My last career with Toyota ended in financial disaster due to my retarded math, so I started a new one with Symmetrics. This isn't meant to be super interesting, but more so an example to others who want to play a CT team and make it to the PT, so keep that in mind
My first season went well in fact, even though my roster was anything but fabulous.
I added a lot of new fresh riders, but kept a few of the original team members, here was my roster for my first year in the ct.
orig team riders:
marsh cooper
brandon crichton
jacob erker
cameron evans
bradley fairall
christian meier
andrew pinfold
andrew randall
will routley
svein tuft
eric wohlberg
new riders:
jure kocjan
ignas konovalovas
aidis kroupis
libardo nino
taylor phinney
floren marquez
anuar manan
david malarcane
ruggero marzoli
diego ulissi
luca zanasca
tim ulbrich
juka vastaranta
pedro nicacio
niels albert
ben hermans
frederik nolf
pieter vanspeybrouck
lucas haedo
I was able to get some decent results with this team...
Wins:
olympia tour (kono)
sachsen tour international (kono)
la poly normande (kono)
giro dell'appennino (nicacio)
tour de pyrenees (nicacio)
volta ao alentejo (nino)
gp ind. e artigianato (pinfold)
giro di festina salzkammergut (pinfold)
veenendaal - veenendaal (pinfold)
As a result, I was able to get promoted to the PT after finishing 1st in the CT with 2619 points. The first ever Canadian based team to make the PT! (to my knowledge anyways)
Nino was my top ranked rider, a total of 448 points, good for 12th overall in the CT.
Nino was my top ranked rider in the super prestige with 751 points, good for 63rd lol.
As a team, we finished 16th, with 4492 points, not too shabby.
Konovalovas had the most wins with 5, good for 37th overall.
As a team, we had 23 wins, good for 10th overall.
In the off season, we had hoped to pick up a few good GC contenders, but valverde, danielson, and devolder all decided to go elsewhere, so our first season in the PT will be a tough one, but we remain optimistic, and hope our sprinters and classic riders can get us the points we need to stay near the top of the PT.
The new additions to the team were as follows:
david abal
gerald ciolek
alex hagensen
hodei mazkiaren
robbie mcewen
michael rasmussen
ruben reig
gert steegmans
david zabriskie
Loaded up on some high quality sprinters and some good classic riders as well, and hope rasmussen can place well in the grand tours, but it will be tough.
Second season predictions (first season in the PT) rank us in the top 10 overall, at least we hope we get there.
How did you manage to sign all of those riders? Ive got the prospect of ProTour promotion with DFL, but I cant imagine being able to buy anyone with a salary limit of 24,000
SportingNonsense wrote:
How did you manage to sign all of those riders? Ive got the prospect of ProTour promotion with DFL, but I cant imagine being able to buy anyone with a salary limit of 24,000
offer everyone big contracts at the same time and if they accept you will be able to go through with all of them even though you will be way over the salary limit
Prize money I win usually helps cover my losses somewhat, although I try to calculate if I can make it to the end of the season without going into debt.
Whenever I play I never adhere to the budget, as long as I don't go broke, that is fine with me. So I sign the riders I want to sign, and if I go over so be it.
It's just the way I play, my budget is only 3.5m, and my transfer funds are at 1.4m, so I don't have money to just blow like the big teams, so it's still a challenge to be able to get decent riders and perform well to get good results. And there is always a limit...my last game I was 250k over my salary budget lol, and I went broke, so at such a small budget, you can never have a dominating team like you can with one of the big squads, not right away at least.
As a Canadian, I've always wanted to play Symmetrics, but way to go! Although, I can't believe you signed all those free agents in Season 1 without signing Charles Dionne and rising star Martin Gilbert! Best of luck though.
