[FM20] Irchester Utd. Tier 10. England. Home. Youth Only.

[sc91]

One of the best reads in years this has been @Jimbokav1971. Solid work, look forward to next year.

[Jimbokav1971]

46 minutes ago, OlivierL said:

I would love to see u start with R&D , i loved them on the CM games  

Managing Kane would be a big challenge. He couldn't make the difference against my home team Royal Antwerp FC in the Europa league, last thursday  

Spurs were awful against Anderlecht. Such a Jekyl and Hyde side at the moment. 

I have FM20 loaded at the moment. (Was just having a look at South America). I might start a Spurs save and see how I get on with just 1 season so I know how bad Kane was in FM20. At the moment I only have the opnions of others to go on. 

[Jimbokav1971]

26 minutes ago, sc91 said:

One of the best reads in years this has been @Jimbokav1971. Solid work, look forward to next year.

Thanks very much. Really appreciate it. I really enjoyed it too. I wonder how far I would have got had I started this at the beginning and not spent ages winning a European trophy in Wales. 

I think that's why it's important to get the main save right for FM21. 

[OlivierL]

19 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Spurs were awful against Anderlecht. Such a Jekyl and Hyde side at the moment. 

I have FM20 loaded at the moment. (Was just having a look at South America). I might start a Spurs save and see how I get on with just 1 season so I know how bad Kane was in FM20. At the moment I only have the opnions of others to go on. 

Anderlecht ???  Royal Antwerp Football Club  four years ago in second division. now Europa League  

Antwerp are in good form and i'm sure that they underestimated them.

[OlivierL]

[Jimbokav1971]

1 minute ago, OlivierL said:

Anderlecht ???  Royal Antwerp Football Club  four years ago in second division. now Europa League  

Antwerp are in good form and i'm sure that they underestimated them.

Apologies. I've watched so much football recently it's easy to confuse them. Yes, of course it was Antwerp, (Belgian), rather then Anderlecht (Dutch). It's were Alderweireld is from I think.

[OlivierL]

Just now, Jimbokav1971 said:

Apologies. I've watched so much football recently it's easy to confuse them. Yes, of course it was Antwerp, (Belgian), rather then Anderlecht (Dutch). It's were Alderweireld is from I think.

Anderlecht is also from Belgian  Alderweireld is born in Antwerp, but he was formed by our rivals (Germinal) Beerschot. He it thinking about returning to Antwerp or Beerschot in a few years. He has a tattoo from our most important cathedral on his chest (or arm). 

[Jimbokav1971]

Apologies. Of course they are. 

[Jimbokav1971]

So Barnet FC were one of the favourites for my FM21 save so I had a little dabble with them on FM20 to see what was what. I think it's fair to say it went ok. 

Conference. 

FA Cup. 

FA Trophy. 

Squad by appearances. 

The Youth intake was decent if unspectacular, but this was just a 1 season dalliance so no point in showing you anything. In my opinion the Barnet squad is significantly weaker this season in real life than last season and I obviously expect that to be replicated in game so FM21 should be harder. 

[Jimbokav1971]

Next up is Spurs and their squad is simply appalling. 

My starting strikers for the 1st Premier League game are...... Rodel Richards (an 18 year old) and Kion Etete, (a 17 year old). 

I was only able to register 20 players for the Premier League, (everyone else was too young), and that was even after the club signed Ricardo Pereira from Leicester for £34.5M. I have delegated almost everything, but I have kept the final decision on all transfer dealings, (in and out), although delegated the actual finding and signing of players. 

[Jimbokav1971]

Spurs short-term save. 

I can see what everyone means about Kane being absolutely gash in FM20. He's currently being outscored by Hugo Lloris. 

I started with 442 and we stumbled through the start of the season but despite losing 4 games, we've lost them each by a single goal. We're not awful, but things just aren't firing up front. I tried 2 up front and then 1 in behind in various forms and nothing seemed to work. For the Genk game I played 1 up top 3 across the middle for the 1st time and pushed both wide players on. We battered them and smashed in 7 goals, but you might notice that Kane didn't score again. 

