Agitated Flora, a Madcarrot story

[Madcarrot]

I wanted to make this thread to as a chronicle of a brand new team going from creation to division 1.
It can be a guide for new players or it could be a cautionary tale of what not to do.



Timeline
First thing - downgrade academy to non-existent

Season 56
Purchased 12 senior players 5 batters, 1 keeper, 6 bowlers, minimum outstanding summary batsmen, minimum outstanding fielding. Average wage $14k
Retired original senior team.

Purchased 7 youth players (based on my opponents I determined that it was not necessary to recruit a full team).

[Madcarrot]

Timeline of events

Season 55 week 10 - creation of team
I assessed my leagues and found that it was impossible for me to make promotion in any of my leagues.

Due to a lack of quality in my team I decided to downgrade my academy and retire half of my team. None of the starting players are worth investing in or will be useful in the future.

I recruited general players from the youth academy to increase chances of getting someone with quality who would be worth selling.

Season 56 week 1
I have $851k in the bank and am ready to build a squad that can win division 4.

[boscorp]

I wanted to make this thread to as a chronicle of a brand new team going from creation to division 1.
It can be a guide for new players or it could be a cautionary tale of what not to do.

Ideally I wanted to make a series of videos but I don't think I really have the equipment or editing skills to do so.

Good Luck with it, it may take a while. Have you selected to auto promote to start off in Div4 or was that luck? I see some other new Pakistan managers started with a side in a div5 comp.
Are you concentrating on juniors, seniors or both?

[Madcarrot]

I wanted to make this thread to as a chronicle of a brand new team going from creation to division 1.
It can be a guide for new players or it could be a cautionary tale of what not to do.

Ideally I wanted to make a series of videos but I don't think I really have the equipment or editing skills to do so.

Good Luck with it, it may take a while. Have you selected to auto promote to start off in Div4 or was that luck? I see some other new Pakistan managers started with a side in a div5 comp.
Are you concentrating on juniors, seniors or both?

Auto promote?

I don't know that's an option but given that my leagues are all full of bots I think it's strange that new teams would start in div5.

I'll be focussing on both youths and seniors as ideally I would like this to be a kind of guide perhaps. Though feedback and criticism of my strategy would make it fun.

It's the kind of thing that I think I'll only really add to this a few times each season I think.

[Madcarrot]

Inception

The Flora began on a cool evening of the 26th August 2023. Just 2 days before my birthday. I decided on Pakistan as it is a time that suits me.

We landed in division 4 in all leagues, with 3 weeks to go until the remainder of the season.

I have decided to withhold from making any purchases of new players until the season ends and I will see what my opponents will be next season.

Key decisions.
As I have no real talent worth developing, I have decided to downgrade my academy and retire some of my players. At the clubs inception I am paying $32,000 in academy costs. If I reduce this to $0 then I can afford 3 decent players on my pay roll without incurring any additional expenses.
I'll also be saving about $10k per week from player wages due to retiring some of my starter players.

I am also lucky enough to be sitting in the top 4 in most of my leagues.
SOD 3rd - with a bot in 2nd who I play in my first week. So I will overtake them and move to 2nd
T20 5th - I don't expect to move to 4th as I play 2 human teams in the remainder of my games. But there is a bot in 3rd so maybe I'll be lucky enough to squeeze in there
YOD - 4th with 2 bots ahead of me. Both of the bots are 2 wins ahead though so I'll need them to lose all 3 of their games for me to improve my position
YT20 - 3rd will probably keep my position as I have 2 human teams ahead of my and a human team below me. I'm 3 wins ahead of 4th place so I'm safe here.

So I've got some prizemoney incoming, I've reduced my expenses significantly. In 3 weeks when the end of season begins I will be primed and ready for whatever happens.

[CraigFisher]

Thanks for sharing this, some good writing and it will help some people to understand more aspects of the game.

[beecee8]

good stuff mad boy

[Madcarrot]

Behold my first ever recruit.



Since wages are not collected in the off season I thought I would begin making some preparations for the upcoming season.

There are still a couple of days to go until end of season so we are yet to see who our opponents will be in div 4.

However as of right now I'm looking for players who at a minimum have outstanding level in either batting or bowling, as well as technique.
I've also set a minimum fielding level of expert for now.

Basically I don't want anyone with a wage higher than 15k.

Brandon Meyler fits quite well here I think. I got him for $1k on the market. He's only 11k per week in wages, this might change at eos.
His experience is low but he has decent enough skills, power and endurance. Most important thing to note is that he has spectacular batting summary.

