roturn wrote:
Already preparing for SotD`s whining in renewals and the "forcing" to cut 1-2 riders.
Must feel weird to win with ~1600 points in advantage instead of winning by a small margin and a lot easier renewals.
It was weird for sure. Especially as I kept track of my record throughout the season and it definately didn't look that promising, despite having my best races towards the end.
I'll whine for sure, but as long as everyone knows about it, I hope they can tolerate it
Planning is definately difficult, looking ahead of a very difficult renewals, but I'll have to say I will definately whine if Spilak wants an increase after his rather poor season. Also Tom David should go for something similar after his TONE flop. So I hope that I can somewhat keep most of my core - even if it means I'll have to ride with several 50K riders instead of strong domestiques like Novak, Campero, Vasyliv and Le Gac. But having to cut Spilak, Coppel, Lecuisinier, Koretzky or Coquard would make it suck quite bad, as my plans were to keep those (maybe sell Spilak, but not by force) untill Lecuisinier, Koretzky, David and Coquard were ready to lead a PT team.
DubbelDekker wrote:
Congratulations SotD! Winning the PT twice in a row is impressive already and winning it by this huge margin makes it even more amazing. Very well done.
Speaking about impressive; newly promoted Aegon, Puma and Evonik finishing 5th, 6th and 7th is a ridiculous achievement as well.
The goal for our first ever season in the PT was just to survive and learn. We did both, so I'm happy. Now that I know how the PT works I see plenty of opportunity to improve on the current roster. We have an exciting transfer season ahead of us.
Huge thanks to all reporters and especially roturn for another season of this great game!
Thanks a lot mate. I am very very happy to see that you managed to stay up. I was getting worried for a while, although when looking at your setup you shouldn't be having any trouble. Ginanni and Madrazo both did OK, but nothing great.
I am very interested in seeing how you'll build your team, knowing your great tactical sense.
First of all, thanks to all the reporters. This was another great season and i cannot thank you enough for making this game as enjoyable as possible. Thanks!
I'm really glad about my team's performance all season long. My leaders performed superb all season long leading us to a 7th place finish that few managers saw coming. Would have loved to see all three of my leaders with 4-digit points but I think with better planning that will be possible next season for Skujins as well. Generally, the team had lots of ups and nearly no downs although I would have loved if the non-leaders would have joined a couple of breaks which they basically didnt all season long.
Despite a single decline in the squad I feel like I've got a bit of retooling to do if we want to prevent a drop into the relegation fight. Renewals will be important to drop the wages of last season's FAs and it will be key to sign some new scorers as I cannot expect my leaders to continue scoring that well in every important race. Might even make Gold Van Awesome available if one of my dream targets will be possible :P
Thanks marco for praising my managerial ability. I might mention though how much luck I had throughout the season as I my riders always performed way stronger than their stats in all three seasons and both promotions were only possible due to disbandments. Thanks nevertheless :)
Thanks a lot cio. The way I see it i will have way too much money for training if i keep my top trio so I will need to waste some money on training. But perhaps you will not do any training giving me the chance to stop training AFTER 2017? (Where do I get my cookie?)
Thanks DD, glad you survived. I'm really curious how you will adjust your strategy ?
Congrats to SotD. Personally, i had your team as pre-season favourite to defend the crown but i would never have expected such a dominant victory. Such a big gap towards the next team is another proof (as if we needed another one^^) to your brilliant squad and race planning and you deserve it too much. I didn't really like your team when I joined the game (no idea why, might be certain riders or simply the amount of great riders/prospects you had) but my opinion completely turned around - loved the discussions we had and I appreciate all the effort you put into the game so much. Thanks a lot for all your participation!
I doubted your win a bit pre-TDF but a perfect run-in to the season shows how misleading the rankings can be at times - especially when someone backloads his leader's race days a bit.
Depending on how hard it is to implement in the ranking updates it would be cool to see the raced & remaining RDs of each rider in the individual ranking updates. I think that would be absolutely amazing and it might not be too much work to implement as you also implement it for the team rankings in PCT & CT ?
I really enjoyed the position fights against Puma and Aegon. Beware yourself - I'll be coming for you next season to finally beat you :P Would not have picked any other teams to battle so closely with all of us having roots in Germany (eventhough Aegon and me fleed elsewhere), the way I tried to copy some aspects of Puma (it's no random occurance that i have signed similar type of riders as Puma) and history of personal (direct transfers in the past and same targets this years).
