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I Trained Passing for my new team!

Written by AaronFern

With my 2nd team in India, I did what many would oppose and started with Passing, Was it a good idea? Did I make profit? Would I do it again?

Here is what I did...

I started my new team in India 24/10/2021. (31469)

I bought 15 players within a few days and decided to train just 1 home grown player that was already in the team. They were all 17 or early 18-year-olds. I bought a mixture of players with Defending, Playmaking, Wing & Scoring with a Solid primary skill, with weak-Inadequate Passing. All players had various specs – and all 15 were bought for a less than 100k outlay.

At this point, I not researched what type of players would be optimal trainees, nor did I research which spec could be most profitable or beneficial. I had a bit of experience from managing my 1st team, but it wasn’t significant enough for me to go the market looking for particular specs per position, bearing in mind that I also didn't have the funds!

At the beginning; it was very difficult to manage. I was limited to just 1 formation (2-5-3), which meant I had no flexibility in tactics. I was lucky that was in a pretty mediocre series, but I still lost a few matches. The solid defenders I bought could not be played in Defense and had to play in other trainable positions. I also struggled to generate decent ratings in League matches and with little prospect to improve these, due to the formation, and the fact that there were only 3 non-training positions I could improve (2xDef & GK).

After about 5 weeks, I used a bit of saved cash and sold off 4 of the trainees for slightly more than the price I'd bought them for. I replaced them with higher skilled Playmakers – still training passing.

After almost 1 full season; 14-16 weeks. I sold most of my starting trainees for £1.1 million, leaving 6 players. 2 of the 3 Playmakers I'd bought after a few weeks were also sold for profit (£500k), to be replaced again with higher skilled Playmakers. The improvement to midfield ratings, with minimal improvements in the non-training positions combined with gradually increasing passing skills, saw me go on to dominate my very weak division and ensure auto-promotion.

It was at this point, having had the team for just under 1.5 seasons, with 1 or 2 games left in the season, where I had the league tied up. My youth team by this time had started developing youth talents and I was ready to move away from Passing onto Defending. I still had a few of the original Passing trainees and the better playmakers, which I combined to fill the Defender slots alongside 2 youth academy promotions. By the 3rd week of the new season all my original passing trainees had been sold. Their additional Defending skill contributed to around a £1.6million profit all told.

How did I fare? My original Passing trainees were bought for a total off; £57,000 and sold between 1-1.5 seasons at £2.7million. The higher skilled Playmakers bought and replaced during Weeks 5-16 gave me additional profit of £2.2million, some of these were also partly trained in Defending.

The other useful bit of information (which intrigues me a lot) is yet to be determined; all my original passing trainees have yet to be transferred on from the clubs I sold them to. This is despite it now being nearly a season since I sold all of them. There were 3 players that have been sold, from which I’ve received an additional 100k as the 'Former Club' bonus.

I have had a look at the remaining players, and the majority are currently still being trained to higher levels. There are some that look like they are no longer being trained. However, if I’ve generated 100k bonus from 3 players, I’d expect (as long as most of the remaining players continue to be trained to high levels) potentially an additional 400-500k, maybe more from the remaining players, once they too are sold on.

It is something to ponder. Does training Passing at an early age mean that those that bought my trainees might possibly spend longer training a primary skill because the secondary Passing skill was already trained to a useful level? Will this potentially giving me more “Former Club” bonus than had I trained a primary skill myself before selling? It certainly is food for thought, but I don't yet have the answer...

On balance however, I do not think I would start a team by training Passing again. I decided to because I was able to dedicate a good amount of time into hattrick to manage those players at the time. Regardless, it was a most enjoyable experience and when I do train Passing again, I might just spend a bit more time researching Specs by position and I'll hopefully have more funds so that I can be more 'selective' with my buys.

It is always worth remembering that there is no single way to play and when you're starting you can start with pretty much any type of training. Everybody dedicates different amounts of time into the game; everybody enjoys various aspects of the game. So, if you want to do what I did and go against the 'normal', I hope you found my experience useful and just do it with no regrets, enjoy the game and use the experience to help you later as your team develops.