Between the Lines - How to Budget for YOUR Midfield
Source: (link)
Comment: An article on midfield and the players who play there. As it's the part of the field where most players invest most you must budget wisely. Player salaries could easily get out of hand. It also points out why wingers should have playmaking, and why you should be willing to pay for them. Credit again to Ainvar for this nice article and BTL for making a very interesting publication.
Budgeting for Midfield
or, getting the most bang for your buck
Let's face it--midfield is still the most important part of Hattrick. So chances are, when you start spending your hard-earned cash, this is where your upgrades are going to happen most. Also, as your wages start getting bigger, you will find that, in order to compete with other teams, a large percentage of your wages will be your midfielders, often as high as 50%.
First, let me take a moment to point out some mathematical points of interest, that will serve us well in the rest of the article. The first is that a level of midfield has a greater effect at lower levels. It's pretty clear that the effect of playmaking level on midfield is linear. For example, if you replace an outstanding playmaker with a brilliant playmaker you can expect about one sublevel of improvement in your midfield, and you'll get that same sublevel of improvement if you bring in a titanic to replace your supernatural. The relationship between pm level and midfield sublevel in this example may not be exactly right, but you get the idea of what I mean by linear, which is my actual point.
However, when midfields face off against each other, the effect is not linear. You can imagine it as a percentage. If team A has a midfield rating of 15 and team B of 20, then the percentages each team gets the ball are 15/(15+20) and 20/(15+20). Thus, an x level difference in midfield at lower levels makes for a larger possession difference than at higher levels.
Example:
poor (low) = 10 and weak (high) = 15. The possession (with equal stamina, etc.) would split 40%/60%
on the other hand, excellent (low) = 30 and formidable (high) = 35 yields a possession split of 46%/54% for the same 5 sublevel difference.
So how can we buy midfielders most efficiently, and get the best deals?
First, let's consider how much a level of playmaking on one player costs. I am assuming, for the sake of this article, that you have progressed at least to the formidable/outstanding phase, as most teams should within a season or so. A look at some transfer statistics shows us that a level of playmaking costs around $600k-$700k, depending on which level and how carefully you buy.
The highest level playmakers are cheaper, but then their wages make you spend a lot, so, for now, I will focus on formidable-titanic as a range.
Now, what other factors influence midfield?
Team Spirit
It's not a coincidence that lower division teams tend to get cheaper solid coaches with lower leadership, and that upper division teams tend to sack their coaches around inadequate leadership and start over with a fresh solid. Certainly, at the upper levels of Hattrick, it's rare for a team to push for promotion without a fresh coach.
This is because team spirit is a huge factor in midfield ratings, and the higher your midfield ratings the more important a factor it becomes. If you can get a 10% better midfield through TS, then as a result of our math done above you can see that that is much more useful for a team with formidable midfield ratings than one with poor ones.
Thus, as you rise in the levels, TS becomes something you want to spend your money on more and more.
Wingers
I used to ask myself the question Why are pure wingers so cheap? and the answer used to be because people are stupid.
But economics teaches us that people are not stupid. And after thinking about the question some more I decided to rephrase it--Why are pure wingers so expensive?!
I don't have an answer to that, but I do have some reasoning to support the change in question. The fact is, a winger will contribute between 45%-75% of his playmaking to your midfield, depending on how often you play him offensively (normal) and towards middle. Compare this to an extra inner midfielder, who contributes about 90% and for whom people still pay ~$650k per PM level (see above). Mathematically, a level of PM on a winger should therefore be worth at least half that amount, if not more if you decide to play them towards middle.
So, a brilliant winger with wretched PM (who is always played offensively) should be worth over a million dollars less than one with passable PM (always assuming stamina for the sake of this article....)
Furthermore, what if you are a team who already has a full set of supernatural or higher inner midfielders? Now the winger is a downright cheap midfield option, because wages are about to start killing you if you try to improve your midfielders!
Now you see why I rephrased the question...
Other factors
Other things influence midfield as well, but I will go into less detail. Offensive defenders are quite a popular option nowadays, but as their playmaking contribution is significantly less than that of a winger, it's hard to argue exactly how much they should be worth, especially as they drop your defense ratings significantly.
Counterattacking also affects your midfield by 7%. By our reasoning above this implies that the CA penalty is more serious at higher levels. Perhaps this is why we don't see a lot of CA up there, though I'm not sure this is the reason. On the other hand a team built around CA at the top levels would save so much money on midfielders that they could very well have insane defense and attack and maybe it's worth it--that's beyond the scope of this article.
I will only mention defensive forwards so people don't get on my case for forgetting them. Honestly, they're not even a consideration for me.
