A Basic Approach To Team Talk

Last years Communication & Psychological Warfare Ebook revolutionized the way I perceived player interaction in FM. Sadly, the publishers and developers of the game failed to see the positives of this publication, mainly because you had to pay for it, but that's another story that I will no doubt get into in detail later on.
Since I'm a chart and graph fanatic I created a team talk chart based on the information in Communication & Pshychological Warfare and the FM Britain forum.

Team Talks

Pre-Match

Team Talk	Pre-requisites
Tell the players they can win this game	Home games where you are favourite Favourable odds away where you feel a win is realistic
Wish the team luck ahead of the game	Home or away games where the odds are clearly against you
Tell the players you expect them to win the match	Clear favourites with a very determined, ambitous and professional squad
For the fans	Against fierce rivals Cup finals Always add individual instructions
No pressure	Facing certain defeat Combine with encouraging team talks to key players

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Half-Time

Team Talk	Pre-reguisites
Show your anger/Expect nothing else than a win	Behind or drawing a game you should clearly win Make tactical changes Bring on new players Add individual team talks Don't use too often
Dissapointed/I want to see more from you	Behind in a game you want to do better in, but not necessarily get a resounding win Players are putting in an average performance and need to improve For ambitious squads where you are drawing or only leading by one
You can win today	Use this route if angry/disappointed is too harsh Useful if holding onto a draw away without being favourite If your team has too low morale for angry/disappointed
Sympathize	If you are unlucky to be behind in spite of good performance
Pleased	To sustain 2+ goal lead against a good opponent To keep morale up when playing well after poor performances Unprofessional and inconsistent players may see this as an excuse to stop trying
Show encouragement to the team	If leading closely against strong opponents
Don't let your performance drop	Leading closely, in control and dominating but has to stay focused When expecting committed opposition in the first half
Pleased at the performance	If you dominate the game but need a bit of luck to score
Thrilled	3+ goal lead at home 2+ goal lead away Leading against very strong opponent When squad is clearly performing above themself
For the fans	Same as pre-match
Enjoy the rest of the game/the pressure is off	Friendlies Nothing left to win Clearly behind against clearly better opponent

Post-Match

Team Talk	Pre-Requisites
Show your anger	May work once or twice if doing well in the league Can cause bad dressing room atmosphere
Disappointed	Often a better choice than showing anger Give individual praise
Don't say a word	Can be used instead of anger with poor squad morale Useful with big team with unremarkable performance
Warn against complacency	After narrow wins With a series of narrow wins that you used to win easily
Sympathise/good effort	When unlucky not to get a result
Pleased	They have done what you asked for and possibly more
Delighted	Convincing performance
Fantastic	Always use if available
Why can't you play like this every week	Good for a good team on a bad run Bad for small team with a lucky result

This worked fairly well in FM 2010 and should work reasonably well in FM 2011.

Simplifying things in a simple chart isn't always enough though. A lot depends on the players personality, morale etc. Any method you see published on the Internet should be regarded as a guideline and it is always a good idea to test it and possibly improve upon it.

Applying Sabermetrics To Football Manager

Ever since FSG took the reins at Liverpool sabermetrics has been a hot topic in football. Even though I suspect it will be a great deal harder to apply to football than it is to baseball I suppose with the right analytical system and data it can be done. I suggest you read the wiki article I linked to if you don't know what sabermetrics is about. In short it is about finding undervalued players based on statistical analysis.

Fortunately FM is a data driven game. As FM players we have a lot more data readily available to us than managers do in real life. So, it's very possible that this approach can be used in FM.

What stat has the most to say about a players impact on a game?

I think it's obvious that the players match rating has a big impact. However, there's bound to be more to it than that.

First of all, you can't just go by the players average rating. Why not? Well, if he has only played one game and received a rating of 10 then you can't be sure this player will be a good investment. So, the average rating is more accurate if it is based on 40 games than if it is based on 5 games.

