Setting The Teamsheet

If you read last nights post about using 4-1-2-1-2 or 4-1-3-2 you realized that I obviously meant 4-4-2 or an entirely different formation right? Well, frankly it's a bit too soon to talk about specific formations for my Lota Schwager squad. Tomorrow the third position analysis post will be published. This time about central defenders. It would be foolish to decide on a formation without analysing all players in the squad the same way. Which leads me to to the topic of todays post. Selection policy.

The question is really simple. How can I decide on a formation without knowinig all the facts!

I obviously shouldn't, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the first who has made an attempt at that. And FM actually lends itself really well to making somewhat uninformed decisions. Here are a couple of selelction methods I have usded in the past.

Assistant Reports: Using the subjective opinion of my assistant manager to select the squad has been a proven initial selection method in my FM saves. When I say proven I don't necessarily mean proven to be succesfull! The main strength of using the assistant reports is that you can quickly get an overview of who you should select based on the number of stars assigned to each player. The weakness is that this star ranking is based entirely on the assistant managers opinion. This is fine if your assistant manager is good at judging a players ability, if he is not you will find yourself in a very bad place!

Average Rating: Selecting the players in each position with the highest average ratinig ensures you get the player who has performed best throughout the season on the pitch. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if he is on poor form or has low morale at the time you might not be making the best choice. It also says very little about his capability to play a specific role against a specific opponent, however, this can be said about most of the selection methods I use.

Form: This is a good way to get players who are currently performing well on the pitch. It also ensures some rotation in the squad. It's a selection method I use on a regular basis, or at least factor into my overall selection method.

Elaborate Excel Sheet: On this one I will ALWAYS be guilty as charged. I love Excel, and it's gotten to the stage where I can't play Football Manager without using some kind of Excel sheet concocted by yours truly. The main weakness is the time it takes to create these, but if you love Excel this will just add to the exitement.

Careful Analysis Of Opposing Team And Your Own Team: YAAAAWN! This is exactly as time consuming as it sounds, it is definitely even more time consuming than the Excel spreadsheet. There is a big problem though. This is what you SHOULD do! It's definitely not a method suited for the casual gamer, but it works! A less elaborate method is to take some time to set the opposition instructions properly. That maybe a topic for another post :-)

The point is team selection is actually rather tricky. Everybody will work out their own system. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't. I have used 4 of the above 5 systems in the past (no prize for guessing which!) with varying degrees of succes. When I'm done analysing possitions I'll probably create a spreadsheet for the purpose of analysing players, maybe I'll make it available to you.