There is a fantastic article that was recently written by PPM Member Ciukitu that talks about staff levels and their impact on your facilities. In the article Ciukitu highlights the attribute levels your staff need to have an impact on your facility equivalent to upgrading that facility. Here is an excerpt from Cuikitu's blog:

Two things we must note:

1. The facilities have an influence even if you don't have any staff employed there.
2. Hiring some staff has a very strong effect on facilities influence.

Ok, how can we find out what is the influence of facilities without any staff employed? The only facility which show us it's influence without any staff is Human resources and economic department.

The guide says: Human resources and economic department - Easier negotiations with the sponsors, more efficient souvenir sale, employment of better staff members or faster scouting of your own players as well as the players of your opponents is facilitated by this department.

Click here to read the full article on Ciukitu's blog

I firmly believe that every member of Powerplay manager needs to read this article. It will not only give you a new understanding of staff salaries, but will also help you better manage your staff and facilities.

Brisbane - 15yr old sensation Riley Brownley wasted no time in making his impact known.  In his first league match for Trueblue United today, Browney scored his first career goal, and the only goal of the game helping Trueblue United secure the Other World I.1 Championship.

Playing a newly modified 3-5-2 system in which extra depth was added to the midfield, the Trueblue United squad dominated in posession against the much weaker Team Noname 6.

Key striker Kyler Higgins had an off-game today, putting 3 shots towards the net, all of them wide.

The win today means Trueblue United have secured the top spot in the league and can not be caught by 2nd place team, Mighty Roo. With 6 games still remaining in the season, fans are wondering if Trueblue United can hit 30 wins in the season (only 2 more needed) and 100 points (4 wins needed).

Would you believe we're almost at the end of the first Powerplay Manager Soccer season? It seems like only last week the PPM team launched the soccer game.

I was thinking about how the game has progressed over the course of the season, and have been very impressed at the level of quality put into the game. I got to thinking, how has the game developed from a user point of view? How are the players looking?

So here are a few player, team and league stats from season 1 of the PPM Soccer game:

Player with the highest average quality:
Miloslav Amrich from the team "Chelsea 58" in the Slovakia V.61 League

Player with the Best Overall Rating:
Filip Chropovsky with an incredible 306 OR from the team "MFK Kosice" in the Slovakie IV.16 League

Best single league attendance:
11,800 on 24 August, 2010 when home team "Real 2010 Madrid "jalu"" hosted the "Capitals Marl" In Germany II.2 League

Most goals in a league match:
13 on 1 July, 2010 when home team "Dinamo Smiltene" defeated "sportacentrs.com" in Latvia IV.43 League

Highest Overall Team Rating (OTR) average:
Slovakia I.1 with a whopping average 102.03 OTR per team!

League with the most goals:
Latvia II.1 with 805 goals.

Team with the best Overall Team Rating:
Holland Pioneers with 143.81 OTR in the Netherlands I.1 League

Most Points in a League:
Trueblue United with 87 points in Other World I.1 League (this is my team)

As promised a few articles back, this brief post is going to touch on player positions in relation to training at the Powerplay Manager soccer game.

Training your soccer players does not need to be a headache. In fact, with a little preparation, training at PPM soccer can be an incredibly rewarding and exciting process.

In my last post I talked about attribute ratios and training. The ratios directly tie into the field positions, so before you can even start to train or plan your ratios, you first need to know WHERE your players are going to play. The PPM guide gives us a list of which attributes have influence on the primary role of a player, and clearly states that there are 2 positions for each "position".

ie. Wing Forward, Center Forward, Wing Midfield, Center Midfield, Win Defense and Center Defense, plus of course the goalie.

so, how do you know what to train your players as?

The answer is not simple, and the only person who can answer it is you.. because only you have access to the details about your team. There are a few things we can share here though that might get you off to a good start.

But, how do you know if your player is a center or wing?

Again, there is no simple answer, but I want to give you an example based on one of my players, and the PPM guide.

The player is a midfielder who prefers the Right position. 

His attributes:

Mid: 36 (95)
Pas: 26 (64)
Tec: 26 (74)
Spe: 25 (59)
Hea: 24 (47)

Now, we know that because he favours the Right side, he is possibly best played as a Wing Midfielder, however do his attributes support this?

The guide suggests that a Side Midfielder has a major influence of speed, medium influence of Passing and Technique and a small influence of Heading. Likewhys, a Center Midfield has a major influence from Passing and Technique and a small influence from Speed and Heading (no medium influence).

So, my player in each position would look like this:

Wing: 36 - 25 - 26 - 26 - 24 (Mid - Spe - Pas - Tec - Hea)
Center: 36 - 26 - 26 - 25 - 24 (Mid - Pas - Tec - Spe - Hea)

But, what about ratios?

Ahh, now this is where we go from simple logic to supposition, preferences and a few wild guesses. In short, as nobody knows the best ratios, what you read below is simply as an example and not to be read as fact in ANY way. I am going to go with a simple 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 ratio for this example as it's easy to work out. If you assume that your players best skills is based on the lowest attribute, you would end up with these as his re-calculated ratios.

