Question About Semi-Pro

[Weston]

Despite pretty much my entire squad being in their mid-to-late-20s, every single one of my players' attributes are dropping all the time, presumably because they're all training 0-3 days a week only.

Is that just how it works - clubs without full time training see their players slowly decay over time without any recourse? Or am I missing something?

[phnompenhandy]

Pretty much, yeh. In general, players stop developing after age 24 (later for keepers). The players who develop are younger. With naff all training facilities/coaching at semi-pro level, the only path to serious development is gametime. So younger players - teenagers ideally, who play a lot of game will develop. They're the ones you might sell on to make money to build the club. Those older players have no long-term value.

[Weston]

46 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

Pretty much, yeh. In general, players stop developing after age 24 (later for keepers). The players who develop are younger. With naff all training facilities/coaching at semi-pro level, the only path to serious development is gametime. So younger players - teenagers ideally, who play a lot of game will develop. They're the ones you might sell on to make money to build the club. Those older players have no long-term value.

We're playing twice a week and I rotate pretty thoroughly. I guess I just didn't think players in their mid-20s early prime would be getting so consistently worse, I thought maybe they'd mostly just stay the same.

[phnompenhandy]

1 minute ago, Weston said:

We're playing twice a week and I rotate pretty thoroughly. I guess I just didn't think players in their mid-20s early prime would be getting so consistently worse, I thought maybe they'd mostly just stay the same.

They should, really. You need to dig in a bit. Are you just going by the reddish arrows on the player overview? They're misleading. You need to monitor the progress graph in their development screens.

[XaW]

3 hours ago, Weston said:

We're playing twice a week and I rotate pretty thoroughly. I guess I just didn't think players in their mid-20s early prime would be getting so consistently worse, I thought maybe they'd mostly just stay the same.

If you only look at the slanting red arrow at times, that might not mean a decline, but a rebalance of the attributes. If you have focused a player on a specific attribute and he is at his highest ability level, the rest of the attributes will go a bit down to compensate. As @phnompenhandywrites, look in the development screen and see the how their attributes really change if you are worried. The drop in attributes mostly happens with injuries. Being semi-pro is more detrimental to growth rather than regression in my view.

[Weston]

But this progress screen is just my extremely poor staff's perception of the player's ability, not the actual attributes, no? Here are a few examples - what do you two think @phnompenhandy@XaW?

Here is a guy (28) I am retraining to play a new position. My guess is my staff think he's getting better as he gains familiarity with a new role, yet his actual ability is decreasing in the process, making me wonder if it would have been better to just let him be a red circle with stronger attributes, because unfamiliarity just hits decision making, no?

I'm training this guy (28) to be a bit less slow. Is all the regression I see really just to counterbalance whatever small gains he's made in that area?

This guy (28) I've sent to the weight room, but his strength attributes are getting worse like everything else.

This guy (29) I'm not training specifically at all, he's just getting worse across the board for reasons I can't understand.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Weston

[Sunstrikuuu]

What do these look like if you select the Attributes tab instead of Progress?

[Weston]

3 hours ago, Sunstrikuuu said:

What do these look like if you select the Attributes tab instead of Progress?

Kind of hard to tell, but looks like some decreases in the lines?

[Sunstrikuuu]

Looks mostly flat to me.  You're right that there are some decreases, and no increases, but doesn't look catastrophic.  Maybe some attributes have gone from 12.3 to 12.2 or something.  But those are the ones showing as flat in the summary; what if you look at Traore, whose summary screen is showing many small and some large drops in ability?

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Sunstrikuuu said:

Looks mostly flat to me.  You're right that there are some decreases, and no increases, but doesn't look catastrophic.  Maybe some attributes have gone from 12.3 to 12.2 or something.  But those are the ones showing as flat in the summary; what if you look at Traore, whose summary screen is showing many small and some large drops in ability?

Again some slight decreases but largely flat, I guess.

