Another season and inevitably, yet another load of changes to contend with! As most teams struggle to come to terms or simply just understand its impact, I dial the clock to end March, 2006. Until then, life trudged along with the normal urgencies one would come to expect from work and play. On that fateful day, I decided to check out what Kent (redtooth of Peejay Reds for the uninitiated) described as more than just a game… and all hell broke loose!

OK so I am being melodramatic, but tell me I am the only one looking forward to training updates or waking up in the wee hours of the morning bidding, whilst cursing for a player I covet to train for the future! And while the exhilaration, frustration and joy of winning is real, each new season – more so this one; makes me wonder why I even bother in the first place?

However, after several reads of the editorials and comments in the forums, conferences and the weekly “teh tarik” sessions, I am convinced of one thing; this may actually be better for the game! For too long we have heard about the merits of multi-skilled players without tangible evidence that it was worth effort in the first place. Evidence of this fallacy was prominent among national team players, largely trained to zenith of a particular skill and little more – imagine Franz “Kaiser” Beckenbauer without the ability to score or distribute pinpoint passes… you get my drift.

I won’t dwell on individual training positions here. Rather, I’d like to consider this from a holistic and strategic point of view.

Chief among the changes is the relative difficulty in maintaining the highest skills of a player. While maintaining his wages is already an issue to have bricks in your bowels, the idea of a divine playmaker unsure of his ability will certainly lacerate your stomach walls with ulcers galore! This is not an entirely bad thing – the changes I mean (not the ulcers for goodness sake!). Multi-skill trainers are now enticed to try something new and alleviate the traditional wage issue somewhat.

How this new development influences the transfer market remains to be seen, but I speculate that the market will take some time to come to terms with the relative valuation of such players. To spice things up, the accelerated impact of low skills training will probably see the birth of a new type of skills trader – what I would term a short-er term “set piece”-type trainer. Of course it remains to be seen how “several times faster” (as defined by the rules) is translated into real training weeks.

For those diligently adopting multi-skill training, it will open up their minds to new training regimes and player possibilities. No longer the conveyor belt approach, training can be as simple as you want, or as challenging as you make it to be. And although it may require a fair bit of reading for newbies, I suspect most of us would have started the game with a multi-skill approach rather than with a singular track mind – HT may indeed be killing the proverbial two birds with one very solidly well aimed stone!

While such changes have resulted in some players emptying their bottles of panadol, there are those of the masochistic design who crave next season’s match engine changes much sooner. But that my friends, is another topic for another week. Till then, have a good season and may your upsets remain in your tummy and out of the Hattrick field!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under General, Hattrick. 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.