The Cup was a kick to the male parts this past Friday. Our future keeper, the one that we hope will take us to the promised land, was injured in the 87th minute, in a game that meant nothing to us beyond getting required DV for the understudy and the other younger players on the squad.
I was upset, not because of the keeper missing playtime, but because each season is so important for future development. If your player doesn't get hurt until their late 20's, they will be a half bar better than the player who picked up all of their serious injuries before age 24. Regardless, I shook my head in resignation, but understood that probabilities in the game engine dictate that all players are likely to suffer a major injury eventually. Fortunately, my players are hard trainers, so the loss of form and DV can be mitigated, even during the 2/week schedule that predominates in the first half of the season. It is alot of form notations to correct for, but I felt up to the challenge.
Today has changed my perspective, when we suffered what was a pipe wrench to the male parts. Our starting keeper, the guy who will keep us in the promotion hunt to Div 2 next season was struck down in the 11th minute, in an injury that will span the entirety of the month of August. Fortunately I was dead on tactically and against a weaker opponent today, because we played 80+ minutes with a defender in the net. He turned in a 3 bar performance, and that alone is reason enough for me to be grateful that I tend to play teams conservatively in the opening fixture.
I like our current starting keeper. Amaldo Porta is a solid 26-14 who most definitely would have managed 27-15 after this season. I was on the fence about keeping him around for next season, his resale has probably peaked and will only decline from here. But with a month of the season lost and form notations that are probably going to average just slightly north of 10, I should sell him along at first opportunity.
This is the stuff that makes this accursed game hard to master. The tactics have been a snooze fest for years now. It is the random feces that you have no control over that provides the great challenges in building a team and taking them to the top tiers of the Xpert Leagues. It will be a shame if a year from now, I miss by one thousandth in a mathematical game of fractions, all because both of keepers couldn't escape a low probability event that only some will ever have to deal with.
It also makes me reevaluate any success that I have ever enjoyed. Was my career double in the UL merely a result of my being slightly luckier in injures than the others that I faced? Furthermore, it makes me question the futility of trying to build anything in X11. Player development is so easy aside from the randomness of injuries, that it really just comes down to econs. Should I sell every player from this team and reinvest over and over again, so that I can buy a team of proven quantities. On a day like today, it seems more expensive and less reliable to try and build a team of your own.
Anyway, for fans of the team, I can promise you one thing, you will see a different keeper in the net this Friday. He is likely to be some old guy, around 14 bars in skill, because that is the level where finding decent compatibility in a keeper is a high likelihood.
After that, I am not sure what I will do. If the temp works out, I might cash in on Amaldo Porta before the pipe wrench to the male parts is recorded in the next change report. I am not sure about Hector Watts, he was in the middle of his skill bar, and will likely be low for the rest of his career, so maybe I will sell him too. After that, who knows, perhaps it is time for a long wave good bye to the X11 community.
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