Underperforming central defenders?

I have played a few years managing Liverpool. My first 3 central defenders, Skrtel, Carragher, and Agger could maintain an average rating over 6.6. I tried using player interaction to help improve their performance, but it didnt help. I eventually sold all 3, replacing them with Sakho and Chivu, as well as a couple of lesser known players. However, no matter who I put there, they always are around the 6.5 rating. (I play a diamond 4-4-2) Chivu has great attributes, however, it doesnt seem to translate, even though he was great for inter before I purchased him.

I play an attacking style; however, when I try playing more defensive, my team doesnt win nearly enough. I was thinking that maybe the attacking style caused poor defensive ratings but this doesnt seem to be the case. I also occasionally play with an offside trap.

Also, a somewhat related question is how is value calculated. It seems to change quite a bit. Also, I recently purchased a player for 9 million pounds and his value upon transfer instantly became 33 million. I just quite understand how that can happen.

thanks

I'll keep an eye on the various position performances and see if I find similar things - but generally I haven't in the past tbh, I do fairly regularly try and tune and balance rating averages to ensure they'll all fairly balanced HOWEVER do bear in mind that some styles of play/tactics will emphasise some positions more than others and it might well be that they're simply not getting involved in play enough to warrant high ratings for some reason (this doesn't always mean 'bad things' - just that they might not be doing much).

With valuation it can change quite quickly both up and down - if a player joins a bigger club especially then his value might jump a bit upon his signing in anticipation of him doing great things .... chances are it won't stay that high unless he does though.

(out of interest which player was it?)

Thanks for the quick reply.

That makes sense, when my team was playing really well, I kept thinking that DC was my weak link; however, may just be because my team was generally on offense.

The player was Daniel Villalva from River Plate. Signed him in 2012 when he was 20 - I think his value was about 4 million, i bought him for 9 million, and now its at 31 million right now. Weird thing about him so far is that he has a great average rating of 7.38 but has a modest 6 goals in 26 games and my team is playing quite poorly.

One more question that I have just thought of is about Player ratings. Are the ratings I see on players dependent on scouts' perceptions or are they stable? Also, are their 'hidden' ratings that keep may keep a highly rated player such as Babel (at least he was in my game) from playing well? He was always a 3 star player in my scouts mind, had great ratings though, but never played well.

Thanks so much. Appreciate the help.

Could be that he's a great team player but NOT a killer striker - Teddy Sheringham was like that when he was still playing, fantastically intelligent player, good movement and skill but not a huge scorer, more of a team player.

I presume by 'ratings' you mean the player attributes (ie. strength, tackling etc.) ?

If so yes there are hidden attributes which affect a players performance (pressure, consistency etc.) and might affect a players performances - scouts will sometimes comment upon them if you read the reports carefully (but not always).

Also bear in mind that a players visible attributes can be biased slightly by his present form - that is a hot young striker who's just come onto the scene might initially be seen as a little better than he is, only to settle down a little once he's more well known etc. - this is intentional and makes it a little harder to consistency spot truly quality players when they first burst onto the scene ..... it takes a quality manager to differentiate between a Francis Jeffers and a Wayne Rooney when they're still youth players.

Alright that makes a lot more sense if players attributes are more likely to be "misguided" early in their career.

Thanks for the help and your time.

I have a question about match ratings. Does the game store floating point numbers to calculate the average or does it store only the integer? Reason being: In an effort to get higher ratings if a player is playing poorly...say a 5...then I wait for his value to go up to a 6 for a second and yank him...is that really giving me much benefit? There isn't a much of a difference between a 5.9 and a 6.0 but there is a huge difference between a 5.0 and a 6.0