Hidden Jewels (CA/PA Discussion?)

I am just thinking out loud here, so bear with me.

See Javier Pastore. An article came up a few weeks ago about what Argentine players in the 2010 WC squad were doing in the 2006 WC.

As the article quite rightly expresses, Pastore was a nobody. He was in the u18 ( game wise ) team of Talleres de Cordoba. No one knew who he was.

Then Huracan loaned him, and he simply filled our eyes with so many nutmegs to keep track of. And now he's at palermo, rated a wonderkid by the game.

I was just thinking, that it just doesn't make sense that as soon as you get a good newgen, you get humped by big teams wanting to co-own them. And if you reject the offer you may get him unhappy.

Look at Canales. He rocked at Racing Santander and was now bought by Real Madrid. But no one found him before. Look at Neymar, he's rocking in Brazil.

But I want you guys to think for a sec, Yes I know teams have scouts all over the place, and smoeone is bound to find a good player here and there. But it doesn't make sense that when you are a Serie C2 team in italy, and you get a good newgen, ROMA comes trying to co-own him.

Big teams don't normally swoop like this for players, they wait for them to be proved.

Di Maria proved himself in Rosario Central before going to benfica. Gago on Boca Juniors ( he kinda flopped, but meh ), Erik Lamela is now rocking in River Plate as I'm sure that some of you have found out.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the whole system is kind of flawed. It just don't make sense that a DECENT newgen is wanted by all the big teams in italy, when he's just made a few sub appearances in Serie B, and not really great.

I'm just wondering what could be a better way to represent this?

Maybe some kind of Hidden jewel system. Just hear me out here. What if every regen has a, say 1-500 chance each year to make a huge increase to their stats, the odds get better as the player hits 17-20. and after that it just dissapears.

This way you can simply give the middle finger to most scouts which won't really see a newgen as a great player, but when he makes the huge increase and makes a lot of first team appearances ( as it happens in real life ) only THEN, they'll start jumping the boat.

Who knew Pastore in FM 06? He should have been in the Talleres de Cordoba u-18... But lets face it, there is no way he was a wonderkid.

Going back to the 1-500 chance. I'm thinking it should be something like an increase in CA/PA, but I don't think that it really is the best way.

Anyways, I dropped the bomb. Now I'm preparing my flame shield.

Niker

it would be good as its once in a blue moon a young player comes through lower sides youth academies and it would make looking at youngsters more fun but add the realistic thing to stop you snapping up all the best youngsters left right and centre

I kind of disagree. There are players like Pastore that bloom in 1-2 years and suddenly big clubs wake up and scouts think "how the hell did I miss this one" but there are examples when Barca or ManU or Chelsea are signing or trying to sign some 14-16 yo talents for their academies. So you can't really say that big clubs don't chase teenage talents.

I agree that the current system doesnt give true representation of rl wonderkids rise to stardom.

i could think of lots of players, off the top of my head is wayne rooney, no one heard of him till he started to make some first team appearences for everton and even then that wasnt enough for a team to come knocking at the door. it was only after a season and a half or so that man utd decided they SAW enough and felt he was good enough to cut it so to speak.

At the moment its like every ai team kows the PA of youngsters and snap them up before they even make a name for themselves. this leads to players not developing properly as they dont get first team football at the big clubs. most of the time they are bought and dumped in the reserves and stuck on the loan list. this just happened in one of my games, man utd bought a young brazilian dc and stuck him straight in the reserves aswell as a french striker who looks very promising. the very next season they sold the brazilian back to the same team for a fraction of the price, this must have hindered his development as if he stayed originally he would have gained valuable first team football yet he was left to rot in the reserves.

i dont know about the jewel stat which you mention but i i think that si need to stop the ai teams from knowing the PA of youngsters. lets face it for those of us that dont use scouting programs ect we dont know them either.

I agree that the current system doesnt give true representation of rl wonderkids rise to stardom.

i could think of lots of players, off the top of my head is wayne rooney, no one heard of him till he started to make some first team appearences for everton and even then that wasnt enough for a team to come knocking at the door. it was only after a season and a half or so that man utd decided they SAW enough and felt he was good enough to cut it so to speak.