Wing: 33 - 24 - 16 - 16 - 8 (Mid - Spe - Pas - Tec - Hea)
Center: 34 - 25 - 25 - 8 - 8 (Mid - Pas - Tec - Spe - Hea)

What does this tell us?

Well, initially it tells us that this player would be good at both positions, but has a slight edge in the Center position. As far as training goes however, he would be much faster to train as a Wing because the only secondary attribute I would have to focus on right now would be his Speed.

So, we have a player who trains faster as a wing and prefers the right side... so I personally have him training as a right-side Midfielder who can play center if need be.

Now, you're possibly thinking that this whole process is an aweful lot of stress to go through just to find a good position. In a way you're right, however the process can be greatly simplified by use of a spreadsheet. More importantly, taking the time to look at your playes will help you know exactly how to train your players best.

And that right there is the key to the whole thing.. you MUST know what position your players are good at before you can really start to nail down any sort of full training system. Take the time, reap the rewards.

As promised in my recent article, I wanted to talk about the attribute ratios for players in the Powerplay Manager soccer game.

As with hockey, there is a lot of personal preferences when it comes to using ratios for your training. What we do know is that for different positions there are 3 types of secondary attributes; Major, Medium and Small. This is a good starting point when selecting what types of ratios to go with.

As there is no clearly defined "right" way to do this, I want to make it very clear that anything I write here is purely my opinion and is NOT to be taken as correct, right, perfect or anything like that. I expect you to make up your own minds as to what is right or wrong, and if you want, share with me in the comments down below.

There are 3 main ratios I have heard being tossed around during conversations. I wanted to briefly touch on these to give you an idea of what can be used.

4 - 3 - 2 - 1

This is a generic ratio similar to the 4-3-2 used in PPM hockey. It assumes that the Major influence ratio is 75% of your primary, the Medium influence 50% and the Small influence 25%. Pretty straight forward and easy(ish) to keep track of.

4 - 3 - 2.5 - 2

A variation of the above and assumes that the Medium and Small influence ratios are slightly more important than the generic 4-3-2-1 ratios.

3 - 2 - 1.5 - 1

This ratio balance is used by those who prefer the 4 attributes be closer together. It can produce consistent players, however will take much longer to build high star-rating players.

No matter what you personally choose to go with, know that the key to a good manager is the ability to bend with the game and learn on the fly. Don't be afraid to try new things and test new theories.

Brisbane - Kyler Higgins has answered his critics.  After going 3 games without finding a touch, Higgins put up 5 big goals in his last 2 games, 3 of them coming in a recent match.  Higgins latest victim was Yellow Flag, who fell to the True Blue F.C. 1-0 when Higgins put away a free kick.

The left-forward striker leads his team and all of Oceania in goal scoring, with 26 goals this season.  In a recent post-game interview Higgins was quoted as saying "I just do what comes naturally, it's my team-mates who do the hard work".

Higgins and True Blue F.C. next match is against "noname team 3", who currently sit in 13th place in the standings.  In their last meeting, True Blue F.C. won 2-0.

We're well over the hump in the first ever PPM soccer season and teams are starting to get established.  Many managers have come from hockey, so are already familiar with the PPM Training system.  Saying that, there are many who came in directly for the soccer game and are still in the learning phase.

In this first of a series covering basic PPM Soccer training I wanted to touch base on the training methodology and highlight a few important factors that may be left forgotten.

Training Methodology

The PPM training system is fairly straight forward.  You simply select the attribute you want your player to train in.  Each day your players will get an increase in that attribute, dependent on the size of your training facility, your coaching staff and the quality of your players attributes.

Training Attributes

The PPM Soccer training is a little more "in depth" than that of PPM Hockey.  Unlike Hockey, where each player has just 3 key attributes for their position (primary-secondary-secondary), in soccer the number of attributes for a position varies, as does their importance to that position.  Because of this, training of players so they can excel best in their positions can appear harder.  In truth, it's not, it just takes a little more time.

As per the PPM Guide, player attributes and their importance on the relevant positions are as follows:

As you can see, PPM have given us the information we need to best train our players, it's up to us how we use it.

Training Positions

This section is part of a much larger article that I will be writing at a later time, but I wanted to briefly mention it here.  As we can see from the information in the PPM Guide, it's not as each as just Forward, Midfield or Defense.  While many may think it's that easy, the PPM team have actually given us twice as many positions by adding a Wing and Center for each of the field positions.  This is really great for us, as allows much more detailed training.  However, you do need to know what positions your players are going to play in.  If you have a midfielder, you need to know where he will play before you can decide how to best train him.  Because of this, take time to really study your team and make not of what position your guys will play in.  Players who prefer Left or Right sides dominate on their side but are a lot less effective on the other.  Universal players however are good at both sides, so often play best in the center position.

