I'm no math major but these "odds" seem fishy?

So. Let's see if somebody brilliant on here can explain this to me. What exactly, percentage chance to win wise, does it say when my Man Utd team is favoured over, I don't know let's pick a not so random example, tottenham: TOT 4-1 DRAW 5-1 MAN UTD 4-7 (FAV)

Now, it think it is also important to keep in mind a few things:

A. I have signed 7 players before the season all of whom were improvements over those they replaced (often times radically so). This game was in November. They have had plenty of time to gel and adjust. Their morale is fine, nobody is unhappy etc. It is obvious that the above odds do not take into consideration the actual players on the pitch because they do not change based on your starting line-up.

B. At each and every position on the field (both teams 4-4-2) my players are superiour statistically. They are also at 100% stamina whereas the opposition is from 92-95%.

C. I do not want to hear "It's your tactics. You don't have your tactics right". I am not a MORON. I do not have my keeper in at striker. I am very expert on picking the right formation that best suits the talent on my team. I know how and when to adjust from one of the preset "defensive" approaches to "attacking" approaches. The Advisor Meeting suggested that the team was most suceptible to a 4-4-2 (which is my normal, for 20+ games, formation) and a normal speed and normal defensive line ... So I set the strategy to standard ... and yes, I even faithfully followed the "opposition instructions" ....

I only ask this because I am wondering what the above "odds" mean translated into percentages ... because whatever they do in strict mathematical terms I doubt they come anywhere close to matching the reality of what the "game engine" (it should be called the "sack of warm goat vomit total BS we have decided you will lose this game no matter what-engine") actually produced:

35 full simulations run:

29 losses

4 draws

1 win (obviously the 35th and final simulation)

So, for all of you who have posted that the game action seems "fishy" and that opposing players seem to hit 35 yard screamers and free kicks with regularity and your players seem to have a penchant for rolling the ball directly to the opposition etc etc you know have your valid hard data proof that you are right. the game is out to get you. and for all of the "experts" who propound how it is just your "tactics" you are WRONG!!! You cannot argue with math!!!

Oh. And like FM 08 and FM 09 the injury engine is also IDIOTIC!!!! I have played half a season and every person in my first 23 has been injured at least once for a 2 week injury or more (i dont even count moronic things like the 3 day flu anymore) and 5 of them have been out twice. Oh, and this wasn't just an "anomaly" .. there were 3 other games during the half season that it took over 15 full simulations before my team, faourites at 1-2 or better, against statistically inferiour competition, was able to book a "win" (and almost always that win came with one or more red cards and at least 2 injuries).

So it looks like they have come up with a nicer looking same old same old version of the exact same thing ... Injury BS Manager 2010!!!! Great going guys. It really is too bad that FIFA's manager mode sucks even worse than this game .... as hard as that is to imagine. Like always the only way to make this game even somewhat enjoyable is to wait for creative folks to invent an FM-RTE or in game editor to act as a counterbalance to the less than fair hand of the programming in the game ... sad really ...

Your point seems interesting.

The only part I can comment on is injuries... I truly believe injuries are very largely affected by your training, so I suggest lowering your intensity in order to get fewer, I personally set my overall slider in the middle of medium and my injuries are pretty good. Don't overwork players.

Your point seems interesting.

The only part I can comment on is injuries... I truly believe injuries are very largely affected by your training, so I suggest lowering your intensity in order to get fewer, I personally set my overall slider in the middle of medium and my injuries are pretty good. Don't overwork players.

Yes. I learned that Catch-22 playing FM 09. In order to have even a marginally realistic (but still rather fatal) season you have to have your training at half or less which then of course plummets your players stats. That is why I will only play with FM-RTE. No injures. And no idiotic generated players. I have never seen so many completely stupid sets of stats on players. I love all of those 5'8" players with huge Heading and Jumping numbers and central defenders with super low marking and tackling, 3's in almost everything and a 17 in pace and a 18 in free-kick taking ... the 'engine' that generates players needs to be scrapped entirely and just have a system where you can create your own players by spending "points". Tho the entire system of player stats and potential is really bogus if you look "inside" the numbers with the FM-RTE. You can see the "Potential" rating out of 200 and the "actual" rating out of 200, but then there is a % rating too ... and none of them are sensibly related to the actually attribute stats ... there are players with lower Potential, Actual ratings out of 200, lower % ratings and yet have higher total actual stats in attributes ... the whole thing smacks of screwy.

