Promotion Turning My Team Dirty - A tiny statistical analysis.

[Parmie]

I mainly play FM as a lower league single club manager, and during my time on FM22, taken 4 clubs from League Two to the Premiership in England.

My saves are a tiny data set to base anything on and I've only recorded one season from one save for actual statistics to look at but I was fully expecting the following to happen based on the previous saves which is why I went back and looked.

The context is that my Oldham Athletic side, after 4 seasons in the Championship won promotion up to the Premiership, comprising a range of ability that coaching staff would describe as good Championship to decent Premiership current ability. The majority of players being in the leading Championship area but mostly youngsters who could improve. So the brave struggle against relegation expectation is quite realistic.

Hypothesis: When a comparatively low current ability team wins promotion, the match engine over uses bad disciplinary scenarios to create greater adversity leading to a realistic level of matches losses.

In plain English, when we get promoted we get loads more yellow and red cards, making individual games harder to win/not lose which contribute to getting a team relegated (or at least perform badly in matches).

For example, I have to manage the disciplinary situation in games by subbing off my first choice players with inferior replacements from the bench (because we're still a small team without a deep squad), and over the season we get more suspensions to the first choice players and so on.

So in my single season of data, we did get narrowly relegated which I don't have an issue with, it's the manner of losses. Using the same tactics as the Championship winning season, and not having 'get stuck in' set, we set a Premiership bad disciplinary record.

For transfers between the two seasons, I had brought in a keeper who didn't pick up any cards at all during the Prem season, a full back with aggression 9, a central defender with aggression 10 and an attacking midfielder with aggression 9. In other words, I didn't sign any headcases and the first 11 was pretty similar to the previous season.

Newly Promoted Premiership Season:

38 games - 87 yellow cards - 7 red cards

Previous Championship Winning Season:

46 games - 66 yellow cards - 1 red card

So potential causes to explain this:

• higher division with better opposition is likely to draw more fouls etc.
• Morale from losses could cause ill discipline

I may expect see some increase in cards for these reasons but I think it's too big a change. From observations during matches, it's much more my players making bad decisions to lunge in and not that they're bringing down someone who is on their way past them. 

If we draw on real life, it's the 2014/2015 season before Villa and Newcastle have 7 reds in a season but Villa had 17 less yellows and Newcastle 22 less yellows. This season Leeds are a bit crazy with 100 yellows but only 3 reds, but generally speaking, relegation candidates are pretty average for discipline.

But real life comparisons ignore what I said at the start of the post, I expected the increased yellows and reds even before we kicked a ball (or an opposition player). 

[santy001]

You've covered some areas already by playing the same style and recognising the difference in quality.

Perhaps one thing you're not factoring in is that often times IRL teams don't just play their way to victory at a comfortable pace without getting drawn into the physical side as much. So you can certainly have a tactic that skews under what you might expect for a Championship season, particularly with a team tactic that really narrows in on particular advantages. 

Aggression isn't inherently a bad thing either, going in a little earlier and more aggressively could just result in a free kick or winning the ball rather than holding off and trying to manage the threat before then having to react once the player has already gone. There are so many considerations its just worth pointing out that some of those same players being more aggressive could just as easily resulted in lower yellow/red cards because they're challenging before things get to dangerous points. But if you're being exposed for a lack of defensive technical play then the aggression could just cost you further anyway. 

[enigmatic]

9 hours ago, Parmie said:

Hypothesis: When a comparatively low current ability team wins promotion, the match engine over uses bad disciplinary scenarios to create greater adversity leading to a realistic level of matches losses.

This hypothesis has nothing to recommend it over the alternatives you've already mentioned. Your players aren't going to lunge in as much when perfectly happy and winning the game against slower, weaker players who give the ball away through poor technique as they are when they're more unsettled against stronger players who can control a ball, and superior opponents expecting to win will have more of the ball and run at you more and be more likely to draw fouls than weak ones who are expecting to lose and probably actually losing. Don't think I've ever had seven red cards in a season despite being over-promoted quite a bit, so it's also possible you've got some players in key areas who are just naturally dirty or poorly suited to making the challenges you need to or you use inherently dirty BWM/PF/DW roles or hard tackle opponent instructions quite a lot even if you don't set team tackling to hard.

