Dealing Limits
The number of transfer deals a side can do throughout a season is currently limited to 50. With the integration of the Youth League the question has been asked if this limit needs to be increased or possibly scrapped altogether.
The original limit was introduced when the 2 deals per week limit and the maximum number of players allowed to be involved in a deal were removed. There were worries that sides would go mad changing virtually their entire squad every week and a limit of 50 was seen as the best number for a season.
General consensus is that the limit needs to be changed. My initial thoughts were to raise the limit by 50% to 75 but I think many of the posts on the forum have been persuasive that this is not really going to have any real effect overall. A larger limit of 100 seemed to be the next best option, but again it is an artificial limit that means work for me and will not affect the vast majority of teams.
The introduction of penalties for sides who excessively change the players selected to play each week is a better control of unrealistic squad management and as such I think the dealing limit can be lifted with immediate effect.
The morale penalties for changes to your starting eleven players in a first team game will be severe as you make a large number of changes – I will post the exact numbers in a couple of days once I have the best ratio worked out and tested.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Game Rules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
18 Responses to “Dealing Limits”
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The dealing limit doesn’t bother me, as there’s no chance of me ever doing 50 deals a season and I have no objection to anyone else doing hundreds of deals, so lifting the figure will make no difference to me and may help three or four managers out – those that only play the game to deal.
In scrapping the limit, I see the need for a check on morale and I think it’s right that someone selling 75% of their team each week should have a morale hit, but I don’t like the idea that if I change four of my starting line-up through injury, suspension, or because they won’t get a cap if they don’t play. If I have two injuries and two suspensions and I sign a new player that I want to play that week, it’s perfectly normal to have five changes in the starting line-up and penalising that shouldn’t affect morale in any way. Falkirk, through injuries to first team players, played 7 second string players at the weekend against Celtic and they played their best game of the season. I saw no sign of low morale in the side – in fact it was the exact opposite.
I would prefer to see a morale hit for managers that make changes to their squad, not to their starting eleven. It could easily be done on a sliding scale. Say, for example, a manager has a squad of 35 and retires a player, introduces another and buys a player off the transfer market – he’s made 3 squad changes, which is a change to 8.57% of his squad and I believe anything under 10% is fine and acceptable in Einnek Football, particularly with the Youth team as well. If the same manager also did three deals, bringing in 6 players and selling 5 players, thats 14 changes, or a 40% change, which I feel realistically, would adversley affect morale.
To summarise:
1. I don’t believe morale should be affected by making changes to their starting eleven, morale should only be affected by changes to the squad size.
2. It should be on a sliding scale:
0-5% change +1 morale
greater than 5% to less than 10% no change to morale
greater than 10 to less than 25% -1 morale
greater than 25% -2 morale
The scale may need a bit of work, but the basics are there. I had to make 5 or 6 changes in a week last season, through suspensions and injuries and to be penalised morale for that is, in my opinion, 1 penalty too many, when you are already being penalised by not being able to play suspended or injured players and also losing valuable caps because of it.
Wow …. can Richard police this kind of condition Kenster …. it looks on 1st glance a bit complicated to say you’ve made a 8.57% squad change … so it looks like people will get penalised and they don’t know why or how it was calculated ? … don’t know whether if im in principle agreeing with this morale hit thing … does it make much difference to the result ?
Personally i have never reached 50 deals, mid 30′s is usually about right for me in a season but with youth introduction i probably will so from a personal point of view i felt a increase was needed however a total lift of the limit is probably the best idea and easiest to maage for Rich.
With regards to the 5 changes I understand why its been brought in and 5 changes to your team is about right IMO. Anything less than that would just be to restricting for most managers and would get very annoying when like Kennie says u have suspensions and injuries (psst Kennie reduce your aggression
) and you wanted to sign players.
I dont agree with Kennie’s suggestion regarding total squad changes though. In fact i really disalike the idea. If you sign top players morale would surely go up not down as your improving the team. Sometimes players are brought in to play in the future and sometimes extras in deals and this would become very irritating and spoil the best part of the game.
Remember guys this is only a game and i dont understand the constant obsession with trying to get this to mirror real life.
I’ve not reached the deal limit since its introduction but i feel that its highly likely now that we have, in effect, 2 sides to run & find 15 players a turn for so the lifting of the limit is the right option.
