Attributes and scout reports

[saab600]

Hi all

I have searched the forum to see if this query has been addressed previously but could not find an answer so thought I'd start a new thread.

There seem to be two schools of thought amongst FM players when it comes to signing players:

1) Pick the the duty and the role; write down which attributes you need; find players with highest numbers in those attributes. Buy.

2) Send scouts out/scout players found in 'player search' screen; sign players with high * ratings of CA and/or PA.

I have struggled with FM this year and I do wonder if it is my understanding of these approaches that is hindering me.

How do most people operate? If you found a striker with high (relatively speaking for the division you are in) stats for each of the relevant attributes, would you sign him?

I've seen that this is how heath adopted the game in FM11 and am interested to see where everyone else stands.

I've not included a poll but may do so depending on how the discussion goes.

Thanks

Seb

[Ukchris]

Attributes & Personality > Rating for me and as you say, all about the role they'll play in your system.

As an example, I love having a DLP in my tactics, someone who can sit deeper to collect the ball and distribute it with quality passing but also have the defensive edge to cover while a more offensive midfielder roams into space ahead. Such a role needs quite a large spread of attributes so I won't mention them all but just for the sake of the example I'd want Creativity, Passing and Decisions (amongst others) to all be good. If there are two players available:

A) 4.5 star current ability rating, 8 Creativity, 11 Decisions.

B) 4 star current rating, 16 Creativity, 15 Decisions.

All else being similar I'll sign the lower rated player B with the attributes I want.

Similarly if there's a 4.5 star rated central defender with 11 Positioning I won't want him, and would rather have a 3.5 defender with good attribute spread.

Of course every case is different and there are many things to take into account: personality is one thing that doesn't factor into their rating at all but I won't go near a player with poor personality regardless of his attributes. Second foot strength can change star ratings quite a bit as it's weighted fairly high so you can have players with matching attributes but Very Strong/Strong feet vs Very Strong/Very Weak feet being rated quite differently. Depending on the position and role they need to play you may or may not need them to use both feet.

There's a lot to consider in assessing a player but at the root of things I definitely go for Attributes over Rating. Buying players based on ratings will give you good individuals but not a team. Knowing your system and obtaining players to fit roles within that system will yield the better team, even if ratings are shown as being lower.

The only thing I use the star ratings for is judging development progress. The potential rating gives a nice indication of how much room a player has to grow while the current rating shows roughly how close to the 'cap' the player is, where you can then only redistribute attributes rather than gaining extra.

[saab600]

Great response mate, really detailed and considered.

Do you play with attribute masking? I suppose the risk is that there are very free players who you can see every attribute for. Do you tend to scout a number of players to get all their attributes and then pick the one that has the best attributes overall?

[Ukchris]

I like to see attributes so I leave them available, though of course only players your club/scouts know well will have all visible and less known players will need scouting to reveal them. My search process is different for senior players and youngsters.

To start with I have a wide scouting network with 25 scouts currently. I try to get plenty of different nationalities and full country knowledge both to speed up specific nation searches and enhance the number of players with full attributes showing in filtered searches. Most scouts are then set to regional or country-specific assignments for most of the coming season to focus on searching for youths up to 17 years old.

Youth Searches

As said, most of my scouts look for players up to 17 (max age of 17 being the only restriction in their assignments) so I always have a good database of youngsters with full attributes and ratings revealed. When I know I'll be wanting a new youth to develop for a position I'll go to player search and set the filter to max age of 17 with 'Can Play' set to the position I'm looking for. There are a few key things in this search though, as I have a custom search results screen adding the following to the display:

Potential Ability, Current Ability, Personality, Media-handling, Specific Strength, Specific Weakness.

I'll start by sorting by potential but will pay plenty of attention to personality. At this stage I'm not even looking at attributes. Those with high potential and a good personality/media type get looked at first, checking key un-trainable attributes. To explain this step, if I want a young playmaker for midfield ideally I want him to start with decent creativity as while you can give them role training to include it there are usually half a dozen or more attributes within that role and creativity gets less focus. A midfielder starting with 2 creativity isn't likely to get too high in it, the same with a defender starting at 4 bravery. It's a core weakness you can't easily fix. In contrast, I'm not at all worried about Strength as you can give it single focus - I've had players starting at 2-5 strength ending up at 14+ due to focused training.

Anyhow, I target high potential youths with decent core attributes for the role you want that can't be given specific training. Preferably I'll get players already having good personalities but if the good personality youths have weak 'core untrainables' I'll move on to looking at those with weaker personalities and look to tutor them to fix that.

Senior Searches

If I really need a new player for the first team right away it's different as they need to have the attributes in place already. Here I'll simply search for core attributes, at a level I'd feel comfortable with. For the Premiership I really want these cores at 16+ but you have to be careful not to be too demanding as setting min 16 for 7 different things would miss great players that might have 17 somewhere. It's different for every role but let's say I wanted a new winger able to go straight into a starting role, I'd likely search for the following:

Acceleration, Pace, Agility, Dribbling all 15+ as primary attributes for how I want them to play.

Crossing, Passing, Creativity, Technique, Decisions to 12+ as secondary attributes.

Now as said ddeally they'll be 16+ in most of those but it allows for someome being slightly lower in one area. I'll then look through the search results, usually with 'Unrealistic Transfers' not shown as I'm not going to be signing Messi at this stage and don't need to see players who I can't buy anyway.

If no one on the initial result list looks to fit what I need I'll start lowering attribute demands by 1 here and there to see if someone else shows with one area being 14 etc. After checking realistic targets I then might also untick unrealistic restrictions and see if some higher rated players might be interested.

If I can't find someone even with lowering expectations it means one of two things, or a combination of both:

1. My scouting network is too youth-focused and I need to do a quick round of sending some scouts to update senior knowledge.

2. My club reputation/status is too low to attract players of the quality I want to I need to either lower my standards or train up a youth until I can bring better players in. This is partiularly the case if you suddenly find a whole bunch of players meeting your requirments when unrealistic transfers aren't filtered out.

If I'm really struggling to find a new player I'll reduce the number of attributes I look for, as you might have partially unmasked players - someone who has 16 pace but you don't know their agility, for instance. If I search for 1 key thing at a time and find half hidden players I'll scout them directly to reveal the rest and see if they fit.

Scouting on specific players is also done before signing even if all attributes are known, as a scout report is needed to confirm their personality, see if they're injury-prone or have a weakness for important matches etc.

Short answer: Yes, I search a wide number of players and pick the one that fits best overall.