Beginners' guide

Your role

You are the manager and in charge of everything related to the club. You plan tactics and strategy, decide what to train and select which players should play. You can buy and sell players, invest in stadium improvements and much more.

Money

Money is important, so think carefully what you should spend it on. A very good piece of advice in the beginning is not to spend any money until you know what's important and where the money can be used to the best effect.

You earn money from games, sponsorship, fans and selling players, and it's used to cover your expenses from player salaries, staff, stadium maintenance – but also from investing in new players and stadium improvements.

Players

Do take the time to get to know your players and their skills. Click on the skill links to see where in the scale they are. Your trainer has also picked your key players (in his opinion) to help you get started.

Most players will ultimately use several skills, but whilst you are just getting started it's best to focus on the main skills:

Matches

A Hattrick season is 16 weeks long: 14 league rounds, one week for qualifiers and one week with no league activity. You play league matches at the weekends; cup and friendly games are played midweek. If there's one thing you should do as a manager it's to submit match orders for your matches.

Also make sure to arrange a friendly each week if you're not in the cup, it's quickly done using the friendly pool. Playing friendlies means you can train more players each week, and maximising your training is very important to help you progress.

Match basics

Simplified, the match simulation is made in three steps. In each half a number of attacks are made:

• Your midfield battle against your opponent's midfield to get each attack, the stronger of the two is more likely to get it. The playmaking skill on your midfielders is what matters the most for your midfield.
• When your midfield has "won" an attack, it is then determined what kind of attack it is (left, right, middle or set pieces).
• Your attack for that sector is then compared with your opponent's defence in that sector. Scoring skill on your forwards is most important, particularly for central attacks, whilst winger skill on your wingers will greatly help your wing attacks.

Training

Training is your primary tool to improve your team, and it's also a good way to make money (more about that below).

As a new team we recommend that you pick one "primary" skill to train, such as goalkeeping, defending, playmaking or scoring and stick to training that skill for a while before you change.

The effect from training is applied once a week. For a player to receive full skill training, they need to play in the corresponding position for 90 minutes in matches during the week. Playing any more than that will not give them any extra training effect. So to receive full playmaking training a player needs to play as an inner midfielder, to receive scoring training they needs to play as a forward and so on.

Transfer

You buy new players on the transfer market, and it is also where you sell your own players. A good piece of advice is to check the "transfer compare" values to get an idea of how much a certain player normally costs.

Staff

Hiring staff members can help develop your club in different ways. Assistant coaches speed up training for example, and could be a good first choice for a new team. The higher skill a staff member has, the higher their salary will be. Very highly skilled staff members can be quite expensive, so it's a good idea to stay away from them until you are sure they are what you need. You can find more info about staff in the manual.

Stadium

There will be a time when you want to expand your stadium, but a good tip is only doing it after you regularly start to fill your current one. Doing it any earlier could be pouring money down the drain.

Youth players

Recruiting your own youth players is a fun way to acquire new players for your team, but as there are some costs related to it we advise you to wait until you get a better understanding of the game, just so you don't throw any money away.

Team building strategies

As a new team, a good strategy is to build for the future instead of for now. The future of your team probably belongs to the younger players, so building your team around them is a good piece of advice. Sometimes it may even be advisable to sell your best player, to raise funds for buying younger talents.

Focus on training and build one part of your team at a time. Let your first team players play in the league match and then buy a couple of trainees (young passable-solid players in the skill you're training) to play in the friendly game solely to give them skill training. At the beginning of your career it's not a bad move to have trainees available to play the league match as well, if you can afford it. These trainees can later (when their skills have improved a few levels) be sold for (hopefully) a higher price than what you bought them for – giving you money to further strengthen your team.

Use match formations to maximise training, at least in friendly matches. If you for example train scoring, make sure to play with a formation using 3 forwards at least once a week – as more players then get full skill training. And if you train defending, play a formation using 5 defenders.