It's you tactics!!

It's you tactics!!

i agree with this

It's you tactics!!

how did i just know that some smart alec was going to say that.

i really do love those posters that respond to the frustration of others, that as it seems by scientific evidence are at least founded in something, with a "i am sooooo smart and it must be you are stupid. only i with my vast FM expertise can figure out something as complicated as the tactics in the game."

to which i reply that A. any moderately intelligent person can figure out the "tactics" in the game and B. the tactics in the game bear almost no resemblance to real life football often times.

I think you need to turn your humour/sarcastic meter on.

I wasn't actually saying it was your tactic just having a laugh seen as you mentioned it so many times.

I think you need to turn your humour/sarcastic meter on.

I wasn't actually saying it was your tactic just having a laugh seen as you mentioned it so many times.

no no. that is why i used the tongue sticky outy emoticon. i got the snark. which is why i said "i really love THOSE posters" and did not refer to YOU.

maybe your humour/snark meter is low on batteries too?

i was being serious, you probably should have gone 4-5-1, at least after the first 10 times you lost

All i can say mate is "Don't buy the game if you don't like it". If you are gonna buy it SHUT UP

maybe your humour/snark meter is low on batteries too?

I swapped it for the beer meter.

All i can say mate is "Don't buy the game if you don't like it". If you are gonna buy it SHUT UP

yes. by all means. why have constructive, if not also a bit sarcastic, criticism. why would one want to hope for the best but be disappointed that very sundry totally BS aspects to the previous FM games were still not addressed.

i apologize for exercising my innate right to express my frustration and disappointment (with supporting data) freely in what one supposed was a FORUM ... i forgot that this was, in fact, not an open forum for discussion, but a chapel for mindless devotion ... my bad ... pray on my little mindless (and rather rude) drones ...

i was being serious, you probably should have gone 4-5-1, at least after the first 10 times you lost

the point of the experiment was to FOLLOW the directions and tactics of the game and see if in fact the game engine was producing "fair" and "accurate" results based on the supposed "odds" to win. if i had not followed the "advice" (which by the way should be good given that the Asst Manager is of Man Utd and not some Blue Square North squad) and "tactics" the game said was most likely to produce good results than I really could be accused of it "being my tactics" ... the point of an experiment is to control the possible variables and then observe the results.

I dont'y want to turn this into a slagging match but you come on here shouting your mouth off about the demo which is not the finished article. I've played FM since it came back out in 2005 and always find people like you slaggin the game, but soon as they get the game and figure it out and win all the time their happy. IT'S FOOTBALL YOU CANT WIN EM ALL

yes. you are the only one who has played the game before. face it. the game might be better than the competition but it is still a rather poor simulation in many ways. many obvious ways. lots of people complain about them because they are actual problems, problems that should be simple to address but never are and there is ample anecdotal and now verifiable data that the game engine does not "play fair" so to speak. and yes. sometimes you loose in football. but i would rather that not be because the "game" has its "finger on the scale" ... and i think it is pretty presumptuous of you to assume that i "haven't figured out the game". i probably understand the inner workings of the game engine better than you do by a mile, due to my highly nerdy nature and access to the FM RTE and having torn apart the inner statistics of FM 09. (none of which make sense btw)

you're a complete knob, i'm not afraid to say it

So basically your sayin they haven't sorted it out since 09 so when it comes out you are going into that FM RTE or whateva it is to edit the game to suit you. Which is fair enough if thats what you want to do.

Who you talkin about uistbhoy?

