The season update
The season update is always run at 05.00 am the night after the date stated as end of season on the league's league info page. At the season update the players age one year, their skill level is updated and those players who have announced they are retiring leave the team. Immediately after the season update there is also a normal form update. Also prize money and trophies are handed out as well as team and player merits for the season that has just ended.

The ageing of players
All players in the team age one year at the season update. They get older before the skill level update. The ageing is also taken into consideration in the calculation of whether a player is going to retire or not.

Players retire
At the season update you will receive an announcement in the mailbox if there are any of your players planning to retire after next season. If all your players plan to stay in the club for at least 2 more seasons then you will not receive any announcement in the mailbox. The players who plan to retire at the end of the next season have an hourglass by their names on the squad page.

The risk of a player retiring depends on his/her age and how much matchexperience the player has received during the past season. The older the player is the more likely it will be that he/she will decide to end the career. The risk that a player younger than 29 will decide to retire is minimal, even though it still exists. But once the player is turning 29 then the player may consider to retire if he/she has received too little match experience during the past season. Players older than 33 may retire no matter how much match experience they have received during the past season. But how much match experience a player has received during the past season will always reduce the probability for a player to retire.

Every time you try to sell a player he/she will consider if he wants to end his career in the current club. This means that the player won't end his football career at the end of the season but he doesn't want to change clubs. He will play in your club as long as you want him, but you won't be able to sell him. The player might still decide to retire in the future though, but it won't be related to whether you have tried to sell him or not.

Skill level update
When a player's skill level changes the form changes in the opposite way. That is if a player's skill level increases his/her form gets worse and vice versa. The change in form does not change a player's actual capacity only how well he/she uses it. There is also a normal form update at the season update which makes it difficult to know exactly how much the skill level has changed by just studying the change in form.

When it comes to skill it is important to realize that the skill level you see is not the player's exact skill but a value that has been rounded off to the nearest whole number. So if a player has 6 skillboxes his/her true skill is somewhere between 5,50 and 6,50. This means a player can lower/raise his/her skill level quite a lot without it showing in the number of skillboxes and also that only a slight change in skill level can affect the number of skillboxes.

A form notation is a recording of a player's form at a point in time. A form notation is made when a player joins the team, at the season update, whenever a competetive match is played (whether or not a player participated in the match). (Previous to Feb. 1, 2008, a notation was made when a form training was completed, but this has been removed under the changes instituted that day.) Each form notation is used to compute the player's average form. So if a player had notations of 10, 12, 14, 12, 10 and 8, the player's average form would be 11. (10+12+14+12+10+8)/6=11

What decides if a player raises his/her skill level or not is the player's development value and his/her age. All players who have an development value above 10 over the whole season will raise their skill level and those with an development value below 10 will lower their skill level. The higher the development value the more the skill level will be raised and vice versa. Be aware of that the development value is rounded so a development value of 10 could mean that the player's skill level can go either way. Younger players tend to do better in the skill level updates and raise their skill level more as well as lower their skill level less than older players. (Older players with a development value above 10 might not always increase their skill, their skill could remain unchanged dependant on their age and development value.) Read more about this in the section on the player and his/her form.

The development value is a calculated value that consists on the player's average form and match experience during the season.

Time at the club
Another thing that's important if you want a player to reach full development during a season is the so called time at the club. This means that only players that have been at the club for the entire season will reach full development. A player who's bought a couple of games in will not reach full development. If you for example bought a player after half the season he or she will only receive half the development a player bought during the silly season or who's been at the club since last season would. This reduction is included in the Developmental Value displayed for a player. It's important to note that this does not affect talents from the youth team. They count as original players regardless on when they arrived during the season and are thus not affected by time at the club.
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