What's the lowest %condition you normally start a player in FM? 95%? 98%?

[CRTB]

Doing a search, I've seen many people bemoan the new heart symbols as not giving the granularity we're used to in previous FMs so I thought I'd do some digging because (correct me if I'm wrong) I've not seen anyone attempt to put any actual numbers around it all.

Historically, I've always looked to rotate my squads to keep only players on 95%+ starting matches. Any lower than that, and on the bench they go. You'll all have your own number, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower. But with the new heart symbols, anything over 85% is now a full green heart.

You see, it seems that you can still get access to the Condition and Fitness values from within the game. So I whacked everything into an excel table, as is my want, and cross-referenced it with the displayed hearts in the game. Initially I wondered if Condition played any part but I cannot see that it does, it seems linked directly to Fitness. I took one snapshot before and after my most recent match, so I had 2 data points per player. Obviously not everyone played so many players have the same value in both results, but I think I have enough to see what is what now:

Here the data is sorted by "Fit2", the post-match fitness value. As you can see, the cut-offs seem largely as follows in both data sets....

Full green heart - 100-85

Light green heart - 75-85

Orange heart - 65-75

Red heart - Under 65

My next task is to find out if the AI is happy to start players with a full green heart but high-80s for condition, or if it can somehow see what we can't and rotates them out basically giving it a massive advantage. I suspect this might be the case as a recent game prompted this very investigation - I noticed during a match that after just 20 minutes most of my players had fallen to "partial green" hearts while the CPU still had a team of full greens at half time. Either way though, that investigation is only going to show how rubbish these new hearts are, not whether they're rubbish or not. They're clearly utterly rubbish.

Also I do know you can hover your mouse over the hearts to get a little more info, but ain't nobody got time for that for every single player before every single match - I'd need to do an Excel sheet before every game. This is especially concerning as if that is data the CPU is using, it can do these kind of global comparisons in a micro second without breaking sweat, lending it a genuine and sizeable edge on the human player and, IMHO, rendering the game in its current state broken.

[CRTB]

The pertinent data in raw form, for anyone interested....

First reading of the values, always absolutely spot-on in previous iterations so I trust it is still right:

Next a screenshot of my tactic screen sorted by "condition heart", I've scrolled to just show the bottom half as this is all that will fit on the screen and anyone above Giacomo Raspadori has a full green:

[FrazT]

Good work

[FrazT]

@Goldenhand your post was irrelevant to the reason for the post so has been hidden.

[karanhsingh]

Where do you see the fitness numbers in game?

[CRTB]

In game now, you can't. All you get is one of 4 different-coloured heart symbols which have barely any granularity at all. Before you used to get percentages for fitness and condition but they've been melded together now.

In a game which thrives on numbers and accuracy, it seems a remarkable dumbing-down of something which so many of us used to base a lot of our decision on. I've read on another forum(!) where I posted this that although nobody there thought it was a good idea either they'd heard the explanation (Maybe on here? I don't come here often these days) that giving a percentage was felt by SI to be too detailed or that there was allegedly barely any difference between the percentages anyway and that it was causing people to needlessly rotate squads.

To the first point, that 1-100 is too detailed, I'd say that given I can tell that my players' attributes from 1-20 in 36 different categories it's not too unrealistic compared to that. We're geeks, we thrive on numbers, many of which are already unrealistically presented but we love those numbers and need them. Dumb the whole game down to just marking all the attributes out of 4 as well and maybe the idea of doing it for condition/fitness will hold some water, but that'll never happen because we know the game in that state simply wouldn't sell. And whilst it might be a difficult argument to say that we can in real life, even with all the medical equipment available at top clubs, distinguish between a condition of 91% and a condition of 92%, we can certainly distinguish it into more categories than just red/amber/light green/dark green. That's stupidly oversimplified and not indicative of how the real world operates.

To the second point, that people were maybe over-relying on it and over-rotating their squad, I have 2 issues with this as an answer:

1) Sometimes I WANT to rotate my squad - Knowing someone is 92% fit gives me a reason to rest them, and sometimes I'm actively looking for reasons so that I can rotate things around a bit

2) Linked to the above, it's about maintaining your squad in peak fitness and this takes away my ability to do that, or at least stymies it greatly. If I'm starting first-team players on 85% on Saturday thinking they're top-notch when midweek we've got a big European match, I might knacker them for that without realising, meaning I've got to either put the basket cases on or play zombies.

