Training

Importance of training

Training is one of the most important aspects of a successful team in Hattrick. By concentrating on training just one skill for a number of seasons a team can take medium skilled, young players and train them up to become superstars, who can then be sold for a profit or kept in the team, thus improving the team and helping the team to eventually win promotion.

But the monetary side is only one side of the coin. Each training type also has associated other benefits and disadvantages. For example a playmaking trainer can't train his players efficiently in the later cup rounds and a goalkeeper trainer is not limited to specific formations.

Choosing trainees

Choosing the correct players to train is a balancing act. There are four factors to consider.

• Main skill (goalkeeping, defending, playmaking, winger or scoring)
• Age
• Secondary skills, related to the main skill
• Price

There is little to be gained from training players that are not at least passable in their main skill. For new teams 17 year olds with at least Passable main skill should be considered. Training a player who is passable or solid in primary skill is not as profitable as training higher skills, but lower skilled players cost considerably less to purchase. To get some ideas of the cost and profit from various skill increases see HAM Transfer Price Evaluation. To compare training values see Barthons Training Value Compare Tool.

As players age, they decrease in price, so buying slightly older players (e.g. 18 or 19 year olds) is often wise.

The better the secondary skills, the more you will pay to purchase the trainee, but the final selling price will also be higher.

Training types

The following contents are based on experience and/or research conducted by Hattrick users — which means that their veracity and accuracy have not been confirmed by any official statement, and consequently they do not necessarily reflect the game reality. Please take this into consideration!

In Hattrick, training takes place once a week. Typically only players who played on certain positions are fully trained depending on the skill you are training. If, for instance, forwards are being trained then only the players that played as a forward in one of the two games that week receive training. Note that only last played position matters for training. There are 13 types of training. Each have their own potential for generating profit or improving your team. Generally the training types that concentrate on one of the main skills (goalkeeping, defending, playmaking, winger, and scoring) are the most popular training types.

To train the maximum number of players each week it is important to arrange friendlies where you play your trainees who did not play in the league match in the same week.

Brackets indicate small effects. Double brackets indicate very small effects

Training type	Improves	...for...	Training speed	Max players trained	Impairs
Goalkeeping	Goalkeeping	Goalkeepers	5 weeks	2
Defending	Defending	Defenders ((Others))	8 weeks	10
Playmaking	Playmaking	Inner midfielders (Wingers) ((Others))	6.5 weeks	6 (4)
Scoring	Scoring	Forwards ((others))	6.5 weeks	6
Crossing (Winger)	Winger	Wingers (Wing backs) ((others))	5 weeks	4 (4)
Defensive positions	Defending	(Defenders and midfielders) ((Others))	16 weeks	(20)
Wing attacks	Winger	Forwards and wingers ((Others))	7 weeks	10
Shooting	(Scoring)	(Outfielders) ((Others))	14 weeks	(20+)
	(Set pieces)	((All))	16 weeks	(50)
Short passes	Passing	Midfielders, wingers and forwards ((Others))	5.5 weeks	16
Through passes	Passing	Defenders, midfielders and wingers ((Others))	6.5 weeks	20
Set pieces	Set pieces	All	2-3 weeks	50
General	(Form)	(All who played a game during the week)	1 week	22
	(Goalkeeping)	((Goalkeepers))

Please note the 'Training Speed' numbers are based on 17 year old trainees, using a solid coach, and 9 assistants.

There is a theory that claims that for each year above 17 you should add one week (or a fraction of a week) of training. Another theory is, that training speed is depreciated with approximately 8% each year above 17 years of age.

Also note that these training speed values are given as an average, and can (and will) vary from player to player. This means, for example, that if the value presented for a given training is 7 weeks, some players will take 6, others 8, but if you look at a large number of players they should average at 7. This might be due to the fact that the player gets a part of the next level after a pop. When that happens he needs less time to pop again. For example: When the first pop ends up to solid and a very little bit (7,02) he needs more time to go to excellent than when his first pop gives him a bit more (7,12).

Training efficiency factors

Effect of coach

To achieve the optimal training time requires a coach with solid coaching skills. A coaching level below that lengthens training time. A general rule of thumb is one extra week for every level below solid, although this rule is not so accurate with the faster training types.

Excellent coaches train slightly faster than solid ones by roughly half a week but are generally seen as too expensive to be profitable in the long term.