At the moment its like every ai team kows the PA of youngsters and snap them up before they even make a name for themselves. this leads to players not developing properly as they dont get first team football at the big clubs. most of the time they are bought and dumped in the reserves and stuck on the loan list. this just happened in one of my games, man utd bought a young brazilian dc and stuck him straight in the reserves aswell as a french striker who looks very promising. the very next season they sold the brazilian back to the same team for a fraction of the price, this must have hindered his development as if he stayed originally he would have gained valuable first team football yet he was left to rot in the reserves.

i dont know about the jewel stat which you mention but i i think that si need to stop the ai teams from knowing the PA of youngsters. lets face it for those of us that dont use scouting programs ect we dont know them either.

well there are different type of transfers as you guys here already mentioned.. Pastore may have proved himself a little before a transfer to Europe and there are many transfers like that but then you can take an example with Fabregas and Pique, two players that never played for the senior Barca team before United and Arsenal took them..

And also there are many others that dont make the grade and end up being sold... It happens all the time in real..

This seems like a whole lot of speculation... It seems natural that you're more likely to miss those that break through on lower levels and notice those players that are snapped by high profile clubs.

What's needed is some investigative work.

Ok, I checked the best 14 players from a save that's in the year 2060. (Those with 180+ CA.)

Of them only one was transfered from a small club (Partizan) to a big club (Benfica) without ever playing for the small club.

A couple were snathced up from a big club to another in this manner.

About half of them never left their parent (big) club before making it to the top (except for loan).

A fair few started in a big club and were snatched up by a small club just to make a breakthrough there and later move on.

A couple were in a small club in the beginning, made a breakthrough and left for a bigger club afterwards.

Of course this is only the very best of the best here, but I didn't see anything to warrant further waste of my time.

Fabregas is another great case of the hidden jewel system I propose.

When he was at barcelona, his PA should have been something that didn't warrant a first team.

The gunners bought him at (what age was it?) and after that he got the attribute boost.

Now Barca want him back *rolleyes* .

Niker

I totally agree, something needs to be changed, rather than keeping this "Player X can become this good and that's final" system, it really annoys me when I get a newgen through my academy with something like 4* PA on his Assistant Report, and I'm instantly inundated with offers for him when he hasn't played any games whatsoever in the game world.

The last time I got a batch of newgens, one of them had 191 PA, 2 weeks later Europe's major clubs are coming in with contract offers and, *BAM*, he's off to Real Madrid where he'll definitely stagnate and be sold to Cadiz in 7 years' time for 2.3m, having not reached his potential having spent years of his career in the reserves.

It seems a decent idea but sometimes it does work the other way as well. Teams buying players really young, being poached off smaller teams. As a Luton fan, 16 year old Cauley Woodrow got snapped up by Fulham the other week and he's only played a handful of games for us (and 1 for England U17's). We've also had a couple of youngsters bought by Chelsea and Liverpool - and also Jack Wilshire (although he was like 9 at the time Arsenal found him so I'm not sure if he counts).

The AI don't take form or past performance ratings into account when they sign players, which, imo, is a massive gap in the game.

off the top of my head is wayne rooney, no one heard of him till he started to make some first team appearences for everton and even then that wasnt enough for a team to come knocking at the door. it was only after a season and a half or so that man utd decided they SAW enough and felt he was good enough to cut it so to speak.

disagree with this...judging from Rooney's record in youth teams, most teams would have been aware of him from a very early age...

yes, me and you may have never have heard of him when he was, lets say 15, but all the major teams would definitely be monitoring him by then.

disagree with this...judging from Rooney's record in youth teams, most teams would have been aware of him from a very early age...

yes, me and you may have never have heard of him when he was, lets say 15, but all the major teams would definitely be monitoring him by then.

Yes but as i said no club was willing to part with cash for him so young, like say ronaldo and nani, it was only after they had been playing for their club that more interest was shown. We digress from the point that major clubs have a trend to buy young players and let them "rot" in their reserves not reaching their potential in fm11. if fabregas, pique , ronaldo or messi where young (mid teen) players on this game they would be snapped up by major clubs because of their big Potential but would be left to rot in the reserves because they aren't yet good enough for the first team, thus causing them not to reach their potential.

