Before I start let me say that this is meant to be a rough guide towards a general understanding of the more important basic principles of how players function ingame. Some aspects will be handled in depth, some will be left out for space when deemed less important to a general understanding of how players work, and all aspects will be subject unfortunately to the extent of my own personal knowledge of the game. Hopefully the majority of information in this guide will be reasonably accurate but some information may be purely my interpretation and quite badly wrong. If this is the case then please assist me by pointing out this information and offering a clear explanation of the error and the fact of the matter.
I also wish to thank FMScoutGenie for their utility as I will be using screenshots of that programme to explain the function of players.
Overview
Players are quite obviously key to this game but it is apparent to me from my time discussing FM online that some FM users do not understand quite how key players are to this game. When it comes to match day the Manager is quite simply at the mercy of 22 players with their own abilities and personalities attempting to carry out some basic instructions. For all the discussion you get on tactics and teamtalks and training around these forums, at the end of the day everything a Manager can do is little more than pushes and prods and pulls on players in the attempt to mould them into a football team and better players. Hugely complicated and highly successful tactics are still only an excellent arrangement of players on the pitch with well thought out suggestions or demands for certain key actions. You don’t get to choose how a player reads a game or how he interpretes a situation or how good he is at making choices or how good he is at executing moves, you only get to decide their shape and position while emphasising a preference for a few key actions.
While it is true that the actions and tactical behaviour you get to instruct a player in leads to a hugely engrossing tactical game and allows for an amazing degree of simulation of real life, it still all boils down to the players you have on the pitch and how they are performing. With FM10 and the Tactics Creator and On-The-Fly tactical changes and Touchline Shouts and Motivation widgets and Teamtalks and all the other great additions to FM in recent years you can now play football management in a far more realistic fashion. In FM10 you can issue a couple of shouts at your players to bombard Nervous Centrebacks from range, to whip passes from flank to flank past tired and slow midfielders, to tighten up and restrict chances for opponent strikers that are Fired Up! because you have just nicked a one goal lead. FM10 extends the entireally player based gameplay to new levels. In previous games you could create and exploit tactics based on players technical and physical ability and intelligence and tactical match strategy. In FM10 you can create and exploit tactics based on player Confidence and Personality, player condition and the time on the clock with consumate ease.
The only assurance of failure in FM10 is failing to understand your players. If you understand your players then no matter how bad you are at the game you will learn and improve. If you do not understand your players then no matter how brilliant your tactics or training or teamtalks or anything else appears, you will always be stuck in a position of ignorance, unable to improve and unable to ever really play the game. It does not matter if you edit yourself into a position of absolute supremacy at game start, if you cannot manage your players you will grind yourself into the dirt and you will fail at this game, because this is Football Manager.
Players
Every player in the game is a vibrant, unique, complex, evolving character. Each player has a huge array of individual footballing abilities and a complex individual personality. They can grow, evolve and decline. They are subject to wide ranging external views on their quality. They each experience a season differently, react to the rigours of footballing life differently, relate to the dressing room or the pitch or the opponent in their own way, and they each view yourself the manager in a different light. Football Manager has one of the deepest “NPC” character systems you will find in any game, because ultimately that is what football is all about. As Football fans both the buyer and developer of FM may not see the game as having such a huge and deep “NPC” character system because of the focus on Football, but that is exactly what this game is all about. FM is like the The Sims where each character is 100x more complex and there are 10x or 20x or 30x more characters to deal with, with the added caveat that at the end of the week you must go out and get a result on the pitch.
That said, each player is still a set of values for a set of variables that functions ingame to produce behaviour. FM is still a computer game and even the most complex of computer game characters must still behave entireally rationally and logically, even if there is some random number values chucked into equations here and there. That means that players will react in entireally understandable ways if not entireally predictable ways. This is something a great deal of FM users do not understand. Everything in the game can be understood but not always predicted. Combine this to the above point that ingame actions and events depend on player reactions and not tactical or choice absolutes, combined again to the quantity of information being processed and the quantity of calculations being made, and you have a situation where unpredictable yet understandable players are carrying out vast numbers of individual actions according to their own specific attributes, while the manager simply gets to influence these events.
