Only one wish for the next gen and it regards the English players!

I know that there is a wishlist thread, but this is now so important that it has to be in its own thread.

I am playing CM/FM for almost 20 years now, and this one thing became unbearable in last couple of years: ALL ENGLISH PLAYERS IN THE GAME ARE OVERRATED! Literary, all of them!

Year after year, every single English player has higher CA and PA than what it is normal. Furthermore, VERY often it leads to crazy and completely unrealistic moments in the game, namely, English national team winning a major tournament! We all know that this never happens, and it will never happen in the future. Not now, not in 20 years, not in 100 years. Albanian national team has better chances of winning the world cup, and yet in almost every save (and I play long-term saves), English national team wins it at least once!

I understand that SI Games is an English company, and that the main market is in the UK. However, there are players from all around the world, and this nationalistic stupidity is killing the game. In every version I have to edit the database for myself to decrease PA and CA of all English players by at least 20, but it is tiring! If this product is being sold worldwide, than respect people who are not English nationalists, and who have realistic views on football.

I will continue to buy the game, and most probably to edit the database myself. But please, at least consider this. Consider how you are killing the joy just for being blind towards the players of your own nationality.

You make some valid points about how players are evaluated, but spoil it all with some pretty outrageous generalisations.

"All English players are over-rated"- what, all of them in the database?

"England's national team will never ever win a major tournament again"- possibly true of the current team, but nobody knows after that

"All English players' CA and PA need to be edited by at least 20 points"- Really?

Maybe one of the researchers can enlighten you on how the current system for deciding on CA and PA are arrived at, but remember that this is all about personal opinion.

I think this works in FMs favour, we often hear complaining about better players, with better stats having all the ball and all the stats and still getting beat, or being out played by hopeless teams the stats say they shouldnt, but I think roy hodgson shows, if you are a bad manager, have no idea about tactics, unwillingness to change, play players out of position on not in their best roles, shoe horn players into positions they are complete strangers at, picking names instead of players, that over confidence, praising players when they dont deserve it, and basically get everything wrong you could get wrong, you could end up having world class players not even able to pass a ball 5 foot to each other, and even a non league team could out play you.

One thing it shows how FM isnt very realistic is how we could get sacked so soon if we were that bad, we would have been sacked years ago for under achieving, when in reality it seems you can have chance after chance and just retire in the end. Maybe one for the team to look at.

English national team winning multiple international trophies and generally british teams winning multiple CLs is not a generalisation but what happens on regular basis and this is proven by many threads raised along.. 10 years maybe. I think english researchers made a good job regarding the english premier league, for what I can see the league is very well balanced, but when it goes outside GB then you'll see Man City winning multiple CLs, along with Arsenal or Tottenham. So I can't say if british players are overrated or continental players are underrated, but in my opinion the correct balance between british teams and continental teams must be found yet.

I couldn't agree more, England usually wins the EUROs and the World Cup, and Tottenham takes the Champions League. It's very annoying, especially as the current England squad is a bunch of virtual unknowns (apart from Rooney maybe, who was once almost a world-class player, but is now way past his prime). There's a reason why no foreign clubs want to sign English players, people. They're nowhere near as good as you think they are, and the likes of Rose, Smalling, Walker, Sterling, Dier, Lallana, Sturridge, Kane, Vardy... Will never win anything. They're simply not that good.

The game doesn't really model the psychological tournament hilarity that seems to affect the England side. With that taken away, and the (relatively, compared to real life) simplistic way players psychology is represented.

With the money in the English game, and the way football is worshipped, England should be regularly challenging in FM. Clubs most definitely, and I don't see any issue with the national team either. In real life, they're in the second tier of teams that can fluctuate between group stage exits and unlikely semi finals. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that they get to a final or win one, and certainly there are players there whose individual qualities should add up to something good. But they don't. So what's the answer in FM? It certainly isn't lowering their ability.

There is nothing to be done at a club level, however. The money that goes into the English game can only go in a finite number of directions, unlike in real life. So it'll go into better players, better facilities, and the like. The former means that they often end up with the top-rated players in the game (money talks) and the latter means that better quality players are produced. Bingo.

