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There is a massive gulf between div 2 and A-League, in both quality and finances. Moreso than when you were last in div 2. 125k/wk sponsorship doesn't go far. If you demote, you need to sell off anyone taking a significant wage, unless they're being trained. You can re-promote with trainees alone and any other players dramatically lose their market value.

Buying players after promoting is a good strategy, with the goal of scraping into 9th. Not talking 15M strikers here, just picking up value buys to fill gaps in your starting XI. Doing so gives you a massive opportunity to take the next step.

This will hurt yoyo teams a bit as they demote, but overall it seems like a reasonable idea.

Instead of extra tax, it would be good to see the extra money get distributed between the player's previous clubs as trail fees, proportionally to the number of training weeks each club gave the player.

Yeah, I haven't had too much exposure to div2 standards since going to 12 team leagues so my info is definitely outdated.

I still would be looking at cutting other places before players though if I could (and I couldn't deal with the financial loss of 1 season). Managing fan mood as best I could, playing friendlies every week against sides that draw crowds, reducing youth places etc and then looking into reducing staff levels would likely come before players.

Not sure on how much you're losing per week so again you've probably looked at all of this already. It has been a while since I was in div2

This is a bit off topic, but might be an interesting exercise for you, if you have time. Assume you just got demoted to div 2 and your full income for next season is 4.1M (~320k/wk).

How would you prepare your team for the season ahead? What would your weekly expenses be? How much would the value of your untrained players depreciate? What would you consider a palatable financial loss for the season?

As a ref, here are my weekly expenses:
Players salary - 199k
Trainers salary - 117k
Club facilities - 31k
Junior academy - 33k
SUMMARY - 380k

So that's a weekly loss of ~60k (800k for the season), plus depreciation of my 7 untrained players (another 1-2M). I've kept an extra striker and mid, so could go close to breaking even if I wanted to move them on.

I suspect your base costs are a bit higher than mine, so it'd be a challenge to balance the budget without fundamental changes.

Have you included gate revenue in there. As it is I operate at a loss when I don’t have gate receipts from home games currently.

First in my case would be play a fortnight and work out what my overall plus/negative is. If I take the become earnings I got against cisco as the most I’d get for the season as a base I should be able to work out what my losses would be. I’m also in a better scenario in that I have 35m cash just sitting in my account so I’d have to lose close to 3m per week to go bankrupt. I don’t have that much expenses per week so I’d survive. I’ll crunch some numbers later for interest though.

So for me players salaries - 471k
Trainers salary - 181k
Club facilities - 48k
Junior academy - 43k

For a total of 744k per week.

If I reduced my sponsorship by a lot to say 150k a week and let’s say my games were half full - so 400k from revenue each match.

In a fortnightly basis then that’s around 700-750k loss a fortnight or 6x that 5m approx.

That’s excluding cup and friendly income which could get me a little more.

I’d survive on that but if I couldn’t access my current balance then I’d cut my youth school down by at least 10 places which takes 32k off a fortnight I think or 190k off.

If I didn’t have the money I’d also drop my head coach from 95k per week down to something like 20k a week. That’s another 140k a fortnight off. So now with that alone I’m losing 400-450k a fortnight or a total of 2.7m for the season which I’d probably sit on. If I could sit on my 35m I wouldn’t because it would likely cost me 5m or so to get the coach back.

So if I was yo-yo between top league and div2 on the -2.7m I’d make that back in profit in the top league in a single season with 400k sponsorship a week and 700-800k gate receipts and I’d just make do with a lower standard of coach save the money in the A League and then burn it in div2 without too much other damage.

If I absolutely had to I could sell some of my more expensive strikers since I have a lot of them. Selling Crampton alone would bet me probably 8-10m alone and reduce my player salaries a lot in the process.

Everything else remains the same, so I’d lose a bit of general training efficiency but that’s about all I’d lose I think.

