Player Attribute/Role/Duty Analyzer

Hey guys and gals, I hope this is the right section for this, I don't venture in here much as I've never really felt the need to get help with tactics & training.

Anyway, I thought I'd share this with the community, it is an Excel spreadsheet that I have put together to assist with choosing player roles and duties. The background is this:

When you select a player role & duty on the tactics screen, it shows you the attributes that the game (i.e. the match engine) considers important for that combination of role & duty ("key" attributes if you like). Like this:

So, what I would do is try a few role & duty combinations to see which would be the best for a given player. This would be done "by eye" - by which I mean you would look at one role/duty combo and think "mmm yes we have some quite good attributes here, a few 15s etc, but he's a bit lacking in pace" (or whatever). On the whole, this approcah worked quite well but it bothered me as it wasn't very scientific and I'm a scientific kind of a chap.

Now what would be really useful, I thought, would be some kind of tool where you could feed in a player's attributes, and it would analyze the key attributes for every role/duty combination available and give some figures for comparison (e.g. the average).

Well, neccessity being the mother of invention and all that, I went and built it and here it is:

Player Key Attribute Analyzer v1

Using it is easy - you simply enter the player's attributes in the yellow column (B) and hey presto! You now have the following data available to help you decide what role/duty combo suits your player best:

Mean (Average)

This is the most important one. It gives you the average attribute score for that player in that role with that duty, simples. A high score here means that this is a suitable role/duty for the player. A low score indicates the opposite.

Median

The middle value in the range of the attribute scores for that player for that role/duty. Less usefull that the average but does give some indication of the spread within the range of values. You will probably never use this and tbh I only included it for completeness.

High/Low

What is says on the tin, these columns show you the highest and lowest attribute value for that player with that role/duty. The Low column is the one you want to pay attention to. You may find a player has a very high average attribute value for a particular role/duty but has a low value in the Low column. You will need to look at this player and see where that low score is. You need to then determine whether or not that attribute is really key, or whether you can let it go.

For example a player with a high average score in the Poacher/Attack role may have really high values for all attributes that are key for this role/duty except for say, acceleration. Now I would consider accelerationto be one of the key key attributes for the poacher role so in this case I would consider a different role/duty combo for that player, which may have a lower average but a higher Low score. Hope that makes sense!

The file can be opened with Excel or OpenOffice and comes with 25 sheets. If you want to add more sheets, simply make a copy of an existing one and add it to the end. Sheet 1 is pre-populated with Messi's attributes so you can see how it works. As you will be able to see there are 3 roles which really stand out for him, namely Winger, Deep Lying Forward (Attack) and Trequartista. Sounds about right to me.

N.B. Where it says "All" in the duty column this is because all duties for that role have the same key attributes, or there is only one duty for that role (e.g. Box to Box Midfielder can only have the support role).

I've typed enough now! Give it a go if you want, I found it really helped me to sort out my player roles & duties which in turn leads to better performances from my players, because the tactic (or at least my players' roles within the tactic) exploited the players strengths.

Feedback is welcomed...

I always appreciate people who create utilities like this, so cheers.

Couple of points

1. Have you seen this:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=175696

***ProZone's FM10 Squad Analysis Tool***

Prozone's already done the same job, so how do you think yours compares?

2. If column F 'mean average' is the key one, how do you filter it so that you get the highest rating at the top and so on? I'd like to see at a glance what a player's best position/role is.

3. I don't get the 'low' thing. For Messi it says 'low 5' for crossing and corners - however his only 5 ratings are for jumping and long throws. I don't see how they are relevant.

I always appreciate people who create utilities like this, so cheers.

Couple of points

1. Have you seen this:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=175696

***ProZone's FM10 Squad Analysis Tool***

Prozone's already done the same job, so how do you think yours compares?

2. If column F 'mean average' is the key one, how do you filter it so that you get the highest rating at the top and so on? I'd like to see at a glance what a player's best position/role is.

3. I don't get the 'low' thing. For Messi it says 'low 5' for crossing and corners - however his only 5 ratings are for jumping and long throws. I don't see how they are relevant.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a look at ProZone's tool, although it looks like the b****** has beaten me to it! Should spend more time in the Tactics & Training forum I suppose!

To answer your questions, I don't think you can sort it to put the highest averages first (at least not with the layout I've used) you have to just look down the column to see where the highest values are. If you try, it will all get messed up. Basically you are looking at 2 tables of data - one is the players attributes and the other is the role/duty analysis.

