Rovers 3-1 WBA Stead (2) Kanu Emo

hmmmm.....my two wingback do both have passable wing skills...But 3-4-3 is probably offensive enough anyway. Once i have trained my strikers up enough (couple of seasons at least) i'll sell 4 of them and switch to 3-5-2. Strikers seem to be at a premium at the moment. I'm about to make a 100% profit on my 28 year old striker whom i have had for less than a season (bought at 158K, current bid is 310K). Any advice on searching for a clown (Popular, solid leadership)? I've followed the hottrick guide's advice but the single clown that I found was bid up to AU$100000 in a matter of seconds. I aready have a player with solid leadership (and pleasant) and i was wondering whether a clown would still be effective. I came across a semi-clown (sympathetic, solid) which i could have bought for 2K but for some reason i passed on the deal. I think that was a mistake...

3-4-3 (as you described it).

Cheer PG (and American). Do you think my 2 wingbacks are better off played as normal or as defensive in that formation?

Pretty sure you can only have a total of 10 assistant coaches (including goalkeeping coaches) before tension is caused. Unless you're training keepers most people have 9 assistant coaches and 1 goalkeeping coach. Speaking of tension i received the following message: A newly bought player got a really bad start when he arrived in the club. The team spirit fell when he initially turned out not to get along very well with the other ones. Is this likely to be an ongoing problem, that is am i going to lose TS every week, or is it just a once off hit. Also is it caused by having too many players?

Thanks for the advice PG but i've changed tactics. For the record i used to get solid in counter-attacks. I just bought myself 6 new 17 yo trainees and i'm going to train scoring. A couple of questions though: Which is better 3-4-3 or 4-3-3? Is it better to lose a wingback or a central defender? Should i play defensive wingbacks and/or a defensive inner mid? Do i need an offensive coach?

YES! My hattrick team is saved (for now at least)! I listed my striker (details below) at AU$300 000 and someone just made a bid on him. Plus there's still 2 days left on the transfer. I have many other over-priced players for sale as well if you are interested Francis Phipps (27951730) 28 years, inadequate form, bruised, but playing A controversial person who is calm and upright. Has weak experience and wretched leadership abilities. Nationality: USA Total Skill Index (TSI): 960 Wage: 1 792 AU$/week including 20% Bonus Owner: Supine Rovers Warnings: 0 Stamina: excellent Goaltending: wretched Playmaking: inadequate Passing: disastrous Winger: poor Defending: poor Scoring: solid Set Pieces: solid

In all honesty my trainees were simply too old or not good enough to begin with. I needed to start again anyway. Griz: Changing tactics means (at least in the context i said) changing training and formation. Formation is changed in the match menus for each individual match. EG if you want to switch to 3-5-2 you would change one of your defenders to an extra central midfielder. Training is changed in the training menu. Actual tactics (like counter-attacking, pressing etc) are also in the match menu and are changed for each individual match (down the bottom of the screen).

Thanks bigA but i've had a gutful of low posession, low scoring opportunities, and slow training. I'm changing things, keeping my best defenders and selling the rest. This time i'll buy a heap of 17 year olds and do things right.

Yeah the hell with training defenders. Even with the changes made recently Hattrick is still massively biased towards midfield trainers. 5-4-1 simply does not have enough attacking potential and if you play 5-3-2 you have pretty much resigned yourself to only having ~20% posession for the entire game. I reckon i'm gonna sell off my players and start from scratch. Is training strikers any easier? I just wanna be different...

417804 <===== Challenge me if you are an Oceania team. I simply cannot afford an international friendly at the moment unless you play at my arena but i cannot return the favour. By the way check out this match!: The crowd of 3544 turning up at Villan Park today were greeted by some nasty showers of rain. Wednesday tactics involved an interesting 4-4-2 combination. They fielded: Szejnfeld - Mallon, Roffers, Dillenbeck, Thomas - Busby, Flinders, Kaul-Seidman, Mawby - Tsigkounidis, Festile. Supine had chosen a strategic 5-4-1 formation. Lineup: Lane - Barlagen, Aujla, Curry, Brandes, Schaffhauser - Martens, Elizondo, Sarumara, Mackenzie - Phipps. Wednesday clearly had decided to counter-attack when they could, using their talent for it. Counter-attacking seemed to be the preferred strategy of Supine. Chanan Brandes received some harsh words from his coach after he acted foolishly, probably out of lack of experience, in the 11th minute and almost caused an opponent to score. Lindsey Mawby was dominating his wing and kept sending fine balls into the enemy box - Yiorgis Tsigkounidis managed to kick one of them into 1 - 0 in the 20:th minute. An equalising goal was close at hand as Francis Phipps clipped a free kick just wide of the goal. After 29 minutes Supine´s Francis Phipps contracted a slight foot injury, but could finish the game. With 33 minutes played the visitors almost levelled the score. Francis Phipps shot a hard curved free kick, striking the post. The teams went for a half-time break at 1 - 0. Supine, bringing the final ball possession rate to 60 percent, dominated the battle. In the 77:th minute Wednesdays Gustavo Kaul-Seidman received a yellow card for going into a challenge studs first. Supine were forced to a substitution as Rangi Aujla couldn´t continue playing due to the rough treatment, forcing Luis de Foixá to come in from the sidelines. With 79 minutes played the visitors almost levelled the score. Francis Phipps shot a hard curved free kick, striking the post. Man, what a shot by Lindsey Mawby! Firing from 35 yards he didn't give the enemy goalie a chance and it was 2 - 0. Wednesday almost scored after a counterattack 85 minutes into the match, but Logan Thomas took a shot from the left that landed harmlessly in the side of the net. Supine, bringing the final ball possession rate to 64 percent, dominated the battle. Bloody Phipps, my striker, missed so many shots. I murdered the opposition in posession, my team had 27.5 stars to their 20 but i still couldn't win the damn game. And to rub salt into the wounds they injurerd my best defender! 2 losses and a draw on the trot....

surely this thread should be moved to messageboard gold.