The vast complexity of the characters in the game is it’s greatest strength, yet a weakness. Many players simply refuse to acknowledge that their tactical instructions are dependant on the interaction of multiple player attributes rather than being some kind of absolute rule. I remember several discussion last year on precisely this issue. Tactics were broken in FM09 like all other FM and CM games simply because players behaved like imperfect individuals. This is not evidence of broken mechanics but of high quality simulation of reality. Unfortunately the level of documentation, review and general analysis of the game available for users either omits this information or is ignorant of it.
This leads to the situation where many players of FM simply do not know what is going on, what to expect, or how the game actually functions. This in turn leads to the same few questions being posted on a regular basis in these forums and forums like these. Before you can manage a football team effectively you must understand a football team effectively, but if you come to this game expecting a battle of set piece tactics and vast quantities of micro-management instead of coming to this game expecting a challenge of observation, deduction, analysis and subtle influence, how can you possibly be happy with, succeed with or enjoy what you play?
When you understand that FM10 is simulating the careers of hundreds of thousands of people involved in Football and you are but one manager, albeit with a more powerful mind, then not only will you switch to 2-D replays and ditch your plans to buy the latest NVidia card and buy a more powerful CPU for faster game processing because you realise have now entered the realm of deep strategy gaming, you will understand that the game is about characters and your role is to manage characters. Your job is not to construct to deeply powerful theoretical formations designed to annihilate the opponent in an abstract context. Your job is to interact with the characters around you so that they do the job you want.
Nothing is more important in FM than understanding this point. Your job is to get your players to do the job. You can’t build up your stamina to play as Sweeper and Defensive Midfielder and Attacking Midfielder and Striker for 70 minutes, or refuse to shoot from range on your weak foot while you chip a lofted throughball with your strong foot on the inswing to your advancing inside forward like you can in Pro Evolution Soccer. You can’t expect your players to behave like Chess pieces, moving here and there and having such and such an impact on every match without fail and with unchanging effect.
Your job is to observe and make decisions accordingly. Your job is to observe what is happening around you and then influence the players at your disposal to get a result. Once you understand what everything does then the game of FM is 90% observation. The remaining 10% is luck. I pulled that one from thin air but you get the point.
Profile In General
The point of this thread is to explain how players work, and to explain that how players work is how the game works. Everything you do is geared towards influencing players, and it is players that step out onto the pitch and carry out your instructions. You might spend 75% of your time in FM designing tactics but it is your players that carry them out and all you really do is prepare them, set them up and influence them.
The players profile screens are therefore by far and away the most important screens you will ever see in FM. Those FM users that take one look at a players profile and then spend the rest of their careers designing tactics and scouring Transfer markets for recognisable names should be ashamed, but their results in FM will no doubt reflect this level of management ability.
The most important screens will look something like this:
What you wont see is a profile looking like this:
As you can see from first glance players are are a lot more complicated than the game lets on from the general player profile. The second screenshot displays perhaps far more information that most Managers would like to know in absolute detail for gameplay purposes, hence why I choose the 34 year old Paul Scholes, a player everyone will know but a player that will not last long in many FM10 games. The purpose of showing the second screenshot is to show that that what managers cannot see easilly is vast, and to show that what happens ingame is far more complex and far more detailed than one might imagine.
Simply being aware of that information is not useful if you do not understand it’s function. Likewise being ignorant of that information is not useful as it can lead users to believe in cheats, gimmicks or broken mechanics. My purpose is not to do anything other than make users aware of the level of detail that does exist and make users aware of how it contributes to the function of players. My purpose is to explain the basic function of players, how players work, and to leave the rest up to the intelligence of the manager. I did not produce a game that leads multiple users to question the function of Teamtalks ceaselessly, to question the function of player development ceaselessly, to consider media comments as frustrating and useless, nor indeed to question how it is that players thrive or collapse under certain environments. However these questions can never be fully answered or the answers fully understood without being aware that Personality, Fitness, Ability and key aspects of Match Performance are as detailed and complex as any on-pitch event calculation. The game does a good job of providing enough information to realise that there is more under the surface of players than is first expected, but I have found that many people fail to take the time to even consider that possibility as they play and subsequently rant or complain about FM.
