Consistency - what is it and how to improve it?

Hi,

I started to wonder what exactly is consistency in FM? According to description it should reflect players ability to maintain his good form and avoid poor performances. Or is it somehow connected to number of mistakes he does in the match?

And how can I train it? If my coach report says about 17 year old player that he "has to become more consistent if he wants to make it here" then how can I help it? Is it just tutoring or can it be improved by some other way? In one thread here it is said that consistency and big matches are two traits that can't be tutored.

Consistency is by far and away one of the best attributes (in terms of how the game does what it does), it has a subtle influence on pretty much everything and at no point can you ever for certain point to it and say its the reason or fault for something happening.

In its simplest terms, its a reflection of how many often a player can play at his full CA across a period of time.

Of course, this comes with some tremendous caveats, consistency doesn't exist in a vacuum. Only the coders can probably truly explain how it works but it can be utterly vital to a player or almost negligible. A player with high determination, high professionalism and such is better able to weather or perhaps even be largely immune to elements of low consistency. However, with this kind of player perhaps when they're "on a high" they're performing so much greater with their strong mentals that there is actually a phenomenal difference in when this player is "on" and when he's "off" and at the other end of the spectrum a player with poor mentals but great consistency it could be almost unintelligible when he's "on" and "off" because other aspects of his game are holding him back anyway.

There's no way of forcing it to improve, I've had inconsistent 30+ goal a season strikers just because the way in which they were played meant they were less prone to the effects consistency can have. There are different positions where you can get away with different types of players, it should always be kept in mind but it shouldn't be the determining factor for a player.

Okay, that explains a lot.

But when my coach report about the player says "needs to work on his consistency..." - how can he do that (work on that) ? Or is it constant throughout players career?

Okay, that explains a lot.

But when my coach report about the player says "needs to work on his consistency..." - how can he do that (work on that) ? Or is it constant throughout players career?

I am hoping (but probably about to get told off) that I remember Cleon properly here. Doesn't enjoy big games goes away by playing him in big games, consistency can be removed by tutoring him. I think, I hope I have remembered that right but I might be on the end of a telling off for that.

I am hoping (but probably about to get told off) that I remember Cleon properly here. Doesn't enjoy big games goes away by playing him in big games, consistency can be removed by tutoring him. I think, I hope I have remembered that right but I might be on the end of a telling off for that.

Partly right. It changes by playing but can't change via tutoring

Okay, that explains a lot.

But when my coach report about the player says "needs to work on his consistency..." - how can he do that (work on that) ? Or is it constant throughout players career?

Consistency can improve over time, and if it ever does, that is how it happens. The coach report is a bit misleading here in that he can't really "work" on it in the sense of you doing anything in training, so it is just a phrase to let you know the player has problems with consistency.

Improving consistency just by playing more games makes sense, actually. You don't see too many young players who play consistently well, usually they are very inconsistent, but that improves with practice and experience. So are things with big matches, I suppose - playing in Champions League, or in international tournament finals, for the first time is intimidating and a bit nervous, but player gets used to it.

That being said, I have one 16 year old player in my U-19 that is reported to be 'consistent' by my coaches. But he is a rarity.

I played FM14 for a while lately, after not playing any FM for years.
I tried to figure out some stuff, and consistency was one of them. So I did a little tracking experiment where I looked at 50 players of various ages and consistency levels.
I check each player year by year and it seems like consistency can both improve and drop quite a bit. The worst player out of the 50 went from having 10 consistency to 5, after a few years not playing in the premier league, to giving poor performances ( 6.5 and below for a season) in lower leagues.
The player who's consistency improved the most went from an 8 to a 15. The largest amount of his consistency improvement went when he was over 28 ( from 11 to 15)
One player who started with a consistency of 11 stayed that way for the long 14 years fo his career.
In general, players who started more than 35 games for two or three years and averaged 6.85 or more improved their consistency. Out of the fifty players, only one of them had a 2 point increase in a single season, everybody else improved by 1 point. On average, the majority of the players I was tracking improved their consistency by 3. Age doesn't matter. Players in their 30s can improve consistency by 1 or 2.

I see many young high potential players in this version with their consistency stat in the red (worst level). From your experience is there a way to improve it or even put it into green consistency? Or are such players a lost cause. I know that above poster showw that it can be but red consistency see ms a bit extreme. Red is the icons colour in the player report i mean

The "experience" exist in FM? If two players has the same CA but one of them played more matches in carrier, he could be better because of it?

22 minutes ago, smajliss said:

The "experience" exist in FM? If two players has the same CA but one of them played more matches in carrier, he could be better because of it?

If you have two identical players except one has higher Consistency than the other, the one with higher Consistency may - with all else equal - perform better than the other.

However there is no such thing as identical players and other attributes can compensate where other areas may lack.  Consistency, like all attributes, should never be viewed in isolation.