MasterstrokeSquad building and management
Board expectations
The results a club or national board expects from its manager for the season, set against the squad's strength, and reviewed at the end.
Board expectations are the results a manager is expected to deliver in a season, set by the club's or the national board's owners and reviewed when it ends.
Every board has a view of its own team's strength and a target to match: a title for the club that just spent the most at the auction, a playoff place for a mid-table side, survival and development for a rebuilding one. The target is usually set once the squad is known, because a board that has watched its manager blow the purse on two stars will judge the season against what that money should have bought. National boards add their own layers: a home series win, a ranking, progress at a World Cup, and a captain they approve of.
Managers live with the gap between the target and the points table. Meeting it buys time and a bigger budget; missing it by a little invites a difficult conversation; missing it by a lot ends the job. The sharpest managers work out what the board will actually count as success, which is not always the same as the stated target, and build a season around it.
In Masterstroke: the board sets your target the morning after the auction, so what you built is what you are judged on. Win enough and a national board comes calling, with its own opinion about the result.