Does that mean all players with a high average rating and a high number of games played is a good buy. If you were managing Manchester United would you buy a Blue Square North player with an average rating of 8.5? Most likely the answer is no. The league has to be factored in as well. In Football Manager every league is assigned a reputation, beware that this reputation may change over time, the link discloses each leagues starting reputation as of 2009.

I'm not a huge fan of using editor data so what about using the leagues co-efficient? The advantage is that you can see the changes over time, but it doesn't say anything about the different tiers in each league.

Fortunately a bit of research, clicking around in the game, I found the screen I needed.

It even shows a star rating of each league. So that information is also readily available.

At this point the factors we will consider are average rating, appearances and league reputation. Appearances could be a problem though. Someone playing 55 matches a season would get an unfair advantage over someone having played 50 matches. And I think we would all agree that both players have reached a point where their average rating has reached a point where you can count on it. I would say that after 30 matches the average rating has reached its level. It is also a point where I would consider the player to have made a full contribution to the team that season.

This brings up another point. The player probably shouldn't be judged on his current season. You won't get the full picture before the season is over. And what about players in leagues you are not playing in? They won't play as many games.

The formula I'm going to use to evaluate players at this point is Average Rating*Appearances(max. 30)*League reputation.

There are still a ton of open questions and issues, but I think I'll save those for other blog posts. (That means I haven't sorted them out yet)

Finally Revealed - The Anatomy Of World Class Players In Football Manager!

Bold headlines rock, and it got your attention didn't it? Anyway, today I decided I would try to find out what attributes most world class players share in FM. To do that I did a player search and sorted the players by value. Then I created an Excel sheet and recorded every attribute over 15 for every player valued higher than £10 million.

Took me about an hour so hopefully you'll get a kick out of it. Here are the final graphs.

Technical Attributes:

Mental Attributes:

Physical Attributes:

You probably have to click on the images to get a good view, but let's go through them for a minute.

From the technical group First Touch and Technique are by far the most interesting attributes. They are the only attributes with a rank above 25. Dribbling is pretty high as well, but not as high as those two. It seems Technique and First Touch indicate the classiness (not sure that's an actual word) of a player. Many of the other attributes are important to specific positions and therefore don't appear as often.

Mentally the game prefers players who works hard and reads the game well. This is indicated by the fact that Anticipation, Determination, Off The Ball and Work Rate appear more than 25 times in this little experiment. Determination seems particularly important being the only attribute that appears more than 35 times!

Physically Stamina is the key to success. The player needs to be able to last all game to become a truly world class player. No other physical attribute appear more than 25 times.

Going by this limited study you should be looking for players with high First Touch, Technique, Anticipation, Determination, Off The Ball, Work Rate and Stamina. In addition it seems it would be a good idea to look for position specific attributes as well.

That's it for today, hope you find it useful.

FM Log 08-03-2011 - New Beginnings

Yesterday a new career was initiated. My challenge is a team called FC Svendborg located in Denmark.

The team is playing in the Danish Second Division West and is expected to finish in the top half. The wage budget is £500/week and the transfer budget is £0.

Playing in Denmark is a special kind of beast as there is a 3-4 month break running from the latter part of November to the early parts of March. This break is longer than the seasonal summer break and if the team has been doing poorly 3 months is a long time.

The goal is to win the Danish Premier Division (Superligaen) within 10 seasons! And then? Move abroad!

First look of the squad tells me they are a decent lot. Not spectacular, but not horrible either (considering the division). This is good news as there isn't much chance of improving the quad given that we are nearly $1k over the wage budget and have no transfer budget. We look a bit weaker than I like in midfield so some loans might be needed.

I'm looking to focus on defense and will be playing a counter attacking strategy. The formation will depend on the opposition, but a 4-5-1, a 3-3-2-1-1 and a 3-3-2-2 have been defined on the match preparation screen. This should allow us to exploit most formations (kudos to Kenny for showing me how to use 3 at the back :-)).

Friendlies are coming up and tomorrow I'll tell you all about the first steps towards world conquest.