it. I'm going to ride my goalie as far as he'll take me, but he can only do so much.

although i had gave up fighting for 8th a few matches ago i messed up one "key" game playing wrong lineup. Although i gained one unexpected point.

Hoping to finish 10th

I still don't know if i really want to promote to D1 in hockey yet.... there is no way my team could compete in D1 yet

Actually my chemistry isn't too bad, the only low one is the goalie I just picked. To be honest with you I just want to place well. I really do not want to win/promote at all for a while. I messed up my team development by acquiring players and not building my infrastructure up as I went along which I plan to concentrate on more coming up. Hopefully my team of old farts career longevity will hold up long enough.

I know I have a fairly tough ride, Cyclones, Grapes, Corsairs, and North Stars are part of my back end. We'll see.. it definitely will be a VERY tight race to the finish line