Preferred Player Moves

A mate told me recently that PPM's are to the detriment of a player's potential ability. Is that really the case? It's the first I've heard of it and seems like he's just having a laugh to me.

Nah, I seriously doubt it. PA is fixed.

However, learning too many new PPMs can be a detriment to a player reaching his full potential because it takes up 20% of his training workload, so his stats will increase a bit slower... but I doubt that is what your friend meant.

I've also noticed that learning the wrong PPM can occasionally "spoil" good young players, especially at the LLM level.

I had a central midfielder with good (for our level) Long Shots, who was striking goals in from range .. until I taught him that "Likes to shoot from distance" PPM. I'd figured it suited the way he was playing, but it changed him - he began overhitting those shots from range, and couldn't seem to get them on target anymore.

Likewise, a striker I taught "Places Shots" rewarded me with an 855-minute goalless streak as he tried to get too fine with his placement; he didn't really have the Finishing or Technique to support such skilled finishing. The streak gave him low Morale, and players on low Morale make less progress towards their PA, train less efficiently, etc.

Again, I don't think that's what your friend meant .. but it does happen on occasion.

If you got a player with less than 5 for finishing, composure, long shots and technique, teaching them to shoot from far out and to do so often isn't going to help their career.

No, he was over 10 on all of them, 13's and 14's on the key ones .. which is phenomenal for the level we're playing at.

I do start to wonder if PPM's consume CA, though - thinking back on it, as soon as he finished learning the PPM, a number of his attributes dropped by a point.

I've got another young midfielder (21), who my coaches rate as "Doesn't think is likely to improve in the future", meaning, they think his CA is reasonably close to his PA.

I had him learn the "Runs With Ball Through the Centre" PPM, which he finished learning in February of my current season.

Scanning through his Attribute progression on March 1st, I see that he lost a point each of: Jumping, Anticipation, Teamwork, Dribbling, Marking, Finishing, and Penalty Taking.

This from a player who had previously held level across most categories, and was showing slight improvement - 1 or 2 attributes might go up every 3-4 months.

That does sound a lot like the PPM consumed part of his CA, causing his attributes to drop so that he did not exceed his CA.

This might be an area of research for somebody who enjoys that sort of thing.

Interesting thread and those are some good examples you brought up Amaroq to show why we should be extra careful with asking players to adopt certain ppm's or remove certain tendencies.

are PPM's vital to a working game, i know some of them were removed, any chance of them been removed all together

None were removed. You are referring to ones that were never actually implemented in FM08. Can I rephrase your question like this:

"If a player has high creativity, good technical and mental attributes and you give him high creative freedom, does he benefit from having PPMs?"

It's a good question, now that I think of it, especially in the light of Amaroq's observations. I hope more will join in with any insights or evidence.

I do start to wonder if PPM's consume CA, though - thinking back on it, as soon as he finished learning the PPM, a number of his attributes dropped by a point.

Interesting idea. Now that I think of it, I've also had some unexplained attribute drops around the time they've learned new PPMs. Maybe this would explain why some players fail to learn PPM (even if they try). This could probably be tested quite easily by taking one peaked player and making him unlearn a PPM. If after that some of his stats improve, it should be because the unlearning process has "released" some of his CA.

are PPM's vital to a working game, i know some of them were removed, any chance of them been removed all together

I sincerely hope not! They improve and customise the game, in my opinion. They make individual players more unique and I have set ideas for certain players on exactly what I'd like them to do. If they don't like it, I'll be looking to sell.