The Definitive Guide to Hattrick for New Managers
Suriyah is currently a small country in the Hattrick world and as such it is sometimes difficult to begin with a team and stick with it, due in part to a lack of support. In this article I will outline some of the problems you may face and give you some general tips to help you on your way.
"Hattrick is an amazing game and a long term one, so be patient and follow the guidlines in this article and you'll be "Syrian League" champion in no time!"
IntroductionHi. I am/was the National Under-20 Coach for Suriyah (depending on when you're reading this). My aim in this article is to give you information to point you in the right direction when just starting out in Hattrick.
Small Country ProblemsSuriyah is considered a small country in Hattrick due to it not having very many active users. There are many knock on effects of this, but one which you may experience first hand is "flag chasing".
Flag ChasingThe concept of flag chasing is simple. Each team in the world who has purchased the "Supporter" package (see the shop) has a "flag collection" page. You can see mine here:
(/Club/Flags/?teamId=62264). Basically, when a team plays a friendly in a different country to their own they are awarded with the flag of that country. The same is true when a team from a different country comes to play at their stadium.
Small countries such as Suriyah are highly sought after flags because there are a very small number of users with the ability to give the flag, and a large number of users who want it. This leads to endless messages and friendly challenges from some rude teams who do not respect the fact that lots of people want to play you.
If you get a lot of messages you should report them as abuse. This will help punish and discourage the teams who are constantly asking you. To do this you must be on the message. At the bottom should be a selection box. Click it and you should see "Report Abuse". Click that then click send and you will be done.
You may also receive a lot of friendly challenges. An easy way to combat this is by navigating to your "Challenges" page
(/Club/Challenges/) and un-ticking the box on the right listed as "possible to challenge". This means teams can no longer challenge you and you can organise friendlies at your own leisure. Flag chasing is not the only problem caused by being in a small nation though...
National Team QualityLess users means less teams producing players, which in turn means less Syrian players. A team may produce one good player of native nationality per season. This is not a problem in a country like England where there are 10,000 teams and players to choose from, but it does become a problem in smaller countries.
I don't want to say too much on this, but you should (when you get to grips with the main aspects of the game) focus on your youth team and producing good youth players. If they are good enough they have a good chance of making the Syrian U20 team, and then possibly the full national team also. This will bring you lots of money when you sell these players, which will help your team progress quickly.
Newbie AdviceOkay, so we've covered a few things which you may want to address, but the follwing points are things which you
should do if you want to be successful. What follows are some general tips for the new player to help you be successful at Hattrick.
The Manager LicenseThe first thing you'll do in the game is complete your manager license. Pay attention to this as you go through it! It goes over the basic features of the game and basically tells you how things work. You need to understand the things that are going on during this before you can think about anything else.
The ManualYour main source of information will probably be "The Manual" page
(/Help/Rules/). It can be found by clicking "Help" at the top, then "Manual" on the left. It basically goes over everything you need to know about the game. If there's something you aren't sure about this should be your first port of call. Even world class managers still use the manual to help them, so it's a good thing for you to read through and study.
General "First Week" TipsThere are some mistakes that new managers make all the time which sometimes cripple their team before they've even got started.
Read this section if you don't want to make the same mistakes! The following points are key to early success:
- First and foremost, don't spend any money until you've gotten to grips with the game. A lot of teams end up wasting their money on upgrading their stadium, buying bad coaches, investing in their youth academy, or buying a single high priced player.
- Secondly, you must understand that Hattrick is a long term game. Planning ahead will reap many benefits so don't expect to be the best straight away. Always remember that if you're ever frustrated.
- Familiarise yourself with your players. You are given a squad of players and you need to choose the best of them to play in your league match. You should know from reading the rules which skills are important for which positions, so choose the player with the best playmaking skill to play in midfield etc. You don't gain anything from playing players twice in one week so you need to work towards having a seperate "Friendly team" for friendly games (comprising of the worse players in your squad).
TrainingBy far the most important thing in Hattrick (and to your success) is training. It is the main source of income and will improve your team dramatically. At the start of the game you want to keep things simple, so ideally you should choose between the following types:
GoalkeepingThis is what I would recommend for the first few seasons. With goalkeeping you can train 2 players per week (1 in your league and 1 in your friendly match) meaning the startup costs are quite low. Goalkeeper training is quite quick (approximately 5 weeks to increase a level), gives you formation flexibility, and will increase your team's defense ratings rapidly. It can also be very profitable if you sell your trainees at the right time due to the quick increase in skills.
