Mechanics of Manager Reputation

Initial thoughts

As I have been unable to find anything concrete on how manager reputation increases in this forum (or any other forum for that matter), I have dedicated this thread to the exploration of the underlying mechanics of manager reputation. I use FMM to explore hidden variables in the game in order to uncover these mechanics, so if you don't want to know how these variables work you should stop reading now. Hopefully my findings will be a great help to players who, like myself, like to change jobs a lot. This thread will be less helpful to players who put a certain club above their own career, but even they might find a thing or two of interest.

Basics first...

Manager Reputation is a partially hidden attribute in FM. If you read your own manager screen you can see your reputation described as one of the following:

1. Unproven

2. Regional

3. National

4. Continental

5. World Class

AI managers cannot be Unproven, they are either of Obscure or Local rep instead.

These labels are actually simple categorizations of a hidden variable called Current Reputation that goes from 0 - 10000. These labels also depend on the nationality of your current or last played league, so you can have unproven reputation in England and change to national reputation if you take a job in Malaysia without your reputation actually changing.

The game engine differs between "Home Reputation", "Current Reputation" and "World Reputation".

As I understand these Variables "Home Reputation" is your reputation with teams of the same nationality as you (Likely secondary nationality teams as well, needs testing). "Current Reputation" governs the ingame reputation label and is your generally most important reputation variable. While I think "World Reputation" is your reputation with all clubs excluded from the "Home Reputation" category, it is possible that it is only used when you apply for the manager job of national teams.

When you apply for a job the game compares your reputation to the clubs reputation and if your reputation is equal or greater to that of the club you might get the job. Which of the two reputations the game uses for this comparison depends on your managers nationality. If the club has the same nationality as you the game uses "Home reputation" and "Current reputation", if not it uses "World reputation" and "Current reputation".

Your starting reputation scores depend on your starting difficulty. These scores ranges from 0 to 10000 and are completely independent of nationality, age or Starting Club. The difficulty levels give you the following scores:

1. International Footballer, "Home Reputation", 8000, "World Reputation", 4000

2. Professional Footballer, "Home Reputation", 6000, "World Reputation", 3000

3. Semi-Professional Footballer, "Home Reputation", 3250, "World Reputation", 1625

4. Sunday League Footballer, "Home Reputation", 1500, "World Reputation", 750

5. Automatic, This one depends on the reputation of the lowest playing league in your game. Values range from 500, 250 (Lowest league in the world) to 9500, 4750 (Spanish First). It's completely independent of nationality, age or Starting Club. Proven by testing.

Current rep is always the same value as Home rep when you create a new manager. To give you some reference Man Utd has a starting reputation of 9250, Q.P.R. has 4750 and Scarborough has 1750.

As I said before these values fall into different categories in-game, Unproven - World Class, depending on what country you currently or last played in. Starting as a Sunday league footballer I would have Unproven reputation in England, Regional in Norway and National in Malaysia at the start of the game. Just try starting three managers with each of these nationalities and you will see that it's true. Reported reputation values in FMM is the same for all three though. If now my Norwegian manager got the job of Malaysian team Melaka his reputation label would change from regional to national, without any value change in FMM, and this label would stick with him when he resigns until he gets another job.

The important thing to draw from this is that your in-game label depends on your current, or last played, league. A national reputation in England is worth more than in Malaysia. This seems to be linked to the nations reputation, but exactly what variable governs it is not of great importance as long as we know roughly how it works.

Reputation can change after every match

Testing has shown that the outcome of every match you play, even friendlies, can change your manager reputation either positively or negatively. The amount of reputation change you get depends on what the game predicts your chance of winning the match is, plus the general prestige (match rep) of the game. The match odds gives you a general Idea of what is expected of you. If you are predicted to win you will usually lose reputation if you draw or lose the match.

The game calculates the the match odds based on the clubs respective reputations, current form and Home advantage.

The reputation changes you get after each match are normally distributed, which means that the more the final score of the match diverges from the predicted outcome the bigger the change in reputation will be. This means that you will see bigger increases by winning 6-0 than by winning 1-0. If the outcome is as predicted you will see little or no change to reputation.

It follows from these observations that winning many matches with a low reputation club, against more reputable clubs, will increase your reputation quite a bit, and more so the higher the prestige of the match is. Losing matches against lesser opponents is an equally fast way of losing reputation. A way to avoid these potential losses is to go on holiday and leave your assistant in charge of the match. Matches played by your assistant has no effect on your own reputation, so use this to your favor. Situations where it might be beneficial to employ this tactic includes matches where you have to field a "B" squad (especially international matches) and financial friendlies against bigger teams.

If you want to start low and increase your reputation fast get a national job as soon as possible. Matches in international competitions, like the WC or The African Nations, can be worth several hundred points to your reputation. African teams like Congo, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria are prime candidates, as they have many quality players but lower rep and less domestic managers than the European countries.

Winning is the Key

Unsurprisingly you need to win stuff in order to progress your career in any reasonable amount of time. Testing has shown that while your reputation scores can increase a few hundred points from games, in a good season, the rep bonuses you get from winning stuff are many times higher than this.

You don't actually have to win to get a bonus. You would get a bonus if you got your team promoted or just reached the final of any given cup or tournament as well, but they would not be as high as for a win. Things that give you a bonus to rep are:

1. Getting your team promoted (Possibly qualifying for European cups as well, needs testing)

2. Winning the league

3. Either winning or losing a cup or tournament final (Winning gets you about twice the amount of rep as losing)

4. Winning Manager of the month pr Manager of the year. (Not that much, but every bit helps)

Applying for jobs

When you apply for a job the game compares your reputation to that of the club in question. If your reputation is greater or roughly equal to that of the club in question you are considered eligible for the job. You will then get the job if there are no computer controlled managers with greater reputation than you also applying for the job.

Nationality plays an important factor when you apply for a job as all domestic managers, to the club in question, get what I call the domestic bias. Clubs favor domestic managers by letting them use Home and Current rep variables when comparing them with the other applicants, foreign managers use Current and World. This gives a domestic bias because Home rep is generally higher than World rep (at least for low level manager), as the initial rep values for new managers indicates. This also means that you can start out as a manager of a more reputable club in your home country than abroad. When applying for international sides the game will favor domestic managers to such an extent that if you don't have sufficient rep, and there are no competitors of higher rep that you, the game will create a new domestic manager (often of lower rep than you) and give him the job. This happens all the time with African teams. When applying for a job while under contract (not international sides) you often have a better chance of getting it if you resign your current job first (especially in the lower leagues), as your potentially new club will have to pay to release you from your current contract.

Leaving your current job

It happens to all of us. We grow tired of our current club and/or just can't seem to win as many games as we would like. As you have a greater chance of getting a new job if you are unemployed, for economical reasons, it can be advantageous to resign from your current job before you send your application to new clubs. The important thing to remember here is that you can resign at any time, no problem, but never issue your board an ultimatum! Ultimatums are flawed in Fm, you never get anything out of them (I have never heard of anyone who did anyway), but you will lose 10% of your "current reputation" by leaving your job this way.

The recipe of quick success

This is a summary of all my experiments and general experience into a playing strategy for lower league managers. These are general tips on how to progress your career in the most efficient way and some of these might not be compatible with your idea of game enjoyment. Aspects of game enjoyment should obviously be prioritized over strategic career choices if not compatible.

Creating a new Manager

When creating a new manager you pretty much set the pace for your future career. You can save yourself a whole lot of time and frustration by picking a club you like. If you like to start unemployed however your choice of starting rep has a much bigger impact on the general progression of your career. If you chose Automatic and all leagues expect to have to start in the lowest Swedish division or some obscure Asian league. This is the ultimate manager challenge and has the potential to give you loads of fun, but also loads of frustration. Personally I don't have the patience it would take to finish one of these games as it will be very slow in the start. If you start as a "Sunday League Footballer" you can expect to land a job at one of the regional blue square leagues, or generally at one of the lowest teams in your lowest domestic league. "Semi-Professional Footballer" should qualify you for a job in Coca Cola League2. "Professional Footballers" would usually play in The CC Championship, while an International Footballer will be potential manager material for most high prestige clubs.

Next comes nationality, which due to the domestic bias has a greater effect than most would believe. The highest ranking clubs you will be an eligible candidate for will almost always play in your domestic league(s). If nationality is variable to you then it would be wise to chose the nationality of the country you wish to play in (it is also possible that it's enough to chose this as secondary nationality, but this is not yet verified).

