Pre-season 2011: Negotiations Comments Off
After the annus horribilis that was 2010, when I survived relegation back to Division 2 by not much more than the skin of my teeth, my Team Ranking has gone up to ‘C’ – thanks for the most part to my swashbuckling Cup run and victory over Liverpool in the final. My league form certainly didn’t get me the new rank.
Yet again I found myself thinking that I had to bag myself a really top-notch set of players in the off-season. There hasn’t been a negotiation period yet when I haven’t thought that. And I’ve always been left slightly disappointed.
This time, I have 38000 points in the bag, an estimated final salary bill of 21000 points, and a squad of 30 players (Huylens retired) that could use some weeding.
PES2008 models (in a limited fashion) your team’s prestige and popularity, which determines not only what players are interested in signing for you but whether their clubs will even let you negotiate with them at all. Now that I was a ‘C’ team I should, in theory, find that more players and clubs were willing to talk to me. Right?
No, not really. I still couldn’t get past the clubs to talk to the players I was most interested in. Mathieu being top of the list, of course. Jerome as well. A left-back called Jansen. Even a legend from PES6, Zoro. None of their clubs accepted my requests to negotiate.
There were plenty of others. And this isn’t even the most frustrating thing. The game counts an unsuccessful request to negotiate as one of your allotted number of weekly transfer bids. Thus you can easily spend a negotiation week putting in requests, having them rejected, and then suddenly finding everybody’s names greyed-out, forcing you to move on to the next week to start again.
After the first negotiation week, I got the message. A ‘C’ ranking was not much better than a ‘D’ ranking. I’m moving in the right direction, but I’m not there yet. I’d have to lower my sights slightly, or hope I’d get lucky.
And so here’s the players I did bid for, and get:
LEKSTROM (GK, age 27) – traded for Ivarov+1000 points. A keeper with great all-round stats. Better than Friedel and Kim U Don’t. Three keepers in your squad is a luxury, yes, but there’s usually about five games per season when you’ll be glad of it. Stamina schmamina…
O’SHEA (CB/SB/DMF, 29) - traded for Suzuki+3000(ish) points. What? An ageing, lumbering centre-back? What was I thinking? Well: for one thing he plays in three positions (CB, SB, DMF). For another thing his stats are still impressive. For yet another thing I was influenced by the fact that I have him in my Coventry City team on FIFA08 (yes, I said the F-word) and he’s brilliant. Want to see a goal O’Shea scored for me in FIFA08? Okay, here it is:
(And yes, that is from next-gen FIFA08, not ‘next-gen’ PES2008. Spot the difference? It’s a constant source of amazement to me this year that, for the first time ever, FIFA is arguably nearly as good as/as good as/better than PES. Next-gen FIFA08 runs so smoothly, too. Curse you Seabass!)
O’Shea will do a job for me for a couple of seasons, then I’ll move him on (we’re back to PES2008 now).
BRAAFHEID (SB/CB, age 25) – traded for Weir+1500 points. Crazy name, crazy guy. High body balance, high speed, and he can tackle. He also plays in the middle. I tested him out in my two pre-season friendlies (of which more later) and he did well, a lot better than Klavan or Van Steensel.
MARCOS (CMF/SMF, age 24) – A superb find in the Unbelonging list, and a player who I would never have got but for the new ‘C’ ranking I think… He’s a left-sided midfielder with strength and stamina and a wicked long shooting ability. He’s like Shaw with muscle. Again, he did well in my pre-season games.
DELGADO (CMF/SMF) – traded for Mao Molina (goodbye, Chairman Mao!)+ 500 points. Another utility player in the mould of last season’s miracle man Djiba. Middle Shooting, strength, body balance, a bit of pace.
ANDY COLE (CF, age 20) – snatched up from the Unbelonging list. A bit of a risk, as he’s a player who I’ve never rated at all in real life. I agreed with Glenn Hoddle when he said that Andy Cole seemed to need five chances to get one goal. But this is PES, not real life. I’ve never rated Alan Smith in real life either, and what a phenomenal player he was in PES6. Here, Andy Cole is just 20 years old and already has impressive stats. Also, I really want another nippy striker up front. I seem to have too many big lumbering CFs right now – Schwarz, Folan, Boyd, Frutos – and not enough fox-in-the-box CFs. I’ve got a good feeling about Cole for some reason, despite him being unfit for both of my pre-season games. Grrr.
So that was my negotiation period. I didn’t get the triple-A players I was hankering for, but I’m happy enough with the ones I did get. My squad is now composed of 32 players, all but a few of whom can at least hold their own in their position against almost any opposition.
Among the players I nearly got was the one and only Micah Richards. I think the game was telling me that I’ll get him next time.
Next time I’ll cover my pre-season games and talk about my all-new and all-improved First XI.