Thanks for your words on our team, jt. You have a lot of interesting points which expose the flaws in our leaders. Avelino and Claeys especially are crucially weak in specific areas which make them fragile and unreliable as regular point scorers. And more importantly I agree that we're going to be in the relegation places for
On the other hand I disagree with other things. Our mountain squad is robust enough in my view to be a constant source of points. Sure, we're not going to win any GT or smaller stage races (except for Volta a Portugal, obviously) with low ACC, but our diesel engines can be a nuisance even with this version of the game - i.e. stage 3 Tour de Suisse 2017 (where Mr.Party Pooper and The Axe ripped the peloton to shreds)
About not training Borges: I didn't have the funds to get him to 80 HIL and even if I did I wouldn't think it would matter. He scores and performs superbly as an underdog. I'm not sure getting him as a definite leader would do much good to his chances.
Reis on the other hand as been our pet project for years. We had just enough to train him to 81. This opens the option for Machado and/or Intxausti to leave next year if need be. I made a lot of mistakes in the transfer season, but I don't regret my training option.
Gustavovskiy wrote:
Thanks for your words on our team, jt. You have a lot of interesting points which expose the flaws in our leaders. Avelino and Claeys especially are crucially weak in specific areas which make them fragile and unreliable as regular point scorers. And more importantly I agree that we're going to be in the relegation places for
On the other hand I disagree with other things. Our mountain squad is robust enough in my view to be a constant source of points. Sure, we're not going to win any GT or smaller stage races (except for Volta a Portugal, obviously) with low ACC, but our diesel engines can be a nuisance even with this version of the game - i.e. stage 3 Tour de Suisse 2017 (where Mr.Party Pooper and The Axe ripped the peloton to shreds)
About not training Borges: I didn't have the funds to get him to 80 HIL and even if I did I wouldn't think it would matter. He scores and performs superbly as an underdog. I'm not sure getting him as a definite leader would do much good to his chances.
Reis on the other hand as been our pet project for years. We had just enough to train him to 81. This opens the option for Machado and/or Intxausti to leave next year if need be. I made a lot of mistakes in the transfer season, but I don't regret my training option.
Thanks for the kind words
I think your very much on the edge of relegation similar to UBS but the flaws are less likely to see you rise.
You are right sometimes the diseal engines can work. However Machado scored less when a better rider then Herklotz, Lescuiner, Adam Yates beating only Madrazo and Tenorio who are better MO so I do think Acceleration is a big part of scoring in this Game as I said unfortunate for you when you've put so much time into guys when it didn't matter as much. With a downgrade this season I see Machado scoring 650-700 points around Cattaneo, Intxausti only scored 515 in PCT similar to Romain Sicard, who did at least score 875 last time in PT so if we take his score and as Reis is similar to Fredrik Strand Galta who scored 475 last season take his we get.
700+875+475 = 2050 for 1.6million in wage. isn't to bad so I do understand I may have been harsh on the mountains guys just believe the money could be spent better on leaders that suit the game more.
With Borges I'm just a huge fan I can see him being similar to Lutsenko with two years training. Think he has 3 less mountain slightly less downhill and sprint but they are near identical apart from that. Lutsenko scored 1308 points last season. Borges if you had been able to get him to 80 which I understand you were never in a position too. would have been mightily interesting. I have Reis improving nearly 200 points so it is a close call but the potential for Borges to be a huge scorer outweighs Reis for me.
Think you're right on point for both Grieg and Gazelle. For the latter, eventhough it should be a worse season for Ginanni compared to 2017, I still think he'll do very well, due to his very nice res stat compared to most puncheurs. And with Teunissen joining, they could easily do slightly better than last year, especially when taking Madrazo's potential into consideration. If he gets "lucky" in a race or two, he's suddenly a much bigger scorer, as the points difference between 1st/2nd compared to 4th-6th + the stage results leading to it, is quite a lot.
Interesting to see you put Grieg at 8th to 12th place overall, as that's higher than other previews. I agree though, as I see them as a team that will challenge for a top 10, as long as Martin can make use of his great stats combination, with his acceleration, hill and sprint stat giving him great opportunities to perform better than his mountain stat along suggests.
Looking forward for more of your team's analysis, and then the final ranking prediction at the end as well
Great in-depth previews, jt. Sharp observation regarding our 'no bad riders' policy. It's indeed something I deliberately focus on. We want to score from breakaways and having a weak rider in a breakaway is a missed opportunity.
Thanks for the update. It's always interesting to read what other managers expect.
We certainly don't expect 1900 points from Coquard. If he can land 1200 I think it will be pretty good. We don't have that many perfect races for him, so he won't be a killer.
In the future I doubt we will see top sprinters score 1500 points as the competition is too fierce to win all the flat classics, and there isn't really that many of those either.
But 1000 points is needed at the very least. Also I need Lecuisinier to come very close to top 5 or achieve it. I hope top 5 in the Tour de France can be achieved as that is also a goal, and I don't think the starting lineup is all that impressive so far. But there's still quite some riders we haven't seen, and the Wildcard teams ain't bad either.
Your concerns regarding my team is basically the same as I have. The trainings this year wasn't ideal, and I could have went for better options with short terms in mind. However I have already tried to maximize my teams efforts in the past 2-3 seasons, so I decided to go for a complete rebuild, looking at a team that could go for another PT top 3 in 2020, where hopefully Koretzky 82/83HI and Lecuisinier 84MO will make for a perfectly well rounded team. Lecuisinier wasn't trained due to racedays. Giving him one last go at 2 Grand Tours while being young enough to content U25 competition made sense for me, and I don't think the output of going to eg 84MO would have been significantly bigger in that regard with him only doing 1 GT and then 2 smaller GC races. That will be the case in future seasons, but then I don't have the U25 competition to think about either, which make that decision easier to make.
Koretzky is a bit of a worry for me. He isn't very good right now, and anything above 500 points would be good, and while making him 82HI would give him a very similar statcombination of Tejay van Garderen, it was important for me to wait and see exactly how someone like him (Tejay) would perform this season to see if it was a good value for money investment. He still have a couple of years worth in training.
Maxime Daniel isn't going to score better than Tom David imo, and his wage is higher, which made for a stupid decision in terms of competitiveness, but being french it made sense. In earlier seasons I would not have considered making that trade.
I hope I'll end up closer to 13th than 17th, as I really don't want to be part of the relegation battle. We were 12th in Badaling while having a disaster race, so that makes me a little bit more comfortable. If we can move to top 5 (we should be able to) after Qatar, then I have a little buffer going into those races where we have nothing to show.
