Spurious Logic

Pre-season part the second

Well that was somewhat anticlimactic. It was a summer of coming's and goings. I didn't get players I wanted but I did get rid of players I didn't want.

The problem with being a club with a low reputation is that no-one wants to sign for you and if they do want to sign for you it usually means that they're either not very good or they're unambitious. We went for a few players and as soon as there was even a hint of interest from an any way larger team we didn't have a chance.

It makes cuts down on your possible actions considerably because instead of having a whole range of options you're instead left with buying players who are too young, too old or not very good. Alternatively you can try and find players for loan who are good enough to play for you. So you spend literally hours looking through the player search engine, cursing the incompetent scouts you hired trying to find that one diamond in the rough who could really contribute something positive to the team.

I took a look at the team from last year and decide that I would concentrate as much as I could on younger players. So out went Guerrero, Daniel , Javier Rivero (), Antonio Calderon

So in total the transfers went like this.

OUT:

IN:

All for free. the loans out are on 100% wages while I'm not paying any wages for Joe.

The profit from the preseason deathmarch came out to be around £50,000 and change which is half of what we brought in last year. Maybe there is an in game law of diminishing returns for having too many games consecutively. I'll have to really check this out for next summer. I'm thinking that I'll just go back and schedule the same games as I did for the first pre-season.

As I said, it was a really quiet pre-season. I did spot a few fantastic players at the trials day but only managed to sign two (Julio and Inglesias). I missed a wonderkid AMC who signed up with a higher league team and is now worth a few million. I had offered him £250 a week wages as a key player and now he's playing in their u19 squad. This is what I mean about lacking any signing power.

Funnily enough I don't find the lack of transfer funds at all restrictive. Unless you're waving around wads of £100,000 you're still stuck with roughly the same quality of player. i.e. You'll get just as good a player for free as you would for ten or twenty thousand. I have yet to spot a player in that budget price bracket who I think was really, really worth it so there's a big price increase before buying players becomes really worth it.

There really has been no other change in the club and to be frank it was dull. I just couldn't wait for the season to get started and I'm interested to see if this league is the same quality or tougher than last years. If this is actually how the Spanish league works then it is a great idea for ensuring that the leagues stay fresh. That there will be new teams to play against every year even if you don't get promoted. On the downside it makes it very hard to predict how you'll perform each year. What happens if I'm in a division with the top 5 teams of each league, or the bottom 5?