I completely agree. I thought it was a bit off that a SW could play FW with only a -2 penalty. I think it should be 2 points per level removed. Here's what I propose:

There should also be a restriction that a player cannot play a position that would make his effective SL 0 or less (SL - OOP + Fitness). The above table would effectively prevent SWs & FWs from playing each other's positions.

One of the purposes for playing OOP is for Acclimitisation, a FW can become an MA. If a player dual-qualifies, can they then tri-qualify, or become a Utility player? For example, if my MF plays 8 matches as FW, and becomes an MA, can he then play 8 matches at either DF or SW and become a UT?

I think that -2 is fine whatever the OOP, either DF to FW.   

I would say that the only difference is a greater penalty for a player playing OOP at SW, as this is a more specialised position which stops shots.  Perhaps -6 for MF or FW playing at SW and -4 for DF?  This similary would work the other way too.  SW if at DF -4, MF or FW -6.

Depending on our decided  season length do we need  to consider extending or reducing the 8 games needed to qualify?

Hi there,

I do not think that a sweeper should loose any levels if he chooses to play OOP as a DF as he is in effect a defender anyway, but i agree with the other deductions.

I also disagree that any other player ie forward or midfield should really be able to play as a SW, but as you have made the level deductions quite high then this should make it a difficult choice anyway.

I think the deduction in levels for OOP for the other outfield areas are too high, a forward should be able to play as a defender at a loss of only one level all around the pitch, or to make it slightly more realistic how about MF only lose 1 level when playing DF or FW, but the other two areas DF -FW and vice versa they loose 2 levels? Just a thought.

	SW	DF	MF	FW
SW	0	0	-4	-6
DF	-2	0	-1	-2
MF	-4	-1	0	-1
FW	-6	-2	-1	0

I see & Agree with your logic here but surely the same logic should be applied to a defender playing as a Sweeper

As Sweepers are adapted defenders are they not ? otherwise no point in having a Sweeper/defender is there

How about

                                 SW               DF             MF              FW

I see & Agree with your logic here but surely the same logic should be applied to a defender playing as a Sweeper

As Sweepers are adapted defenders are they not ? otherwise no point in having a Sweeper/defender is there

How about

                 SW               DF             MF              FW

I personally don't think that a -1 penalty is "daunting" enough. Nearly every manager will play their +1/+2 Fitness players OOP for a mere -1 penalty in order to acclimatise the player to an MPP. The idea as I see it is to make there be a payment of sorts for allowing managers to dual-qualify some of their players.

I agree with Rob that -1 is not enough because of the acclimatisation rule. However I'm not sure if we need to go to -6  as players aren't acclimatising anyway and I can't see anyone playing a FW at SW. I haven't done any maths though.

Kenny Burns was an out and out FW at Birmingham but was an SD at Forest and won the supporters player of the year.

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the feedback on this question.

I think that the OOP stuff should be fairly rare (or rarer).

We'll go with this for season #1:

1 position removed -2

2 positions removed -4

3 positions removed -5

So an SL 10 Sw plays at Sl 5 as a FW.

An SL 8 Fw plays at 3 as a Sw

An SL 6 Df plays at 2 as a Fw

And so on...

I'll update the rules accordingly.

Al

This one slipped by under the radar with me.

I notice that outfield players are specifically DF, MF and FW in the rules. GK and SW are not mentioned.

DF, MF and FW can play OOP.

The GK and the SW are specialist positions.

I would suggest that they not be included as possible OOP positions. (I know that Al has already updated the rules to say otherwise, I'm going with the original rules here).

We might look at having a GK and SW play OOP with each other, but I personally wouldn't want it.

Over the course of 4 or 5 seasons, we could see teams composed of practically 11 UT.

I would be against having UT players at all.

This was meant to be a simplified game.

Just to further David's points a bit, I believe he's getting at two separate issues:

1) Acclimating

2) OOP rules

Personally I'm not a big fan of having rosters filled with players that can play multiple positions.

I'd either like to see some restrictions on this that are "more difficult" like playing 16 games OOP rather than 8 to qualify.

Or keeping the 8 but making the OOP penalty harsher.

Or only allowing X players per roster that can play multiple positions.

Or some blend of those.