Aegon imo the positiv surprise of the season. Great season and well deserved for all the work roturn put into the game!
Glad to see that Pokerstars managed to stay in PT as one of my favourite teams when I joined the MG. Training Degenkolb turned out to be a great investment and i love that it was Kluge who saved your season eventhough i would loved to see him saving your season elsewhere ;)
Grieg might have been last this season but i feel like they've got a perfect base to rebounce quickly. I'd be very surprised if they wouldnt be racing in PT in 2018 as they've got so many riders who will be great for PCT. Wisniowski, Trentin, Rowe is such a scary trio for PCT cobbles...
Sad to see us go down, but after a poor transferseason it was always going to be likely. Ponzi didn't quite replicate his invincible form of 2015 and hence we are relegated. Crashes didn't help us, especially's Kwiatkowski's at Tirreno which really set the tone for the rest of the season. An enjoyable season however.
My activity hasn't been up to scratch really this season, so I will have to consider my future position in the game now I think. A nice way to bow out in Lombardia with Ponzi if this is the end.
Congrats on the dominant victory SotD. Thanks for all the organisational work to first of all roturn and also all the reporters who have put time into making this game so great.
knockout wrote:
Congrats to SotD. Personally, i had your team as pre-season favourite to defend the crown but i would never have expected such a dominant victory. Such a big gap towards the next team is another proof (as if we needed another one^^) to your brilliant squad and race planning and you deserve it too much. I didn't really like your team when I joined the game (no idea why, might be certain riders or simply the amount of great riders/prospects you had) but my opinion completely turned around - loved the discussions we had and I appreciate all the effort you put into the game so much. Thanks a lot for all your participation!
I doubted your win a bit pre-TDF but a perfect run-in to the season shows how misleading the rankings can be at times - especially when someone backloads his leader's race days a bit.
Thanks mate. I really appreciated the chats along the way too. Especially when there are no races to take focus it's really nice to talk to equal minded persons about the prospect of the game, why we chose what we did in the past, and how training could have turned out if others did other things and stuff like that
I had my team as winning in the prediction too, but definately didn't believe we would win like this. That was very surprising.
I'm glad to hear that you like my team now, especially when it wasn't the case earlier on. I don't know why, but it means something to me that the team is likable. The manager - That is another thing
knockout wrote:
Grieg might have been last this season but i feel like they've got a perfect base to rebounce quickly. I'd be very surprised if they wouldnt be racing in PT in 2018 as they've got so many riders who will be great for PCT. Wisniowski, Trentin, Rowe is such a scary trio for PCT cobbles...
It would ruin their promotion bid to keep all three I'd say. Neither are strong enough in the hills to be complete as puncheurs and neither strong enough as a sprinter to lead a sprint to win. I would keep Wisniowski and Trentin and sell Rowe. And obviously trim the team. There's A LOT of riders
Congratulations to SotD! What a mega lead, this points advantage is just ludacris. Glad to see some of my fav teams in Vesuvio and Evonik also enjoying a great time. But also lots of teams for potential disbandments where the managers havn't been seen in ages. I hope roturn can contact them to keep them in there. I don't want to see too many disbandments in PT, especially because I'd hate to see so much heritage being lost.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
Thanks for all the effort from everyone. We've enjoyed our first season in the PT, even though we never really had any chance of surviving. The Giro was by far our highlight of the season, but we'll also take with us some very good racing on the cobbles.
I can simply just say WOW, looking at the rankings. Huge congrats to SotD on an absolutely amazing victory.
Very close for the remaining podium places. Gutted for ember, for just missing out, especially considering how poor Boasson Hagen have been.
knockout wrote:
Grieg might have been last this season but i feel like they've got a perfect base to rebounce quickly. I'd be very surprised if they wouldnt be racing in PT in 2018 as they've got so many riders who will be great for PCT. Wisniowski, Trentin, Rowe is such a scary trio for PCT cobbles...
It would ruin their promotion bid to keep all three I'd say. Neither are strong enough in the hills to be complete as puncheurs and neither strong enough as a sprinter to lead a sprint to win. I would keep Wisniowski and Trentin and sell Rowe. And obviously trim the team. There's A LOT of riders
A lot of riders, indeed Didn't get a new round at renewals after promoting, so had some riders that would have gone otherwise. Will be a lot of changes now, so interesting to see how the team will look after renewals this time around.