Oh, and loaded leagues. If you load a small number and England is one of them, you know what you're going to get.

ETA; I've got a save that's gone into the 2100's, and spent a lot of time at International level. A lot of it with Scotland. After two different managers, I got two World Cups on the spin in 2062 and 2066. England hadn't won one in a hundred years by that point, meaning Scotland now had more World Cup trophies than England did. Then they won three on the bounce. It's by no means a given that England will win anything in most saves.

I disagree, and I think the "overratedness" in the game reflects that in real life. I see now that Gareth Southgate is being listed as a potential replacement for Hodgson. Really, Gareth Southgate? What's he ever done? And Shearer on the BBC commentating that he would take the job if he was offered What the hell makes him think he is a manager fit to run a national team

Jeebus, I love England, but you peeps need to wake up, so that you can actually move forward.

I don't know if there is a favouring towards English clubs or not (I'd be surprised if there is), but lets just assume for a second that there isn't.

As far as I am aware, the quality of newgens is based on the following factors: a clubs' Youth Recruitment network (for newgen PA); the clubs' Junior Coaching (for newgen CA); the quality of a clubs' Youth Facilities (for CA development); a clubs' Reputation; and the divisions' Reputation.

So for example, a club in Gibraltar can have the best facilities in the world, but it's still in low reputation Gibraltar and thus is extremely unlikely to get much in the way of high PA youngsters coming through.

I have a future "starting save" where I holidayed until 2040. Looking at players no older than 25, there are 32 in my database with a PA of at least 180. 13 are English. That's quite a high proportion.

But, looking at the reputation of the EPL, the clubs therein and the money that has been thrown at those clubs (which no other country can match), and given what we know about how newgens are "calculated", is it any surprise a high proportion are English?

Even Brighton (who have been in the EPL for the last 20 years) have top notch facilities and they have one of the best young players of all.

However, I am a little concerned about other nations. There is only one Spaniard in those 32 players for example, just two Brazilians, and two Germans. Given the money, reputation and facilities available in the EPL I can understand how the quality of English newgens can improve, but such a dramatic drop in other nationalities "feels" a little off.

Clearly this is only a very limited sample size, but rather than think there is a favouring towards English clubs, to me there is - perhaps! - a little too much weighting towards who has the biggest wallet (and therefore facilities) and reputation. I don't know if there can only be so many high PA newgens created each year, but if there is that could go some way to explaining this shift.

I'd be interested in SI's take on this.

English national team winning multiple international trophies and generally british teams winning multiple CLs is not a generalisation but what happens on regular basis and this is proven by many threads raised along.. 10 years maybe. I think english researchers made a good job regarding the english premier league, for what I can see the league is very well balanced, but when it goes outside GB then you'll see Man City winning multiple CLs, along with Arsenal or Tottenham. So I can't say if british players are overrated or continental players are underrated, but in my opinion the correct balance between british teams and continental teams must be found yet.

I couldn't agree more, England usually wins the EUROs and the World Cup, and Tottenham takes the Champions League. It's very annoying, especially as the current England squad is a bunch of virtual unknowns (apart from Rooney maybe, who was once almost a world-class player, but is now way past his prime). There's a reason why no foreign clubs want to sign English players, people. They're nowhere near as good as you think they are, and the likes of Rose, Smalling, Walker, Sterling, Dier, Lallana, Sturridge, Kane, Vardy... Will never win anything. They're simply not that good.

Whilst there is an element of truth in that in general the way you set up your save heavily influences the results both at Continental & National level.

Teams in playable leagues generally outperform teams from non-playable leagues and longer term the number of newgens coming into the save influence the standard of the National teams.

Secondly how those games are simmed also plays a part with the bigger teams/nations benefitting more if the matches aren't fully simmed.

