BuzzerBeater Forums

To stay on NT topic I have to say the u21 guys have been really good this season got a training plan quickly and a check up message since. Worth applauding because it must be a pretty thankless task..

I wouldn't want to put anyone off, but having worked behind the scenes with previous u21 coaches, I think theirs is a harder job than mine. And yes, its a thankless task. They have to run the team, pick the squad, deal with the players in the squad, they players for next year's squad, then the 18 and 19yos that are possibly for the next coach's tenure.

Oh, not even mentioning the messages they send out and never get a reply.

Last edited by Gully Foyle at 12/4/2014 5:52:25 PM

i think we are alright with guard trainees for the future. I am training two and my ex colleague Astragoth is training one and now selling him to give Osman priority. I would love to take sidaway on board, but since we both used to log on both from work and our IP adresses are linked, I prefer not to do that to avoid a possible ban... I asked our NT coach for feedback on my 2 guards so that I can shape them as best as possible to become great NT players.

I don't want this to come across wrongly as it seems like lots of passionate people here.

I would go as far as to say Sidaway is unlikely to make the NT he has only gone up 15 stat points in the last 4 seasons since he played for U21 and his inside needs lots of work. I would encourage you to keep going on your players Johannes. I'm happy to be proved wrong on Sidaway by the way, just in reality and not in "oh yes I can" statements as frankly we can talk and throw mud all we like here. All we will achieve is lost ground and dirty hands.

Hi guys just thought i'd bring my two cents to the table. As the U21 coach for the past two seasons i have realised how England seem to have very little understanding of training. Its quite worrying seeing teams waste away these MVP+ potential players that Muse claims we should only focus on. If you took the time to scout and help the NT you'd see that there is very little MVP+ players drafted every season, if we just focused on them we'd have 5 players for the U21 team every season if we were lucky. Most of these players go to the new div 3 teams who don't know what to do with them.

The main problem i feel in England is the lack of training community. I messaged close to 100 managers over the past two seasons in regards to training and i have had several coaches as part of my team reach out and get a quite frankly pathetic return. I probably was ignored by 75% of coaches and those that did reply seemed defensive, thinking i'm messaging them for the sake of the U21 team. When in fact i'm offering training advice which would make the players good for their team and U21 players in the process. A lot of players in England seem to think training for the NT is forced etc, which it isn't. New managers don't understand how much they damage our draftees by wasting them and there is not an active enough forum to attract these new guys to come check it out. If you look at countries like Bosnia they have around the same players as us, and a close number of threads but over 8x more replies per post than we do.

Granted many people won't have the time to help scout/train etc but it doesn't take much to offer to help a new guy and send him a message every now and again to see how he's doing. We need to become a united community if we expect England to do anything at U21/NT level. I think it starts at the top down, i will not name any names but i do see a sense of arrogance from some EBBL users, as if for some bizarre reason they are above us all. I was ignored by one player when all i wanted was his players stats. As well as this since i took the U21 role, 95% of messages i have to send, not many people make the effort to contact me.

I'm very happy to see praise for my work at the U21 level on this thread, but i have over 30 votes and a 67% approval meaning at least 10 people have voted me down so far, I would like for these people if they are active to tell me why they have voted me down. I would much rather have someone critise me than keep quiet or we'll never grow as a community. I feel like we can speak our mind here, this is not a hate message by any chance just what i think.

Zeus.

Last edited by Mod-Zeus at 12/5/2014 7:40:51 PM

Well said Zeus and I totally agree with all of it.

I have helped Zeus in the last few weeks scouting players and messaged every (or at least 99%) of managers who had a Season 29 draftee with allstar potential or higher, both 18 and 19 year olds and got close to 50 managers messaging me back, now this is a good amount of managers replying however some of them had no clue of training and that's where I support what Zeus says about training and helping out Division III managers as a community. Now I'm not saying everyone has to take on a role like I did and help out as they may not have the time, but its also a struggle for me sometimes to message 40 odd managers and reply to every single one suggesting a training routine and ask basic questions involved in training, I think there's too much of the Division III teams who play the game and train their players but in the wrong and that's where we more experienced players must intervene and progress the U21 and senior side as a country.

as one off the coaches that (half) waisted a MVP player, I have to say that the english NT has one off two problems. Or we have not enough MVP or better players as a community to ever be competing for anything or there are too high expectations from some how players should be trained and that they should have loads off secondaries in order to be even considered playing for the NT. in combination with having to be MVP or better.

Trying to train players and give them some secondaries and to keep them in a certain wage range and to stay atleast half competitive seems to me an impossible task. Take for example Osman. He is coming along very nicely. But ideally he would need 2 more PS and 1 or 2 more OD. It is (please spare me the 1 or 2 possible exception stories) near to impossible to give him that kind off training. With his salary, it is very difficult to give him off position training and still stay half competitive, which is necessary to get enough gate revenue. I will do it, but to expect or hope other trainers do the same thing is just not realistic.

If Sidaway with 3 more seasons training has no chance to make it into the NT because off his weak secondaries, than I would like to know what kind off secondaries are being expected for en english NT guard to have...

Last edited by Astragoth at 12/5/2014 4:03:27 PM

Several pages of comments now. I've just been skimming through it, not skimming through laziness, but because I've already read it and wanted to refresh my memory, and I think we've identified two main problems, that I think may have been obvious to us all all along.

One, there aren't enough people offering advice, and two, there's no one reading what advice is given, or reading it and ignoring it.

Zeus is right. People don't seem to understand that we're (mostly him) trying to help. That's been the aim of the forum posts I put out at draft time. (Possibly too late to have the effect I want.)

This isn't a new thing. Almost every U21 coach I've known has had the same problem.

When it comes to training, I've made clear all along that I don't feel its my place to tell people how to train. Even if I did, and then someone asked to see my current or former NT players, I'd be slightly embarrassed. Though that's not the reason I don't do it. I feel people's players are their own. The NT just borrow them.

I feel I could do more though.

I can see a number of people obviously want England to do well. Even people who aren't actually English but are in our league. We need to find a way to use the passion in the last few pages of this thread to push England forward and perhaps sort out the future.

I don't think its going to be easy. If any lower division managers have thoughts about this thread and the NT in general I'd love to hear from them. I know the forums can be a fairly bewildering place but everyone is entitled to a view and to post it here.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has posted, and hopefully will continue to post.

Definitely agree about retaining more D3 managers if they are engaged with the NT/U21 and even just on the forums or the match chat..


Gives more incentives to login and enjoy the game and also understand the importance of English draft prospects= hopefully better English players down the line.