Rebuilding formerly world class, long term injury players (eg. Owen/Duff)- is it possible to return them to former glory, or is improvement fixed?

title... pretty much says it all.

Am wondering if Improvement is fixed on an Age curve- ie. players peak at a certain age dependant on their position, or if it is acutally possible to return a 27-29 year old player to their peak potential.

what is necessary to do this? obviously game time, but.. winning competitions? etc

title... pretty much says it all.

Am wondering if Improvement is fixed on an Age curve- ie. players peak at a certain age dependant on their position, or if it is acutally possible to return a 27-29 year old player to their peak potential.

what is necessary to do this? obviously game time, but.. winning competitions? etc

I think if they are too old already, they can only improve just a slight bit, depending on your training facilities and coaches.

However, they can become footballer of the year or win some other awards by including them in your first team and using good tactics that will give them chances to score goals and contribute on the field.

Michael Owen on my England save is a machine. He seems to be reliving his former glory days.

Would be great if SI could offer some indication on this..

There are a lot of players in the same boat who have mid-career injuries and start the original data both old and with Low CA.. any chance for an over 26 or so, twenty or thirty points off his PA to get back up there?

It depends on their age and position, plus the fact that the older a player a gets it is more likely that gains in CA go into mental attributes.

A general rule of thumb I've found is this listed from the earliest to oldest age at which players typically start to lose CA:-

Wingers/Strikers -> central midfielders -> full backs -> centre backs -> goalkeepers

I'be also found 24/25 to be the rough age where CA gains tend to slow down regardless of how close CA is to PA.

right. I tend to agree.

Basically the question I'm asking is if there is any special provision for (specifically older), classy players to make, not an improvement as a young player would, but a return to the player they were before the injury in a quicker space of time

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> right. I tend to agree.

Basically the question I'm asking is if there is any special provision for (specifically older), classy players to make, not an improvement as a young player would, but a return to the player they were before the injury in a quicker space of time </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't know about the new patch but on previous versions players CA usually stayed more or less fixed regardless of injury and what you see in game is their attributes dropping because they are not training.

So injuries would affect how much more they could improve because as they get older the amount of CA they can gain relative to their PA drops.

So say you had player aged 27 with CA of 160 and PA of 170. He picks up a long term injury of 6+ months. What you lose is any more gains in CA up to 170 he could have gotten if he wasn't injured, rather than actual CA points themselves. When he returns from injury older the amount of CA he can gain is less than what it was prior to the injury because that's generally how CA/PA works. So you lose out on potential gains rather than actual CA already reached.That's what I've generally observed on versions other than 8.02 (since I can't test every player under every scenario I'm not saying I am 100% certain that CA won't drop, just that I've never seen it).

yeah- obviously that's true and i think it's obvious it's inaccurate also.

My concern is more for established players that have started the game "nerfed" like duff. Who at 26 or 7 have found themselves with their CA dropped a lot to compensate or their... current ability in reality!:>

unfortunately what is not represented is the opportunity for a player like that to rapidly and drastically get back to their old form at a different rate to what another player would "improve".

i think that is something that could be added/is needed. with the current settings it makes players like him a little obselete/useless.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">yeah- obviously that's true and i think it's obvious it's inaccurate also.

My concern is more for established players that have started the game "nerfed" like duff. Who at 26 or 7 have found themselves with their CA dropped a lot to compensate or their... current ability in reality!:>

unfortunately what is not represented is the opportunity for a player like that to rapidly and drastically get back to their old form at a different rate to what another player would "improve".

i think that is something that could be added/is needed. with the current settings it makes players like him a little obselete/useless. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well it's a chicken or egg type scenario really. All researchers can do is look at how players perform and base their CA on that. Has Duff not played like he used because of the effect of various injuries he has had or is there more to it? His CA isn't lower directly because of his long term injuries i.e. player A is injured so set his CA lower. Owen and Duff are good examples of this. Alot of their effectiveness as players was due to their speed/agility. Both had serious knee injuries which have physiological effects on both of these attributes. Thus they have both lost something which made them the players they were.