DefendingThis is one of the most profitable training regimes but is very slow. With defending you can train 10 players per week (3 central defenders and 2 wing backs per weekly match) meaning startup costs are quite high. You also have to play 5-4-1 or 5-3-2 to make the most of it and this can give you poor league results. It is also quite slow (around 8 weeks per level increase), but is the most profitable overall, if you have enough money and patience make it work.
PlaymakingMidfield is the most important part of Hattrick, so this can see you get good results quickly. With playmaking training you can train 10 players per week (3 inner midfielders and 2 wingers per weekly match - although your wingers recieve only 50% training) so again startup costs will be high. However you will be playing with 3-5-2 or 4-5-1 which will give you high midfield ratings meaning you'll perform well in league matches. It is also quite profitable and takes around 7 weeks to increase a level (14 weeks for wingers).
ScoringSome say the best form of defense is attack - these people usually train scoring. With this training regime you can train 6 players per week (3 in each weekly game) so startup costs are fairly average. Since you'll be playing 3-4-3 most of the time (4-3-3 isn't a very good formation) you'll get very good attack ratings, but will need to make sure your midfield is up to the task of getting you scoring chances. Scoring training is pretty much in the middle of everything as far as profit and training speed (around 6 weeks per level increase) are concerned. You'll need to make sure your defense is up to the job of stopping the opponent though.
Your ChoiceIf I were to restart my team, I would train goalkeeping for the first few seasons due to the low startup costs and relative speed of profit, then move on to playmaking training once I'd got enough money to buy good trainees. However it is all personal preference and you can choose whichever training method you like. Just make sure you choose one! There are also some basic rules you should follow when training players...
General Training Tips - Stick with something for a long time! Remember that Hattrick is a long term game. You'll make the most profit by keeping trainees for 2 or 3 seasons and selling them at a much higher level than what you bought them for.
- Make maximum use of training slots! If you're training defending for example, don't only buy 6 trainees. You have 10 "training slots" so you might as well use them. It's much more profitable to buy 10 slightly worse players than 6 slightly better players. The same applies for all training types. Maximise your slots.
- Buy young trainees! Players train slower above 21 years old, so ideally you want to buy 17 or 18 year old players to train up. The younger the better, as long as you can afford enough to fill all your training slots.
- Get a good coach! You don't start with a very good coach so will need to buy a better one. Depending on how much money you have left after buying your trainees (and you should factor this in when buying), you should buy either a passable or a solid coach. "Coach level" is the only thing which determines how quickly your trainees increase in level so buy a coach with the lowest leadership possible as it will be cheaper. The higher the coach level, the quicker your players will increase in skill. You can change your coach on your training page, or click here:
(/Club/Training/ChangeCoach.aspx) - Play a legal formation! If you play 4 or more central defenders, inner midfielders, or forwards, (or an illegal formation such as 5-5-0 or 2-5-3) you will lose training for that week. This is disastrous so simply don't do it!
Other HelpIf you follow everything mentioned above you'll be well on your way to success! However I've only given a brief overview of what you need to do to start up your team in the correct way. There are many other things to consider if you want true success, and there are plenty of ways to find out about them...
ForumsA big source of help can come from the forums. The Hattrick community is a wonderful thing and it has many members out there waiting to help you.
Your first port of call should probably be the national forum for Suriyah, which can be found here:
(/Forum/Overview.aspx?v=0&f=527664). On there you should find help from other teams and also information about the Syrian National Team and U20 team.
Some other forums are Global (English)
(/Forum/Overview.aspx?v=0&f=11056) and Questions (English)
(/Forum/Overview.aspx?v=6&f=13392) where you can go to get help from other teams.
External WebsitesBy far the biggest source of information I've gained in Hattrick comes from external websites. Hattrick is such a huge game that people have actually made many websites to help with team management. One good tip is to just type "Hattrick xxx" into google (replacing xxx with something you want to find out about) and you'll be guaranteed to find a Hattrick Wiki page about it. I'll list a few of the most useful websites below:
(http://wiki.hattrick.org) - The best place for information
(http://hattrickinfo.com/en) - An excellent place to find specific information
(http://www.alltid.org) - A great place for team and league stats
(http://www.databased.at/hattrick) - Contains info and ways to analyse your team
(http://www.ht-box.ru) - Work out healing & training times
(http://iht.smdesign.es/en/node/257) - Good Youth Academy Guide
Final CommentsI hope you have found this guide helpful. Hattrick is an amazing game and a long term one, so be patient and follow the guidlines in this article and you'll be "Syrian League" champion in no time! If you ever need anything don't hesitate to get in touch with myself, or on the forums.
Broughy1322 (3414712)Manager of Stinging Scorpions (62264)Founder of The General Managers Club (85054)
2009-12-04 00:09:03,
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