As it's the weekend I have a bit of time on my hands but I will resist the temptation to set up for this afternoon's pre- season Gold and the FL
But thinking about this I do have some thoughts .
I won the Gold league two seasons running and was looking forward to defending it. Due to its popularity once the training benefits were mentioned on the forum I wasn't able to get back into it for the next couple of seasons and lost my interest in it. It can't really rank as a top competition if entry to it is so arbitrary as to be the managers who happen to be on line at the time it is open. This is in complete contrast to the FL where entry is open to all managers over and extended period of a week or so and Steve actively contacts new managers to invite them to join. What's more, you have to qualify for the top leagues in the FL by working your way through the lower leagues first. Therefore I didn't really see the Gold League as a high status competition.
If you want to change that you would need to manage entry into it a little more. The Champions League which Dan is managing is also becoming a really top competition.
The situation with the pre-season Gold is even more confusing. It states that it will only be run pre-season but is actually run more than once a season. It was introduced to cope with high demand for the Gold League which was driven by the publicity given to training benefits on the forum ( right or wrong).
Demand for a competition that gives training and gelling benefits in pre-season is always going to be high from managers who are wanting to win top conferences or do well in a tough early season Champions Shield or Elite Cup draw because the lack of scheduled games during the preseason period means that stats otherwise drop making it hard to compete against good teams who have managed this.
Nothing was ever said about whether entry to both competitions was acceptable although several managers who got into neither have complained about that but complaints from some do not equal rules for all. The situation is unclear. The pre-season Gold never seemed as it carried any Kudos at all to me. I was quite surprised to hear that not setting up my team for all matches in that was causing angst.
So, my suggestion if you want to make the Gold League high status would be to manage entry, according to some criteria that could be discussed here, and then control it via password. In order to satisfy the people who just want training benefits from the "gold" leagues you could open as many "pre-season" or "supplementary" gold leagues as is needed..as soon as one fills, open another so that there is always one available. You could also decide if people should be able to enter only one or more than one. This latter aspect could be based on trust or, if it is really considered important, by password. I suspect trust would be enough.
A possible criteria for entry to a high status Gold League could be " the team must have won any competition in the past under the current manager" This shouldn't include lower divisions of conferences. If that's to wide you could consider narrowing it or you could say that you would then select from those that meet the criteria by current order in the managers table for example.
I know that involves work for somebody but if you want the Gold League to have the same sort of Kudos as the FL or CL it may be what's necessary. You can't just open the competition to all comers on the day the previous one finishes and expect it to be respected.
The Gold Cups are a different kettle of fish to the Gold League in my opinion. In a cup ( knockout) competition if somebody does not set up and loses the only person who loses is themselves..others who are still in the competition cant complain that they had a a tougher match. So hopefully the problem is just with the Gold League competition.
Hope that helps.
