Rowsus you absolute dead set legend.
A pondering a particular tactical approach to supercoach I don't think is discussed a whole lot (I think many do it subconsciously) and I think makes sense.
I'm going with the plan of picking value players early on before focusing my final trades to pick the top players that I don't have. The advantages are three fold:
1.) More Data: More obviously by picking the top players at the end you have added confidence that they will continue to perform because of more knowledge and games watched throughout the year. One might say you are loosing points by bringing them in late which brings me to the second point.
2.) Points for Cash: By picking value keepers early that say may be 2-3 players or 2-5 points outside the top 6-8 you are getting the same amount or a tad less points for a much cheaper player. Meaning in turn you use left over funds to invest in another value player.
Eg.) The Goddard Vs Mitchell conundrum
Say Titch 405k averages 100 and Goddard 535k averages 106.
You can uses that 120k to find extra 6 points on ground easily. Such an approach later in the year is less beneficial as a fully upgraded team will yield less opportunities to utilise the 120k to advantage.
3.) Safety Mechanism: If by R14 (just after the bye) injury has decimated your team and little trades remain one would feel more comfortable relying upon as little rookies as possible. Also the "value" of these premiums nets you extra points. Also with player resting as it is now a few extra trades could cover a donut net you 100 points and overcome any points loss prior.
Of course I don't mean take ridiculous risks with midpricers. This only works for value keepers.
I have picked Zeiball (390k), Mitchell (405k) and intend to pick Rocky (450k) this week and B Smith, and Selwood in the relatively near future. Leaving players such as Mcdonald who is a "must have" to later as the final touch to my team.
Of course by doing so you run the risk of stocking too heavily on slightly below par players and have to waste trades to bring in the cream. As always, pre planning to ensure the proper balance is crucial.
That being said the winner last year had pretty much the top 6 forwards, defenders, top 2 rucks and top 8 midfielders. However I'm sure he picked up at least a few of them at good value.
Please confirm this isn't complete kaboodle
McC, not too sure about the "legend" bit, but thanks anyway!
The thing you refer to a the very end is the key to it all. There's a very fine line, or balancing act, we try to navigate in SC. We need to buy low/cheap, to save trades and money, but we need to buy well, too. What you have said is correct, but can be taken too far. It's one thing to buy 4 "bargain" Mids at say $450k each, that return say 105-108/game, but that won't give you a competitive team. They're performing 15-20% better than their buy-in price, but now you have 4 Mids in your team that would be classified as M7/8, and you are losing 8 to 12 points/Round to those Coaches with better performing M5/6's. Do a similar thing in your other lines, and you will have completed your team quicker, and probably have used a trade or three less, than other Coaches, but you will be losing 40-50 pts/Round to those Coaches, who may complete their teams a week or two, and a trade or three, later than you, but will quickly over haul your early point advantage.
It's one thing to think you might "fix" these slight under performers later, with the trades you saved by buying in at good prices, but the problem is, by my estimate, buying "smart" will save you half a trade. Do it 6 times, and save 3 trades, but what if you have to fix 3 or 4 of those 6, because you are leaking too many points? It's likely you need three trades to fix each pair of these of value picks. One trade to make the cash for the "fix", and one trade for each of the pair you will fix. So if you saved 3 trades by building your team this way, you actually need 4 out of 6 of these value picks to be performing well enough to be kept, because it will cost you the 3 saved trades to fix the other 2 players! By all means, take the bargains when they are there, but if they are turning into Stepping Stones, rather than Keepers, they are more like a millstone around your neck! Unless you have shopped really well in your initial team, you can't afford to be using a handful of Stepping Stones in your trading. You might survive one or two, any more than that, and it is likely you end up with a compromised team. Stepping Stones are for your initial team, not for your trading.
In theory: Start with 14 Keepers, and you need to make 8 upgrades to fill your team. You probably lose 3 or 4 Keepers to injury, and another 2 or 3 because they underperformed. So you might only end up with say 7 or 8 of your starting Keepers still in your team come seasons end. Just to demonstrate this point, Jay had 15 Keepers in his starting squad in his winning year. We had a 10% higher budget that year, as we had 33 players not 30. He ended up with 11 of those Keepers in his final team, and one of those 11 went out, then back in again. Keeping in mind, that was the winning team, it's not unreasonable to say most teams might end up with say 8 out of 14 starting Keepers in their final team. So we have 8 out of our final starting 22 nailed down, and need to find 14 more. Let's say we identified the 3 underperformers early on, and used 4.5 trades to replace the 3 of them. Let's also assume your injured players needed a bit of cash to replace them, and you used 4 trades to replace those. You also used 3 trades early correcting Rookies etc. You now have used 11.5 trades, and you still only have 14 Keepers in your team. Not every trade can be one up/one down, even if you are buying well as you suggest. There just aren't enough Cripps/Millers/Oxleys in any given year to do that. Those 8 upgrades might cost you 16 trades, but could cost you more. Let's use your "bargain" plan, and say they cost you 14. You've now filled your starting 22, and used 25.5 trades. This has assumed you used 5 or 6 bargain picks. You can see if 2 of them fail to reach genuine Keeper level, you will burn 3 trades to fix them. You've now got 1.5 trades left, and you are hoping like hell your other 3 or 4 "bargains" can carry the team, up against other teams that have "genuine" D5/M7/F5's not a clump of D6/M8/F6's.
As I said right at the start, you walk a fine line. You need to buy low, but you need to buy well, too! The opposite happens to those Coaches that follow the flavours of the month, and pay $50-$100k too much for their D3-4/M3-5/F3-4. They use their cash too quickly, and can't farm enough Cows too fill their team. They end the season with 2 or 3 Rookie/Midpricer types still on the field, and little or no bench cover! The Coaches that can balance these 2 things, buying cheap, but buying smart, are the ones at the pointy end of the leaders board, come seasons end.
In summary, it's not
kaboodle at all. You just need to temper these picks. Don't try for too many, as they need a success rate of around 65-70% to be considered a successful strategy. That applies to Stepping Stones taken in initial teams, too!
