After last weeks rant I decided to have a think about my options here at Bifrost.
I asked myself, can one result tip a person over the edge? I guess for some folks it does, I'm not usually a person who acts in haste but I can be a bit of a drama queen when it comes to my teams on here. Call it frustration sometimes, I probably do some people's heads in, I mean I do my own head over this game. I don't think its always been this way though, over time and changes to the game since taking on the team from scratch, kind of made it feel like the goal posts were moved over time, its a bit like having the carpet pulled from under you every time you think you are getting somewhere.
I can't just keep blaming game changes though can I? I mean everyone else is in the same boat aren't they? Well all those who started with new teams circa 2010 and onwards maybe, I wonder how many established managers who took on a new team in the Xpert Leagues around 2010 are still with those teams. I would be interested to know as a few managers who I know took on new teams during the year I took Bifrost on are no longer with those new teams. I wonder why that is, starting from scratch is like the Highway to Hell (great track btw), its long, tedious and as frustrating as hell.
When I arrived at Bifrost, the team was valued at 4.2 million econ, they really were at the very low end of the spectrum of new teams, but it was the challenge I was looking for at the time. We started in Division 8 and now we are in Division 4 after 3 years and 3 months. I've tried to build a conveyor style team, with the aim of bringing youth in every season, some to develop for the future, some to develop to sell and keep the bank balance healthy. Keeping afloat financially though has been a bit of a nightmare, we have had seasons where we were quite comfortable financially, and then the Youth Academy was introduced. Of course we invested, it wasn't all that successful for Bifrost and it left us on the edge of bankruptcy at one point.
I had no alternative than to sell players I had planned to keep but it had to be done to keep us afloat. I dropped the investment to a more manageable amount and things were steady for a while. Last season we had a decent cup run and we made it to the 7th round, of course with extra matches comes the extra cost of training, we also made the play offs again which saw us rise to the 4th division, great progress but still a long way to go and to keep going I knew I would have to think of another phase of player sales and bringing youth in, otherwise we would burn out before we've even reached another division. We struggled to sell what we wanted to sell despite numerous re-listing, it seems no one wanted a 26/14 skilled defender with hard trainer, he was a reluctant sale, but we desperately needed the money, alas he didn't sell and I gave up trying and decided to play him. We're down to the last 2.7 million econ and through to the 5th round of the cup, not really much incentive to stay in the cup apart from ranking points.
I have been looking in the job centre for quite a while now, last week I applied for HMFC, Jackalbs team, just the type of team I have been looking for, decent team, manager been with them for many years and it would have meant I would be competing with guys I used to compete with when at X11 Samurai, on the day of the deadline I lost a skill bar off my ranking which is just typical, but it wasn't meant to be and a manager with a bigger loyalty bonus and higher rank took them, nice to at least see them go to a manager who commits long term.
It could be a while before another team like that comes up again, I would prefer to stay in the Classic League if I can, in the meantime I guess my loyalty bonus is building and seven months will take me to the maximum loyalty bonus, just got to work on rank and hope to at least improve on our results. I guess its disappointing to think about leaving what I started, but when I started out here at Bifrost the game was different, things have changed and the climb from the depths of the Classic League to the top could realistically take 6, 7 or even 8 real life years providing there are no more changes.
I can at least say I gave it a go at a certain time within the game and when I took my team on, it became a possibility for everyone to take on a new team from scratch without the two month penalty for quitting their team. That was a real positive :)
|