In the first screenshot we can see Paul Scholes’ Technical, Mental and Physical Attributes. We can see his Condition, his Career Description, his Personality, his Reputation and his Media Handling style. In the second screenshot we can see his Technical, Mental, Physical Attributes, but this time we can also see his Hidden Attributes, his Ability, his Reputation, his Mental Traits, and his Condition Details.
The second screenshot explains in detail the factors that contribute towards the information in the first screenshot. The playing attribute categories remain the same but everything else from reputation to personality to condition details are vastly expanded, meaning that ingame in FM10 you get to see a players on-pitch ability in an instant, but you are left to guess and figure out the details of this character as an individual personality, a personality that obviously has huge implications for this players behaviour. All of this information in my opinion is ideally hidden, for example Important Matches and Consistency are ideally hidden from the direct knowledge by the manager, but that does not mean that users should be ignorant of the existence of these variables and that is a key point. I do not wish to know the Consistency and Important Match attributes of my players, but I do wish to know that they matter and play a role.
All of this “Hidden Information” that is revealed in the second screenshot exists ingame, functions ingame and can be found ingame but it can never be found in detail nor depth. A players Ability, his CA and his PA, can be found in coach or scout reports but it is always rated according to other players in your squad and is always subject to the interpretation of your coaches and scouts. The attributes in the category “Hidden Attributes” are rarely shown unless particularly good or particularly bad and if they are displayed ingame you will find a rough description of one of these extremes in coach/scout reports. The category Mental Traits contain the attributes that construct a players personality. This information can be more easilly found in a players Personal screen, but is likewise a general overview of all attributes and does not go into detail.
To discover this information in detail you can do several things. Pay close attention to your player in all aspects of his behaviour and reactions, download a scout editor and “cheat” or look up the relevant guides in these forums that contain detailed breakdowns of personality types into contributing attributes. It is more than possible to play this game without knowing the details of these attributes, and in my opinion it is far more enjoyable. However it is incredibly hard to play the game if you are completely ignorant of their function let alone their existence, and especially if you do not know to look out for them in the first place.
Profile Breakdown
Using my exceptional paint skills I have broken up the profile screen into colour coded areas of relevance. The three playing Categories are in green, the player details category at the bottom is white and the 4 other Ability, Trait, Hidden Attribute and Reputation categories are in yellow, blue, purple and red respectively. Personal details is left uncoded as it is of limited real function other than the Age variable. Unfortunately my paint skills leave with me a rather limited choice of colours so the definition and contrast between some categories is rather poor.
In the profile we can see 6 distinct colours for 8 different groups of attributes or other important details. Technical, Mental and Physical attributes function almost identically and function only when a player is on the pitch for the most part. They are therefore grouped together. Each of these distinct categories functions in a particular way and has a particular role and relevance to a players behaviour or other issues regarding the player. Each is generally quite simple in it’s own function but each also related to each other and this relationship can become quite complex. Ultimately these distinctions between groups and colours represent only particular details of particular aspects they do not in anyway represent isolation or independence, and ultimately the complex relationships between all groups produce a player for whom personality is closely tied to ability, reputation and the further evolution of all groups.
Yellow – Ability Category
I wish to start with this panel first as it is something of a hinge around which player attributes and player ability and player development and player personality evolves. Every player has a Current level of Ability and a Potential level of Ability known from here on in as CA and PA. CA effectively describes a quantity of ability points a player currently has while PA describes the maximum quantity of ability points a player can ever obtain. Ability points only exist in Ability Attributes which is the Green group of Attributes and CA is an indicator of the overall quantity of Ability Points existing in those attributes. Those familiar with Roleplaying Games or other character based games can perhaps see a relationship to Experience points and this is not inaccurate. The Ability screen shows the current quantity of ability points existing within a characters abilities, and the maximum quantity he can reach.
A players Ability will fluctuate constantly throughout a season and will increase, peak and then decline as he ages. This however is not a property of CA and PA themselves, for the game is not that simple. CA and PA are merely indicators of current ability levels and maximum potential ability levels. The change of CA and improvement or decline of Ability Attributes is a property of Ability Attributes themselves.