Even on default level though as long as you have plenty of playable leagues the issue is no where near as bad as you make out. In my current save (Every League playable) England as a nation have done better than previous saves winning the 2016 Euros but in other tournaments have never been past the Quarter Finals (Currently in 2024). Looking back to FM15 where my save was in 2027 England never progressed beyond the Quarter Final of the Euros or 2nd Round of the World Cup.

At Continental level its a slightly different story with English teams generally doing better than IRL in recent years but far from dominating and with the money coming into the EPL it remains to be seen what happens over the next few years.

I don't know if there is a favouring towards English clubs or not (I'd be surprised if there is), but lets just assume for a second that there isn't.

As far as I am aware, the quality of newgens is based on the following factors: a clubs' Youth Recruitment network (for newgen PA); the clubs' Junior Coaching (for newgen CA); the quality of a clubs' Youth Facilities (for CA development); a clubs' Reputation; and the divisions' Reputation.

So for example, a club in Gibraltar can have the best facilities in the world, but it's still in low reputation Gibraltar and thus is extremely unlikely to get much in the way of high PA youngsters coming through.

I have a future "starting save" where I holidayed until 2040. Looking at players no older than 25, there are 32 in my database with a PA of at least 180. 13 are English. That's quite a high proportion.

But, looking at the reputation of the EPL, the clubs therein and the money that has been thrown at those clubs (which no other country can match), and given what we know about how newgens are "calculated", is it any surprise a high proportion are English?

Even Brighton (who have been in the EPL for the last 20 years) have top notch facilities and they have one of the best young players of all.

However, I am a little concerned about other nations. There is only one Spaniard in those 32 players for example, just two Brazilians, and two Germans. Given the money, reputation and facilities available in the EPL I can understand how the quality of English newgens can improve, but such a dramatic drop in other nationalities "feels" a little off.

Clearly this is only a very limited sample size, but rather than think there is a favouring towards English clubs, to me there is - perhaps! - a little too much weighting towards who has the biggest wallet (and therefore facilities) and reputation. I don't know if there can only be so many high PA newgens created each year, but if there is that could go some way to explaining this shift.

I'd be interested in SI's take on this.

This.

I would add that the nation's youth rating also contributes to newgens, and England's isn't as high as you might think I believe. But when there's billions pouring into the country, there's only so many places that it can go. I'm not really sure what they can do to stop that, short of putting some hard-coded handicap in. What's happening is showing that the AI can take its money and use it effectively. Doing otherwise would be hampering the AI further and making the human user even more powerful. And to what end? Just to stop a nation competing that should compete?

Thanks Seb, good point and something I should have thought about.

Yeh, I simmed most of that save with just one league loaded for speed, it was only the last 2 or 3 seasons I loaded more leagues.

Ignore me, my brain hurts .

It's down to SI (and probably more specifically the HR's) if they want to disclose the exact methodology behind it all but I might be able to shed a brief bit of light on it.

England probably does have the highest average CA among its clubs in its top league. Generally speaking the difference between the strongest teams in the Premier League and the weakest teams is not as dramatic a gap in other leagues. The vast majority of these players are not English however.

Top English clubs do have good facilities to develop players, but have a poorer production of good regens at the baseline level. The system is more complex than I'm explaining it here, but with inactive leagues and lower facilities you may tend to be noticing some leagues are falling by the wayside when they would be higher if they were run in full detail. This is particularly more likely with South American leagues.

When it comes to overall distributions of abilities there are approaches that vary from league to league under the guidance of HR's and how its felt that league is best represented. There have been decisions taken to better reflect this reality, this focuses more on keeping players in leagues in line with how they actually seem to be.

Each researcher rates their club in a vacuum with some guidance from their HR. We can make assertions and put our points forth if we believe something falls generally outside the scope of the guidelines for example - the expectation isn't that a player at Stoke City will be at 190CA. If I felt so inclined I could try and make a persuasive argument for it, and if I was able to justify it in the minds of the HR's it could well make the game. Very unlikely, but it's not categorically set in stone that this cannot happen.

