Bazman's Blog
23 Dec 2019. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 19.
As noted in the last round of salary negotiations, the wage bill is starting to bite and some of the players and staff putting in requests are going to be going away disappointed this time around. Eight players and four headquarters staff turned up at the Manager's Office with their inflated sense of self worth today, here's what happened :
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FOXWORTH | 37717 | 39980 | 2263 | 6 | 33 | APP | no change |
| HODDLE | 649655 | 812068 | 162413 | 25 | 27 | APP | +17% matches TP, permanent |
| FOSTER | 450498 | 540597 | 90099 | 20 | 10 | APP | +11% training TP for 3 seasons |
| DAVEY | 447340 | 563648 | 116308 | 26 | 10 | DEC | no change |
| ASTLE, G | 1033774 | 1292217 | 258443 | 25 | 19 | DEC | -14% training TP for 1 season, -1 First Touch, -1 Creativity, -1 Dribble for 1 season |
| ASTLE, R | 241461 | 265607 | 24146 | 10 | 24 | APP | no change |
| SWEET | 63820 | 74031 | 10211 | 16 | 37 | APP | no change |
| FITZPATRICK | 250515 | 325669 | 75154 | 30 | 36 | APP | +10% training TP for 1 season, +12% matches TP for 2 seasons |
| [tot. players] | 739037 | ||||||
| POLLA | 213128 | 266410 | 53282 | 25 | Staff | DEC | no change |
| BUENO | 152237 | 175072 | 22835 | 15 | Staff | APP | +0.07 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| ERDESIR | 258940 | 334032 | 75092 | 29 | Staff | DEC | -0.90 rating |
| CALSKAN | 1253880 | 1630044 | 376164 | 30 | Staff | DEC | no change |
| [tot. staff] | 527373 |
So, overall seven APProvals and five DEClines from a total ask of $1.25m this season, some were modest requests and some were downright greedy.
Looking at the declined requests first, the stand-out joker is senior Head Coach Calskan, looking for a massive +30% on top of his $1.25m per week pay packet. He's a 10.0 skill guy of course and I've seen other ones with $1.9m salaries but moving him up to $1.63m was too much and he got turned down. Clearly he knew he was pushing his luck as he laughed it off and continued to work as normal. Senior coach Polla asked for 25% which would have taken him to a fairly reasonable $266k per week but didn't grumble when he was rebuffed but youth coach Erdesir took offence at not being granted a 29% increase that would have made him better paid than any of the senior coaches and dumped 0.90 skill on the spot (I'm convinced that the reactions of staff and player's are more random and less logical than we might expect). Looking ahead on this, it'll take 12 seminars and $3.24m to put that skill back onto him compared to having saved $1.2m per season on his salary, so an expensive decision! Two players were declined too, defensive stalwart Davey took the rejection of his 26% ask well whilst Gary Astle is clearly not happy with his $1m per week and is having a 3 skill point and 14% training strop over me turning down his 25% ask - what a Prima Donna! Considering he only made 19 appearances last season, this again looks more like a random rather than a logical outcome.
Three players had their modest request granted and jut walked off happy without promising to increase their performances, at a total of under $38k though I'm happy with that. Three more took the money and improved their resolve, veteran defender Hoddle bagged a permanent matches boost for his $162k per week upgrade while young attacker Foster took his $90k and vowed to improve his training for 3 seasons - ironically something that will likely keep him out of the team for 3 seasons rather than on the pitch! The impressive youth attacker Fitzpatrick became by far my best paid youth player (more than twice the wage of any of the others) and repaid the favour by boosting his training points gain from both training and matches, this is on top of the permanent +14% training ground bonus he picked up back in Season 17. Fitz has to be a strong candidate for an England NT youth pick this season to add to his 3 appearances in last season's world cup games. Finally a nice boost for senior coach Bueno, with a modest ask of an extra $23k per week, he will pick up an extra 0.07 skill from seminars in the coming season. The benefit will save at least six seminars and $1.62m on his route to maximum skill, not quite reversing the loss from Erdesir but patching up the largest part of the hole.