But at the same time it's very difficult to separate out all of the factors that affect a player's form and quantify them, and since attributes are assigned based on observation of performance this has a telling effect. Strikers serve as the best example of this since their performance is more readily measured by goals. Look at the foreign players in the Premiership in recent memory that have scored regularly in other leagues yet never set the Premiership alight (Morientes, Shevchenko) and those of the opposite nature (Forlan).

What affected their apparent sudden loss of ability in England? Was it difficulty settling in a new culture? Was it difficulty adjusting to the higher tempo? Did they not fit tactically nor find themselves gelling with their new team mates? We just don't know exactly and can't really quantify it so form has to be a key element in the measure of CA so Owen/Duff get assigned CA based on their form over recent seasons. The researcher can't give them a higher CA based on what they did 5 or so years ago as the game would become a mockery of existing performance.

But as been said many times CA is a subjective assessment and if you don't like it then you could change it in the editor.

i agree with the foreigners think and I think that brings out a problem with the game, or researchers more accurately. Obafemi Martins for example, has been dropped in CA (or so i believe looking at his stats) and as a result his pace and acceleration is 18 and 18- which is absurd if you watch him for 5 minutes.

His performance this season, which i guess is judged on goals even though allardyce was playing him on the left for most of the time!! has nerfed his stats making him useless in the game even if he returns elsewhere. Likewise it is with Duff and Owen.

Owen has lost pace yes but the amount he has matured as a player mentally and tactically, with keeping the ball etc is huge! his movement off the ball is just as intelligent, and the problem is when his CA is dropped and can't recover... well then it's all over. Perhaps Duff is a better example using the same logic.

Owen is far too good on my game and never has been that good IMO. Right now in the Premiership there are many strikers better than him and that teams would not swap for Owen. Adebayor, Rooney, Torres, Anelka, Drogba, Eduardo, Tevez, Yakubu, Berbatov, Keane, Defoe, Carew, Ashton, Santa Cruz, Benjani lol. In Premiership terms he is a second rate striker and his goal record for England is really quite poor when you compare it to some of Europe's top strikers.

He continues to live on a reputation based on the fact that he was ok at Liverpool during the Houllier days, which doesn't say much does it.

Owen crused the English scoring record and scored hatricks for fun in WC 2010, and did quite well in WC 2014. Owen is superb all the way until age of 40 to be honest. As long as you play him. It might say his ability is low at 38, but by god can he score goals...

Oldest player to play for England, most caps, and most goals. Michael Owen. 41 and still going strong Albeit a little too slow for the big matches.

ok- just the framework i am interested in. Owen an average example. Duff a good one.

basically- i think they have to be careful lowering players CA when they are over a certain age because of form/injury when it's usually due to adaptability or... injury!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Nomis07:

Owen is far too good on my game and never has been that good IMO. Right now in the Premiership there are many strikers better than him and that teams would not swap for Owen. Adebayor, Rooney, Torres, Anelka, Drogba, Eduardo, Tevez, Yakubu, Berbatov, Keane, Defoe, Carew, Ashton, Santa Cruz, Benjani lol. In Premiership terms he is a second rate striker and his goal record for England is really quite poor when you compare it to some of Europe's top strikers.

He continues to live on a reputation based on the fact that he was ok at Liverpool during the Houllier days, which doesn't say much does it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Now I'm not a big Owen fan but some of this is ridiculous!

1) His England goals record is unquestionable, to sit 9 goals behind Bobby Charlton is phenominal and his goals per game ratio is less than 0.01 worse than Charlton's.

2) He was far from just being ok at Liverpool (who I hate btw), he was brilliant. He did well at Real Madrid when he got the chance, the vast majority of Madrid fans will not have a bad word to say about him. It's harldy his fault that Calderon (or whoever it was at the time) decided that the club needed to sign performing seals from Brazil and play them.