I've started a thread in the Ask Admin thread here which is a more appropriate place for this discussion.

Damn, all our meat/cow references look ridiculous and lame in this merged thread. I swear they were amusing or at least whimsical when we first posted them! EDIT: What the hell?!? I used the word Jes-us (minus the dash) and it changed it to "thats blasphemy". Which card carrying member of the PC police thought that up?

Well he's up to 5.5 million with 2 days remaining so i imagine you will probs be ok on this one. If there's anything i can do to help just pm me pg.

T'will be interesting when Souey and Cole meat later in the year.

So just to confirm, noone has any real knowledge on the squad numbers for next season and we are all playing number guessing games?

American. You should have trained stamina in the off-season. I raised my entire first-teams stamina to excellent after only two weeks training. But hey if you have already written of this season... Do any of you guys use Hattrick manager software. I have installed the freeware organisers Hattrick Buddy (HB), Hattrick OK(HOK) and Hattrick Organizer (HO) and have found a couple of issues. HB is the slickest and nicest to work with but doesn't have the lineup tool (absolutely necessary) that HO and HOK have. HO is very cool but is written in Java so it's a bit slower and doesn't integrate as well as the other two. Still i would have tosay that it's my favourite. HOK was the first program i used but it has a horrendously ugly and out-dated interface. Also the lineup tools for HO and HOK give me differing advice. For example HO says that my inner-midfielder is best played as defensive while HOk says he is best played as normal. HO seems to be the most up-to-date so i place more weight on its advice than HOK. Anyone else have words of wisdom in this area?

Interesting article at football365 that mentions Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke.

Actually it's mentioned in the bible as one of the signs of the Apocalypse: The second seal is broken when Dwight Yorke admits he's a lazy sod and starts playing his heart out.

Hey American. As someone who is training Defending i feel i should offer a bit of advice. Training defending is sloooow. You really need to start with 17yo trainees and nothing older. My first batch of trainees included 1 17yo and the rest were 18. My 17yo trainee is now head and shoulders above the rest of the group because he was able to train up quickly when the rest were just plodding along. Defending is a long-term training solution, I can't really see how it will benefit you overly in the short term. And unless your wingers are young, training them in defending is going to take forever. With that said my defence is freakin' rock solid (as you would expect from someone training defenders) but ihave had to buy good players for the midfield and forwards. I imagine that you will probably have to do the same for your defence. If you don't limit yourself to young (under 21) players, like you have suggested you do in previous posts, you shouldn't have to break the bank to pick up a couple of solid defenders. Don't forget that passing is an important secondary skill for central defenders (especially if you are going to play an offensive central defender). I can thoroughly recommend the south american area(and to a lesser extent the North American and Oceanian/African areas) for bargains as their transfers tend to end when the european countries are sleeping. EDIT: Oh yeah i forgot to mention that i am 3 points clear in my league after drawing 2-2 with the second team. My league has 2 Hattrick supporters, 2 regular power-players and 3 bots. Is this an easy/normal/hard league?

Looks pretty good there Griz. This is my striker (i play a 5-4-1 usually so i need someone sharp up front). Francis Phipps TSI = 1 000 (200 000 AU$) , 28 years, passable form Has poor experience and wretched leadership abilities Stamina: excellent Keeper: wretched Playmaking: inadequate Passing: disastrous Winger: poor Defending: poor Scoring: solid Set Pieces: solid I bought him because i urgently needed someone to take my free kicks as well as score goals. He's getting on in years but i still say he was a good buy. 4 goals in four games so far, although bizarrely my Centre back is the lead scorer for the conference with 5. If i can't get myself out of debt by the end of this season i'm going to abandon my team and start again. I wasted waaaay too much money early on buying players that i didn't need and selling good players for too little. On the plus side I have 6 trainees that should be worth a heap, including some quality wing-backs. I just wish i had trained keepers when i first started out to help build up a bank-roll quickly.

Quite right. I apologise unreservedly for my slight against silly cows. Although i feel my original comment was taken out of context I should never have made such a hateful slur against silly cows. The contribution of silly cows to our way of life over the years has been tremendous and it was remiss of me to paint them in the way that i did. Again I apologise and I hope that in the future the wounds between us will heal.

I think that ultimately it's a good thing that Cole is on the way out. For all his undoubted talent and ability he rarely worked as hard as he could have and he definitely was not great for team morale. I am sorry to see him go but our team is more focussed without big-name players dreaming of their glory days. Oh and Neophyx, i ordered a black coffee today but the silly cow at Starbucks brought me one with milk instead. Do you think this means that Souness is racist?

Thanks for tips BigA. Incidentally that site was what inspired the tactical change in the first place. I'll let you all know how it goes.