Green – Technical, Mental and Physical Ability Attributes
Those attributes coded in green are a players Ability Attributes that control his abilities on the pitch, and as you might expect are closely related to the Yellow Ability group. Infact the Green and Yellow groups are much the same as each other. The quantity of points in the Green Ability Attribute group is reflected in the size of a players Current Ability in his Yellow Ability group and vice versa. There is no real distinction between the two but the information is displayed as seperate for means of showing scout/coach reports and providing a general understanding of a players general level of ability combined to showing that information in detail as the size of individual Ability attributes.
For the ability attributes themselves, they are both constantly evolving and expansive in their scope. There are multiple attributes for Technical, Mental and Physical areas of the game and events and actions on the football pitch will involve calculations making use of large numbers of these attributes. Clearly the higher an attribute is the better a player is at that particular aspect of the game but again the game is not so simple as to calculate one event using one single attribute. Something as basic as a longshot might combine the Flair, Decisions, and Anticipation mental attributes for choice of shot type and choice of goal area aimed at while Composure and Technique defines the quality of the connection and the execution of the shot type, leaving only the Longshots attribute to define the initial accuracy. In this example a swerving Beckham style 30 yarder from a player with low Longshots but high mental and technical attributes may still find itself whipping and dipping past the keeper because although the initial accuracy was poor the player hitting the shot aimed at towards the right post knowing it would curve violently and quickly towards the bottom left corner, while his composure and technique ensured a perfect connection and a Ronaldo or Beckham esque movement of the ball in the air.
I don’t think the coding exists to calculate that specific type of shot event but all FM users that regularly watch full match replays will know themselves the difference between a Technique shot or a Finishing/Longshot shot, or a high Flair shot or a low Flair shot, because you can see the impact of these attributes ingame. Likewise most seasoned fullmatch replay FM players will understand that a Forward Run is largely dependant upon Off-The-Ball and Anticipation for finding space and timing a run, but they will understand the difference in action, event and result that comes from a player with low Anticipation and high Off The Ball versus high Anticipation and low Off The Ball which quite obviously boils down the subtlety of run timing, space exploitation and preperation to receive the ball. It is not complete events, complete actions and entire moves that are determined by individual attributes, it is components of actions, moves and events that are determined by attributes. How well a player controls a pass will be determined not just by his First Touch but by his Anticipation, Composure, Technique, Decisions, Flair and if that Controlling of the Ball is an instant run or turn or dribble then many other attributes will also be involved in what may seem to be a basic and simple event.
Explaining how Ability Attributes work on the pitch is not explaining how Ability Attributes work as details of a player. Ability Attributes contribute their values to complex calculations involving multiple attributes and other factors that determine the outcome of a match event, but how Ability Attributes actually work themselves is a different story.
The best way to explain how Ability Attributes work is to explain them as giant CA fans, pulling in CA or expelling CA. Each attribute is an individual fan with an individual speed but these fans and their speeds are grouped together into categories while also being modified by preferred position and player age. The Ability Attribute Categories exist because each individual category reacts differently to Age. The Physical Category pulls in CA at it’s maximum rate when a player is young, ever increasingly slowing down as a player ages untill the point where a player gets old enough for the CA fan of Physical Attributes to start expelling CA. The Mental Category is the opposite, pulling in CA slowly when a player is young and increasing it’s rate of pulling in of CA as a player gets olders.
This pulling in or expelling of CA is a natural feature of Ability Attribute Categories, however the rate at which individual attributes pull in or expel CA is modified by a players Preferred Positions, his Personality, his Match Experience and his Training Regime. I will leave Personality and Match Experience for the relevant time, but a players Preferred Position acts as a basic modifier of rate.
Here is a table explaining the different modifiers for different attributes for different positions.