Who you talkin about uistbhoy?

not uuuuuuuuuuu

Do you think he's talkin S**T

Do you think he's talkin S**T

yep, pretty much

yh same here

So basically your sayin they haven't sorted it out since 09 so when it comes out you are going into that FM RTE or whateva it is to edit the game to suit you. Which is fair enough if thats what you want to do.

IMHO the game absolutely needs some serious work. Lots of it is good. But alot of it is highly suspect to say the least. The FM-RTE (Real Time Editor) simply allows you to go into "the inner workings" of the game. The most useful thing is the ability to heal your tragic band of walking war wounded. But it is also nice to redistribute players stats. I avoid making "super human players" but I have seen some utter non-sensical stats on players. My favourite is players who are 5'6"-5'8" who have really high "Heading" stats. And the randomly generated players if you play for many years are just rubbish with how they distribute the points initially and since the way the players develop and train is also just as rubbish it is nice to be able to manually increase the player stats in a more sensible way year by year up to their 'potential' (tho i do keep myself to whatever internal % rating they originally have) ... I just got sick of having each player in the perfect training regimen (maxed out since you can heal injuries) to boost the most important stats for their position(s) and then watch theirs stats go up in totally useless categories. yes yes, my striker with the 6 in tackling, who is under a training regimen with super low for defence, really needed that one more point in tackling and not in say ... oh, something useful like ... i don't know ... first touch, finishing ... the things i have maxed out in the training.

is it technically cheating. yes. is the game also cheating. i think i have proved with this, and other data collection (like on injuries) that it is .... so it cheats, i cheat ... fight fire with fire is what i say ... plus it is the only way i can make the game tolerable and somewhat enjoyable ...

I've played few games on the demo now but i cant say that i've had loadsa injuries. I can remember last year the game was unplayable when it was 1st released due to the amount of injuries you got.

ive gone the whole demo with no more than 2 injuries ova 2 weeks and ive done three demos. leeds, wigan, sunderland. if you dont like the game bud then dont buy it.

ah. the last refuge of the village idiot who is faced with cold hard facts. just deny that they exist. as hard as it is to imagine, for some people the 'method' is as important as the 'madness' ... you see suspect things happen in the game and just go "oh, well that is the way it goes" and some of us wonder if all of the "anecdotes" and "irregularities" have any underlying fact to them ... and so we do what rationalists do, we collect data and experiment to find out if there are any underlying proofs that the game is bogus ... it turns out it is ... maybe there is a good reason from a programming and development standpoint ... i don't know i am not a programmer but it would seem to be pretty simple to develop a programme that took into account all of the pertinent factors (player stats, home/away, morale, form, tactics, fitness, etc) and that produced outcomes that are consistent with reasonable probabilities ... whatever the game engine is doing it is not doing that. it cannot even do something simple like adjust the probabilities based on who you start ... (for instance for those "Cup" games against scrub teams where you start your youngsters the odds should be different than if you start your superstar starters, and you should be able to see ... in basic terms, how your team selection impacts the probability of your winning (the odds in other words, which while not exact should roughly translate into ... if you were to run 100 simulations, something resembling the probability outcome). Also the game has just small annoying problems that should be easy to programme around. My overall "Transfer Confidence" is lowered because people are upset that players left the club when better players replaced them ... that is just stupid. I sold some 1 1/2 star 22 year old scrubs and bought four 19-21 year olds that were nearly fully developed 3 star players and the fans aren't ecstatic? It was the same stupid stuff in FM 09 where you would scout and find some 17 year old wonderkid potential who wasn't good enough to play right away but you wanted to scoop up and the fans would ding you on your "transfer" confidence. that is just an idiotically easy problem to fix yet ... not fixed. I could go on but I wont ... obviously you 'drones' do not wish to hear anyone "disparage" (ie rightfully criticize) your beloved FM.

He'll buy the game regs no dowt about it

You go on about odds, the odds are set before you pick your squad. Maybe what they would need to do is add latest odds to the game

on a serious note now.

From what i can gather from your opening post you are upset becuase the match odds made you a heavy favourite and after following all advice given you lost. Is that correct so far?

