Rejected Retains and New Managers

[McMeghan]

Was talking with friends on Discord and we were talking about a rule from the current ruleset of SCL/SPL.

I believe new manager duos (soon to be trios?) shouldn't be able to retain players from the previous season. Simple as.

The way I see it, retains exist to reward clever drafting/scouting from managers who did their job. As a result, I don't think a pair of managers who didn't do anything for that should get to enjoy the rewards.

I think only returning managers (from the same team obviously) should be able to have access to Retains. Or at the very least, one member of the previous year's core. If you really wanna be lenient, I could even see it be fine if a player from the year before turns into a manager and thus has access to the retains under the guise of having contributed to the team environment/growth of the retained player. Anyway you get the idea.

What's people's thoughts on this? Admittedly I didn't think about it too much so maybe I'm missing something but I think it's a fair change to the rules.

 

[Aberforth]

Players can already refuse retains if they dont want to play for the same team that drafted them last year, I dont see why we need to make it harder for new managers each tour they play in. Allowing new managers to benefit from the old managers work is a quirk of the retain system as we have it, but what's the reason to change the system to make things harder for new managers every time they come in?

 

[Luigi]

Was talking with friends on Discord and we were talking about a rule from the current ruleset of SCL/SPL.

I believe new manager duos (soon to be trios?) shouldn't be able to retain players from the previous season. Simple as.

The way I see it, retains exist to reward clever drafting/scouting from managers who did their job. As a result, I don't think a pair of managers who didn't do anything for that should get to enjoy the rewards.

I think only returning managers (from the same team obviously) should be able to have access to Retains. Or at the very least, one member of the previous year's core. If you really wanna be lenient, I could even see it be fine if a player from the year before turns into a manager and thus has access to the retains under the guise of having contributed to the team environment/growth of the retained player. Anyway you get the idea.

What's people's thoughts on this? Admittedly I didn't think about it too much so maybe I'm missing something but I think it's a fair change to the rules.

who benefits from this?

 

[McMeghan]

Players can already refuse retains if they dont want to play for the same team that drafted them last year, I dont see why we need to make it harder for new managers each tour they play in. Allowing new managers to benefit from the old managers work is a quirk of the retain system as we have it, but what's the reason to change the system to make things harder for new managers every time they come in?

Just because you're a new manager doesn't mean you should be handed free gifts. I think everyone should start from the same level and retains should only be a reward for people who did a good job the year before.

As it is, it feels like new managers just start with different playing hands which doesn't feel fair either.

who benefits from this?

I don't think it's about anyone benefiting from this. It just seems more logical to me.

 

[Luigi]

I don't think it's about anyone benefiting from this. It just seems more logical to me.

making the tournament less balanced without benefitting anyone doesn't seem very logical to me.

 

[Drifting]

Obviously I’ve never managed SPL/SCL, but speaking from my experience as an assistant manager in UPL which has the same format, having access to no retains as a new manager, while everyone else could retain all the super undervalued players from last season, felt like we were already starting on the back foot. Combine this with the fact that the auction budget had been increased by about 20-30k that year, making retains relatively more powerful, it all but made it basically impossible to succeed as a new manager pair in that tournament.

So I have to agree that I just don’t see a competitive basis for this. And that’s if we take it for granted that retains are a “reward” to begin with. If I became the new GM of the LA Lakers I don’t lose the ability to renew Lebron’s contract. Retains (imo) should be about tying a player to the franchise, not tying them to the ephemeral face who happens to be running it at the time.

 

[McMeghan]

I don't necessarily disagree with that line of reasonning to be honest.

Another reason that brought up that idea is when I see discussions about some SPL/SCL teams and people actually say things like "oh yeah nice job, but was made much easier with those broken retains you didn't even work for". So this + my vision of retains being a reward made me post this thread.

Also in the past I've seen new managers discuss teams to pick and analyzing the retains available to go for the more "optimal" franchise, so the current system also has that element built into it.

 

[RADU]

The idea of franchising is about the players consistently being on the same teams more so than the managers. You're effectively removing the franchising aspect for any team with new managers and at the same time making it much harder for new managers to ever make up for that barrier for entry.
It's also perfectly normal, imo, for managers to pick the team with the best retains: since SPL takes heavy inspiration from real life sports league lets take an example, if you were a new coach in the prem, would you rather be coaching Liverpool or Crystal Palace? I think people who undermine the work of managers really overstate the importance of retains, and don't realize how easily a bad manager could fumble the bag with a good team while a good manager could get a really good results with few to no retains.

 

[McMeghan]

Alright it seems there were some sides of the question I didn't quite fully consider.

I also think this proposed change is more so "ideological" than beneficial to anyone/anything in particular and so I probably won't comment further and admit defeat.

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For what it's worth, I also think Retains don't really make or break a season. Which means that implementing this rule doesn't really change much in practice. But that also means I don't think it really puts new managers at a disadvantage to begin with.

 

[MANNAT]

I think this proposal is a bit of an overcook. It’s already hard enough to manage an official team tournament for the first time, let alone having no retains against a number of teams that have powerful team bolstering retains. If you feel this strongly about new managers profiting off of the hard work from others, you might as well nuke retains entirely.

 

[Merritt]

Since maybe this wasn't written anywhere (I think it is, but wasn't able to immediately find it), new managers are assigned teams with priority to previous connection to the teams up for grabs, followed afterwards by preference. This has been the case for a long while - returning managers get their own teams back, if they're not managing again then players (priority to retains) are given the team, and only if those factors are both equal do we get into managers selecting from any team.

People already brought up the various other reasons why we wouldn't go through with this change (significant disadvantage for new pairs, hurts franchise aspect of retains), so we're not going to.