Anyway, hopefully this gives you some ideas on how midfield works, and, mostly importantly, how to get the most bang for your buck when investing in midfield.
by Ainvar
Comment: An article on midfield and the players who play there. As it's the part of the field where most players invest most you must budget wisely. Player salaries could easily get out of hand. It also points out why wingers should have playmaking, and why you should be willing to pay for them. Credit again to Ainvar for this nice article and BTL for making a very interesting publication.
Budgeting for Midfield
or, getting the most bang for your buck
Let's face it--midfield is still the most important part of Hattrick. So chances are, when you start spending your hard-earned cash, this is where your upgrades are going to happen most. Also, as your wages start getting bigger, you will find that, in order to compete with other teams, a large percentage of your wages will be your midfielders, often as high as 50%.
First, let me take a moment to point out some mathematical points of interest, that will serve us well in the rest of the article. The first is that a level of midfield has a greater effect at lower levels. It's pretty clear that the effect of playmaking level on midfield is linear. For example, if you replace an outstanding playmaker with a brilliant playmaker you can expect about one sublevel of improvement in your midfield, and you'll get that same sublevel of improvement if you bring in a titanic to replace your supernatural. The relationship between pm level and midfield sublevel in this example may not be exactly right, but you get the idea of what I mean by linear, which is my actual point.
However, when midfields face off against each other, the effect is not linear. You can imagine it as a percentage. If team A has a midfield rating of 15 and team B of 20, then the percentages each team gets the ball are 15/(15+20) and 20/(15+20). Thus, an x level difference in midfield at lower levels makes for a larger possession difference than at higher levels.
Example:
poor (low) = 10 and weak (high) = 15. The possession (with equal stamina, etc.) would split 40%/60%
on the other hand, excellent (low) = 30 and formidable (high) = 35 yields a possession split of 46%/54% for the same 5 sublevel difference.
So how can we buy midfielders most efficiently, and get the best deals?
First, let's consider how much a level of playmaking on one player costs. I am assuming, for the sake of this article, that you have progressed at least to the formidable/outstanding phase, as most teams should within a season or so. A look at some transfer statistics shows us that a level of playmaking costs around $600k-$700k, depending on which level and how carefully you buy.
The highest level playmakers are cheaper, but then their wages make you spend a lot, so, for now, I will focus on formidable-titanic as a range.
Now, what other factors influence midfield?
Team Spirit
It's not a coincidence that lower division teams tend to get cheaper solid coaches with lower leadership, and that upper division teams tend to sack their coaches around inadequate leadership and start over with a fresh solid. Certainly, at the upper levels of Hattrick, it's rare for a team to push for promotion without a fresh coach.
This is because team spirit is a huge factor in midfield ratings, and the higher your midfield ratings the more important a factor it becomes. If you can get a 10% better midfield through TS, then as a result of our math done above you can see that that is much more useful for a team with formidable midfield ratings than one with poor ones.
Thus, as you rise in the levels, TS becomes something you want to spend your money on more and more.
Wingers
I used to ask myself the question Why are pure wingers so cheap? and the answer used to be because people are stupid.
But economics teaches us that people are not stupid. And after thinking about the question some more I decided to rephrase it--Why are pure wingers so expensive?!
I don't have an answer to that, but I do have some reasoning to support the change in question. The fact is, a winger will contribute between 45%-75% of his playmaking to your midfield, depending on how often you play him offensively (normal) and towards middle. Compare this to an extra inner midfielder, who contributes about 90% and for whom people still pay ~$650k per PM level (see above). Mathematically, a level of PM on a winger should therefore be worth at least half that amount, if not more if you decide to play them towards middle.
So, a brilliant winger with wretched PM (who is always played offensively) should be worth over a million dollars less than one with passable PM (always assuming stamina for the sake of this article....)
Furthermore, what if you are a team who already has a full set of supernatural or higher inner midfielders? Now the winger is a downright cheap midfield option, because wages are about to start killing you if you try to improve your midfielders!
Now you see why I rephrased the question...
Other factors
Other things influence midfield as well, but I will go into less detail. Offensive defenders are quite a popular option nowadays, but as their playmaking contribution is significantly less than that of a winger, it's hard to argue exactly how much they should be worth, especially as they drop your defense ratings significantly.
Counterattacking also affects your midfield by 7%. By our reasoning above this implies that the CA penalty is more serious at higher levels. Perhaps this is why we don't see a lot of CA up there, though I'm not sure this is the reason. On the other hand a team built around CA at the top levels would save so much money on midfielders that they could very well have insane defense and attack and maybe it's worth it--that's beyond the scope of this article.
I will only mention defensive forwards so people don't get on my case for forgetting them. Honestly, they're not even a consideration for me.
Anyway, hopefully this gives you some ideas on how midfield works, and, mostly importantly, how to get the most bang for your buck when investing in midfield.
by Ainvar
posted by Martin @ 12:39 PM