We won 7-0, neither wingers were inverted and Kane still only has 1 shot.  

When I look at his form so far he's actually having shots and shots on target. He's just not scoring them. 

The Harry Kane I know should be absolutely filling his boots with this many chances. 

I actually haven't looked at Kane yet. I wonder what he looks like in game. 

Now it makes a bit more sense. His physicals are really low in comparison to real life. I'm personally of the opinion that Balance is a key attribute for attacking players but that's not the only area where he looks under-cooked here. I also look at the PPM here and wonder if that's really what he is best known for? I'm a BIG fan of Kane and I would have had other PPM's there 1st. 

Shoots from distance. 
Plays One-Twos.
You can't have "shoots with power" and "places shots" at the same time I don't think, but if I had to pick just 1 for him then it would be "places shots, (with power)". 
Tries killer balls is something that has probably become more obvious this season, (so no dig at the researcher there). 

His "come deep to get ball" is certainly more pronounced this season than last.... actually that's not quite right. Him dropping deep is producing more results this season, but actually it's something he has always done. 

There is no way I would ever use the Editor to "correct" a player, but I'm honestly surprised that the Spurs researcher has reported on him so poorly, especially physically. I rarely if ever manage at this level so I have never seen anyone re-created so incorrectly. 

[Jimbokav1971]

Spurs short-term save continued. 

FM is strange. In many ways it's so realistic but it has got Kane and Spurs so wrong in FM20. We are winning games, (9 games and 2 draws sandwiched in between defeats to Liverpool and City), but in those games Kane has scored just 1 goal. You have to remember that this is the Spurs of last season by the way rather than the Spurs of this season, (which has significantly more depth across the board). This squad is properly awful and Jose's issues with injuries as described in the Amazon Documentary make all the more sense now. 

I've been playing the lone striker/Kane/whoever in a False 9 role and while it seems to be working ok in terms if the overall team performances and results, it's not working at all for him in terms of individual performances and I need to change that. 

I've tried him as AF(a), but I think that was in a 2 up front. I'm not sure I have played him on his own as an AF(s). Actually I've just checked and he did play as a lone striker in an AF(a) role, but it was in a 4141 formation and in the above games we went to 3 across the middle and our wingers pushed up. So what I'm going to do is revert the striker role back to AF(a) and see how that goes. 

I was prepared for Kane to not be as good in this save as he is in real life but I wasn't at all prepared for him being this bad. He's absolutely rubbish and I really do find it laughable that a researcher at a club like Spurs can get such a high profile player such as Kane so wrong. 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Jimbokav1971]

Spurs short-term save continued. 

Harry Kane has seen a dramatic upturn in form that has seen him score 9 goals in 11(1) appearances. He's still not a threat like his real-life self, but if I had managed to get him scoring like this at the start of the season then God only knows where we might be now. He's scoring at a rate of almost a goal a game now, (Lloris has been taking penalties and has scored 3 of 7), so it's possible that Kane would have scored 7 more goals than he actually has. 

Kane's improvement in form has also meant an improvement in our form. 

The staff at the club have made a few transfers, but nothing Earth-shattering or ground-breaking. 

Transfers in. 

Pereira came in at the beginning of the season and meant that I didn't have to play Aurier the whole time. 
Doku came in and then went out on loan the same day.
Morelos is a striker that I'm not really keen on at all, but the window was closing and I was desperate for a striker and this was the only striker they had lined up.
Lopez looks like he could offer some back-up in the DLP role that I like. 

Transfers out. 

[-Jef-]

Kane is not really AF. I see him more of as a Complete Forward and in support role with Bale(Lucas) and Son on the other side making runs behind him as inside forwards.

[Bot Makel]

I think Kane is a good DLF on support duty, he goes deep, holds the ball and plays through balls for those who get in.

Dribbling is not his best attribute, so I would avoid false 9 or complete forward.

