At the start of the season I wrote up my Sorare goals and strategies for the year. I’m going to run through how the first half of the season has gone and how much progress I’ve made towards my goals. I also want to look toward the rest of the season, whether to add any new goals and which of the current goals should be focused on.

The Highs

I’ve managed my highest scores in a non-Amateur competition score in GW 397. I got up to 430.45 points thanks to a Celtic stack + Antwerp’s Jelle Bataille. The score was good enough for a cash reward and my first tier two reward on Sorare!

I’ve been pretty consistently picking up at least a threshold or a card reward each week over the last couple of months. Some weeks I’m even managing to win something mid week and at the weekend. I’ve not had much midweek utility in my gallery until this season, so it’s great to have a genuine sweat in most game weeks.

Overall, I’ve won £64.61 in cash rewards in the season to date. I’ve also added 18 card rewards, of which I’ve sold two for a combined £10.85 but I have kept the rest for now. Luis Rioja from Alaves is the only reward that’s contributed to winning anything, so I probably should get rid of a few of them to be honest.

The Lows

It was a pretty rough start to the season. After winning a couple of rewards before the Scottish Premiership started, I went 4 weeks (8 game weeks) without any kind of reward between August and September.

With my gallery having a heavy focus on Scottish players, I was hoping for a really successful Christmas period whilst most of the other leagues were on break. I did pick up some rewards, but I didn’t put any huge scores up so they were lower tier cards. Like a lot of people I did get burned by some weather postponements which didn’t help.

When I did hit a Tier 2 it was Lisandro Martinez who was promptly ruled out injured the following game week and has just returned. I still have the card, so hopefully I’ll get some solid utility moving forward or see his price rebound a bit!

Season Goals

SO5 Goals

• 2/3 hit rate for Limited thresholds – I got off to a super slow start and that basically killed any hope of hitting this target. Overall I’ve hit the threshold in 14 of 34 game weeks (41% hit rate) where I’ve been entering a competitive line-up (there were a couple of quiet weeks I entered three-man line-ups as an extra training line-up).
• Record a 450 point score – I haven’t hit 450, but I have set a new personal record at 430 points. I set 450 as the target with the now-defunct fitness bonus in mind, so without that extra 8-10% I’m considering this one a win.
• Win a Star Limited – I new this was an ambitious one and I haven’t come close, a Tier 2 has been my best card reward to date. The Christmas period was probably my best chance with my Scottish cards, so I’m not confident I’ll manage this by the end of the season.
• Win 3 Rare cards – Current count zero – so not great here either. My plans for Cap 220 Rare didn’t work out (more on that below), I’m switching up my approach to Rares so hopefully I can at least make some progress on this goal by the end of the season.

Other Goals

• Do a Better Job Taking Profit – Mixed results here I’d say. I’ve taken profit on some cards when it’s there and flipped a few limited cards that I thought were underpriced. However, I have also held cards when prices have risen. Isco is the biggest missed opportunity in £ terms, but I’ve held on to plenty of others I could have taken profit on. Definitely room to improve on this one.
• Add Midweek and International Utility – I had some decent midweek utility in the first half of the season, but there won’t be as much the rest of the way with Newcastle and Celtic out of Europe. I have enough international options now I should be able to put a Cap 240 line-up in at least.
• Add Summer Utility – I’ve added a Tigres collection which should give some utility over the summer at least. I wouldn’t mind adding a few more options here to let me play match-ups a bit more.
• Trim Down Some Low End Cards – I traded a few away early in the season, but I’ve replaced them between some Cap 220 leftovers, rewards I haven’t sold and few other pick-ups. I’d like to improve on this one and trade some quantity into quality!

Cap 220 Check-In

Limited

My Cap 220 Limited strategy was to attempt to play the competition like a Daily Fantasy competition, trading in and out of players on a week-to-week basis. The hope was this would allow me to target strong match-ups and win some card rewards. I started with a £30 bankroll with the aim of making a 100% ROI by the end of the season.

I had a couple of close calls with rewards, but ultimately I haven’t won any cards with this strategy. To be honest, by mid-October I abandoned this approach. I stopped having as much time to research as I would like to and it lead to me picking players up last minute at peak prices. That coupled with the lack of results made it an easy decision to cut my losses.

Now Cap 220 seems to be the home of month-long competitions this is definitely the strategy needed to get near the top of the leaderboard. However, with a lot more people doing it, the price surges are huge on the best options which immediately drop once the game weeks close. I suspect it means the losses on cards will wipe out any profit made from the final reward unless you luck-box a Star limited or possibly a Tier One.

I still have 11 of the cards I bought for this challenge, at their current floor prices they are worth £13.21. That coupled with £13.70 from card sales leaves me down £3.75 on my starting £30. So a small negative ROI (-12.5%), isn’t too bad a result.

Rare

For Cap 220 Rare my strategy was to base my team on a three man stack with a proven history of correlating high scores. When the main stack had a strong match-up my intention was to make this my priority line-up and play my limited goalkeeper with the best match-up. Rounding out the team would be a high upside rare outfielder with a good match-up.

This one was an abject failure in terms of SO5 results. I looked into Saint Johnstone based off already having Stevie May as a forward option and paired him with Drey Wright and Andy Considine. The three had a history of hitting some big scores together and Saint Johnstone lose enough games to keep their L15s affordable. Drey Wright has barely played thanks to injuries and May was benched after doing next to nothing on the field, so not great!

On the plus side I have managed to flip a few rares for profit over the first half of the season. So not a complete loss. Now it looks like Cap 220 month-long is going to be a regular occurrence this strategy is dead – there’s no way a side that fits under the 220 point cap will also get 4 strong games in a month. So, I won’t be continuing with this strategy going forward.

The Rest of the Season

I’ll be continuing to working towards the goals I set at the start of the season. I’m going to try and re-focus on taking profits and getting rid of some of the bottom end players in the gallery including the rewards I’m not getting a huge amount of utility from. With the returns I’ll look to either add some elite limited cards or some more rare options.

Over the second half of the season I’m looking to make the step up to Cap 240 Rare. I’ve picked up some MLS players over the winter that I’m hoping can earn a few thresholds over the rest of the season. I don’t have the budget to add a lot of options so I think I may need to be quite active trading cards – whether to keep under the cap or to find players with decent match-ups.

There’s a bit of risk here with the speculation of changes to thresholds around the community. But I’m hopefully I can earn some rewards before any changes go into effect as well as potentially making some profits on the cards. Ultimately, I’d like to transition over to Scottish Premiership cards by the start of the 24/25 season. I have more knowledge there, which should lead to more consistent results.