At the other end of the spectrum, if I feel a player is below the general expectations for a club like Stoke I also put that through and explain the decision to the HR's. A prime example being that in previous years players like Mamady Sidibe, Jon Walters and Glenn Whelan haven't had a CA that fits in with the general expectation of what had been at times key players at a mid-table Premier League club.

After this our information gets put into the hands of SI's testers. If anything appears out of place in soak tests then it gets flagged up, if anything appears out of place in play tests it gets flagged up. I've had feedback via my HR from as high up as Miles Jacobson.

The problem with looking at headline CA's is that they alone are rarely the reason for players performing so well or so poorly in the game, the best example I can think of is when a 129CA Peter Crouch was nailing down the golden boot almost guaranteed a couple years back. It was an unusual combination of attributes that Peter Crouch comprises of, coupled with the tactics set for Tony Pulis as Stoke manager and other players in the team. I don't know if its down to the change a couple years back when the data issues forum got put into the bugs section (I still think that board should either be renamed to FMXXXX Data Issues & Bugs Forum or splitting into two separate areas as Data Issues aren't really bugs - people perceiving them to be bugs could also be behind some of the lack of refinement to some posts), but its been far, far quieter in recent years over there. I always invite people to provide feedback on Stoke and try to explain why I've made certain decisions so that people can then better provide critique of it.

In the vast majority of cases though people just say a CA is too high and provide no context, which is sort of what you've done in the opening post. Did you really have to boot up FM16 and then drop Peter Crouch to around 104/105CA this year?

I believe, and I may be wrong, that another element that may skew it when it comes to regens, is the fact that the English league structure on most saves has the 4 top leagues loaded, which is 92 teams. That means that although the Youth Rating is lower than other countries, there is simply much more players in the English youth intakes than there would be from the 40 teams in Spain for example. This means that although the chance of any particular player having a high PA are lower, in total there will be a lot more high PA English players.

On the point of the Out of the Box database though, I'd have to say I'd disagree with the OP. I don't think on a CA/PA level there's anything wrong with the levels of the English players when compared to their continental counterparts. The issue comes with the fact that IRL they can't seem to play together, whereas in the idyllic world of FM, they are (in some cases much) better at it.

the best players in my game come from Italy Germany and Argentina

I always get amazing regens from France every year. England produces a decent amount, but like most have said, their CA must be really high because English clubs and the NT always do very well in tournaments. I've always just passed this off as slight patriotic bias and a mixture of the EPL simply being the most popular league in the world. But now is a great time to bring up this topic again due to current events.

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room that is the consistently poor standard of coaching & evidence pointing to a lack a tactical knowledge in England.

I have been critical of player ratings from the English research team but for me the main area to address would be considering a significant downgrade in the ability of coaches & the youth coaching ratings at English clubs as there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that players are not as well trained in England as they are in other major nations.

It's not just the data though, for a number of years I've put forward an opinion that the strengths & weaknesses in the ME play into best attributes of English players while the weakness that might not be commonplace outside of England are core issues for all nations.

Well, something is happening, and I also think that which leagues I choose should have such a large impact in the long run. Is that possible to solve somehow? But yes, it looks like the issue is deeper than just English player ratings, and probably also involves coaches and everything else in the game.

Thank you all for joining the discussion, and thank you moderators for not censoring it and allowing it, although it is critical towards the company.

Several points and concerns were mentioned here. First about the competitiveness of English football clubs. I think that they should remain very competitive, as they indeed are. After all, there is a lot of money flowing there and regardless of untalented generation of English players, English clubs will always be competitive. My main concern and criticism was about English national team. I rarely load English league, and yet, they are always winning the major competitions.

However, after maybe +50 seasons of experimenting with the decreased PA and CA for all English players, some good things emerged:

1. English clubs are still very competitive abroad. Often they win the CL, as they should

2. Successful English clubs have a lot of foreigners who are improving the quality of the league in general. Again, as it should be.

3. English national team cannot win anything. As it should be. Actually, after the initial decrease in ranking, newgens improve England, but to the realistic levels. It is still hard to play against English national team, but they are not invincible. They are a decent squad, as they are now. But nothing more.