[Jimbokav1971]

4 hours ago, rosque said:

Kane is not really AF. I see him more of as a Complete Forward and in support role with Bale(Lucas) and Son on the other side making runs behind him as inside forwards.

 

3 hours ago, Bot Makel said:

I think Kane is a good DLF on support duty, he goes deep, holds the ball and plays through balls for those who get in.

Dribbling is not his best attribute, so I would avoid false 9 or complete forward.

I'm sure you are both 100% completely correct, but I'm in the camp whereby I believe in playing players within a tactical framework that works rather than letting the players play in roles/positions that best suit them as individuals, (although I appreciate that the optimum level is probably somewhere between the 2). 

For the 2nd half of the season I have had a system that seems to work ok, and I wonder where we might have been over the course of the whole season had I played this way from the start.

My usual style is to look for small but gradual progress in a save and not really wonder too much about not winning this title or gaining that promotion as long as the general trend is on an upwards curve. 

This save is is a little different though in that the attraction is that the squad is so rubbish and that Kane doesn't seem to be anywhere near the goal-scoring God that he is in real life. Many others have said that he is rubbish in FM20 and it's pretty hard to get him scoring at a reasonable rate, but already in this save I have managed to get him scoring at a rate of almost a goal a game, (since the change in tactic). 

The easiest thing to do would be just to sign better players and almost bully the game into better results, because that's what I usually do right? but this save is attractive because it's hard. I think what I'm going to do when I get to the end of the season is post the results and then go back and start again, this time with the tactic that I have developed being used right from the start. Next time I will put Kane on penalties & free-kicks, (Lloris is rubbish but this save is really all about Kane), and see how many goals he can score. With 2 games remaining he has already scored 20 goals this season and Lloris has taken 8 penalties and scored 1 direct free-kick so he could easily be on 29 goals even without any improvement. I think it's a reasonable expectation that he can score 11 more goals than he did this season. Even if he doesn't score in the last 2 games of the season that brings him to 40 goals which would seem to be more than I have seen others be able to score with him in the 1st season. 

[-Jef-]

I see your point but almost every player will underperform if he is put into wrong role. Even though he did score 20 for you already.

[Jimbokav1971]

Short-terms Spurs save continued. 

Kane form. There is 1 game missing at the start of this "form". A 1-0 win in the Champions League against Celtic that we won 1-0 but Kane didn't score. 

Kane season stats. 

Schedule. 

Final League Table. I think it's fair to say that without the bad start to the season we would have finished higher. We should have finished above Chelsea anyway, but 7 pts to Arsenal is probably too big a gap to over-come and we didn't really deserve to finish in the top 4. 

Champions League. It would have been great to win the Champions League, but the truth is that the squad was shattered and on it's last legs. It's a miracle we got anywhere near the Final. Especially when you factor in that Kane scored 1 goal against Zenit in the 2nd game in this competition and never scored another. 

FA Cup. 

League Cup. 

Kane finished 9 goals behind Aguero and he also scored 4 goals less in other competitions. Kane was a million miles short of Aguero this season.  But then again, look at who Aguero is playing with in comparison to who Kane is playing with. It's not really a fair comparison. 

[Jimbokav1971]

29 minutes ago, rosque said:

I see your point but almost every player will underperform if he is put into wrong role. Even though he did score 20 for you already.

I totally agree with you. That's what I mean. It's a balancing act between playing a player in a role that suits the player as opposed to playing him in a role that most benefits the team. 

[Bot Makel]

55 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

 

I'm sure you are both 100% completely correct, but I'm in the camp whereby I believe in playing players within a tactical framework that works rather than letting the players play in roles/positions that best suit them as individuals, (although I appreciate that the optimum level is probably somewhere between the 2). 

For the 2nd half of the season I have had a system that seems to work ok, and I wonder where we might have been over the course of the whole season had I played this way from the start.