What's people's thoughts knowing that the game is effectively forcing you to start players who are only at 85% condition? Is there a general acceptance that this is OK? Am I alone in my thoughts, or do you think it was better as it was before?

[BamBamBam]

This is the kind of content i come here for. Top work.

[Sharkn20]

This is excellent work, I much rather prefer granularity that what we got this year, at least they could've give us the option to revert to % or split it in more colours...

I take they want to get to more users by simplyfying the game in some aspects, but by doing so they are making long term customers unhappy by taking the detail out of them... Hard to find the balance when you don't give options.

[JordanMilly]

9 minutes ago, Sharkn20 said:

This is excellent work, I much rather prefer granularity that what we got this year, at least they could've give us the option to revert to % or split it in more colours...

I take they want to get to more users by simplyfying the game in some aspects, but by doing so they are making long term customers unhappy by taking the detail out of them... Hard to find the balance when you don't give options.

They've said it's because people kept ignoring what they'd said about how different levels of fitness applied, and most people just didn't play people under 95% fitness, which doesn't happen IRL (at least in part because you don't know if someone is 90% fit or 95% fit IRL), and so to add the correct level of ambiguity that a real manager would be dealing with, they removed the percentages.

[Sharkn20]

Just now, JordanMillward_1 said:

They've said it's because people kept ignoring what they'd said about how different levels of fitness applied, and most people just didn't play people under 95% fitness, which doesn't happen IRL (at least in part because you don't know if someone is 90% fit or 95% fit IRL), and so to add the correct level of ambiguity that a real manager would be dealing with, they removed the percentages.

Still 85% is too much of a gap until 100%. At least do the colours by 10%

50-60% red

60-70% orange

70-80% light green

80-90% dark green

90-100% blue?

[frank_olaf]

7 minutes ago, Sharkn20 said:

Still 85% is too much of a gap until 100%. At least do the colours by 10%

50-60% red

60-70% orange

70-80% light green

80-90% dark green

90-100% blue?

I feel like this is the best way forward. I understand the reasoning to get rid of the percentages as it is a bit unrealistic, but having a gap of 15% for the first colour band seems like too much to me. 10% gaps (and adding a 5th band) would make more sense.

[DP]

17 minutes ago, JordanMillward_1 said:

They've said it's because people kept ignoring what they'd said about how different levels of fitness applied, and most people just didn't play people under 95% fitness, which doesn't happen IRL (at least in part because you don't know if someone is 90% fit or 95% fit IRL), and so to add the correct level of ambiguity that a real manager would be dealing with, they removed the percentages.

Maybe do the same for morale too? Far too many variables. 
 

How would you know if your player had ‘really high’ morale or ‘excellent’ morale? 

[CRTB]

1 hour ago, JordanMillward_1 said:

They've said it's because people kept ignoring what they'd said about how different levels of fitness applied, and most people just didn't play people under 95% fitness, which doesn't happen IRL (at least in part because you don't know if someone is 90% fit or 95% fit IRL), and so to add the correct level of ambiguity that a real manager would be dealing with, they removed the percentages.

Well everything else is 1-20, or at least most things are. IRL, can you definitively say that a player is 13 for crossing rather than 12, or 14? No. But in the game you can. So we get 20 possible options for each of 36 attributes for a player, but only 4 options for Condition. It's quite laughable.

Dumb the whole lot down to 1-4 and then there's an argument for doing it for Condition too. Until then, IMO at least, there's not.

[CRTB]

Also, if there's seemingly virtually no difference between 85% fitness and 100% fitness then if I do say a whole season's matches of Team A on 100% vs Team B on 85%, then do the same in reverse, there should be no difference in league table.

I certainly have the time and maybe have the inclination to do just this, though it'd take a while as I have other stuff to be doing too, and from what I can tell from a quick Google there are real time editors available now? Does FMRTE allow you to see Condition, anyone know?

I could stop the game before a match, doesn't matter which one, and edit one team to be 100% Condition on all players and give them say 10 for each attribute, then make the other team 85% Condition and 10 for each attribute. Play that game 38 times, record the table. Then flip it around with Team A on 85% fitness and Team B on 100%. 

By replaying that one same game 38 times (for each setup!)  we're taking morale out of the equation and other variables which would change over the season because each match would have an identical starting point. I guess that would show definitively whether there's a problem here or not. If both tables come out roughly the same, all's well and I guess we can just adapt to the hearts. If not and there's a big difference ......