If I was restricted to 4.1m revenue total instead of my approximations above (think I’d get a fair bit more than that personally) but let’s just benchmark that anyway. It means youth school comes down to 16 places saving me $16k a week (could trim that more if necessary to avoid junior league but let’s minimise how much I lose), kill my head coach saving me at least 70k a week possibly as high as 80k. So that’s 90k a week off my expenses which means it’s now down to 650k ish . That’s 7.8m in expenses for the season which means I take a hit of 4m from my 35m and I’m back in A League. If I kept the coach since that’s hard to replace cheaply then I’m looking at losing around 5m.

I’d take that loss for the season and get the 5m back on profit the following season in A League.

Now if I wasn’t as established it would be different, I’d not have the main coach at 95k wage and I’d also not have anywhere near the salaries I pay in player salaries so I’d make even less of a loss.

What I’d be looking at is what profit are you making for a season in a league and is that enough by itself to to support the loss in div2 without changing anything? I don’t care about a season of losses if it means I end up in a better position for surviving the above league with better opportunities quicker. The loss cancels out after a short space of time. The constant sitting in div2 or yo-yoing by selling/repurchasing/selling ends up I feel keeping you down there longer. Now that won’t always be the case as soon as some of the top div2 teams compete against the bottom 6 a league teams obviously but that’s why it’s important to get to a league as soon as possible and survive as long as possible and then by doing so you gain advantages over those yo-yoing and can develop faster and bank enough resource so you’re no longer effected by it. I’ve come from 9ths to 7ths to now 5-6th finishes in about 4-5 seasons. I’m lucky that I came 8th (last) the season they introduced the 12 team leagues so didn’t relegate
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200k of my 470k salaries is made up of 6 strikers, many of which I don’t need either, just wasn’t going to sell off any over Christmas/new year.

It is interesting to see how everyone would do it differently.

I think I'd fall in to the sell off/fire players category. If I can win the title with my trainees, I don't want to be carrying the cost and depreciation of old players, but I would know towards the end of the season, I would have to start accumulating old players that can compete in the A-League.

From there trainees that don't make the 1sts can play in friendlies and then sub on especially for the games you can't win and then a risk benefit for the extra training in weeks where you need to beat other lower table teams.


But this massive difference between the leagues is exactly why we need either a merged league, or a set sponsorship based on divisions regardless of country you are in.

Both of you would promote quite comfortably on the strength of your trainees. My league keeper is currently a 19yo midfield trainee with hopeless keeping.

The selling of players comes down to... their wage, how much their value will drop and how much it would cost to buy back a similar player.

If Crampton is $8-10M now, how much will he be worth at the end of the season where he's not required. If that's $7-9M, then you can sell now, buy another striker when you promote and retain the $1M. Problem is, the tax designed to discourage day trading takes the $1M, so either way it ends up costing you $1M (plus their wage) and that's just for one player.

Obviously that's just an example and the figures will differ.

The latter will never happen it’s not fair either because our top league isn’t and never will be as strong as Poland’s first league. I know the arguments to suggest that would change but it wouldn’t with equal sponsorship because simply size of players. Scratching that our 2nd Div will never be the equivalent of polands 2nd. Half our 2nd Div or more is bots. I’m all in favour of the former though.

Oh I’d sell older players but not necessarily because I was dropping unless they weren’t going to be useful for me in 2 seasons. I have too many already which could cut my salaries down by around 100k quite easily. I just haven’t gotten around to doing so and replacing ageing players and many of my older ones are now worthless coin anyway.

Yeah difference is Crampton won’t drop in value this season or next too much and if he was my starting xi I’d need someone equally as strong costing me around the same price anyway unless I wanted to regress somewhat.

That’s what my argument was more aimed at. Any short fall loss can be made up for quickly in the above division if you can get there and stay there.

If I sold say Svendstrup I’d probably be lucky now to get 1m but it would have less of an impact on my progression.