My usual style is to look for small but gradual progress in a save and not really wonder too much about not winning this title or gaining that promotion as long as the general trend is on an upwards curve. 

This save is is a little different though in that the attraction is that the squad is so rubbish and that Kane doesn't seem to be anywhere near the goal-scoring God that he is in real life. Many others have said that he is rubbish in FM20 and it's pretty hard to get him scoring at a reasonable rate, but already in this save I have managed to get him scoring at a rate of almost a goal a game, (since the change in tactic). 

The easiest thing to do would be just to sign better players and almost bully the game into better results, because that's what I usually do right? but this save is attractive because it's hard. I think what I'm going to do when I get to the end of the season is post the results and then go back and start again, this time with the tactic that I have developed being used right from the start. Next time I will put Kane on penalties & free-kicks, (Lloris is rubbish but this save is really all about Kane), and see how many goals he can score. With 2 games remaining he has already scored 20 goals this season and Lloris has taken 8 penalties and scored 1 direct free-kick so he could easily be on 29 goals even without any improvement. I think it's a reasonable expectation that he can score 11 more goals than he did this season. Even if he doesn't score in the last 2 games of the season that brings him to 40 goals which would seem to be more than I have seen others be able to score with him in the 1st season. 

 

I think you did a very good job, finding the square with the available team is one of the goals in FM.

We can talk about the difficulty of lone strikers in FM20 especially against teams playing in defense. Tottenham will often find themselves in this situation which is why I believe that Kane often does not perform as he should.

If I just wanted to make Kane make it I would most likely play with a 2-forward formation making him the main goal scorer.

[Jimbokav1971]

Kane playthrough #2. 

Despite what @rosquehas said recently in the thread, (he's right by the way), I'm going to persist with Kane playing in the AF(a) role. I'm quite enjoying this little sabbatical with Spurs and depending on how this season goes, (I'm playing the 2019/20 season again rather than moving on to the 2020/21 season), I might give it another go again with a different role. 

He's going to be taking free-kicks and penalties and I need to work on Kane's positioning at set-pieces. I just think it's interesting to see how many goals I can get him to score when everyone else seems to struggle. 

Again, I will be delegating absolutely everything to staff, but will retain the right to confirm all transfers. 

[-Jef-]

I should also mention that one can make a player work in a lot of 'weird' roles for that particular player, such as AF is for Kane, IMO. Kind of interested to see what I can get out of Kane while adjusting for him as center piece and not put him into a pre-defined role as you are doing.

 

Just to be clear, am not saying that @Jimbokav1971's approach is wrong. I just have a different philosophy regarding tactics and I basically change tactics every 6 months when new players arrive or when someone different can get into first 11. But as we have seen in this thread, Jimbo has seen massive success while not changing tactics almost at all, except for maybe that wide target man issue And that's the beauty of this game - there is no set way of playing the game.

Edited November 4, 2020 by rosque

[Jimbokav1971]

3 minutes ago, Bot Makel said:

 

I think you did a very good job, finding the square with the available team is one of the goals in FM.

We can talk about the difficulty of lone strikers in FM20 especially against teams playing in defense. Tottenham will often find themselves in this situation which is why I believe that Kane often does not perform as he should.

If I just wanted to make Kane make it I would most likely play with a 2-forward formation making him the main goal scorer.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you. 

But just as I don't like "inverted" players because they are over-powered and not as aesthetically pleasing to me as "normal" wide players I have to accept that there are limitations within this squad and it makes sense for me to convert both wide roles to IW(a) from W(s). I don't really want to do that yet though. 

The problem with this tactic is that I don't want to change too much too soon and not know how many goals Kane might have scored with the 3 in the middle and 2x W(s) out wide. I think I will stick with what I have and then if I am still interested after the 2nd play-through is finished give the "inverted" tactic a go. 

After that I might look at 2 up front, but I'm pretty sure that this Spurs squad isn't good enough to play 442 the way I do. If I play Son up front then who plays wide on the left? Also, Ndmobele seems to work brilliantly as a DLP, but when he's not there we struggle to have someone else be creative. (Lo Celso was injured for most of last season). 