Originally Posted by Surferosa 
Att/ Posn GK DR/L WBR/L SW DC DMC MC AMC MR/L AMR/L ST Training category Acceleration 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 Aerobic Agility 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Aerobic Balance 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Aerobic Inj Prone 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Jumping 1 2 1 3 4 1 1 1 1 1 4 Aerobic Natural Fitness 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Strength Pace 2 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 Aerobic Stamina 1 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 Strength Strength 3 3 2 3 4 3 3 3 2 2 4 Strength Corners 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Set pieces Crossing 0 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 4 4 2 Set pieces Dribbling 0 1 2 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 3 Ball control Finishing 0 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 2 2 4 Shooting First touch 1 2 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 4 Ball control Free kicks 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Set pieces Heading 1 2 1 2 4 1 1 1 1 1 4 Ball control Long shots 0 1 1 1 1 3 3 3 2 2 2 Shooting Long throws 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Set pieces Marking 0 3 2 2 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 Defending Passing 1 2 3 3 2 4 4 4 3 2 2 Attacking Penalties 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Set pieces Tackling 0 4 3 2 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 Defending Technique 1 2 3 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 Ball control Versatility 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Aggression 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Anticipation 2 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Tactics Bravery 4 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 Composure 2 2 2 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 Shooting Concentration 4 4 3 4 4 3 2 2 2 2 2 Defending Consistency 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Decisions 4 4 3 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 Tactics Dirtiness 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Flair 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Ball control Imp Matches 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Iinfluence 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 Off the ball 0 1 2 1 1 1 2 3 2 2 4 Tactics Positioning 4 4 3 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 2 Tactics Teamwork 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 Tactics Creativity 1 2 2 2 1 3 4 4 3 3 2 Attacking Workrate 1 2 2 1 2 4 3 3 3 3 2 Strength Aerial ability 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Goalkeeping Command of area 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Tactics Communication 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Tactics Eccentricity 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Handling 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Goalkeeping Kicking 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Goalkeeping One on ones 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Goalkeeping Reflexes 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Aerobic Rushing out 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Tactics Tend to punch 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Throwing 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Goalkeeping
While Age determines whether a particular Category is pulling in CA or expelling CA and how quickly each Category is pulling/expelling CA, the table above shows how different Natural positions for each player modify how quickly each individual Attributes CA fan is pulling/expelling. A young striker whose Physical Attribute CA fan is pulling in CA should rocket up in Acceleration compared to Agility as his Position contributes a 6x modifier for Acceleration and a 3x modifier for Agility. His Acceleration should go up twice as fast as his Agility through Natural development. Ofcourse when he gets older his Acceleration should be dropping twice as fast as his Agility and because his Physical Attribute fan switches from pull to expell earliest you will start fighting this Physical Attribute drop battle at a much earlier stage.
Training can, according to my understanding, contribute as little as 0% change in rate of CA gain/loss up to as much as 30% to 50% difference. I personaly consider the 0% to 30% mark of change in CA gain/loss for Training to be the most likely value, meaning that no Training contributes 0% impact while maximum Training contributes a 30% impact. Over a long period of time you can do a lot of good work in Training to build great players but you cannot reverse the process of Aging nor negate the variation in modifiers for Natural Position. You can build up plenty of Stamina for players when they are young to allow them to keep playing for many more years that other players but only because you are stockpiling Stamina early knowing it will start expelling CA early and knowing how important it is to keep producing CA.
Red – Reputation Category
The above was complicated stuff and I am sure a few people will disagree with my interpretation of how Ability attributes work. Unfortunately things are only to get more complicated but before I explore areas of even more complication I am going to take the time out to explain something that is quite simple yet is very important to understand for me to explain the next areas of complexity. I wish to apologise if my previous points lacked clarity and confused people for it was necessary to make those points in order to be able to provide a complete overview of how players work. The subsequent information I provide should help to make things much clearer, but before then you can all sit back and relax and let me explain Reputation to you.
The Reputation Category is a way of defining how “great” or “important” or “well known” or “impressive” a player is. It is a 4 digit number assigned to players, clubs, staff, leagues, competitions, etc. and it is used simply to define how one player, club, manager, staff, league, competition etc. reacts to another. In game terms it is an easy way of deciding how one character deals with other characters, in football simulation terms it is a good approximation of world media bias. Players that score lots of goals while winning lots of competitions simply get more headlines and look better than players that keep cleansheets while being knocked out of competitions by flukes.
Reputation is gained by doing things that catch the eye, like scoring goals and winning titles. Reputation is used to define how powerful and important a player or club or other entity looks. The difference between the Reputation of two Clubs is what is used to define match odds and it also defines how each club approaches the game. The higher one clubs reputation is versus another the more defensive one club will play while the other plays more attacking. The higher the Reputation of a player the more his Transfer fee becomes, the more managers want to buy him and the more money he wants for himself.
