A team with no forwards?

Back in October, I outlined my plan to develop my team in the League of D (Huge Pythons at the time, but since renamed Grim Fandango), which involved rotating 4-5-1 and 5-4-1 and heavily developing three defenders and three midfielders at a time. I've been getting excellent returns on DV, but I've found the side currently yo-yo between the two divisions - the mentors are good enough to haul the team to the top flight, where they get thrashed. I've also only been able to train six players at a time in five slots.

I've since had a bit of an epiphany, thanks in no small part to one of my other sides - Steel City Starlets. Now, the Xpert Ladies is an odd league in that youths cost a small fortune in the closed season and the YA is a worthy investment. I'd got the defenders and midfielders I needed to take the team forwards and was using my strikers to generate revenue. However, my YA had been falling short on quality strikers to train during the season, so the ones I was promoting I was actually leaving out. Instead, my two youngest mids are all-rounders and I'm rotating them up front, thus allowing me to play my strongest midfield. That got me thinking, why not just scrap forwards altogether?

I have a dim view of forwards right now, both in terms of their utility and their profitability, but I figure I could use the forward slot as a means of training up my very weakest youths if they are all-rounders. The plan would be to use a permanent 4-5-1, with my mentors as a GK, two DF and three MF. That leaves me two defensive slots, two midfield slots and a forward slot for youths. I could rotate three youths in defence, three in midfield and then have an all-round defender and all-round midfielder rotate in the space up front. They'd earn 85% of the usual ME, which multiplied by the 63% earned for half a match means that, if they rotate at half time, the ME gained is still like playing one whole game out of two up front. With all-rounders being handy in a small squad anyway, it seems like a no brainer, especially with me developing two extra youths at a time.

I'm hoping to adapt my Orange Mooses side to use all-rounders in this closed season, then will shift to my other teams in due course. I'll let you know how it goes.

The relationship between ME, AF and DV

I posted here about the relationship between ME, AF and DV, but now I've turned that info into two calculators that will allow you to approximate a player's current ME if you know their DV and AF, but also allow you to estimate a player's potential DV based on a value for average form and an amount of match experience. Note that the DV calculator will probably become inaccurate for ME values > 500 (or where a player has more than five times the ME required for DV to equal AF, which is impossible in most leagues), and that these calculators won't be accurate for players aged 33 or over.

Note that the calculators will take a decimal value for average form, so if you are VIP you may be able to get a more accurate figure from the form graph to use.

Match experience calculator

Average Form:
DV type	Old (0 to 20)	New (-10 to +10)
Development Value:

Development value calculator

Average Form:
Match Experience:

Development Value, Match Experience and Average Form

Knowing about how the Development Value (or DV) works is an important part of the game, as being able to successfully train up your players allows you to improve the skill of your players and increase the value of your squad.

There are two factors that contribute to a player's DV (and ultimately, how they will progress at the end of the season) - match experience (ME) and average form (AF). Knowing a little bit about how these two factors combine to produce the final DV value will help when it comes to maximising your team's development.

Players gain experience for each minute that they play. Younger, lower skilled players learn more from older, better players, both on their own team and on the opposing side. That experience is converted into a percentage value, such that DV is then a percentage of AF. The more experience a player gains, the higher that percentage value. However, something unusual happens when a player reaches "100%" i.e. when DV is the same as AF. Further experience still contributes to a player's DV, but instead of being a percentage of their average form, it's a percentage of 20 (the maximum value for average form) - AF. This means that players on lower average form actually gain more than players on higher average form for extra time played.

It's worth noting that, the greater match experience a player has, the smaller the effect any additional experience will have - don't be surprise if DV rises quickly to start with but slows down as the season progresses. I got hold of some figures regarding match experience and its effect on DV and have managed to put them into a graph which should help illustrate how match experience and average form combine to produce the overall development value, and the effects of giving players more than "100%" match experience i.e. what happens when you start pushing DV above the average form. The term "standardised match experience" just means I've adjusted the figures so that 100 is the experience needed to get DV = AF (players getting the maximum experience out of a game need about 4/14 games to get "100%" usually), 200 is double that amount of experience and so on. Realistically, you'll not be able to get past around 300 without having a cup, as cup games provide bonus experience.

One thing to note is that average form is incredibly significant for players with lower amounts of match experience. It's why it's not always a concern if players appear to gain DV slowly at the start of a season (when you may be trying to build form up after a change report). It also shows that you can't rely solely on match experience for DV, you have to maintain form as well.