18:29
Big news here but actually quite a straight forward announcement.
It’s good for pretty much all players but the big winners are:
– CL/Europa involved high quality players of the Core Key Strategy type.
– Bad players who people may never have thought they’d be able to sell.
Whilst there are some tempting dividends on offer, and we should target them, I think that prioritising cleaning up stagnant portfolios left over from a long 3-4 months of being unable to sell is the priority.
If more liquidity is injected into the market because of this – that’s a great opportunity to start freeing up some cash.
And then use that to shape our portfolios in the right direction for next season, which for me as you know, is going to have a heavy bias towards the Core player type. But I’d stress as well I still have a 50/50 split with the others and include plenty of high potential youth/elite veterans as per Key Strategy.
Core players are essential. But too many can make a portfolio a bit too safe.
I think the key here is the awful word: triangulation.
We want to prepare for next season.
But we don’t want to let those sweet IPD dividends and Gold Day’s pass us by either.
But we don’t have to.
Cl/Europa involved players that we will want for next season will score goals too. I’d prioritise this over trying to chase weak players who you only want because of the IPD promotion.
There will be scope for a bit of this and with the payouts so generous the rewards will be great. But it doesn’t mean we should let it lead us into bad players.
This may be FI’s last olive branch to anyone who was left bufuddled by the introduction of the Matching Engine and caught out holding bad players.
When the hype for the promo is gone – bad players are still going to be a nightmare to get rid of in the Matching Engine.
This may be the last good opportunity to get rid of them, so we shouldn’t make it harder for ourselves by loading up now just to grab some easy IPD!
Rather, with a bit of thought we should be able to find plenty of those players who live in the sweet spot. We want them for next season. They are in action in Serie A or the CL/Europa. And can bring home those Gold wins or at least some IPD for us.
That’s how we make the most of these promotions without putting ourselves in an awkward position later on.
I’m going to wrap up there. Goodnight folks and thanks for joining for the latest Live Blog!
18:19
What jumps out when you look at the calendar is that in July through August the Media Promo helps fill the little gaps but August is the month of Gold Days.
Dividends are going to be raining down on big CL/Europa players in a way we have never, ever seen before. And perhaps never will again.
5th/6th August. 2 Gold Days with just 8 teams in play. And on the 5th only 2 of them, arguably 3, are any good. The odds of winning these Gold Days are so, so much higher than we usually get.
And it gets better. Beyond that we get no more than 4 teams per Gold Day.
Once we are onto the 11th we go all the way to the 23rd with no more than 2 teams per day.
One match. For a Gold Day.
There will be some unexpected results because even “bad” performance players can nick it, particularly the goalscorers who are generally poor for FI in terms of baseline.
But goalscorers who are suitable for FI are still more likely to win.
It’s going to rain dividends on high quality players in August.
Yet another reason, as I’ve been banging on about for a week now, to accelerate any purchases you want to make of these high quality Core Key Strategy players.
18:06
Cash Drops.
Meh.
I never win.
18:05
Make it Gold.
Goddamn you FI. If you had given me a heads up I could have delayed the CL/Europa Preview.
This makes our Round of 16 ties, which an hour ago I said were mainly about progressing to the Gold Days… a Gold Day in themselves.
Does this change my views in the article? *reads it again*
Not really. But a bit.
It’s the same in that as a general rule at this stage of the calendar we want players who we can take into next season, and the August CL/Europa run is a bonus on top of that. I’d rarely be buying a player I wouldn’t buy anyway just for August.
But now that did just become a lot more viable.
The Round of 16 Gold Day is a prize is itself – so those more punty picks just became a lot more viable.
Knowing what I know now I would have included some more low key potential winners at value prices as punt options.
But in the main – I think the strategy of using this time (and hopefully liquidity) from this announcement to really accelerate next season preparations is right. And if you can do that in a way that also gives you a good chance of snagging some August CL/Europa dividends? Even better.
17:58
Ok, Summer Media Madness.
Media players are getting a rough deal out of the fixture calendar. Nobodies fault – it’s just with so much football to pack in over the next year to make up for lost time more match days automatically means fewer media days.
The choice FI made was that in the dividend announcement they clearly prioritised performance.
Bad news for your big premiums particularly if they are over reliant on media.
To soothe that wound along comes this promotion.
This is really quite generous and could benefit big premiums but also some of the mid tier transfer gossip picks too.
It’s particularly good for big Champions League players in August – even if they aren’t usually the big media type. That winning goal could deliver not just the performance dividends but the media too.
Not a huge amount to say on this beyond that – it’s just a straight up Good Thing for the usual media premiums but also for CL players (maybe EPL Europa too from the semis onwards).
And it might help any transfer holds too but I’d also stress that unless you want the player anyway it’s probably not a great idea to be gambling purely on transfer outcomes at this stage.
Ideally we want to be hoping for the transfer but not be devastated if it doesn’t happen – usually because they are fine to hold at their existing club. Big price tags and big pressure on that one big move? Generally bad.
17:45
So why would they do this? It’s a shot in the arm particularly for bad cheap players.
It was looking like you may never get to sell them for anything like a reasonable price. This was causing a lot of upset.
This is a lucky break and may represent the last opportunity anyone ever has to say they didn’t know and play the victim.
If this does, as I’d expect it to, push traders towards lots of value IPD shopping then we can expect to get a better bid price for cheap players, good and bad.
That’s really positive.
So the first thought of this is – it’s hopefully going to present good opportunities to sell any remaining players I’ve lost confidence in.
The short termism of others could be exploited and it may help me re-organise my portfolio which, whilst far from terrible, is not exactly as I want it to be simply because it has been so hard to sell for so long.
Beautiful.
My second thought is that we also want to benefit from these incredibly generous dividends.
Instead of chasing cheap and generally bad players who will be good for the promotion but then we will want to dump them like a bad one night stand the next day… it is worth remembering that good players score goals too.
So I expect to be able to triangulate signing up some more of those Key Strategy players, both Core and otherwise, who I want to take into next season but perhaps also have Serie A games remaining, or CL / Europa involvement.
And it may help Ligue 1 players along too as if they restart earlier they will get the promotion for longer.
17:40
Five.
Five times.
FIVE times in play.
That is crazy.
I am still wrapping my head around winning 5-10p in dividends for a goal. That is the equivalent of a positional Silver (or Gold Day win if you are a defender) in the new dividend structure.
For. Scoring. One. Goal. Or assisting, for that matter. And 5p for a goalkeeper clean sheet are you serious.
This is absolute madness. I have never seen the like.
I suppose the calming influence is that FI can do this because they know there aren’t that many games!
Serie A has a way to go. Europa and Champions League check. Ligue 1 might get a good run if they restart in late August.
Other leagues may not get going until more like mid-September including the EPL. But that would still start next season with a bang and likely a couple of weeks of this crazy promotion will count.
17:26:
For the second time this month FI’s announcements have my jaw on the floor.
This is a big, and unexpected, promotion that goes beyond just a lazy deposit bonus. It actually looks downright clever and supports some areas of the market that were struggling.
Good for almost all players, but it’s particularly the bargain bucket end who will get a big IPD boost to dig them out of trouble.
So my first thought is that yes we will want these dividends but for the love of God anyone holding poor quality cheap players they don’t want should try to use this as an opportunity to get a reasonable price for them!
FI have thrown holders of weak/bad players a bone here and they should take it.