4. Even with decreased PA and CA, English players are VERY expensive, as they indeed are. Meaning, they are still overrated in terms of price and reputation, but not in terms of quality. Which is great for the game.

5. Regen system actually improves the game when you decrease PA and CA initially. I guess that the algorithm takes into account all those things mentioned above, regarding the quality of the facilities, youth coaches, etc. However, as the initial PA of the players is lower, there are not crazy good players to lead the national team to win the tournaments.

The problem with my editing of the database is that I cannot dedicate more than an hour or two. I am using my free time to play, and not to mess around with the editor. That means that PA and CA are not fine-tuned. I just decrease everyone with English nationality. If you want to try my database get it here: https://www.mediafire.com/?obzmnezsaws4n4o

However, it would be much better if the SI's researchers would actually discuss this internally. And more importantly, they should play the game! Play it for at least 20 seasons in five different saves, and make comparisons.

Touching on player rep is an interesting one, based on the data it seems that it is common practice to match player rep to CA when there probably should be a greater difference with players in higher rep leagues or nations being prone to having rep in excess of their ability, couple that with English players being more inclined to having mental attributes that see them commit less time to improving their ability when they reach a "made it" rep score.

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room that is the consistently poor standard of coaching & evidence pointing to a lack a tactical knowledge in England.

I have been critical of player ratings from the English research team but for me the main area to address would be considering a significant downgrade in the ability of coaches & the youth coaching ratings at English clubs as there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that players are not as well trained in England as they are in other major nations.

It's not just the data though, for a number of years I've put forward an opinion that the strengths & weaknesses in the ME play into best attributes of English players while the weakness that might not be commonplace outside of England are core issues for all nations.

I would mention we actually also have guidelines nowadays in place to try and shape how managers are more in certain nations. Again, without giving it all away entirely it might be that this needs a bit more refinement as we go forward but the ability of coaches are being moulded more around the expectations of the English game and the same for coaches in other countries. This will certainly go some way towards mitigating coaches who are in charge of English teams from perhaps getting an overly good, swashbuckling approach at least.

I think the game has a bias problem to England and English players.

As well as to whatever nation is loaded

In every users game it's common to see England winning tournaments or challenging, on a consistent basis, Which is not realistic at all judging by the circus they dish out as a footballing nation every other year

I haven't seen England winning many tournaments in my save but my big problem is the transfers of English players.. All English clubs yes even L1 teams wants ridiculuos fees for the players and I find my self looking players in other EU and South America clubs, then I will face the challenge of homegrown squad registration

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room that is the consistently poor standard of coaching & evidence pointing to a lack a tactical knowledge in England.

I have been critical of player ratings from the English research team but for me the main area to address would be considering a significant downgrade in the ability of coaches & the youth coaching ratings at English clubs as there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that players are not as well trained in England as they are in other major nations.

It's not just the data though, for a number of years I've put forward an opinion that the strengths & weaknesses in the ME play into best attributes of English players while the weakness that might not be commonplace outside of England are core issues for all nations.

The problem with this, while I largely agree is the issue lies between 18-21. FM faces an issue in trying to map and replicate something more complicated than perhaps the game allows.

I think first off too many users obsess with PA and CA without any relation to the attributes themselves. That just doesn't work. Throw that out there and implications of bias, it pretty much misses the mark on research.

Two issues lie here really, the long term modelling from youth up, and mapping the anecdotal deep lying issues between 18-21. (starts with a general lack of exposure to game time and experience, perhaps looking at managers tendencies to bring through youth may help here) and the seasonal modelling between players form. If a player has earned X attributes over a 60 game season, slashing that arbitrarily based on the last 4 games after that makes no sense, especially when said tournaments aren't necessarily the pinnacle of the game.

How to model various different pressures between club and country would be another longer term way of getting more accurate modelling. And essentially the aim is getting more finesse in modelling. Slashing CA is an inaccurate blunt instrument way, that still doesn't deal with the situation.