Choosing a team

Whether this is something you choose when you create your manager or you start unemployed you should give a great deal of consideration to which club you should choose to start out with. If nation is variable then you should go for a nation with many leagues, of different levels if you start low, as this gives you more opportunities to win something. England and Italy are good choices here. Furthermore you might want to choose a league which is lax in its foreign players restrictions, as this increases the number of players available for transfer quite a bit. If you start low you might also want to give consideration to the number of promotions your potential league has, as a promotion is worth a lot either you win or finish 6th.

Next you should consider your potential club's winning potential. It will be far easier to win your league if you manage a team predicted to finish in the top three than if your team is predicted to relegate. Most people think that the game predictions are useless, as they are often off by quite a bit (especially for good human players), but they are very valuable when choosing a new club as the prediction is an expression of the teams reputation (at the start of the season) relative to the other teams in the league. The most reputable team will be predicted to win. This is useful to know as the more reputable the club is the higher the quality of the players and staff you will be able to attract to the club will be. Career wise it might actually be smart to play a league lower than you are qualified for, as you might then be eligible for the team predicted to win the league. Newly relegated teams with a little money on their bank accounts are prime candidates.

Players who start with low rep and without a job will find their club options severely limited. Generally go for clubs with as high value and as much money as possible. This will greatly help your wage budget and to attract the few good players (and staff) actually willing to play for your club.

Winning silverware

I will not offer you general advice on how to do this as there are an innumerable amount of people who have made their suggestions available already. You will need a good tactic in addition to signing quality players and staff. I usually find that it pays to build on a tight defense, but that's just me. Getting a good parent club and loaning some of their players might also be very helpful.

What I will offer however is some advice for when you do win promotion. Think long and hard about your chances of winning or at least finish among the top 5 in your new league. If you find that your chances are slim then you would do well to resign your job and find a new one. Most players will not want to do this, but it will likely be a smart career move. By winning a promotion you are now generally eligible for jobs half a league higher up than you were before. If the best you can do is a below mid-table team in the league above your last league then you would do well to apply for the job at one of the newly relegated teams instead.

National jobs

Get one of these as soon as possible! Extra matches means extra opportunities to increase your rep, and international matches are among the best. It doesn't matter too much which country you manage, but generally go for nations with many quality players and relatively low rep. All the African national teams are prime candidates.

I am a fan of journeyman games. The thought of starting at the bottom and working your way to the top appeals to me very much. However, working your way up can be a tedious and time consuming experience for any of us. For different reasons we might want to change turf in the game, just to find that none of the teams we thought ourselves qualified to play for would even consider hiring us.

This is exactly what happened in my current game. I started as a 29 year old manager with Norwegian nationality, Sunday league experience and No job. After a few weeks I got a job at Norwegian second division side Modum, which gave me a contract worth 300 pounds a week, Wage budget of 4K and no Transfer budget. Modum was at the time a semi-professional team, worth roughly 45k (100k debt at start), predicted to lose the division. It did have relatively good facilities though, average training and adequate youth, which was the main reason I accepted the job.

I did a complete overhaul of the team, fired all my current staff and hired new ones. Gave the players I could be bothered to keep full time contracts, and fired or sold the rest. The first season went relatively well considering the media prediction and my violent upheaval of the teams foundations of players and staff. After having sniffed around mid-table for most of the season we finished 10th (of 14), just above relegation, after a slump at the end of the season. I was confident that the second season would go much better though, after my new players and staff had some time to gel together, and especially after I got Premier Division side Stabæk as my new parent team.

In the second season I was able to Loan a fast striker and a Left Winger from Stabæk, paying 0% of their wages, for a whole year. These two were considered my two best players by all my staff, and the striker would indeed end up as the leagues top scorer and top rated player, while the winger would have most assists. Having also signed a quite decent captain (20 inf, 12 det) things might be starting to get a little better I thought. During the first season I had managed to get rid of the 100 K debt and by the end of this season I would have 250K in the bank. All this time I had managed to keep my wages about 1k below the limit set by the board (despite it just being 4k to begin with), so my board was very pleased with me. A big reason that I managed to do this was by arranging lots of friendlies with Rosenborg (Top club of Norway), which would net me a ticket income of about 20k each game. Might not be realistic that the club would agree to multiple friendlies in real life, but you need all the help you can get in the lower leagues...

The second season went incredibly well considering the last seasons result and odds of 150-1 against me winning the league. The 10 First games saw me in second place, with something like 6 wins, 2 evens and 2 losses I think. Unfortunately newly relegated team Nybergsund was almost unbeatable. Despite my keeper conceding least goals in the league, by a good margin, Nybergsund was 8 points ahead of me with only 3 matches left of the season. I would have to win the league to get promoted. By bidding on their best players earlier I had seen to it that they were snatched up by bigger clubs, so they had lost part of their teams backbone towards the end of the season. They were beginning to slump in results and I had incredibly managed to fight through a slump mid-season and was currently on a winning streak. Could it hold though? Nybergsund would only need 1 point in their last three matches unless i was able to win all my matches by big margins. It should be impossible.

What happened next was like watching a miracle. Nybergsund lost their first match in 10 rounds 2-3 while my boys banged in the biggest win of the season 6-0! Next I faced the leagues nr 3 while Nybergsund faced the third to last team of the league. I went into this match with little to no hope as Nybergsund would surely win against such a poor team. My boys did their job and won 4-1, but when I checked the results of the other matches I saw that Nybergsund had actually lost 1-3! Now my goal difference was equal to Nybergsund, so they would actually have to win their last game to be certain of promotion. Luckily I faced the jumbo team of the league for my last match and won comfortably 3-0. Nybergsund however was facing the team I had just beat 6-0, surely they would win... I could not believe my eyes when I saw that they had actually lost 0-3 to the team that I had just beaten 6-0. Nybergsund rounded of the season incredibly poor and got stuck in second division, while I won the league by 1 point and got promoted to first division. There must have been quite a bit of head bashing going on in the Nybergsund board room after that.

However, when my board learned that we had got promoted they did what must have been one of the most idiotic economic decisions I have ever heard of. In their ecstasy they took up a loan of 4.8 million pounds to build a new stadium! At the time the club was 250k in the green, and I had only earned 350k in total over the last 2 years. The club was immediately declared bankrupt, went into receivership, and those bastards started selling of my players for next to nothing.

This naturally demotivated me a lot from taking on another season with this team, as I could see no immediate solution to the clubs economic problem. I would probably be unable to retain good players for any period of time, let alone buy any new players, and as a result of all this I would probably be relegated. On top of this Stabæk had just been relegated to the same division as me, so they would no longer be my parent club. Prospects were grim indeed. Thus I wanted to change turf, but I soon discovered that this wasn't as easy as I had expected (Seeing as I had won the starting league and a promotion, with a team predicted to lose the league, after all). That was when I decided to start investigating the mechanisms behind manager reputation.

As my only other alternative now was to go back to another team in the second division I decided to try and rough it out with Modum for another season. My salary had gone up to 500£ by now btw. Luckily I was able to get another big team as a parent club, and through sheer force of persistence I was able to loan 5 players from them for a year without paying any wages. I was also able to loan my best striker from last season again, plus a midfielder from another club. 6 of these loaned players would form the backbone of a team that I hoped would be able to fight of relegation. I was aware that this tactic was not going to be very good in the long run, but hopefully it would work long enough for me to get a better job. I had been unable to loan any good Central Defenders though, so this season would see a lot of goals on both sides of the pitch. In the end I finished 9th of 16, with 41 points and 47 goals, which I thought was great all considering, but not anywhere near promotion though as the winner (my previous parent club) won the league with 76 points and 74 goals (nearly twice as much as me). On the financial side the board started to show some sense in July, having blamed me for their loan extravaganza all season those (colorful language)! They started investing money in the club at non-regular intervals, and although no investment was greater than 400k they started adding up, so that by the end of the season the clubs debt was reduced from 4.8 mill to 1.5 mill.

Still unable to get a decent job, I decided to stick with Modum for one last season to try to get some data. My strategy was the same as last season, loads of loaners and friendlies against the top teams of Norway, plus I finally managed to sign my top Striker from the two previous seasons to the club, after he was fired by Stabæk. Club debt was down to 0.7 mil by the season change, and I had managed to put together a better all round team than last year. Maybe this season wasn't going to be as bad as I expected.