Training Ratios

This is part of a larger article that will be coming in the next few days.  As per the PPM guide, the attributs for each position have varying importance to that position, so the ratio of the attributes would naturally vary.  There is no set rule as to what this ratio is, so it is purely up to individual preference.

That said, enjoy the game.  PPM have given us a great game here with fantastic freedom to train and build our teams.

Brisbane - Less than a month after Devon Whelan called out Stars starting goaltender, Daniel Lehmbacher, he's discovering the long journey it can be for a netminder to snag the starting position.

Whelan, who has played just 1 period this season after Lehmbacher was pulled during an early game has displayed patience as he's watched the Stars go 4 wins, 1 OTW, 1OTL and 1 Loss in their first 7 games with Daniel Lehmbacher putting up very respectible numbers in 1.76 GAA and 90.8 Sv%.

Coach Trueblue had nothing but praise for Whelan in the last week stating at a recent press conference, "Devon has been incredible and has shown professionalism and a great work ethic.  He will be rewarded with a start in the coming week".  Coach Blue, then went on to say that Whelan would be a key participant in the upcoming Training Camp where he will get a major boost to his training and skillset.

In their first 7 games of the season (S5) the Stars have 31 goals for and only 12 against, and rank in the top 5 teams in Division 1 in Goals For (3rd), Goals Against (2nd), Goal Difference (2nd), Wins (equal 5th) and Losses (equal 2nd).  Stars right-wing Egils Azacis leads the entire division in goals (7) and Daniel Lehmbacher is 4th in GAA.

The Stars hope to continue their winning ways in the coming days when they take on Blackcrows Kosice (15th) and Traktor (3rd).

When I first started this series I had planned to do just the 3 articles.  It was after reading a comment on the 2nd one (Penalty Kill) that really inspired this; you could say part 4 is more of an explanation than a new technique.

The comment in question raised the point that I had been innacurate when I had talked about experienced players.  I wanted to explain that a little more as experienced players are not always the best guys to use, as I had previously stated.

What I should have said was "all things equal, experienced players are better".  In other words, if you had 10 players all of equal OR and Qualities, the experienced player is always the better option to go with on your special teams.  This is never the case however, and many of us have superstar rookies who have killer skills and great qualities but have very little experience.  In this case, the best option by far is to play the inexperienced rookie.  Doing so will give your special team a boost in skill, and will also give your player more experience.

Over the previous 2 days I described a few tips on creating successful Powerplay and Penalty Kill units. In those articles I talked about the importance of tracking your PP and PK. In this, part 3 in the special teams series I am want to briefly talk about the tracking, and hope to offer a few tips to help in your team research.

You will need something to track your stats on. You can use anything you like to do this, although I personally suggest using a spreadsheet. If you use MS Office or Open Office, you can use their included software (Excel or Calc respectively). I personally recommend using Google Docs, as this ensures you have access regardless what computer you're on or location you're in.

What To Track:

What you choose to track is purely optional. I personally recommend tracking as many details as you can, including the following:

• PP/PK Data
• Shorthanded Data
• Relevant scorers from PP, PK and SH

You might find it easier to use 2 separate sheets on your spreadsheet to track this.

Note: I know this may sound like a lot of work, but the time you take here can save you a lot of time down the road.

PP, PK & SH Data:

In your first sheet/tab you want to keep track of your game data relevant to PP, PK and SH. The way to do this to have the following headings across the top of the sheet (order is optional):

Game, Total PP, PPG For, Total PK, PPG Against, SH Goals For, SH Goals Against

Down the first column you want numbers 1 through 38, so you have a row for every league gameday of the season. I only track league games, as these are the most important games for your team. You can of course track all games if you so choose.

To track the data, after each game simply add the relevant figures in the appropriate column. If you had 3 PP chances and 1 PPG in game 1, then in the game 1 row, add 3 under Total PP and 1 under PPG. You can keep a running summary of your Totals using spreadsheet formulas.

Note: Your PP% is your total powerplays divided by powerplay goals. Your PK% is worked out by (Total PK - PPGA)/Total PK (ie. PKs, 1 PPGA = (6-1)/6x100, or 83.3%).

Scoring Data:

Tracking who actually scored the PP or SH goals is purely optional. I track my teams entire stats in a spreadsheet, so this data is used to add to the total stats. What this data can provide is an idea of who plays which role on your PP, and is useful if you plan to change your PP/PK lineups from time to time.

To track it, simply put a list of your teams players down column 1, and then across the top add headings for PPG, PPA, SHG & SHA. If you feel like it, also have a column for GWG and OTG (game winner, and overtime goal).

Tracking the player data takes a little more time, but once you have the hang of it, is really only about 2 minutes work each game-day. I think you'll agree that 2 minutes is a pretty short time for such valuable data.

Why Track Data?

Simply put, tracking this information will help you further develop your team. You can use the data to help adjust your training methods or simply figure out which players do or don't perform well on special teams.

But more importantly, why not track it? PPM don't fully track this information, and until they do it's up to us as managers to track it ourselves.