Personally i feel it needs sorting.

well I'm pleased to see that this idea didn't get shotgunned off the floor, yet.

I know that many players BELOW 14 years are taken into bigger teams, but the game doesn't represent this. So Messi is a product of Barcelona and not of Newell's Old Boys, but that's just the way the system goes.

What I'm trying to get at with this suggestion is to somehow create a rising star, while also dealing with the random factor that a totally common player may turn into a superstar given the right situation ( 1 in something chance ).

Pastore is just the case. I'm certain that some other players are around that had the same situation.

I can just imagine getting a mail on my box from my ass man saying.

"I've noticed that John Doe is improving a great deal recently... maybe you could consider him for the first team?"

And you see the sweet increase in stats, for a 17 year old, making him actually first team worthy.

This isn't me proposing a radical change to anything, I'm just thinking out loud about something which I think flawed, and a way to fix it. you guys are all free to make suggestions about this, or argue, this IS a forum as far as I know.

Niker

I think you raised a good point , Niker. But, I think the issue lies in the games' mechanics.

When a regen is created with high potential, the game automatically generates his reputation. Sometimes it can be quite high, whereas IRL, this high starting point for a reputation , probably would not exist. It would be a gradual increase over time since they were perhaps as young as 8 or 9 years old.

I'm not quite sure how you represent that in a different or more efficient way? I think it works reasonably well as it is, but as you've said, it does have its flaws.

It seems that a dynamic PA would be the answer. (If we assume that the AI teams sign by PA as well as reputation. I don't know if they do.) I don't think that doing things randomly is the answer. A player doesn't get a whole lot better like that. Not randomly. You have to train hard, be focused, have good tutoring (I'm not talking about the tutoring system of FM), play regularly at a correct level for you.

So, dynamic PA...

An idea from the top of my head follows, but first I'll say that I believe that countless hours of doing/training is very much more essential than talent. In fact I claim that "talent" is merely having a high level of interest in an activity. Anyway, the idea:

- Assign every regen a PA that has a range. This range won't be set initially, it will be something like PA100-170, for example. (This represents the work that the player has done during his childhood and teens. If you have trained and trained, all of your free time the likelyhood is that you're A) likely to become a good player and B) likely a better player than others of your age already. These early years largely define how good you can become.)

- Have certain events affect the range over the years. For example if the player is injured for half a year it might cause the range to change to PA100-160. Then again he has great coaches and a fantastic tutor and that will cause him to go PA120-160, but he doesn't get the playing time he needs and it will again change to PA120-150. Over the years the lower and higher limit will become the same and that will be the final PA.

- So if everything is perfect the PA will settle to 160 and if everything is horribly wrong the PA will settle to 100.

Another idea:

- Assign the PA like you do now, but set it a bit higher.

- If things are perfect do nothing.

- If something's not good drop the PA slightly.

- Repeat until the CA is level with the PA.

One question begs to be answered though: Do we need the PA to be dynamic? The CA is dynamic already, so maybe it should be enough already. Many things affect the CA, so why should the same things affect the PA as well? Would the effects just be doubled and is that of any benefit?

Very good point from the OP...

The main issue is that AI clubs and scouts can "see" the players' PA right away, so they can buy all the players with good potential, regardless of them actually having shown in-game potential.

Basically it's a constant leap of faith... "This Guy has 175PA, we should sign him... sure he hasn't played a game for that U18 amateur side, but hey.. 175PA baby!!!"

Of course the same goes for scouts at human-managed clubs, but the human manager can take advantage of his common sense.. AI managers will fall for the "inconsistent, injury prone, all-8s, high potential guy", while many of us would just look at the player's profile and label him as not worth the effort.

Still, this should really be addressed, in order to avoid AI clubs signing pretty much every newgen with high potential who's vaguely good enough.

More fuel for the dynamic PA campaign, or at least for keeping the "negative PA range" active for players younger than 21 or something...

