Regarding physical attributes

I started an experiment.

Picked up the worst team on a lower league and managed to hit the top spot of the league.

Used a plug and play tactic, never changed anything, never shouted anything, never gave any team talks.

So what did I do.

I put on a spreadsheet the physical attributes of each player in the squad, except natural fitness and added them.

Like:

Striker 1

Acceleration 16

Agility 13

Balance 16

Jumping 11

Pace 13

Stamina 12

Strength 12

Total: 93

Striker 2 total 86

Striker 3 total 75

etc.

Ranked all my squad according to physical attributes, (except goalkeepers). Defenders, full backs, midfielders, wingers, strikers.

Also bought new potential players ranking them as well.

Potential striker 1 score = xx

Potential striker 2 score = xx

Potential striker 3 score = xx

Eventually I created an extremely physical squad, which runs, pressures, wins challenges, wins headers, wins tackles, scores goals. It might not have direct free kick goals, amazing passes, good through balls, long runs and dribbles. but those lads do win.

The reason I mention all these is because I want to improve the ranking, especially as I rise against harder opponents which are going to be more technical and skillful.

1) Could I improve the rankings? Is perhaps stamina, agility and balance less important than strength or acceleration or pace?

2) Should I consider physical attributes as the first step to minimal acceptable for that particular league, and then start ranking technical (or mental) attributes? Like if the minimum acceptable physical attribute for a low league is 12, should I get rid of all players that have something as low as 5 or 6?

3)If a striker has 12 acceleration and 8 finishing (they do score a lot even with 8 finishing) which is going to be more of an improvement 14 acceleration and 8 finishing OR 12 acceleration and 10 finishing? How are these 2 attribute points going to matter more?

That was a quick post, not much effort put in cause I don't know if those interest people.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I tried the very same experiment on a previous save, with the very same methodology only ranking mental and technical attributes and it didn't work out well at all.

Interesting. I've seen people do experiments that are similar, but they always seem to focus on the technical side. I.E. look at this striker with 7 finishing score 40 goals a season type stuff.

I wouldn't know how you'd go from ranking player's purely on physical attributes to starting to include key technical attributes. I feel like at that point you've just gone into the standard player evaluation.

I would think that the ideal approach is to assign a value to each attribute based on that player's position/role and then multiply that value by the attribute score for each player. Pace and acceleration might be a full 5 out of 5 value for strikers but only a 3 out of 5 for defensive midfielders. Similarly, jumping would be a 5 for central defenders but only a 1 or 2 for wingers.

I've done this for the roles I use, set up a spreadsheet matrix, and plugged in scores accordingly. It ends up working quite well, though it does a feel a bit unrealistic to be able to do this with human evaluation. What the process has revealed for me is which players have value above or below their CA based purely on their role-specific attribute values. It leads to finding good value players and avoiding some of the high CA duds.

could do it depending on your style of play?

passing, creative play would value first touch in all positions maybe, hard pressing would value work rate and stamina in all positions for instance

this way you can customise your teams style a little more than just ppms and roles

this is working! after promotion, we won the double and now we are about to play CL.

I believe physical attributes are more important than technical and mental. There are zillions of exceptions, I won't argue that. But if you want a quick mindless breeze, trust them physicals.

An interesting experiment and one that does make you think a little.

Football is still a physically-demanding sport at its core, so I'm not surprised physically-gifted players will excel. Whats important has always been creating a system whereby these players weaknesses can be minimised while maximising their physical gifts, also important would be can a player be disciplined enough to play in such a system? It won't be pretty, but it can work, and who knows these players might come up with a stunningly good counter attack once in a while.

I have noticed people in these forums mentioning that physical attributes were the most important thing at lower leagues, perhaps run a test at a higher league to see the results? The only thing i would suggest is look at the required attributes for the role you have given them and rank those higher than the other ones.