After a very good start I was among the top five, but I soon came to the conclusion that I would never get the data I needed at this pace, plus I had really grown tired of Modum. Therefore I decided to do some result fixing this season in order to shed some light on my current hypotheses. I will not go into great detail of this, my fourth season with Modum. Suffice to say that I ended up winning the league and the cup. When the club wanted to renew my contract i rejected all their offers, they would have been doomed to relegation next season even if I still wanted to manage them, and went job hunting when my contract expired.

I now wanted to move to the continent, preferably to England, to get a fresh start and some new challenges (plus to get more data). The Norwegian leagues end in October however and my contract expired in December. A few clubs became available in December, but I didn't get any of them. As soon as my contract expired I went on vacation with the apply for jobs option active. I only got offered a few sh*tty jobs that I rejected, and thus went half a year. I was starting to loose hope when at the start of the English season I was offered the job at newly relegated Coca Cola 2 side Hartlepool. I graciously accepted, and thus began my career in England.

Hartlepool had been a steady runner in Coca Cola league 1 for many years and most of their players were great at this level (6 or 7 stars by a 20 judge ab ass man), so it must have been a total fluke that saw them relegated. It would seem that I had just struck gold.

This is where I list my experiments and working hypotheses. Please note that I do not update what I have written about each experiment even though new material that contradicts my initial statements are revealed, so If my thoughts here contradicts what I have written els were this post is out of date.

This do not apply to the Hypotheses section however, which I update regularly.

Starting variables and applying for jobs

I have done some experiments to try to discover how the different manager reputation variables work. My main working hypothesis has been that when you apply for a job the game compares your reputation to that of the club, and if your reputation is equal or better you would get the job.

However, it's not as simple as Manager reputation > Club Reputation = You get the job.

The most straightforward variable seems to be "Home reputation". If you home reputation is grater than the clubs reputation you would usually get the job, given club has same nation. If this variable only applies to clubs of your nationality it could explain why people report that Nationality has an effect on reputation, even though my data proves that nationality does not change the variables in any way.

It doesn't seem quite as easy as "Home rep" applies to certain clubs and "World rep" applies to the rest though. I have not found any data to contradict my theory of the "Home reputation" variable, but I have found plenty of data to contradict my assumption about "World rep".

In this experiment I created 4 Norwegian managers in the same game at the same point in time, one for each of the difficulty levels except Automatic (I will be ignoring this difficulty level from now on, as my testing has proven that the only thing that changes it is what your least reputable playable league is). In contradiction to my "World reputation" hypothesis I found that my manager with 8000 home rep and 4000 world rep got the available Coventry job, while Coventry has a reputation of 4850. 4850 > 4000 obviously, so it's not as simple as I originally thought. It could be that Home reputation applies to all countries in the same continent as your home country, but my second manager with 6000, 3000 was rejected for the Southampton job, while Southampton's reputation is 5500. 6000 > 5500 so this hypothesis doesn't seem to work either.

To further confuse things my 8000, 4000 character got the Ukrainian National job, reputation 6000, and my 3250, 1625 character got the Nigerian national job, reputation 5500!. Seems like national teams follow their own set of rules.

Hopefully we will be able to make sense of these thing as more data turns up.

Reputation changes from friendly matches

For this experiment I played a friendly match at home with Modum (Rep 2185) against the third best Norwegian team Brann (Rep 5554), the match odds were 9-1 (home), 4-1 (even) and 1-4 (away) in favor of Brann.

I found that the following results gave me the following changes in reputation afterwards (Sorted by goal difference):

Modum 5 - 1 Brann, +7 Home rep, +7 Current rep, no change for world rep.

Modum 2 - 2 Brann, +2 Home rep, +2 Current rep, no change for world rep.

Modum 2 - 3 Brann, No change

Modum 0 - 2 Brann, No change

Modum 0 - 4 Brann, -1 Home rep, -1 current rep, -1 World rep.

Modum 1 - 6 Brann -2 Home rep, -2 Current rep, -1 World rep.

Modum 0 - 6 Brann, -3 Home rep, -3 Current rep, -1 World rep.

Modum 0 - 10 Brann, -7 Home rep, -7 Current rep, -1 World rep.

From these data I draw that the game predicts the favorite to win by a certain goal difference and sets a threshold there. If the favorite wins by this threshold or less nothing happens, if the difference is greater the manager of the favorite team gains reputation points at the cost of the other manager. Each goal the result differs from the predicted threshold represents either 1 point gained or one point lost for each of the managers (unless the favorite wins, which seems to prevent gain for the other manager). In this case the threshold seems to be between 2 or 3 goals in favor of Brann. Why two thresholds and not one? It's tempting to guess that the game calculates the difference by dividing the reputation of the favorite club with the oppositions reputation. In this case that would mean 5554/2185 which equals 2.54, as you can see quite in the middle of 2 or 3 goals.

This equation does not incorporate home advantage though, so the equation might have more to do with the odds, but then again you would usually play roughly as many home as away matches during a season so it should even out in the long run. 4-1 in favor of Brann is a margin of three goals, but that doesn't explain why a 2 goal margin would be counted as a no change score. More data will be required to fine tune the equation. But for now a seemingly satisfactory equation could be "Predicted goal difference" - "Actual goal difference" = "change in reputation." Given the win is greater than predicted for the favorite, or the outcome (Win, draw loss) better than predicted for the opposition. If this number is positive the favorite manager would lose this much reputation, if it's negative he would gain this much reputation. The opposite holds true for the other manager. This equation predicts that if a draw is the favored result either manager would gain or lose the goal difference as if the equation had no given condition.

World reputation behaves unlike the other two variables, but I'll leave it until I get more of an idea what it does.

If you let your assistant handle the match you get no change to reputation.

Pinning the reputation change equation

Game 1:

Modum (Player, Rep 2416, home) VS Rosenborg (Computer, Rep 5018, away), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266

Match odds: Modum: 13-2, Draw: 11-4, Rosenborg: 2-5 (Fav)

Modum 0-7 Rosenborg, -5,-5,-1

Modum 0-4 Rosenborg, -1,-1,-1

Modum 0-3 Rosenborg, No change

Modum 2-3 Rosenborg, No change

Modum 0-0 Rosenborg, +1,+1

Modum 1-0 Rosenborg, +4,+4

Modum 3-0 Rosenborg, +7,+7

Modum 8-0 Rosenborg, +7,+7

It seems like 7 is the biggest amount the reputation variables can increase from one single friendly match, as I didn't get a bigger increase by winning 8-0 than by winning 3-0. The changes does not seem to be quite as linear as I originally thought, but the equation still gives you the general idea. Interestingly the gain was smaller for a draw here than in the Modum-Brann match, possibly this was because the odds were better for a draw in this game, 11-4 (2.75-1) compared with 4-1.

Game 2:

Modum (Player, Rep 2416, away) VS Brann (Computer, Rep 5476, home), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266

Player manager2 (Brann) reputation: Home: 3250, Current: 3250, World: 1625

Match odds: Brann: 1-8 (Fav), Draw: 5-1, Modum: 12-1

Modum 0-4 Brann, Manager 1: -1,-1,-1. Manager 2: +2,+2, 0.

Modum 4-7 Brann, Manager 1: No change.

Modum 1-2 Brann, Manager 1: No Change. Manager 2: No change.

Modum 0-0 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: -1,-1,-1.

Modum 2-1 Brann, Manager 1: +7,+7,0. Manager 2: -3,-3,-1.

Modum 4-2 Brann, Manager 1: +7,+7,0. Manager 2: -3,-3,-1.

Modum 4-0 Brann, Manager 1: +7,+7,0. Manager 2: -8,-8,-1.

A pattern seems to be emerging. It seems like the biggest you can loose any match without a reputation loss is by 3 goals, as there was no difference in threshold value in either of my three matches so far (1-4, 2-5 and 1-8). The biggest increase you can get from a draw seems to be 2, as there was only 1 point difference between odds of 5-1 and 11-4 (2.75-1), still to early to say anything certain about this though. Your potential gain from winning against superior opposition seems to be highly correlated to the odds, as a 1 goal win gave a 4 point increase at odds of 13-2 while it gave 7 points at odds of 12-1 (which makes sense, as the odds is nearly twice as bad.).

Game 3:

Modum (Player, Rep 2416, Home) VS Brann (Computer, Rep 5476, away), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266

Player manager2 (Brann) reputation: Home: 3250, Current: 3250, World: 1625

Match odds: Modum: 7-1, Draw: 3-1, Brann: 1-3 (Fav)

Modum 0-4 Brann, (e), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +3,+3, 0. (pinned back, they dominated, 50%, 0-4)

Modum 1-3 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (near total domination)

Modum 1-3 Brann, (e), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +2,+2, 0. (had by far the better of the match and eased through, 50%)

Modum 1-3 Brann, Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +2,+2, 0.

