With homegrown players to the top

Last week, HT-Tjecken announced a performance boost for homegrown players. This means that players that are born and raised in your club will play better than before. In this article I’ll reveal how you can take full advantage of this improvement. I’ll calculate and show how you can get a homegrown team, capable of playing in the first league of your country, reaching 448 hatstats and a mythical midfield. All this, without purchasing ANY players from outside your club.

First, I will explain you a training plan for own youth for the next 15 seasons. This plan was originally written for new teams, but can also be used by existing teams that will start from zero. After explaining the training plan, I will show which players and ratings you will have at the end of the 15-season-cycle. Only the coach will be acquired externally, all players will be homegrown.


The training plan

We start pulling 2 goalkeepers from the old scouting network. We train these players in goalkeeping during one season, or a bit more. Don’t worry about the low level of goalkeeping: as I will show later on, with the increased training speed they will improve very fast. Then, we’ll pull 9 defenders out of our youth academy. Again, don’t worry about their skills. We train them 2 seasons in defending (including one goalkeeper), 4 seasons in playmaking, 2 seasons in winger and 2 seasons in short passes. By training them many skills for many seasons, we make full use of the high training speed on low levels and benefit from the fact that older players can train longer nowadays.

After training defense, we’ll pull two [technical] youth players in order to fill up the 50% training slots for playmaking and winger. They will also receive full training in short passes and scoring. These two players will become our much-appreciated technical defensive forwards. Before training short passes, we will promote 3 or 4 normal forwards from our youth academy. After receiving the short passes training, they will train scoring for three full seasons, together with the two technical defensive forwards. To conclude, the whole team will train set pieces in combination with a higher percentage of stamina for at least one or two seasons.

After 15 to 17 seasons, your keeper will be 32 to 34 years old and you will have to substitute your old players for new ones. That’s why it is necessary to reach our goal within this set time frame.


Which skills will your players have after 15 seasons?

With help of a training simulation tool like this one (http://www.htspain.es/index.php?pag=train_calc) we can calculate the levels our players will reach after a certain amount of training. To give you an impression of the possibilities of a homegrown team, I entered the above mentioned training plan in the skill calculator.

I presumed pulling players of (on average) 17,50 year old. Only the keeper will have wretched goalkeeping and defending, because he will be pulled out of the scouting network. The rest of the players will be pulled with an inadequate main skill and weak side skills. The training will be given by a solid coach, on 100% intensity and 10% stamina (up to 20% during set pieces training).

I tried to take into account the fact that not all players will be able to train in pre-season. This is especially relevant during the training cycle of playmaking, as this training lasts for 4 seasons. Of course, I also took the limited amount of available training slots into account.

After training goalkeeping and defense, we will have a brilliant goalkeeper with outstanding defense.

With 9 defenders for the 9 available defense slots, we can build our defense as well as our midfield:

2 wing backs with brilliant defense, world-class winger and brilliant passing.

3 central defenders with brilliant defense. One of them has supernatural playmaking and two of them have magnificent playmaking (because they trained at the 50% training slots on the wings). All have brilliant passing.

2 wingers with brilliant defense, supernatural+ playmaking (because they couldn’t train in pre-season), world-class winger and brilliant passing.

3 inner midfielders. One of them comes without any defense. Two of them will have brilliant defense. All three have titanic playmaking and brilliant passing.

Next to this we still have some unused slots for the training of short passes. These will be used for the training of a young set of forwards. These 3 or 4 forwards will have reached supernatural scoring and magnificent passing after season 14.

We still have a few unused training slots left, especially the 50% ones for playmaking and winger. These slots can be used for the creation of our 2 technical defensive forwards. After season 14 they will have reached magnificent playmaking, brilliant winger, magnificent passing and magnificent+ scoring.

On the screenshot below you can see, as an example, how the defenders will look after they’ve received full training of defense, playmaking, winger and passing. Just after their 27th birthday they’ll reach their last skill training, after which the % of stamina will be raised to 20%.

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5316/5849390668_f2c557e6a1_b.jpg)


Which ratings will you obtain after season 15?

