judging qualities/potential

Last FM game i played was FM10. I have played FIFA 12, and the career mode reminded me how great FM was. I had such an awesome game with chelmsford on FM10. Planning on buying FM13 and have a go with them, since they narrowly missed promotion this season. I love LLM, big clubs are just boring after two seasons, while there is nothing that compares the feeling of going up a tier and battleing your way to the top.

Now here i have a little confessions to make,which is in a sense cheating. Im horrible at judging qualities of potential players, and also in their potential. thats why, even at non LLM clubs, i always used the FMRTE to change those qualities with my scouts and assistant manager.

Now long story short, they are making the FMRTE something you have to buy, and this is the perfect oppurtunity for me to throw out this little cheat. But that leaves me to the following question: what exactly do the ratings for judging potential and qualities do? how does it work? does 5/20 means he is right in 25% of his rapports? or does it merely mean it has an error rate of 75%? what exactly does the number means? and at which level does it starts to become reliable?

thanks

TBH ATM the difference between a 20/20 and a 1/1 is fairly minimal.

If you really want to make the step forward though you should know yourself which are the better players by looking at their profiles/attributes/watching them in matches and then use your coaches/AM as a backup opinion.

what is minimal? cause i have the tendency to dispose of players who get 2 or 2.5 stars. while it might not be necessary

what is minimal? cause i have the tendency to dispose of players who get 2 or 2.5 stars. while it might not be necessary

On older players maybe 0.5*, 1* at most.

Younger players could be worse but this can be caused by a poor personality meaning they would never have a chance of reaching their actual PA anyway.

Although stars are useful they are just a guideline, you really need to look deeper into a players attributes, strengths, weaknesses, personality etc before deciding if a player is good enough.

First you need to have a clear plan for your tactic; what player types/qualities do you need in each position? I like having the choice between several at least up front. Let's say you play a rather standard 442 with one big guy and one fast guy up front, one creative and one "destructive" midfielder, one cover and one stopper defender.

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What roles would you say these three prospects would fill in that 442 tactic? PA star ratings are the same.

cant see hislengt, but pearson would be the big guy, looking at his heading and his mediocre pace, cros has good tackling, stamina and work rate and medium creativity, osi would put him defensive midfielder. as for lavie, i would say he is a stopper, giving his tackling and heading is better than his marking

cant see hislengt, but pearson would be the big guy, looking at his heading and his mediocre pace, cros has good tackling, stamina and work rate and medium creativity, osi would put him defensive midfielder. as for lavie, i would say he is a stopper, giving his tackling and heading is better than his marking

Lavie is the only one where I disagree. I'd say that with his good positioning, composure, anticipation, speed and agility for his as well as his low bravery and aggression he'd be more suited for the cover role.

cant see hislengt, but pearson would be the big guy, looking at his heading and his mediocre pace, cros has good tackling, stamina and work rate and medium creativity, osi would put him defensive midfielder. as for lavie, i would say he is a stopper, giving his tackling and heading is better than his marking

Height is tied to Jumping, so for regens high Jumping = tall player.

Pearson is the first player coming up through my own academy that might have a future in my squad. A rule of thumb I'm using when looking at young players is that +5 physical, +4 technical and +3 mental, while not optimal of course, is what I expect to see most of the time. This is the second year of his career, so before he's 21 he should have 16 pace and strength, 18 jumping, 20 stamina, 15 acceleration, 8-9 natural fitness, 15 agility and 18 balance (those develop a bit slower). 16 technique and first touch, 17 dribbling, 14 finishing and 13 passing. 20 work rate, 18 team work, 16 off the ball, 18 flair, 15 decisions and anticipation, 12 composure. I hope for at least +1 to all these, especially finishing and composure as the trains a lot on shooting of course. He will be reasonably fast, strong and good in the air, with good technique and an excellent team player. But at the top level he won't be "the fast striker" no - 15-16 isn't fast enough for that.

Using the same rule of thumb for the others you will see that while Cros isn't exactly a blind "hack-em-down" unintelligent footballer, his speed, work rate and tackling will make him an excellent ball-winner on the midfield. Lavie, with this low bravery and aggression, will not win enough challenges even though he will be both big, fast and strong. All three crucial defending attributes (tackling, marking and positioning) will undoubtedly improve beyond 16 so that's not an issue. He will likely not become a very intelligent defender, even though he won't do many mistakes with the ball (composure). As such, while he will become a very good central defender, he will be a good allrounder and not an excellent stopper or cover defender.

All three have excellent Determination and personalities, so they are likely to come close to reach their potential. All three have plenty of CA yet to distribute; which is what the PA star rating indicates. So a scout will give you an indication of how much CA they have left to distribute, and how good they are now (they are rarely very wrong). YOU need to look at their Determination, then the attribute distribution (+5s, +4t, +3m - will that future player be good enough to do what you want him to do?), and if those two are satisfactory, look at his personality in the info tab: Fairly professional, fairly ambitious or worse and you will most likely have to tutor him with someone better. In that case, signing him will involve quite a bit of risk, since tutoring may or may not work (and if his reputation is high enough you won't be able to tutor him at all).

what is minimal? cause i have the tendency to dispose of players who get 2 or 2.5 stars. while it might not be necessary

you should be carefull if you do this.

i haven't actually looked at his CA/PA, but Flanagan of Liverpool starts the game as 3 1/2 stars for PA. i've barely played him and his PA is now 2 stars.

