Out of interest how good is he?

Age: 27
BT Rating: 3,436 (+214 last week)

Stamina:feeble
Wicket Keeping:worthless
Batting:worthless
Concentration:competent
Bowling:mediocre
Consistency:abysmal
Fielding:woeful

Bowling: Wickets: 48, Career Average: 32.96, Strike Rate: 32.99, Econ: 6.13
Batting: Career Average: 1.07, High Score 7.

He'd be good as a backup, but we haven't played him much of late so his form isn't so good.

You can guarantee a better player than that using ITS youth pulls, and hed be 10 years younger so you could train him. You could very easily and cheaply replace him, it would probably only cost about 10k to buy, or do it yourself and chance getting a better player.

That's what I said we're going to do, wait for the youth pull and sell him.

Well, I'm annoyed. Our much vaunted batting lineup didn't show today and we were well beaten, despite bowling out Young Boys Burn for a beatable 253. Rubbish.

I did the repairs to the youth academy that we agreed, costing £60,000 to bring it back to Superb after we made £100k from this game. We're still slightly in debt because of that but have a lot of home games coming up and the friendly tomorrow.

I was surprised then, after ensuring our academy was superb and using the following(...):

12 Bowling
10 Batting
10 Stamina

...that we got:

Andi Pie
BT Rating: 2,651
Bowling: Mediocre
Batting: Mediocre
Stamina: Mediocre
All the rest were poor.

Anyway, what do you want to do Andy? Train him or sell him? He has all-rounder potential but would need time.

I decided to sell Pie, the nets are taken already and he'd take too long to train to be good enough for Divions IV or III, which we should be aiming at.

I think we should start investing £20k per week into the academy soon. We can afford it with the friendlies and home gate receipts, and a good youth pull will be needed as the players currently training reach 20. As we are currently at £6k, it would only be an extra £14k per week.

I've got a couple of bids in for 17-year old "respectable" batsmen who have got me interested. I'll keep you posted as to how they go Andy.

Good idea Colly. I reckon we can make more money than it costs from the Youth Team given time. All you need is a bit of luck and you may end up with a really, really good player a lot more cheaply than you could buy such a player for. As we seem to be in a net gain with the finances at the moment, given the friendlies and the home games, I'd agree with you to up the investment in the youth team. Hopefully, given a bit more time and the end of season bonus, we can upgrade the stadium to the 'ideal' size as previously indicated by Statto and Aussie-Yank. I think our team has improved immeasurably since the beginning of the previous season. We have a couple of weak points. We need a better batsman to replace Donnelly and a better bowler to replace Macey. We could also do with a very good all rounder to replace Midworth as he's getting on a bit. However, with Adu, Cooper, Wright, Antoine (and to a lesser extent Skalding and Rajesh) we've got a fantastic side. I've been a little disappointed with Rajesh and Beattie, but Beattie still has time to improve further. In the medium term, we may look to replace Rajesh - but that probably won't be for a couple of seasons unless we get lucky with a youth pull!

Rajesh just needs fitness training, which I would like to put him on once the 19-year olds have turned 20, he is one of the reasons we stayed up last year because he consistently scores fifties. Wright also needs fitness training. Of course if we get one or both of the 17-year olds I am bidding for who have respectable batting, we can train them to replace Donnelly, and possibly also Rajesh. I am toying with the idea of Rajesh moving to 3 and swapping with Cooper, who has superior batting and stamina. Beattie is still young and inexperienced, but if he pops to proficient he should maybe swap with Wright to look after Wright's fitness more.

I'd like to make the following changes to the bowling too:

b1 - Macey (Normal - to be replaced by Marsh when he's ready).
b2 - Wright. (Normal)
b3 - Skalding (Attacking).
b4 - Midworth. (Defensive)
b5 - Antoine (Attacking).

Skalding and Antoine are our two best bowlers and can handle attacking. It will bring them more 5-wicket hauls and they have the ability, especially Antoine. Midworth should bowl through defensively at 4 as a containment bowler whilst Antoine and Skalding take turns attacking at the other end. Macey hasn't got much longer in the side, though he still takes some wickets. Midworth has a little while left, he's 27 now, but his experience is needed right now - he is the only player in the side who has played over 50 games.

Heskey will be an all-rounder soon, his batting needs to improve of course, but it is doing and his keeping is going well. Combined with his fielding skills he is taking a lot of catches and has a stumping too, in only a few games.

We can no longer afford "competent" players in our team. We need "respectable/proficient" or higher to be promoted and succeed in Divison III if we get there. We're working towards that, but it's not so long ago that Binnion was our only such player and we were being spanked (first half of last season), so I think it's going well.

I should add. I think we should "Go for it" in all our remaining league games. With the friendlies not taking much out of us and rotation protecting them, and us out of the cup, we can afford to go for it in the league games.

Andy, we have bought a player. One of the players I was looking at was Matt Murdoch, a 17-year old:

Age:17 Years Old
Battrick Rating:4,313
Wages:£966 p/w

Stamina:abysmal
Wicket Keeping:worthless
Batting:respectable
Concentration:worthless
Bowling:worthless
Consistency:abysmal
Fielding:competent

He basically has around the same ability as Beattie did when we bought him, and better batting (Beattie was competent when we bought him), but cost £63,000, almost one third of the price! This puts us a bit further in debt, but the home games coming will make that up. I certainly promise not to buy any more players for a while - I did put a bid of £7k in for another respectable 17 year old, but hopefully others will bid and I'll leave that one alone. To add to the transfer listing of Pie, I have listed Fife too, because now that we have Murdoch, Fife is no longer needed. So hopefully those two will make some of the money back that I spent on Murdoch, who has been given an immediate batting net and will be an ideal replacement for Donnelly. He is also getting a fitness net to replace Marsh's batting net. I think a batsman having good stamina is mor important than a number 10/11 who doesn't bat often (I hope!) having decent batting, but if you want to change it then that's fair enough.

I did expect him to come a little cheaper but had to fight for him late on. I hope you don't mind me spending some more money in addition to the ground and academy improvements, and apologise if you didn't want me to spend £63k. I would certainly be prepared not to buy another player this season and rely entirely on youth pulls for new faces, especially this bowling all-rounder we're after. We should get back into the black and maybe save some money up for a while? Three home games in succession coming soon should allow us to make a good start of that.

I've posted a lot today, that's it for a while!