Ideal squad size

When you are given a new team in Xpert Eleven, your squad consists of 18 players (2GK-6D-6MF-4F). The maximum number of players you can have is 20, and the minimum is 13. So what is the ideal squad size if you are looking to develop a great team?

Having too many players makes it difficult to maintain average form. It costs too much to keep training all the players. But having too small a squad means that an unlucky run with injuries and red cards might leave your team vulnerable.

I usually try to keep a squad of 17. 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders and 3 forwards along with a couple of very young players is ideal in my opinion.

Sometimes you might need an extra high skill older player in case you don't have skilled players at certain positions, but having more than 18 players will be a nightmare. (In fact, having 18 players is enough trouble.)

If you have skilled players between 24 and 28, you might even be able to reduce the squad size to 16. Fewer players, and you might be especially vulnerable when you're hit by injuries and bans. Don't keep too few players if you have fragile players who might be out with injuries for long stretches, and unsportsmanlike or tough players who might pick up too many bookings and get themselves banned.



How many players do you have in your teams and how many players at each position? Have you ever played with a squad of 15 or fewer? If so, did you have a serious injury/ban crisis?

.

The Average Age Rule

The average age of your team has an effect on the performance in a match. According to the Xpert Eleven rules page, your team performs at 100% only if the average age of the players is 26 or higher. The performance of the team gets worse as the average age decreases.

I looked around in the forums and found that the relation between the average age and performance is a linear function for age below 26. To find how much the performance level will be for a particular average age, you have to multiply the average age by 3.846 (that's 100/26). For example, if your team's average age is 22, the performance level will be (22*100/26) = 84.6%.

This graph shows the performance levels of the team for different values of average age:



Having young players is a good thing, but having too many of them will bring down your team's average age and cause a drop in performance. Always keep a few good older players in the squad to make sure you have a high enough average age.

Is the average age of your team above 26? Have you noticed a dip in performance whenever you play a younger team?

.

Aggression vs Injury Risk

In my previous post, I mentioned that you should always keep an eye on the referee's strictness levels before deciding to play aggressive. However, that doesn't mean that you have to always play aggressively when a lenient referee is in charge. The more aggressive you play, the higher is the risk that one of your players gets injured.

I found the following figures from Leftblank's strategy guide, The Art of Xpert Eleven. C, N and B on the leftmost column indicate your aggression settings (careful, normal or bruise) and those on the horizontal row on top indicate your opponent's settings. The numbers show the percentage chance that any of your players will not get injured for the given settings. (The figures with the question marks are only guesses, and not confirmed.)

	C	N	B
C	95	60 (?)	85
N	60 (?)	80	60 (?)
B	80	60 (?)	40

This shows that playing bruise has the highest likelihood of causing injuries, not to mention that your players might also get booked and concede free kicks. I usually avoid using bruise settings even for very lenient referees. I prefer playing normal aggression for lenient referees (H = 1 to 3) and careful for others.

.

Where are all the young goalkeepers?

I recently came across this interesting discussion in the Xpert Eleven forums regarding the minimum age of goalkeepers. You can easily find outfield players who are 16 years old, but there are no 16 year old goalkeepers.

Apparently, this is because the average age of retirement for goalkeepers in Xpert Eleven is one year more than that for outfield players and increasing minimum age for goalies makes up for the extra year they play.

This higher age of retirement reflects the situation in real world football. You just have to look at Portsmouth's (and England's) David James and Man United's (and Holland's) van der Sar -- both aged 38 -- to know that goalkeepers retire later than outfield players.

What was the skill/age of the best goalkeeper you ever received from your youth system? And what was the age of the oldest goalkeeper to play for your teams?

.

How much do referees influence the game?

One aspect of tactics that many Xpert Eleven managers often neglect is the referee attributes. A bad referee could win the game for your opponents. (Ask any Chelsea fan and they will tell you how Mike Riley defeated them in their match against Liverpool recently.) This fact about football in general also applies to Xpert Eleven.

Referees in Xpert Eleven have two attributes which have values ranging from 1 to 9. You should always keep an eye on the referee's attributes before deciding to play offside or cheats in the tactics page.

