English Premier Division Data [Discussion]

Missing staff:

Sean Cullen (Head of youth development) Fulham.     It seems like the current HOYD 'Huw Jennings' has got into a role similar to 'Neil Bath' at Chelsea. On the FM24 database Neil bath is now a director.

Fulham FC - Academy Leadership Appointments

Fulham FC - Sean Cullen

Training Ground Guru | Jennings becomes Head of Football Development in Fulham restructure

Training Ground Guru | Fraser promoted to Head of Youth Development & Recruitment by Chelsea

I might be wrong on this one do let me know- thanks team!

 

Bruno Guimaraes' instalment and sell on clauses to Lyon appear to have been duplicated somehow.

Julio Enciso, one of the best young players in PL.

He got 4 goals and 5 assists in 1073 minutes during last two seasons.

I think 134 ca is ok for him, but look at his attribute: Anticipation 8, concentration 10, decision 8, vision 11, pace 14.  It really unacceptable, his attributes really need to be checked again.

We could take a look at Garnacho for compare. He got 5 golas and 4 assists in 1381 minutes during last two seasons.

It easy to see that Enciso is better in stats, or at least the as good as Garnacho. But if we compare their attributes in game, we will found Garnacho is much better than Enciso.

Enciso is not as fast as Garnacho,but close to him. Pace 14 is pretty slow in game, especially for an winger. Enciso is faster than most wingers in pl, I think his pace should increase to 16 - 17 like Mitoma, not as good as pace 18 of Garnacho, but close to him. His acceleration should increase to 18 like Garnacho. I watched all matches of Enciso and Garnacho during last two seasons, I'm pretty sure of this. 

If you think my opinion is too subjective, you can read some scouting report of Enciso, they always told that pace and acceleration are Enciso's strongest weapons.

 Concentration&Anticipation&Decision:

I played every version of fm since cm99, I'm pretty sure that Concentration , Anticipation , Decision are most important mental attributes for an attacking player.

Julio Enciso is a very effective player in PL, 4 Goals 5 Assists in 1073 minutes.

For comparation:

Luis Diaz in liverpool: 8 Goals 2 Assists in 2100 minutes.

Saka in Arsenal: 15 Goals 11 Assists in 3500 minutes last season.

Antony in ManUTD: 7 Golas 2 Assists in 3100 minutes.

You can easily found the key mental attributes of Enciso are so low, he is denfinitely underated, these attribute need improvement.

Concentration: 10 -> 13

Anticipation:  8 -> 14

Decision: 8 -> 14

I

To balance his ca, attribute that not important for an winger like corner, throwing, leadership, freekick could reduce like Garnacho.

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by acceptz

18 hours ago, Smallen said:

Hi Tom. Not going to refute any of the other stuff but finishing of 12 + composure of 11 does seem underrated based on the evidence to me? Barnes scored 13 non-penalty goals from an xG of 8.9 last season. He was also in the 90th percentile amongst wingers/attacking in the division for goals per shot, implying that he took his chances very well:

 

In the 21/22 season he scored 11 from an xG of 7.9, in the 20/21 it was 13 from an xG of 7.4.

That's 3 consecutive seasons of massively outperforming the quality of chances provided to him.

I can't deny that he doesn't seem like a player who will be particularly involved in other parts of the game. I'd probably argue that his dribbling attribute of 16 and flair of 15 seems way too high based on what I've seen of him and the supporting data that suggests he doesn't dribble much, and when he does he gets tackled more than 90% of other wingers do (this is last season's premier league data vs other wingers/attacking mids):

 

----

edit: The reason he hasn't played much is because he came to us relatively late in the window and hadn't had a pre-season prior to that. Howe also demands extremely high standards of fitness from the players. Even Bruno Guimaraes didn't come straight into the team when he joined despite us being in a relegation battle at the time. He then went on to get a serious injury in one of his first starts. 

Once again, I would ask you to judge whether Barnes is scoring too few goals in your saves, as opposed to focusing on numbers out of 20 in isolation.

Dribbling as an attribute is not how often a player dribbles, but rather how good they are at keeping control of the ball at speed - which Barnes is quite adept at, in my opinion.

Regardless of the reasoning for Barnes not playing, I'm really not sure how either the Newcastle researcher or I could make any call on the player being at the level of other Newcastle players if he simply has not played football. It's one to review in the next data update, of course. 