Reputation is how the game world deals with image, power, importance, value, quality. It is one of the biggest flaws in match tactics between teams yet at the same time it is incredibly difficult to design a better system. A decent human manager will ignore reputation and build tactics on details but the AI cannot because it views the game in terms of reputation. Like I said this a weakness but it is hard to imagine designing a better system unless you are one of those customers that simply closes their eyes to the practical reality of coding Artificial Intelligence. Sometimes the deepest games must take what the customer considers a shortcut, because they are quite simply not in the position where they are financed by Governments to employ cutting edge geniuses to build computerised brains.
Reputation in FM10 is AI perception. That is what it means, and that is how it works. It is important to a player for many reasons. It determines how other AI entities view him, it determines how he views himself, it determines how he views other players, it determines how he views other clubs, but it also determines the degree of difficulty he is playing at, the level of opposition the game thinks he is playing against, and how well the game thinks he has done.
Reputation does not just define how characters view each other but it defines how the game itself views a challenge. This is important for a player because the level of challenge the game thinks exists determines how well the game thinks he has done and this has repercussions not only for his value but also for his ability and personality and his reaction to events.
Purple – Hidden Attributes Category
This is another quite simple and quite vital area of a players profile. The attributes here all determine certain key aspects of a players general behaviour and character on the football pitch. These are attributes that are best kept hidden in my opinion so a manager must figure out through scouting or watching players what they are like on the pitch, but again in my opinion these are attributes that everyone should know exists.
The attributes are pretty self explanatory. Consistency determines how often a player will play at his level of CA and actually works out of 25 games, so a maximum score of 20 means a player will play to his level of CA 20 games out of 25. When a player is not playing to his level of CA, the average level of reduction is 10 CA points but this an average and players can be slightly off-form or extremely off-form depending on your luck. Very inconsistent players will therefore not only usually play below their ability but will play erratically and the level they play at will vary enormously. Dirtiness is an indicator of how a player will use any means necessary to win challenges and how often they will foul players when they cannot win a challenge fairly. Extremely dirty defenders will take out wingers or strikers when they are turned or beaten for speed or beaten in the air, dirty midfielders will rush into tackles and physically harrass players for the ball even when it is shielded and so on. Dirtiness is a funny old attribute for it obviously encourages plenty of cards and fouls but it also provides an immense level of solidity in players. Dirty defenders are brick walls that will not let opponents past even when beaten fairly. The Important Match Attribute is another powerful attribute that works very well with Consistency. This is the “game raiser” or “Cup Team” attribute and it defines how well players approach and perform in big games.
The relationship between Consistency and Important Matches is worth going into in more detail. If you are looking to perform well across a League season and perform with expected levels then the Consistency attributes of your players will play a big part in achieving the kind of performances that you expect your players to be capable of. Important Matches works to raise the game of your players in Cup Ties or Rivals Games or other key high tension matches. Manchester United and Liverpool are great examples of the huge importance of these attributes. You might expect Manchester United to put in a better challenge for the league title but might fancy Liverpool in the European Cup Final. Otherwise inconsistent players and inconsistent teams can become hugely dangerous players and hugely powerful cup teams because of the existence of these attributes. Pay close attention to them because if key players lack consistency you will struggle in the League and if key players lack high Important Matches you will struggle in Cup Finals or Rivals Games.
Versatility is an indicator of how quickly a player can become experienced in new positions. The lower this attribute, the longer it will take in terms of Training and Match Practice in those positions for players to become successful at them. Playing players out of position carries a penalty of reduced positional and decision making abilities, so if you intend to play a player in an unfamiliar position regularly you want to retrain him in that position and if he lacks versatility you will be in for a tough time getting him up to the required standard.
White – Match Details Category
This is the next slightly complex and very important category. This particular category is an essential category not only for understanding how physically fit and how match practiced a player is, but also for defining CA gain through Match Experience.
In simple terms a player’s condition that can be found in his normal profile screen is a combination of his Physical Fitness and his Match Experience. The Fitness indicator in Profile Details in the normal profile screen is more of a description of important levels of either Match Experience or Physical Fitness. Rather than describing Match Experience or Fitness or a combination of both, it relays information on key important levels obtained by either. Information such as “Severely Lacks Match Fitness” means that a player has very low levels of Match Experience but says nothing about his physical condition. This information can be extrapolated by viewing a players overall Condition, so a high level of Overall Condition combined to “Severely Lacks Match Fitness” means a player has an excellent or maximum level of physical fitness. This is why players with 87% Condition for example can have the indicator “Needs Match Practice” as their Condition is a combination of their low Match Experience and high Physical Fitness. A player with 87% Overall Condition may therefore be physically fit enough to play a match.