The other thing to consider is that Kane just can't play every game, (and neither can Son), so if I play 2 up front then who are the other players that come in and play there? You might say that Dele or Moura can come in and do a job, but if they play up front then who plays out wide? The fact is that this squad has serious limitations in attacking areas. 

There is no Doherty & Reguilon at full back. Rose and Walker-Peters are both out on loan and can't be re-called. 

There is no Bale or Vinicius and Troy Parrott is also out on loan and can't be re-called & that's a real struggle. 

[Jimbokav1971]

Injuries. 

When you start the 2019/20 season Spurs have a few significant injuries. 

[Edit]

The squad is so limited at the start of the save that the Senior squad is is fleshed out by 3 grey players. I usually only see GK's like this. 

This is a perfect example of where our lack of depth is. 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Bot Makel]

9 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you. 

But just as I don't like "inverted" players because they are over-powered and not as aesthetically pleasing to me as "normal" wide players I have to accept that there are limitations within this squad and it makes sense for me to convert both wide roles to IW(a) from W(s). I don't really want to do that yet though. 

The problem with this tactic is that I don't want to change too much too soon and not know how many goals Kane might have scored with the 3 in the middle and 2x W(s) out wide. I think I will stick with what I have and then if I am still interested after the 2nd play-through is finished give the "inverted" tactic a go. 

After that I might look at 2 up front, but I'm pretty sure that this Spurs squad isn't good enough to play 442 the way I do. If I play Son up front then who plays wide on the left? Also, Ndmobele seems to work brilliantly as a DLP, but when he's not there we struggle to have someone else be creative. (Lo Celso was injured for most of last season). 

The other thing to consider is that Kane just can't play every game, (and neither can Son), so if I play 2 up front then who are the other players that come in and play there? You might say that Dele or Moura can come in and do a job, but if they play up front then who plays out wide? The fact is that this squad has serious limitations in attacking areas. 

There is no Doherty & Reguilon at full back. Rose and Walker-Peters are both out on loan and can't be re-called. 

There is no Bale or Vinicius and Troy Parrott is also out on loan and can't be re-called & that's a real struggle. 

I did not know the composition of the squad, it was a simple general idea that unfortunately cannot be taken into consideration.

Seeing your tactic (personally I tend to always have few active instructions but I don't want to talk about this as it has nothing to do with it) I think it is well structured. The two wings should take the ball deep and cross as soon as possible for Kane. The inverted wings would eventually clog the center of the field. In the sense, if I think of Kane AF I want it to be thrown by my midfielders and therefore they have the space and time to throw the ball into space.

[Jimbokav1971]

31 minutes ago, rosque said:

I should also mention that one can make a player work in a lot of 'weird' roles for that particular player, such as AF is for Kane, IMO. Kind of interested to see what I can get out of Kane while adjusting for him as center piece and not put him into a pre-defined role as you are doing.

 

Just to be clear, am not saying that @Jimbokav1971's approach is wrong. I just have a different philosophy regarding tactics and I basically change tactics every 6 months when new players arrive or when someone different can get into first 11. But as we have seen in this thread, Jimbo has seen massive success while not changing tactics almost at all, except for maybe that wide target man issue And that's the beauty of this game - there is no set way of playing the game.

I think a lot of my "tactical tinkering" has been via the use of PPM's and I haven't even looked at that at Spurs and will probably to continue to ignore it. I don't want to look at "development". This isn't a proper save. 

I mentioned Kane's PPM's, (or lack thereof), at the start of the 1st walk-through. I think that might be the biggest barrier to him in the AF(a) role because at the moment I can't force him to do what I want and instead have to rely on him playing making the decisions I want him to make. I really do rely heavily on PPM's in my usual saves. 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Jimbokav1971]

Kane playthrough #2. Transfers. 

The board have signed Ricardo Pereira again and I'm happy with that. It was the only signing we made in the 1st window on playthrough #1. 

