The Sweeper - A Rare Breed

In the analysis of different positions in Football Manager we will now discuss the sweeper. The sweeper is so rare that I didn't feel I could reach a set of 100 players. To ensure that each player has at least some quality I have only included players worth at least £1.000.000. That leaves me with a set of just 24 players using my evaluation save which includes all the biggest European leagues and the Brazilian and Argentinean league. So, I can't really say that the data presented in this post can be considered conclusive in any way. However, there are some strong tendencies it might be worth exploring should you decide to be adventurous enough to employ the good old sweeper.

Here we go.

The technical attributes expected of the sweeper are hardly surprising.

Heading, Marking and Tackling are by far the most important technical attributes for the sweeper. In other words, the sweeper needs sound defensive capabilities to perform his duties.

Mentally the pictured is slightly more varied.

Positioning is clealy the most important attribute for a sweeper followed by Determination. Bravery and Influence also seem to be highly desirable attributes for a sweeper. I suppose this is because the sweeper needs to stand his ground and ensure that his defensive compatriots does so as well.

The data doesn't allow us to make a conclusive guess about which physical attributes are important for the sweeper. In fact, looking at the chart below we might even say that physical attributes aren't important at all as far as the sweeper is concerned. A little bit of Balance probably wouldn't hurt though.

Of the attributes mentioned I would say that only Heading, Positioning and Determination can be considered must haves based on the data available. That's the weakness with analysing positions such as the sweeper. The data simply isn't sufficient, but hopefully you still get a decent starting point out of this.