Modum 0-2 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Near total domination, coasted through, 54%)

Modum 1-2 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Could and should have scored more, dominate game, 54%, 1-1)

Modum 2-3 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Could and should have scored more, dominate game, 54%, 0-0)

Modum 2-3 Brann, (h), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Good display, both side had chances, 52%, 2-1)

Modum 3-4 Brann, (h), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: No Change. (entertaining, 51%)

Modum 0-0 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: -1,-1,-1.

Modum 1-1 Brann, (a), Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change. (massive superiority, 58%)

Modum 1-1 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change.

Modum 2-2 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change.

Modum 2-2 Brann, (a), Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change. (superiority, 53%)

First thing to note here is that the odds are more in my favor than the last time I played Brann at home. I accredit this to the fact that my clubs reputation increased from 2185 to 2416 after the season change, while Brann had their reputation decreased from 5554 to 5476. The ratio difference (5476/2416=2.27) is quite a bit better than it was before (5554/2185=2.54). This seems a plausible explanation for the change of odds in my favor I think.

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that this calculation is quite more complex than I originally thought.

As you can see I lost 0-4 this time without any change in reputation, both the times I played Brann before (with worse odds) and lost by the same score I also lost reputation. I am going to gather some more data from this match before I try to analyze it further, but any input would be appreciated.

Reputation Changes over time

For this experiment I created 3 unemployed Malaysian managers, one with International reputation, 70 years old, one with professional reputation, 50 years old and one with semi-professional reputation, 30 years old. I had only the three Spanish leagues running to make this go faster.

Immediately after creation I sent all three of them on a 5 year long holiday and let the game alone to work it's way through the years. After five years I checked their reputation values in FMM and the results were unanimous. Time alone does not change reputation. This is given that going on holiday does not make you immune to reputation change, but I can't see why it logically would.

So I would say it's safe to falsify hypothesis 6, based on these data.

Ingame Reputation Labels

I have done some testing to uncover which of the three reputation variables govern the ingame reputation label. For these experiments I created a Manager with English nationality, International footballer reputation, and he took charge of Arsenal. I changed all the reputation variables in realtime with FMM and checked the Label changes ingame straight away. These are the data I found:

Data set 1: (uncovering English reputation label thresholds)

(home),(current),(world) = (ingame label)

10000,10000, 5000 = World Class

8000, 8000, 4000 = Continental

6000, 6000, 3000 = National

4000, 4000, 2000 = Regional

3000, 3000, 1500 = Regional

2750, 2750, 1375 = Unproven

2500, 2500, 1250 = Unproven

2000, 2000, 1000 = Unproven

From these data we get a general idea of what the threshold values of each individual reputation label are. Interestingly it appears that you cannot have Local or Obscure reputation when managing in england. At least not when only managing the Premiere division.

Data set 2: (Uncovering the reputation label variable)

(home),(current),(world) = (ingame label)

10000,10000, 0 = World Class

10000, 0,10000 = Unproven

0,10000,10000 = World Class

0,10000, 0 = World class

0, 3000, 0 = Regional

10000, 2750,10000 = Unproven

From these data we can conclude that the only variable that affect your ingame reputation label is Current Reputation.

Data set 3: (applying for the Nigerian national job)

(home),(current),(world) = (response to application)

10000,10000,10000 = Got the job right away

10000,10000, 0 = No answer after a month

10000, 0,10000 = No answer after a month

0,10000,10000 = Got the job right away

It appears from these data that the your chances of getting a national job is a function of your Current reputation and your world reputation combined. Neither of these maxed out by it self was enough to instantly bag the job. Home reputation seems to have no effect. For the record Nigeria had a reputation of 5500 and started the game without a manager.

Comparing a friendly to a league game

In this experiment I wished to compare a friendly and a league game with the same match odds to see if I could determine just what effect competition reputation plays in the reputation equation. To achieve this I played a friendly against my first league opponent just one week before the season started. Here are the data from the two matches:

Game1

Randaberg (Player, Rep 3025, Home) VS Modum (Player, Rep 2416, away), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Randaberg) reputation: Home: 3250, Current: 3250, World: 1625

Player manager2 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2631, Current: 2609, World: 1266

Match odds: Randaberg: 4-6 (Fav), Draw: 9-4, Modum: 7-2

Randaberg 7-0 Modum, Manager 1: +2,+2, 0. Manager 2: -5,-5,-1.

Randaberg 9-5 Modum, Manager 1: +1,+1, 0. Manager 2: No Change. (Modum 2 red)

Randaberg 5-1 Modum, Manager 1: +3,+3, 0. Manager 2: -2,-2,-1.

Randaberg 6-3 Modum, Manager 1: +1,+1, 0. Manager 2: No Change.

Randaberg 5-4 Modum, Manager 1: No Change Manager 2: No Change.

Randaberg 3-2 Modum, Manager 1: No Change Manager 2: No Change.

Randaberg 2-1 Modum, Manager 1: No Change Manager 2: No Change.

Randaberg 1-0 Modum, Manager 1: No Change Manager 2: No Change.

Randaberg 1-1 Modum, Manager 1: -2,-2,-1. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0.

Randaberg 0-1 Modum, Manager 1: -4,-4,-1. Manager 2: +4,+4, 0.

Randaberg 1-2 Modum, Manager 1: -4,-4,-1. Manager 2: +5,+5, 0.

Randaberg 2-3 Modum, Manager 1: -5,-5,-1. Manager 2: +5,+5, 0.

Randaberg 0-2 Modum, Manager 1: -8,-8,-1. Manager 2: +7,+7, 0.

Randaberg 1-5 Modum, Manager 1: -8,-8,-1. Manager 2: +7,+7, 0.

Game2

Randaberg (Computer, Rep 3025, Home) VS Modum (Player, Rep 2416, away), Norwegian first division (rep 7)

Computer manager1 (Randaberg) reputation: Home: 3236, Current: 3236, World: 1657

Player manager2 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2636, Current: 2614, World: 1266

Match odds: Randaberg: 4-6 (Fav), Draw: 9-4, Modum: 7-2

Randaberg 7-0 Modum, Manager 1: +5,+5,+2. Manager 2:-10,-10,-2.

Randaberg 7-2 Modum, Manager 1: +4,+4,+2. Manager 2: -6,-6,-1.

Randaberg 4-0 Modum, Manager 1: +3,+3,+2. Manager 2: -1,-1,+2.

Randaberg 2-0 Modum, Manager 1: 0, 0,+1. Manager 2: 0, 0,+3.

Randaberg 2-0 Modum, Manager 1: +1,+1,+1. Manager 2: 0, 0,+3.

Randaberg 3-2 Modum, Manager 1: 0, 0,+1. Manager 2: 0, 0,+3.

Randaberg 2-1 Modum, Manager 1: 0, 0,+1. Manager 2: 0, 0,+3.

Randaberg 1-0 Modum, Manager 1: 0, 0, 0. Manager 2: 0, 0,+3.

Randaberg 0-0 Modum, Manager 1: -2,-2,+1. Manager 2: +4,+4,+4.

Randaberg 2-3 Modum, Manager 1: -9,-9, 0. Manager 2: +10,+10,+4.

Randaberg 2-3 Modum, Manager 1:-11,-11,-1.Manager 2: +11,+11,+4.

Randaberg 0-2 Modum, Manager 1:-14,-14,-1.Manager 2: +16,+16,+4.

Randaberg 1-3 Modum, Manager 1:-15,-15,-1.Manager 2: +14,+14,+4.

Notice that the match odds of the two games are equal and that the game is played in the same arena both times, so the only changed factor between these matches are the competition (Friendly, rep 1, VS. Norwegian First Division, rep 7). Competition reputation definitely has an effect, as the reputation changes are significantly bigger in the league game and the limit to the reputation change size is higher. Just how the reputation factors into the equation however is difficult to say. It's not a simple multiplication or addition to the numbers from the friendlies, but simple graph analysis of the numbers do suggest that it multiplies the result in some way. The size of the changes seem to rise exponentially the more unlikely the result, whereas the most likely results see no change from competition rep.