[craiigman]

13 hours ago, CRTB said:

Doing a search, I've seen many people bemoan the new heart symbols as not giving the granularity we're used to in previous FMs so I thought I'd do some digging because (correct me if I'm wrong) I've not seen anyone attempt to put any actual numbers around it all.

Historically, I've always looked to rotate my squads to keep only players on 95%+ starting matches. Any lower than that, and on the bench they go. You'll all have your own number, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower. But with the new heart symbols, anything over 85% is now a full green heart.

You see, it seems that you can still get access to the Condition and Fitness values from within the game. So I whacked everything into an excel table, as is my want, and cross-referenced it with the displayed hearts in the game. Initially I wondered if Condition played any part but I cannot see that it does, it seems linked directly to Fitness. I took one snapshot before and after my most recent match, so I had 2 data points per player. Obviously not everyone played so many players have the same value in both results, but I think I have enough to see what is what now:

Here the data is sorted by "Fit2", the post-match fitness value. As you can see, the cut-offs seem largely as follows in both data sets....

Full green heart - 100-85

Light green heart - 75-85

Orange heart - 65-75

Red heart - Under 65

My next task is to find out if the AI is happy to start players with a full green heart but high-80s for condition, or if it can somehow see what we can't and rotates them out basically giving it a massive advantage. I suspect this might be the case as a recent game prompted this very investigation - I noticed during a match that after just 20 minutes most of my players had fallen to "partial green" hearts while the CPU still had a team of full greens at half time. Either way though, that investigation is only going to show how rubbish these new hearts are, not whether they're rubbish or not. They're clearly utterly rubbish.

Also I do know you can hover your mouse over the hearts to get a little more info, but ain't nobody got time for that for every single player before every single match - I'd need to do an Excel sheet before every game. This is especially concerning as if that is data the CPU is using, it can do these kind of global comparisons in a micro second without breaking sweat, lending it a genuine and sizeable edge on the human player and, IMHO, rendering the game in its current state broken.

 

2 hours ago, CRTB said:

In game now, you can't. All you get is one of 4 different-coloured heart symbols which have barely any granularity at all. Before you used to get percentages for fitness and condition but they've been melded together now.

In a game which thrives on numbers and accuracy, it seems a remarkable dumbing-down of something which so many of us used to base a lot of our decision on. I've read on another forum(!) where I posted this that although nobody there thought it was a good idea either they'd heard the explanation (Maybe on here? I don't come here often these days) that giving a percentage was felt by SI to be too detailed or that there was allegedly barely any difference between the percentages anyway and that it was causing people to needlessly rotate squads.

To the first point, that 1-100 is too detailed, I'd say that given I can tell that my players' attributes from 1-20 in 36 different categories it's not too unrealistic compared to that. We're geeks, we thrive on numbers, many of which are already unrealistically presented but we love those numbers and need them. Dumb the whole game down to just marking all the attributes out of 4 as well and maybe the idea of doing it for condition/fitness will hold some water, but that'll never happen because we know the game in that state simply wouldn't sell. And whilst it might be a difficult argument to say that we can in real life, even with all the medical equipment available at top clubs, distinguish between a condition of 91% and a condition of 92%, we can certainly distinguish it into more categories than just red/amber/light green/dark green. That's stupidly oversimplified and not indicative of how the real world operates.

To the second point, that people were maybe over-relying on it and over-rotating their squad, I have 2 issues with this as an answer:

1) Sometimes I WANT to rotate my squad - Knowing someone is 92% fit gives me a reason to rest them, and sometimes I'm actively looking for reasons so that I can rotate things around a bit

2) Linked to the above, it's about maintaining your squad in peak fitness and this takes away my ability to do that, or at least stymies it greatly. If I'm starting first-team players on 85% on Saturday thinking they're top-notch when midweek we've got a big European match, I might knacker them for that without realising, meaning I've got to either put the basket cases on or play zombies.

What's people's thoughts knowing that the game is effectively forcing you to start players who are only at 85% condition? Is there a general acceptance that this is OK? Am I alone in my thoughts, or do you think it was better as it was before?

Which one is it?

I seem to be able to see them from the IGE.

[CRTB]

14 minutes ago, craiigman said:

 

Which one is it?

I seem to be able to see them from the IGE.

If IGE means In Game Editor, then I don't have that at least not yet. Is it still an extra £5? 

Both quotes are true though, I thought what I wrote was pretty clear, apologies if not. From the vanilla game, you cannot see condition. Third party tools allow you to see it. No idea about the official editor.

[kandersson]

Great thread!

