Pre season training in full flow in Middletown

[Chris Taylor]

Previous reports went into great detail about the Steelers approach to the 3 auctions in the offseason, and the next in this 'riveting' series of insights is a review of the clubs pre-season training plans. Player development is a foundational part to the Steelers plans to grow a sustainable, competitive club in SSL and the club have suffered many seasons of frustrating mediocrity as a consequence. The club firmly believe that the skill cap that the league has in place means that the real battle ground is with secondary skills with the likes of Byker Grove, Great Preston and more recently Coogee building a winning culture on triple stat freaks that contribute to all phases of the game. As such the off season program's offer the Steelers the chance to work on these secondary skills that might, one day, mean the club don't stink. 

Perhaps the most pleasing part of the offseason has been the lack of options the club have for additional player training. With 8 spots available the club only managed to find 1 player, Billy Watts, that was both eligible and good enough to bother investing in, with 1 shooting point added to the 18 year old defenders skill set. The club struck a deal to sell highly rated young goalkeeping prospect, Suxstorff, but only after they had utilised the goal keeper training option, and the club feel that young defender, Lester Schumacker, is probably just about good enough and young enough to be worth investing 1m to improve his passing skills. The only other options available were either squad fodder in the first team or spending money on the youth team players who frankly the Steelers couldn't give two sh1ts about and will likely sell them all before the season is done! 

Last off-season some confusion over errors in the clubs sheeting meant they only received 300 'good sheeting abs' which definitely stung the clubs management team enough to ensure that the errors weren't repeated. This meant that the club had 500 bonus abs to allocate and they decided to invest that in the development of young Tony Yeboah with 100 passing abs and 400 shooting abs:

T_Yeboah      18 gha  1 15 16 20 21 400 732  916 712
T_Yeboah      18 gha  1 15 17 21 21 400 732  16 112

Yeboah had a woeful time of it as a 17 year old and some had felt he'd fallen behind in his development. With Bucher moving on from the club, the emphasis was on getting Yeboah to become a top tier player by the time that current #1, Sean Boyd, retires in 4 seasons time. 

Speaking of Yeboah, many thought that the woeful season last year would mean he was a guarantee for a spot on foreign loan, however it now seems that he'll stay in the first team set up. The clubs acquisition of all three positional coaches mean he'll be guaranteed 600 additional abs and with enough playing time he should end up with more abs staying than he might on loan. The same is also true of Billy Watts who had a very fruitful season last year but at just 21 rated was thought to be better served going on loan. The deal to sell Sloan meant the club were short of a defender and he'll be joining Yeboah in the hunt for as many minutes as possible as a back up player. It also puts an end to the clubs dream of actually caring about the foreign loan match reports as it is inevitable that 2 losers will be joining Paul Robinson on loan (and he won't actually play because there's already too many keepers out on loan). It does mean that Robinson will return as an 18 year old 21.770 keeper keeping him on track to be in the first team set up at 20 or 21 years old. 

As many of the golden generation at Middletown start to mature, the pressure on the club to actually win some matches will only increase, meaning the clubs emphasis on player development might be harder and harder to come by when it means missing out on top tier talent elsewhere. For now the Steelers are just happy to see that a number of these high end talents are starting to blossom into exceptional players. 

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