Thank you for the great and quickly corrected final PT write-up of the season!
We started the previous transfer period with a plan, sell all our riders we didn't level up ourselves over the course of two seasons, ideally do a relegation bounceback in the second season and come back with a maxed Ayuso to PT.
Always thought staying in was a small possibility if everyone scored according to their capacities, but as the season went on, apart from Higuita, this didn't seem to be happening either. But actually some very nice GT's from the different stage racers as well as Halvorsen with a great Philadelphia win brought us over the line in the end. Not sure how exactly to continue the project we had in mind now, as relegating in the next season should lead to some big cap issues in the one after that, but we have time to figure that out.
Very nice from Gazelle to stay in PT after it looked a bit bleak after Praha, but definitely heartbreaking for Sony, who definitely deserved to stay in as well and have a great project going on, combined with their nice and local youth. Already looking forward to seeing them back in PT, hopefully in 2027 Same goes for other relegated teams, can see all of them do well in the off-season and immediately make a push back to PT if they want to.
To everybody who did well a big congratulations, and the biggest congratulations of them all obviously to knockout for winning the PT for the first time. Not saying he'll win it next year and for every year to come, but this certainly was not his final win
See you all soon in every other thread and on discord!
Most of all congratulations to Knockout on the win, entirely deserved.
Sympathies to all the relegated mangers but mostly to my fellow admin Abhi on falling just short.
The silver lining is that if he had stayed up and I had gone up with KB, we would have had a problem with reporters on PT races next year. So really neither of us failed, we just fixed things for the good of the game.
Apologies for the PT scoring snafu. I completely forgot monuments have their own point scale. Luckily Fab is going to improve the tool for next year so it doesn't require me to enter the race types, since I am clearly not capable of doing that correctly. Or perhaps someone wants to volunteer for this job - with the new tool it should be really easy.
First of all, a big thank you to all reporters, preview writers and everyone else who helped keep the season on track and finish with zero delays! Incredible job by everyone involved! Also thanks to kb for this update, having to do it basically twice in two days!
A big congratulations to knockout on the well deserved and much awaited PT title win. The win looked quite secure for the second half of these season, with a little scare right at the end. All's well that ends well
Coming to ourselves, I had assumed we'd go down after the transfers as I felt we were one top rider short. That was how it seemed but TDF onwards the team really picked up momentum, and almost pulled of the big save. Sucks to come so close and fall at the final (two) hurdle(s), but I'm happy the team pulled their weight across the board to try to stay in the division. Possibly two bad days from Haig in two different races in the first half of the season, is the main reason for our fate, but can't really assign the blame to a single place, as we did have some luck elsewhere. Also, I didn't really consider the reporting considerations of not relegating, so would like to thank Ulrich for pointing that out
Thanks for everyone for another season wrapped up. Unfortunately Gidich couldn't do anything about us getting 4th in the end. So congrats to Alex and Rabobank for their podium spot. A result of some great team building in the last years.
And also of course congrats to knockout for finally getting that title.
Looking at my team I feel like especially my two captains Gidich and McNulty underperformed their potential. The standout rider for sure is Mano with his 839 points. I'm very happy about that.
Congrats and thanks to everyone really on another great year. It is a weird feeling to be writing this in my university library as a Masters student, thinking about first starting in the MG in my first year of high school. This brought up a full 10 seasons for Xero Racing, and by the end of the year I will have spent half my life on Daily. Love you all, this is a great game we play together and an awesome community.
Thanks to everyone who keeps it going, every manager who plays and maintains this universe together, but especially every reporter and even more the MG-admins. I can't name everyone off the top of my head without forgetting, but the work you do (for free) to let us enjoy this game over years (for free) is exceptional and you can never really be thanked enough - though as always I'm sure more tasks and reporting help would be a good start
Feels very good to have that 10th spot - even though apparently my Team Goal was a Top 5 not Top 10 like I'd been thinking, so I kind of feel bad now that we denied Fastned that spot To stay in the Top 10 was expected before transfers but definitely not after, and very unexpected to do it without Areruya and Pidcock even achieving as well as they did last year, and without our new leaders doing as well as Ganna and Manninen did (though solid work from both Olivier and Vermeersch really). The depth scoring turned up for us in a way it hasn't at Xero for a long long time. From Fouche and Blums sitting together on 269 down through the always-awesome Tesfaye Heyi, and new cheap FAs Lutsyshyn, Paulus, and Redy (all grabbing victories!) and so on. Most of all though team legend Hugo Houle returning for one last ride with us for 50k at the end of transfers and putting up 150 points at age 35. What a man.
Areruya in 4th is a fine finish. We had some fun with planning, not sure if it will ever happen again but throwing away 2/3 of the RDs to send him to a GT was well worth it and to still score so high is awesome. Maybe MAL should try something new with his planning as well next year since he can't beat Areruya even getting half the hilly races all to himself with Herklotz and Areruya at the Vuelta. Pidcock had an up and down year but evens out fine too. He can't claim to have even gotten close to his rival though - but I guess that's a battle we lost while winning the Top 10 war Haven't asked for the renewals file yet so don't want to jinx it, but they both have done their jobs wage-to-points-wise the last two seasons. Love them both dearly.
As said in the HQ I couldn't be happier for knockout's title. What a team. Nobody 'deserves' to have a title until they actually go and win one, but I don't think anyone will disagree this just feels right after such sustained success. Vesuvio with a great final season too, amazing the number of riders who have delivered them success over the years, and the Ws are one hell of a duo to finish as the faces of the team. Wirtgen especially a cool story as a home rider. Rabobank, King Power, and Carlsberg are awesome teams in the Top 5, such great managers for a long time and built some great squads who have had memorable years. As Bikex says, there is definitely more to be wrung out of that team, but all three have great platforms to maintain or build.
