I would.  The earlier the better, so there's less time to forget.

That's correct Mike.   It MUST be sent to me, via email prior to the session 10 deadline (email on the way as a reminder).

Hmmm...I've missed something clearly...what are 'Mulligans' and what have they to do with NMR's?

Craig, I have been trying to understand this as well. As far as I can make out, the NMR/Mulligan reference is to the same thing: a chance for a manager to undo the harm caused by missing orders (NMR) which means SBY and APP lose out on appearances. So, if a team misses an orders deadline (or more), he gets a chance to restore some 'appearances' to APP and SBY. A balancing mechanism. 

Correct, Ellis.  One missed session where an App doesn't play can potentially cost that player 1 SL for the rest of his playing life.  Finishing the season at SL 9 instead of 10, then capping age I at SL 14 instead of 15, etc.  Unlike other leagues where you can simply spend more to drop extra TP/CP into the players next match, the playing time caps on youth prevent any other option for making up those lost QNL.  A team's T11 or T16 can end up suffering slightly for 3 seasons because of one really lousy week that precluded getting orders in.  The NMR/Mulligan grace rule Al put into place allows some of that damage to be mitigated, so a manager who had a bad week or one memory lapse can prevent the potential long-term damage for about half the youth players that season.  Not all, as there are limited NMR points.  Some though, so there is less doom and despair for an NMR than there used to be.

Thanks Kevin. The irony appears to be that it is better to NMR than risk youth players against a known hard opponent. Or do I have that wrong?

Here's some more detail around NMRs…

A team is labeled NMR (No Moves Received) if Orders are not sent for a given session (in theory, auction bids could still be entered, but here an NMR is orders/lineups specific).

If a team goes NMR, the simulator creates lineups for that team as part of the logic to the start of processing results for a given session.

There is specific logic used to create these lineups.  If you'd like to see the code I can supply it (I don't have a detailed description of the logic, however).  The NMR lineup generator account for creating Youth Cup matches and also avoiding playing an SBY twice and an APP more than twice.  

Note that no Youth Coach is used for NMR.

In addition, note that if you start a session with more than 15 CP (as everyone typically should), any CP not used (and NO CP are used if you are NMR) over 15 are lost.

So if you have 40 CP to start session 5 and were NMR in session 5…you could still get 15 PLUS whatever you earned in session 5 for session 6.

But those 25 CP have been forfeited.

The concept of a mulligan came into play for two reasons:

1) We occasionally had a blip in previous seasons where folks thought they saved their lineups but it didn't appear to work.

2) Occasionally real life gets in the way and people miss a session.

Because of the way SBY/APPs depend on their appearances/youth coaching each session to reach their maximum potential I wanted to have an occasionally used exception to help people in that circumstance…hence the mulligan.

For the mulligan (another word for 'second chance'), each team gets 5 "Youth Coach" slots to use (no more than 1 for a SBY or 2 for an APP - along with other specific rules).

Typically a team works on improving the skills of 5-7 SBY/APP players a season (or more).   In a given session that's 5-10 chances for improvement (adding 1 or 2 QNL).

For the mulligan you get on the very bottom end of that, so in rare cases it might mean a full replacement for the SBY/APP slots you would have used in a session, but for the most part it will not be.

In summary, the intent is to help out the occasionally NMR team (no more than 1 time a season) after all matches are played for a given season.   In reality though they still may have players that miss their potential and have lost out on CP per the info above.

Given all that if you do see a benefit in going NMR versus putting in orders, let's discuss further.  I'm not seeing a benefit, but am open to further discussion as obviously I have no interest in fully rewarding NMR scenarios such that there's some sort of advantage.

Thanks Kevin and Ellis - and yes, Ellis you make a very good point. Is it a tactical ploy by those clever chaps who decide to NMR? NMR's usually result in big crosses next to a managers name, not possible benefits.

However, I think it's a bit of a difficult one - if a team NMR's because the manager intends to leave (and the NMR/Mulligan rule doesn't exist), then a new manager coming in starts with a team that has been disadvantaged due to no fault of their own.

There again, if a manager NMR's every now and again but not enough to get the boot, they have a get out of jail card which seems a little unfair to those who never NMR.

Finally, what it doesn't take into account is people making genuine mistakes, which shouldn't really be punished in my opinion.

So, I think the NMR/Mulligan rule should be limited to one per season...or something similar...(a manager who knows in advance that they could NMR would, I imagine, always make Al aware and someone could caretake?)

Haha! Looks like you posted as I was typing - I blame my wife who insisted on talking to me whilst I was trying to type, distracting me and delaying my post. I've told her  countless times before that interrupting anything I am doing football related results in a sulking husband and is to be avoided :)

Al, you pretty much explain away the points I raised, so feel free to ignore the above :)

When I suggested it might be better to NMR rather than risk youth players against a known hard opponent, I did not take into account the NMR would mean missing out on spending CP that session. So, the lowest CP loss would be if the team had 0 CP to carrry over and 0 CP from results, and only CP from fit players - say 20. That would make it a trade of 20 CP for the benefits of the NMR. I'm not experienced enough to say with conviction if that is a reasonable cost. Obviously, if it's not, then there is no risk of it being better to NMR...

While I remember, do new managers taking over mid season, suffer the GPP reduction at the start of the next season for team NMRs before they took over?