Hattrick Season 76

[ChiliMonster]

Cup R5
Home derby against a Div III team. PIN with TS woc. I won midfield with 60% ratings. They Counterattacked with better attack/defence ratios than mine. It was close, but they won 2-3. Spectator income was £278K, plus Cup achievement bonus of £93,333. Into George Carey Cup.

League wk5
Straightforward 4-0 home win on PIC leaving me clear at the top on 15 points and +20GD.

Kevster

[Eastheath]

A 0-7 bot bash was noneventful, unfortunately my rival also put in a 7-0 bash and so retains a 3pt and GD+11 lead. Somehow have to close the GD gap. Next week I'm home to 3rd in the back to backs, while my rival has a bot, so keeping the GD within catching distance is going to be tough!

[ChiliMonster]

Round 4 of George Carey Cup - a straightforward 0-3 win. This week's match (tonight) looks even more straightforward. I hope to keep this extra cash coming in for a couple more weeks.

League week 6. Away to sixth place team, whose ratings suggest they should be doing a bit better. Enough to make me PIN rather than PIC (because conversely next week I'm home to third-place, whose ratings look worse and I'll PIC them). Another 0-3 win.

So I'm top of my Div IV on 18 points, GD+23. It's a real possibility that I win the league and autopromote to Div III after 11 seasons in this league. Counting my chickens...

Kevster

[Bink333]

6 games in already..

In England my slow start to the season, caused by passing training, sees me 6th on the IV table on 7pts, 9pts adrift of the leader. Last week my #1 PNF trainee took a +2 knock so I'm doing a week of PM to benefit the ex-U20 support spec player who needs 3 weeks to pop to ET PM. The injured guy does not need more PM, and the focus is now on getting his attack contribution to NT levels. The league stats suggest that ratings wise this is a very tightly contested league, with my lads having the best m/f and worst defence in the top 7, and joint strongest attack. I'd be happy with a P5 finish for the extra experience gains from a qualifier.

In Oceania, one of my Wb has been called to the NT despite being 28 and still on 10% stamina. Scored a goal this week as well, but he's had his second red card in the league this season, playing as a winger, meaning 2 weeks of missed defender training, as I'm still in a secondary Cup, which he's ineligible to play in. After 6 I'm in 2nd, 3pts off the leader who I face next in the double header. My £10.15m new signing picked up a +2 on Sunday as well, so he'll miss training and these important games as well. I sold my support spec home grown defender with 12Def 7.5PM and 5 passing yesterday for a little over £2m which means I now have a kitty of £5m to buy a quick/head FTW to replace the one I sold to help ensure I had the funds to buy the new signing. I'm probably going to wait, as I have another youngster to sell soon, and the only one I've seen on the TL (that I like) looks over-priced..

The statistics for my IV series are distorted a bit by the personnel changes but my CA team has the best defence and attack in the league and the worst m/f so the plan is coming together nicely. I'd quite like to get promoted no later than next season as stamina will be going up at the end of next season, and I'll be wanting to push on.

In South Africa I'm 3rd on 14pts behind the leader on -6 GD. I did score against them at last but it ended 1-1. 4th is just 3pts back. The stats suggest I'm 4th strongest, with =2nd defence (training with 5) =5th m/f and 6th best attack. 1st and 2nd play each other in the double header, while I've got 7th. I'm nowhere near strong enough to consider promotion to II, but I'm enjoying the season.

The South African NT finally got a win at home to Brunei on a PIN on Friday, setting hatstats that puts them in the top 10 in the world this week. After two unlucky games, we had a bit of luck to avoid a draw and get the win against a strong CA. We host Austria next, one of the best oiled NT machines in hattrick. They went PIN last week as well, which makes this Friday's game a little more interesting than it might have been.

[Eastheath]

The stuttering spluttering pigs ear of a season continues, we won 3-1 (when on 'paper' it should have been more) and a second IM has got crocked, so I now have a +3 and a +1 in IM and only one healthy midfielder. The next leg will therefore be interesting, away to a team I would beat if I had a full squad. Our league rivals meanwhile ploughed on with a 4-0 win, so the GD now between us is +14, which is something I have to narrow before we meet in the final round 14.

[Bink333]

Mid season.

4th in England with a 5-2 win against the team that was 3pts and +6GD ahead of me. I'm now in front on goals for, +6. 10pts, leader is on 17, 7th is on 5, but 3pts covers 2nd to 6th. My star PNF trainee is still bruised with a thigh injury, and I've seen too many get aggravated to risk training him this week. My best Youth Pull of the season is staying for some training. Not sure for how long, 1900 TSI and 2050HTMS, with an unpredictable spec. Excellent wing and inadequate in PM/Ps/Sc

2nd in Oceania with a 0-0 at home to the leaders this week. They are 3pts and +3GD ahead. I'm 4pts ahead of 5th. Sold my younger hg trainees, to leave me with+£8m in the bank. I will need to buy a couple of players in a about a season's time, and keep £1.4 aside for a coach conversion.