So You therefore decided to run a test by replaying the same match 35 times. Now during these 35 replays you followed pretty much the exact same tactics, advice ect, ect, that you used for the 1st match and still lost the majority of these games. is this correct so far?

I really dont see what your problem is if this is what actually happened. The game uses mathematical data to simulate a result so if you have the same data for 35 simulations then you would expect to se the same result pretty much most, if not all of the time. There will obviously be some variances, like an opposition goalie having a bad day or something such as this, so this is where the 4 draws and 1 win come in.

And if you are just complaining that you lost even when you are a heavy favourite then lets not forget that this happens all the time in real life as well.

exactly fuzzrab ur spot on there

yes. see that is what i mean. once you select your squad, on the match preview screen, the odds should be adjusted to reflect your selections. and yes, betting odds are not exactly the same as what the internal engine might produce over 100 simulations. but they should at least be in the ball park. there are NO circumstances that even the original, unaltered Man Utd line up (much less my vastly improved line up) wouldn't beat Tottenham more than 1 out of 35 times. I mean Man Utd could literally play with 10 or 9 men and win at a greater probability rate than that.

that is just one of hundreds of little annoyances that still exist in the game. i litterally played over 12 seasons of FM 09 and you should see how bad all of the players were once the "original" players were gone. the game NEVER creates young players that start out on a comparable level to say players like Pato or Stevan Jovetic etc who at only 18-19 are already 'developed' enough (ie have the attribute stats) to compete at the highest levels. to give you an insight into the 'inner workings' let's say those players have a potential rating of 185/200. well at 19 in the starting tame they are very nearly fully developed ... lets say 175-180 out of their max of 185. new 'created' players in the game, no matter what their potential start out with a rating of 40-90 and are usually 15-16. there IS NO POSSIBLE WAY to develop them to a the equivalent of any of the really good young real players at the start of the game. even if you start them even tho they have super low potential ability and suck quite badly stats wise in every first team game they do not develop that quickly in those 2-3 years. and the truth turns out that they never develop to anywhere near their potential if looking at the 'created' players on even the computer run teams is any indication.

maybe i think too much about these things but that is, in my opinion, the fun of a simulation like this ... the essence is in attention to details. they might seem small to some but to me that is what would make a simulation like this realistic and of the highest quality. and from everything i have seen this franchise, in all of the iterations i have used is sorely lacking when it comes to attention to realistic details ... even simple things that should be easy to programme. what do you mean the fan rating is "Poor" when a team of 18 year olds go out and beat a full fledged Premier League side (albeit a lower table one) 2 - 1. the fans would be ecstatic ... they would be mercilessly mocking the opposing fans that their team lost to "our babies" ... it is little things like this ... which should be simple to address ... are ignored and glossed over that i find highly annoying and what vex me most about the game ...

Instead of shouting about it, upload your save game.

Pato and Jovetic sarted off in 1st teams when they were 16. I do that with regens get them in there playin early learning from top players like rooney and rio and betime they get to 19 they are worldwide wonderkids or continental wonderkids. Not all youth reach there potential early.

on a serious note now.

From what i can gather from your opening post you are upset becuase the match odds made you a heavy favourite and after following all advice given you lost. Is that correct so far?

So You therefore decided to run a test by replaying the same match 35 times. Now during these 35 replays you followed pretty much the exact same tactics, advice ect, ect, that you used for the 1st match and still lost the majority of these games. is this correct so far?

I really dont see what your problem is if this is what actually happened. The game uses mathematical data to simulate a result so if you have the same data for 35 simulations then you would expect to se the same result pretty much most, if not all of the time. There will obviously be some variances, like an opposition goalie having a bad day or something such as this, so this is where the 4 draws and 1 win come in.

And if you are just complaining that you lost even when you are a heavy favourite then lets not forget that this happens all the time in real life as well.