Just caught up with the final races of the season.
Hard way to finish a season. Not much more to say, back to the drawing board. I was thinking about stepping down for good, but if the overlords allow (despite my lackluster activity this season) I think I'll take another crack at the PCT with what should be quite a powerhouse team once I find a way to cut a million dollars.
Congrats to SotD, well deserved. And thanks to roturn, the reporters and everyone else behind the scenes for keeping this game rolling along.
So it really ends here. First of all, thanks SN to making this game such a fun to be part of, i have really enjoyed it, except last few months. But it was a great journey from D2, throughout interesting PCT step and right into PT and winning GTs left and right. Now SN is somewhat missing (?), thanks to especially roturn and rest of the MG team for stepping in and making the game running smoothly even without its "soul".
Metinvest team is a history now and i hope we have left some kind of legacy in the man-game, promoted the eastern european cycling and showed new managers one of the ways to suceed in this game. I think we have stayed loyal to our principles of developing the eastern european talent which can become superstars of MG cycling (Grosu and Zmorka) or great PT/PCT semi-leaders/domestiques (Karnulin, Tanovitchii, Bratashcuk, Sosnitkiy,...).
We have combined this careful approach with signing established stars Ignatiev and Pluchkin. Both will be hopefully remembered in tight connection with our colours and both should be part of history books.
As far as final rankings goes, we are happy to enter top10 again after good Tasmania and we have remained there. That was absolute minimum, to be in top10, but it was a tough long season full of surprises, so in the end we have to take it as solid final result.
Pluchkin did what he should, Gesink was simply too good in first two weeks of the Vuelta...he still scored over 2000 points, so awesome season anyway, with another GT win. I dont think i could plan him better, he would score less with another approach, i am sure abou that, even when there are guys that would not agree.
Ignatiev saved his season a bit in Tasmania, but it was still worse than last year and i have expected more. TT/hilly tours and races were decent, but where he failed compared to last year? That was the long flat classics and stages, where he dominated last year and done nothing this year. 85 fighter stat? Pfff...unfunctional or not needed for good final attack in PCM15. His beasty flat stat is also useless in this PCM, same with godlike stamina. He is one of the best riders stats wise, but not in a stats that matter...
Grosu was solid throughout the year, but he still needs heavy traiining in the future to challenge the best punchy sprinters and flat beasts. Develop him well Alex!
Zmorka failed our expectations, sadly TT speciality is the least guaranteeing thing in the game and it gives you only scraps if not combined with good hill/mountain stat or other things. He is worth like 100k in wage, nothing more.
Sad to see established teams like Orange, Red Bull or Movistar going down a division, but they have a chance for the rebuild, along other two teams. Lets see which managers will in the end stay and who else will leave for good, it seems that activity was lacking in some cases.
Good to see Pokerstars surviving, i hope beagle can turn the things around and again attack top5-10 in this "post Boonen era".
Top 4 in the rankings are clearly the best 4 teams in the game, so good to see he game reflecting that. Then Aegon is the surprise of the year for me, i will have to go through individual rankings to see how they actually got so high. Same goes for Puma, i thing the depth mattered, combined with great PCT showings. (i still hate that PCT bands for PT teams idea).
Evonik has good management and few superstars, including the guy that should not have been in the database at all with these stats, so no suprise to see them so high.
Now the last rankings words goes to the season dominator SotD and his Festina setup...congrats mate, you have done it again and title is fully deserved, dont play the humble guy, you crushed them! SotD will keep winning in this game and i am looking forward to see him kicking the butts even with so many overperformers. He will analyze, adapt and crush you again, just wait and see.
So that is probably all...thank you guys for nice years in the game, it was fun and i will never forget. I will continue to follow the MG for sure, so we will stay in contact. Maybe if i will be bored in following years and game still runs, i will try to jump back in.
Special mention goes to fjhoekie, my "ukrainian buddy". Best of luck in the future seasons mate, i hope you will try to sign and develop further some of my guys and push to PT. It was a nice cooperation we had in our local market, i hope you see it the same way.
Grosu was solid throughout the year, but he still needs heavy traiining in the future to challenge the best punchy sprinters and flat beasts. Develop him well Alex!
I'm considering it. But I'll have to see if I can even get him in the next transfers madness
A shame to see an established and active manager leave the game. But I guess it's better when you do it like this rather than going awol.
