Oggetto: Senior NT

Firstly, thanks for the votes to make me the first ever NT coach. I will be sinking a lot of time into this and have already received a couple of offers to help out which i am hoping to make use of.

Some of you may already have received a message requesting the stats for one of more of your players. I sent these to every manager with a player with an overall skill of 350 or higher. The response has been good so far and i have started compiling a list of all potential NT players.

If you feel you have a player that could be of some use but that i have missed, please send me a message with his stats and i'll definitely have a look at him.

It's going to be a bit tricky choosing the squad as we may well be going with a lot of 4/6 CL players as they will be our best skilled players, but these will be overtaken in skills by the top up and coming 6/6 youngsters within a few seasons. I would appreciate people's opinion on how to proceed with the selection process here - do people think it's worth going with our top youngsters now to get them all the experience possible and plan for the future, or do we try and get success now with our older 4/6 guys, and them ultimately become useless in a few seasons time?

I would also appreciate ideas for how to sustain a strong NT long into the future rather than just one manager having a go every season, and there being no system or structure in place to sustain a strong core of players. I know that some of the top nations have managers that scout talent in all the leagues to keep an eye out for top drafts so they can monitor their development. If they are drafted by a team with a low training and regen facilities, they encourage the manager to sell the player so that he can gain skills faster at a better club, and thus give the player a better development path so he is more useful to the NT in the future.

These are the things i would like to see happen for our NT. I know we are a nation of very few PPM managers, but the better organised we are, the better our national team can be.

Firstly, congrats RossP and good luck with the challenge ahead. My thoughts on a few of these points are below, for what they’re worth…

You can call up 25 players per season. I would call up no more than 5 top future prospects, and at least 20 players who can win now. As I understand it we should have a U19 team next season; NT chemistry built up in the junior grades is partially transferred to the Senior NT if players move up directly. So if there is an outstanding 17-year-old now, he can play in the U19s for the next two seasons then move up to the seniors with 50%+ chemistry in Season 6. Although there might be a handful of U18s out there now who are worthy of going straight into the Senior team, probably not that many will benefit unless they are ready to contribute relatively soon.

Personally – and this is just my opinion – I never liked the practice of encouraging inexperienced managers to sell top prospects so that they can be trained to NT level, at least not unless the prospect is absolutely unbelievable. It’s easy for us to influence new and less experienced managers, but remember that keeping these players will help them build a strong team and gain promotion even if the player won’t ever reach their full potential in less facilities. I'm aware that’s not a widely-held view though, and fair enough.

Hopefully lots of people are sending player info through to you. Given the low levels of HR&ED we all have, I would suggest you need some ‘volunteer scouts’ to start seeking out potential talent playing outside the UK I. and II. Divs. Although it would be ethically questionable for someone to scout a player and then hand over the stats to you (I'm not suggesting this), I'm sure some of us can help in short-listing possible players if you like.

Once we get further into the season it would be good to start up threads for the U19/U17s – anyone know when these start up by the way? – and make sure we are identifying the top pipeline players well in advance. That seems to be the best way to build an NT which will be successful in the long term. But I would say, for the first couple of seasons, let’s go all out to win some silverware while the playing field is level.

So I asked about the U17/19 in the International Q&A forum, and it sounds like they won't be implemented for a couple of seasons, which is disappointing. So ignore that bit of my previous post. It might well be worth identifying some top prospects for the future, and getting them experience/chem in friendlies now.

Congrats as well RossP, a well deserved outcome. I know he has put a lot of time into this already!

I really like the idea of giving a few of the youngest stars an opportunity sooner rather than later, but there is a risk that any talent so far, and for the next season, will be overtaken quickly by new pulls as academies get bigger and staff improve.

I'd be more tempted to prioritise the players with the best qualities/CLs regardless of age and also those players who are being trained well, rather than just having high OVRs. At least they will become the best in seasons down the line and last longer too.

i'm looking forward to seeing how our nation and community can do. I have no doubt that if we get a solid base of supportive managers we will be able to do really well together.

Good luck with the first WC qualifier tonight guys!

Good result for us! Roll on the next game!

Yep, good win guys. Start as we mean to go on!

Hi all,

I thought I would give the UK gang an update on the situation with our UK team. -

Firstly, I want to congratulate Anatoli on getting the position and personally I was very honoured when he asked me to help out with the team.

We looked at the team as it was and decided very much to go back to basics. i.e a very good passer of the ball in PG, Shooter in SG, 'Mixitup' type in SF, a 'Pounder' in PF and a giant leap ! of a Centre. - Well that's the plan anyhow.

And credit where credit's due the tactics and the results have been great and Anatoli has been spot-on.

The first game against the Netherlands was a ' OK ....let's change this moment'. And from then , we are looking pretty good. Chemistry is a bit low - but it's the same for a lot of sides and with a bit of help from the rotations we have a good chance of progressing in the qualifiers.

The group we have is difficult. But, we have done really well in the friendlies and there's no real reason why we can't push this thing forward.

We had a look at all the draftee's and the highly rated 15/16 yr olds and again Anatoli made it quite clear to me who he wanted and exactly what training ratio's he wanted. (So no messing about for me there !!!!). So if you have a guy in the team please follow his ratio's.

And on that note if you get a 'Hot Prospect' - please do get in touch - we have left room in the squad.

Ok guys, thanks for reading and thanks for your support.

Best Wishes,

Nigel

Great update. I hope you guys do well with the team and pick some genius line ups/tactics along the way!

As a manager who is interested in training youngsters for the NT, I would appreciate such things like:

- guideline OVRs/training ratios etc
- a summary of the youngsters that are under watch

Anything that showcases the efforts of managers and gives more reasons for interaction on the forums would be brilliant

Sounds like you guys have everything under control... thumbs up from over here, and good luck with the qualifiers

Thanks Fella's ! And Fluff - PM sent

Ok Guys -- Looks like we'e Run into a bit of a Hiccup :__ Looks Like the NT has de-selected itself overnight - God knows what Happened.... Anatoli and myself have been on to the mods for a while and it's going to be a forfeit... Apologies to all :/

Ok I read this after my post in the other thread. I cent believe something went wrong

why forfeit?

Go to like official Facebook page of Basketball World Cup Season 4. We are going to keep some credit competitions during World Cup: www.facebook.com/pages/PP... .