02 Sep 2019. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 18.
Once more it is that time in the FootballStrategy calendar that managers get requests from their players and staff for salary increases. Sometimes the players and staff react to extra salary by increasing their output or training speed and sometimes they react to refusals by losing skills or training more slowly. Sometimes they react to manager decisions with a mere shrug of their shoulders!
As you can read in previous blog posts, I tend to grant almost all of the requests, which gains me bonus skills and training but pushes the wage bill ever higher. At the start of season 17, I granted $1.3m of weekly salary raises across the club and now at the start of Season 18 requests have come in for another $1.0m of weekly raises. I granted them all again, but at some point in the future I'm going to have to become more choosy. All of my Season 18 negotiation details (6 players and 3 staff) are here in the table :
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MANBY | 440667 | 511173 | 70506 | 16.00 | 31 | APP | +20% matches TP for 2 seasons |
| GEORGESCU | 49952 | 55946 | 5994 | 12.00 | 33 | APP | +1 Finish, +1 Head, +1 Dribble for 1 season, +17% training TP, permanent |
| REYNOLDS | 1046312 | 1538078 | 491766 | 47.00 | 35 | APP | +19% training TP for 1 season, +10% matches TP for 2 seasons |
| WATSON | 218167 | 222530 | 4363 | 2.00 | 33 | APP | +1 Finish, +1 Head, +1 Dribble for 3 seasons, +1 potential for 2 seasons |
| KELLY | 593086 | 717634 | 124548 | 21.00 | 28 | APP | +16% matches TP for 3 seasons |
| MONFORTE | 416018 | 532503 | 116485 | 28.00 | 36 | APP | +17% matches TP, permanent |
| [tot. players] | 813662 | ||||||
| Szynal | 242199 | 358454 | 116255 | 48.00 | Staff | APP | +0.56 rating |
| Aa | 134784 | 171175 | 36391 | 27.00 | Staff | APP | +0.40 rating |
| Treacy | 167437 | 200924 | 33487 | 20.00 | Staff | APP | +0.08 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| [tot. staff] | 186133 |
Happily this time (and for the first ever time), I didn't have any players or staff simply pocket the cash for no return, they all gained something. A couple of the players even picked up what will become very significant bonuses. For instance, Georgescu is a 21 year old Romanian attacker who made 10 appearances for his country's U21 squad last season; the temporary bonus skill points may well get him some further games in this season's World Cup campaign and the permanent extra training bonus should ensure that he becomes a valuable player when he turns senior too. The permanent match training points bonus on Monforte is also a huge boost to him as he is something of a Spanish wonder-kid, playing in NT games at both youth and senior level, last season he was knocking out 5 games per real life week regularly.
Some of the bonuses weren't so powerful, for instance Treacy, one of my coaches, got a nice seminars bonus but he already had 9.57 skill meaning that he is only about 6 seminars away from being at his maximum skill. The bonus reduces this to three seminars, which I'll happily take and will be gained in the first two weeks of the season, then the bonus is sitting idle for the other 14 weeks of the season. Overall however, I think I've had a good salary negotiation round, now it's time to check out my sponsorship offers.
16 Aug 2019. [FW] Final Whistle due to go live on 19 August.
At long last, the developers of Final Whistle have announced the date that the game will go live. Monday August 19 is the day for your calendars.
So far the arrangements for the transition are that clubs participating in the current development phase will be able to continue through to the live phase with no problems. They will be given a seeding for league placement, although all club data will be reset (i.e. players, cash, facilities and old results/tables will be wiped). In the live game, the seedings will be used to determine your starting leagues. Seeding values will come from the current ELO rankings of clubs. Currently active clubs will be bumped up to 1500 ELO if they are currently under that whilst all inactive clubs will be bumped down to 1400 ELO, ties will be resolved by club registration date. If you have a club in FinalWhistle and you've been waiting for the game to go live, NOW is the time to log in to claim your seedings activity bonus!
Other information recently given is that some new Nation Leagues will be created and that the first league games will start on August 21. That's actually quite a fast start-up time, so those clubs who are on the ball and set-up their team orders in the first two days are likely to get a good start. Currently the shortest build-time for facilities is 3 days, so attendance increases (from upgraded Parking) and spectator spend increases (from Merchandise stalls) wont be seen until the second match.
It's always interesting to be in at the start of a new game. What's the best plan - investing in players?, training?, academy?, facilities? No-one will have the cash to buy it all, everyone's going to have to make a choice!