Apparently you do not understand ODDS. The point is, yes on any one off game, even a heavy favourite can lose. Even if they employ the perfect tactics (as indicated by the pre-match advice...unless i am to assume that the pre-match advice, from my world class asst manager with a 17 in tactics is giving me wrong/false advice), are superiour man for man, etc it is possible to lose any one game. but if you run the game simulation over a number of times the results should roughly represent a winning percentage indicated by the odds. that is what odds are. they say the odds are 50-50 that if you flip a coin you will get heads. the probability of any one flip is always 50-50. but the probability of getting 35 heads in a row is infintesimally small (sequence probabilities are individual probabilities multiplied over iterations).

so in other words the exact same settings, the ideal settings as indicated by the game itself, should not result in the "same result pretty much all of the time" you should see that, while any one game might go either way, over an increasing number of games the outcome should trend towards results that match up with individual odds or probability. In other words if you flip a coin 100 times, you should get something in the range of 50 heads and 50 tails. sure it could be 40-60 but a result of 3-97 would be incredibly improbable without external factors like a weighted coin or a 'trick thrower'.

and that is my point. the point of this experiment. i was wondering if, in fact, after a winning streak or just for no reason the game just "decides" you are going to lose the game no matter the "variables" (players, form, stamina, tactics, etc) ... so when you get 1 win in 35 simulations (yes, i could have run 100 but who has that kind of time ... i mean i am a lose and nerd but even i stop at 35 sims) that win percentage is so incredibly divergent from the 'actual probability' as indicated roughly by the odds that you have to suspect you have a 'weighted coin' or 'trick thrower' like you would if you got 3 heads and 97 tails.

The pre-match odds are not based in any way on the match engine. They are probably a mixture of your relative reputations and current form. It's like tossing a coin that has a reputation of being 50-50, but actually might not be.

SO are you gonna buy the game after everything you have said about it?

Pato and Jovetic sarted off in 1st teams when they were 16. I do that with regens get them in there playin early learning from top players like rooney and rio and betime they get to 19 they are worldwide wonderkids or continental wonderkids. Not all youth reach there potential early.

look. not to be rude but unless you have used the RTE you have no idea what you are talking about. ALL regens start out absurdly low, and mostly with entirely moronic stats, and NEVER progress to similar levels of young great players in the beginning of the game. even if you start them in the first team all of the time from 16 and have them learn from Rooney. I have seen it over the course of 12 seasons work out exactly that way. when you can see the internal numbers it becomes readily apparent. and this is aside from the fact even to do this it is entirely unrealistic to real life. Pato was not starting at AC Milan at 16. he was playing in the U-18s and reserves until he got good enough to break into the first team. which if you did in the game would never happen because U-18 games and reserve games do nothing for player development (or relatively nothing if the internal numbers are any indication ... you can have a 16 year old player with a 80/180 potential player 2 years in U-18 and reserves and he ends up barely at 100/180 at the end of those 2 years, even with excellent training facilities and 4-5 star coaches. put it this way, a team like AC Milan or Man Utd, if you look into the internal game numbers have a starting line up where the players average about a 170 rating ... some great players are in the 180s and some back ups are in the 160s ... it is ludicrous to think you could or should start a regen youngster that is at 80 ... they would get slaughtered. my point is some regens should start at the 130 ish range ... the ones with really high potential ... and playing U18 and reserves over a couple of years should get them to the 150s so that they can reasonably start in a first team of a squad like Man Utd every once in a while without being totally outclassed when they are 17-18 (or in Cup matches etc). so that by the time, if you have given them good training and shepherded them along nicely that they become the equivalents of Pato when they get to 20-21. And having seen the internals on the game over a long multitude of seasons this simply not how the game does regens. which is of course why after 12 or so seasons every squad ends up looking like a League 1 side (not really, a bit of hyperbole snark .... but really, you should see how bad the Real Madrid side is after 12 seasons).