3) I'll agree with about half of those other premier league strikers but- Defoe? They're not even on the same level of ability. Ashton? if we're talking about players going off the boil then this is a prime example. Curbishley would chew his arm off for Micheal Owen ahead of any of their forwards. I'm sure a lot of Liverpool fans would love to have him back playing with Torres. Benjani? On good (half) season does not a player make. See Ricketts, Micheal. Maybe that was sarcastic on your part, I can't decide.

Slightly off topic (ok, very) but it annoyed me.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by pauly15:

ok- just the framework i am interested in. Owen an average example. Duff a good one. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I have been unable to get Duff to perform. What does work fairly well is intensive physical training over the course of a season, letting him play in the reserves. Then put him on a medium physical, with ball-control and attacking + tactics as the main area of training for about a season, letting him play in your first team wold probably be good by now.

He will not become as good as he was before, bascially cause he's too old to rebuild all the well physically and it will take him 1 season, as for a young player it would take 1-2 months.

As for getting him back... the best I've done is get Ronaldo back as worlds best striker.

Took half a season of intensive agility training and then put him on a quite tough attacking schedual. Started to bang in goals for fun again. Was great to see him bang in goal after goal after goal against Chelsea in the Cl final

But yeah. It's possible. But it takes a lot of intensive training and it will take longer to retrain a fallen star than it would to train a new star.

Oh and the older your player gets. the tougher the training has to be to make progress or even remain at his current level. Which can result in injuries. If he get's severly injured at 33 his career is as good as over...

Here’s a list of players with better International goal scoring records (goals per game) than Michael Owen and all of them play in European qualification groups and play for supposed lesser nations.

Jan Koller – C. republic

Hakan Suker – Turkey

David Healy – Northern Ireland

Jon Dahl Tomasson – Denmark

Pauleta – Portugal

Davor Suker – Croatia

Nevermind how close he is to Bobby Charlton’s record (despite Charlton being a midfielder) it just goes to show how very average Owen is.

As for his playing days at Liverpool, they were always just ok and only once did he top the scoring charts. The clubs were not queuing for him when he was shown the door at Real Madrid and having to choose a struggling Newcastle was surely totally degrading for a player of such “classâ€, the reason for that choice was because the beloved Liverpool et al did not want him and especially for the price that was agreed.

Benjani was tongue in cheek but Ashton in particular would be way ahead of Owen for a lot of managers if it wasn’t for his injuries.

I’m from Northern Ireland and the reason I dislike Owen so much is because he has done nothing in a team filled with superstars. He has scored a good number of goals but David Healy isn’t far behind him, with fewer games and playing for a country ranked 25 places below England, which has a horrendous pool to choose from.

It was slightly off topic but for Michael Owen to be so good in the game is utter nonsense considering the amount of goals he scores each season is something that he can only dream of.

Koller, Sukur, Suker are all target players. In general their teams attacks end up with these players, so naturally their goal ratio will be higher

What happened to Peter Crouch, John Carew etc?

If that was the case then the non target player would have a less impressive goalscoring record but this isn't the case for the likes of Raul, Henry, Klose, Healy etc.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Raul, Henry, Klose, Healy etc. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Is this a spot the odd one out competition?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dalglish:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Raul, Henry, Klose, Healy etc. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Is this a spot the odd one out competition? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes and the answer is.....

Raul because he has the worst goal to game ratio at international level out of all four.

I think you are blinded by your hero worship.

Healy hasn't really done anything at the highest level has he? A mean five goals for Fulham insn't that prolific.

Yes and I know he's scored 33 international goals, but most of them went in off his shin

Owen had a lot more 'competition' for goalscorers than most of those players mentioned.

Speaking as a Fulham fan, Healy is probably about 4th choice in terms of striking options. He's a kick and rush footballer. He's not got pace, strength or guile. In fairness we've probably only kept him because if we get relegated he'll be playing at his level. I'm not even going to entertain an argument that considers whether Micheal Owen is a better player than Pauleta! At the end of the day, international fooball is not the pinnacle of the game and hasn't been for the best part of 10 years in my opinion.

why has my thread been destroyed by yet another person that can't see owen is a dream machine?

a player over 26 with current low CA relative to his PA, is he dead? reguardless of what he was?