• Skill (S) : The higher the S-value of the referee, the better he is able to judge fouls and off-sides accurately.
  
  
• Hardness (H) : The hardness or the H-value of the referee shows how strict he is. A referee with high H-value is more likely to book players than a referee with a lower value.
  

Aggression, offside traps and cheating should always be decided based on referee's attributes. Here are a few pointers on what to do based on the referee's skill and strictness:

• Use cheat for low skill referees. (S = 1 to 3)
  
• Use offside traps for skilled referees. (S = 7 to 9)
  
• Use "bruise" aggression if referee is lenient. (H = 1 to 3)
  
• Use "normal" aggression if referee's strictness is medium. (H = 4 to 7)
  
• Use "careful" aggression if referee is strict. (H = 7 to 9)
  

Remember that your aggression settings could also cause injuries to your players if you play bruise. Set it to "careful" regardless of referee strictness if you don't want to risk too many injuries.

What tactics do you use for different referees? Do you play "bruise" for lenient referees or are you a "careful" player?

.

Tools: Xpert Eleven Secretary

I recently came across this website that provides some tools to help you with your Xpert Eleven teams. The site has been up for only around three days now, and there are 4 tools available, as of now:

• Change report calculator. This tool guesses the change report for your players based on the age and average form. You will have to enter the values manually, though. The tool doesn't look very reliable right now for older players, but it does give you an idea about what to expect at the season update.
  
  
• Change report saver. You can archive your old change reports on the XES site by using this tool. You can either enter the values manually or upload the html file of the change report page. This tool could prove really useful if you want to track the growth of your players.
  
  
• Match Experience Calculator. This tool gives you the maximum and minimum match experience that a player can gain if you enter the number of matches remaining. I'm not sure about the accuracy of this tool either
  
  
• Transfer Calculator. This tool gives you the price at which a player will be listed in the transfer market if you enter the price you've asked for the player. It also works the other way round, ie. you get to know how much the other team gets for a player based on the price shown in the transfer market. This tool is also available for direct transfers.
  

The major drawback of the site is that you have to enter all the data manually into the site because the Xpert Eleven crew do not allow other websites to collect user passwords.

Those who play the browser based strategy game Tribal Wars know how useful tools like TWStats could be to the game. Something like TWStats isn't available for Xpert Eleven right now and this website could develop into something useful for X-11 managers.

Do you think that tools like these are required for Xpert Eleven? What tools do you think could be useful for Xpert managers?

.

How do I decide when a player needs training?

Here are a few simple rules I use to decide whether or not a particular player needs training:

• If a player has form below 13 he needs to train. Period.
  
• If a player has form 13 with downward trend, it's a good idea to train him.
  
• If a player has form 14 with steep downward trend (red arrow), train him if he's an important player.
  
• If you have a player has a low average form, train him if he's in you long term plans for the quad.
  
• If a player is retiring at the end of the season and he's not skilled enough to be needed in this season's matches, don't bother with training him.
  

Every Xpert Eleven manager has his own opinion about when to train his players. Some would be more stingy on their training expenditure, so as to save enough for new players whereas some, on the other hand, are more generous, preferring to develop their players' skill through training. It all depends on what you believe to be a better option for your team.

I myself don't always follow these pointers exactly, preferring to relax these rules depending on the team, the stage in the season and the average form of the player concerned (especially if it's the second half of the season).

How do you decide when a player needs training?

.

Xpert Eleven Resources

Here I have compiled a list of guides, tools and other resources that could help you in your quest to become the best manager on Xpert eleven.

Guides

• Official Xpert Eleven Guide. The first place you should refer is obviously the game's standard rules page on the Xpert Eleven site. It's an excellent place to start for any beginner.
  
  
• The Art of Xpert Eleven - Strategy Guide. Outside of the official manual, Leftblank's strategy guide is the best guide for the game out there. (some might say it's even better) Go ahead and start reading this manual (download here) the moment you've finished reading the official guide.
  

Tools

• Xpert Eleven Secretary. his website provides some tools that could help you with managing your Xpert Eleven teams.
  

Blogs

• How to Xpert Eleven
• Xpert Eleven - The Complete Guide

.