No Pato made his debut and never looked back for internacional and Jovetic was the same at Partizan and they were both 16 thats why they moved to top team in europe where they were straight away apart of the 1st team squads

The pre-match odds are not based in any way on the match engine. They are probably a mixture of your relative reputations and current form. It's like tossing a coin that has a reputation of being 50-50, but actually might not be.

yes. i understand that. which is why in my post previously i clearly stated that while the odds are not exactly equal to the probability outcomes you should/would get they also should not be wildly divergent.

it is like saying 'this coin has a reputation of being a bit weighted to he heads side ... about 65-35" and then getting 3 heads and 97 tails.

look. i really dont want to devolve into a discussion on probability mathematics so you will have to take it on faith that i am well versed in the basic concepts and methodologies of statistics and probablity and these outcomes were way way outside the standard deviations of the bell curve ... which means something is going on ... i don't know what, but something is going on ... which is just one of various problems i find about the game ... which is why i will only buy and play the game once there is a good RTE for it ...

yes. i understand that. which is why in my post previously i clearly stated that while the odds are not exactly equal to the probability outcomes you should/would get they also should not be wildly divergent.

it is like saying 'this coin has a reputation of being a bit weighted to he heads side ... about 65-35" and then getting 3 heads and 97 tails.

look. i really dont want to devolve into a discussion on probability mathematics so you will have to take it on faith that i am well versed in the basic concepts and methodologies of statistics and probablity and these outcomes were way way outside the standard deviations of the bell curve ... which means something is going on ... i don't know what, but something is going on ... which is just one of various problems i find about the game ... which is why i will only buy and play the game once there is a good RTE for it ...

Or it could just mean that this time, the reported odds are quite out of whack with the real odds. What's the probability distribution of the alignment of reported vs real odds? Think about how many games you play, and how rarely this happens. Now think about the effect of tactics. Not so implausible now, is it?

I still think you should upload your save and let everyone have a crack at it. We might all learn something.

well i played 15 seasons at real madrid and the amount of top quaility youth was there to be seen. But what i did find was in other games i did there wasnt as manyas in some others. And you say there isn't young quality regens like pato comin through well that is just BS. I wonder what you had to say about 08 regens because i think there was a big inprovement on 09

No Pato made his debut and never looked back for internacional and Jovetic was the same at Partizan and they were both 16 thats why they moved to top team in europe where they were straight away apart of the 1st team squads

yes. well that is sort of my point. they were good enough, even at 16 to start for ... say Partizan ... and if you looked at the internal numbers for the Partizan squad in a RTE you would find that they probably range from 140-160 ... which means that Stevan J. would have had to be at least near that range ... let's say 120 at worst ... to start in that squad. And with regens who have the same ultimate potential as Pato they all start at 85ish ... and no coach, translating into "real world terms" would have started an 85 rated Stevan with his 150 rated teammates ... that is a recipe for not being a coach very long.

my point being that every so often there is a player who at even a young age is much better than his aged peers and can play, let's say at 16, with a squad like Partizan and then, thusly, at 18 with a squad like Fiorentina ... but the game does not reflect that ... in the RTE you can search and see all of the players in the game's database ... you can filter them for Potential Rating and Current Rating ... and i have NEVER seen a highly rated potential regen player .... lets say above 180 (out of 200 max) start with better than a 96.

yes. well that is sort of my point. they were good enough, even at 16 to start for ... say Partizan ... and if you looked at the internal numbers for the Partizan squad in a RTE you would find that they probably range from 140-160 ... which means that Stevan J. would have had to be at least near that range ... let's say 120 at worst ... to start in that squad. And with regens who have the same ultimate potential as Pato they all start at 85ish ... and no coach, translating into "real world terms" would have started an 85 rated Stevan with his 150 rated teammates ... that is a recipe for not being a coach very long.

my point being that every so often there is a player who at even a young age is much better than his aged peers and can play, let's say at 16, with a squad like Partizan and then, thusly, at 18 with a squad like Fiorentina ... but the game does not reflect that ... in the RTE you can search and see all of the players in the game's database ... you can filter them for Potential Rating and Current Rating ... and i have NEVER seen a highly rated potential regen player .... lets say above 180 (out of 200 max) start with better than a 96.

I have. Are you sure you're searching quite right?