With regards to morale being affected by changes to the starting line up i feel this is the way to go, however i do agree with many of Kennies comments. I think enforced changes through bans & injuries shouldn’t be taken into account as these are things no one can predict. However changes made through deals are entirely management based decisions & as such should affect team morale. Not sure if this would be easy for Rich to work out?
Also is morale going to be affected by the Youth Team results? If so then i don’t feel this is right & personally think we should have separate morale ratings as its effectively 2 different sides?
I agree generally with Kennie, except for how he worked out the percentages used. But as he said that might need some work.
I have a squad of 42 at the moment, so at up to 10% I could do 4 changes without penalty over both squads. Others may have less so could only make 3 changes. I think that could be very restrictive, so I would suggest 20%, which would allow for most managers to make 6-8 changes over both squads before any morale penalty. I do worry that people might back away from some transfers if any morale loss comes in too low.
Maybe it would be possible to code where what you did in the week(s) before as well might influence it as well. What I mean is that someone who makes the most changes you can without penalty every week would be able to change their entire squad over a few weeks without any morale loss. But someone who makes very few changes, if any, each week but one week might do one change over the morale penalty limit would lose a little morale.
Is there any possibility of having seperate morale ratings for each squad? After all if you made big changes to your youth side it wouldn’t really have an effect on your 1st side?
I do agree that large amounts of changes should have an effect on morale, despite being one of those managers who loves a deal.
I agree with Kennie that we need some kind of check on the amount of deals a team can make in one week, but I can see one or two issues.
1) Having a percentage based scale would unfairly penalise teams with fewer players.
2) Looking back over deals, there are a few deals that involve multiple players per team. This would restrict these teams to that deal only for that week. There is also a chance that this one deal would cost them a morale point. I recently did one deal with Achillean Druids that would have lost me one morale point on that deal alone.
3) Would the loss of morale apply for dealing or only if all new players made the starting eleven for the next match?
Reply to Mark – Yes Rich could do write this code, but the more I think about it I’m not sure either system would have the desired effect of making managers think before they did a deal for the sake of it. I think raising awareness of how to calculate whether a deal is worth doing or not may be the way to go on that one. Morale makes a difference to your posession calculation, which does, obviously effect the results of some game. I don’t know what the morale calculation is now and to what extent it alters possession, but back in the day, if you had 30 possessions at the strt of a game and I had 30 possessions, you had two more morale than me, the calculation was plus 2 minus two, meaning you started with 32 possessions and I started with 28 – a swing of 4. That’s a simplistic way of looking at it, as Richard’s algorithm is more complicated than the old way of calculating it, but it certainly makes a difference to your chances of winning a game.
In reply to LB. Yes you are right, Einnek is a game and doesn’t mirror real football and doesn’t have to. My suggestion was an alternative for discussion and my position has already moved on how effective it would be, having ready the other posts and discussed the morale issue with a couple of managers and with Rich.
In Reply to The Henfry: Morale isn’t taken into account in the Youth game, as far as I am aware, so no worries there. Your suggestion that injured and suspended players be taken out of the equation is a sound one and bears further study.
In reply to DJay: I’m surprised you’re for it mate, but good on you! The youth players are part of the overall squad now, so would have to be included in the calculation, but as I mentioned aerlier, this is only an alternitive suggestion for discussion and the percentages suggested are not set in stone.
In reply to Micke: 1) I don’t think there are many teams with squads under 30 anymore and any changes would be announced in advance to allow Managers to increase their squad size, if they wished, before the change was made. You make a valid point, however and managers would have to keep a squad of 40 players if they wanted to make four changes Black widows has 31 in his squad, I have 41 If we did a deal swapping 2 players for two players, that would be a 12.9% change for him and a 9.75% change for me. It would calculation, I would see no change and Spen would lose one morale. As 4 changes is fairly standard, perhaps my percentage calculation should start at 15% rather than ten, so as not to penalise smaller squads.
2. I take your point. I feel however, this would be fair, particualrly if the morale for winning, drawing and losing a game was also adjusted. If you did a deal that cost you one morale, but you gained 2 extra morale for winning your game that week, because you strengthened your side, it would be worth doing.
3. My way is simply number of squad changes, Richard’s way is starting eleven changes.
My argument is that me having to make 5 changes due to injuries and suspensions, or because I want change from 424, to 532, (which involves 4 changes alone) should give me a morale penalty) – I believe that if there is to be a penalty, it has to be on the squad and not the starting eleven.
As per everything I’ve alraedy put on the forum.
