Psychology

There are several completely different issues that fit into this chapter. There's a "global" psychology (team spirit and confidence), player intristics (agreebility, honesty and aggressivity), team attitudes during a game (play it cool, normal, match of the season) and such "institutions" as team captain, coach and clown.

1. Team spirit (TS).

TS is by far the most important thing discussed here. What does it do? It considerably affects midfield value, which -- as you hopefully know well by now -- is the most important "sector" of your team during a game. Plus it's the nicest thing that you can manage in hattrick, since there are so many factors that influence it. TS level is the common thing that distinguishes experienced hattricker from new managers. Keep it as high as possible.

Now concentrate a bit, I'm going to explain the mechanism behind TS fluctuations. There five kinds of occurences that may change your TS:

• daily updates
• matches
• player trades
• training intensity changes
• penalty for having too many employees

Daily updates.
You know what they are, right? Special scripts run throught the database and make appropriate changes to many things, such as player health, arena construction, etc. They read relevant data (For example player's age, injury level and number of doctors) and calculate new value of a given thing (player's health in this case). Same thing happens to team spirit. Mechanism is a bit complicated, though. During those updates TS always shift towards the "neutral" value (which seems to be somewhere within composed level). The steps towards this neutral value differ. They depend on:

• difference between current TS level and this "neutral" value. Bigger difference means bigger jump. For example you will lose more if you're currently at Paradise on Earth than when you're at delirious. Similarly, you'll gain more when at furious than when at irritated.
• coach'es leadership. Higher means you'll get more or lose less.
• team leader's leadership. As above.

Matches.
Play it Cool (PiC) raises your team spirit, Match of the Season (MotS) lowers it. It's hard to try to give you precise numbers here... PiC raises your TS by 1-2 levels. Some people say that MotS lowers TS by half (which I don't quite agree with). Anyways, team attitude significantly influences TS and you should consider it as the most important factor.
In a match itself, PiC and MotS alter midfield ratings (I'd say it's 20-30% change, but it's just a rule of a thumb). Their impact on other issues is not stated clearly in HT rules, but it seems that midfield is not the only thing that is altered. My guess would be that (at least in case of MotSing) chance to score itself is altered. So solid attack would have a bigger chance to score against a inadequate defence if the attacking side is playing MotS. Neither star ratings or team attack and defence are affected.
It's very desirable to build up TS early in the season and keep it high till the end. And yes, only people that play in qualification games (or cup final in countries with 6+ league levels) or those that like to call themselves Mother Teresa do not play MotS in the week (Gee, I love it so much... I finally get to have midfield as high as my competitors' average ;) ).

Player trades.
This rule was implemented to stop daytraders a bit. It's simple - nasty/controversial players lower TS when bought, popular/sympathetic guys do the same when are sold. It seems that pleasant players give no effect at all, although I might be wrong here (I don't want to waste your time on explaining, why, but if you read the chapter on values, it should be obvious).
Edit: I received some feedback (from anonymous user) and it seems that pleasant players may reduce TS when are sold. It looks like the "magic" border is something within this level.
Edit2: TS can drop also when a pleasant player is bought.

Training intensity changes.
Thats something that many people don't know about. If you significantly lower the intensity of training, your TS will skyrocket. And vice-versa: when you raise it, TS will drop. Might be useful before some important games, especially in the end of the season (when you don't give a crap about TS dropping in a few days when you get back to high intensity). I have not tested it, so my knowledge is close to nothing... please contact me if you have some experience with it!

Penalty for having too many employees.
This rule is widely known, so there's no need to write a lot about it. If you have more than 10 employees of any kind (goaltending and assistant coaches are counted together), you'll get fined on friday. There's absolutely no reason to go beyond 10, period.

Also, it's said in the rules that psychologists improve TS "to a degree". I can't really tell you how big is their impact (they mainly deal with confidence), I have not noticed it at all (maybe it only helps when TS is low? Mine is usually high...).

Tips:

• Play PiC as often as possible. Surely in all of those games that you'll most likely to win. I can't tell you how important this is!
• When you want to make something that will lower your TS, do it early. Your TS will either fall slower or rise faster (no need to explain, right?). Generally it's good to make those TS sacrifices on Sunday, after the game.
• Playing PiC is less profitable if you're around delirious/PoE, since it's going to drop fast anyway. Especially, if your coach has bad leadership or your team leader is not popular.
• Try not to play MotS, unless it's the end of the season and you don't have anything to fight for.
• If you have a bunch of potential players to be bought, consider their agreebility as well. Pleasant is nice (won't lower your TS when bought/sold) in other cases decide whether you want to be penalized now, or in the future. In the off-season, before TS reset, go ahead and buy those nasty/controversial bastards!

2. Confidence.

High confidence helps you score when you get the chance. Again, I have no idea on how important it is, since I barely ever have it below strong :/. It changes after you've won or lost a competitive game (results of friendlies have no effect) and during weekly update (the one that brings you a new youth squad pull). Draws have no effect. Number of psychologists sets a point that confidence switches towards.

Overconfidence. Sometimes it's good to oversleep and miss watching the game live. Especially if this damn feature kicks in. Overconfidence might happen when your opponent has much lower confidence... you lose A LOT in all sectors (defense/midfield/attack). In my first season I was almost sure that I will advance to the 2nd league. Unfortunately, overconfidence kicked in when I was playing against a AI-controlled team. Great advantage and 0-0. Couple weeks earlier I had that game (MatchID 994837):

Teodor Nyhgren behaved like an inexperienced youth player in the 5:th minute as he gave the ball away to an opponent. Lucky for him though, there was no goal. Dziobaki had a good opportunity to score the lead goal but the home team goaltender Mikael Einarsson saved Gabriel Przybylowicz´s shot headed for the top corner. The teams went for a half-time break at 0 - 0. Dziobaki, bringing the final ball possession rate to 96 percent, dominated the battle.

