How to plan for the next seasons

A few days ago, a manager was asking for help in the game's chat. He was on about: planning and spending for the next season. Giving it a short think, I realised that it's really something that many people do very, very wrong. The main cause of this - as ridiculous as it might sound - is that people actually don't plan at all. They just act for the current moment, without giving it a good think.


Let's get us understood from the start. It would be ideal to plan in advance for more than just one season. Yeah, right! - you're gonna say, who does this guy think he is? Alex Ferguson, or something? It's actually plain simple: planning for just one season makes it impossible to be worthwhile on the long run. Why so? Well, I'll give you a few scenarios of how to get it wrong:

1. You plan to sign players for the moment, not the future, and win everything this season. Done, you've signed a team of veterans, 28-32 range. They deliver, you win a couple of major competitions this season, and during offseason, you feel that you want to renew your lineup with younger players - Oops! You can't get rid of them, and their wages are high, so releasing them becomes a bad idea also, because the costs will make it impossible for you rebuild. You can easily imagine the chaos and downfall yet to come...

2. The plan is to create the best U17 team I can this season. Said and done. You're 15'th in the Youth Rankings and the team is doing good. Your senior side - mainly youths - did rubbish and you find yourself with no money for next season, and without a competitive side. Selling them 18 year olds, yet unready for senior level, and rebuilding a competitive side that fast, is very unlikely. Team's rep is calculated for the last 3 season's performance... and I think you're gonna suffer.

3. You want to make an all Serbian team. You basically just want to do that, thats all the thinking behind the move. Well, maybe not having enough money and power at your club will make you regret this. You might not be able to get the best Serbian players because: you don't have enough money, you can't afford getting all wonderkids in the wage wars (yet again, because you've done a few under-value swaps for some Serbs). According to my experience, these kind of plans are 99% of the time money wasters. When you want to go back to normal, you find that you have a mostly just ok players, slightly underperforming, with wage that's above their actual worth... Good luck sorting this one out!

So, when you find yourself planning next time, take into account:

• Skills: what you got, what to learn, how to maximise the benefits they give;
• Sources of Income: Performance, Reputation, Selling;
• Players: Squad Age, Sellability Value, Market Changes, CA/PA;
• Club: Balance, Payments In/Out, Stadium's Required Capacity, Supporter Type, Competition Performance Weighting.
• Tactics: Starter and Cover for every position, Quality of subs, Squad depth, Versatility;
• Timing: When to sell, When to buy, When to start works on the stadium, When to rebuild your squad (if neccesary).

And remember to think in advance before making any move!