These observations refer to the variables Home and Current rep in this case, World rep is a chapter to itself. As I have noted before world rep can only change negatively from friendlies, and only marginally at that. This does not hold true for league games apparently, it was in fact very difficult for the Modum manager not to increase his world rep, as he had to lose by at least 5 goals not to do so. I will not speculate too much why this is at this point, but it seems like it is enough just to play against a more reputable team to gain reputation. Furthermore it is becoming clearer and clearer that there is another factor in the equation besides Comp rep, goal difference and odds. This factor does not seem to be of critical importance, as it has only accounted for differences of max 2 points so far, but it becomes very difficult to analyze the data until it is identified.

Manager reputation and signing players

For this experiment I Created a Norwegian manager with rep scores of 500,500,250 who took the helm at Fulham. I the did a player search and asked my assistant to filter out unrealistic targets. I took a screen shot of the players that came up, retired my manager, created a new one with scores of 8000, 8000, 4000 and repeated the procedure.

The results where clear: Manager reputation do affect what players you can sign.

When I compared the two lists there where clear differences. The first manager was able to hire 53361 players, while the second manager could chose from 54165 players. Considering the fact the the two managers was at both their extremes reputation wise, and that manager 2 only could hire 804 more players than manager 1 (1.5% more), this effect is not that great. Among the 22 most valuable players manager 2 only had 3 more players than manager 1 to chose from.

Hypotheses

These have been my most important working hypotheses during my experiments. Part of the reason I list them is that I would like input from you, particular on the unresolved ones. I have also listed instructions on how to check those. If you want to double check my findings and tell me that I'm wrong please do so. That's the way science moves forward.

Hypothesis 1. You get a boost to reputation after you play your last match of a league or a tournament. (Falsified)

You do indeed get a boost to your reputation if you either Win or get promoted in your current league. This boost does not necessarily come at the last day of the season however. You get it with the message that your team has won the league or got promoted. By winning the Norwegian first division my Reputation scores increased from 2765, 2738 and 1410 to 4061, 4034 and 2190, which makes for increases of 1296, 1296 and 780. To get a boost from a Cup or tournament you apparently have to reach the final. By losing the semi-final of the Norwegian Cup I did not get any reputation, but by losing the final my rep scores increased by 442, 441 and 231. By winning the Cup I got increases of 757, 756 and 463, which roughly gives you a ratio of 3-5 (Loose - Win).

Hypothesis 2. Manager reputation increases according to league result at end of season. (Verified, given that the result is sufficiently good.)

You have to either win or get promoted in the lower divisions, premiere division haven't been tested yet.

Hypothesis 3. The size of these reputation increases depend on the reputation of the league. (Falsified?)

I would say that this was falsified for certain except there is a genuine possibility that the League increases I got was the sum of a winning boost and a promotion boost. At least you cannot compare winning a league to winning a cup.

Hypothesis 4. Reputation can change from match to match, depending on result and opposition. (Verified, preliminary equation)

Preliminary equation: "Predicted goal difference" - "Actual goal difference" = "change in reputation" Given the win is greater than predicted for the favorite, or the outcome (Win, draw loss) better than predicted for the opposition.

I have done some testing on this and reputation can indeed change after a single match, magnitude of change depends on result and opposition. I also have to retract my previous statement about friendlies not affecting reputation as my data have proven that they can indeed significantly affect manager reputation (Though not club reputation). If you let your assistant handle the match it has no effect on your reputation.

The size of the change depend on the odds, which is a function of the club reps, home advantage and current form, and they are apparently "Normally distributed". This last bit means that the more unlikely the result the greater the change to reputation.

Hypothesis 5. Home reputation also applies to secondary nationality teams. (Still needs testing)

If you want to check it just create a manager with a secondary nationality and apply for jobs in your secondary country.

Hypothesis 6. Reputation declines over time. (Falsified)

This was pointed out by Tokey in the thedugout.tv forum. Testing has shown that time alone does not change reputation at all over a time period of five years. The only thing that's still uncertain is whether going on holiday makes you immune to reputation change, but until someone can show me data that proves this is so I declare this hypothesis falsified.

Hypothesis 7. If team A is predicted to win by x to the power of y (like 4-1), then A is predicted to win by x/y-1 goals. (Falsified)

Not that simple.

Hypothesis 8. Ingame Reputation Label is correlated to one or more of the three rep variables. (Verified)

Testing has proved that the ingame rep label is a categorization of the Current Rep variable. Home and World rep have no influence on this label.

Hypothesis 9. Manager reputation affect what players you can sign (Verified)

This was pointed out by SCIAG at the sigames.com forum. It was proven by manipulating the reputation of a club manager of a certain club, in a standard game with 50k+ players, to both extremes. Manager reputation only counted for up to 1.5% of the available players to the very reputable manager however, so club rep is a much more important factor here.

Hypothesis 10. Reputation changes and pre-match odds are calculated according to the ELO ranking system. (Falsified?)

This was suggested by DaveRH in the sigames.com forum and could seemingly explain the normal distribution and ranking mechanisms used in FM08. My test calculations did not give completely accurate predictors but they were quite close. As this system apparently is used in proffessional football it would make sense for SI to use it, but they apparently don't. More information can be found on this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Hypothesis 11. If you are currently under contract and are offered a new job your new club will have to pay to release you from the contract. (Verified by ZJ)

Differences in bank account pre and post signing (recorded by ZJ) has proved this. This means that financial considerations comes into play when a club hires a new manager and that you thusly are more likely to be offered jobs if you are unemployed and be linked to more jobs if you have little to go on your current contract.

Final thoughts

I would greatly appreciate your input on these hypotheses, especially input which leads to new testable hypotheses, and/or verifies/falsifies the current hypotheses. Or if you doubt my results feel free to try to replicate them and post here to tell me I'm wrong. All credit will be duly given in the main threads to those who contributes to changing it's contents.

Credit so far:

Vertanno (cmfrenzy.com forum), some data contributions and pointing out that the Local and Obscure rep labels are only available to AI managers.

crouchaldinho (sigames.com forum), data contributions on applying for national jobs.

ZJ (sigames.com forum), too many contributions to specify!

it does change at the end of the season, and unproven tends to stick for a few years whatever your succes. i got from bsn to league 2 in four, despite being favourites for relegation in my first season.(btw thats BSN > BSP > LEAGUE 2 if your not familar with the lower english leagues.) after i got got league 2 it went up to regional from unproven.

i think the equation would be(but with more variables added) league rep - team rep / league position = rep increase.

EG

league rep 800 - team rep 400/ league pos 2 =200 rep increase of 200.

great idea, i'm really interested in it now, keep the updates coming

Originally posted by turn it upto 11:

it does change at the end of the season, and unproven tends to stick for a few years whatever your succes. i got from bsn to league 2 in four, despite being favourites for relegation in my first season.(btw thats BSN > BSP > LEAGUE 2 if your not familar with the lower english leagues.) after i got got league 2 it went up to regional from unproven.

i think the equation would be(but with more variables added) league rep - team rep / league position = rep increase.

EG

league rep 800 - team rep 400/ league pos 2 =200 rep increase of 200.

Like I said the Unproven label depends on which country you start out in. When I start a game in Norway I never even see the Unproven label, I am automatically Regional from the start. The fact that Unproven label seems to stick with you in England is because England has the second most reputable league (after Spain) so the demands to get a higher label is subsequently higher there than elsewhere.

Good suggestion for an equation, try to post some data to test it and we will soon see if it sticks. Only problem I immediately see with it is that the in-built data editor reports league reputation on a scale from 0-20, but the principle of the equation might still be right.

Is there any hypothesis that covers you being more highly rated throught the world, but not at home? (Roy Hodgson for example)

Originally posted by Morridin:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by turn it upto 11:

it does change at the end of the season, and unproven tends to stick for a few years whatever your succes. i got from bsn to league 2 in four, despite being favourites for relegation in my first season.(btw thats BSN > BSP > LEAGUE 2 if your not familar with the lower english leagues.) after i got got league 2 it went up to regional from unproven.

i think the equation would be(but with more variables added) league rep - team rep / league position = rep increase.

EG

league rep 800 - team rep 400/ league pos 2 =200 rep increase of 200.

Like I said the Unproven label depends on which country you start out in. When I start a game in Norway I never even see the Unproven label, I am automatically Regional from the start. The fact that Unproven label seems to stick with you in England is because England has the second most reputable league (after Spain) so the demands to get a higher label is subsequently higher there than elsewhere.

Good suggestion for an equation, try to post some data to test it and we will soon see if it sticks. Only problem I immediately see with it is that the in-built data editor reports league reputation on a scale from 0-20, but the principle of the equation might still be right. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

sorry i was under the impression league rep was judged on the same scale as personel rep.