1st in South Africa as the 4 teams all nearest to me drew with each other, while I picked up a 7-0 against 8th. It's only a 2pt lead, abd the stats suggest I'm only the 4th strongest team. Tonight I pull a U21 finals age perfect GK, but he's low solid and there's a better one out there already. I'll give him some Def training before I list him.

How are you gents doing at the half-way stage?

[Donut102]

Apologies for being absent - works been getting rather hectic.

Div III

Knocked out the Cup in R7, so focus is back onto the league. Switching to PM training from defense will make the 2nd half the season somewhat easier to manage.

Currently in 6th, just 1 point above the autorelegation spot. I'm fortunate to have a bot in series which flatters me. In the first half I only managed to win 2 games, 1 of which was against the bot.
I probably only need to win 2 or 3 games in the 2nd half to be safe, and that looks likely. So hunkering down, training, getting ready for next season.

Div V

The one that got away? I got knocked out of the cup relatively early, so full focus on the league.

W5, L2 in the first half. Now in 2nd place, level on points with 1st who I have in the double header - we lost the first leg away from home. Winning this week will be key to the season, and then try and hold on.

Given that I was aiming for 3rd at the beginning of the season, I'm in a great place. But having got here, it would be great to hold on for the title - even if I am then demoted next season.

Cheers
Donut

[Eastheath]

It wasnt going well at half-time, still 0-0 in a game we had to win. One of my two remaining fit IMs got crocked in the first half, so I had one IM and two infillers left, trying to hold the centre field together. We were losing midfield anyway, so whats one less IM in the grand scheme of things....
Fortunately the CA tactic came good and we nicked a goal in the second half, followed by three more in the last few minutes to make it look like a comfortable 0-4 win. Our league rivals won also, so they maintain the 3pt and +15 GD advantage. Will have to try to close that GD gap next week - and the weeks after that!

[ChiliMonster]

Weeks 7&8:
Double header, won both. Clear at top of league with 100% points. GF 33, GA 3.

I went out of the George Carey Cup last week, which was no surprise, though surprised to encounter a team at the top of the Div IV with a team of 34yo all on sold/ex stamina. They humped my second team 6-0.

I've done a bit of tinkering in the transfer market. Sold my E-T mono defender and bought a Titanic defender with brilliant MF who is also a couple of years younger. It briefly took £5K off my wage bill. I sold a trained winger for £3.9mill and bought a 26yo ET forward with formidable passing, sold MF and passable wing. So that's pushed my wages up again. I've put my other ET FW with Ex passing on the market above transfer compare value, so if someone buys him I'll take the money and get a titanic forward with passing and high set pieces. Those defender and forward purchases were a good but below their compared values, so I'm happy about that.

Week 9 League: I'm sitting happy at the top, home to 8th who have 4 points. What can possibly go wrong? Of course, my confidence is completely exaggerated and has been for weeks, but it has a huge impact on my MF ratings such that initially I'm less than 50% possession. They take the lead but their poor (well, passable) stamina means that midway through the first half the ratings are going my way. After half-time my players "returned to the field with a new sense of purpose" and the ratings were more like I expected. I really should have hammered them but I lost 1-2!

That's my hopes for a perfect season trashed. Still hoping to win the league and autoptomote, but my match away to Barr Point in 2 weeks will be critical as they are just three points behind.

Kevster

[Donut102]

Div III

Lost 4-0 away from home to the league leader.
Now dropped down to 7th place, 1 point from 6th, and 2 points from 5th.

Demotion looking more and more likely.....

Therefore using the time to do a mini rebuild. Sold one my ageing HG midfielders, and bought in a 20 year old. I've now spent £15m buying 3 new players this season.

Div V

4-0 win at home.

In 2nd place, 3 points off 1st. I can't see the leaders slipping up, but I'll keep the pressure on.


Cheers
Donut

[Eastheath]

Beat a bot 8-0 and my league rival also won 6-0 so I've closed the GD gap to 13. Need to keep that going, except next week he has another bot and I am away to a real team, winnable but will be hard to stick in 4 or 5 goals, never mind 7 or 8. Still got some crocked players, might get one back by next weekend.

