JRC - how did they get so good?

This question was asked in the Clubrooms, but the thread got a bit inexplicably hostile so I've brought it to the offsite so people can have a reasonable discussion on it.

There are a few elements to his success...

Youth Academy
He has no academy, and probably never has. This means he isn't forking out around 800k a season on a top level academy, but it also means that he can't make any profit on player sales, which can put a YA into profit. His choice was no YA, and it's worked for him.

Transfer Market
He's very active! 605 transfers at a loss of 13.5 million.

60 of his transfers where he bought then sold have made a loss of 38 million.
He kept those players for an average of 376 days and they decreased in CSR by 433.

57 of his transfers where he bought then sold have made a profit of 25.5 million.
He kept those players for an average of 303 days and they improved in CSR by 34,274.

Money
He told us a week or two ago that he has 20 million in the bank, so his net game profit since he started is about 33.5 million.

Player Age
He currently has 5 players over 35, 15 players who are 30-34, 3 who are 25-29, and one who is 22.

His general policy is to buy late 20s when they're international class, then sell early 30s when they turn to maximise sales.

Training
I've always assumed that he doesn't have training facilities, but when he's been asked the question in the past he gives a politicians answer. "Why do you ask", "what do you think" are typical responses. Looking at his lifetime profit of 33.5 million, this may be a false, or a partly false assumption. He certainly does have training facilities now, but did he one or two seasons ago is still unconfirmed.

My lifetime game profit is about 10 million. He's won a lot more league and cup titles than I have, so it is possible that his prize money can account for this difference.

Having some basic facts, what are your thoughts, and what questions remain unanswered?

I wonder how many would have the discipline to focus on 15-16 decent player, and wonder too how many would want to play the game that way?

Still, the min salary has only been with us a short time, and perhaps paying $50-60k/week for rubbish will start to hurt clubs like Bat's

I'm actually going the no training route with one of my affiliates as an experiment. In all honesty, it's as boring as sin. My USA side is much more fun, full YA and lv 5s and 4s, building up a young side to compete at the higher levels. I won't be able to do what bats has done, but I'm having a lot of fun doing this.

I guess, that's all that matters at the end of the day, he has fun doing what he does, I have fun doing it my way.

Personally I love the whole set-up of bringing your own YA graduates through to the first team. To do what Batman and Razor have done is a passion killer to me, but has proved functional for trophy winning.

That's my issue with it, it's functional. I just don't think I'd have fun when so much of what I enjoy is the development and progression in both seniors and juniors.

As an aside, my English club have full lv5s (6 trainers in total), no YA and since blowing my entire bank balance on Thorne back in May 2015 I've made £8m

So you can afford a quality u20 trainee for S32? I did say to someone the other day I was going to try not to be monomaniacal about the S32 campaign, but since then I've been told what the word means, and it turns out that as so often I was wrong.

Afford? Yes. Have training slots available? Unfortunately no.

Leaves me oddly hoping Wordy takes the plunge tomorrow, at least I assume the nets are on the old guard?

Errr... Ohhh look, a squirrel!!

quind wrote:Leaves me oddly hoping Wordy takes the plunge tomorrow, at least I assume the nets are on the old guard?

He can take the plunge after the WC final.

Florida wrote:Errr... Ohhh look, a squirrel!!

You've spent a tidy sum on the Sceptic lad, something you'd like to share? As a person who recently trained a Belgian u20 I find the suggestion someone might do other than train for England worrying

He matched the skills I was looking for? Ooooh look, a fox, just over there!

Florida wrote:As an aside, my English club have full lv5s (6 trainers in total), no YA and since blowing my entire bank balance on Thorne back in May 2015 I've made £8m

How the hell have you managed that?

By having 3 good players and the rest rubbish. My salaries are fairly low and have in fact dropped this season

I've just noticed that you said no YA too. That is probably the killer for me

57k per week for ya. Just shy of 1m per season.

So the question really is....

Have the new changes (Facility and staff affect energy gains, and Minimum salary) had a significant effect on the game or not?

The idea was to
1. Prevent the no facility teams continueing
2. Prevent people being able to save enough money to just buy a great team. (Not sure this one works so well as my English team is sitting on close to $7M and has done nothing)

Would love to hear how people feel about these changes. (In a non official BoR forum)

Hi Cairns, glad you're asking.