I'd imagine if i start to play him more, this will go up.

with Coates, his PA rating has fluctuated between 4 stars and 3 stars, depending on how much game time he gets.

To add to what PP says, also take a look at their attributes that you can't train - not just determination, but the other mental attributes too, e.g. bravery, aggression, flair. Depending on the player, these can be more or less important. Because you can't train them (they're more personality-based), they're much harder to influence. Also some physical attributes are easier to train than others (strength can shoot up when they're young; pace and acceleration are less likely to increase as massively). You can remedy a mediocre core attribute through individual training, but you can't make a good player out of one who starts of with poor key attributes all over the place, irrespective of what your scouts say.

It's important to remember that it's the attributes that make the player, not CA/PA. The AI is notoriously bad at judging players based on their attributes, which is why players that the AI doesn't rate can still be very good. Remember that ability points get used up by useless attributes as well as important ones. Your DM or MC doesn't need to be Usain Bolt; a player with lower pace and acceleration but higher teamwork, work rate, tackling, passing etc. will be a better player in most cases.

So you don't need to put as much stock in what the PA/CA ratings are per se; it's the difference between the two that's particularly important for young players, i.e. how much room for improvement there still is. You see loads of players rated as, say, decent League 1 midfielder who can easily perform at championship level because their attributes are in the right places.

Especially in LLM, one trick ponies are generally better than jack of all trades. You can get a lot of mileage out of a striker with 17 jumping and 14 heading, a winger with 14 crossing, a midfielder with 13 passing and 14 creativity. Or you can sign the player the AI thinks is fantabulous, and have a team full of strikers who can pass but can't score, full backs who can't tackle but can dribble etc. The important thing is to play to these players' strengths and have players who complement each other. The winger with 14 crossing is no good in a team where no one can get on the end of the cross.

Edit: it can also be worth retraining players to a new position. Sometimes they start out with attributes that are much better suited to another position, and you can get much more out of them if you do this. I've had DMs with high pace, crossing and dribbling that I've made into wingers instead, for example.

ok, so to summarize:

although the rating for judging abilities isnt hugely important, i have to put more focus on mental stats, and whether the abilities are high in the right place

As for judging potential, i assume the staff rating is a bit more important

I think a genuine example of this would be Tonton Zola Moukoko(if you don't know him for shame)...

I remember, all my coaches and scouts saying he was never good enough, he was always good enough...

I even had him in a game I ran in Sweden with AIK, he was a beast...despite him being my 6th best midfielder but stll got 13 assists and this was on FM12...

I have always tried to sign players with good team work and work rate myself...

But I do have a young player and I don't know what to do with him, his got some very strong attributes and some awful ones, i'm in the BSS, if I may could a throw up a screenie of him?

I think a genuine example of this would be Tonton Zola Moukoko(if you don't know him for shame)...

I remember, all my coaches and scouts saying he was never good enough, he was always good enough...

I even had him in a game I ran in Sweden with AIK, he was a beast...despite him being my 6th best midfielder but stll got 13 assists and this was on FM12...

I have always tried to sign players with good team work and work rate myself...

But I do have a young player and I don't know what to do with him, his got some very strong attributes and some awful ones, i'm in the BSS, if I may could a throw up a screenie of him?

As I said, if you plan to stay in the BSS, surely it is nice to have young prospects in your squad that you could develop. If you plan to rocket up the leagues, even if you use two or three seaons in each league, very few hot prospects will have the potential to become good players a league or two above the one they are playing in now. Usually, a young player that will become good enough for, say, League One while you are in BSS, will have the CA to dominate in BSS already from the start.

If you sign up to ImageShack or similar sites, it is easy to post a screenshot here.

Cheers mate, I reckon I'll be in and around the BSS for the next few seasons

Here he is...

Cheers mate, I reckon I'll be in and around the BSS for the next few seasons

Here he is...

I don't think there is much hope for him, no. The physical attributes are ok, but the mental ones are very poor. Composure, Decisions, Determination and Creativity are all hopelessly low. Down in BSS +5p, +4t and +3m is highly unrealistic to expect. I'd say that such an increase requires 60-70 or more CA points, and a Leading Star for most BSS clubs would perhaps have 100. A decent BSS player (2 stars or something?) current ability would perhaps be 70-80, so the difference is not so large. +3+2+2 is perhaps the most you can expect. So in the future, his physique and technique would both be good for that level, but the mental attributes would still be fairly unimpressive. Take a look at this guy - the best striker in BSS in 2023:

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While his physique is inferior already now and technique probably much the same as your developed player would be in the future, his mental attributes, which are the most important imo, are far superior.

Cheers for the reply mate...

Just as in real life, players who can read the game and work hard tend to be a little more successful that a technically gifted player...Just look at Roy Keane, techically good, not special but his hunger and ability to read the game and be in the right place at the right time is what made him the greatest box to box midfielders of his day ignoring his personality of course as his the most unlikable man around

I didn't realise how important the mental side was in the game, didn't(still don't) know exactly how the match engine works but this has been a help for sure