2 hours ago, Tom Elliott said:

Once again, I would ask you to judge whether Barnes is scoring too few goals in your saves, as opposed to focusing on numbers out of 20 in isolation.

Dribbling as an attribute is not how often a player dribbles, but rather how good they are at keeping control of the ball at speed - which Barnes is quite adept at, in my opinion.

Regardless of the reasoning for Barnes not playing, I'm really not sure how either the Newcastle researcher or I could make any call on the player being at the level of other Newcastle players if he simply has not played football. It's one to review in the next data update, of course. 

Well I've been running simulations with Everton to test tactics on the new match engine and decided to review Barnes stats on the last 3 simulations.

In all 3 seasons he's been a fringe/squad player, often behind Gordon and Murphy in the pecking order at LW and only scored a total of 10 goals (and only 4 assists) in all competitions over the 3 simulated seasons. I don't think this reflects his real life scoring ability?

Edited October 23, 2023 by george_nufc

On Timber's injury, even when starting a game in the 'Your World' mode, where everything should be as it was on July 3rd, Timber is rightly still at Ajax, but also still has the ACL injury he picked up at the start of the season. Injuries sustained after July 3rd should also not be included in this mode. 

Edited October 23, 2023 by jkadms
incorrect info

Hi,

I started a save with Everton and i had a question.

Shouldn't the club reflect that is on sell? Everton is currently going a takeaover process from the current owner to 777 Sports, maybe is impossible to reflect that specific takeaover, but the club should be on sell, since it had been rumored for a while and it was confirmed by the current takeover process.

United is also going through a similar process even if at the end is only going to be a 25%, but shouldn't also that be reflected?

Thanks

1 hour ago, george_nufc said:

Well I've been running simulations with Everton to test tactics on the new match engine and decided to review Barnes stats on the last 3 simulations.

In all 3 seasons he's been a fringe/squad player, often behind Gordon and Murphy in the pecking order at LW and only scored a total of 10 goals (and only 4 assists) in all competitions over the 3 simulated seasons. I don't think this reflects his real life scoring ability?

Isn't it entirely subjective, as Barnes likely overperformed last season + took a very high volume of shots? We don't really have the evidence to suggest that he will replicate that this season.

If you look at the more advanced numbers, his xGOT was 9.8 last season - so it's possible he benefited from subpar goalkeeping on average.

Also, tactically we don't know how the AI is using him at Newcastle and he's clearly in rotational use. He's getting 40% as his SOT % as well - which would suggest he's still a reasonable finisher.
 

4 minutes ago, cpfcinsights said:

Isn't it entirely subjective, as Barnes likely overperformed last season + took a very high volume of shots? We don't really have the evidence to suggest that he will replicate that this season.

If you look at the more advanced numbers, his xGOT was 9.8 last season - so it's possible he benefited from subpar goalkeeping on average.

Also, tactically we don't know how the AI is using him at Newcastle and he's clearly in rotational use. He's getting 40% as his SOT % as well - which would suggest he's still a reasonable finisher.
 

If you look at my previous post one the first page you can see Barnes is one of the highest scoring wingers in Europe over the past 4 seasons. I would assume he'd continue to produce excellent numbers in Newcastle's team given they are one of the best attacking teams in the league and should create a lot more chances than Leicester.

Smallen has shown he's massively outperformed his xG 3 seasons in a row now, which indicates his shooting is excellent:

I don't want to drag this out too long for the sake of one player, but I think the evidence is clear to suggest his shooting ability is underrated as he doesn't appear to perform anywhere near this ability in-game, based off my simulations. I've probably done 20 or so 23/24 season simulations and don't recall Barnes getting 10+ league goals once whenever I've checked.

17 minutes ago, george_nufc said:

If you look at my previous post one the first page you can see Barnes is one of the highest scoring wingers in Europe over the past 4 seasons. I would assume he'd continue to produce excellent numbers in Newcastle's team given they are one of the best attacking teams in the league and should create a lot more chances than Leicester.

Smallen has shown he's massively outperformed his xG 3 seasons in a row now, which indicates his shooting is excellent:

I don't want to drag this out too long for the sake of one player, but I think the evidence is clear to suggest his shooting ability is underrated as he doesn't appear to perform anywhere near this ability in-game, based off my simulations. I've probably done 20 or so 23/24 season simulations and don't recall Barnes getting 10+ league goals once whenever I've checked.