And, for the love of god, it's time to reduce the effect of reputation and PA on AI scouting and buying policy

I just checked with FMRTE how many players aged 20 or younger have a high PA/CA but would be available really cheap because they play in a small league/club or are even without a club. It's unbelievable my scouts won't find them. Of course I didn't check their names. Argh, I hate that feeling of gems slipping through your fingers.

EDIT: In a database of 55,000 players, there are about 250 players aged 20 or younger with a "potential rating" > 80 and a asking price of 1 mil at max.

the whole PA/CA system is perfectly fine really, it's simple, it works, sure, small clubs dont hold on to "good" players long enough, and they get snapped up too quickly, but there's no need to change the ca/pa system, just make the bigger clubs take a bit longer to "Notice" the player.

so your solution, Krald, is to reduce the effects of PA hence Reputation?

The AI don't take form or past performance ratings into account when they sign players, which, imo, is a massive gap in the game.

I agree with the point, although it is probably the same with Human players surely? Stats being the biggest decider for us lot?

I would suggest that the solution is to do with a revamp of scouting.

The problem is that you can scout a player once, and immediately know that they "have the potential to be better than Michael Carrick" or whatever. In reality, how on earth could a scout make a report card with such a definite conclusion? A report card should be nothing more than "good reputation, powerful defensive midfielder who may well be talented enough to succeed in the Premiership". Then they would watch said player for 5 games, before coming back with a definite conclusion, or perhaps saying that he's coming back from injury and performing poorly - unfair to judge at this point.

Apparently Ji-Sung Park was watched around 20 times by United before he was signed... that would never happen in FM.

The problem isn't that players are born with high PAs and high reputations, it's that the player and the AI managers can find this all out in a matter of seconds.

The problem isn't that players are born with high PAs and high reputations, it's that the player and the AI managers can find this all out in a matter of seconds.

Spot on neither the Gamer nor the AI should be looking at PA. They should look at CA compare it to players of the same age and if a player is monitored look at the rate of CA increase and extrapolate a CA at the peak age for the players position if the rate of increase remains constant.

Ok thats simplified and there needs to be some other factors introduced so that not all scouts are equal but the point is nothing in the game should use PA it should be hidden from the AI and the player.

I agree with that. THeres no way that a scout should know the PA of a player. For all he knows he sees a kid do some kind of tricks with the balls and he says he's got the potential to be as good as messi? No. He may say that, but he really sucks later on.

Niker

I think you raised a good point , Niker. But, I think the issue lies in the games' mechanics.

When a regen is created with high potential, the game automatically generates his reputation. Sometimes it can be quite high, whereas IRL, this high starting point for a reputation , probably would not exist. It would be a gradual increase over time since they were perhaps as young as 8 or 9 years old.

I'm not quite sure how you represent that in a different or more efficient way? I think it works reasonably well as it is, but as you've said, it does have its flaws.

You forget that IRL these players that in FM start at the age of around 16 have been around for 2-4 years or more. Most big academies have allot of age groups so a u18 player isn't necessarily unknown to the world.

Spot on neither the Gamer nor the AI should be looking at PA. They should look at CA compare it to players of the same age and if a player is monitored look at the rate of CA increase and extrapolate a CA at the peak age for the players position if the rate of increase remains constant.

Ok thats simplified and there needs to be some other factors introduced so that not all scouts are equal but the point is nothing in the game should use PA it should be hidden from the AI and the player.

Wouldn't that be the scout's job?

Also, if you scout a player extensively, you'll notice that the PA star rating changes based on factors like reputation, form, scout's knowledge of the country etc. If you check reports against actual CA/PA, you'll see that scouts get it wrong most of the times, sometimes give only a half a star room for improvement on a player that has more that 40 CA points left, if that player has low reputation/form, and vice verse for well known players with high rep, high CA but low PA.

Wouldn't that be the scout's job?

Also, if you scout a player extensively, you'll notice that the PA star rating changes based on factors like reputation, form, scout's knowledge of the country etc. If you check reports against actual CA/PA, you'll see that scouts get it wrong most of the times, sometimes give only a half a star room for improvement on a player that has more that 40 CA points left, if that player has low reputation/form, and vice verse for well known players with high rep, high CA but low PA.