[Bink333]

England

Not that it matters particularly, but we had a horrendous result at the weekend. I was in 5th home to 8th who had managed 1pt all season. 54-55% possession and 4 of the 12 chances fell to my lads, one of which was a PNF chance (Converted). 309 hatstats to 257 with better attack vs defence and vice versa in all sectors, but we lost 2-3. That puts us down to 6th, 6pts off the leader and +8 goals for (GF) - ahead of 7th. League stats say we're the 2nd best team in this division (IV.59) with the 5th strongest team leading the table. I'll be happy with a qualifier for the experience boost, and away to 5th this week. My star youth pull of the season has lost training through injury in both his first senior games, which is annoying. Passing training for 5 more weeks and I need a week of PM to pop my ex-U20 support spec solid leader home-grown. I think I'll move to scoring after that to get him up to speed before selling him as a future NT prospect, and getting the wing training done for my PNFs.

Oceania

The youngest of my 4 Oceanian NT potential full-backs has been playing NT games this season but was injured on Friday. The clock ticks down on my Defender training, and my English quick popped to magical last week making him 18/8/15/9/6/7 Turned 29 today (45 minutes ago) with a new wage of £43,616, but I'm confident that I'll have 6 full-backs and a CA-CD (Maldives) all getting regular games before long. My biggest issue at the moment, is to stop myself buying a forward, so that I can instead buy an NT standard GK, BEFORE releasing the liquidity of my unpred 22y/o Spanish GK with solid leadership, and so to then use the remaining funds for my planned coach replacement (current fella has disastrous leadership) & that forward.

In the league, this pure CA team is now on identical GF/GA and points with the leader, 3pts clear of 3rd who visit the leader this weekend. I'm playing 8th. Promotion is possible to III despite the stamina issues at 10% which are not going to be changed until the end of next season - unless the NT managers start knocking on the door to change that, but with England/Oceania & Maldives all likely to crash out during Q1 this season, this really shouldn't become an issue. Ideally, we promote at the end of next season rather than this, but I'm getting a lot of enjoyment from this CA build and trying to get the most out of what has been of the most cerebral squad designs I've ever worked on to date.

South Africa.

I've posted an article in South Africa HT-Press which was then pushed out to all South African club secretaries and as a result has had views from 90 something managers (with an active user base of 220). You can read it at the bottom of the main South Africa page. Luck has been against the NT in Q1, but the team has fought well, and it has been fun working on developing the foundations for strengthening the future of their NT.

Somewhat more astonishing is that my threadbare team has topped III .13, 2pts clear of 2nd, despite being statistically the 4th strongest in the league. I've just spent all of the funds kitty on a 13/13 quick CD aged 22 (£5m) to train 2 levels defending alongside my GK, before moving him on, but he's likely to become an NT player 6-8 seasons up the road as well, so it seemed like a good idea for them to 'get to know each other'.. The team is in no shape to compete at II level, so I'll just ride out the season and see what happens.

[Eastheath]

Another away win, 0-6 to the team in 6th. Our rival, 3 pts ahead, beat a bot 8-0 so their GD over us expands to +15 again, and with just the 4 games to go including our head to head, it looks tough to haul this one back enough so that the last game has meaning. I wont give up on the title just yet!

[ChiliMonster]

I was away to third. I won the ratings but was 1-0 down at half time. I won 3-1 though.
The big surprise was second-place team Barr Point losing 3-0 away to the team who were in seventh and also beat me last week. That means we have a six-point gap going into our match next week, in which I will be the away team, so I could lose and still be on course to be champions. At the moment I could lose two points and still be on course to auto-promote.

A former youthclub player who I sold for over a million two seasons ago immediately after promoting, just sold for nearly 4 million, so that's a nice £80K bonus. I also promoted a youth with excellent defending a couple of weeks ago who sold for £400K.

Kevster

[Donut102]

Div III

Home game (in 6th place) against 2nd.
We drew the away game 0-0. Even with home advantage I decided I couldn't win midfield, and went 532 CA, with just 2 inner midfielders.
Opponent went 352, so obviously I won midfield....
Not sure how that happened, but we won 1-0.

Up to 5th place, just 2 points above 7th - who we play next week. Key game to avoid auto-relegation.



Div V

6-0 win at home.

In 2nd place, 3 points off 1st. I can't see the leaders slipping up, but I'll keep the pressure on.


Cheers
Donut

[ChiliMonster]

I was away to Barr Point, who were second in the league. A comfortable 1-7 win! That means an aggregate 14-2 win over the two games this season against my closest rivals.

That leaves me 9 points clear on 30 points and a GD with is 24 better than Barr's. I'm not technically champions yet, but the bookies are paying out, I think.

My last three games are against 4th(H), 8th(A), 7th(H). I could drop three points and still be in an auto-promotion place.

There are only 2 points between 5th and 8th, so there is still a lot to play for at the bottom.

