Pre-Season News & New Gameplay Analysis (Patreon)

Pre-season News

I have updated the keeper and squad depth trackers

On the squad depth tracker, I have added a notes section and also highlighted players who are injured/known fitness issues for the opening game.

Hahn hasnt arrived in Japan yet. (no doubt a paperwork thing, im very familiar with the amount of hoops you have to jump to get your visa & its not pretty!). Wakahara is fav to be stand in though not a given yet.

Hoibruten also hasnt arrived in Japan yet and is unlikely to play the first game with Scholz and Inukai the likely pairing for Urawa

Iwanami transfer to the Saudi league has surprisingly broken down. He will return to the Urawa camp however has missed preseason up to now and its also known they have planned around his exit. I personally cant see him being a starter this season even if fit and still not known if any clubs interested in him. One to monitor.

Lavi transfer to Gamba is also complete. He will also be unlikely to start the first game due to late arrival into Japan.

Harakawa played some of the training game. He is working his way up to match fitness after surgery. There is a lot of competition in Cerezo midfield however I still see him as a starter for them when match fit. Kagawa is heavily rumoured to be returning to Cerezo. I am a big fan of him, however I am unsure where he fits for the team and want to see his performance levels first.

Mateus played in Nagoyas recent friendly and is training as normal. There has been some rumours on twitter about a bid from the Saudi league but for now nothing seems to be happening & its not been reported in legit Japanese media sources.

We are now going to see some more legit friendlies where I expect starting lineups more to be used from the start. As always, I will update the squad depths with info! Please give me a shout if any questions or want to check if a player is a starter

Capped Mode

Starting this GW we will see the introduction of gameplay and threshold changes. More info can be found here 

I plan to do a separate post and stream on this as there is a lot to unpack!

I have been updating the watchlist of players I like for it which can be found here 

A few aspects ive noticed recently is:

- Some Rare Asia cards are in places excellent value. Eg I picked up Yamanaka (Starting LB for Cerezo) for <0.015. I feel depth is going to be key over the season and different capped modes

- For Capped 220 you can use a limited card. I have been personally picking up limited keepers for different leagues to give me options. This will vary depending on your gallery. My own strategy is Cap 240 will get priority as you get threshold & there are many GWs where I dont have enough rare keepers so Cap220 gives options as I can enter with limited keeper and/or enter alongside Cap240 and use different rare cards as variance play. There is also a lot of strategy that can be used with capped modes as ive learnt from NBA. For example, using a 0 or low scoring card (eg Samper on his return game) to open up the Cap for big scoring guys. Understanding general upside and ceiling scores potential of players also is key.

Playsharper already have something that looks at projected upside under value. This is still pretty crude though a great easy (and free!) way to identify targets and project scores. 

- Rewards setup has changed. You can see them here . I am still analysing this and my initial thoughts are that picking division for my best cards will become more key.  Regions have more high tier rewards (but fewer T3 and overall rewards as now). For me its about the quality of rewards and secondly how competitive I am/number of games being played. In general i dont pay much attention to the number of entries in a rare division. I plan to stream how I pick my lineups to show my thought pattern with it which hopefully will be useful!

A big aspect as always is planning ahead and im using SD, this league calendar to make sure im maximising my gallery/seeing whats ahead.

Eg GW346 is when J League starts with 1 game and that GW also see Champ League/  Europa Cup/conference league fixtures. I find Conference League in particularly v good to find value players or can use alongside Asia cards in All Star etc. GW357 we have international qualifying games for the 2024 European Cup. This can give excellent fixtures to get players for when nations are playing minnows eg Northern Ireland vs San Marino or Greece vs Gibraltar

Again strategy will depend on gallery size and scarcity you are using. For me its about making small upgrades and analysing the setup. I will never be able to get everything right, however over the season I strongly feel that I can get a big edge with analysis, planning ahead and trusting the data!