[Sunstrikuuu]

Huh.  He doesn't have nearly as many red/orange arrows in that screenshot as he did in the previous one.  Have you changed training or anything?

[Weston]

19 minutes ago, Sunstrikuuu said:

Huh.  He doesn't have nearly as many red/orange arrows in that screenshot as he did in the previous one.  Have you changed training or anything?

I get 0-2 training sessions a week so I don't know if you can say I've really "changed" training so much. Wouldn't know what it was if so, I picked what the sessions were a month or two at a time with a focus on match tactics / teamwork and some set pieces in between general and physical.

[Sunstrikuuu]

9 minutes ago, Weston said:

I get 0-2 training sessions a week so I don't know if you can say I've really "changed" training so much. Wouldn't know what it was if so, I picked what the sessions were a month or two at a time with a focus on match tactics / teamwork and some set pieces in between general and physical.

Sounds about like mine in the British county leagues.  Your players are better than mine, but I've got a mixture of green and orange arrows.

[enigmatic]

What level were they playing at before?

A 28/29 year old in the semi pro leagues absolutely is likely to be coming down from a peak, especially if he was training full time not that long ago.

 

Do agree that the generic "progress" screen appears to be much more staff's extremely poor perception than anything to do with reality. That's even true at high levels of the game

[Weston]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

What level were they playing at before?

A 28/29 year old in the semi pro leagues absolutely is likely to be coming down from a peak, especially if he was training full time not that long ago.

 

Do agree that the generic "progress" screen appears to be much more staff's extremely poor perception than anything to do with reality. That's even true at high levels of the game

They were all free agents before who weren't training at all. Their prior leagues were one division up in Finland, Morocco's top flight, Egypt's top flight, and Scottish Championship. All have down arrows all the time.

[Weston]

Meanwhile I have a player who is "exhausted" and "high injury risk," so I'm told he's "jaded" and "in need of a rest."

But how? And when would I rest him? He already has every other day off at least!

Doesn't make sense - either they're working hard on their attributes in training and tired, or they're relaxing and losing strength and shouldn't be so beat up.

[autohoratio]

On 31/01/2023 at 16:37, Weston said:

Again some slight decreases but largely flat, I guess.

What about if you change "Last month" in the dropdown to "All time"?

[Weston]

49 minutes ago, autohoratio said:

What about if you change "Last month" in the dropdown to "All time"?

Doesn't look like it's showing all time...

[Weston]

Won the league with 5 games to spare and the team automatically turned pro. Bizarrely, most of my players are accepting slight wage decreases in the contract negotiations.

Training is still only every other day. I thought this was maybe because I still need to hire my coaching staff to full time contracts, but it might just be a bug based on this note? What do you think?

Edited February 5, 2023 by Weston

[DarJ]

4 hours ago, Weston said:

Won the league with 5 games to spare and the team automatically turned pro. Bizarrely, most of my players are accepting slight wage decreases in the contract negotiations.

Training is still only every other day. I thought this was maybe because I still need to hire my coaching staff to full time contracts, but it might just be a bug based on this note? What do you think?

It will change for the next season

[Weston]

6 hours ago, DarJ said:

It will change for the next season

Weird, it should change now if we've become professional now, but I guess it's good to know this is an overall game issue and not specific to my save. I guess it's pointless to upgrade my players' and staffs' contracts now then if there's no benefit to it until next season...

[DarJ]

54 minutes ago, Weston said:

should change now if we've become professional now,

I have no idea how it works irl but if the teams need to be register every season, it would make sense that since they already registered as a semi pro team at the beginning of the season, they can’t just change that 

[Weston]

1 hour ago, DarJ said:

I have no idea how it works irl but if the teams need to be register every season, it would make sense that since they already registered as a semi pro team at the beginning of the season, they can’t just change that 

That could make sense, in which case I'm not sure why the game is telling me we made the switch now instead of later. I've raised it as a bug either way so that it can be made more coherent regardless.

Edited February 5, 2023 by Weston