I'm not sure the table proves all that much - as I don't really care for assists as a stat. But I guess the question is of the 20+ sims, how many is he starting 25+ matches?

Otherwise, it's hard to draw any conclusions from it. Newcastle may have a better team than the Leicester of last season, but that may also mean the goals are distributed across more players.

Not sure where to post this, Joe Edwards is england u20 manager not Ian Foster

Arsenal's sock design is incorrect for the regular and alternate home socks - should be a single side stripe, rather than a single horizontal hoop which I am getting in game

3 hours ago, basqueliverpool said:

Not sure where to post this, Joe Edwards is england u20 manager not Ian Foster

When Foster was moved in the database to Saudi, his national contract was not cleared in the database despite his non-playing history being updated. That was my error, I apologise for it and have fixed it for a future data update now.

In the early access, the Arsenal season ticket includes 26 home games (as in past seasons); however, from this season onwards, ST holders includes 22 games (19 PL, 3 CL group home matches) only. More info here.

15 hours ago, faeriequeene said:

In the early access, the Arsenal season ticket includes 26 home games (as in past seasons); however, from this season onwards, ST holders includes 22 games (19 PL, 3 CL group home matches) only. More info here.

Thanks very much, @faeriequeene - I have made amendments in the database, which will be in evidence in a future update.

18 hours ago, llama3 said:

Arsenal's sock design is incorrect for the regular and alternate home socks - should be a single side stripe, rather than a single horizontal hoop which I am getting in game

Thanks @llama3 - I realise that this is not ideal, but we cannot match exactly the current real life home sock design with the options available to us in the database.

On 23/10/2023 at 12:56, LuisAlvaroR said:

Hi,

I started a save with Everton and i had a question.

Shouldn't the club reflect that is on sell? Everton is currently going a takeaover process from the current owner to 777 Sports, maybe is impossible to reflect that specific takeaover, but the club should be on sell, since it had been rumored for a while and it was confirmed by the current takeover process.

United is also going through a similar process even if at the end is only going to be a 25%, but shouldn't also that be reflected?

Thanks

Thanks @LuisAlvaroR - that's a very fair point; I will look into Everton's settings and make amendments for a future update.

On 23/10/2023 at 12:05, jkadms said:

On Timber's injury, even when starting a game in the 'Your World' mode, where everything should be as it was on July 3rd, Timber is rightly still at Ajax, but also still has the ACL injury he picked up at the start of the season. Injuries sustained after July 3rd should also not be included in this mode. 

Hi @jkadms - thanks for that observation.  It would seem that the way injuries take place in Your World mode is intended behaviour in-game, but your reasoning makes a lot of sense and your suggestion will be considered.

On 22/10/2023 at 16:24, John_Serious said:

Ben Chilwell has extended his contract with Chelsea by two further years until 2027.

https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/article/chilwell-commits-to-chelsea

 

 

 

Thanks very much @John_Serious - apologies, we missed this.  The database has been amended and the rectification will be seen in a future update.

On 22/10/2023 at 15:36, ChrisNUFC said:

Man U

Excellent Training Facilities
Excellent Youth Facilities
Excellent Youth Recruitment

For the last decade fans, players and coaches have bemoaned the lack of investment in these areas. The academy while good in its day, was built 23 years ago, and last expanded 10 years ago. 

Old Trafford is rated at being in Very Good condition, when again supporter groups have been highlighting on much work is need to repair it. The Telegraph in 2023 ran an article about the condition of the stadium, The Guardian in 2019 ran a similar one. 

Man U's Youth Recruitment gets a boost from their reputation and catchment area, over the last few seasons they've lost out to Man City on young talent reguarly. I'm not suggesting these ratings should be awful, but excellent doesn't really reflect reports externally and from Man U's own fanbase. 

Owner's Ambition seems lacking. I'm only expected to compete in the Champions League and qualifiy for the Champions League. Board Culture is lacking any reference of maintaining the club's reputation or increasing it, which given how everyone seems to believe the Glazers are using Man U to increase their own revenue, would seem fitting. 

Develop players from the club's youth system, Work towards developing the best youth facilities in the county and Work towards developing the best youth facilities in the Premier League, are these really what the board of Man U currently see as important? Feels more like a hangover from the 1990s/2000s era. This seems far more fitting and accurate for supporter culture. I wouldn't have it linked to the current Man U board at all. 