Originally posted by turn it upto 11:

sorry i was under the impression league rep was judged on the same scale as personel rep.

No need to apologize, it was a good suggestion. With a little tweaking to your equation we can get the same effect as if league reputation had a 0-10000 scale, it could look like this:

(league rep * 500) - team rep / league position = rep increase

We need data though before we can begin seriously tweaking the equation though, so please post any data you find with FFM before and after the last game of the season.

Originally posted by Queen of the Stevenage:

Is there any hypothesis that covers you being more highly rated throught the world, but not at home? (Roy Hodgson for example)

I have never seen this in the game, have you got any examples?

would be interesting to see if the equation changes depending on the competion the team is playing in aswell.

Originally posted by turn it upto 11:

would be interesting to see if the equation changes depending on the competion the team is playing in aswell.

Could well be, time will tell.

New hypothesis.

Hypothesis 7. If team A is predicted to win by x to the power of y (like 4-1), then A is predicted to win by x/y-1 goals.

Shouldn't be to difficult to test if this equation holds true. You just need to check several games for predicted goal difference and see if this threshold was predicted by the equation.

The beauty of this equation is that it will allow you to predict the needed match outcomes for your reputation to change based on given match odds.

Originally posted by Morridin:

Hypothesis 4 is updated based on the following data:

Reputation Changes over time

For this experiment I created 3 unemployed Malaysian managers, one with International reputation, 70 yers old, one with professional reputation, 50 years old and one with semi-professional reputation, 30 years old. I had only the three spanish leagues running to make this go faster.

Immediately after creation I sent all three of them on a 5 year long holiday and let the game alone to work it's way through the years. After five years I checked their reputation values in FMM and the results were unanimous. Time alone does not change reputation. This is given that going on holiday does not make you immune to reputation change. I could not see why it logically would.

So I would say it's safe to falsify hypothesis 6, based on these data.

supposed to be 6 i take it.

i was suprised at this one, i thought if you were off the scene for a while rep would go down. well not a really well known manager like say fergie or wenger but someone lesser known would become unknown after a 5 years with out a job

Originally posted by turn it upto 11:

supposed to be 6 i take it.

You are correct of course, a little typo there. It might have made sense in real life if reputation diminished over time, but I suspect SI found it was unnecessary to add this feature to the game, as you will rarely go long periods of time in the game without a job.

Update to Hypothesis 7. (Pending new equation)

After more deliberation I have come to the conclusion that the predicted goal difference can not be calculated as simply as "If A is predicted to win by x to the power of y (like 4-1), then A is predicted to win by x/y-1 goals.". I failed to recognize the simple fact that 2-1 is considered more certain odds than 4-1, which invalidates my equation. I'll experiment a little to see if I can come up with a new equation. Stay tuned.

I need some help in pinning the equation for manager reputation changes.

The equation is proving more elusive than I first thought, so I will need lots of data to nail it down.

What I want you to do is to replay the same match several times to get different results, check the relevant variables with FMM and post your findings here. We need one big win for both teams (by 3 to 5 goals), one small win (1-2 goals) and one draw. If you are having trouble getting these results you can take control of your opposition with a new manager. In fact, if you do this you will be able to produce double the amount of data, as both managers reputation will change. We will also need each clubs current reputation and the match odds.

Please post the data something like this:

Modum (Player, Rep 2185, home) VS Brann (Computer, Rep 5554, away), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266

Player manager2 (Brann) reputation: Home: 5260, Current: 5160, World: 2490

Match odds: Modum: 9-1, Draw: 4-1, Brann: 1-4 (Fav)

Modum 5 - 1 Brann, Manager 1: +7 (Home rep), +7 (Current rep), no change (world rep).

Manager 2: -4, -4, -1.

Modum 1 - 0 Brann, Manager 1: +4, +4, no change.

Manager 2: -2, -2, 0.

Modum 2 - 2 Brann, Manager 1 :+2, +2, no change.

Manager 2: No change.

Modum 0 - 2 Brann, Manager 1: No change.

Manager 2: +1, +1, no change.

Modum 0 - 4 Brann, Manager 1: -1, -1, -1.

Manager 2: +3, +3, no change.

Thanks in advance.

This is a great read. KUTGW.

So just to clarify, If Im with a club, buying players sorting my tactics etc, If i get my assistant to play the games... my rep never inreases?

or are there additional ways to increase this?

Originally posted by Fatman:

So just to clarify, If Im with a club, buying players sorting my tactics etc, If i get my assistant to play the games... my rep never inreases?

Not unless you get bonuses for league position or something similar. I haven't been able to verify this so far, as I have just finished my own season.

Hmm thats strange - sometimes i like to get my assistant to handle matches.

Im sure my rep has increased - interetsting to know when you find out

i know bumping is frowned upon but just to let the op know there is someone still interested in this little experiment.

If Morridin returns to continue this, I'll clarify:

Current Reputation is reputation in the country you're currently managing in.

That means that if you're managing in your home country then Home rep. = Current rep.

Originally posted by AB-forever:

If Morridin returns to continue this, I'll clarify:

Current Reputation is reputation in the country you're currently managing in.

That means that if you're managing in your home country then Home rep. = Current rep.

I'm still here, just haven't loaded FM in a while. I suspect that CR is a short term variable, which can be influenced in other ways than just matches. I don't think it's quite as easy as you say "AB-forever", because while I haven't done significant testing on CR I know it doesn't change when you take up leadership of a foreign club. It didn't for my Norwegian manager when he got a Malaysian job at least.

First of all, great thread. Always been interested in this aspect of the game. Well worth exploring.

Only got circumstantial evidence for this but an additional thing to consider with regards to getting the manager positions is the competition and time-frame of the opening. I think there is some element of amount of managers applying for a position that can impact it as well.

Twice while playing 08 I've been playing in the bottom leagues but still got a job for a relatively good African national teams and while I had unproven/regional rep on another continent. I think partly the reason for this is because there were no other applicants for the job which effects the comparison between your rep and the team's rep.

Also, I've once the game seen a team go for very long time without a manager (6+ months) and when I applied for them I got it, despite the team being way out of my league. I was coaching in Russian division 2 and got a job for Heracles in the top dutch division. My reputation was regional at that point as well.

I reloaded to an earlier save when the job had only been on the market for about 1-2 weeks and that time I didn't get it.

Sorry for not being able to get more detail, this was in a game a while ago.

Keep up the good work.

Originally posted by ZJ:

Only got circumstantial evidence for this but an additional thing to consider with regards to getting the manager positions is the competition and time-frame of the opening. I think there is some element of amount of managers applying for a position that can impact it as well.

Quite likely. As I've written above it's not as simple as "manager reputation > Club reputation = job". I have gotten jobs with MR<CR and I have applied with MR>CR only to lose the job to a manager with higher reputation than me. Makes sense that the board would become desperate after six months, or maybe the club just lost lots of reputation during that time. Too bad you don't have the savegames anymore, or you could have checked club reputation at both times.

Originally posted by ZJ:

Twice while playing 08 I've been playing in the bottom leagues but still got a job for a relatively good African national teams and while I had unproven/regional rep on another continent. I think partly the reason for this is because there were no other applicants for the job which effects the comparison between your rep and the team's rep.

Remember that African teams in general are way lower rated than European ones. Also note that the ingame reputation label changes from country to country, based on country reputation.

I don't use FMM and similar, so sadly can't help you with that although if something interesting comes up later I might make a special save at that point and check it out later.

The times when I was in Africa I was coaching in division 3 in Germany with a regional rep. Do you think that is enough to become the manager of Cameroon and Tunisia? Seemed very strange to me.

I've done some save/load experiments where I every now and then when there is a suitable job opening save, then apply for it and see if I get it. Then I reload and try it again taking slightly different approaches (resigning, media comments etc).

So far these have been the results:

If team rep > my rep I never got it.

If team Rep = team rep I never got it.

If team rep < my rep I got the job about half the time if it was abroad. Slightly more often if it is in the same country which seem to support your theories.

One more thing I noticed was that it if I resigned before applying and/or did the media comments I seemed to be slightly more likely to get the job, i.e. choosing the "I want a new challange option" seem to alert the club to your status. It only worked when my rep was higher than the club though as in the first try they turned me down, but in the second attempt it worked.

I know its not much help to you without the exact rep values, but if anyone else is interested its areas worth looking at.

Originally posted by ZJ:

The times when I was in Africa I was coaching in division 3 in Germany with a regional rep. Do you think that is enough to become the manager of Cameroon and Tunisia? Seemed very strange to me.