I haven't found that, i was at man utd and scouted a CB from ireland he was oni 17 and it said he wound be a leading star for me and i already had world-class sakho and leading star evans at the back for united. He turn out to be one of the best in the world betime he was 20.

on a serious note now.

From what i can gather from your opening post you are upset becuase the match odds made you a heavy favourite and after following all advice given you lost. Is that correct so far?

So You therefore decided to run a test by replaying the same match 35 times. Now during these 35 replays you followed pretty much the exact same tactics, advice ect, ect, that you used for the 1st match and still lost the majority of these games. is this correct so far?

I really dont see what your problem is if this is what actually happened. The game uses mathematical data to simulate a result so if you have the same data for 35 simulations then you would expect to se the same result pretty much most, if not all of the time. There will obviously be some variances, like an opposition goalie having a bad day or something such as this, so this is where the 4 draws and 1 win come in.

And if you are just complaining that you lost even when you are a heavy favourite then lets not forget that this happens all the time in real life as well.

Thank god someone pointed that out.

Or it could just mean that this time, the reported odds are quite out of whack with the real odds. What's the probability distribution of the alignment of reported vs real odds? Think about how many games you play, and how rarely this happens. Now think about the effect of tactics. Not so implausible now, is it?

I still think you should upload your save and let everyone have a crack at it. We might all learn something.

the effect of the tactics? you mean the tactics that my highly rated, tactically gifted assistant manager advised me to follow to give me the best chance of winning ... 4 or 5 pieces of advice mind you .... these tactics would make the probability outcome swing wildly against my superiour on paper side from winning more than 1 out of 35 ... that doesn't even make any sense.

I am not complaining that my Accrington and Stanley side wasn't able to beat Real Madrid more than 1 out of 35 times. This MAN freaking UTD ... a better MAN UTD than exists in the real world because I did the off season shopping to shore up the sad and pathetic deficiencies that SAF side currently has.

I mean we are talking a starting 4-4-2 of: van der Saar (GK), Hargraeves (RB, trained to be an "accomplished" RB), Ferdinand (DC, who is much better in the game stats than in real life now), Vidic (DC), Evra (LB), Juan Manuel Vargas (ML), Carrick (creative CM), Danielle de Rossi (defensive CM), Darijo Srna (RM), Rooney (ST complete), Berbatov (ST support) with players like Jovetic, Nani, Valencia, Marek Hamsik, Sandro (a hugely good youngster in the new game) and the catch all full back sub John Oshea on the bench.

against tottenham. to say the outcome probability should be 50-50 at worst is a stretch. Just face it ... the game is screwy. It doesn't make it evil or anything it just makes it imperfect ... and while nothing is perfect, and everything can use improvement ... myself most assuredly included ... i think that as the "best football manager simulation" out there it is sad that many of the persistent and annoying problems seem beyond the makers/progammers to fix .... i hardly think that is some radical and untenable position to take ..

I have. Are you sure you're searching quite right?

wow. let's see. how would you do that? uh. put in 170 as the minimum for Potential Ability and 18 as the maximum age ... and presto ... you would have all of the players under 17 (altho i think all regens are between 14-16 and all of whom after 3 or 4 seasons have to be regens), who have a potential above 170 ... and then conveniently the list pops up with both Current Ability and Potential Ability and you can sort in decreasing order by Current Ability and presto ... i have never seen a player with higher than like a 101? maybe? once? mostly the highly rated potential regens are in the 85ish range ... i mean i can pull up my current game and do it right now .... i would of course have to excluded my stable of youngsters that i have "manually" developed ... i know this because i assidously scour the data base for the best young tallent 3 to 4 times a season, sign the best i can ... and ALWAYS have to 'develop them' up to 110-130 range (i use a 60 point gap between potential and current as a guide for 16 year olds) ...

so whatever game and database you are playing it is not working the same as mine is all i can say ...