Can't find any fault with the points you've raised & I do agree that the 18-21 development phase is often one that can be over-powered (I think that's what you were getting at), I've been pretty consistent in my position that key causes are the generous mental attribute values of English based players & the almost fixed nature of those attributes for newgen's with too many 15 years entering the game with perfect hidden mental attributes & the effectiveness of getting a 30 year old player to tutor a 15 year who is lacking in one or two areas.

Personally I do not think that modelling the different pressures of club & international football should be that complex, the two year cycle of an English tournament postmortem tends to come to a similar conclusion that weakness in English players are being masked because they play with much better/mentally stronger foreign players at club level, a rising tide raises all boats is an apt phrase. How this translates to FM is that players with lower rated hidden attributes gain confidence from having much stronger people around them at their club so for the most part they appear to be on a similar level but when they are in the international environment or a club that does not have mentally strong players that crutch is no longer there so the insecurities, self-doubt start to feed off each other as the importance of the matches increases.

Edit: I should probably add that recreating the short-sighted nature of cash rich clubs such as those in the Premier league is a difficult challenge for SI, in a perfect simulation a manager at an English club would be more likely to get short shrift from the owners whenever they mentioned the idea of developing players from the youth system & all that entails in favour of being compelled to accept a philosophy of buying players to immediately play in the first team & in some cases concentrating on buying high profile players even if that means passing on a better transfer option but I dare say that for many who play FM having those type of restrictions placed upon them could negatively impact on their enjoyment.

Can't find any fault with the points you've raised & I do agree that the 18-21 development phase is often one that can be over-powered (I think that's what you were getting at), I've been pretty consistent in my position that key causes are the generous mental attribute values of English based players & the almost fixed nature of those attributes for newgen's with too many 15 years entering the game with perfect hidden mental attributes & the effectiveness of getting a 30 year old player to tutor a 15 year who is lacking in one or two areas.

Personally I do not think that modelling the different pressures of club & international football should be that complex, the two year cycle of an English tournament postmortem tends to come to a similar conclusion that weakness in English players are being masked because they play with much better/mentally stronger foreign players at club level, a rising tide raises all boats is an apt phrase. How this translates to FM is that players with lower rated hidden attributes gain confidence from having much stronger people around them at their club so for the most part they appear to be on a similar level but when they are in the international environment or a club that does not have mentally strong players that crutch is no longer there so the insecurities, self-doubt start to feed off each other as the importance of the matches increases.

Edit: I should probably add that recreating the short-sighted nature of cash rich clubs such as those in the Premier league is a difficult challenge for SI, in a perfect simulation a manager at an English club would be more likely to get short shrift from the owners whenever they mentioned the idea of developing players from the youth system & all that entails in favour of being compelled to accept a philosophy of buying players to immediately play in the first team & in some cases concentrating on buying high profile players even if that means passing on a better transfer option but I dare say that for many who play FM having those type of restrictions placed upon them could negatively impact on their enjoyment.

That was indeed what I was getting at.

Your second paragraph makes really interesting reading. Perhaps too late for be widely focused on for FM17, but maybe for the future. Certainly it's a much better idea than slashing CA with no precision.

Well, researchers should decrease CA and PA of every English player with precision. It is their job after all. My method just gave quick and good results, i.e. to unable English national team to win a major competition.

It seems that they still don't think that English players are overrated in terms of quality, but that it is a structural problem within the game.

Well, researchers should decrease CA and PA of every English player with precision. It is their job after all. My method just gave quick and good results, i.e. to unable English national team to win a major competition.

It seems that they still don't think that English players are overrated in terms of quality, but that it is a structural problem within the game.

No, because you cannot simply decrease CA and PA with precision, there is no precision in doing so. To suggest that is to fundamentally misunderstand how research (and indeed the attribute system) works.

And you claim that the overrated attributes of English players were done with precision??

Yes, they were done with precision.

Ultimaely benefactor you're on the right path in terms of learning more about the game, but you've learned a small amount and think its enough to pass judgement sweepingly. If you had raised this on the data issues it would have been dismissed out of hand, because you clearly haven't thought what players are overrated in what areas.

