Relegation :-(

So ..... after a few match order backfired I am starting down the barrel of relegation from III to IV. Team already in debt, to the tune of £140k .....

Any (serious) thoughts on appropriate action to take? Who to sell and what costs to control?

http://www.blackoutrugby.com/game/club.office.php#page=summary&id=1092

I have 3 strong prospects who I can pull early next season:

Alan Conant
16 y/o (R5, D3) | 200cm | 114kg | England
Right handed, right footed, in reputable form .
A collected player with collected discipline, horrible leadership, and non-existent experience.
Energy: Perfect %
Stamina: Unknown Handling: Decent
Attack: Medium Defense: Impressive
Technique: Reputable Strength: Reputable
Jumping: Satisfactory Speed: Satisfactory
Agility: Low Kicking: Despicable

Roderick McKellar
16 y/o (R1, D3) | 185cm | 110kg | England
Left handed, left footed, in reputable form .
An aggressive player with flawless discipline, reputable leadership, and non-existent experience.
Energy: Perfect %
Stamina: Satisfactory Handling: Impressive
Attack: Satisfactory Defense: Princely
Technique: Impressive Strength: Decent
Jumping: Average Speed: Satisfactory
Agility: Moderate Kicking: Despicable

Quentin Topou
16 y/o (R1, D2) | 193cm | 89kg | England
Right handed, right footed, in decent form .
An aggressive player with controlled discipline, impressive leadership, and non-existent experience.
Energy: Perfect %
Stamina: Decent Handling: Impressive
Attack: Average Defense: Reputable
Technique: Average Strength: Satisfactory
Jumping: Reputable Speed: Reputable
Agility: Horrible Kicking: Reputable

Players I absolutely don't want to sell are Hollis, Bracken, O'Hare, Owen, Atkins or Mika ......

HELP

if you have a youth manager get rid of him , might think about only keeping the scout.

you might have to sell ellicott for starters and then possibly o'hare

Youth manager is toast now, no need for him for the moment. May save stars all next season anyway as realistically no nets will be open for a while.

Reticent to sell the younger talent - got a few aging players on my hands. What is likely impact on crowds / members etc from dropping a division?

the old players wont sell for much though.

your members and crowds wont be effected too much mate

All about cost control then ....

May scrap standing capacity, may have to lose an attack coach .... see how it goes.

Play a lot of mondays to lose ranking, it'll help your contentment on saturdays.

Destroy standing, should have done that ages ago, now it's essential.

Wait until you see your league before you scrap players, you need to know how much you will need, in order to promote back.

Cheers Raggs, will get standing scrapped soon as it will let me. Quick question - on the Mondays - what do you mean?

disagree with Wing as well. memebers and crowds is a massive problem when you demote, your contentment will hit rock bottom fro demoting and you will be smashing teams ranked way lower than you every saturday. this means your contentment doesnt go up.

contentment doesnt change though playing mondays but ranking does. you can lose a maximum of 0.75 each monday (play at home and delibaratly lose to a much weaker team) if your ranking is 60 for example and you play a team ranked 52 on a saturday ( the majority of div4 teams are ranked 50 -55) then you get no ranking point increase for the win. Saturday ranking point changes are the only thing that effect contentment. your fans stay pissed = no new fans and not full stadium possibly. very important to get your ranking down to level that means you gain contentment from saturday matches.

Ah, OK makes much more sense.

So right now my ranking is circa 59k, so play weaker teams at home on a Monday, lose deliberately to drop ranking down, which means that winning in the league improves contentment .....

Props playing in the centre etc etc in which case....

I might be after ranking points next season. Could well be happy to try and take some off your hands.

will look you up :-)

hey, i got relegated last year, and i kept all my best player to progress as far as i could in the cup, but then sold them all after i was out as their wages were sooo high. and i got rid of my lev 5 training facilities. And sold one of my up and coming players for 2.5mill. this combined with money from other sales ment I could compleatly reshape my team, and have lower expenses. before i was loosing 80k-100k per week, but after doing all this im only loosing 20k each week. Iv been manly buying 19-22 year olds with a min of 50k csr. I was able to decrease my wage bill for my players form 269k to 209k.

Dont worry about your ranking as when you do cup matches you will be able to go easy in league games next year and all out on cup matches.

Thanks, makes me feel a bit better. Hoping to avoid having to sell any of my decent youngsters, but it is going to make it easier to jettison some of my higher earning oldies and replace them with youngsters.

If I get knocked out of the igtwcc early I may be looking to get some ranking points off you too

sure, hit me up for a friendly anytime. Got one of my fringe players up to 46k so can kill the standing once I sell him ....

So - very happy to take some ranking points off you next season

With regards to your youths - you are in debt and can't afford the wages of your current squad - to my mind it is madness promoting any of your promising youths next season. You should be able to work through to top of your league with this season's squad...then promote those promising youths at the end of the season (aged 17 and a bit), at the same time as jettisoning your older players. That way you are not playing high wages for those promising youths in a lower Div.

Yeah, it is something I am thinking about. My second option is to promote them, play them and train them but that may be risky from an energy point of view even playing WNWIM regularly.

The third option is to promote them and sell them - realistically I have one NT prospect who will take up 10 nets, another U21 prospect who will take up another + I could continue to train the third feasibly.

What I don't want to do is leave them for a year so they are nearly turning 18 without really developing in the YT and let them lose value. Current view is promote them all and pick the most promising to train.

See Quin's thread on the YA and how well some 19 yr olds are making it out of the YAs.

You know your cashflow better than me...but I'd be surprised if you can afford to keep them & pay their wages, from what you've said. That leaves two options, promote and sell or keep in the YA!

I would definitely promote the first guy early and sell, in the right conditions he would sell for more than a few bob

Read the posts on the YA - interesting reading. May well keep at least a couple in there and adjust team training to support their development.

Attack, Defence, Stamina and Speed would certainly cover the second two.

Cash flow is probably a case of suck it and see I guess - have flogged a couple of older high earners and one squad player + sacked youth manager + scrapped standing.

Depends on the crowds I get in Div IV - capacity is going to be 13500; still got 2000 members for now so that is still 6.5 x .....

As an update, Ellicott sold for 700k today (Sadly to a French team) - so that keeps the wolf from the door financially for now.

nice one mate