Kevster.

[Bink333]

England

On Sunday we were away to third and won 2-4. My lead PNF trainee was suspended, so it was a pretty good result, although the match up was always in my favour against a CA team. I went 2-5-3 AIM with 2xCD, and scored 2 goals up the middle, and converted a quick SE and a PNF chance. The PNF chance was probably a lucky one to get as they had 3xCD but Lyons does have 16PM against the total of the sum of the three defenders' defence...

The win means I'm 7th, 1pt behind 5th, 2 behind 4th and 6pts off the leader with 3 to play. The run in is home to 1st, away to 2nd and home to 4th, while 8th plays 4th, 2nd and 6th. It should be a fun run in, although massaging the team into a qualification spot looks extremely tricky...

4 weeks of passing and one PM, before a season scoring, then a season wing, and back to scoring.

Oceania

We got knocked off the top spot after a 1-1 draw away to 5th at the weekend. The leaders play 3 of the bottom 4, our fixtures are tougher, but it's next season I want to promote anyway. My coach dropped to solid coaching last week, so £1.4m saw an upgrade of a mythical xp to excellent with passable leadership. It should mean better TC, although TS management is less of an issue for a CA team, and of the coaching level maintains that small form boost over a solid. 2 of my 4 Oceanian Wb are not in the NT squad, subbing for each other on Friday, but Pudge picked up his 3rd knock of the season on Sunday, although he should be fit to play next week and only lost 10 minutes training. My English Quick is now 18Def 8PM 15Wg 9Ps 6Sc 7SP and 29/14 age. Just over a season left at 10% and then if the wages don't burn the kitty, I'll be looking to push on with promotion and Cup runs.

South Africa

This team was knocked off the top step on Sunday as well. We lost 1-0 to the Champions of the previous few seasons. I'm only a point off the lead, who are away to 3rd next, while I'm home to 7th, so I might be able to get something from that, although 2 of my first choice midfielders are crocked. Both currently +2 which puts a spanner in the works.

The National Team set ip with a press away to 2nd place Jamaica on Friday, we restricted them to one chance, which fell to their only dangerous line of attack and converted (coin flip) after we'd switched into 4-5-1 from 3-5-2 on 7mins having gone 0-1 up. Some useful results elsewhere mean Jamaica remains 5pts ahead of us in 2nd, and we are back to max TS. Jamaica play Singapore next the only team in the group to use TS this week, an ill-judged choice which may well have gifted the Jamaicans 3pts on a silver platter. We have Yemen who beat Singapore with 18/100 chance to do so on the replays. Yemen have GK form issues and generally play CA away...

Good luck to all for the end of season run in.

[Eastheath]

Meanwhile, over in the dark recesses of Series V, we won 6-0, the league leaders won 1-5, so while the GD gap narrows back to 13 in their favour, and they stay 3 pts ahead, catching them is looking less likely now.
Next game we are away to 6th, they are at home to 3rd, but they are likely to maintain the GD where it is. That 90+ minute injury time winner of theirs in the first round game against us has basically decided both our seasons right from the off. Not bitter, just frustrated!

[Eastheath]

Well, Santa arrived early at the eastheath household yesterday. Our game away to 6th was uneventful, the 0-6 win was what was required. The league leaders however stumbled remarkably at home to 3rd, losing 1-2, despite winning on all fronts in all sectors from ratings to stars to goal attempts, except the one that mattered, goals.
So, as we head to the last two games, not only are we on the same points as league leader but the GD is cut back to +6. The big difference for me is that, should we both win next weeks game, I would only have to win the final game away against the league leader to take the title, as opposed to have to win and by a margin of 8....
However, now I am doubting next weeks game, because its at home to the team in 3rd that just beat the league leader. On paper its a win for us, but that's what it was for the other guy. I will have to be careful here and not throw away the lifeline I've been given....

[ChiliMonster]

At home to 4th on a sunny day meant an almost full stadium and the revenue that brings. My opponents played 5-5-0 which was a surprise to me, but also to their players as they don't seem to have played that way before. It didn't turn out to be a genius long shot strategy on their part as I won all sectors and their organisation collapsed further. I won 6-0.

It confirms me as champions with 2 games left. I think I only need 2 points from the last 2 games to ensure autopromotion. I have now also scored 50 league goals so far this season, which is psychological milestone, and have the top 2 scorers in the league at present.

I just promoted from my youth team a 17y0d player Kelsey Hopper: Quick, Scoring 7.5, Def 5, Wing 5, Pass 4, PM 3 who will be listed for sale today. AdTheMad the England forward scout says he is the perfect age for the U21 continental championships final.

Kevster