The Manager does not get to view directly a players Match Experience, his Physical Fitness, his Jadedness or general Tiredness. The Manager can only view Overall Condition which is a combination of Match Experience and Physical Condition, and look out for priority messages in the Fitness Selection Details, such as “Tired” or “Lacking Match Fitness” or “Fully Fit” all of which indicate a level obtained for Match Experience, Physical Condition or Jadedness. To actually work out the specific details of Match Experience or Physical Fitness you will have to do a small quantity of problem solving, but generally the indicators require no further investigation and suffice to let a manager decide whether to play a player or not.
The complex aspect to this area of the profile is understanding that it is Match Experience that determines CA gain. It is this aspect of a players profile that controls the basic rate of CA gained by a player. If we continue the analogy of CA fans from the Green Ability Attribute Category description, where each Ability Attribute was a CA fan pulling in or expelling CA at different rates then Match Experience is a CA fan positioned opposite the Attribute Categories and the speed at which this CA fan is rotating determines how much CA is being blown towards the Ability Attribute Fans. The various speeds and directions of the Ability Attribute fans determines how much of this CA goes where into each attribute but it is the speed of the Match Experience fan that determines how much CA there is being blown towards these fans. You can imagine therefore that the Stamina Attribute Fan may be attempting to expell a large proportion of CA compared to other attributes that may be attempting to pull in a small proportion of CA, but if the Match Experience CA fan is blowing a gale and pounding these attribute fans with plenty of CA regularly then the actual drop to Stamina will be low. However should the Match Experience Fan cease to blow CA towards the Ability Attributes then the Stamina Attribute is going to expell a huge quantity of CA that will then be sucked in by for example all the Mental Attributes, or even potentially be lost completely. This is regular occurance during the Off-Season when players are not playing football. All their Match Experience Fans are set to Zero and it is rare to find a player returning to the club that has not experienced a small degree of CA loss because of this.
However there comes a time in every players career where contant max speed settings of the Match Experience Fan is simply not enough to combat the combined force of every Ability Attribute set to expell CA. When this occurs a player has reached a stage of inevitable decline, his CA will drop and he will eventually be forced to retire.
The speed setting to a players Match Experience Fan is modified by several factors. The first is the quantity of Match Experience which essentially controls whether a player is getting zero to maximum possible CA, and then we have other factors like Club Reputation and Player Personality which actively modify the quantity of CA being “blown”. While Maximum Match Experience means Maximum CA gain, these other factors of Club Reputation, Personality and the specific details of each players Ability Attribute CA fans control the exact quantity of CA being gained from each match and these differ from player to player.
Blue – Mental Traits Category
This particular category is perhaps the most powerful category in the game. This category of attributes, like Hidden Attributes, do not change according to CA and work completely differently to Ability Attributes. These attributes and a few attributes from the Ability Attributes such as Determination, Flair, Aggression, Bravery etc. are what I call “Personality Attributes” and define the kind of choices and kind of behaviour and kind of character every player is, beyond his Ability Attributes which constantly evolve and only define profficiency at actions on the pitch. These attributes are essentially the controlling attributes of your player, defining who he is and what he is like. They control the rate of CA gain through Match Experience, they control his behaviour on and off the pitch in reaction to a huge number of events, they control his wants and desires and wishes in response to his own view of his Reputation and others view of his Reputation, they control his relationship with his manager and coaching staff and teammates.
These attributes are fundamentally powerful and important but there has been little investigation into their exact function ingame. A few details are known about specific attributes but the overwhelming quantity of their function in detail when it comes to specific events is unknown. Most of these attributes play a large role in multiple key situations, none less important perhaps than Teamtalks, but I would be lying if I said I could explain each attributes complete role in defining reactions to teamtalks, match odds, opponent reputation and on-pitch events in factual and thorough detail.