We have just agreed terms with Marcelo Brozovic though and I'm not sure whether to confirm the deal or not. We needed him on playthrough #1 because Lo Celso was injured for most of the season, but I'm not sure we need him now and I'm hoping that if we don't sign him then the club will bring in another striker.

I have managed to stop Troy Parrott from going out on loan though so I that's like another signing in itself, (although of course he is already injured).

The club are also in for Federico Bernardeschi, but of course we can't afford to sign both him and Brozovic. I REALLY like the look of Brozovic, but Benardeschi is probably going to be of more use to the squad because it will allow the likes of Son, Moura or Bergwijn to play up front. I think I'm leaning towards Brozovic because we already have Parrott staying who we didn't have last season. 

I've decided on Brozovic, and that just leaves us £9M in the transfer kitty. Maybe because Levy is spending the money himself he will allow himself to spend over budget and also bring in Bernardeschi? 

[Edit]

We have £248M in the bank so let's see if we can get this Bernardeschi deal over the line. 

Well that was easy. 

[Edit2]

We have 27 players in the Senior squad and nobody really in the other squads capable of stepping up. 

12 of the 27 players are currently injured leaving us with 15 to choose from as we start our campaign. 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[-Jef-]

I tried him as CF-S and while he did have 7.2 av rating he did not contribute much with 7 goals and 3 ast in 20 games I insta-resulted. Other players were a lot more productive than would have anticipated, Moura had 10 goals, Bergwijn and Son had 7 each.

[Jimbokav1971]

If you haven't seen it, the Awards voting thread is up now. 

I'm not fishing for votes even a little bit, but I would urge you to vote in as many categories as you can. If you really can't think of a person/thread to nominate then just leave that one out and vote for the one's you know. Even if you just vote for 1 thread/poster, that's completely fine. 

It doesn't matter who/what you vote for or how many categories you vote in. All that matters is that you cast at least 1 vote. please. 

[Jimbokav1971]

Kane playthrough #2 Summary. 

Premier League. We had an awful start to the season and I considered pulling the plug early, especially when it took Kane 9 games to score his 1st goal. Finishing 3rd is probably the limit that I could achieve with this squad, but I'm happy with 4th. 

FA Cup. Winning this was great, but beating Arsenal in the Semi-Final was greater still. 

League Cup. We started the season really poorly and this just came before we turned the corner. 

Champions League & Europa League. Bayern & Benfica were too strong for us in the Champions League Group stage as we were decimated with injuries in the 1st half of the season, but we rallied well and although we didn't win the Final, beating Arsenal in ANOTHER Semi would have surely pleased the fans. 

Premier League Golden Boot. I think this probably means that I can consider this little challenge done. Kane only made 28(1) appearances in the league, so I'm happy with 20 goals. 

36 goals from 46(3) appearances is decent, but I will admit that I was hoping for 40 goals and he fell a bit short with 36, but that's what happens when you take 9 games to open your account at the start of the season, miss 2 penalties and don't score any free-kicks. 

Premier Division Team of the Year. The Golden Boot winner obviously gets in this. 

I didn't make the most of Kane at set-pieces at all and I think if I did then 50(ish) goals in a season might be a realistic target. As some others have mentioned, FM20 Kane isn't suited at all to the AF(a) role that I used, and I still say he's a pretty poor replication of the 2019 real life Kane, (especially in terms of PPM's and physical attributes). I'm tempted to keep going and fine-tune things to get him scoring even more goals, but I think this is enough.

I was a bit gutted that we lost the Champions League Final in season #1 and REALLY gutted that we lost the Europa League Final in season #2, but that's just the way it goes. Kane was shattered in both finals after his exploits over the course of the season. 

[Maw74]

Yes happy with those Semi-Final wins, Sissoko with the winner in EL  

Quote

Premier League Golden Boot. I think this probably means that I can consider this little challenge done. Kane only made 28(1) appearances in the league, so I'm happy with 20 goals. 

