David sent out feelers early May and we quickly came to a deal - 950k and 10 TP for a fully trained MF by MSA.. This ended up being perfect for Alloa. First off a straight 500k profit. Normally training up 0/5 apprentices is detrimental to your team but I was going to play early cross and in a couple of weeks had traded away a 2/19 MF and 4/25 MF for a 2/18 DF, 4/19 WG and 580k.

In early cross the MFs together would have given me 22 DEF and 22 OFF. The WG gives me 37.05 OFF and the DF 10.8 GP, 18 DEF and 3.6 OFF. Alloa is stronger even without the cash.

And the 0/5 MF would be my second strongest MF after match 4. We did have two decent DMs but they played in defence in the 6 man rotation. 

As I said to David: "This will be a future blog post.

"But the main benefit is in TPs. As this season is just one to save cash, as I doubt we can get promoted, the plan was to use up 4 extra slots in the Cecil Cup, then 1 TP per match until the penultimate weekend [of the season], saving 2 games in case of injuries or suspensions. By MSA both WGs would be SL 29, my Bosman SL 19 and 2 TP on an apprentice - in that order. Post MSA I'd have 19 games (I always assume no extra cup games) and 17 TP to use on them.

"With your guy I have 10 extra slots to fill. Now the plan is to use TP on the Bosman in league match 1, both WGs from [league] matches 1 to 6 and one WG in league match 7 [with 2 each in the Cecil Cup first round]. Without your player I'd only have WG 29 and WG 22 at this point, and Bosman 18. With your player I have WGs 29 and 29 and Bosman 19 [for actual match 10]

"Your player will get TP from [league] matches 7 to 14 (15 and 16 spare in case of injuries/suspensions) with the other 2 somewhere from [league] matches 1 to 6, probably sooner as he joins the first team after 2 TP applied."

All the Cecil Cup run did was give me one free slot (I've used 13 rather then 14 planned) but Levitt got his 10th TP in league match 12 [match 20] and now I have 4 matches before MSA for my apprentice.

Pro: OTF doesn't suffer from EL or DP. Not sure why  I forgot that and that's a major plus.

If you play Ball Control you need OTF. Most (OK 3) tactics have OFF OTF + DEF OTF adding up to 2. So OTF of 10 gives you 10 OFF and 10 DEF if playing N. With P all 20 goes on OFF and with S it all goes on DEF. With O it's 15 on DEF and nothing on OFF. E and L don't use OTF.

OTF is good for C with 20 on OFF and 15 on DEF. Why don't more teams use C? See my future post as to why you should consider it.

On B it's 20 on OFF and 7.5 on DEF. And then there's the MF bonus which, for OTF of 10 gives you 6.25 of each for every MF you have more than them. Against most E and L teams that's 18.75 for a total of 65 OFF+DEF (this is balanced by GP and DEF being low for DFs compared to N).

But if you don't like B (hard to keep enough high SL players) or E/L (a bit weak defensively it seems) what are the pros and cons for OTF over CP on players?

Pros: 2 CP doesn't cost you an extra slot at 25k. It only costs 6 CP to maintain 10 OTF and can be done in 3 matches. It doesn't age mid-season - if you are not using CP on OTF it's likely you're using it on and age 3 or 4 player. Come mid-season they lose 3 or 4 SL, probably, so you have to add more to get back to the same level. A good Age 3 player will lose 4 or 5 SL at the end of the season making it 8 over all. OTF only loses 6 CP worth.

Cons: Playing N, 2 CP on a DF will give you 1 (or 1.2) GP, 2 DEF and 0.5 (or 0.4) OFF. 2 CP on a MF will give you 1 DEF and 1.5 OFF, on a WG maybe 2.8 OFF and a FW 2 OFF. The FW is the only one that isn't an improvement here but he'll get more shots and a better chance of scoring.

We all get 40 TP free and most teams don't need to train up two age 0 and two 1 players. And the market gets flooded with MVPs and auctions.

However we all want more than 40 CP and pre-season they'll cost you 100k each.

Back in the day we only got 35 TP and it's value was about 115k with CP at 80k. Regular trades were 2 TP for 3 CP. Then Commish decided to promote youth players with the 40 TP. 

I managed to get the trade altered so 2 CP would get you 3 TP and it hasn't changed that much since.

DUM winning everything? I think that's when I was away (season 23-32). 

Before I came back I noticed everyone was playing BC as it was too O P (as my kids would say). I think the main problem was MF OFF was set at 1.0 and OTF OFF was also very high.

Keeping 5 decent MFs as well as a GK and a FW (was not able to get enough decent MAs) was my problem, Roy. It worked for a while but two seasons ago the cracks were showing and we couldn't score goals.

I still think you should mark more, however.

I've just noticed that Hibernian's listed rivals are East Fife - twice.

What did Paul do, David?