SI?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Nomis07:

Here’s a list of players with better International goal scoring records (goals per game) than Michael Owen and all of them play in European qualification groups and play for supposed lesser nations.

Jan Koller – C. republic

Hakan Suker – Turkey

David Healy – Northern Ireland

Jon Dahl Tomasson – Denmark

Pauleta – Portugal

Davor Suker – Croatia

Nevermind how close he is to Bobby Charlton’s record (despite Charlton being a midfielder) it just goes to show how very average Owen is.

As for his playing days at Liverpool, they were always just ok and only once did he top the scoring charts. The clubs were not queuing for him when he was shown the door at Real Madrid and having to choose a struggling Newcastle was surely totally degrading for a player of such “classâ€, the reason for that choice was because the beloved Liverpool et al did not want him and especially for the price that was agreed.

Benjani was tongue in cheek but Ashton in particular would be way ahead of Owen for a lot of managers if it wasn’t for his injuries.

I’m from Northern Ireland and the reason I dislike Owen so much is because he has done nothing in a team filled with superstars. He has scored a good number of goals but David Healy isn’t far behind him, with fewer games and playing for a country ranked 25 places below England, which has a horrendous pool to choose from.

It was slightly off topic but for Michael Owen to be so good in the game is utter nonsense considering the amount of goals he scores each season is something that he can only dream of. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whilst I don't disagree, I think his £100, 000 a week wage demands may have had something to do with it.

As far as I am aware, very few players are earning that sort of cash on the back of season spent largely as an unused substitute in a team full of stars.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dalglish:

I think you are blinded by your hero worship.

Healy hasn't really done anything at the highest level has he? A mean five goals for Fulham insn't that prolific.

Yes and I know he's scored 33 international goals, but most of them went in off his shin </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ha ha ha, you are the blind one sir.

The goal against england, the chip against Wales, the chip agaisnt Spain, the chip against Denmark, the back heel against Sweden. He scored a hat trick agaisnt Spain and Sweden, two of the top teams in Europe.

Yes he has hardly been prolific with a Fulham team that is bound for relegation and has struggled for goals all season.

As for Owen being a "dream machine" I agree totally it is a dream that he will ever be considered a world class talent.

In reality, Duff will never be what he once was. Some players are ruined by injury prematurely and he's one of them.

As for the game's reaction, I'm not really sure. My current game has three recent long-term injuries. Of those, the key two players appear to have returned to their best (I don't look directly at CA/PA so can't say for certain), but their natural fitness appears to have been quite heavily hit.

Consequently, they're injured more often and they really struggle to get back to full match fitness. But once they are, they appear to be fine.

And Healy? A successful international player, but the fact that he's never done anything in the Premiership tells its own story - either he's definitely lacking the talent to be consistent or top flight managers don't rate him. Let's face it, a player who can score against the best in Europe should otherwise get a better other than a gamble from Fulham.

I can't say about Duff, but in my game Owen did get to be a world class player once again; depending on your point of view. I am in the camp that believes he is one of the most over-rated players ever. Now he's lost his pace he is proving what a player he isn't. Granted he's still got a great 3rd touch (providing he hasn't lost posession by then).

In the game I'm the Wednesday manager. By the time I could afford Duff my scouts told me not to bother as my current players in the same positions were all better. I was tempted to get him and see how good he could get because a few years ago he was wonderful to watch.

I might give it a go when I re-start after applying the new patch, regardless of what my scouts / fans think.

As for David Healy, I'm sorry, I don't see it. How he has scored so many goals in internationals amazes me. As a Wednesday fan there had been talk of him coming on loan to us. Thank god it didn't happen. The last thing we need is another player who can't score in this league. Ask the Leeds fans.

I can never get Duff to perform, but Owen after a season or two always starts to turn it on for me. Gotta say about Healy - as a Leeds fan - he infuriates me.

Adriano- has anyone got him back to his full PA?

how long did it take, constant play/winning?