Hello all, I don't mean to take away from everything else being discussed, but I have a new discussion point that I'd like some feedback on. I already talked about this with a few people and to my surprise virtually everyone agreed so I felt it was worth bringing here. In short, I believe custom manager prices may be better than fixed prices. If I recall correctly, last year the price for managers was about 12.5k. In my opinion this was rarely a fair price, every team either got a player who woulda ordinarily gone for over 20k for dirt cheap, and others felt like they didnt live up to the price. Because of that we saw some broken combos (stareal + starmaster ou core comes to mind) and some others that were lacking.
In the spirit of competition, and considering this is not supposed to be an "elite" tour but rather one where even middle of the road guys should feel comfortable playing, I think custom prices would help here. No team should be gifted an all-star player before the tour even begins, and likewise, lower caliber managers should not be punished by having to choose between managing and playing because they know theyre not worth the price.
One of the major concerns I know people will bring up will be ambiguity, and how to determine the price of a playing manager. You could do this simply with categories, such as ranking managers in categories of say 12k, 16k, 20k or some other amalgamation. Or, custom prices for each and every manager still works as long as you have some objective criteria for assessing a player's value. Someone told me Ticken had a good formula for this, I'm sure other formulas exist as well.
I know that some people will not agree with this, especially teams that have a cracked playing manager they were hoping to swoop for a steal. But it is healthier for the tour as a whole to not give certain teams a major advantage right off the bat. I would urge everyone to not just oppose this idea because it doesnt benefit them, but rather consider how it could create for a better tour.