Averages for small number events like cards are pretty volatile too. Extreme case: I won an Olympics with seven penalties (including the winner in the final and two in the semi). All the other teams in the tournament had three between them. Now that looks a lot like it was rigged in my favour even accounting for my Colombia side being vastly superior to most of its opponents and playing a lot of possession football in the final third and scoring lots from open play too, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Also, I didn't get those penalties in the previous Olympics with a similar side which also reached the final (and conceded a penalty in it IIRC)...

 

The way that FM match engines actually produce pretty consistent poor results for sides whose players are only slightly worse than their opponents is that relegation candidate managers tend to deploy more defensive tactics (like IRL) which are less effective at picking up three points, but that's one of the areas human managers have a massive advantage...

Edited May 19, 2022 by enigmatic

[sdx15]

You’re missing two things in your analysis. What’s the standard of tackling in your team? If it’s average for Championship and one of the worst for BPL, then that might result in more cards.

And what about player mentality? Does a number of your starters have the unsporting/temperamental personality or a player con suggesting that the player is likely to (not the exact wording) indulge in unsportsmanlike conduct? Those factors could indicate high temperament or dirtiness, which in turn can result in more yellow cards when the players are losing and feelling the pressure.

Edited May 19, 2022 by sdx15

[Prepper_Jack]

Your players probably aren't being turned dirty. They were probably already dirty. The step up in quality and extra pressure probably just made them act upon it more. And, yes, I'm sure the opposition is drawing more fouls by better dribbling skills.

I have a team in Romania, freshly promoted into the top division. Not a bad team, with a lot of burgeoning young talent, but the players are broadly below average in most abilities, and in a number of statistics the lowest in the league.  Season isn't quite done, but it's getting there, and we're in 2nd place. Pretty much everyone in the league, except for about 3 teams (including my own), plays a hard pressing tactic. Across 22 matches, my team has 9 yellow cards, 0 red cards, and a grand total of 133 fouls. For comparison, the competitor directly above me, in 1st position, has 50 yellow cards, 1 red card, and 355 fouls. They have the worst disciplinary record in the league. The cleanest competitor (aside from my own team, which is the cleanest) still has more than double my yellow cards, with 21. My team would probably have 0 yellow cards or thereabouts if I hadn't given periodic instructions to tackle certain individuals harder. Each yellow card we got was entirely predictable, and pretty much at my instruction.

Now, I don't know the specific dirtiness of my players, but I suspect it to be fairly low. None of my players indicate in their coach report that they are dirty or unsportsmanlike, so I would assume the stats are lower than 10 in that regard. They also have been given little cause to play dirty, as with 13 wins, 7 draws, and 2 losses we have been pretty successful. Everyone is happy, and if people start getting anxious or nervous on the field or in the lockers, I simply tell them not to worry about it, and to enjoy themselves. Nervous people cause yellow and red cards, and generally play poorly. I had a lot of nervous players upon promotion, and in the first 10 matches I had to do my best Bob Ross impression in every chat just to get them to calm down. At this point, a couple players might show nerves in big matches, but in all they are generally relaxed and motivated.

My baseline tactic has standard press triggers, on positive mentality, with stay on feet enabled. I'm not using tight marking in general, which can also lead to more fouling (though it's often unintentional). Even so, the team is at 5th place (of 16) in terms of possession, and the best ranked team in terms of defense, with only 17 goals allowed in 22 matches. This is largely due to the team having pretty decent decision making and positioning skills for the league, and they usually disrupt the opposition offense quite well without the need to press. Now, the team is 11th in terms of possession won, but my strategy isn't about winning the ball back in dangerous positions, or even being ball hogs, and more about just being patient and methodical with a defense that is difficult to penetrate, so that particular statistic isn't hugely relevant for me.

In short, I don't think there's anything in the match engine that's trying to engineer your losses through bad discipline for newly promoted teams. It's just that if you get promoted and are trying to gegenpress teams that are much better than yours, there are consequences for such things. Their players run faster, and dribble better. They will get in your penalty box more. Your players are under more pressure for having to deal with that, and will make bad decisions as a result, particularly if stressed out.

 

[Parmie]

So some good stuff above but also some things that ignore the original premise.