Morale in the game is based on your starting 11, not the squad.
(No captain, lose morale, losea game lose moral, win a game gain morale).
You cannot plossibly entertain the idea of percentage changes to the squad.
It has to be the starting 11 or nothing.
Currently, 5 changes = -5 morale.
This is an email I sent to Rich after the last turn: -
My main thing now is that current rules allow any team to deal in astronomical changes to squads every week – great, but not too many.
4 of these may start for their new team that week getting them out of the current 5morale loss for 5 changes.
I suggest that every new player in a teams starting 11 incur a -2 morale drop with existing squad members coming into a team changing nothing.
Then I thought well you cant penalise without offering an incentive, maybe by fielding the same starting 11 how about a +1 morale, with only -1 per new player?
But then surely this discriminates against dealing???
So we’re left with a dilemna.
Do we need realism and a sensible rule to counter an element of the game that could and should impact on results or not?
It is a tricky one, but I cannot see how a team making even 3-4 changes with new players (not injury or suspension forced) can go into a match on the same morale they had after last weeks match.
Can you programme this? What options are possible?
Having looked at this again my proposal is as follows: -
3 NEW squad players in starting 11 = -3 morale
Every additional NEW squad player in starting 11 on top of this incurs an extra -2 morale
Injury and suspension replacements should be classed as a forced hand and therefore this should not impact on morale.
Making no NEW squad changes to starting 11 (so you can rotate your existing squad at this point) = +1 morale.
Anything in between and morale remains the same.
Again I think it needs Rich to programme in and do a test run, but I think this can work if the right system is utilised.
Thats it for now more to follow
Previously when I’ve played the game I have never real dealt that much (perhaps that’s why I had limited success). This time round I’ve done 5 or 6 deals already, selling my IC and a highly rated forward but making very little change to my starting lineup. I rarely change maybe more than 1 player a week in first 11 and I am perhaps missing out on some players earning a cap, that’s the way I believe is best for my team (and it seems to be working so far!!)
I like to run with a small squad and so would be against the percentage of the overall squad rule and it would mean that some of the deals I’ve done would have cost me 1 or 2 moral points, on top of changing my captain at one point. Also one way of reversing a losing streak is to make some squad changes, so a team with low moral through losing could be hit even further when you could argue the opposite would be true.
I do like the idea of gaining moral for making none or very few changes (personally I’d probably benefit from this) and maybe a player could have his own personal moral. A player playing regulary and getting caps would have a higher moral then one who hardly played at all and by moving clubs he moral would increase (or maybe decrease depending on the club!!)
Can’t help but feel some of this is a little overcomplicated. Anyway …
I say -2 morale for every new (ie signed in that week) player to appear in the first XI. No morale added for good behaviour. There may be a week when changes are enforced (suspensions, injuries) but they are usually only for the week (with unavailable players very likely to return the week after) and, affecting only new players in a starting XI, with our shiny new big squads we are already likely to have replacements in the squad, who would be exempt. And of course just because you sign 7 players one week, they are all unlikely to start, we’re just talking the first XI here – and the following week they’d all be exempt anyway.
In total agreement with Kennie.
I personally drop anyone who gets below a 7 rating for the next match – why should I be penalised for dropping players who just aren’t performing to the standard I would expect?
You could replace them with your existing squad players, not just new players you’ve signed that week..?
Personally i’d prefer no more morale hit then the 5 changes rule already suggested for the benefit of a healthy active transfer market
In a nutshell, i’m dreading the day someone turns round and say their not doing a deal because it will effect there morale
Totally agree with you there Marky boy!!!
I think this issue needs a lot more discussion. I will defer the morale changes for now while we continue to review this area.
My thinking is we need a much more robust morale system which better reflects deals, squad changes, team changes, win, losses, etc. Let’s continue to float ideas.
One other point I would like to raise.
During cup matches, teams not taking part will be involved in friendlys.
If a manager makes wholesale changes for these friendlys, will this also have an effect on morale?
I’ve never understood why someone would want to do that in a friendly. There is a skill point available for the player of the week and what is the point of getting a skill point on a nobody? Not only that, if you drop a player that week, the loss of possible form dots means that he could be hurt in future internationals. You do, however, raise an excellent point, as this would stop managers who wanted to (although I still can’t see the point), drop key players for friendly matches.
I had another idea on the morale calculation, but I printed it on the wage increase blog article. Check it out and your input would be welcome.