How to find opponent's players' performance ratings without VIP

One of the advantages of VIP account is that you get to see the latest lineup of other teams, and also the grades of their individual players' performance. What most managers don't know is that you can get this information from the match report although in a less user friendly manner.

Take the latest match report of the team whose information you want to know and hold the mouse pointer over the name of any player of that team, and you'll get the grade for their performance in that match. Of course, you can get the grading for any match this way, but you would most likely be interested in how the players performed in the most recent match.

The information could be useful when you aren't sure which of your opponents' players you should mark. In such cases, the performance of a player in the most recent match could be an indicator to his form and thus help you choose the player to mark.

Give your divas their favorite shirt numbers

It might seem like an insignificant little thing to do, but it's always good to check if your divas have been given their favorite shirt numbers. It's the kind of thing that you have to check once, and then you benefit from it for the rest of the season.

Divas will perform better when they are given their favorite shirt numbers, and their performance drops slightly if they aren't. (That's why they are called divas.) So, having a diva in your team isn't really a bad thing at all, because once he's given his favorite shirt, he will actually play better than others of equal skill.

I've made it a habit to assign favorite shirt numbers to all my players, whether they are diva players or not. I don't think anything has been confirmed either way about shirt numbers affecting the performance of non-diva players, and even if it did, it would matter much less than in case of divas. Nevertheless, I try to assign favorite shirt numbers to everyone in the hope that it does help.

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?

.