All this was reflected, in longer cup runs and essentially more money
Thats a good point, the cup runs did provide a substantial stream of money to the teams that took advantage of it. Clearly some teams, esp Stogey and I, have focused on that and reaped the rewards.
Yes. IMHO, bigger than what I have vs. a season 5 team, since I cannot take advantage of FA's or increased training.
I'm not getting the FA thing having as much of an effect. Though I see your point about increased purchasing power allowing the advantage of a deeper team for a cup run.
As for the increased training I see that as a benefit for a team that started before season 5. They drastically increased the training speed, IIRC, around season 3 to increase salaries faster. I think they gradually reduced the pace of training a 2-3 times after that, so that teams starting later would start training at a slower pace each time it was reduced.
I helped a couple other teams pretty closely during season 4 and all were able to pick up 5 decent young trainees at that time and progress very well. Personally, I never focused on having the best young trainees. Usually I aimed for the best players that were still reasonably trainable, so I'm not sure having the best of the best trainees was ever the worth the premium paid for them. Esp considering FA's and the rapid growth of teams kept the prices on good players lower then they could be.
I'm not saying your wrong about the part I quoted above though, there's a lot of data (some we have, some we don't) to take into account.
Last edited by brian at 08/26/2009 12:38:10
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