CA Vs Player's Actual Ability

Does CA Define how good a player is? Or is CA the tool used to calculate how many attribute points a player has overall?

For example a player with lesser CA, but with attributes distributed in a more concentrated way for his position be better than a player with overall higher CA, but attributes distributed poorly for said position?

this is something which interests me greatly, so i'd like to know the answer for definite.

No, yes (but relevant positional attributes eat up more of the available CA) and yes.

Thanks for the quick reply, i think in future when looking at players i'll focus less on the scouts star rating and more on the actual attributes themselves.

Does CA Define how good a player is? Or is CA the tool used to calculate how many attribute points a player has overall?

For example a player with lesser CA, but with attributes distributed in a more concentrated way for his position be better than a player with overall higher CA, but attributes distributed poorly for said position?

this is something which interests me greatly, so i'd like to know the answer for definite.

This. He can be 1 star but have high values in all the key attributes for his position and be better than a 3.5/4star who is more rounded...

CA represents the amount of points each players currently has to "spend" on his attributes, but it's not the sum of the single attributes. It's a weighed average, where depending on the role/position each attribute can "cost" a different amount of "CA points".

So to answer your second question, a player with a lower CA but with better attributes distribution is surely more reliable, and thus "better" than a player with plenty of CA points but with a terrible distribution.

If your CM is a great passer and has flair, but he's slower than a tectonic plate and/or can't make a right decision to save his life, you're not going to get much advantage from his technique anyway.

Just think of it in RPG terms...

A "Mage" can raise his "Intelligence" skill by 1 point with, say, 10XP points, while to raise his "Strength" by 1 he'd need 50XP, because he's mentally strong but physically weak.

So in FM a Striker will need more CA points to boost his Finishing skills, while an unimportant skill like Tackling could cost much less... But just like in the RPG, you wouldn't want to waste valuable points on secondary skills.

P.S. speaking of "low-cost attributes" some years ago (FM09 I think) there was a way to exploit such development system by retraining players with lots of potential in unfamiliar and unrelated positions (ST into DC, DC into AMC) in order to get significant raises in "cheap" attributes.

This has been fixed now AFAIK.

Thanks for the replies guys, i've been playing FM for so long, but i've never played with much "thought" I'd buy all the best players with the biggest clubs and click continue.

I'm trying to go back to roots of how i used to play pouring over every squad looking for a hidden gem, (back in the CM days lol)

So basically i'm trying to acquire more knowledge to improve the experience im having