31 Aug 2019. [FS] Quad skill gains, Double fixtures and one hair-raising match.
It's been a weird old week in Football Strategy and it's only Wednesday! First off, a player has been spotted who received a quadruple skill increase from salary negotiations. Triple skill increases seem to be the most frequent, but this player proves that three is not a hard limit for skill buffs. I found the player while scouting my youth FS Cup opponent, Labdászok of Hungary and the bonus he received must rank as one of the best gain-to-cost ratios in the history of FootballStrategy. The evidence is in Figure 1, but the details are a PERMANENT gain of +1 Finish, +1 Strength, +1 Head, +1 Dribble and a PERMANENT gain of +10% training points from training for a cost of $9,700 per week (basically loose change for such a player). An amazing bonus, I'm crossing my fingers to get something on that level on the next round of salary negotiations!
Fig. 1. A four-skill bonus on top of extra training after a salary negotiation.
Next, the random nature of the National Cup has thrown up a pair of paired matches for the upcoming weekend and cup round. On the 4th of August, the league sees the fixtures Whirlwind Warriors vs Bazmans Bandits and BMM FC vs Beautiful Peaches whilst the cup matches on the 6th of August have turned out to be Bazmans Bandits vs Whirlwind Warriors and Beautiful Peaches vs BMM FC!
That brings me on to the most nail-biting, edge of the seat match that I've had for a while, that saw the Bandits snatch victory from near certain defeat. It was a blustery Tuesday evening with sporadic thundery rains, the kind of night that almost no one wants to play football in. Bazmans were at home but the pitch was like a soggy sponge and the opponents, Stafford Rangers had defeated Premier League opposition to get themselves into the match and didn't look like they were ready to roll over. The first half was a disaster for the home team, they weren't moving the ball well, there was little communication between the players and no one looked like they were ready for the fight. 8 minutes in and the normally solid defender Micky Hoddle turned the ball into his own net, 9 caps for England he has but no one is betting on him getting a 10th! The defensive setup of Stafford saw Bandits have a lot of possession but they posed little threat, the wind and lacklustre shooting conspiring to send shot after shot wide of the posts. Hoddle's day got worse as Stafford's Fitzpatrick ran right past him and placed a shot just out of reach of the diving keeper to double Stafford's lead. There was nothing for it but to sub him off, Wayne Targett coming off the bench for a rare appearance. Rangers had a midfielder sent off, but the resulting freekick went nowhere and Bandits struggled to grab the numerical advantage. 0-2 down at half time and Bandits were booed off the pitch by the 45000 home fans and seemed to be heading out of the cup.
Desperate to turn things around, the manager wheeled out the trusty powerpoint presentation in the dressing room and projected an array of famous East Anglian warriors onto the wall .. Boudica, Lord Nelson, Asbo the Swan .. how could these legendary fighters fail to inspire the lads? Outside in the stands, the Stafford faithful were chanting things about how great Alton Towers is and how Drayton Manor Zoo has the best stick insects in the land; some of the home fans were leaving the stadium. The pep talk was to no avail though, the second half started as the first had finished .. a shot wide, off the post, tackled by the stout Stafford defence. In the VIP box, Stafford bigwigs talked about how we should visit Lichfield Cathedral next week before being guests at their semi final match. Then, almost imperceptibly, something changed; the rain slowed, the wind dropped a bit, a drunk woman grabbed the stadium microphone and asked where we all were, the Bandits started to gain some composure. Sensing a point of inflection, the tiring Robbie Astle was brought off, his legs heavy from the waterlogged turf, and replaced by the veteran Thomas Curtis. Now the numerical advantage started to be pressed home, saves drawn from the Stafford Keeper, a freekick just outside the box, a rebound off the post and then, just as the grey clouds parted and the first ray of sunlight of the day entered the Banditorium, an imperious David Manby sweeping up the rebound and netting for the Bandits, a goal!