Gutted with the Sony relegation but looking forward to some more Abhi PT reports again I guess Sure that won't be a long-term reassignment. Five great managers going down (hopefully all returning!) and scary bases to build teams to come back up. Congrats to those who survived the battle!
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [PT] Xero Racing
I guess it's due for a proper post from me aswell...
First of all, thanks for an amazing season to everyone running the game. It has been among the top consistent seasons in terms of structure and race reports. That is much appreciated!
Another big congrats to Evonik for finally taking what was rightfully theirs a couple of times in not to distant past. Lecuisinier have been underperforming massively to end up 750 points behind Herklotz. That is a full Dombrowski worth of points, which really puts things into context, especially if you look at the wages of riders beating him. He is underperforming by 3-400K worth of wages, which is A LOT when you look at the quality he possesses.
Also an amazing "comeback" from EA Vesuvio to come this close to the win in their final season. It would have been the icing on the cake for the longest existing team in the game - but somehow feels more good not to win, when the manager is in fact inactive. There are some very very strong riders entering the market though, which makes promoting to the Pro Tour interesting, as signing riders like Wirtgen could really propel a team into survival.
That being said, Kudus now sends his second team into the abyss with his devastating wage, that really makes it close to impossible to actually stay up. He's the modern day Romain Sicard - Watch out you guys
King Power had another great season, but I could easily find a decent amount of points here and there that wasn't picked up. IMO they are the 2nd best team in the division - but Rabobank really made the most of their team to take an impressive podium spot! Big congrats!
Also a congrats to BBL for getting Carlsberg to a top 5. That was better than I would have expected, but you somehow managed to make those early blunders from Skjelmose and Aranburu dissapear throughout the season as both must have scored atleast on par as to what you could have anticipated, and probably also 100-200 points more. Also Gregaard showed up to make it an amazing season!
We ended up sandwiching in between Tinkoff and Puma, and looking at the teams we have I think that is a very good sandwich for us to be in, because I could have easily seen both teams ending between 500-1000 points above us prior to the season! Herklotz took his usual individual title, and it will be extremely interesting to see where he goes in this monumental battle of FA top riders! Despite it being his last season in the prime he should still be a monster for 3 seasons, before becoming "only" a good rider for a year or two.
At the other end of the spectrum it's really nice to see teams like Gazelle and Los Pollos Hermanos staying up after it looking very dire towards the end for both! Gazelle probably need to re-invent themselves after falling so hard from the Grace, but it has become a rather aging team - But enough quality in the FA market to make them bounce right back up into the top flight next season. Atleast I suspect that is going to happen!
Jura, Lierse and Grieg made their presence at the bottom pretty early on, and never really managed to break lose even if Mads Pedersen in particular tried his best to keep his team up. Jura and Lierse both had riders performing well, but when your best riders are positioned between 50-75th individually you really need a lot of depth to cover those lost points. Especially for riders like Gamper and Oomen you could have expected more., where Jura was particularly struck by leaders with relatively low energy stats.
Team UBS seemed to me strong enough to stay up, but Kudus scoring 3-400 points below what could have been was the big difference between going down and coming close. Godoy could have scored slightly better, but it's really the depth that is just non-present that makes the team fall so hard. Balmer did alright, Buchmann should have done better, but the quality was too low behind those riders, even if Jacobs had a bit of succes here and there.
Sony on the other hand came agonisingly close to survival. Zmorka got it right and scored +800 points which was also the main reason he was number 2 on my priority list behind Marcos Altur. Mick van Dijke also had a pretty solid season, but obviously having a top GC rider like Haig scoring below 700 points is just absolutely awful. You see GC riders like Darbellay, Olivier and Gregaard scoring almost similar and you just can't deny a difficult season when a high wage profile scores something like that.
Looking past him it seems like the depth was alright although I would probably have expected more from Hofstetter, Cherkasov and Roson. When riders like that just score about minimum points it's always difficult to raise the season past a struggle.
Overall a great season for us, where we especially saw that Farantakis can infact pull the team like we hoped he could - probably also well above what can be expected in the future. We also saw the gambles we made hit homeruns. Altur, Kinoshita, Cavagna and Zingle all pulled their wheight extremely well scoring 1.800 points for us for a combined wage of 765K! In the end it absolutely was the micromanagement in the lower level gems, that catapulted us well into safety! We need something similar next season to stay up, but we are very intruiged by the chances in the market and believe we can pull ourselves out of relegation once more. But it will require a good renewals, aswell as a market that isn't too shut around itself due to fewer teams. Otherwise we will be in trouble!
I'm sorry for not being present at so much of the season. I've glanced through some of the races now, and I must say we were actually closer to survival than I had imagined prior to the season. Obviously because of Pedersen, who brings home yet another monument. A trustworthy man!
The gap from him to the rest of the squad in terms of points obviously too big, but at least good to see us go down in some sort of style and following the team identity of being a classics team.
Same goes for other relegated teams, can see all of them do well in the off-season and immediately make a push back to PT if they want to.
To stay in the Top 10 was expected before transfers but definitely not after, and very unexpected to do it without Areruya and Pidcock even achieving as well as they did last year, and without our new leaders doing as well as Ganna and Manninen did (though solid work from both Olivier and Vermeersch really). The depth scoring turned up for us in a way it hasn't at Xero for a long long time. From Fouche and Blums sitting together on 269 down through the always-awesome Tesfaye Heyi, and new cheap FAs Lutsyshyn, Paulus, and Redy (all grabbing victories!) and so on. Most of all though team legend Hugo Houle returning for one last ride with us for 50k at the end of transfers and putting up 150 points at age 35. What a man.