Effect of player age

Young players train much faster than old players. To achieve the optimal training time, many managers prefer trainees between the ages of 17 and 20, with 17 or 18 the best age to start training. Clubs at higher series levels may prefer to train older players at a higher skill level in order to remain competitive in both the league and the cup.

Older players are much slower to train, and a good rule of thumb is one extra week for every year older than 17. More precisely, training becomes approx. 8% slower for every year above this (also called trainings speed depreciation).

Certain training types — namely set pieces, stamina and general — do not depreciate in training speed, no matter what age the player is.

As a player reaches 27 his abilities may start to decrease. This process doesn't occur constantly, and there is no guarantee it will happen at all. Typically, very small decreases occur for players around 30, considerably larger leaps for players around 35. For some reason, these decreases in abilities always surface on Mondays. Certain skills are harder to maintain as players grow older — scoring ability is the hardest to maintain, whilst goalkeeping is the easiest.

Effect of assistants

Assistant coaches also help with training. A team may only have 10 of any one type of staff. However assistant coaches and goalkeeping coaches are treated as one type, so a team may only have a combined total of 10 coaches. Typically non-goalkeeping training teams employ 9 assistant coaches and 1 goalkeeping coach. It is believed that a goalkeeping coach helps to maintain the form of the keeper. Other people prefer a 8 to 2 split between coaches.

Some users claim it is possible to have 11 coaches without seeing any ill effects, but many users have lost a week of training when trying this.

It is not always in a teams best interest to hire all the possible assistants. The effect of each additional assistant decreases fast. The effect of additional assistants most probably follows a sqare root dependence, just as economists do. Hence four assistants improve the training twice as much as only one assistant does, and 9 assistants improve the training three times as much ( sqrt(9) vs sqrt(4) vs sqrt(1) ).

Another model suggests that each additional assistant coach is worth 50% of the previous. If that is the case then you get something like this:

1 = 100% 2 = 50% 3 = 25% 4 = 12.5% 5 = 6.25% 6 = 3.125% 7 = 1.5625% 8 = 0.78125% 9 = 0.390625% 10 = 0.1953125%

Example: Having 5 GK coaches instead of 10 will slow GK training all the way from solid to divine by 1 week only. This is approximately 2 years of real time! To get that one week advantage, it will cost you: 104 weeks * 5 assistants * 1500€ every week = €780.000

New clubs and clubs in financial difficulty should always bear this in mind when trying to make savings.

• For more information, see: Staff

Training intensity

Most team managers agree it is best to train at 100% intensity. The benefits are clear in that skills increase more quickly, and there is also the likelihood of better form.

Unfortunately, there is also an increased chance of injury.

When to cash in

The following contents are based on the opinion of Hattrick users — which means that their veracity and accuracy have not been confirmed by any official statement, and consequently they do not necessarily reflect the game reality. Please take this into consideration!

In most cases selling trainees at age 21 is the best way to maximise profit. Once a player hits 21 years old, he begins to train at a noticeably slower rate compared to a younger player.

With particularly high skilled players, especially National Team players, training can be taken on further, but in general the financial returns decrease beyond the age of 21.

It is also worth noting it is possible to overtrain a player, and make him unsustainable in the long run due to the extremely high wages. The recent market deflation also makes selling unprofitable after 21.

Advanced training

Training can even increase the skills of players that haven't played (for your team). This gives rise to some very advanced training techniques:

• Osmosis training - Making a profit popping players that do not play in the trained position
• Skill trading - Primarily refers to buying players that played in the right position for your training, but at a different club, so that you get an extra player training for free. Also refers to buying players believed to be close to "popping", ideally within one to two weeks, benefiting from market inefficiency in valuing partially trained players. The latter approach is difficult with any skill other than goalkeeping, due to the inexact correspondence of TSI to player skills. (The first method is most effective when combined with the second—training an extra player for free, and pushing him up a level in skill while doing it.)

But it could be that the goal of maximizing profit is a goal that does not optimise the team over time. This user believes it is better to develop own players to advance in the series system, rather than to optimise economical goals. It is after all a football manager game!

External Links

• Barthons Training Value Analysis

If you replace TSI with salary you get an almost exact value to base your skill trading on and can buy players close to popping in all categories. This is mostly true when a new season begins because the salary is based on that players current skills when the salary is calculated. If you train your player the salary will become a less accurate skill calculator during the season and will only be accurate again when a salary updated is performed between seasons.

In the beginning the salary reflected the players current skill but this was changed by the hattrick team to make skill trading less predictable.

• bobymoore's blog advanced articles on competitive training