How to evaluate Players

Hello everybody!

I finally made the switch from EA'S Football Manager, however I find it hard to evaluate my Players and my Team.

Maybe I'm just overseeing the obvious, but with EA's FM it was quiet easy to see how good a Players is as each one of them had a rating from "0-100". Can you guys please give me a few hints on how to improve my player evaluation and on what to look for in a player?

I just recently purchased the FM 2010, however if I can finally figure out how to evaluate my players I'll probably get the new 11'er as well.

Stay thirsty my friends

Scouts can help if they are good (particularly with potential). High Judging Ability and Judging Potential are important for this.

All individual attributes are out of 20, the closer to 20 the better. Judge what standard your players are by comparing them to others in the league so have a look around. The best players will have the better attributes in the right areas E.g CB's 15 Marking, 15 Tackling, 15 Jumping etc. would make a good CB. Have a look what your coaches (if they are good coaches) say about your players by going on your player Reports.

It depends what do you expect from a player. Overall Rating is not a reliable criteria therefore I like FM does not include such things. You should evaluate each attribute of a player seperately. You can search the web and find some useful detailed articles about it.

For example for a Target Man Striker, I look Finishing, Heading, Composure, Off The Ball and Strength.

I use the scout/coach star reports to judge roughly how good a player is, then look at the individual attributes to see if there are any obvious strengths or weaknesses.

The best way to evaluate the players though is on performances on the pitch. If a striker is scoring goals then who cares if he is deemed to be sub standard and has a finishing attribute of 4?

Overall ratings are ridiculous. You can't judge a player's ability by adding all of his stats and then dividing. That way, players like Walcott would be rubbish. A good thing you might do to learn how to evaluate players is seeing how good their attributes are in the tactics screen. Put a player in his position and you can see what attributes are most important, they are highlighted by the tactics creator.