yes. well that is sort of my point. they were good enough, even at 16 to start for ... say Partizan ... and if you looked at the internal numbers for the Partizan squad in a RTE you would find that they probably range from 140-160 ... which means that Stevan J. would have had to be at least near that range ... let's say 120 at worst ... to start in that squad. And with regens who have the same ultimate potential as Pato they all start at 85ish ... and no coach, translating into "real world terms" would have started an 85 rated Stevan with his 150 rated teammates ... that is a recipe for not being a coach very long.

my point being that every so often there is a player who at even a young age is much better than his aged peers and can play, let's say at 16, with a squad like Partizan and then, thusly, at 18 with a squad like Fiorentina ... but the game does not reflect that ... in the RTE you can search and see all of the players in the game's database ... you can filter them for Potential Rating and Current Rating ... and i have NEVER seen a highly rated potential regen player .... lets say above 180 (out of 200 max) start with better than a 96.

the effect of the tactics? you mean the tactics that my highly rated, tactically gifted assistant manager advised me to follow to give me the best chance of winning ... 4 or 5 pieces of advice mind you .... these tactics would make the probability outcome swing wildly against my superiour on paper side from winning more than 1 out of 35 ... that doesn't even make any sense.

I am not complaining that my Accrington and Stanley side wasn't able to beat Real Madrid more than 1 out of 35 times. This MAN freaking UTD ... a better MAN UTD than exists in the real world because I did the off season shopping to shore up the sad and pathetic deficiencies that SAF side currently has.

I mean we are talking a starting 4-4-2 of: van der Saar (GK), Hargraeves (RB, trained to be an "accomplished" RB), Ferdinand (DC, who is much better in the game stats than in real life now), Vidic (DC), Evra (LB), Juan Manuel Vargas (ML), Carrick (creative CM), Danielle de Rossi (defensive CM), Darijo Srna (RM), Rooney (ST complete), Berbatov (ST support) with players like Jovetic, Nani, Valencia, Marek Hamsik, Sandro (a hugely good youngster in the new game) and the catch all full back sub John Oshea on the bench.

against tottenham. to say the outcome probability should be 50-50 at worst is a stretch. Just face it ... the game is screwy. It doesn't make it evil or anything it just makes it imperfect ... and while nothing is perfect, and everything can use improvement ... myself most assuredly included ... i think that as the "best football manager simulation" out there it is sad that many of the persistent and annoying problems seem beyond the makers/progammers to fix .... i hardly think that is some radical and untenable position to take ..

I'm sorry, but you are not convincing anyone. Tottenham is a tricky game because they can play quite neatly, and they've been known to be a bit tough for players who play United in the past (I know because I'm one of them).

Every time one of these threads come up, there's been one really simple, foolproof solution: upload the savegame. Seriously. Do that and your position would be beyond reproach. I note that this is the third time of asking. Refuse if you like.

Thank god someone pointed that out.

pointed what out. the statement was utter nonsense and only illustrated a complete lack of understanding of basic statistics and probability and modeling of simulated outcomes to real world probabilities ... you guys must be from the US or some other nation with equally abysmal basic mathematics education ..

wow. let's see. how would you do that? uh. put in 170 as the minimum for Potential Ability and 18 as the maximum age ... and presto ... you would have all of the players under 17 (altho i think all regens are between 14-16 and all of whom after 3 or 4 seasons have to be regens), who have a potential above 170 ... and then conveniently the list pops up with both Current Ability and Potential Ability and you can sort in decreasing order by Current Ability and presto ... i have never seen a player with higher than like a 101? maybe? once? mostly the highly rated potential regens are in the 85ish range ... i mean i can pull up my current game and do it right now .... i would of course have to excluded my stable of youngsters that i have "manually" developed ... i know this because i assidously scour the data base for the best young tallent 3 to 4 times a season, sign the best i can ... and ALWAYS have to 'develop them' up to 110-130 range (i use a 60 point gap between potential and current as a guide for 16 year olds) ...

so whatever game and database you are playing it is not working the same as mine is all i can say ...

Are we still talking about regens? Of course they're going to be different in each game. Unless you're talking about demo regens, in which case, no, I've not had the pleasure. But it's not implausible either, considering the size of the demo database and the fact that there hasn't been much time for regens.