85 is a bit low for a full green heart imo.  90 would probably be a more reasonable choice. Having numbers back would be even more reasonable. Real life managers rely on highly specialized staff, analysts and advanced tools like GPS performance trackers (during training sessions and matches) to assess players condition. I suspect numbers are much closer to reality than full hearts or thumbs up for condition/fitness levels.

[WeePaul]

29 minutes ago, CRTB said:

Also, if there's seemingly virtually no difference between 85% fitness and 100% fitness then if I do say a whole season's matches of Team A on 100% vs Team B on 85%, then do the same in reverse, there should be no difference in league table.

I certainly have the time and maybe have the inclination to do just this, though it'd take a while as I have other stuff to be doing too, and from what I can tell from a quick Google there are real time editors available now? Does FMRTE allow you to see Condition, anyone know?

I could stop the game before a match, doesn't matter which one, and edit one team to be 100% Condition on all players and give them say 10 for each attribute, then make the other team 85% Condition and 10 for each attribute. Play that game 38 times, record the table. Then flip it around with Team A on 85% fitness and Team B on 100%. 

By replaying that one same game 38 times (for each setup!)  we're taking morale out of the equation and other variables which would change over the season because each match would have an identical starting point. I guess that would show definitively whether there's a problem here or not. If both tables come out roughly the same, all's well and I guess we can just adapt to the hearts. If not and there's a big difference ......

Of course there's a difference. You're just unable to see it at that exact moment. But if you play someone on a green but 85% fitness you'll notice they'll go down a colour quickly. 

[WeePaul]

1 minute ago, kandersson said:

Great thread!

85 is a bit low for a full green heart imo.  90 would probably be a more reasonable choice. Having numbers back would be even more reasonable. Real life managers rely on highly specialized staff, analysts and advanced tools like GPS performance trackers (during training sessions and matches) to assess players condition. I suspect numbers are much closer to reality than full hearts or thumbs up for condition/fitness levels.

Miles said, I think on the stream they had, that managers often said to him that they would love to be able to have exact percentages for how fit a player is. 

[CRTB]

I'm sure they'd love to know that a player is exactly 13 for crossing too, but they don't.

Make it the same each way and I'll have no cause for complaint. Give us a rating out of 4 for each attribute too, make it "more real":

Crossing * = Very bad

Crossing ** = Not great

Crossing *** = Good

Crossing **** = Excellent

Sounds more realistic when you think about it, so who's in for that, for all the attributes? No? Thought not.

[Mars_Blackmon]

I’m having more fun with the hearts. I don’t think 85 is too low at all. I usually sub out around 75-85 in the past but now I’m able to squeeze out more production from my players until they reach a red heart because I’m not so caught up in number management.

 

[kandersson]

2 minutes ago, WeePaul said:

Miles said, I think on the stream they had, that managers often said to him that they would love to be able to have exact percentages for how fit a player is. 

When managers (or fans) say 'fit' IRL they usually mean the final 'result' of a few different factors which are present in FM under the name of 'condition', 'sharpness', 'training load', 'match load', 'overall risk', 'injury susceptibility', 'jadedness' (hidden). So yes having a single final number for 'fitness' would be impossible IRL, but I'm sure all the specific 'factors' are tracked and analyzed with more depth and accuracy than current FM icons or descriptions. Numbers for 'condition' and 'sharpness' were just tools to make more informed decisions about 'fitness'. Player and staff attributes aren't really much different, and I'm sure there are people who would like them gone for 'realism'. FM is a football simulation though, numbers are key tools to play this video game.

[enigmatic]

I like the hearts, as someone who used to micromanage player fitness, but 85% seems like quite a low cutoff point for 'apparently ideal' condition

IIRC even the low rotation AI used to be discouraged from starting someone on 87% fitness.

 

Those figures also seem to suggest that SI has, in fact, adjusted the parameters to punish sides fitness-wise for aggressive pressing. I basically never got players down to <65% fitness inside 90 mins in previous editions but now it's every game, even if I dial it back a bit when I've got a two goal lead and unload my bench

[Tom 99]

3 hours ago, CRTB said:

To the first point, that 1-100 is too detailed, I'd say that given I can tell that my players' attributes from 1-20 in 36 different categories it's not too unrealistic compared to that.

Messi Dribbling 20

Average player Dribbling 10

There must be space between them. Maybe difference = 10 is too exact but way better than condition = 90 or 91 or 92. Even a car fuel gauge isn't so exact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_gauge_(Toyota_Corolla).jpg

Green heart = 91 - 100 % would be good.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Tom 99

[CRTB]

Bad analogy, my car gauge tells me exactly how many miles I've got left in the tank. Almost all do these days.