The starting position is one of previous experience, with a different formation and tactic and at a different club I've experienced this before.

A bit more limited statistics to consider. The two sides that were relegated with me, Stoke and Crystal Palace have been played 4 times in the Championship the next season. So they're a kind of barometer for the difference in quality (or not).

In the Premiership season, playing those 2 sides over 4 games saw my team accrue 9 yellow cards. The 4 Championship games. including facing those 2 sides in our first 2 league games, accrued 2 yellows, and those both in one of those matches. Over the cup games in the new Championship season, we faced Premier League teams 5 times, with 7 yellows.

Some numbers to play with. The premiership season yellow card rate was 2.3 yellows per game, and reds 0.2 (or 1 red every 5 games roughly). Over now 92 Championship games, the yellow card rate was 1.3 and reds 0.01 (1 red card over 96 games). The cup games in the new season had a yellow rate of 1.4.

In my view, there is no hidden dirtiness attribute problem, that would manifest regardless of the opposition.

For the defensive capability that is very interesting. Looking back at who got carded. The right back position accrued 17 of the yellows and 2 reds on their own (3 different players over the season, but mostly Rico Lewis - tackling 12, aggression 15, decisions 13, concentration 15). We did use a ball winning midfielder on support, the two players covering that position 10 yellows and no reds. The Box to Box midfielder role was sent off 3 times but otherwise only getting 7 yellows. One of those players is high aggression 16 and low tackling 9 and was 2 of the sendings off.

My left back didn't see the same level of yellows. Slightly better overall than the right back but not by much, but perhaps enough to make a difference. The central defenders did take quite a few yellows and apart from an AMC getting sent off once, account for the rest of the reds.

So I am fairly convinced by the view that if defender current ability = comparatively low, then this causes more yellows/reds = more lost games.

But the anomaly is the same opposition in a lower division even if played immediately sequentially on from the higher division and playing better opposition in cup competitions, sees fewer yellows dished out. So I'm still leaning towards a view that the league competition level is still contributing somewhere in the players' mentality towards generally performing worse and contributes to the disciplinary issues but it's not as simple as a straight match engine issue.

 

[Freakiie]

44 minutes ago, Parmie said:

So some good stuff above but also some things that ignore the original premise.

The starting position is one of previous experience, with a different formation and tactic and at a different club I've experienced this before.

A bit more limited statistics to consider. The two sides that were relegated with me, Stoke and Crystal Palace have been played 4 times in the Championship the next season. So they're a kind of barometer for the difference in quality (or not).

In the Premiership season, playing those 2 sides over 4 games saw my team accrue 9 yellow cards. The 4 Championship games. including facing those 2 sides in our first 2 league games, accrued 2 yellows, and those both in one of those matches. Over the cup games in the new Championship season, we faced Premier League teams 5 times, with 7 yellows.

Some numbers to play with. The premiership season yellow card rate was 2.3 yellows per game, and reds 0.2 (or 1 red every 5 games roughly). Over now 92 Championship games, the yellow card rate was 1.3 and reds 0.01 (1 red card over 96 games). The cup games in the new season had a yellow rate of 1.4.

In my view, there is no hidden dirtiness attribute problem, that would manifest regardless of the opposition.

For the defensive capability that is very interesting. Looking back at who got carded. The right back position accrued 17 of the yellows and 2 reds on their own (3 different players over the season, but mostly Rico Lewis - tackling 12, aggression 15, decisions 13, concentration 15). We did use a ball winning midfielder on support, the two players covering that position 10 yellows and no reds. The Box to Box midfielder role was sent off 3 times but otherwise only getting 7 yellows. One of those players is high aggression 16 and low tackling 9 and was 2 of the sendings off.

My left back didn't see the same level of yellows. Slightly better overall than the right back but not by much, but perhaps enough to make a difference. The central defenders did take quite a few yellows and apart from an AMC getting sent off once, account for the rest of the reds.

So I am fairly convinced by the view that if defender current ability = comparatively low, then this causes more yellows/reds = more lost games.

But the anomaly is the same opposition in a lower division even if played immediately sequentially on from the higher division and playing better opposition in cup competitions, sees fewer yellows dished out. So I'm still leaning towards a view that the league competition level is still contributing somewhere in the players' mentality towards generally performing worse and contributes to the disciplinary issues but it's not as simple as a straight match engine issue.

