Überwinger

An überwinger (also called a combo winger or possession winger) is a player with high skills in both winger and playmaking. Passing and/or set pieces may also be considered a requirement for überwingers.
The purpose of überwingers is to provide high wing attack and midfield ratings at the same time, while also allowing the option of playing with several different instructions (e.g. offensive or towards middle).
The finest of all überwingers also have a valuable "specialty" that further adds to their team contributions, the classic choice being the "Quick" überwinger.

Origin

The term was introduced by American manager Basil_II (Byzantines, teamid 8174) in the Wing - Market & Discussion Federation.

Wage efficiency

Because of the game's wage structure, überwingers usually have low salaries compared to the single-skilled players who would be needed to generate similar contributions to match ratings. At the time this terminology was introduced, approximately coinciding with the changes in Hattrick regarding the speed of training various skills, the überwingers were the best and most obvious method to combat salaries with multiskilled players. With more recent developments, like the new training schemes, counter-attacking strategies, and defensive forwards, there are many more ways a clever manager can adjust his training scheme to maximize the price/performance ratio of his team.

Recent changes introduced by the developers have caused a decrease in training profits and a consequent increase in the importance of sponsorship and attendance income. In order to adapt to these new conditions, many teams are using überwingers to maintain high levels of performance and more manageable salary levels.

Training an überwinger

Überwingers almost inevitably take longer to create than single-skilled players and therefore must be trained much longer overall. Also, because the players have to be trained in more than one skill, managers either have to change their training regimens to train the players' second skill, or buy players who have already been trained in their first skill, making the production of these talents more challenging than old style training schemes. Potential überwinger trainees are rare and expensive and there is often much competition for them from playmaking trainers.

What once was my pet project, also engaged by a small number of my esteemed conferencemates, has become a full-blown HT Trend embraced by many thousands of HT Managers working on these special players. Hurrah for the überwingers! - Basil