I can see where my previous argument could fall over. If you’re buying players for cover as opposed to make your first team stronger then reselling if you drop hurts you less then vying for your 1st xi having it not be enough and then reselling and trying again wihh th someone of similar quality in 2 seasons time. I’d always wanting to be going forward in strength to survive the automatic drop and that opens so many doors. Ageing players gets a little murkier but mostly same principles apply in my philosophy

Interesting approach. It would sacrifice training a bit to reduce head coach value. And as you said, a decent cost to buy another. One of the more painful and costly things I've done, hunting for head coaches.

You may make significantly more, but I doubt that much. If mine is anything to go by, your div 2 total income would be 40% of your total income in A-League.

If you cut YS spots and either head coach or 100k off strikers, it'd be about a 3M loss plus market value depreciation. That would probably be sustainable given you can make that back in profit the following season.

Yeah I am in different scenario. I wouldn’t lose too much in training (just a lot of the general training. I’d flip back to the old training system or unearthly in skills you train tragic in skills you don’t as opposed to having an all unearthly coach. I also only went that way because at the time I could afford it. With increases in expenses all the time by these devs it’s a yearly proposition as to whether I can keep doing that but at the moment I can afford to (just).

I think to do it properly the best strategy is one where you can work out the loss in revenue from what you could get in above divisions, the change in supporter sizes as well as you will go backwards in div2 as opposed to forward in div1 which in turn increases your other things like gate receipts and sponsorship. You need to factor in the cost of depreciation of players if you care for that agaknst the cost to replace them and the lost cost of not winning games to keep mood high enough to minimise sponsorship drops and gate receipts drops etc.

It’s a tricky one to work out mathematically due to so many variables. You also possibly get a playoff if you come 7-9th so that’s more money.

No strategy is necessarily wrong or right, it’s what works for your own style. My strat was always to get to a league as early as I could and hope I could stay there long enough to secure my spot there. Now I’ve done that I’m rising through the league and starting to close the gap to the top teams.

Very different strategy to say what Chile have done for example and yet we’re fairly even. Mind you I’ve yet to spend my 35m so that could make a difference.

What’s working against my strategy is they are now clamping down on people having money by making the expectations punishing for those of us not wanting to spend cash. I need a podium (which I won’t get) and who knows how much that hurts me next season

If you’re buying players for cover as opposed to make your first team stronger

This hypothetical aside, which is just a bit of fun... the main point is that it widens the divide between established A-League clubs and clubs trying to break into the A-League.

You cannot sustain an A-League cost base on 40% of A-League income. So teams promoting are coming from a lower cost squad. They'll need to bolster in an effort to stay in the top league (or maintain any semblemce of fan mood). If they fail, they face a 3M loss if they don't sell off players, which is a 6M+ loss relative to the 9th placed A-League team they're trying to keep up with.

Of course the poor team in div 2 who can't promote, doesn't get the sugar hit at all. But that's a different discussion. They're not affected by this tax.

The increased fees will definitely affect my approach when I need to round out my squad for A-League again. Investing more than a couple of mill on each player I'm not planning to train would be a significant risk.
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Definitely agree with you there.

The last thing I would touch are coaches. Yes they are expensive, but they also give you a chance to make money, help progress faster in the most interesting part of the game, and they normally cost a lot to find good ones.

The fact I've spent 20-30M looking for an unearthly coach and still not got one is annoying when I hear of many spending less than 10M.

And when they go on the market, they are going up in price so much that it actually makes the lottery better value on average.

I was thinking the effect would be similar in other countries, but it's probably not a big deal, 'cos the difference in income from div 2-3 or div 3-4 would be smaller when the lower div is not full of bots.

If the bots in div 2 had a fanbase comparable to the average of the active clubs, that would reduce the gap to the division above and reduce the need to buy and sell players for short term gains. Now we're really going into the hypothetical realm though.

What’s working against my strategy is they are now clamping down on people having money by making the expectations punishing for those of us not wanting to spend cash.

Do you think it'll be a big hit though? End of season payments are not huge compared to gate takings.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your strategy is based on long term development of quality players and resisting the urge to go for a title too soon, which not only helped build a nice bank balance but also a squad of trainees that only need to be supplemented by a handful of players (and not 15M strikers). Very effective strategy.