 

Fullbacks in general are some of the most foul prone players in the game, so dirtiness, even at levels where your coaches won't rate it as a negative (so say a super clean player at 1 vs a not dirty but not completely clean player at 10) can make quite a difference in how many yellows they accumulate over a season.

As for your final point, I think one of the big differences here is the importance of matches. A cup match as an underdog isn't going to put your players under that much pressure, a big match in the Championship when you're cruising towards promotion might not be the most worrying thing either, however, if your team is set to fight against relegation in the Premier League, every point matters, which might stress players a lot more. I could very well imagine that under the hood the importance of say p1 vs p2 in the Championship is completely different from say p17 vs p18 in the Premier League in the aspect of how important getting 3 points is. Add to that, as a top team in the Championship you will generally be winning a lot more, as a result your morale will also be much better and there will generally be way less frustration within your team.

[enigmatic]

15 hours ago, Parmie said:

So some good stuff above but also some things that ignore the original premise.

The starting position is one of previous experience, with a different formation and tactic and at a different club I've experienced this before.

A bit more limited statistics to consider. The two sides that were relegated with me, Stoke and Crystal Palace have been played 4 times in the Championship the next season. So they're a kind of barometer for the difference in quality (or not).

In the Premiership season, playing those 2 sides over 4 games saw my team accrue 9 yellow cards. The 4 Championship games. including facing those 2 sides in our first 2 league games, accrued 2 yellows, and those both in one of those matches. Over the cup games in the new Championship season, we faced Premier League teams 5 times, with 7 yellows.

Some numbers to play with. The premiership season yellow card rate was 2.3 yellows per game, and reds 0.2 (or 1 red every 5 games roughly). Over now 92 Championship games, the yellow card rate was 1.3 and reds 0.01 (1 red card over 96 games). The cup games in the new season had a yellow rate of 1.4.

In my view, there is no hidden dirtiness attribute problem, that would manifest regardless of the opposition.

For the defensive capability that is very interesting. Looking back at who got carded. The right back position accrued 17 of the yellows and 2 reds on their own (3 different players over the season, but mostly Rico Lewis - tackling 12, aggression 15, decisions 13, concentration 15). We did use a ball winning midfielder on support, the two players covering that position 10 yellows and no reds. The Box to Box midfielder role was sent off 3 times but otherwise only getting 7 yellows. One of those players is high aggression 16 and low tackling 9 and was 2 of the sendings off.

My left back didn't see the same level of yellows. Slightly better overall than the right back but not by much, but perhaps enough to make a difference. The central defenders did take quite a few yellows and apart from an AMC getting sent off once, account for the rest of the reds.

So I am fairly convinced by the view that if defender current ability = comparatively low, then this causes more yellows/reds = more lost games.

But the anomaly is the same opposition in a lower division even if played immediately sequentially on from the higher division and playing better opposition in cup competitions, sees fewer yellows dished out. So I'm still leaning towards a view that the league competition level is still contributing somewhere in the players' mentality towards generally performing worse and contributes to the disciplinary issues but it's not as simple as a straight match engine issue.

 No, a sample size of four games with presumably different starting XIs, starting morale, tactics and scorelines isn't a "barometer for quality", and getting 0.5 yellow cards per game in the Championship fixtures is at least as much of an unexplained deviation from average rates as getting 2.25 yellow cards a game in the Premier League ones. But nobody writes "I think SI is making big games in my promotion season artificially easy" posts

Variance is a thing, and those variations over small numbers of matches against somewhat similar opposition are tiny compared with my more-than-twice-as-many-penalties-as-all-the-other-teams-put-together Olympics. Which in turn is obviously a reflection of small sample sizes and tactics and luck of individual games, and my team being more likely to get penalties in a match in general, not some code SI wrote to make Colombia U23's third Olympics very different from their second

And no, hidden dirtiness wouldn't manifest "regardless of the opposition". Dirty players foul better players who have the ball for long periods whilst finding a game difficult more often than they foul poorer players who don't have the ball very much whilst  happy because they're 3-0 up.... this is pretty fundamental to how football works.

And all of us have previous experience. It doesn't necessarily match yours.