DIVISION A: FINAL SUMMARY:
What a long and winding journey this has been. Division A has not the best or most interesting division but today is it's spotlight!
DISCLAIMER: All calculations done for the club financials are my own and do not represent official results. Any discrepancies between this post and those stated by Master of the Dead at a later date, please defer to his values and not mine. Any errors you may find should only be pointed out via mail and only if it involves a significant change.
Writing this post, it became apparent I didn’t fully grasp how the mechanics of this league work but I’d like to thank Master of the Dead and Red Λrmy for helping me understand, although questions remain. Lastly, due to the erratic posts and my confusion with the league it should be no surprise that I'm not participating in the next season of Manager's League.
Going into the Season 2, I’ll do my best to present the financial situation of each club; this includes:
- Bank Balance: Leftover money from Season 1
- Player Income: Income from winning/losing games
- League Base Income: Covers club operational costs in upcoming season
- Salaries: Player salaries withdrawn before Season 2 begins
Based on the above information some assumptions were still required. Clubs receive reduced income from losses compared to wins, but the concept states that the losing team only gets the income if ALL players on that team complete the game and avoid any boots. The first assumption based upon that are any boot during a loss voids any income, but a boot has no consequence if the team has won…
The game income structure for Division A is:
- 1v1: Win = 3, Loss = 0.5
- 2v2: Win = 4, Loss = 1
- 3v3: Win = 5, Loss = 1.5
Purchased players are contracted for two seasons, so the next assumption is that salaries will be fixed for both seasons. Salaries are currently 30% of purchase price and will remain the same value for the next contracted season unless a player is sold/traded and bought under a new purchase price.
Lastly, I will assume all clubs will retain all players in their lineup, which isn't true. Lineup changes will be made later and I expect them to be significant. But more on that later.
Based on expected game revenue and the current wage bill leading into the Season 2 auction, club balances from highest to lowest are:
1. Random Players: 193.5 Nohhams
2. Warsenal WC: 96.5 Nohhams
3. WTF: 79.9 Nohhams
4. Spuds: 70.9 Nohhams
5. Robot Unicorns: 14.9 Nohhams
6. Legends of Light: ≤ -15.2 Nohhams
So let’s just put Legends of Light aside, pat them on the head, the division wallflower, to wait for their turn. The rest of the clubs end the season with money in the bank to maintain their club rosters, but the difference between Random Players and Robot Unicorns is stark. Only Random Players has a healthy amount of money to completely rebuild their lineup, almost 1.5 times the budget Division B clubs started with. Warsenal WC, WTF, and Spuds to a lesser extent, are in a decent position to update their lineups with enough funds to buy new players. Robot Unicorns however have only enough funds to purchase from the lower tiers, needing trades or releasing players to free up money.
As stated earlier, the club balances are predicated on the existing wage bill, and so the assumption that no team trades or releases players isn’t true. All teams except Spuds need to remove at least one problematic player from their roster. If a club did want to trade a player though, they’d have to find another club to agree on a price, and failing that, release the player from their contract which only returns 90% of the purchase price value (plus 50% of the change in base price TBD). In almost all cases, releasing a player will be an investment loss, and thus doing so would be a desperate measure to try and cut your losses.
Next, let's talk about player performance, it's time to call some players out for their performance. Player performance can be measured via points or win rate, but I followed the money instead. The point of this league, as opposed to all others, is the inclusion of a market and money. Wins will buy short term success, but it’s the money that buys long term success, season after season. So when a manager buys a player, they should be expecting that player to break even. But if a player doesn’t break even, the ‘blame’ can be split between players and managers. Managers should not overbid for a player, where it is unrealistic for the player to recover their salary through wins. Depending on their opponents, it's sometimes hard to fault a player for underperforming, but their valuation is that they will win so many games and so underperforming is not acceptable.
Now, let's analyze the teams.
