How can you tell when a once "hot prospect" has 'peaked'?

[pauliowigs]

A few things first, I do not use any editors or programmes to view players CA or PA - so in that respect I have to use good scouts and coaches when playing the game to aid my judgement.

Ever since Sfraser kindly helped me develop a training schedule for a player of mine, I create my own training schedules for all my young players, and i strive to involve them a suitable amount within the first team squad.

I am Fulham in my current save, and I am now a premiership title contender (in the year 2018!). The past few seasons I have put a massive emphasis into devloping youth players, picking up the hottest prospects and attempting to devlop them.

Some of my players (whom my coaches believe have BAGS more potenital than there current ability) seem to get better and better, rapidly.

However I have experianced something with other young players whereby they suddenly recieve a reduction in attributes across say 4 or 5 stats all at once. Sometimes these are balances out with an increase in 1 stat at the same time, but it normally makes the player "look worse" and often isn't a desirable change. Occasionally some of these stats will climb back up, over time - sometimes even to drop again at a later date (as if those attributes are on the cusp and cannot make there mind up which side to fall).

Most of the time, my best coaches (at judging PA and CA) inform me that players displaying this behaviour can get between half a star and 1 star and a half better.

I realise the star rating is unique to your club and circumstances, but in my case it is often the difference between a leading champ and a good prem player.

To perhaps put it better, the improvement my best coaches (at judging ability and potential) are telling me the players could make is the difference betweeen them being useful or not.

So something occoured to me. Orignally i was just perplexed at why players that were supposed to have a bit more left in them would suddenly lose 4 or 5 attributes at once, then I started to think, can I deduce from this behavoir that these players will never again see widespread improvement, only attribute shifts and perhaps some mental improvents as they age? Are my Coaches egging it on a bit and is it time to move the players that do this along to another club? (assuming i'm not happy with them in there current state).

Any help or ideas would be appreciated .

[Sergey S.]

No, the prospects will not "peak" until they reach their number of stars (unless the potential is estimated wrong by the coaches to start with) or they get too old(as in 31+). Assuming you're still playing them regularly and their Professionalism/Work Rate/Ambition aren't too low their CA should continue to improve at about a constant rate.

Mass reduction of attributes could be a sign that the player's "wrong footedness" increased (which costs massive amounts of CA that has to come from somewhere), or perhaps a sign that his Physical Attributes are increased at the cost of Technical attributes (Some physical attributes cost like 4 times as much as some Technical attributes). Last possiblity, barring long term injury since I assume you've considered and dismissed that, is that the player is learning a new position and that caused the weighting of his attributes to change, hence the readjustment of the visible attributes. In any case, you're right that its attribute shuffling, but that doesn't mean that the attribute improvement has stopped.

[SFraser]

I would Sergey S is giving you good information here, but there are a couple of points I would like to add.

First, scout reports are always dependant upon scout quality and while it is logical to assume that JPP/JPA are the most important attributes, if other attributes are involved in accurate reports then it will be difficult to get "the perfect judgement".

Second, and this is the key point, is that "mid season attribute drop" or "erratic attribute movement" are extremely common occurances on players that are within 1-5 points of their PA. What is happening is that the player is "hitting his peak" for only a couple of months of the season, when particularly good performances are combined to particularly high Reputation competitions/opponents. The absolute peak for any player can only be achieved in these circumstances, and so when these circumstances change the player will drop a few CA points.

Your player will always be close to his peak for many seasons to come before age kicks in, but reaching his absolute maximum peak will only occur for a few months each season if you are both good and lucky.

What you are seeing in your players is an example of them losing that slight "maximum" edge that they only achieve occassionally each season under ideal circumstances.

When you see this happen two things should stick in your mind. First that your player is very near his maximum and he will not ever improve much beyond this, and Second that your player is near his peak and you should be looking for ways to try and keep him at this peak as long as possible, because it will not last continuously and it will only occur at "crunch time" in a season with high performances.

Each season then is basically a race to get players up to this maximum peak after the Off-Season, and then the attempt to keep your players at this peak as long as possible to get the most out of them. Bad form, being knocked out of Europe or whatever is similar for your level, injuries, off-season etc. will all disrupt this "absolute peak" and knock your player down a few CA points from his maximum.

If you get to this stage in your own save, you are doing player development and squad management to a very high level. Now comes the actual gameplay of producing, maximising and maintaining a players "true" peak as best you can every season.

[Sergey S.]

First, scout reports are always dependant upon scout quality and while it is logical to assume that JPP/JPA are the most important attributes, if other attributes are involved in accurate reports then it will be difficult to get "the perfect judgement".

Second, and this is the key point, is that "mid season attribute drop" or "erratic attribute movement" are extremely common occurances on players that are within 1-5 points of their PA. What is happening is that the player is "hitting his peak" for only a couple of months of the season, when particularly good performances are combined to particularly high Reputation competitions/opponents. The absolute peak for any player can only be achieved in these circumstances, and so when these circumstances change the player will drop a few CA points.

I don't think this could be his problem since his scouts/coaches are saying those players still have 1/1.5 stars to go to reach their potential. To be that far off, those scouts/coaches would have to be pretty damn poor at estimating CA/PA. I guess it depends on league's level, but I would estimate 1.5 stars to be about 25-30 CA points, plenty far from their max.

[SFraser]

I don't think this could be his problem since his scouts/coaches are saying those players still have 1/1.5 stars to go to reach their potential. To be that far off, those scouts/coaches would have to be pretty damn poor at estimating CA/PA. I guess it depends on league's level, but I would estimate 1.5 stars to be about 25-30 CA points, plenty far from their max.

Stars are a terrible guide to anything and I don't use them, but if you go down that route just remember that scouts are far from perfect, to say the least.