On your other point , the Low column (H) does not relate in anyway to the attribute columns (A), it realtes to the role/duty (D + E). For example, the value 5 in the column H2 indicates that lowest value Messi has for the key attributes for the Libero role with Support duty (D2 & E2 respectively). In this case it is his Jumping attribute that lets him down.

Does that clear that up or have I further befuddled?

No, that's fine. So low ratings mean don't even begin to consider the player for those roles.

I recommend you have a good look at prozone's spreadsheet - it's very good. It might inspire you to refine yours to make it even more user-friendly. Good luck!

Certainly will when I get a chance. I already had some revisions planned for v2, e.g. having highlight the best position etc.

You're right about not assigning a role/duty where a player has a low "Low" score but it's worth checking where that low value is before making a decision. For example, if you had a guy who was perfect for the Box to Box Mid. role but who had a low Long Shots attribute, you could still give him the role, then just tweak his long shots from often to rarely. He will then do the Box to Box role but without doing the long shots so much. I don't consider long lshots to be an integral part of the box to box role.

Obviously if his low score was in stamina, or decisions, or something else that is really really important for the role, that's a different story and would mean he cannot really do that role.

Again thanks for the feedback

I'll take a look at ProZone's tool, although it looks like the b****** has beaten me to it!

Great minds...

I know how much effort something like this takes to produce so I must congratulate you on your efforts

I imagine that having done this work you will have noticed that, for example, DCs usually always produce Limited Defender as their best Role. Phnompenhandy and others, like myself, have raised the question of including user defined attribute weightings to address this occurence. I'd like to know if you have noticed this and have any thoughts or ideas?

This is useful, thanks.

To make it easier to identify the strongest role / duty combination, you can use the RANK function on the mean in column F to highlight the strongest combination, and use conditional formatting to assign colours to a defined number of top combinations.

doesnt genie scout, frmte and bunch of others already have this function...

This is useful, thanks.

To make it easier to identify the strongest role / duty combination, you can use the RANK function on the mean in column F to highlight the strongest combination, and use conditional formatting to assign colours to a defined number of top combinations.

It's like you can read my mind! Exactly what I was planning for v2!

doesnt genie scout, frmte and bunch of others already have this function...

Maybe, wouldn't know as I don't use cheat tools.

Great minds...

I know how much effort something like this takes to produce so I must congratulate you on your efforts

I imagine that having done this work you will have noticed that, for example, DCs usually always produce Limited Defender as their best Role. Phnompenhandy and others, like myself, have raised the question of including user defined attribute weightings to address this occurence. I'd like to know if you have noticed this and have any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks, best part of a days work (including the write up!)

About the "Limited Defender" issue - yes I has noticed this, but the major issue for I feel is that if the weightings are user-defined then they will be by definition arbitrary, and therefore we have no way of knowing how they will relate to and affect the MEs calculations. If we could delve into the game code and see how the ME weights the attributes, then apply that to our tools, that would be a step forward.

doesnt genie scout, frmte and bunch of others already have this function...

No, those utilities don't consider roles and duties.

I tried the rank function but it just made a column of squiggles.

No, those utilities don't consider roles and duties.

I tried the rank function but it just made a column of squiggles.

Seems to work OK on mine - enter this formula =RANK(F2,$F$2:$F$44,1) in cell J2.

Copy that down to J44 and it will rank the mean, with the highest total giving the highest rank (best role / duty combination).

You can then do conditional formatting to highlight ranks in a specified range a specified colour (I do <30 is red, between 30.01 and 39.99 orange and >=40 green)

About the "Limited Defender" issue - yes I has noticed this, but the major issue for I feel is that if the weightings are user-defined then they will be by definition arbitrary, and therefore we have no way of knowing how they will relate to and affect the MEs calculations. If we could delve into the game code and see how the ME weights the attributes, then apply that to our tools, that would be a step forward.

Absolutely spot on!

A quick update, here is version 2 which now highlights the top 3 highest average ratings to make it easier to use. Also includes player name on sheet. Only 2 sheets in this one - Messi on one and a spare, just make copies for your other players.

Player Key Attribute Analyzer v2

EDIT: It's just occurred to me that this might not work in Excel as I wrote the formulas for the conditional formatting in OpenOffice Calc and I've got a horrible feeling the systax might be slightly different from that which Excel uses. I will check it tomorrow and if necessary produce an Excel version.

EDIT AGAIN: Scratch that, it works fine