National teams seem to follow their own set of rules when hiring managers. I have gotten jobs which FMM told me I shouldn't get if the only thing involved was manager and team reputation. It seems that international teams from other Continents are more lenient than European ones, which make them an excellent way of increasing your own reputation (if low).

Just wanted to say that this is a very interesting thread Morridin . I will certainly be reading your updates with interest. I've been dying to know how manager rep works for ages!

Keep up the good work!

C.

An interesting line of inquiry. I think hypothesis six might have been dismissed too soon. You created managers who were unemployed, and they didn't see their reputation drop at all after five years. However, that just means that previously unemployed managers do not lose reputation. A much more interesting way of trying to disprove hypothesis six would be to create those same managers again, have all three of them manage teams in the same league for a full season, have them quit, and then go on vacation for five years, allowing us to see if reputation that has been "built" upon those base reputation levels will decline if a manager isn't managing. It's one thing for a never-employed manager not to lose reputation, but it's another thing altogether for a once-employed manager not to lose reputation.

Some anecdotal evidence to consider: in my current FM07 game, my reputation has gotten "stuck" at a certain level:

Current Rep: 10000

Home Rep: 10000

World Rep: 8999

My reputation has been this way for the better part of three or four seasons, and despite back-to-back Premiership titles, winning the Champions League, and having won numerous domestic cups, it hasn't budged. It's the same for Arsene Wenger in this save, as well. He's "stuck" at the highest possible Continental reputation possible, and the game doesn't seem to want to give either of us Worldwide reputations, regardless of our exploits. While this may no longer hold true for FM08, it might be worthwhile looking into: can managerial reputations get "stuck" for some reason? Insufficient team rep? Too few wins that defy the odds?

Some food for thought.

Originally posted by Brend:

An interesting line of inquiry. I think hypothesis six might have been dismissed too soon. You created managers who were unemployed, and they didn't see their reputation drop at all after five years. However, that just means that previously unemployed managers do not lose reputation. A much more interesting way of trying to disprove hypothesis six would be to create those same managers again, have all three of them manage teams in the same league for a full season, have them quit, and then go on vacation for five years, allowing us to see if reputation that has been "built" upon those base reputation levels will decline if a manager isn't managing. It's one thing for a never-employed manager not to lose reputation, but it's another thing altogether for a once-employed manager not to lose reputation.

Ok, let's say your line of reasoning is valid. To prove it you should make a new save of your current game, resign your job and send your manager on a holiday for a couple of years. If you find that your reputation has decreased during that time I'll retract my words.

Originally posted by Brend:

Can managerial reputations get "stuck" for some reason? Insufficient team rep? Too few wins that defy the odds?

Some food for thought.

Straight of the bat I would say that there might be a programing error in FM07 that prevents your world rep from increasing while your Home and/or Current rep is maxed. Either that, or you could try taking up the job of a national team. Interesting that your reputation label wouldn't change to worldwide, perhaps that's what World Rep is for... You have Inspired me, I will do some testing with FMM.

I got worldwide rep after winning the world cup if it helps at all.

Originally posted by Morridin:

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

If Morridin returns to continue this, I'll clarify:

Current Reputation is reputation in the country you're currently managing in.

That means that if you're managing in your home country then Home rep. = Current rep.

I'm still here, just haven't loaded FM in a while. I suspect that CR is a short term variable, which can be influenced in other ways than just matches. I don't think it's quite as easy as you say "AB-forever", because while I haven't done significant testing on CR I know it doesn't change when you take up leadership of a foreign club. It didn't for my Norwegian manager when he got a Malaysian job at least. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh.

Sh*t

Just ignore me then

KUTGW

Originally posted by AB-forever:

Oh.

Sh*t

Just ignore me then

KUTGW

By all means AB-forever, as I am probably wrong in several of my assumptions above I value criticism and feedback, so please keep your posts coming.

Btw, the inability to edit my own posts is really starting to bug me!

Since I'm interested in this, I downloaded FMM to check out some reputation things.

I'll check through-out the season and see what I can come up with while I play:

Started in Russian Div 2, with a club with 1000 rep. I just finished my second season, finishing 3rd. I finished 11th in the first season.

Started with Sunday League Experience, i.e.: 1500 (home), 1500 (current), 750 (world). I'm don't have Russian nationality so not coaching in my home country.

After those two seasons, my current rep are 1918, 2426, 1400.

The club rep is now 2743 moving towards the start of the 3rd season.

Some things to note:

1) I saved 4 games before the end of the 2nd season, club rep was 1900ish, my rep was almost identical to postseason although about 20-25 points lower or so (I won the last 4 games of the season so that could account for that according to your description above).

So, club recieves a 800 point rep bumb from finishing 3rd in the league (I was predicted to be 22nd, so this might explain this, i.e. the more you overachieve, the higher increase) while my personal rep barely moved. This could be related to the league itself as well though, might differ from league to league. This disproves your hypothesis 2 and seems to indicate that only results in a game to game basis change manager rep. Technically manager rep could increase later, I'll check into that during next season. Will also try to check when my manager profile updates next time. Any ideas on when it does that?

I'm predicted to finish 15th this season, so after this we can compare the increase to see if its related to predicted position, or relative to your club rep, or set for your positional finish.

2) I've almost doubled my world rep but played only 87 games in total, meaning it has increased by almost 7.5 per game. Given that your tests didn't show much change in world rep, might be something else that effects this. Home rep has increased about 4.8 per game, while current has increased 10.6 per game so similar seem to apply here, i.e. that there is something else that can effect it. League position would seem reasonable, but as mentioned, didn't see it at the end of this season.

Will post if I come up with anything else.

Shouldn't reputations of other candidates for the job have some effect on whether or not you get it?

Originally posted by Mravac Kid:

Shouldn't reputations of other candidates for the job have some effect on whether or not you get it?

Yes, I'm quite sure it does as even if your rep is high enough, you may still lose out to someone with higher rep and vice-versa, if you have a very low rep but there are no other applicants I'm sure you can get the job. Would guess it also have something to with the board's stats as well if they are prepared to hire you despite your lower rep.

Originally posted by ZJ:

Since I'm interested in this, I downloaded FMM to check out some reputation things.

I'll check through-out the season and see what I can come up with while I play:

Started in Russian Div 2, with a club with 1000 rep. I just finished my second season, finishing 3rd. I finished 11th in the first season.

Started with Sunday League Experience, i.e.: 1500 (home), 1500 (current), 750 (world). I don't have Russian nationality so not coaching in my home country.

After those two seasons, my current rep are 1918, 2426, 1400.

Interesting ZJ, these numbers seem to support my assumption that Home Rep is for Teams with your own nationality and World rep for all other teams. In comparison my manager has 2629, 2607 and 1266 after 3 seasons in his home country. Note that your world rep has increased more than your home rep, while your current rep has increased even more. My numbers saw a completely different change, Home rep with the biggest increase, then Current and World last. Interesting...

Originally posted by ZJ:

So, club recieves a 800 point rep bumb from finishing 3rd in the league (I was predicted to be 22nd, so this might explain this, i.e. the more you overachieve, the higher increase) while my personal rep barely moved. This could be related to the league itself as well though, might differ from league to league. This disproves your hypothesis 2 and seems to indicate that only results in a game to game basis change manager rep. Technically manager rep could increase later, I'll check into that during next season. Will also try to check when my manager profile updates next time. Any ideas on when it does that?

Could you post the reputation of the Russian second division? Strange that your reputation didn't increase from league position. Could you check it again at frequent intervals from just before the last game of the season? There is definitely a boost for winning competitions, as everyone who has won the CL for the first time will tell you, but I'm not quite sure when it happens. Logically it would happen when you got the message telling you how you did. Could be that you have to win, or get promoted, for this to apply to leagues though. My previous testing has shown that reputation doesn't change when your stats update, but if you want to check for yourself it happens at mid season and when the game updates to the next season. About 16 of feb and 16 of aug in my game, if I remember correctly.

Originally posted by ZJ:

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

Shouldn't reputations of other candidates for the job have some effect on whether or not you get it?

Yes, I'm quite sure it does as even if your rep is high enough, you may still lose out to someone with higher rep and vice-versa, if you have a very low rep but there are no other applicants I'm sure you can get the job. Would guess it also have something to with the board's stats as well if they are prepared to hire you despite your lower rep. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes it does. The applicant with the highest reputation usually get the job.

But you will not automatically get the job if there are no other applicants.