36 goals from 46(3) appearances is decent, but I will admit that I was hoping for 40 goals and he fell a bit short with 36, but that's what happens when you take 9 games to open your account at the start of the season, miss 2 penalties and don't score any free-kicks. 

Not the most amazing stats in FM world but that is great in realistic terms, yeah 40 would have been nice but slow start, he did have that period of time when he just didn't/couldn't score in August.
 

[Jimbokav1971]

2 hours ago, Maw74 said:

Yes happy with those Semi-Final wins, Sissoko with the winner in EL  

Not the most amazing stats in FM world but that is great in realistic terms, yeah 40 would have been nice but slow start, he did have that period of time when he just didn't/couldn't score in August.
 

I don't think it's great in FM terms or in real life terms. 

The problem specifically is that Kane doesn't seem to be any good in the game and those who manage him seem to have a problem getting him to score goals at anywhere this sort of level. 

I wasn't going to play a 3rd season, but I would love to score 40+ goals. 45 goals would be brilliant. 50 goals with Kane in the 2019/20 season would be mind-blowing. 

There is more to come I'm sure! 

[Jimbokav1971]

Kane playthrough #3 has been cancelled. 

[Tajerio]

As someone who watches Spurs every week, I don't think Kane's physical stats are massively off save Balance, where I agree with you he's had a bit of a rough ride of it. The trouble is that he's already extremely highly rated by CA, which is compounded by the strength of his weaker foot. Even adding just a point to most of his physicals and bringing his Balance up to 15 or 16 might push him higher than the researcher feels comfortable going--I know they have at least some vague guidelines about how high to go.

[Jimbokav1971]

4 minutes ago, Tajerio said:

As someone who watches Spurs every week, I don't think Kane's physical stats are massively off save Balance, where I agree with you he's had a bit of a rough ride of it. The trouble is that he's already extremely highly rated by CA, which is compounded by the strength of his weaker foot. Even adding just a point to most of his physicals and bringing his Balance up to 15 or 16 might push him higher than the researcher feels comfortable going--I know they have at least some vague guidelines about how high to go.

You make a decent point. 

Talking about his CA and PA, (hidden so those of you who don't want to know don't have to see)..........

Spoiler

Kane CA is 177 
Kane PA is 185

Auba CA is 165
Auba PA is 170

Laca CA is 158
Laca PA is 161

Wilson CA is 146
Wilson PA is 155

Giroud CA is 150
Giroud PA is 156

Abraham CA is 150
Abraham PA is 165

Vardy CA is 160
Vardy PA is 163

Salah CA is 179
Salah PA is 184

Firmino CA is 172
Firmino PA is 178

Aguero CA is 178
Aguero PA is 183

Rashford CA is 153
Rashford PA is 175

Martial CA is 150
Martial PA is 170

Son CA is 160 (It should be said that Son needs a BIG boost). 
Son PA is 161

The problem I have is that he seems to be under-cooked in terms of actual ability in the game in comparison to other players who we might consider to be at a similar level. 

I don't manage big players and big clubs enough to be able to tell you what that is. All I know is that I'm personally of the opinion that he is the best striker in the Premier League, but doesn't seem to perform like that in game. While that could be down to him playing with inferior teammates, I don't believe that to be the case. (I mean it is the case, but I don't think that's the cause). 

@Tajerio makes a brilliant comment about Kane's two-footedness, but Aguero is also two-footed and only has +1 CA so why is it that Aguero seems so much better in game than Kane? (I honestly am just asking the question and don't have the answers so feel free to chip in). 

We all know that physical ability has always been over-powered in FM. I remember Djibril Cisse being an absolute beast for AI managed Liverpool back in the day and Orri Freyr Oskarsson was the original physical beast in FM. Although it's effectiveness has been reduced, I think it's fair to say that it's still over-powered. In particular I think that the balance attribute is HUGE and a 7 pt swing in favour of Aguero is quite simply ridiculous. I'm hoping that this will be tweaked in FM21, (both Kane and balance in general), but I don't expect either to be resolved. 