With these players, you have the flexibility to play all kind of formations. Everything is possible, from an ultra defensive 541 or an extreme 523 counter attack to an all out attack 253. And because we train set pieces during the last seasons, we can play them all without losing training slots.

With help of Hattrick Organizer 1.430 ( http://www.hattrickorganizer.net/) we can simulate above-mentioned group of players and check their ratings for all kind of formations at the end of the 15-season cycle. I presume that by that time, we will have a coach with solid leadership. I also presume of the following for the simulated match:

Neither attack nor defense-minded coach
Playing normal (no pic nor mots)
Playing at home
Team spirit content
Team confidence slightly exaggerated
Stamina and form are solid
Experience will be passable.
This simulates a fairly important game in the middle of the season.

1) Playing the most common kind of 352 (1 normal wing back, 2 normal central defenders, 1 normal winger, 3 normal inner midfielders, 1 winger towards middle and 2 normal forwards), you will receive the following ratings:
Defense: brilliant (low), brilliant (very high), solid (low)
Midfield: brilliant (low) (11.49)
Attack: magnificent (very low), brilliant (low), solid (very high)
Total amount of hatstats 353.

2) Using the same formation, but using our two technical defending forwards, we obtain a higher midfield: world-class (low) 13.42. The attack ratings remain acceptable: magnificent (high), formidable (low) and outstanding (low). The total amount of hatstats increases to 373.

3) If we put the central defenders offensive and both wingers towards middle, than we even reach a midfield rating of supernatural (very low) 14.17!

4) With an ultra defensive 541 with defending backs, wingers and inner midfielders, your defense tops: world-class (low), extra-terrestrial (very low), world-class (low). It is obvious that because of the relatively slow speed of defense training, this zone will be your weakest link. Therefor you could consider training one season more of defense. The backside is that you run the risk of not arriving at the highest leagues within your 15 to 17 season cycle.

5) Playing 253 with offensive backs, wingers and inner midfielders, your attack rating tops: supernatural (high), titanic (very low), supernatural (high). This is more than sufficient.

All in all, these are ratings with which you can battle for the championship of an average II-division of a major HT-country. With some luck, you’ll even be able to make the step to the first division! And mind you, all these calculations were made without the extra bonus for homegrown players! Add 20% up to these ratings and you will be able to reach a mythical (very low) midfield (17,00) playing option 3). Also, playing option 5, our central attack will be magical (very low). Playing option 2), the total amount of hatstats will be 448. No doubt that in order to reach the highest leagues, you’ll have to grow your own players!


The last piece of the puzzle: the economy

By now, it will be clear that within 15 to 17 seasons you will be able to play with a homegrown team that can reach the absolute top of your country. But what about the salaries? By the time we’ve reached season 15, our players will earn very decent salaries. Even while we can expect to play in division III by then, it might be hard to pay them. Though, this isn’t as big a problem as it might seem, because we train extreme multi-skill players that don’t earn that much.

With the same training tool as used before, we can also have a look at the salaries. In above-mentioned example, the total amount of salaries will be around 376.000 euros a week. However, the new changes will lower our salaries at least 13%. This leaves our weekly salary expenses at 327.000 euros. The average expenses for stadium maintenance and staff in III-division will be 100.000 euros a week, while the revenue of match takings and sponsors will sum up to 400.000 euros (two weakly average without cup games). Now there is only a small difference between revenues and expenses of 27.000 euros a week. We can finance this easily with the income of cup games.

When we succeed in making the step to division II, we will obtain a healthier weekly economic balance. This is because the revenues are higher in II, while the salaries are still the same. Of course it is still not easy to reach the highest divisions: you will need an iron discipline. However, also with a normal team it is hard to reach the top leagues.

Most important for each team in Hattrick is to have a well thought long term plan, without losing money with impulsive transfers and badly managed training plans. Our homegrown project provides this long-term plan benefitting to the max the new performance boost for homegrown players. There is only one disadvantage: we can’t reach the first division all at the same time. ;)

Thanks to Faas_Voorthuizen (5155557) en the Dutch federation Eigen jeugd in het eerste... (97038)

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