I wont be judging my youth development policy and understanding of players on the star rating from some AI character. Not in a million years. Useful? Sure. Accurate? Forget it.

[pauliowigs]

Ok, first off thank you for your inputs. I hadn't given any consideration to the idea of wrong footedness adressing itself. Nor had I realised this phenomenom was normal with players close to there potential and that you should attempt to get them in the higher state for as long as possible and that this could go on year after year. Its all insightfull.

Obviously its difficult for you to speculate over my team due to not knowing any details, so I went and had a little look on my save game. Unfortuantly atthis current time there were not too many radical examples to show, but I did find a couple.

The examples i have here are with players dropping 3 or 4 stats, but I have experianced this where players can drop in 6 or seven stats, which can be heart breaking when you check to see what progress your prospect has made within the month!

I'd be very grateful if you could have a look at the information provided and let me know what you think is happening (wheter its being close to CA an thus jumping about to redistribute or something else).

Obviously I am leaving myself open for criticism across the board here as I will also show my training schedule for the player in question.

For the main example I will show you as much information as I can to do with a now 20 year old centreback whom I signed when 18 and has showed very little positive development.

Here you can see his profile and his recent changes. A drop in free-kick taking is not too suprising given it is not anything that he will focus on in training. However a drop in concentration and off the ball is a bit stranger as the training schedule that he is on (and has been on since he joint my club) is quite intensive in terms of tactics and defending.

So as you can see above from the training schedule, what I am seeing in this batch of changes does not really correlate with what I would expect or have hoped to see. The player has not had any significant injury. I am drawn to the conclusion that perhaps it was an off-month or something..... but looking at some of his patterns in stat changes I can see this isn't the case....

The player hasn't improved of note. His schedule throughout this period has remained the same as the one you have seen and yet his "tactical stats" do not seem to show improvement. In both Decisions and Off the Ball he is showing this "on the cusp" behaviour I spoke of, but in the other areas he is flatlined.

Well that being the case I am led to believe he is not a prospect at all and is effectively a mistake that was made by my good scouts who reccomended him (a 4.9 million pound one at that!). He was 18 then, so perhaps my coaches will now 'fess up and tell me he doesn't have too much more potential.

This coach is suggesting he has a whole star better to get. The difference is, in his reckoning, between a good Championship player and a Good Prem Player. Well a good prem player would be very useable for me but this report goes against the grain of all the evidence thus far.

As we can see Ricky Spragia is no mug, he has decent stats all round and relatively good judging stats. And what he is saying is something that is more or less concurred with by an overwhelming majority of all of my 17 coaches (who, admitedly all have varying ability).

I understand that the coach reports and the star system are not the most reliable things, but as a player of the game they are the only interaction that you as a player are allowed in conjuction with CA/PA. i effectively have about 15 out of 17 staff members telling me this chap should improve a considerable amount and about 18 months of no progress at all from the player. If the information being fed to me by good staff members was only ever out by "half a star" (which is a different amount of CA depending on club to club) then i would perhaps find it easier to buy, but if Spragia and co are just plain wrong and this player has not got much left in him then that seems like quite a gross miscalculation.

One more quick example to follow....

[pauliowigs]

This is again, just to demonstrate the "on the cusp" scenario of attributes that I am getting from certain young players.

This chap is a central midfielder, and to be fair he is 21 now and has improved during his earlier years at the club. Now he seems to have reached his "peak". The coach report is from a coach with 15 judging ability and 16 judging potential. He is still implying theres a bit more to get out of the player, but once again the evidence suggests otherwise. He is on quite a tactically intensive schedule, but it is not just these atrributes he displays this "on the cusp" behavoiur with.

When i say "has he reached his peak" I don't mean are they at the exact CA that they can be, or has the CA met the PA. Thats a bit too precise for me as I have no involvement with the players out side of the game world. I can't check there PA and CA. All I mean is am I unlikely to see attribute jumps and significant improvements in key areas outside of the ones that constantly jump up and down?. If i am not happy with the player now, as they are, attribute wise, should I abonden them as the improvements from here onwards are likely to be minimal? Or will they achieve a suden spurt and get over this constant up and downness.

[crouchaldinho]

That player is 20 years old. He has the potential to keep on improving until around the age of 24 years old. Even after that, he may still improve, but it would only be very small increments after that. Other things that will improve include some of his hidden mental stats as his age increases. A player is generally said to reach his peak at around 28 years old.

I'd anticipate a decent increase in attributes over the next couple of seasons. The most important thing is to give him games. Match experience is the best way to develop a player.

[crouchaldinho]

What is the player's personality? That could be another important factor.

You want high ambition and professionalism to help a player to reach his potential. A negative personality trait may hold a player back.

[crouchaldinho]

Mass reduction of attributes could be a sign that the player's "wrong footedness" increased

Does footedness change in a player? :confused:

I've never noticed this before.

[Sergey S.]

Does footedness change in a player? :confused:

I've never noticed this before.

It's hard to keep track of that especially considering the ranks visible in game have 5 subranks when viewed in Genie Scout or some other 3rd party tool. But I've seen plenty of posts that claim that wrong footedness increases when training a winger to play on the other wing, same with Fullbacks.

I would suspect that it can increase normally too, but I haven't tried to reproduce that behaviour.

[DocSander]

What is the player's personality? That could be another important factor.

You want high ambition and professionalism to help a player to reach his potential. A negative personality trait may hold a player back.

I think this is an essential piece of information missing so far...

While your information on the two young Fulham chaps has been quite extensive, their personalities are unknown to us so far.

Since indeed professionalism, ambition and determination are essential for players to reach their PA, and tutoring is (besides match experience) the only way to get these attributes up, tutoring is an essential element of youth development!