Still one goal behind, but only 12 minutes left on the clock, what had started as a faint glimmer of hope had now become a shining expectation, Bazmans players sweeping forward at every opportunity searching for an equalizer, the remaining home fans cranking up the volume. Another Manby pot-shot, Southgate running into space on the wing, a small child looking up from a phone to see what the fuss was about between games of Fortnite, more sunlight, more noise, more belief! Four minutes left, another attack, three minutes, two, Manby finds some energy from somewhere to chase down a loose ball and wham, the equalizer is scored and the stadium erupts. It's not over though of course, these cup matches are played with penalties but no extra-time. There are mere seconds left, Southgate charges forward on the unguarded flank and puts in the dangerous cross, Watson shoots, Gabbiadini parries, Manby shoots, Gabbiadini parries again, man of the match now whatever the outcome, the whistle blows and the stadium camera focusses on a Bandits fan missing his own open mouth with the pasty he'd been saving for the journey home.
Penalties are the height of nervousness and excitement with the simple kick of a ball leading within a second to victory or defeat. Bandits kicked first, Manby on the scoresheet again. An instant reply from Stafford attacker Rafi, one apiece. Watson placed the ball carefully for his shot but appeared to slow his run-up on the still wet grass and the shot skidded towards the post to the relief of the Staffordites. Grey looked confident stepping up for his kick but the shot was hooked and went wide; Sean Neville walked to the spot for the Bandits, not a normal penalty taker but called into action due to the earlier substitutions, he looked nervous but placed his shot carefully and racked up only his 8th career goal. Stafford also sent up a defender, Bright, who blasted wide .. advantage to the Bandits but it didn't last long as Reynolds, another defender, placed the ball and kicked it wide leaving Keiron Owen to confidently level the scores. 2-2 after 4 kicks, effectively sudden death now. After some discussion, Mick Banks picked up the ball and walked to the spot. Gabbiadini wriggled around on his line before steadying and diving the wrong way against what was actually a tame shot. Bandits ahead, the home crowd were dancing. Stafford elected Ainsley Black to take the kick, the stadium hushed for the moment, Black took a strong, fast run up and blasted the ball ... right into row Z. Cue the celebrations in East Anglia, cue the quiet coach trip back to the Midlands for Rangers, cue some adverts for bookies offering 5-to-1 on that fan actually getting the next pasty into his mouth, it's Bandits party time!
13 May 2019. [FS] Salary Negotiations for Season 17.
A new season in FootballStrategy means a new round of salary negotiations with the players and staff and a chance to gain valuable training or skill bonuses. This time around my squad received requests from five senior players, two youths and five staff. As seen in the table, the cost of granting them all would be about $1.3m per week. This is a hefty amount for any club ($20m+ for the season), but I decided to go for it as I had a nice cash boost from meeting last season's sponsor targets and a sweet fanbase boost from the England National Team putting in a great performance at the Season 16 World Cup. I saw also a bit wary of getting stuck by a big skill drop after taking a hit on a coach last season (see below). All of my Season 17 negotiation details are here in the table :
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| REYNOLDS | 595649 | 732648 | 136999 | 23.00 | 27 | APP | +14% matches TP for 1 season |
| FITZPATRICK | 49108 | 66295 | 17187 | 35.00 | 28 | APP | +14% training TP, permanent |
| HAWKINS | 38442 | 41901 | 3459 | 9.00 | 29 | APP | +1 Pass, +1 Dribble, +1 Creativity for 3 seasons. |
| ASTLE R | 213755 | 226580 | 12825 | 6.00 | 30 | APP | no change |
| ASTLE G | 786852 | 967827 | 180975 | 23.00 | 20 | APP | +20% training TP, permanent |
| HODDLE | 501790 | 652327 | 150860 | 30.00 | 28 | APP | +13% matches TP for 2 seasons |
| NEVILLE | 539467 | 663544 | 124077 | 23.00 | 33 | APP | no change |
| [tot. players] | 626382 | ||||||
| Calskan | 972000 | 1253880 | 281880 | 29.00 | Staff | APP | +0.06 seminar points gain for 1 season |
| Scheidler | 540000 | 750600 | 210600 | 39.00 | Staff | APP | no change |
| Erdesir | 174960 | 258940 | 83980 | 48.00 | Staff | APP | no change |
| Ponomarenko | 259200 | 336960 | 77760 | 30.00 | Staff | APP | no change |
| Polla | 151546 | 171246 | 19700 | 13.00 | Staff | APP | no change |
| [tot. staff] | 673920 |
As you can see from the numbers, I got quite a lot for my money from granting the players' requests and very little benefit from granting the staff requests. Even Calskan's seminar points gain isn't beneficial as he's already on 10.00 skill and wont be going on any seminars in the near future, especially now that the staff decay system has changed. Not to worry though, it's still a positive that the staff didn't take any skill hits.