Sign high-reputation players is very low on the board cultures list of requirements, when it always appears to be top priority often to the detrement of what the club really needs (Ronaldo, Ibrahimovich, Mason Mount, Casemiro, etc)

Supporter expectations of just qualifying for the Champions League seems very low. 

Supporter influence on the board is rated as 'High', when it would appear The Glazers couldn't care less what Man U fans think considering the last decade and even the last 6 months with the 'sale'. 

Corporate fanbase is 4% feels low

David De Gea appears on favourite staff list, yet nobody battered an eyelid when he was allowed to leave on a free

 

Staff

For nearly 10 years now in Football Manager, Man U have constantly had one of, if not THE best coaching and scouting in the game. Yet, what obscure gems have they unearthed. Which players have they helped develop into world class talents. Taking this with a point of view that 20 is 'Best in the world' and a rating of 16+ in an attribute would make them one of the top non-playing staff in their field. 

Manager - Erik Ten Haag

Motivating and people management seems high, given the issues he's had with a number of players over the last 18 months. His handling of De Gea, Harry Maguire, Ronaldo, Sancho, a few examples. His tactical knowledge seems high too, considering there's no clear identity to this Man U team, and you rarely seems adjustments made to counter a threat or even create a threat during the game. 

DoF - John Murtough

 

Rated as a very good, almost World Class scout. Yet the signings since he was appointed in 2021 haven't really improved Man U or fit into a system of play.

Head of Youth Development - Nick Cox

Rated as nearly one of the best in his field at youth development, has been at Man U since 2016. Since 2016 Man U haven't produced plenty of players who have went on to play in the Premier League and Championship, with a few exceptions such as Marcus Rashford developing into a star. 

GK Coach - Craig Mawson

Been at Man U since 2016 and didn't really improve distribution within the GK, before that worked at Burnley where he worked with Tom Heaton and Nick Pope, and I know first hand that Nick Pope's distribution is average at best. 

Coach - Benni McCarthy

Rated as a very good attacking coach, when Man U's goal tally this season is 2 less than what would be expected based on xG. and last season was 14 behind what would be expected based on xG.

Coach - Eric Ramsey

I'm always wary of any British person having a super high adaptability, even more so for someone who has never left the isles. 16 for set pieces, Man U scored 4 goals from corners last season and so far haven't scored any from a corner this season. Also, Eric's profile has him rated as a really good all round coach, which at 31 years old is very impressive. 

Physios

Man U have 4 members of staff with 16+ (two of which are 20) in physiotherapy, which seems very high and would lead to headhunting. 

Scouting

There's no disputing that Man U have a lot of scouts and their network is far and wide, yet the number of scouts that are rated 16+ in key attributes seems very high. I can't think of many potential players Man U have signed over the last 10 years that have become amazing. Man U have had the best English scouting team for a very long time in FM, which I don't believe to be the case at all. 

18 scouts have 16+ for judging ability, which would make them some of the best at the world at recognising which players could come into the Man U XI, improve it, learn the system and excel (including things such as abilty to learn a new playstyle, formation, their professionalism and character). If you look at Man Us signings over the last decade, I don't believe there to have been more success than failures when it comes to first team signings. 

There are 20 scounts with 16+ rating in judging player potential. Likewise, I can't think of many players Man U have unearthed over the last decade that other clubs weren't aware of. This number seems very high, even more so with the number of coaching and support staff with a 16+ rating too.

 

U21 Staff

 

Similar to the first team, the U21s are rated as one of (if not) best coaching teams in the English game. Their last success in the development league (all arguments aside of its suitabilty) was 2016.

u18s

They won the FA Youth Cup in 2022, but before that their last success was in the competition was 2011. 

Even taking into account the number of players who progressed from academy to first team, this rating seems far too high and would suggest a high success rate for developing 1st team calibre players at Man U (certainly alongside the high ratings for youth facilities and recruitment). 

Working with Youngsters

There is a database wide issue with 20s being placed into Works with Youngsters, just because a coach is a 'Youth Coach', I personally believe this rating should also reflect how a young player matures and develops as a 'person' as well as a footballer. As well as  considering maturation and over training, to reduce the amount of muscle injuries during teen years leading to repeatative injuries in adult life. 