Dziobaki held the ball, with a clear 98 percent possession rate. (yes, there were no events in the 2nd half)
Attack was weak-passable-weak against 3x inadequate defense. Wouldn't you be mad? I missed the 2nd league by 1 point I think.

Tips:

• Try not to think about psychologists as a way to quickly repair your current confidence level, especially if you don't have a wealthy club. Remember that they have an effect at the same time that economic update is processed, so (unlike For example assistant coaches), you have to pay them one extra salary (when they're fired). Hireing 10 guys and fireing them right after the first update will cost you 30k €...

3. Team leader.
Every team has a leader. Unlike in real world, hattrick leaders usually sit on their butts and do nothing, that's their job. Who are they? During everyday's update agreebility of a player with the highest leadership influences TS a bit. He doesn't have to play, he might have 9 weeks of injury to heal, it doesn't matter. I've read that coaches may not be leaders (I think it was said by some HT-guy). If two or more players have the highest level of leadership (For example you have 3 solid leaders), you can't really tell which one is the leader, unless you have a superb experience in that area (I don't).
So it's a smart thing to have just one guy that is popular (the highest agreebility level) and has leadership higher than any other player. Usually people buy one popular player with solid leadership. Such a guy is called a clown (only popular/solid!). There are also semi-clowns (sympathetic/solid, they do the job, but not as nicely) and anti-clowns (solid leadership and bad agreebility).

Tips:

• How to find a clown? That's what I did: I searched for players with current price less than 25k €, low value (can't remember exact figure, let's say it was max. 25k €, too) and maximum inadequate playmaking, scoring, defending and goaltending. When I got the list of players (long list in most countries), I just opened all of them in a new window (which is, btw, MUCH more convenient in Opera than in Internet Explorer). When I got a lot of those players opened, I just minimized that main hattrick window and quickly checked if any of those guys was a clown. Quick look at leadership, Alt+F4 (close window)... repeated many, many times. Finally I found a cheap guy (12,5k €) who doesn't earn a lot (he's even Polish!).
  If you don't want to spend a lot of time, try looking at some advertising places for people selling clowns. Currently the price seems to be around 60-70k € (just to give you a picture, I haven't done any closer research on that).

• If you can't afford a clown, try to buy a semi-clown, but make sure he will be a leader! I'd probably buy someone sympathetic with solid leadership. If you're lucky enough not to have anyone with passable leadership, than buy some popular guy with passable leadership. Just make sure you don't pay too much for those guys (I'd search for someone who should be sold for almost nothing).
• How to make anti-clown not doing his nasty job? HT-Bjorn said that he's 95% sure (he just doesn't remember how it was coded) that ex-coaches still lose leadership. So when you want to get a new coach, turn your anti-clown into the cheapest possible coach (weak) at first and then make your desired player a coach. You'll lose some money (10k €). Note that this anti-clown must have at least weak experience (otherwise you won't be able to turn him into a coach).

4. Coach.
Your coach has a similar impact on the team spirit that team leader does (although I can't tell you what's more important, it's virtually impossible to measure that), only in case of the coach leadership itself is the key factor. As a national coach, I received a ht-mail from someone (can't remember his nick) who said that his TS hasn't dropped from PoE after one week! Again, I can't certify that (but that would be sweet, wouldn't it?).
Under new rules, there are two ways to get a new coach.

• Hireing a completely new guy, which should only be used by those that are just starting their careers in hattrick (they don't have money and players with high experience... and they can't wait for one season, of course). Unfortunately, coaches with poor leadership seem to be the only option for those new managers, as they need training power badly (better leadership is not affordable).
• Transforming an existing player into coach. Few rules:
  • operation costs more if you choose a coach to have greater coaching skill.
  • operation costs less if a player has higher experience.
  • player's experience and leadership are inherited.
  • player must have been in your team for at least one season.

  This is much cheaper way of getting good coaches, as high leadership & coaching skill combos are deadly expensive if you hire a brand new person.

Note that if you want a coach with high leadership, you'll have to keep an anti-clown in your squad for at least one season (unless you're very lucky to find a clown with good enough experience).
Also, under new rules coaches lose leadership gradually, keep that in mind.

Tips:

• It's a good thing to start looking for the next coach early. You might buy some worthless guy with passable experience and For example passable leadership... give him a chance to play few times, so that he gets a chance to raise experience to solid.
• If you can't afford a good coach, think about coaching skill in the first place. First make sure that you grant your team a steady source of income (training), then worry about it's current performance (TS, etc.).

5. Captain.
He has one simple job: raises your team's overall experience. His experience and leadership count. Leadership seems to be more important, just let me tell that while I've been coaching a national team, world class/solid guy made team experience 1-2 levels higher than magical/inadequate man.

Tips:

• It might be a good thing to look for one player with nice leadership (passable?) and experience. Just wait till you need a new player... but make sure he won't get too weak for your squad early, you don't want to make that painful transfer search any time soon :)

6. Aggreebility, honesty, agressission
All about agreebility has been already said. It only matters for team leaders and when players are bought/sold.
Honesty and aggression. The lower their level is, the higher a chance that your player gets booked. If you look carefully at match reports, you'll see that bookings related to those two intristics are noted with different sentences. High aggression might pay off sometimes, when you'll see your opponent dragged off the field (what kind of a sick animal are you, huh?). AFAIR bad level of honesty has no advantages.

Tips:

• Try not to buy criminals, they tend to get the third booking in the worst possible moment. I got that from Hattrick chapter of Murphy's Laws book at the local metaphysics bookstore.