Looking at the players it seems that some have better advisers than others, for example Neville realised that with 33 appearances last season he was always going to be granted the $124k that he asked for whilst Robbie Astle only asked for $12.8k despite his 30 appearances and having knocked in 34 goals from midfield. Don't tip him off, but I'd happily double his salary if he keeps up his performance levels!
Interesting picks from the outcome benefits this season are that Gary Astle delivered a 20% boost to training session Training Points, the largest boost that I've seen so far. This boost is permanent AND it stacks onto his previous permanent 16% training session TP boost making him an absolute beast in the training ground! Also the 14% training ground boost for Fitzpatrick has significant long term value as he's only 18 right now.
If anyone's got some outstanding results from salary negotiations that they'd care to share, send me an ingame message (club = Bazmans Bandits) about it and I'll feature the best ones in a future blog post.
23 Apr 2019. [FW] Final Whistle moves closer to going live.
Exciting times at Final Whistle as the developers announce in a forum post that they are approaching a release date. There is no fixed date yet, but the word is that at latest the game will go live in July this year although it is possible that it will be earlier. This will come as great news for the managers who have been battling each other for league glory in the beta version of the game, although it will mean that all the virtual players in the database will be freshly generated. I'll certainly be missing my goal machine Cor Brons, even though he has a woeful on-pitch temperament!
Fig. 1. Cor Brons is my most powerful striker and always on my teamsheet in the lineup page.
23 Jan 2019. [FS] Salary negotiation results - second season.
The second installation of player and staff salary negotiations are with us in week 0 of Season 16. For newer managers, this will be their first experience of dealing with such wage requests - don't worry, it's not so scary! The set-up is almost the same as it was for the first time, but for this round, there could be effects from previous season wearing off and also the potential for multiple bonuses or penalties to stack on top of each other. Disappointingly (from a blog perspective), I only had 5 requests to deal with from the Bandits' players and staff this season, here's the table of requests and outcomes:
| Name | Salary | Request | Cash increase | Percentage increase | Games played | Decision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAVEY | 146080 | 160688 | 14608 | 10.00 | 22 | APP | +16% training TP for 2 seasons |
| LOMBART | 647158 | 880134 | 232976 | 36.00 | 36 | APP | no change |
| CHAPMAN | 106896 | 137895 | 30999 | 29.00 | 14 | APP | no change |
| KELLY | 290546 | 363182 | 72636 | 25.00 | 26 | APP | +11% matches TP for 1 season, +10% training TP for 2 seasons |
| Treacy | 122764 | 137495 | 14731 | 12.00 | Staff | DEN | -0.84 rating |
All in all, not a huge increase in cash terms for my club, but there are some interesting things to note. 1. Davey made two salary increase requests in two seasons and now has three bonuses, two of which appear to stack together (+16% training TP and +17% training TP). I checked the TP history of Davey after the latest training and the points gain tallies with the idea that Davey is getting a total bonus of +33% training TP .. this season and next he's going to train like a beast! 2. Any salary increase that was agreed in previous seasons has been wiped .. yes, the benefits stay but the costs vanish! You can see that from comparing Davey's base wage this season and his boosted wage from last season in these blogposts, but I double checked and it applies to all of the players. In fact it looks like some kind of general salary decrease has been silently applied for high earning players (salary negotiations or not) - for instance I bought Lombart from transfer last season and until the normal End-of-Season salary changes, he was earning well over $1m per week, so even with his "boosted" salary this season, I'm saving a sack full of cash.
I continued my policy of denying salary negotiations to staff members, but it backfired this season, with my U19 Coach Treacy losing 0.84 skill. Looking at it now, he only wanted a small increase, under $15k per week, and by denying it, I now face a bill of about $800k just to replace the lost skill points via seminars. Definitely a mistake on my part and a lesson to look at the numbers more carefully before I press the deny button in the future!