[Tajerio]

For Aguero, I think it's the physicals and the extra couple points of Off the Ball and Technique that make him the superior in-game goalscorer, so I'm generally in agreement with you. The high Dribbling also probably helps Aguero get into better positions to score in-game and lose the ball less. Any role in game that asks Kane to dribble is not going to turn out particularly well, with his (relatively) mediocre Dribbling, Agility, and Balance.

It'll be interesting to see what changes, if any, the Spurs researcher makes for Kane. I know Son's been tuned upwards for FM21, which I think is fair. As I alluded to in my previous post, if researchers are given some kind of guidelines on how high players should go for CA, that might interact in a negative way with two-footedness. In order to fit someone like Kane or Son in, for instance, since two-footedness takes up CA, the researcher might have to knock down their other attributes a bit unfairly. I don't know, of course, that what I'm talking about here is actually what's going on, but I've suspected it about two-footed players for a while (not always fairly, though--I remember thinking Mkhitaryan got a raw deal in FM17 because of his two-footedness, but it looks like he didn't).

[karanhsingh]

Interesting discussion about Harry Kane, I agree with a lot of it. Just for fun, I changed his weak foot to 1 in the editor and loaded up the game. This is what his profile looked like.

Essentially, all the attributes are up by 1. I really wonder if this Kane would perform better in-game, or the one who is either footed. 

Other info in the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

His RCA (recommended current ability) drops from 177 to a whopping 151, which I think means these attributes have swung even more than 1 but cannot be seen due to the decimal points system. 

Also, a comparison of some of the hidden attributes which may be contributing to CA.

Weaker foot is 3 points higher which definitely has an impact, the others like consistency and professionalism may do too.

Another thing is that Kane for some reason has a rating of 11 to play as CM (competent) whereas Aguero does not (they both are accomplished as AMC) - this is probably "eating up" some CA points for Kane as well. I have long held the opinion that players should not in effect be penalized for positional versatility, but I believe that is how the game is structured.

All of this may explain to some extent why Aguero appears the better player, but their CA is actually pretty much the same.

 

Conclusions:

The fact that Aguero consistently out-performs Kane in-game (at least in season 1 before his ability declines due to age) probably lends further credence to the argument that physical attributes trump the others at least on the ME of FM20. 

If you offer me a striker with CA 150 and amazing physicals or one with CA 160 and poor physicals, I would always choose the former. Essentially, a Djibril Cisse type player would almost always out-perform a Teddy Sheringham type player. 

I had this on a previous save on FM20 when Ousmane Manneh scored a ton of goals for me all the way from 3.Bundesliga to 1.Bundesliga, despite having very average CA and poor technical/ mental attributes.

My hunch is that weaker foot takes up too much CA but that would have to be tested. It would be interesting to see if one-footed Kane outperforms his two-footed counterpart or not over time - technically all else being equal they should give similar returns. 

I definitely do not think that being able to play more than one position should take up CA points - cannot see the logic in that.

[Mr_Demus]

Thank you for a lovely read. Thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

[Jimbokav1971]

7 minutes ago, Mr_Demus said:

Thank you for a lovely read. Thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

My pleasure. 

[Sonic Youth]

I've enjoyed your journey all the way through, though sad to see it has ended (was looking forward to see if a PL title happened and getting into Champs League). Thanks for sharing your save with us

[Jimbokav1971]

6 hours ago, Sonic Youth said:

I've enjoyed your journey all the way through, though sad to see it has ended (was looking forward to see if a PL title happened and getting into Champs League). Thanks for sharing your save with us

Thanks very much. 

I'm not actually good at taking the final step in saves like this.

[Thebaker]

On 09/11/2020 at 13:28, Jimbokav1971 said:

Thanks very much. 

I'm not actually good at taking the final step in saves like this.

Its all about the journey which is always entertaining