I can't remember if you have already expressed your wish to leave before our little encounter, but if not, I hope that's not what triggered it. Hopefully there are no hard feelings.
Grosu was solid throughout the year, but he still needs heavy traiining in the future to challenge the best punchy sprinters and flat beasts. Develop him well Alex!
I'm considering it. But I'll have to see if I can even get him in the next transfers madness
A shame to see an established and active manager leave the game. But I guess it's better when you do it like this rather than going awol.
I can't remember if you have already expressed your wish to leave before our little encounter, but if not, I hope that's not what triggered it. Hopefully there are no hard feelings.
No hard feelings at all...i had it planned already before this season, but in the end decided to stay for one more year and now is the time.
Grosu was solid throughout the year, but he still needs heavy traiining in the future to challenge the best punchy sprinters and flat beasts. Develop him well Alex!
I'm considering it. But I'll have to see if I can even get him in the next transfers madness
A shame to see an established and active manager leave the game. But I guess it's better when you do it like this rather than going awol.
I can't remember if you have already expressed your wish to leave before our little encounter, but if not, I hope that's not what triggered it. Hopefully there are no hard feelings.
No hard feelings at all...i had it planned already before this season, but in the end decided to stay for one more year and now is the time.
If I end going after Grosu and getting him in the transfers I will ask for your assistance on how to have him dominate the MG world
Grosu was solid throughout the year, but he still needs heavy traiining in the future to challenge the best punchy sprinters and flat beasts. Develop him well Alex!
I'm considering it. But I'll have to see if I can even get him in the next transfers madness
A shame to see an established and active manager leave the game. But I guess it's better when you do it like this rather than going awol.
I can't remember if you have already expressed your wish to leave before our little encounter, but if not, I hope that's not what triggered it. Hopefully there are no hard feelings.
No hard feelings at all...i had it planned already before this season, but in the end decided to stay for one more year and now is the time.
If I end going after Grosu and getting him in the transfers I will ask for your assistance on how to have him dominate the MG world
Just train his fighters stat year after year, and he will win everything.
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
Now the last rankings words goes to the season dominator SotD and his Festina setup...congrats mate, you have done it again and title is fully deserved, dont play the humble guy, you crushed them! SotD will keep winning in this game and i am looking forward to see him kicking the butts even with so many overperformers. He will analyze, adapt and crush you again, just wait and see.
Hehe thanks for the kind words mate. I can't completely argue against it, although "crushing" might not entirely be possible. This season was definately a one off, seeing how close it was last season, and Becherovka definately getting better next season with maxing talents. But you are right about the adapting part. No matter how crazy my wages will go I will find a way out of it, and end up with a strong setup. I'm not fearing that at all, despite definately beeing pissed some time soon, when I see my wages
Thanks a lot for some great chats in the past. I have enjoyed it a lot, and I feel I will lose a voice of reason whenever I try to make inputs to improve the game, as we have often been connecting well in these discussion, despite often coming up with different solutions.
I'm happy that you are not leaving, so instead of a goodbye, it will be a see you soon, mate!
Thanks Avin for your wonderful contribution to the game for several seasons.
You`ve always been a very active part of teh race discussions and "lived" the MG for quite some time.
Really sad to see you leave (and as you know, I would like to convince you to stay), I am happy to see you following it in the future being still a part of the game then.
Your team and in especially the Pluchkin saga will always be in the MG history.
Avin Wargunnson wrote:
Special mention goes to fjhoekie, my "ukrainian buddy". Best of luck in the future seasons mate, i hope you will try to sign and develop further some of my guys and push to PT. It was a nice cooperation we had in our local market, i hope you see it the same way.
100%. We've had amazingly good chats during the transfer seasons, and I feel like we helped eachother establishing Ukraine in the world that's called ManGame, and I will obviously miss that in the coming transfer period. Other than that you are giving me and my team the giant, but equally very good in some ways, pressure to continue what you've started with Metinvest with me basically being somewhat of a support team, now all eyes will be on me, especially now it looks very likely my team will actually be going up. I certainly have plans for the upcoming transfer season, and unsurprisingly a few of the current Metinvest riders are part of those plans, will be interesting to see if we can continue the legacy you started.
So, also thank you for helping us, and in general being an amazing person for the MG. Will miss you for sure.
Manager of Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska in the PCM.Daily Man-Game