The energy changes have been great. Penguin Wanderers didn't upgrade last season and despite having the second highest CSR in England (behind JRC), they got mashed and had a relegation play-off instead of competing for the title.

The biggest problem I see with the game right now is the rise of the "superteam", who have fifteen great players, with one to three decent backups, and the rest are 0 CSR or equivalents. New Zealand is a good example of a nation that hosts Superteams, whereas England doesn't have them. That's why JRC managed to clean house so easily.

The minimum salary will slow down money farming, but it's still possible I assume. The minimum is now 22 x £7,000 = £154,000 a week as opposed to probably under £10,000, but a top team will pay in excess of £550,000, so they're still saving circa £400,000 a week.

It does seem that in order to compete at the highest level, you can't train your own players. You have to buy big and then top up their monster skills. The game could do with some form of "loyalty" scheme where home grown players are more of an asset than a detriment to a team. Having club Chemistry like NT level would be good and hopefully solve a lot of problems.

Changes are likely starting to have an affect, how much it's hard to know, and it's possible even with the increased costs the money piles are still on the rise at the top of the game. I'd still like to see the minimum squad size go out to 24, and then if needed 26, and then maybe base the min. salary on the top 15, all aimed at building costs on what Edd's been labeling the superteam.

Whether this would actually be a solution I don't know, nor if it's required. If the money is leaving the game at the level of Div 2 and above it might be better to see where the levels go to now without further adjustment

I don't follow div 1 finances all that carefully but akll my teams do ok financially.

Her Majesty'e Secret Service spend $1.25M on L5s this week... and their loss was
Loss (£ 1,131,821) so was having a weekly profit of $118,179 (But only had L4 facility, no trainers).

So at the lower levels the finances are certainly there to make it easier for a new team to grow.

On the other extreme I have Robindale with a weekly loss of $249,123 - I make most of this up in League games and youth sales:
League match (15400680) played at home generating a profit of $427,197.
Cup match (15679205) played at home generating a profit of $212,362

So with full facilities (YA and Senior) I have a small loss considering home/away - probably covered mostly each season by cup games.

Cant really see how anyone lower down can be struggling financially, except that they have not upgraded stadium enough.

cairnswm wrote:I don't follow div 1 finances all that carefully but akll my teams do ok financially.

Her Majesty'e Secret Service spend $1.25M on L5s this week... and their loss was
Loss  (£  1,131,821) so was having a weekly profit of $118,179  (But only had L4 facility, no trainers).

So at the lower levels the finances are certainly there to make it easier for a new team to grow.

On the other extreme I have Robindale with a weekly loss of $249,123 - I make most of this up in League games and youth sales:
League match (15400680) played at home generating a profit of $427,197.
Cup match (15679205) played at home generating a profit of $212,362

So with full facilities (YA and Senior) I have a small loss considering home/away - probably covered mostly each season by cup games.

Cant really see how anyone lower down can be struggling financially, except that they have not upgraded stadium enough.

For me, it's been really tough to buy my way out of div4. I'm not filling my stadium against half the league because they're bots, so it's kind of hard to upgrade that. In order to challenge for promotion, I need to buy older, experienced players, who cost a shed load, because everyone is after them.

I feel like a good change would be to make the right size players more common in the YA, but the right skills less common. When I scout my three locks, the chances are they're going to be too short - 193-198 - but they're going to have the right skills. Wouldn't it be better, and closer to reality, if they were more likely to be 198+, but less likely to get to 14 strength, jumping, tech and handling by 20.

That would mean lower level teams could still bring in bigger locks without having to pay over the odds for every single player 199cm or taller.

Another thing is the bots. The leage distribution is terrible. I've been sitting in a league for ages now where it's been me and one other team. There have been 2-3 one season teams and 4 bots to join us. Each year.

That means that:
a) I cannot fill my stadium, so my finances are poor.
b) If I cannot win cup matches, I cannot gain enough contentment to gain members to fill my stadium against the bots.

That in turn means that when I do get promoted, I'm going to be miles behind my competitors. Not a problem if I've stockpiled a wedge of cash, but I want to train my own players, so I make a loss each week.

A narrow piramid would solve so many of the problems with BR.