2025-02-03, 07:01 AM - Word count:
Hello everyone! I recently joined the SSL through the urging of Saba (I had joined a couple seasons about but I didn’t have time so I retired before I even got drafted)but I have the same plan I did with the late Franco Colapinto as I do with Kim Minjeong, which is to get as many goals as possible. Team loyalty isn’t for me in the SSL, I would love to dive into the rulebook and learn about transfer values as I will be hopping from team to team to rack that goal number up! With that in mind, and with the Position Tracker on the site, I was wondering if that’s even possible and if teams even need strikers.
Disclaimers:
First off, I’m “pre-writing” this because I’m excited to join SSL and I kind of got sucked in by the spreadsheet I “made” (I copied the budget sheet and made a new tab)
Secondly, the data I have is accurate as of January 22 in the AM EST, and this article will be posted on Feb 3rd so that’s quite a bit of time for things to change.
Kind of “thirdly”, and a supplement to me being in the league, I have no idea how Football Manager works, what’s good, etc. so I’m just making wild assumptions and that’ll hold true with everything I write here.
Fourthly? I’m assuming most squads run a single striker system.
Starting off, we have 25/15 displayed in the striker position on the portal tracker, that’s already looking pretty bad for me who wants to get in right away and get called up right away, however, if we start doing some legitimate and copium data changes, the picture looks better than that!
![[Image: G2Q8ylQ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/G2Q8ylQ.png)
These are the active, non-retired strikers in the budget file, sorted by draft class and then TPE. It’s kind of a shock to see so many older players still at such high TPE totals, mostly talking about Jean-Claude Goddamn. This sort removes only 1 player, leaving us at 24/15 and really, it’s 24/8 because I’m not looking at scoring a bunch of goals in the minors, I want major league goals.
I think based on my player timeline, I’m going to axe the players that are older than S15, I think that this is probably a bit premature as Puppy’s Wang Zhihao shows that we’ve got some monsters that will survive regression for a long, long time, but it’s going to show me some numbers of players who I will directly be competing against as the best striker of my generation.
![[Image: vWGZUEg.png]](https://i.imgur.com/vWGZUEg.png)
Now that we’ve done some age discrimination, we’ve got a 15/8 count, much nicer and easier to work with.
![[Image: sbR37NZ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sbR37NZ.png)
![[Image: ua0ig9w.png]](https://i.imgur.com/ua0ig9w.png)
Alright! We did it, now we’re at 9/8 of strikers that we’re going to compete with for our generation, and that’s basically the number of strikers needed (of course there are going to be other forwards created this season and the next few).
We could end here and say, hey, there’s only 9 other players I’m directly competing against, sounds great and like I have a chance, but we’ve got to also account for distribution on teams, surely not all teams are the same and good! In order to do that, I’ve sorted each player into their organization and sorted based on how relevant they are to the Kim Minjeong supremacy era!
Because I’m really competing against strikers who are in my “generation”, I’ve got them organized in how relevant they are, with players in italics in the academy system.
![[Image: F7jBFat.png]](https://i.imgur.com/F7jBFat.png)
To me, it looks like we’ve got some space, assuming no transfers. A.C. Romana, Schwarzwälder FV, Tokyo S.C. look like they’ve got a lack of a strong striker option, assuming most teams only run one of course.
If we continue with this, our competition isn’t with the 9/8 mark, it’s with a ?/3 where the players who are joining me in this class are competing to get that first team job immediately so they can start stacking up that resume.
Do we need more strikers? Yes and no, we probably have enough in the league if everyone is perfectly distributed, but there is space for a few more of us, and it’s going to be a great scramble to find the best spot, and I’m not sure if my play time demands will actually help me get there, unless I commit to one of the top teams in a big transfer to cement that position.
All in all, there’s space for me to max earn and to get a lot of goals. In order to facilitate this I will need to grab as much money as possible and might have to make some tricky decisions to find teams that can make this happen and I’m excited to see how it all plays out! Great to join you all in the SSL!