Also, Messi dribbling might be 20 but is that discernible from a player with 19? Especially when propensity to dribble is further governed by flair and ability to do so moderated by technique, balance and agility.

So without looking Messi or some other player might well be Dribbling 20, Agility 20, Flair 20, Balance 20 but could you as a player or a manager really tell them apart from a player with one 19 somewhere in there?! Especially when this is all just opinion, there's no way to actually "measure" dribbling. Yet we've got all that to help us pick the best player, but when it comes to whether that player is fit to start a match, despite all the technology that top clubs have to accurately monitor fitness and condition, we get LIGHT GREEN HEART. 

[DementedHammer]

37 minutes ago, CRTB said:

I'm sure they'd love to know that a player is exactly 13 for crossing too, but they don't.

Make it the same each way and I'll have no cause for complaint. Give us a rating out of 4 for each attribute too, make it "more real":

Crossing * = Very bad

Crossing ** = Not great

Crossing *** = Good

Crossing **** = Excellent

Sounds more realistic when you think about it, so who's in for that, for all the attributes? No? Thought not.

I for one would love this to be an option. 

[CRTB]

8 minutes ago, DementedHammer said:

I for one would love this to be an option. 

I'm sure some would. I know there's a core of players who won't use any real life knowledge, who rely entirely on their scouts, who try to make things really difficult for themselves and that's great and I absolutely respect anyone who does that and you should play the game how it gives you the most enjoyment. I'm also fully in favour of options to suit as many people as possible and there's no reason why a skin couldn't be made which did some kind of conversion on the attributes so that it displayed them as 1-4 stars instead of 1-20 as a number.

I think it's fair to say though that most people want as much detail as possible.

[Tom 99]

27 minutes ago, CRTB said:

Also, Messi dribbling might be 20 but is that discernible from a player with 19? Especially when propensity to dribble is further governed by flair and ability to do so moderated by technique, balance and agility.

I'm just a fan and not a coach who analyze players every day but I can give you this dribbling ranking:

Messi > Griezmann > Louis Suarez > Luke Shaw > Average player

So even a guy like me needs some ranking space between Messi and an average player.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Tom 99

[CRTB]

Great. But I would also say that I can tell between more than 4 levels of fitness.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

Does the AI know the thresholds? 

 

As in, does the AI know if they're 85-90 or 95-100? Or are they just as blind as us and just see 'green = good to go'?

 

[98765431]

It's ridiculous if the sports scientists in game think a player who can only play 45 mins before getting exhausted is in full fitness. THE GAME IS BROKEN. 

[emil_sbn]

I like the hearts too its pretty hard thou to keep the squad in the greenzone when you play gegenpress with a team with lousy stamina =)

[98765431]

Could you please also do the same for 'sharpness' to decode those mysterious description of trends like 'gaining sharpness' and 'losing sharpness' that are used to describe a static sharpness status? 

Edited November 30, 2020 by 98765431

[CRTB]

5 minutes ago, 98765431 said:

Could you please also do the same for 'sharpness' to decode those mysterious description of trends like 'gaining sharpness' and 'losing sharpness' that are used to describe a static sharpness status? 

In all honesty, probably not. At least not anytime soon. These useless heart symbols bugged me enough to look into it further, but I'm not feeling anything like the same ire towards "sharpness".

What I've done is simple enough for anyone else to replicate if they have the time and inclination to do so though.

[JordanMilly]

2 hours ago, CRTB said:

Well everything else is 1-20,

It's actually 1-200, they just round it on the attributes screen.

[98765431]

2 hours ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

I’m having more fun with the hearts. I don’t think 85 is too low at all. I usually sub out around 75-85 in the past but now I’m able to squeeze out more production from my players until they reach a red heart because I’m not so caught up in number management.

 

This isn’t true. A player with 85% fitness will go to a red with less than 60 mins of play, which is a huge difference with 90%, 95% and 100%. Any professional sports science guy or coach should easily notice especially when SI claimed how accurate it was when they introduced the so-called “medical centre” couple of years ago.

[Mars_Blackmon]

1 hour ago, 98765431 said:

This isn’t true. A player with 85% fitness will go to a red with less than 60 mins of play, which is a huge difference with 90%, 95% and 100%. Any professional sports science guy or coach should easily notice especially when SI claimed how accurate it was when they introduced the so-called “medical centre” couple of years ago.