Right, but sometimes they will be correct. And it's all to do with judging player ability and potential stats of the scout. So the better the scout is, the more accurately he can pass on the hidden PA.

What I'm saying is that it should be impossible. Scouts should not be able to return a verdict on a player's potential, whom they haven't seen play. If someone asked you to check the price of something in a supermarket, you went but it was closed, you would hardly come back and say "it's about £3.50". The scouts should spend longer tracking the player if you ask them to, and watch games they play to get a firmer idea about their calibre. Same for the AI - if players haven't played any football, it should be impossible to put any figure on their potential ability. If they've only played 10 games for the reserves, then the information should be very sketchy and need following up - it's no basis on which to buy a player.

At present, you could get a report card on a one-day old regen, find out he's the next Cristiano Ronaldo, and sign him. Your scouts may not be correct in their assessment, but that's not the point. It is physically impossible to know.

Scout reports should be based on performances.

Accuracy of reports should be based on the playing level of those performances.

Been saying this for years, but it never makes it in

Would be interesting to know in Player Search Filter after setting filter preferences how many people then arrange search results by form rather than age, value, etc.

I'm guessing close to none.

Big teams don't normally swoop like this for players, they wait for them to be proved.

Chelsea have just signed Lucas Piazon, he has made no appearences at club level and had a rather underwhelming u17's championship considering the level of hype around him.

Scout reports should be based on performances.

Accuracy of reports should be based on the playing level of those performances.

Totally agree with the first one... accuracy should be influenced by the scout's skills, too.

Once again, there are several cases about kids being bought by bigger teams. Piazon being one of them, despite failing to make a first team appearance.

My guess is Chels is trying to get a HG status on him, specially sicne he's young and shows promise.

But that isn't ALWAYS the case, and that is my point.

For all we know Lucas may be stuck on the loan list at chelsea forever.

And there is no way that scouts should tell you that he has the potential to be as good as X player.

He should only be able to tell you "Lucas' skills are about the same level as X player, but he's still young, and should get better"

The thing is you don't know HOW better he can get, and big teams gamble on these players for need, for the HG status for example in England

Take Pato. He rocked at his home team in brazil, and internationally, and was bought by Milan. Now some people are acussing him of not being what he was hoped to be.

Niker

Also, the stupid thing is Top Clubs in FM do buy youngsters REGARDLESS of their current skills, just basing their purchase on scout reports (aka on knowing the PA is high).

It's quite pointless having a mediocre 18yo with 12 as best attribute signed by AC Milan or Real Madrid, while he'd be barely ok for his previous club's reserve team... and more often than not the mental traits of said players are clear hints they'll never fulfill their potential, not even close to that.

So while I see how some clubs in real life can go for relatively unproven youngsters, often in an attempt to "outsmart" the rivals and securing themselves a future top player, but there must be SOMETHING in those guys that hints of future potential... I mean something visible... even if it's just "he played well in his previous U18 club" or "he was the star of the local u14 team"

Instead most of the "hot potential" youngsters AI clubs sign in FM are unremarkable.... the kind of guys you tend to sell to Watford or Preston as soon as you get an offer for them...

The agent of a youngster could possibly have a purpose here. And the youngster himself.

They could try to figure out whether it's wiser to sign for a smaller club instead or not move at all. They would consider the training facilities, quality of coaches and playing time they're likely to get to decide the best option. (Which I'm sure they already do to a degree.)

Bradford City have an hotbed of bringing pure talent through the years some have gone on to better things....

Dean Richards (R.I.P. Legend)

Fabien Delph

Tom Cleverley

Andre Wisdom - Liverpool - Watch this space

Andy O'Brien

Des Hamilton.

Stuart McCall

We have had other young ens who we have taken in and matured or we have got rid of when suggested not good enough

Paul Scholes - Rejected as a 10 year old

Paulo Wanchope - Wasnt strong enough

Mark Schwarzer - signed for £350k sold 8 week later for £1.8 million.

Lots of players do progress but theres certain ones who make it.