Greetings, fellow sentient beings!
I am trying to write this and post it before the next season begins with less than an hour remaining. This is my Ref link to Rabona, the Hive blockchain football manager game.
As I wrote in My Previous Report, the one of Season 8, I was one match away from League 1. And I won the match I needed, my competitors for the spot lost theirs, all went perfect, I was somehow miraculously in.
In for a lot of trouble...
I mean, I knew it would be much tougher, I just did not know how much tougher. I forgot to report to you I was qualified, for example. I was too busy getting my ass kicked around.
Take a look at that CherkovoGT team here. Those are my Cherkovo Garlic Tenders.
As you can see on the table above, I lost three matches before my first draw and my first point. Then it was another round of draws and losses until my first win came in match 9. If you are familiar with the points system in such football leagues, you know that a draw is almost a loss. You gain 1 point for it but you fall 2 points behind the optimal 3 you could gain for a win. Three draws count the same as one win and two losses. So it's not as if you avoided a loss three times, you got the same disadvantage as if you had two.
I was pretty much anchored to the bottom of that league and in danger of falling out of it at the end of the season. The last 4 teams are sent back to League 2. I had to reach at least 12th place and stay there in order to keep playing in League 1 next season. When some income from the new ads contract would help me fortify that position. Maybe.
But measures had to be taken immediately.
If you listen to football and other sports commentaries you are probably familiar with the saying "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." And the way it applies to changes in sports. Well, respectively, when things don't work, you do need to fix them.
I had just invested a lot (speaking in terms of in-game currency, i.e. RBN) into infrastructure last season and it had not yet kicked in. I had few resources to spare and I had to find a way to impact my future results with minimum additional investment.
What I did was sign with a better goalkeeper and give him a salary almost twice higher than the next best paid player on my team. I did so because I identified the goalkeepers I had as my weakest spot. They were previously decent, but still my weakest spot in terms of Overall Stats.
I also built another level of my Training Center, bringing the total bonus chance during home matches to 20%. At some high upkeep. As if I were paying yet another player. But 20% bonus applied half of the time (home matches only) to 11 players should be worth it.
And things started to turn around, indeed.
Until I got to that nerve-wrecking moment in the round before the last one.
I was at that 12th place, I had a 4-points lead and I was about to play versus the last team in the league. At home where that 20% bonus would be applied. It was a win-and-stay-in situation.
I lost. Nothing more that I could have done, it was just Chance was getting its revenge on me.
All the stats of the game in my favor except for the one that mattered — goals.
Yeah, all right, I committed more fouls, too.
Then it was a 1-point lead only and my last match was versus a team that had previously beaten me 5:0. My nemesis. In terms of results.
My nemesis in terms of placement in the league was playing against a generally stronger team, too, the guys who finished at 5th place. If my competitors were to lose or draw, I could afford a loss as well.
Wait for it...
They didn't. They won.
But so did I.
So, miraculously again, here I am, a League 1 survivor.
Thank you for staying with me so far!
Let's see how I do next season with a bit more resources to spare ;)
Good luck and have fun!
Yours,
Manol