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Hmm, I just looked through the TL, for star potential guys no older than 24, with good OD and PA. Players with ~13-19K salaries, and ~70-75 total skill points, had TPEs around 200-900K. Now I agree 900K is way top end, but perhaps you were looking at older guys, whose worth on the transfer list declines as they have fewer years until drop status kicks in. Something in the range of 300-450K doesn't seem crazy to me, as long as we're talking younger players. Plus, many of the players had no TPE for their particular skill distribution.

And in this hypothetical we're considering the training of an 18 year old guy low potential guy until he's 21. So in this case, talking about whether the players end up as world class, or desireable among the highest division teams, or whether they make NT status is irrelevant.

Here, let's do a step by step comparison. We'll take two teams, one is gonna buy a decent star potential guy, one is gonna guy a decent MVP guy. Train the first star potential guy for 3 seasons, and the MVP guy for 5 seasons. Let's assume 11, 10, 9,9,8 skill pops in the 18-22 seasons (actual numbers not completely crucial, so long as they are equal for the two trainees). Assume the star potential guy costs 50K, and the MVP guy 600K, and that they have 6 in all outside skills and 4 in the inside skills (so ~3K salary and 52 total skill points).

First season, both star and MVP trained:
3K * 14 weeks = 42K
ending skills: 8/8/9/8/8/7 4/4/4/4

2nd season, both star and MVP trained: salary now ~7K
7K * 14 = 98K
ending skills after 10 more points: 11/9/11/9/9/9 4/4/4/4

3rd season, both star and MVP trained, salary now: 15K
15K * 14 = 210K
ending skills with 9 more points: 13/9/13/11/11/10 4/4/4/4, needing 19.04 cap number. Middle of road star potential.

Now at this point, let's sell the star potential guy. I think that build would easily go for 450K.

450K sale - 50K initial purchase - 42K year 1 salary - 98K year 2 salary - 210K year 3 salary = 50K.

The MVP guy keeps getting trained.

4th season, salary starts at 24K.
24K * 14 = 336K
ending skills with 9 more points added: I dunno, 14/10/16/12/12/12 4/4/4/4

5th season, salary starts at 45K
45K * 14= 630K
add skills to whatever you want, with 8 total points added. The player will be sold at the start of his next season, and assume the trainer won't pay any of his updated salary.

Ok, so how much more does the high potential trainer need to pay for that 4th and 5th year? That's the amount above the star potential sale price that needs to be covered in order to make more of a return.

336 + 630K = 966K.

So, how much does the MVP potential guy need to sell for in order to make 50K, like the star potential trainer did?

X - 600K initial purchase - (42+98+210+336+630 salary) = 50K

X = 1,966K. The high potential trainer needs to sell his trainee for nearly 2 million just to break even with the star potential trainer. And that represents a 1.3 million net difference between purchase and sale prices, which is largely above the players on your own transfer history.

Now, sure, you could train the MVP guy in some secondaries, lower the total salary burden in the 4th and 5th training seasons, and thus reduce the needed sale price for break even (even if you assume zero salary growth in the 4th and 5th seasons, that's still implies a required sale price to 1.42 million to break even).

Remember too though that the star potential trainer will have had two extra seasons to do some other training as well. So they added value there. They could be two years into training another star potential guy in the same exact way, if they wanted to.
-EDIT - oops, that's 12 pops in year 1. Doesn't change anything since each trainee got it. :)

Last edited by Tangosz at 4/25/2012 1:11:41 PM

Of course, it's more complex than that, unfortunately. The star trainer will need to have someone replacing the sold player's position on the team, which will offset the salary somewhat. Likewise, one could also assume that the star trainer could put the 550K difference in initial investment into building out the arena, which would essentially give an additional profit until the second team could match that investment (plus any subsequent ones the initial team makes).

I still am of the opinion that the first few seasons, train someone you can get cheap who has enough room to grow for several seasons, and put everything you can into building the arena. If you get better potential than star at a low price, wonderful, but arena first.

Yeah, there are a lot of other variables, but here we are just reducing it to a consideration of just the cost of acquiring, training, and supporting the trainee himself. I think it helps make it clearer to think about how other possible decisions would impact this.

I LOLed.

You guys are talking all hypotheticals and theories, when you pull up the payers, the cost of your actual trainers, your record with such players, the player's skills and relative value, you will see time and time again that those trainees end up near worthless by age 25.

I mean, other than the examples you have already been shown, of course. And the guy that I bought at 55k with more skills than the guy who sold for 450k. Or my draft pick who has higher skills even than that. All of whom were regular players on my team pretty much from the day I acquired them, meaning I didn't have to spend money on a veteran of higher skilll levels and upgrade each promotion.

And as far as the cost of the trainer, until I upgraded to a level 5 trainer this season, the amount I brought in above the league average in merchandise pretty much covered the full cost of the trainer (except when I got lazy and kept one of the trainers a bit too long).

I don't care what you did - I am not presuming to tell you what you did when you toiled away in the low levels of Japan's II was wrong or worthless. But likewise, you should not presume that you are the owner of the true with regards to the USA's lower levels. Last thread on this, you pointed out that all the people discussing this were in IV and so their opinions were worthless -- so now I suppose guys being in III and safe from relegation in their fourth full season of the game have no bearing on how to succeed in V and IV either? Shall we wait until I promote to II at some point before I am judged worthy of having an opinion?

But you're right. My trainees are worthless. I mean, they're only the starting rotation for a team that is very likely to make the playoffs in III, and I'm only pulling in close to 150% the league average in merchandise. The worst of the four remaining star guys just sold for almost half a million, which is apparently not even worth wiping my nose with. But I forget -- that's all theory. I mean, what relevance does any of that have to a lower level manager in a big country, when you have all the experience of slumming it down in II to rely on?

oh and here is a warning to all these people supposedly buying your trained up star pot. players~

Look at the purchase price and skills of players you can get, over star potential

Kévin Barrau Bought Mouson 1/10/2012 $ 371 900 56k C allstar
Ermes Arca Bought Milano Knickerbokers 2/8/2012 $ 450 000 35k allstar
Samuel Falcón Bought Free Agent 2/8/2012 $ 306 800 30k perrenial
Albert Solano Bought Free Agent 11/30/2011 $ 408 000 19k superstar
Panos Vlimas Bought Free Agent 10/18/2011 $ 246 090 20k salary allstar

Yes. And none of those players have any business being on a team in USA's V because their salaries are way too high. Heck, just the first two combined have more weekly salary than my entire team as I came out of V, and I could have probably shaved some salary still considering how easily I promoted. The top three really shouldn't appear on a well-built team in IV, either - I had one 25k guy and everyone else around 16k or less as I promoted out of IV.

I mean, sure, if your idea of lower level is II.whatever, yeah, you can surely afford a 120k+ salary for a fairly new team. But if you're advocating that new players go out and buy 20k players, you're simply too unfamiliar with lower level finances in larger countries and maybe you should leave the discussions about those to people who *do* understand.