What makes a good assistant manager?

Looking for some help really. All my time playing FM i've never known what makes a good assistant manager, so could someone tell me what to look for.

Thanks.

I always look for my assistant to have good Motivation, Man Management and Tactical. I think with your assistant it is personal preference depending on what you want from them.

depends what you want him to do. i make sure he has good tactical knowledge, motivation and judging player ability/potential. i also like them to have the same favoured formation as me.

Also, judging player's current and potential abbility.

EDIT: too slow...

yeh it does soley depend on what your going to use him for - whether its to take training (look at coaching stats), whether he's being used to find players (judging player abilty/potential) or whether he's being used simply to back you up, say you go on holiday or you choose to have him manage the reserves (man management, tactical knowledge etc.)

When you play in lower leagues such as BSP, the most important thing is to have a good knowledge of the quality of your players. Usually, when you start with such side, your staff will have very poor Judging CA and PA, thus giving you useless reports about your players. At this level, you don’t care about your AssMan being good at managing the reserve or youth team as you will probably want to use the best players in your first team squad. If your club has bad training facilities, which is often the case in very low leagues, the only way to improve their abilities is to give them first-team matches making the “Motivating”, “Discipline” and “Man Management” of your AssMan pretty much useless.

So, first look for an AssMan with as high Judging CA and PA as you can afford to hire, all of the sudden, your players rating will significantly drop from 5 stars to 0.5. Now you have a realistic feedback of your players’ abilities. The next step is to hire a “Scout” with high Judging CA and PA and find better players than those you have. If you hire an AssMan with the qualities required in Premiership while managing a low league side, you will pretty much pay an AssMan for doing nothing; he’ll win reserve matches more easily than an AssMan with good Judging CA and PA but why for?

Depending on the side you’re managing, the needed qualities of your AssMan can be totally different:

Premiership club:

Training facilities: Best

Youth facilities: Best

AssMan profile: The AssMan must be a backup manager, he needs to be great at “Motivating”, “Discipline”, “Man management”, “Working with youngster”, “Tactical knowledge” because he’ll help your youngster develop and keep your reserve team players fit.

BSP club:

Training facilities: Awful

Youth facilities: Awful

AssMan profile: The AssMan is here to help you decide who you’re going to keep in your team with his high “Judging CA” and “Judging PA” and sell the others. The awful level of facilities doesn’t help improving players’ abilities just through the qualities of a classical Premiership AssMan, the best is to know who to hire next to help the club go up as fast as possible.

I agree with Headhunter.

Motivation, Discipline, Tactical Knowledge, Man Management.

Although for me, 'Working With Youngsters' is less important. I have had a few squads with U21's in my first team and I have yet to see a negative affect if my AssMan has a low 'WWY' attribute.

I would also suguest that Determination has some importence because this shows how much effort your AssMan will put into his job.

Also, if you look at his 'personal' tab on his profile, it will show you (By means of a bar graph) how good your AssMan is with 'Squad Management", which I believe is determined by some mathmatical formula of his mental stats.

JPP and JPA may also help at higher levels when asking your AssMan's oppinion on tactics for individual opposition players, hard tackling, tight marking, show onto weaker foot, ETC.

Personally my perfect assistant manager is Werner Kern.

All his mental stats but Adaptibility are >15, most 19-20, then Man Management and WWY are 19-20.

Perfect!

Judging ability is the first thing I look at for an assman. Second, because I start in MLS with a limited number of coaches, I make sure my assman is proficient at teaching at least one training category, so the Discipline+Determination+Motivation is important. Once I'm able to hire more staff I focus mainly on finding someone with a good combo of JCA/JPA/Motivation (and possibly knowledge of foreign countries to expand my knowledge.)

My take on it is this

Motivation is only required if he does team talks?

Management is for press conference?

Tactical knowledge is only useful with

Work with youngsters is only good if they are managing reserve or U21

JPA/CA is only good for looking at current players ability. You can get away with it by viewing JPACA through your coaches who have high judgement.

So if my ass man is only doing Press conference the rest can be low. Idea stats for me would be

Man Management 20.

JPACA 1

Youth 1

Tactical 1

Motivation 1

Not sure what Determination and discipline does. I mean it is me that fine the player who picks up red cards.

Personally my perfect assistant manager is Werner Kern.

All his mental stats but Adaptibility are >15, most 19-20, then Man Management and WWY are 19-20.

Perfect!

+1 to that

Real good 'un

Tactical Knowledge is used when he

- managers the reserve/Youth team matches

- Provides feedback in 1st team matches

Determination helps in odd ways too

Man Management & Motivation seem to cover team talks & press conferences

Judging Current/Potential are also used when approaching free players, as he will give an indication on thier ability (definate purchase, decent player etc etc)

Terry Venables.

Personally my perfect assistant manager is Werner Kern.

All his mental stats but Adaptibility are >15, most 19-20, then Man Management and WWY are 19-20.

Perfect!

Yep, excellent Assistant but its a pity that he's 63

Other potentially good assistants imo are Nigel Gibbs and John Park, they are very affordable too.