He's not a world beater by any means, and he would be terrible in division 1 or 2. But I expect him to be useful enough in division 4. I think I will put him on endurance training and then maybe fielding.

Depending on what level opponents I get at eos I will be looking for players of a similar calibre in the coming week.

[casperj]

Should be a decent buy, especially if you are running a low academy - no skills really need fixing which isn't always the case with cheap players. Low experience might be a concern, as I've found these players perform really poorly relative to their skills at higher leagues. Will be interesting to see how he does in the lower leagues.

I'm selling a bunch of 29-31 year old seniors at the EOS. Depending on how the EOS wage update goes some of them might be above your wage budget though - I've put a post of transfer ads forum if you want to look.

[Madcarrot]

We happened to draw the team who won our league in the final round of the season. A human team.

We lost convincingly but he scored 81 so that's a good sign.

[Madcarrot]

Beginning our first season.

Season 56.

Today is the beginning of our first official season.
The Flora have existed for about 3 or 4 weeks and due to some great financial management, we have a bank balance of $852,101

This is more than enough to get a strong squad together to achieve promotion to division 3

As mentioned above I have already recruited 1 batsman, so I will still need to get the remainder of my senior team together, which will include 3 spin bowlers and 4 seam bowlers, a wicket keeper and 4 or 5 more batters. The same for my youth team.

In regards to my youth team, I'm recruiting general players from the lowest ranked national team. The nation does not matter but if I do get anyone of quality I will sell them.

Let's have a look at the leagues in Pakistan

SOD 4.5
There are 3 other human teams and 4 bots.
The human teams
Musa Eleven last logged in approx 4 weeks ago, I actually played them last season in a T20 match before recruiting any players and beat them
Sulaiman Cricket Club they log into the game daily, but consistently rated around 80k in their seniors last season. They demoted from division 3. They could turn it around and start being active on the market so I need to watch them.
Perry's Paratroopers XI recently moved over from England division 3. They are active as well playing nearly every day and they played a friendly match today on a green pitch and rated 198k
They will be the obstacle that I need to overcome this season

T20 4.4
I've got 2 human teams and 5 bots in this league
Indigo-Greens II is a Zimbabwe NAT assistant so they are going to be tough. They narrowly missed out on promotion last season and towards the end of the season they rated around 185k
Aces XI is the current Pakistani NAT manager, he demoted from div 3 last season and towards the end of the season had a rating of around 175k

YOD 4.8
There are 2 other human teams here
Afridi's stars is a team that focusses mostly on their senior squad. They rate around 60k
MUK CC evolved from my favourite Pokemon grimer. MUK logs in once or twice per week and promoted from div 5 as the only human team. They rate around 60k

YT20
1 other human team
Musa Eleven not really active and rated around 45k

For reference my starting squad before I recruited anyone rated
Senior: 117k
Youth: 66k

I think youths should be relatively straightforward to promote to division 3 but seniors might be a bit more of a challenge

[Muff]

The Flora have existed for about 3 or 4 weeks and due to some great financial management, we have a bank balance of $852,101

I assume a lot of this is from Academy Downgrades?

He's not a world beater by any means, and he would be terrible in division 1 or 2. But I expect him to be useful enough in division 4.

Id argue he is a bit much for div 4, but you can make 1 or 2 players waged around here work.

[Madcarrot]

OK so here are my calculations for budgeting

Each week I will get sponsorship money for my leagues.

This is
SOD $60k
T20 $45k
YOD $25k
YT20 $12k
Total: $141k per week

Gate takings, I recieve 2/3 income for home games so for calculations I'm averaging it at 1/2 each week.
SOD $10.63 per attendee, with 7,000 crowd = $37205
T20 $8.85 per attendee, with 6,000 crowd = $26550
YOD $4.29 per attendee, with 4,000 crowd = $8580
YT20 $2.17 per attendee, with 3,000 crowd = $3255
Total $75590

Sponsorship and projected takings = $216590

Costs
academy $10k
Ground maintenance $8k
Total $18k

Income - costs = $198590

For a 12 player team I can afford an average wage of $16,299 per player. Including a youth team if I go for an average wage of $2k per youth player then for a senior team I can afford an average wage of $14,299 per senior player.

This is not including the bank balance that I will have leftover after making purchases.

[radar]

If you're trying to one-shot to div 1 I'd suggest going underbudget for now to make future seasons easier.

[GM-crowfan65]

More people should work out a budget