How good will certain players be?

I'm interested to know how FM players attributes, personalities and hidden skills are decided? I assume it's down to certain people, maybe scouts or fans, helping SI out but to my mind, that creates a pretty biased view of the player. For example, if you're a Lille or Chelsea fan, you might make Hazard a world beater, whereas if you're a Man United fan, you might downplay his talents. How is impartiality achieved? It seems to me that judging players is completely based on opinion, and I'm just interested how SI balance this out?

Another thought I had was about two new Premiership acquisitions - Man United's Kagawa and Chelsea's Hazard. In the media, Hazard has got the biggest attention, mainly due to the fee and reputation, but on paper, Kagawa has the much better scoring and assisting stats, and personality wise, he seems a better fit for United and the Premiership - he appears to be hard working, reasonably shy, almost Scholes-esque to a degree. Hazard on the other hand, seems Ronaldo-esque - he seems to court media attention, is more flamboyant, maybe more sulky (Drogba-esque).

In FM 2013, I wouldn't be surprised to see Hazard performing better than Kagawa, mainly due to the researcher being misled slightly by recent media reports, and Hazard's better YouTube compliations. In real life, I'd be willing to put money on the fact that Kagawa will be seen as the better purchase come the end of the season, for his overall benefit to the team.

I'm not really comparing the two players - they play in different positions - but my point is: how much research is done into players, and I hope FM reflects real life, as opposed to the image portrayed in newspapers and YouTube!

Hazards attributes will be entered by the Lille researcher and Kagawa's by the Dortmund researcher and they should have seen a fair bit of both. I'd hope they would both be season ticket holders. Yes its all subjective opinion but its open to challenge anyone can post in the data forum and present a case for changing a players attributes.

I think with recent transfers like these, the researchers at their previous clubs will provide the attributes and ability for the players. The only issue with this is it means if, for example, the Lille researcher is a little more harsh with ability than the Chelsea researcher, Hazard will underperform at Chelsea due to their other players being better than him.

Of course,this is the same throughout the game anyway. If a researcher rates, say, Everton too highly compared to the rest of the Premiership researchers, you'll end up with a situation where Everton are always punching above their weight.

For what it's worth though, I agree with your general point and think Kagawa will be more of a success in England.

Edit: That's what happens when you spend too long explaining something.

Look at how Balotelli has been downgraded, and will now be upgraded in the next version of the game. Nuff said, really. His teamwork and work rate and hidden attributes are much too low, even for someone who is controversial and sulks at times.

I'd certainly say in the past season, Hazard's goalscoring/assist stats have been better than Kagawa's for sure. not only that, in a much worse team too. He is also younger and is the creative, pacy player Chelsea desperately need...United don't really need a second striker in Kagawa. I don't see why Kagawa will necessarily be the better signing here

bit off topic anyhow

I'd certainly say in the past season, Hazard's goalscoring/assist stats have been better than Kagawa's for sure. not only that, in a much worse team too. He is also younger and is the creative, pacy player Chelsea desperately need...United don't really need a second striker in Kagawa. I don't see why Kagawa will necessarily be the better signing here

bit off topic anyhow

In the last season perhaps, but I also think that overall Kagawa is the better player. Ligue 1 is really quite poor whereas the Bundesliga is a top league, underrated by far too many people, so Kagawa was arguably playing in a harder league. Finally, he isn't a second striker - at United you'll see him play on the wing or in central midfield. In FM terms he's clearly an AMC, so unless Fergie changes to a 4-4-1-1, he'll play deeper and burst forward ala Lampard.

Of course,this is the same throughout the game anyway. If a researcher rates, say, Everton too highly compared to the rest of the Premiership researchers, you'll end up with a situation where Everton are always punching above their weight.

One word - WOLVES.

These things tend to be sorted out with each version though, the researchers aren't psychics and for the most part I think they do a pretty good job.

Yeah I wasn't neccessarily getting into a debate about Hazard vs. Kagawa, but those two players were useful examples, as Hazard is coming in with huge media attention, and a huge reputation and price tag, and it'd be easy for a FM researcher to "buy into" this hype a bit, and make him a world beater (whether he actually is or not is open to debate), or at the least, overinflate his attributes. Kagawa on the other hand has slightly come in "under the radar", and it'd be easy for someone to downplay his skills.

Also, when the researcher is entering the attributes and skills he believes a player has, I wonder if he/she also gets involved in setting the players personality traits, and whether a player will settle in. For example, there is a chance Hazard will struggle, and he'll turn into another Veron, or Downing (obviously Hazard is better than Downing, but Downing had a reasonable reputation before moving to a bigger team and struggling). I wonder how big the researcher has weighted this "chance". By the same token, I'd assume Kagawa's "chance" will be lower. This sort of stuff requires the researcher to almost have knowledge about the player AND the person. Sounds to me like it's a very hard job, so kudos to them for the levels of accuracy we've seen so far over the years. It's an interesting subject to me though - I'd love to know how it works from a researcher if they comment in here.