Also, should acclimation only be for Df, Mf, and Fw.  We have included Sw in the current rules set, however should we treat a Sw as a specialty player (like we do the Gk) since he stops attacks...and ONLY allow Sw's to play Sw?

This is an area I'd like some more open discussion on to see if we can build some consensus.

Thanks,
Al

Before answering the question of "how many games", I think it would good to know how many games we can expect in a given season. For my opinion, I think it should take the majority of a full season to acclimitize to a new position.

I think that players should only allow to acclimitize 1 position removed from their "given" position, and can only acclimitize to 1 other position.

• A FW can only become an MA
• A SW can only become a SD
• A DF can become either a SD or a DM
• A MF can become either a MA or a DM
• No players can become UTs

Another option for Harshness of OOP Penalty could be to change to a % penalty.

• 1 position removed = 25% penalty
• 2 positions removed = 50% penalty
• 3 positions removed = 75% penalty

Yes, I'm getting at both items.

Out of Position.

I'd prefer to restrict playing OOP to the 3 specified outfield areas/players.

DF, MF, FW.

I would not include SW or GK. In this game both positions are too specialised.

It may seem like a fabulous cheese tactic to some of you to have 2 or 3 DF who can play at SW, but I'm guessing the original rules were setup to deliberately not include this option.

Acclimatisation.

I don't have a huge issue with acclimatising players, provided it's only the 3 areas I've mentioned, but I'd like to send a note of warning.

In the other games most of us are familiar with, the number of Multi-pos players are lmited in some way. Max number per team or the more organic version if you like where only a limited number appear in a season by way of Auctions or Drafts. When theseare split over 48 teams or whatever you find the number per team stays relatively constant.

Obviously if you limit the total that can join your league per season, you don't really need a max per squad.

What could happen in this league is that we could all play our entire outfield OOP for 8 games and have 16 or so multi-pos players after less than 3 sessions.

An exaggeration I know, but it seems that at the moment there is little to offset us from doing that.

With the higher OOP penalties, it seems that managers won't play their guys too far away, but you never know. The occasional foray into another area and 2 seasons time you've got an SA (Sweeper/Attacker)??

Why not just make it that a DF can only play OOP at MF and a FW the same. Then have it that wherever a MF plays to 8 first, DF or FW,  becomes their area of acclimatisation and that they then can't move to the other area.

I can understand managers wanting to have an extremely variable squad in the other games where we can have 7,8 or 9 tactics which use lots of different player types. But in this game, there's only 3 areas and basically 1 tactic.

Here's my thought on s

Acclimatisation.

This really depends on the length of the season.  I think we should aim for acclimatisation at 1/3 of games in a season.  So for a 24 game season, 8 would be fine. 30, 10 games etc.

Penalty

I think the penalties we have above are fine. Maybe with only Sweepers being able to play Sweeper.  But as a suggestion of an alternative idea for discussion perhaps we could use a percentage rather than fixed of say 75% (rounded down)? (More complex though ;-))

Limited multi pos.

I am not really in favour of a limit.  If a manager can balance his resources and use skill to get a squad of multi pos players then so be it.  Everybody can do it.  In this game where the opposition team you are going to play against may be easier to predict than MSWL leagues multi pos players will add  formation unpredictability.  In reality the penalties and length of time to acclimatise above will make it  difficult enough and I think a team of 11 UTs is extremely unlikely.  Also the multipos player in MSWL leagues  MA and UT players  where shooting comes into play are much more important  than in United.

Also perhaps auction players should not be multi pos players which would help limit the numbers.

I am also not in favour of a limit.  If the penalty is sufficient for playing OOP then not that many teams will do it and the number of players acclimated at more than one position will regulate itself.

I don't see the need to restrict those playing at SW, either.  Given that they don't count towards the DF levels in this version of United, they're not as valuable as they might have been and therefore playing at that position for other players should not be banned.

If we weren't trying to keep this game simple, I'd suggest that a player lost his acclimation if he didn't play enough games at each position to keep it.  And I'd allow other players to play as a GK gaining one level each time they play there, up to a max of half their level.

Even with only 8 games needed for players to acclimatise I dont think we will see that many players acclimatise.

I just dont see multi position players as that valuable that managers will be going all out to create them.