Ten minutes. That's how long "you are just a noob" lasted on Saturday night before it came straight back at the lad who said it.

At 18:06 UTC, LilPimiETuk turned up in #suggestions to defend the match engine against rosvorn:

What do you mean? I think the match engine is great, you are just a noob and you have to study it.

At 18:16 he posted this in #match-chatter:

Maybe i am the noob and i need to study the match engine better but... xD how is it possible to go from top 3 to 7 losing streak without anything at all happening at the team?

The data backs up the streak. La Coruña, the Deportivo side he's been asking the Skez bot to fix since 14 October, kicked off against Burgos at 18:00 and lost 2–0. That's seven league defeats in a row: Valladolid, Málaga, Castellón, Barakaldo, U Salamanca, Oviedo and Burgos. They scored four and let in 17. They're 14th in Spain's second tier, and the form guide reads six straight Ls.

GreenFuryx had a theory: "Opponents get better?" Fair shout, la, except Oviedo, who won 2–1 at La Coruña on Wednesday, are 19th of 20.

Football simulator or mathematician simulator?

It started on Thursday. rosvorn, the same lad who called for the FA to be scrapped, asked for a complete rework of the engine with corners, set pieces and free-kick specialists. Cipi replied that corners are "just cosmetics" and that the engine runs on a handful of skills built from the data API. rosvorn didn't budge:

Suggestion stands - full revamp of the simulator engine. Are we playing a football simulator or mathematician simulator.

Cipi went full Morpheus:

So there is no field, there is no ball, there is no player there

He added that "there is no Lamine Yamal in Soccerverse. It´s just an ID". He told rosvorn "you can see the story if you take more pills", and said the engine has had "only 2-3 minor changes in almost 5 years". His point: Hattrick and ManagerZone can invent a "header" because they keep their own data. Soccerverse only has what the API gives it, and it stays decentralised.

rosvorn insisted "I'm not trying to start a fight". He said he'd invested "because I thought it was a football simulator initially", and then he delivered the line of the week:

Maybe I got wrong impression by Andy saying on the AMA that they want to optimize the app for millions of users. Now, that last part is ... hm... its ... HM ! That's all I'm gonna say.

Cipi's reply: there are only 5,300 clubs, so growth has to come from investors and agents, not managers.

Then cloudsv_ reckoned that with GPT "you have It done in 2 or 3 days. A full engine", adding "The cost would be like..... 150$?" rosvorn agreed you could build a "beast of an engine for a week + 2D". Cipi: "I really doubt that you will create a 2D engine". brettwhipp, who'd backed the set-piece idea, gave up: "sounds like its to hard thou."

Nonsense every single week

On Saturday, rosvorn's Burgas lost 2–1 at L Plovdiv at 17:00. Fourteen minutes later:

Complete revamp on match engine. I can't deal with nonsense every single week. Sorry.

Fifty-two minutes after that came the noob jibe, and ten minutes later it bounced back. The best bit is that these two are rivals in Bulgaria's top flight. LilPimiETuk's Varna Green won 4–1 that evening and sit 9th. rosvorn's Burgas are 6th and beat Varna 3–0 in September. The rematch is in Varna on 9 December. Get the popcorn in.

At midnight the engine gave the doubters a present. Cancún lost 3–1 at home to Necaxa, and Rodrigo Reyes Orozco got a straight red on 25 minutes, then a yellow on 84 and a second yellow on 94. Sent off twice in one match. xlonefoxx posted the link: "2 red cards for the same player in 1 game". Cipi says there's no player, only an ID. Apparently the ID can't stay in the dressing room either.

rosvorn has already opened a new front. On Sunday morning in #suggestions: "Economy revamp - a 12 x for every player is absolutely crazy." That's the same 12x behind the FA ban row we covered on Thursday.

The verdict

Cipi's right about the mechanics. There's no new data, so there are no new skills, and he warns that rushing out a new engine "can destroy the entire ecosystem". rosvorn's right about the shop window: casual punters want to watch football, not read it. LilPimiETuk turned out to be right too, but only about himself.

rosvorn's sign-off: "Where there's a will, there's a way." Keep it tidy, lads, and check your own form guide before you call anyone a noob.