What isn't true?

[Vänsterback]

1 hour ago, 98765431 said:

This isn’t true. A player with 85% fitness will go to a red with less than 60 mins of play, which is a huge difference with 90%, 95% and 100%. Any professional sports science guy or coach should easily notice especially when SI claimed how accurate it was when they introduced the so-called “medical centre” couple of years ago.

Well, it's not like professional medical staff always make the right decisions or that the manager listens to or understand the information they are given by the medical staff. In real life, players play on pain-killers from time to time and are rushed back onto the field after injuries more often than not. One could argue that it has been too easy for us to minimize risk of injuries or fatigue in the game. I for one have been very uncomfortable to start at match with a player on 89% fitness compared to one with 90% or 91%. So to make Football Manager players use their squad in a more realistic way perhaps it's needed to trick us into picking players on 85% for the starting eleven regularly? I can't play FM21 in the same way I played FM20 or FM11 anyway.

[santy001]

I've removed the inclusion of the % cut-off from the title. 

It's effectively a spoiler and once people learn it, they can't unlearn it. For those who wish to play the game without this knowledge they shouldn't necessarily have that ruined just by scrolling down GD.

[Phil930]

7 hours ago, CRTB said:

I'm sure they'd love to know that a player is exactly 13 for crossing too, but they don't.

Make it the same each way and I'll have no cause for complaint. Give us a rating out of 4 for each attribute too, make it "more real":

Crossing * = Very bad

Crossing ** = Not great

Crossing *** = Good

Crossing **** = Excellent

Sounds more realistic when you think about it, so who's in for that, for all the attributes? No? Thought not.

That is a really interesting idea.  Feels like something that might even suit Touch or Mobile.  Concept is fascinating.  If it didn't work, they could easily expand the four categories with more, say 1-20, and include the number!

Kidding, but 5 feels the sweet spot.  I don't know why.

[98765431]

7 hours ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

What isn't true?

85% is already very low that almost no player can play through 60min if they start at 85%. So if you have 4-5 players start at 85-90% (it is normal if fm hides the real number) and if you sub off any players with red heart, you will have at least 4-5 players who needed to be sub off at 60min, plus the essential tactical subs and subs for injury you need to make. You will obvious run out of sub. So it is also obvious that you haven’t played through fm21 and are making up story to cover up for SI if you 

1. Play players with 85-90% fitness

2. sub the players off when they have red heart

[santy001]

Players with 85% condition can play a whole game, quite easily. Not if you play a high intensity system for 90 minutes but you're supposed to manage your side through a game. If you go 3/4 goals up, I always have a dialled back formation to rely upon to conserve my players. You're then trading in the risk vs reward of giving up the initiative to the opposition. During particularly tough runs of fixtures, I might even change things for the last 10 minutes or so of the first half to try and keep more in the tank.

Alternatively, you can start on a more holding, lower intensity formation to try and wear out the opposition before switching it to a higher intensity formation later in the game. 

[WeePaul]

17 hours ago, CRTB said:

Bad analogy, my car gauge tells me exactly how many miles I've got left in the tank. Almost all do these days.

Also, Messi dribbling might be 20 but is that discernible from a player with 19? Especially when propensity to dribble is further governed by flair and ability to do so moderated by technique, balance and agility.

So without looking Messi or some other player might well be Dribbling 20, Agility 20, Flair 20, Balance 20 but could you as a player or a manager really tell them apart from a player with one 19 somewhere in there?! Especially when this is all just opinion, there's no way to actually "measure" dribbling. Yet we've got all that to help us pick the best player, but when it comes to whether that player is fit to start a match, despite all the technology that top clubs have to accurately monitor fitness and condition, we get LIGHT GREEN HEART. 

Ive noticed the issue. You think the heart is the sole arbitrator in deciding whether a player is fit to start. There's more info there and it isn't even difficult to obtain. 

Oh, and tour car gauge absolutely does not tell you exactly how many miles you have left. It gives you a number. That number is not reliable. 

[kiwityke]

I don't find it that hard to still rotate. The day before the match when the assman sends me his XI he thinks we should be using I go and look at the hearts.

If a day before the match you have anything less than a full green heart, I treat that player as being not fully fit and potentially rotate them if possible.

I do this because by match day nearly everyone has full green hearts again.

I don't get why people are so upset about the change. The current system seems way more realistic than the old one of someone being 77% fit etc.