Pre-season 2011: running on empty
Disaster has struck. It’s not a fatal disaster, but it could well become one. I’m paying the natural and inevitable price for not yet being very good at PES2008. I’ve been in this kind of position before, but not for a long time. I hope I can remember how to get out of it. Let me explain.
In the season just gone—season 2010—I finished bottom of the league. I won only 2 games all season (again) and scored a paltry handful of goals.
The problem is that at the end of the previous season, anticipating success, I spent big in the transfer market. I took on too many players at too high a cost.
Now my salary bill is 8500 points. And I’ve got just 5400 points in the bank.
Anyone unfortunate or careless enough ever to find themselves in a similar position in Master League knows that there’s a GAME OVER screen with my name on it waiting for me at the end of this negotiation period if I don’t take drastic action.
I’ve only ever had a proper GAME OVER in PES once. It came way back in PES2. That was my first PES with a Master League and the whole concept was new to me. I unthinkingly blundered into disaster after my very first season. I overspent, couldn’t claw the money back, and it was all over. Even then I operated my strict policy of never reloading, of playing every game once and once only. Every outcome, on or off the field, was the only outcome there was allowed to be. I had to take the GAME OVER and start again.
And that’s what I’ll have to do this time as well, if I can’t avoid it.
First things first: playing the maximum number of pre-season friendlies. Winning a few of these would mean only losing one player, or even none at all if I won enough. I didn’t win any of them, though. I drew one and lost three. I’m no good at PES2008 right now. That’s why I’m in this position.
The other thing to do: put players on the transfer list en masse. Which is what I did. I was delighted after one negotiations week to see two CPU teams make bids for Ruskin. Great! But then I checked the bids.
I don’t know if this is a bug or what, but each of the three CPU teams had bid exactly 1 point for Ruskin. I was, and am, confused. If it’s a bug it’s a terrible one. But I can see how it might not be a bug. It could be a clever simulation of what might really happen—knowing that I’m a club in trouble, the other clubs take advantage by slyly offering to lighten my wages blll with nominal transfer fees. Releasing Ruskin would mean paying compensation.
I rejected all the CPU offers, hoping for a ‘proper’ transfer fee from elsewhere. Amazingly, all the remaining weeks passed without the CPU bidding for any of my players.
So then came the last week, and I had to do the toughest thing. I had to release a load of players in order to get my salary budget down. I released all of the below:
Elmander
Sibon
John
Ben Arfa
Ruskin
Batlles
They all hurt in their own way. Sibon was the easiest to let go; Batlles the hardest. All of them cost me between 20 and 100 points in compensation. At the end of the process I had a bank balance of around 5250 points, and a salary bill of around 5150 points.
So I had avoided the dreaded GAME OVER. But at what cost? My current squad is pictured on the left. It doesn’t look too healthy, does it? You don’t have to know PES to know that playing a busy, competitive football season with a bare-bones squad like that is going to be tough. Especially when you’re not really that good at the game to begin with.
I’ve spent nearly six months on this blog assuring the possibly-sceptical reader that I am an average player of PES. The ludicrous next-gen PES2008 seemed to give the lie to that statement. Now the solid, faithful last-gen version is proving its truth.
On the right, for what it’s worth, is my new First XI.
Park Jyun Hi comes in to replace the departed Elmander. I’ll keep Komol on the bench for now, but his time is coming. I’m toying with the idea of moving Podolski to the centre and slotting in Komol out there on the left, but I’ll see how the season goes first. Heck, I’ve got so few players that they’ll all play an equal number of games anyway, and they’ll all be permanently knackered to boot.
I’ve played a Master League season with a preposterously small squad before. The last time I remember this happening to me was in PES4. The difference then was that I was already good at the game and was able to work my squad back towards rude health within half a season. I’m not giving up on this career before the season has even begun—if anything this makes life more interesting. But I’ll have to get good at last-gen PES2008, fast.
Similar posts:
- Pre-season 2015
- Singers FC: pre-season negotiations 2008
- Wanting it Bradley: pre-season 2012
- Pre-season 2017
- The more things change…