It's all fine and good saying:

"I want you to lower the CA of all English players because of what happens in my games,"

But even if we're inclined to agree we're then left thinking:

"Eh who does he mean? Which of these players are overrated, which of these players attributes are overrated?"

If you truly believe you're speaking from a position of educated reasoning, then the burden is on you to enlighten us simple peons on the research team. Because obviously the 88ish (think there's like 4 open clubs at the moment) of us + head researchers involved in the top 4 leagues in England have already looked at the players and rated them as we feel they ought to be.

You could drop the CA of Daniel Sturridge, drop his finishing to 1 and he would probably fit your arbitrary criteria then. You could take a look at Raheem Sterling, drop his pace to 1 and again it'd probably be the same. Lowering CA isn't just a case of dropping the CA number and then everything will be fine. You might have noticed it working the way you wanted because of a) it will massively distort players and b) everyone tends to think their own work is better.

If you genuinely have issues with English players and wish to make a meaningful contribution, get yourself across to the data issues forums and begin making well thought out, reasonable, explained comments on which players should be changed.

Yes, they were done with precision.

Ultimaely benefactor you're on the right path in terms of learning more about the game, but you've learned a small amount and think its enough to pass judgement sweepingly. If you had raised this on the data issues it would have been dismissed out of hand, because you clearly haven't thought what players are overrated in what areas.

It's all fine and good saying:

"I want you to lower the CA of all English players because of what happens in my games,"

But even if we're inclined to agree we're then left thinking:

"Eh who does he mean? Which of these players are overrated, which of these players attributes are overrated?"

If you truly believe you're speaking from a position of educated reasoning, then the burden is on you to enlighten us simple peons on the research team. Because obviously the 88ish (think there's like 4 open clubs at the moment) of us + head researchers involved in the top 4 leagues in England have already looked at the players and rated them as we feel they ought to be.

You could drop the CA of Daniel Sturridge, drop his finishing to 1 and he would probably fit your arbitrary criteria then. You could take a look at Raheem Sterling, drop his pace to 1 and again it'd probably be the same. Lowering CA isn't just a case of dropping the CA number and then everything will be fine. You might have noticed it working the way you wanted because of a) it will massively distort players and b) everyone tends to think their own work is better.

If you genuinely have issues with English players and wish to make a meaningful contribution, get yourself across to the data issues forums and begin making well thought out, reasonable, explained comments on which players should be changed.

This pretty much sums it up.

A lot of people need to start actually understanding how it works, because criticising without doing so makes one look very foolish.

And you do realise that the results of that work are disasterous and that they are destroying the fun of the game? It is not one save game, it is ten save games. And if you want, I can make you a simulation with 50 seasons and 10 different save games. You will always get the same ridiculous results - English national team wining international competitions. I honestly hope that you had made these kind of simulations.

And very often they win it with the first generation of players, so it is not about regens, good coaches, etc. It is about untalented English players being overrated. As simple as that. Sorry.

And you do realise that the results of that work are disasterous and that they are destroying the fan of the game? It is not one save game, it is ten save games. And if you want, I can make you a simulation with 50 seasons and 10 different save games. You will always get the same ridiculous results - English national team wining international competitions. I honestly hope that you had made these kind of simulations.

And very often they win it with the first generation of players, so it is not about regens, good coaches, etc. It is about untalented English players being overrated. As simple as that. Sorry.

All of Europe and most of the other leagues loaded and most of them in full detail matches.

They even lost a penalty shootout.

And you do realise that the results of that work are disasterous and that they are destroying the fun of the game? It is not one save game, it is ten save games. And if you want, I can make you a simulation with 50 seasons and 10 different save games. You will always get the same ridiculous results - English national team wining international competitions. I honestly hope that you had made these kind of simulations.

And very often they win it with the first generation of players, so it is not about regens, good coaches, etc. It is about untalented English players being overrated. As simple as that. Sorry.

