Asunto: Tactics on Building your team: Market vs. Training

So my question is: What is your preferred method of building your team over time? Do you:

1) Build your team through the "Market", i.e. paying money to acquire new talent; or,

2) Do you invest heavily into your training facilities, human resources and econ, and sports academies to breed talent?; or,

3) This question can pertain to coaches as well!

Basically, I'm at the point now where I have enough money to buy good individual players through the market but I'm wondering whether I should instead invest that money into facilities and coaches in order to breed players.....in other words, building a team through the draft instead of through free agency.

Anyway, let me know! Thanks.

I blend the two. Using the academy to grow good players and address weaknesses in the market.

You don't need to go to the market right now, plus you might overpay for players because you are not familiar with the current prices.

Don't expect to win everything right away. It's going to take you couple of seasons to move up.

Right now just concentrate on building Training, Regeneration, Economy and Academy facilities.

oh and happy birthday jonathan!

Well analyzing all that you have done so far Jonathan, I would have to say, stay away from the market right now. You have spent quite a bit on players (not saying you did anything wrong) but unfortunately without a decent training facility level it would be hard to make a profit off players when you decide to sell them. Ive seen the players you have on the market right now and the bad news is you probably wont see half of what you had bought the players for.

My advise I can give you for the rest of this season is work on your stadium. It is a big source of income that you are missing out on. Since you claim to have money destroy the benches, build small stands, and max them out. Also continue to work on your facilities like you are doing.

Your players are fine, they have decent OR for your league (though OR isnt everything). Just focus more on your stadium and facilities the rest of the season and you should be just fine.

He doesnt need stadium right now. Thats where a lot of beginners make mistake.

Thats not completely accurate. If he is selling out every home game and is in the middle or bottom of standings, then the stadium is to small. If its not a sell out and you are a middle of the pack team then it may be built up to much.

Thank #1 for the birthday wishes @DarkAddiction, and #2 for the continued suggestions. I've laid off the market, and will for the foreseeable future....quite frankly I'm pretty sure I'm getting hosed in the market simply because I don't have enough money or resources to pick up highly talented young players and train and build them through my training facility....yet.

So, thus far (since your suggestions have started coming through), I've put some money toward my training facility, sports academy, Human resources and economic department and education center. I've also begun to build onto my stadium; building one section of small stand-ups and maxing it out. This should act as a trial run on @Alecandros's theory that I might be losing out on income due to my stadium.

Follow up question: Where should I spend my money regarding coaches? Obviously my "facilities" need staff, thus I'm going to have to spend a little to get some staff in there. Any suggestions on staff i.e. what positions are important at this stage, etc.

Keep the suggestions coming on what I can do to improve. I really appreciate it. Thanks to all.

Also, I just checked the attendance for the past 10 games at home and it looks like I've sold out every one of them. Hopefully, the new build of stand up's will increase my sales and get me some more money.

The "Big 4" are Training, Regen, HR, & Sports Acd. Education only helps staff members train faster. At lower level facilities, staff doesn't have as much influence as is does when you facilities are higher. Staff also are very tricky as they can become really expensive to keep.

Personally, I did not start making a noticeable profit from buying and selling players until my fifth season playing the game. Even now, when I sell a player, I'd be lucky to earn $1 million. Of course, I only sell players when I get a new player to stay under the 40 player limit and usually sell one of my worst players or prospects (I could probably make more if I trained some players a bit longer if the margin could be greater than the costs of going over the limit). If I started over, I would probably try to avoid upgrading my team as often as I did in small increments.

In any case, I would advise against spending too much money purchasing good prospects. With low level facilities, those players will not grow as much on your team as they would on a team with better facilities and will need to be replaced in the long run. Of course, if you buy or obtain players with worse qualities, you might have to replace them more often if you want to be competititve right away. When I started out, I tried to find bargain players who were extremely cheap but could help my team be competitive. In general, once you get an idea of market prices, you might find a worthwhile bargain from time to time.

My backup goalie, who was on my team when I first started, has amazing qualities (98-92-98) and career longetivity (though he started out at about 19 with a low OR). He is easily an average goalie in my league, however, on one of the best teams, he might have turned out to be significantly better. I probably could have gotten a lot of money for him, though I preferred to keep him.

In addition, it's better not to upgrade your stadium in too small increments, paying redundant costs. The first upgrades may be relatively cheap enough to be justified in that way though. On the other hand, upgrading straight to a triple multi-functional (to the extent that you can fill seats) may or may not be cost effective. Starred players, parking, ice quality, and the like also help to some extent.

Staff can become extremely expensive - there was a good article considering the costs and benefits on the home page at some point. The usefulness of the staff generally corresponds to the facilities (so the sporting directors, managers, physiotherapists, and coaches could be argued to be most important), except that their salaries can become excessive. Be careful about training the staff to the optimal amount. Personally, I just bought the best staff I could find for the 10,000 minimum when I started to get at least two per position and replaced them as I pulled better staff. I generally keep my best two staff members for each position and one or two that have the potential to surpass them and sell the excess. On my soccer team, I just waited until I pulled staff members and mostly avoided the staff market.

Hopefully some of this is of help, not redundant, and not wrong. Good luck and keep with it!

Im not sure how to do the reaction to: But anyways, this is to Outsider. Ive built up my stadium when I started out and it wasnt a mistake because I took full advantage of home income. Right now Jonathan has an team OR of 205 which even if he played a team with way lower OR such as no manager teams, he would still have between 5,000-7,000 attendance. Now if he had played a home game against a team with the same OR or better, then he would have an attendance of 8,000 or close to max if he had the 9,600 space. I agree with Blackkat on the "Big 4" and I also agree with alot of what capsaicin said. Ive read quite a bit on the stadium build and some do small stand ups; large stand ups; large stand up with seats; and then double multi.That is the route Im taking.

Jonathan its your choice how you want to build your stadium after you knock out maxing the small stands. All this is is just suggestions to try and help you. Anyways good luck to you and hope all goes well

It seems that I mistook this for a hockey forum, but most of what I said applies just as well to my soccer team.

To do a reaction just click the "Reply" button to the right hand side of the persons name who posted.

Hahahaha I feel like a just rode the short bus lol