How to organically grow my team ?

[michaesteink]

Hello, 

I am looking for some practical advice for my Valmieria FK save in Latvia. In a nutshell, I have managed to win twice the league and twice the Latvian Cup, managed to get once into the Europe League group stage, where I got slaughtered. The majority of my price money I have invested so far into my training and youth facilities. My bank account shows that we have around 1.8 Mio EUR. My wage budget is around 22k per week. II have sold one, two key players, but overall I do feel that I have a very good team assembled to defend my title in the third season.

However, I am now at a stage, where I am unsure, how to approach my third season ? In a sense, what else can I do to get better and especially get my team into the Champions League (this is the goal of my save together with trying to win the title for 15 consecutive seasons to break the record from Skonto Riga). 

I have allot of expiring contracts and some players are not willing to extend their contracts beyond November 2023. Should I ride it out risking loosing them for free or get money in to potentially re-invest it into facilities ? 

 

Thanks, Michael. 

 

 

 

 

[Muttley84]

The secret in small leagues is patience and marginal gains. Each season you shoul use the money from Europe to buy prospects which are young and have resale value. For the first year you could look into baltic and easter states and after you are consistent in Europe for african and south-american players. 

You should be a bit ruthless with players at the club and sale each time there's a profit, and constantly bring upgrades in each position. I wouldn't invest in the facilities until you get Champions league money, they are expensive and with mid- and long-term returns.

But all of the above are just my way of playing small leagues, you could write your own path.

[michaesteink]

Your statement regarding the facilities is absolutely correct. I have nearly spend all of the prize money to bring them up to an average standard. I will take your advice and hopefully manage to qualify this season. It will be though very tough given the competition. 

The Latvian league has a rather strict registration system. For this reason I am mainly scanning the statistics of all Latvian teams to find cheap replacements to continue to have a strong position in Latvia. I have a transfer budget of nearly 1Mio after selling my top goal scorer, but I do hope that I have a replacement bought for only 100k. 

But what should I do for example to keep players happy, so that they would like to extend contracts or maybe are not always depressed, when I neglect their wishes to negotiate with a club abroad ? 

Thanks ! 

[Muttley84]

On 27/01/2022 at 15:42, michaesteink said:

But what should I do for example to keep players happy, so that they would like to extend contracts or maybe are not always depressed, when I neglect their wishes to negotiate with a club abroad ? 

Give them more money usually works... haha. Having a higher reputation as manager also does, but in the end, if they moan about transfering and their performance drops - I just sell them. Try to sneak in clauses as in loan back till the end of season, transfer activating on next summer and % of next sale. It won't be such a loss, with the european money u can rain smaer clubs and replace them. It s going to be painfull for seasons...