Firstly I want to make one thing clear, this is not a whine.  This is not a moaney old gripe at the Devs.  This is merely the voicing of a concern for what is truly a fantastic game.  The work the Devs have done in improving gameplay, adding features, but particularly solving the performance issues has been exemplary.  I've been playing TM for nigh on three years now.  Three years!  That’s longer than most of my jobs!  Well at least a significant duration anyway and particularly significant for an online football management simulation.  Clearly there are many things that the owners and developers of this game are doing right, otherwise me and probably you would have gone long ago.

However over the last few seasons a number of managers I have spoken to have noticed what could be a disturbing trend - namely the deflation of prices for players.  Now don't get me wrong here, the sky-rocketing inflation of just a few seasons back was harming the game as well.  And I'm not talking about the figures five star young prodigies are going for (these appear to be marching on unabated).  I'm talking about good players who may not be quite world class - *19s and below.

 

For a club like me these are the surplus youths that I need to sell in order to stay in the black.  I don't want to sell my best players; I need them to try to be competitive.  And I’m finding that I need to sell more and more to survive.  Many other managers are finding the same thing.

League of Ireland stalwart and perennial challenger Le Sharks says that “Deflation is noticeable in average to good young players. It’s really affected good older players I find - Irish NT Peter Keys was just turned 30 and 80k asi when I sold him. He went for just 134 million. That was the end of last season - he's since been deleted as the team who bought him were banned. That in itself tells a story that even cheating teams are paying less money!”

Game Teamster IFK Norrköping agrees that it is evident for second tier players, “I have noticed it; looks like prices are going down if they aren’t top class players.  Sold a couple of English youths earlier this season and they went for a lot less than expected.”

 

LoI manager Cavan Celtic sees advantages to deflation, “I think deflation is a good thing - the game becomes more accessible as new teams can buy better players quicker. It ruins the plans of day-traders. Then again, managers who have spent ages building up a good team with either big money signings or scouting for younger prospects might be a bit annoyed that anyone can probably build a similar team now with a lot less effort.”

However, what if deflation carries on unchecked?  “A total crash would cause problems. The lack of new teams with new money is causing it. If [the market] collapses completely and big players start to become real cheap, then everything we have done over the last few seasons as far as building a squad is concerned becomes almost pointless.”

Deflation has two potential causes: an increase in the quality and number of players available and/ or a decrease in the amount of funds available to managers.

Both of these are at work here.

You'd think they'd have loadsa money... 

 

I was trawling through teams in Bahrain the other day, trying to find how many rich managers there were out there who might buy a DC of mine… There are fuck all.  In fact the proportion of managers in the top two divisions with money problems (poor, grave or terrible economic status) was staggering.

Perhaps Bahraini just can’t handle money?  But setting all nationalist-based pseudo assumptions aside for the moment, it is far more likely that the current problems for managers in Bahrain are prevalent everywhere.  My own division is reasonably healthy, with only a couple of managers below the poverty line.  However, I see more and more grave, poor and terribles every day when I look at teams that have shortlisted my own players.  And the amount of times that transferlisted players have not sold has increased recently for me as well.  

The decrease in player prices (for those players who are less than world class here, I repeat) is a supply and demand problem, but is caused and in many ways made worse through how the TM economy works.

For a long time I have suspected that inflation was being driven by the speedy growth of the game.  New managers bring new money to the game.  They arrive and are immediately gifted an asset in terms of players, they are given a ground and the means to make income and they are not (yet at least) saddled by facility costs as they have not built anything.  In short they are immediately profitable entities.

Older, more developed managers - apart from perhaps an elite few - take money out of the game.  I have been running at a weekly loss since season 9.  That’s fine with me, because I wanted to develop my facilities to their potential as fast as possible.  And you do need highish levels if you want to progress in this game.

It works when there is a constant supply of new managers looking for players to strengthen their team (and with money to buy them).  The problem arises when the proportion of old managers to new managers changes.

If we have relatively small numbers of established managers and high numbers of newbies, we get inflation: less players to choose from and more managers with money to buy them.  Consequently when we have a higher proportion of developed managers to the uninitiated we get deflation: less teams with spare cash, relatively more players on the market.

For at least the last 3 seasons the number of managers after the TM update has not increased season on season.  Or if it has, only marginally.  Let’s look at today for example: there are 658 new teams pending.  It has been in or around this level for some time.  Over a season (12 weeks) that equates to around 55,000 new managers.  However, more than this was deleted for inactivity in the last update.

 

So my take on it is that the majority of teams deleted are by and large less than a season or two old.  So every season, the proportion of experienced, developed and possibly cash-poor managers increases.  Leading to lower and lower prices.  Plus if you have more teams with higher facilities then there will be more players coming out of their academies and they will in general be better players.  The Youth Development survey we did a while back proved that there is a small percentage increase in the chance to draft higher quality youths with each succeeding level (although it sure doesn’t feel like that sometimes!).  Add to this higher training ground levels, better coaches and you have larger and larger numbers of teams producing more and more better quality youths, relative to the market (new teams) to buy them.

Stir in the transfer tax and the new transfer list, where non-pros cannot search by skills.  Season with the new ME and its possible harshness on average players and you have your problem.  Not a recipe for disaster necessarily, but where would it lead if it went unchecked?

So what can be done about it?  

I dunno!  What are you asking me for?!  What do you think yourself?

Is Deflation a factor, is it a cause for concern and can anything be done?

What’s your opinion and experiences in the matter?

Is there anything we can do about it? Find out in the second article, here