Genuine Thai Tom Yum and shrimp cake can really send me up to culinary heaven. Unfortunately Aro King’s sms brought me down to earth in a resounding thud (!)… simple read “you lost 0-2…” Remind me to bar his calls and sms whilst overseas… okok, thanks for the update bro. Like a good neighbour, Lam knew that I was on business trip and was merely keeping me updated (and ruining a perfect meal at the same time!)

The lost to Scorton Rovers was not unexpected. In a world of equals, his team was simply more equal than mine on each seven areas of ratings. Added to this was the fact that my first choice striker and set piece taker was in HT hospital and my magical playmaker was suspended from the game after accumulating 3 yellow cards, which meant that he was literally on “sale” as the game was on. Why? Well, that’s what today’s diary is going to be about.

Tālivaldis Kaktnieks was purchased at the end of last season as part of my preparation for my new series. I failed to realize however that he was close to celebrating his birthday and that his previous owner had still been training him - hence his salary increased by almost RM 200,000/week. This meant that I had surpassed my salary cap by some measure. Even more worryinng was the fact that my see-saw performance and need to periodically PIC hurt my gate receipts, compounding my financial management. Once I realized that I would be KOed from the competition, the decision to sell was easy…

You see, I am a firm believer of wage optimization. If you take the trouble to use alltid (www.alltid.org), under the “main page for” your series, on the left hand menu under sub-section “teams”, you will find an item called “Per rating”. Click on it! You will find a salary per hatstats ratings table that measures your wage efficiency. This shows how much you are paying to acquire your current ratings and needless to say, the lower your salary per rating, the better - as the table suggests.

Of course there are other important factors like the relative strength of the teams in your series and national team interests, but generally speaking, the lower your salary per rating, the better your financial growth (OK, I concede that demotion does little for growth… that’s why it’s called the economics of HT)

I am a firm supporter of wage efficiency and despite the level of competition in my series, I am committed to making this work. So in a way, getting KOed by Scorton Rovers (the rogue!) may be a good thing as I find myself back on track to grow and hopefully not get demoted!