If your rep is low and there are no other applicants the board will delay giving you an answer. It would make sense for the board to lower their demands the longer it takes to hire a new manager though.

Originally posted by Morridin:

Interesting ZJ, these numbers seem to support my assumption that Home Rep is for Teams with your own nationality and World rep for all other teams. In comparison my manager has 2629, 2607 and 1266 after 3 seasons in his home country. Note that your world rep has increased more than your home rep, while your current rep has increased even more. My numbers saw a completely different change, Home rep with the biggest increase, then Current and World last. Interesting...

Could you post the reputation of the Russian second division? Strange that your reputation didn't increase from league position. Could you check it again at frequent intervals from just before the last game of the season? There is definitely a boost for winning competitions, as everyone who has won the CL for the first time will tell you, but I'm not quite sure when it happens. Logically it would happen when you got the message telling you how you did. Could be that you have to win, or get promoted, for this to apply to leagues though. My previous testing has shown that reputation doesn't change when your stats update, but if you want to check for yourself it happens at mid season and when the game updates to the next season. About 16 of feb and 16 of aug in my game, if I remember correctly.

Where can I find the rep of the Russian Second division?

I've played 6 games into the 3rd season so far, still no increase bigger than what can be explained from just the games itself (around 15 points up in each category). Will keep checking during the season.

Will reload the old game just before the season ends and check if there was any increase but i doubt it. I think you were spot on when you said that you have to win or get promoted to get it though which makes sense from a manager rep perspective. If you get promoted or win people hear more about you than if you just overachieved in the league. Also, there is a massive difference between winning the CL and finishing 3rd in the Russian 2nd div . It's probably as simple as that winning cups etc adds reputation.

Hopefully I'll get promoted this season and we can find out.

Originally posted by ZJ:

Where can I find the rep of the Russian Second division?

Use the Data editor that came with FM. If you play the 8.0.2 database, like I do, it should be 4.

If my preliminary theory is correct, you will get 4 times bigger reputation changes from playing games in your league compared with friendlies.

If this theory holds true it means that it will be much easier to pin the rep change equation, and later to predict the necessary outcome of a match just by knowing the odds and the league reputation. To verify this I would need 2 matches with equal odds, one friendly and one league (or other competition), reported in the way I have described above. Easiest way would be to arrange a friendly with one of your rival teams in the league, at roughly the same time, and match reputation changes for equal results. I will do this myself unless you beat me to it.

Originally posted by Morridin:

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

Where can I find the rep of the Russian Second division?

Use the Data editor that came with FM. If you play the 8.0.2 database, like I do, it should be 4.

If my preliminary theory is correct, you will get 4 times bigger reputation changes from playing games in your league compared with friendlies.

If this theory holds true it means that it will be much easier to pin the rep change equation, and later to predict the necessary outcome of a match just by knowing the odds and the league reputation. To verify this I would need 2 matches with equal odds, one friendly and one league (or other competition), reported in the way I have described above. Easiest way would be to arrange a friendly with one of your rival teams in the league, at roughly the same time, and match reputation changes for equal results. I will do this myself unless you beat me to it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sorry, time for me to go to bed so won't have time to do that

Here is some additional info from me:

1) Yep, on 8.0.2. My nationalities is Swedish/English (just saying that for reference really)

2) Reloaded and checked my rep 4 games before end of season and 4 games into next season. The former was 1905, 2413, 1378 and the latter 1932, 2439, 1430. Club rep went from 1923 to 2750. When I checked just before end of season and just after they announced how I did, there was no change at all. Provides support for the idea that only winning/promotion gives manager rep increase while club gets it based on relative achievement.

To test this, I'll save a couple of games before end of season and try to achieve a variety or results (winner, promotion, 3rd, 4th etc) to check what the club/manager increase in rep is.

3) Played a few friendlies against a mix of teams in the same div and some the div above. Got no or very minor changes in rep out of those games. Never more than 1 point. In the league however I make steady improvement of a few points a game depending on result. They don't come dividable by 4 though, so most likely it give you rep increase in increments (0.8 is rounded up to 1 etc). My league increases of averaging 4.8 to 10ish seems to correspond to your idea that league games are worth 4 times more. Seems to indicate that there is a formula for this, maybe you are on to it with your theory of odds and league reputation. Let me know what you find.

ZJ

To summarize my findings Competition reputation does indeed factor into the reputation change equation, as rep changes were significantly larger in the league game than the friendly. Comp rep does not factor into the equation as a simple multiplier or addition, but the numbers suggest that it does indeed factor as a multiplier in some way as the numbers on both end of the scale increased exponentially while those in the middle were more or less unchanged.

World rep seems to follow it's own set of rules yet again.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a factor in the equation that i have not yet identified and until I do any number analysis becomes very difficult.

Just finished the season, and here is the findings:

2 games before end of season:

1983, 2492, 1576 and club rep 2793.

Gained promotion, finishing 2nd:

2412, 3344, 2010 and club rep 3899.

Increases were approx: 425, 850, 435 and 1100.

What can be concluded?

a) Promotion does indead increase manager rep far more than just doing well in the league.

b) It is calculated at the same day the league is finished, i.e. when the last game is played.

c) Current rep increased in absolute terms at approx the twice the rate of Home and and World.

d) Percentage increases were approx 25%, 33%, 33% and 40% though.

e) Just playing games seem to have minor effect, I only gained around 50, 50, 150 points over the course of the whole season. Club rep increase was only 40 as well. It seems final position is the crucial thing here.

I'm going to replay the last couple of games and "fix" the games so I finish 3rd and 4th respectively and check the results. I can't finish 1st however, the run-away league leaders had basically won it 10 games before the league was over.

Ok, some new information. Quit my job and had at the time rep of 2412 (home), 3236 (current), 2010 (world).

During the next 3 months, I applied for 29 different jobs, club rep varying from 1500 to 6000. 2 of them was internationals.

This happened:

a) During those 3 months my reputation did not change at all.

b) I only got 1 job, which was one of the international ones (it had rep 5550) - Cameroon.

c) Upon getting that job, reputation did not change.

d) Paid particular interest to Russian jobs (where my reputation had been built) and Swedish (my main nationality). I was turned down for Russian jobs at clubs with rep of 1700, 2100, 2201, 2856 as well as many with higher rep than myself.

I was also turned down for 2 Swedish jobs at clubs with rep lower than all mine (1500 and 1900).

Conclusions:

1) National teams have their own rules again.

2) Turned down for jobs with lower rep than what I had in both Sweden and Russia - Either there are more complicated rules (with regards to Home/Current and World) than expected or the manager they hired instead had higher rep than me. That is next on the list to check.

3) Rep does not decrease (in short run). Might be that it takes a longer period before it deteriorates.

4) Getting a job does not in itself change reputation.

If anyone have any suggestions to other things to look at, let me know.

My guess is that hiring decisions are significantly affected by the reputations of the other applicants

This would explain why national jobs for a team like Cameroon (few or no domestic managers in database and unlikely to be attractive to non Cameroonian AI managers) are easy to obtain even with a relatively low CA

Are managerial stats taken into account. For instance, would a club who prefers to play an attack based 4-5-1 be more inclined to hire you if you are known for an attacking and playing a 4-5-1? Or would a club who is cheap or money strapped be more inclined to hire you if you have a 20 for Financial Control?

If this is the case, which I hope it is as otherwise I cant see a point for these stats, then figuring out what exactly governs being hired for a job would be near impossible.

Originally posted by GreenEagle16:

Are managerial stats taken into account. For instance, would a club who prefers to play an attack based 4-5-1 be more inclined to hire you if you are known for an attacking and playing a 4-5-1? Or would a club who is cheap or money strapped be more inclined to hire you if you have a 20 for Financial Control?

If this is the case, which I hope it is as otherwise I cant see a point for these stats, then figuring out what exactly governs being hired for a job would be near impossible.

With respect to the first, I'm not sure clubs have preference of how to play in the game, only players etc. Unless Owner/Chairmen has one in their settings?.

Nothing I've seen support this as I've seen coaches take over clubs and drastically change formation etc. I remember Milan having 4 different coaches within 9 years, all with completely different stats and preferences.

With regards to the second, could possible be the case although those stats are linked to your CA/PA as a manager (which is 200) so technically a human manager should be able to out-do them. I can probably check this as i've noticed that if you reload clubs hire different managers sometimes so it would be possible to go over it and check for trends.

So far reputation seems the most crucial stat, but will keep checking other variables. Should be possible to change this back and forth in FMM and see what happens.