Disclaimers:
First off, I’m “pre-writing” this because I’m excited to join SSL and I kind of got sucked in by the spreadsheet I “made” (I copied the budget sheet and made a new tab)
Secondly, the data I have is accurate as of January 22 in the AM EST, and this article will be posted on Feb 3rd so that’s quite a bit of time for things to change.
Kind of “thirdly”, and a supplement to me being in the league, I have no idea how Football Manager works, what’s good, etc. so I’m just making wild assumptions and that’ll hold true with everything I write here.
Fourthly? I’m assuming most squads run a single striker system.
Starting off, we have 25/15 displayed in the striker position on the portal tracker, that’s already looking pretty bad for me who wants to get in right away and get called up right away, however, if we start doing some legitimate and copium data changes, the picture looks better than that!
Strikers sorted by Class and TPE
These are the active, non-retired strikers in the budget file, sorted by draft class and then TPE. It’s kind of a shock to see so many older players still at such high TPE totals, mostly talking about Jean-Claude Goddamn. This sort removes only 1 player, leaving us at 24/15 and really, it’s 24/8 because I’m not looking at scoring a bunch of goals in the minors, I want major league goals.
I think based on my player timeline, I’m going to axe the players that are older than S15, I think that this is probably a bit premature as Puppy’s Wang Zhihao shows that we’ve got some monsters that will survive regression for a long, long time, but it’s going to show me some numbers of players who I will directly be competing against as the best striker of my generation.
S15+ Strikers sorted by Class and TPE
Now that we’ve done some age discrimination, we’ve got a 15/8 count, much nicer and easier to work with.
SSL S15-19 Top Earners
Now that we’ve got our batch of players to compare against, we can also see who’s maxing or on a top earner pace, if we’re going to be the best striker in the SSL, we’ve got to earn! I’ve got a chart here that shows the top TPE per class and the top TPE for strikers in each class! Luckily the numbers are kinda similar season by season so we’re looking at a 100 TPE difference between classes here as our benchmark, and we can start eliminating users who aren’t on our pace! I don’t think it’s fair to call all of these players IA or something, they just aren’t in the competition for the super Kim Minjeong.S15+ Strikers with non-maxing users removed
Alright! We did it, now we’re at 9/8 of strikers that we’re going to compete with for our generation, and that’s basically the number of strikers needed (of course there are going to be other forwards created this season and the next few).
We could end here and say, hey, there’s only 9 other players I’m directly competing against, sounds great and like I have a chance, but we’ve got to also account for distribution on teams, surely not all teams are the same and good! In order to do that, I’ve sorted each player into their organization and sorted based on how relevant they are to the Kim Minjeong supremacy era!
Because I’m really competing against strikers who are in my “generation”, I’ve got them organized in how relevant they are, with players in italics in the academy system.
- Green - Direct competition, max earners who are also in the “generation class” as me, which is from S15-20 but is really a bit too broad.
- Yellow - In the same generation but not quite max earning
- Orange - In the same generation but closer to IA than not
- Red - Old-heads or IAs that will not count for my purposes
Strikers by organization and competition level
To me, it looks like we’ve got some space, assuming no transfers. A.C. Romana, Schwarzwälder FV, Tokyo S.C. look like they’ve got a lack of a strong striker option, assuming most teams only run one of course.
If we continue with this, our competition isn’t with the 9/8 mark, it’s with a ?/3 where the players who are joining me in this class are competing to get that first team job immediately so they can start stacking up that resume.
Do we need more strikers? Yes and no, we probably have enough in the league if everyone is perfectly distributed, but there is space for a few more of us, and it’s going to be a great scramble to find the best spot, and I’m not sure if my play time demands will actually help me get there, unless I commit to one of the top teams in a big transfer to cement that position.
All in all, there’s space for me to max earn and to get a lot of goals. In order to facilitate this I will need to grab as much money as possible and might have to make some tricky decisions to find teams that can make this happen and I’m excited to see how it all plays out! Great to join you all in the SSL!