The choice is ultimately yours though my friend, you can either try and engage in the data/research process correctly with nuanced and detailed contributions or you can make wide-scope nondescript posts that will ultimately leave you feeling more frustrated as you're not going to shape the data/research process much at all here.

I can't speak for all researchers, but whenever a person has a query or issue with Stoke data I at least explain how I came to that conclusion for a player and what my thought process was to get there. Because it gives people the knowledge to better provide constructive feedback as a result, part of the issue here is you're criticising researchers without anyone really knowing who it should be.

You haven't even refined your point enough yet to the point to know whether it should be those few who played in all of Englands games (sparing the likes of Forster and Stones) or all of the players called up for Englands squad (sparing the likes of Butland, but penalising the likes of Forster and Stones), all players eligible for the England sqaud (meaning players like the 120 something CA Peter Crouch would also need dropping) or all English born players (meaning from my perspective Jon Walters born in England but playing for the Republic of Ireland would also have to be cleaved down) so right now it comes back to that point - even if we're inclined to agree with you. Where would we start? Where would we stop?

The choice is ultimately yours though my friend, you can either try and engage in the data/research process correctly with nuanced and detailed contributions or you can make wide-scope nondescript posts that will ultimately leave you feeling more frustrated as you're not going to shape the data/research process much at all here.

I can't speak for all researchers, but whenever a person has a query or issue with Stoke data I at least explain how I came to that conclusion for a player and what my thought process was to get there. Because it gives people the knowledge to better provide constructive feedback as a result, part of the issue here is you're criticising researchers without anyone really knowing who it should be.

You haven't even refined your point enough yet to the point to know whether it should be those few who played in all of Englands games (sparing the likes of Forster and Stones) or all of the players called up for Englands squad (sparing the likes of Butland, but penalising the likes of Forster and Stones), all players eligible for the England sqaud (meaning players like the 120 something CA Peter Crouch would also need dropping) or all English born players (meaning from my perspective Jon Walters born in England but playing for the Republic of Ireland would also have to be cleaved down) so right now it comes back to that point - even if we're inclined to agree with you. Where would we start? Where would we stop?

And on that point we've reached a dead end.

OP if you can actually read some of what santy has said, and offer up something useful, then head to the data forums. Your current wildly inaccurate thoughts based on a lack of knowledge, with all due respect, would be dismissed of hand by any researcher worth their salt, because they have no proper bearing on research.

This is a fun game. Inspired by HUNT3R's post, but coming from a more "normal" setup. I don't usually make any kind of changes to processing, and just load a modest number of leagues. In my save, I started with just the "home nations" leagues (Britain + Republic of Ireland) and the top division from Germany, Italy and Spain I believe. Stayed that way for 40 years, when I added a few more worldwide minor leagues. Then about 20 years later I started loading continents at a time, unloading England at that point. So in short, England was always loaded.

Here's how they did in that time.

So in the World Cup, they've played in 22 tournaments since the save started. Out of a possible 23 (they failed to qualify in 2094 (they really hate World Cups in 94, don't they?). In that time, they've won it three times. Three in 22. They've only gone to the semi final or later four times, including those three wins. Two group stage exits, eleven second round exits, three quarter final exits. If you take the tournaments in the first 20 years from the save start (because that's the period of time you can talk about realism for before game-generated players come in), then they never made it beyond the second round. Not too dissimilar to HUNT3R's list. They had a golden era between 2066 and 2078 before going back to "normal", but who's to say that won't happen in real life? No-one knows. Spain were absolute dog pops pre 2004, then they ruled the World for a decade.

So, onto the Euros...

Again, the first 20 years is pretty normal. Semi final in 2016, performing beyond expectations, but given the odd structure of the Euros now, we've seen that sides that "shouldn't be there" actually are. After 2016 it's a couple of second round exits, another semi, a quarter and then a group exit. Then we're into the fantasy land where anything can happen depending on what's loaded and what's gone on. They won three in that time, then a succession of defeats in finals, semis and quarters.

So all in all, what exactly is wrong with any of that?