The Grand Rapids Riverhawks released their training information and change report projections for the UL's 22nd season. This season marks Q's ninth season with the team and many who follow the team will know that the manager has described it as the toughest campaign in the history of the club.
Team average form for the year will finish at 14.8. This is well below the club's historic average of 15.0. The low form has ostensibly been offset by the extended cup run and the manager's late season decision to play for DV instead of vying for 2c's playoff spot. This call has exposed the club to its worst beating in its eight year history, but it has paid reasonable late season dividends with the team managing to climb up to a respectable 15.29 average DV with one game yet to play.
Still, if the club remains around 15.3 average DV, it will be its lowest tally since the beginning of the DV era. GR FC has in the past managed excellent development of its players and has an average of 15.55 DV over the past four seasons. The poor result could be blamed on a lengthy cup run and a terrible season for injuries, but it cannot be blamed on a lack of training attention for the players.
This season marks the team's most expensive season ever for training costs. The club generally averages a very pricy 127 training sessions per season or slightly more than 7 sessions per player. But this year will see the team order exactly 151 sessions or a mind boggling 8.9 sessions per player.
The outlay for this season's 151 sessions is 19.63 million econ, a sum that will forever change the way that the club approaches the Ultimate League Cup. The team's 21 matches this season were a new high and were 3 more games than the team played last year. The difference in training costs alone were in the 4 million econ range and top 4.5 million with win bonuses.
Given this information, the team announced that next season they will attempt only 3-4 cup matches and rely on substitution for any additional DV needs. The reduction of 5-6 matches should save the club something on the order of 9 million econ, while boosting the average form of the players by half a bar at least. It is expected that this will provide for similar or better average DV for team at a far lower cost.
The only casualty to this strategy will be Q's manager rank. But the manager has long reviled the game's ranking system and views the long term health of the club as his number one priority. In an era with player substitutions, the value of playing the Cup has clearly diminished. We finally have enough data to show that for our club at least, playing in the Cup does not pay. The team would undoubtedly be better off without Cup matches and as such, it is criminal to subject the club to such expense and damages, when the only clear dividend is a few extra manager bars.
With all of the doom and gloom of a season that we have long waited to end, the CR results appear surprisingly good. But any casual viewer should reflect on this years CR vs our team's historic averages. Make no mistake, our players suffered this year, and this season may be one that has far reaching implications in terms of player skill path progression, team value and most importantly peak player skill. We can only hope that the damages wrought this year can be recovered slowly over the next few seasons. But even so, we are left with the likelihood that for some of these players, they will never be as good as they would have been without this season's grueling campaign.
|
Player |
Form |
DV |
Training |
|
Johansen |
15 |
16 |
11 |
|
Farinha |
15 |
16 |
5 |
|
Ortis |
14 |
13 |
6 |
|
Sexton |
13 |
13 |
11 |
|
Scolari |
16 |
17 |
7 |
|
Leadbeater |
14 |
15 |
11 |
|
McAnespie |
16 |
17 |
7 |
|
Morse |
14 |
14 |
10 |
|
McFerran |
16 |
16 |
10 |
|
Revell |
16 |
17 |
7 |
|
Ragnarsson |
12 |
12 |
13 |
|
Warg |
17 |
17 |
6 |
|
Grisales |
13 |
16 |
12 |
|
Carreiras |
13 |
11 |
9 |
|
Arber |
15 |
16 |
10 |
|
Cronshaw |
15 |
16 |
8 |
|
Evers |
17 |
18 |
7 |
|