Adaptability – as far as I know this is the key attribute in determining how well a player settles into a new environment, a new country, town, club or learning new languages. I am not sure where else it functions but it is unlikely to be confined to acting on these details alone.
Ambition – a pretty big attribute in terms of importance. It has it’s most obvious affect on where a player wants to play i.e. the size of the Reputation of the club he wants to play for. Think Ronaldo and Real Madrid. However this attribute also has a huge impact on the quantity of CA gained by playing matches, i.e. a high Ambition increases the maximum amount of CA being blown out by our Match Experience CA Fan. Ambition also has a role to play in reaction to teamtalks. Ambitious players want to make a name for themselves and so will often respond well to matches against tough opposition but are likely to become demotivated and complacent against “weaker” teams.
Controversy – players that speak to the media and offer their opinion or complaints or transfer requests in public will have high controversy. It is not necessarilly a bad thing to have a controversial player that is otherwise an excellent personality as they may rage about harsh penalties and get their own team motivated. Controversial players that are also Ambitious and even worse ambitious, unprofessional, disloyal and unsporting are likely to be a complete nightmare for squad harmony. I have seen some amusing examples of terrible teenage players being transferred to clubs they are barely good enough for and seeing them comment about how “they are going to bring real football to XYZ club” and how the player “wants the manager to build the team around him”. The guy could be Pele the second but if he destroys team harmony within seconds of signing a deal then he should be avoided like the plague.
Loyalty – speaks for itself. A great attribute to have in high levels, but it is not necessarilly a bad thing if a players loyalty is low and you are a top club. Just don’t expect a disloyal player to hang around if bigger fish start calling.
Pressure – another huge attribute when it comes to performances and tough matches. Players with a high Pressure attribute will thrive in tough games, will respond to high pressure teamtalks, will keep their heads in tough match conditions, and will rarely be found to be Nervous or lacking confidence even after the team a division above you have scored an early goal in the Cup Final. Players with low Pressure will often buckle under those conditions even if they are supposedly better players, so keep your eye out for them.
Professionalism – huge attribute. Possibly the single most important attribute in the game when considered in isolation. Professionalism is first of all the single most important attribute when it comes to the quantity of CA gained by playing matches, high professionalism is the single biggest modifier of the rate at which our Match Experience CA fan turns. Highly professional players will develop early and peak fast and have the longest careers as they simply do not decline anywhere near as quickly as the rest of the football world. Professionalism is also a key attribute in dressing room/club behaviour with players neither rocking the boat nor reacting adversely nor accepting undue, unfair or unprofessional behaviour. Professional players may take a dislike to rediculously egotistical kids spouting their mouths but they will not get upset, will not allow it to affect their performances, will not allow it affect other relationships without warrent. Professional players will never turn up late or go AWOL, they will react with motivation to comments from other managers. When it comes to match day the Professional player will rarely become overly motivated or undermotivated. They will rarely be complacent or Fired Up! They will rarely lose their heads and they will rarely react with extremes to your teamtalks. Unprofessional players are the opposite, easilly provoked to extremes, easy to wind up or demotivate, and something of a loose cannon when it comes to teamtalks and reactions to match events.
Sportsmanship – Not quite the same as the Dirtiness attribute which defines how willing a player is to commit a foul when a challenge has failed, this attribute is more about how willing a player is to win at all costs versus a player who wishes to play a good, fair match. Sporting players will put the ball out for a throw even if an opponent is timewasting while an unsporting player might carry on with the game when an opponent is in agony and dive to win a penalty. Unsporting players that are on the end of a defeat or are being outplayed may even end up losing their tempers and physically assaulting other players. It is one of those two way attributes, there are good and bad aspects to both high and low values.
Temperament – essentially controls how easy it is to wind a player up. Low Temperament players are likely to be easilly motivated to extreme levels through shouting abuse at them, but if they are also unsporting they may physically attack their opponents. Temperamental players are often useful for the manager who thrives on getting reactions from players but he must judge their tempers and his words carefully.
I am sure to have missed plenty out so I will reserve the next few posts for updates, amendments and further investigation of key issues. If you disagree or wish to add to what I have written here then by all means do so, but please attempt to provide thorough explanations and details where you can.
I hope this is of use to people and produces a good level of discussion. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
Creativity and Flair 
Posted on May 15, 2012
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