I know far too many rotten youth coaches who cannot develop character or help with teenage issues. Man U have an amazing 32 members of staff with a 16+ rating in this field, some of which are support staff. 

Player morale

At the start of the season the players are generally OK, which doesn't seem right considering they only just managed to finish 4th, are aware of the fan unrest, the potential of a Glazer sale, and various other off field issues. 

In short, it feels as thought Man U are still the juggernaut entity from 2000 and there's not much to reflect the lack of investment, lack of club identity or struggles that former coaches, players and their fanbase have talked about. There's still this ingrained culture thoughtout the club, including the board, around youth development. Yet, Man U are not one of the best in the world, let alone in England, at youth development. I do believe the fans have that culture, but I cannot believe The Glazers share it outside of signing young players to sell on for profit model (if at all). I understand the class of '92 bears a lot of pride for Man U fans, in the same instance it would be good to be aware that it was the class of 1992. 

Since then Man U recognised talent in Guiseppe Rossi (Parma), Paul Pogba (Le Harve), Pique (Barcelona), Andreas Pereira (PSV) and Ronaldo (CP Sporting) and managed to sign them before others. Marcus Rashford is the only real superstar success story Man U's academy has had in the last decade, while producing decent Premier League players such as Tom Cleverley, Kieran Richardson, Darren Fletcher, Michael Keane, Lingard, Scott McTominay.

In absolute Football Manager data terms Man U are still set up for success with their infrastructure and coaching standard, even the blight of The Glazers feels extremely weak and almost none influential. Managing Man U in FM should feel like a challenge of succeeding despite the Glazers and once they leave, rebuilding everything again to try start a new legacy. 

 

Hi @ChrisNUFC - thanks very much for that detailed breakdown of the way that you see United and the way that we represent it in FM.  You have raised lots of really good points and we will look into them.

Kobbe Mainoo at Man United has Determination 3…… clearly wrong and needs to be fixed before full release.

21 minutes ago, Stevmon said:

Kobbe Mainoo at Man United has Determination 3…… clearly wrong and needs to be fixed before full release.

He doesn't have a rating set in the database as it's too early to judge - you've just got unlucky that it's randomly generated as a 3 in your save.

Duplication instalments Odegaard
Please fix it

On 22/10/2023 at 11:37, Sevrillion said:

Romero’s passing seems a bit underrated. A combination of passing 12 and vision 11 seems low, when he’s a very solid passer who is pretty reliable in a system that relies on playing out from the back, as shown by his fbref stats: https://fbref.com/en/players/a3d94a58/scout/365_m1/Cristian-Romero-Scouting-Report

I would also argue Vicario has been better this season than his attributes represent, but I understand he’s only just moved from Italy. But it doesn’t look great when he’s compared with Onana for instance.

Seconding Romero's ball-playing being far too poor in the current DB. I think his aggressiveness out of possession has wrongly coloured people's perception of how good he is on the ball. He's joint 3rd among Prem CBs for progressive passes this year, tied with Dias, trailing only Dunk and Andersen. 4th among CBs in progressive passing distance, trailing only Silva, Dunk and Saliba. Also 5th in the entire prem in progressive carrying distance (dribbling attribute of 9 btw). He semi-regularly breaks out of the defensive line and joins in attacks when one of his carries takes him past the first line of the press too, so it's not like he's just running the ball into empty space.

Even if we take the "Don't think about about the number from 1-20, it's about creating an accurate simulation", this doesn't do that, especially with "Dives into tackles" being his only player trait. It might be that Spurs in my save are 17th, but Romero in my save is currently averaging 2.6 progressive passes per 90, well below his averages from both 21-22 and 22-23, and substantially less than half his average from this year. No real way to track progressive carrying, but no reason to assume that would be in-line with real life either, given 9 dribbling and no PPMs that would increase his carrying volume.

But also, when the discrepancies between game and real world are this wild, it's hard not to think of things with the simple 1-20 in mind: objectively one of the best ball-playing centerbacks on the planet should not have the ball-playing attributes of a League One CB.

7 hours ago, Nick OGS20 said:

He doesn't have a rating set in the database as it's too early to judge - you've just got unlucky that it's randomly generated as a 3 in your save.

Is that normal for young players? Will it be changed for full release or will it be a random low number each save?