Beginners' Guide

Your role

You are the manager and are in charge of everything related to your club. You plan tactics and strategy, decide what to train, and select which players get to play. You buy and sell players, invest in stadium improvements, and much more.

Money

Money is important, so think carefully about where you want to spend it. A very good piece of advice in the beginning is to not spend any money until you know what's important and where the money can be put to use best.

You earn money from games, sponsorships, fan club memberships, and player sales. Money is used to cover your expenses like players' and staffs' wages and stadium maintenance – but also for investing in new players and stadium expansions.

Players

Take the time to get to know your players and their skills. Click on the skill links to see where in the scale they are. Your trainer has also picked your key players (in his opinion) to help you get started.

Most players will ultimately use several skills, but as you are just starting, it's best to focus on the main skills:

Matches

A Hattrick season is 16 weeks long: 14 league rounds, one week for promotion/relegation qualifiers, and one week with no league activity. You play league matches on the weekends; cup and friendly games are played midweek. If there's one thing you should do as a manager, it's submit match orders for your matches.

Also make sure to arrange a friendly each week if you're not in the cup. This can be easily done using the friendly pool. Playing friendlies means you can train more players each week. Maximizing your training is very important to help your team progress.

Match basics

While the actual details are, of course, more complex, the basic match simulation has three steps. In each half a number of attacks are made:

• Your midfield battles against your opponent's midfield to get each attack - the stronger of the two sides is more likely to get it. The playmaking skill on your midfielders is what matters the most for your midfield.
• When your midfield has "won" an attack, the type of attack is determined (left, right, middle or set pieces).
• Your attack for that sector is then compared with your opponent's defense in the corresponding sector. Scoring skill on your forwards is most important, particularly for central attacks, while winger skill on your wingers will greatly help your wing attacks.

Training

Training is your primary tool for improving your team, and it's also a good way to earn money (more about that below).

As a new team we recommend you pick one "primary" skill to train, such as goalkeeping, defending, playmaking, or scoring, and stick to training that skill for a while before you change.

The effect from training is applied once a week. For a player to receive full skill training, they need to play in the appropriate position for 90 minutes in matches during the week. Playing any more than that will not give them any extra training effect. So to receive full playmaking training, a player needs to play as an inner midfielder, to receive scoring training he needs to play as a forward, and so on.

Transfer

You can buy new players on the transfer market. The transfer market is also where you sell your players. A good piece of advice is to check the "transfer compare" values to get an idea of how much a certain player normally costs.

Staff

Hiring staff members can help develop your club in different ways. Assistant coaches speed up training, for example, and could be a good first choice for a new team. The higher skill a staff member has, the higher his salary will be. Very highly skilled staff members can be quite expensive, so stay away from them until you are sure they are what you need. You can find more info about staff in the manual.

Stadium

There will be a time when you want to expand your stadium, but a good tip is to wait to do it only after you're consistently filling your current one. Doing it any earlier is pouring money down the drain.

Youth players

Recruiting your own youth players is a fun way to acquire new players for your team, but as there are some costs related to it, we advise you to wait until you have a better understanding of the game, just so you don't waste any money.

Team building strategies

As a new team, a good strategy is to build for the future instead of the present. The future of your team probably belongs to the younger players, so building your team around them is a good piece of advice. Sometimes it may even be beneficial to sell your best player, to raise funds for buying younger talent.

Focus on training and build one part of your team at a time. Let your first team players play in the league match and then buy a couple of trainees (young players who are around passable or solid in the skill you're training) to play in the friendly game solely to give them skill training. In the beginning of your career it's not a bad move to have trainees available to play the league match as well, if you can afford it. These trainees can later (when their skills have improved a few levels) be sold for (hopefully) a higher price than what you bought them for – giving you money to further strengthen your team.

Use match formations that maximize training, at least in friendly matches. If, for example, you train scoring, make sure to play with a formation that uses 3 forwards at least once a week – as more players will then get full skill training. And if you train defending, play a formation using 5 defenders.