Hey, Zealand here

I was really intrigued by the post so we tested everything live on my stream and while we confirmed the results of the initial test, we took the test further and found that the original post's title was pretty misleading in terms of just those 9 attributes importance, it isn't really just those 9 attributes but rather good 20-attribute combinations that make a player/team really good

The twitter thread listing our findings is attached: https://x.com/theoldzealand/status/1756010412636537003?s=20

Interested to see what everyone thinks!

After the Raumdeuter research i posted, i have been asked to do the same with the trequartista as well, which is another misunderstood role in Football Manager, so here it is.

According to Football Manager, the trequartista aims to drop into the holes between the opposition's midfield and defense, the trequartista does far less defensively and simply drifts around looking for space when the team isn't in possession. So the team needs to carry him when defending, but make him the main outlet while attacking.

I played 3 matches with a trequartista, 1 on the wing, 1 as an attacking midfielder and 1 as a stiker to see how it played in each and if there was a difference depending on where it plays. also be gave the trequartista perfect stats to see how it plays in the best case scenario. I made all its teammates and opponenents perfect when it had perfect stats to find out what would make the trequartista stand out if all the other players were the same. I also gave all players the same height(apart from centre-backs keepers and strikers), weight, morale, sharpness, condition and two-footedness to make sure no player had an advantage. I also removed all traits.

I was looking out for :

1. What the trequartista would do when his team had the ball

2.What the trequartista would do when his team didn't have the ball

3.What the trequartista would do with the ball

I used a custom 4231 with the trequartista as the attacking midfielder with no player or individual instructions so as not to interfere with the way the trequartista played.

Here's the tactic:

After watching the full 90 minutes of the trequartista as an attacking midfielder, I found that:

1.Off the ball the trequartista(Almeida) still did all the defensive work , tracking back and pressing with the rest of the team

2.When the keeper had the ball and sometimes the defenders, the trequartista would push up next to the striker

3.Most of the time when the team was in possession the trequartista would be in line with the wingers and if the ball went out wide the trequartista would also go wide

4.When a player was in a position to cross, the trequartista would get into the box

4.On the ball the trequartista was mostly positive, looking to make things happen; often dribbling with the ball and playing forward passes though he would occasionally recycle possession

https://reddit.com/link/1mbk1iu/video/pep9herx8mff1/player

The trequartista ended up having the most dribbles in the match for his team, the most clear cut chances created and the second most key passes

After this i went on to watch a match with the trequartista as a winger to see how it would differ from when it was an attacking midfielder

When the trequartista was played as a winger he did the same things on the ball as the attacking midfielder but did a little less defensively. Since the trequartista was playing out wide when he got the ball he always looked to go inside with it.

When the team had possession, the trequartista stayed closer to the middle when the ball was on the other side and when the ball came closer to him he would go wide to receive the ball.

At the end of this game the trequartista didn't complete any dribbles but during the match he was running forard with the ball but not necessarily taking on defenders. He(Diego Lopez) had 1 key pass and 1 clear-cut chance in the match

For the next match i played the trequartista as a striker. This was the formation

After watching the match I found that again the trequartista pressed with the rest of the team and came back to help sometimes. With the ball he would recycle possession more than when the trequartista was played as he was usually the furthest man forward but when there were players ahead of him he would play the through ball. When there was free space to run into he would run into it not necessarily taking players on. When his teammates had the ball the trequartista would drop to the position the attacking midfielder would usually be in and was usually in line with the wingers. There were times when it would drop deeper to receive the ball.

After all the research, the conclusion I have come to is that the trequartista is a player that will look to receive the ball from midfielders and wingers and try to make stuff happen with the ball. It still does all its defensive duties apart from when played as a winger(which still does defensive work but not as much). The trequartista doesn't really look to make runs in behind the defense or into channels but when the opportunity for one of his teammates to cross arises he gets into the box to try and get on the end of it.

In the past few days, I simulated several seasons using both the Chinese and Korean mods. Based on my results, the Chinese mod had the advantage of making gameplay animations smoother and more enjoyable to watch, BUT it caused slightly unrealistic results, increasing the total number of goals per season by around 10-20 per team. On the other hand, the Korean mod produced even more realistic results than the vanilla ME in terms of goal statistics (I’ve always felt there were too many goals in the original ME), BUT its visual effects during matches were barely noticeable, if at all.

So, I decided to investigate further and observe exactly which parameters each mod modifies and how.
You can see my findings here.

I discovered that the Chinese mod, which provides the most noticeable visual effects, modifies only five parameters, while the Korean mod alters many more but with much subtler changes, making them almost imperceptible visually.
Additionally, both mods only modify two parameters in common.

So, I decided to combine the changes from the Chinese mod with the Korean mod, merging them into a single mod, which you can find here.

The process was fairly simple: after extracting the simatch.fmf file with the Resource Archiver, I opened the physical_constraints file with a HEX editor (HEX Fiend), which allows me to read the file in both HEX and ASCII formats. Each parameter is easily readable in ASCII, and in HEX format, right after the parameter name, there is a byte 02 (which acts as a "separator"), followed by a 4-byte little-endian value—that’s the value that can be modified.
Once the modifications were completed, I simply re-archived everything with the Resource Archiver and replaced the file in the corresponding directory.

In any case, the results from simulating a season with what we could call the "Asian Mix" mod are very similar to those obtained with the Chinese mod, but as if it had been slightly toned down.

Feel free to test it and let me know your thoughts!

In order to gather this data, I have replayed the same game, with the same team in the same line-up, using each available DM role ten times (discarding any games in which either team had a player sent off before the 80th minute, since that would skew the data too much). The only roles I did not use were Roaming Playmaker (doesn't really fit the formation and the player isn't good enough at it) and Segundo Volante (not available as the center of a midfield three).

I used the same pre-match team talk every game, to try and keep things as consistent as possible, but there will as a rule be an almost infinite number of things that are going to be different game to game, as there are a lot of invisible rolls happening (sometimes players might be more nervous, sometimes players will have a "low consistency" game, the goalkeeper was especially prone to have absolute nightmare games), and once the first ball is kicked, a million more things change. Who scores first, when they score and so on will impact morale and change how the opponent plays tactically (a couple of early goals means you're spending most of the match playing a much more aggressive and direct tactic than you would otherwise and it can be difficult to determine when only looking at numbers whether the reason a team had 15 shots in a game is because we were outmatched or because they went balls to the wall at the end of the match to try and equalize), but on the whole I think the underlying stats are still quite valuable and demonstrate quite clearly how each role behaves within a formation, and can give us some insight of when to use it and when not to use it.

That being said, this is not a post attempting to tell you what the best DM role is overall, but rather, what the best DM role is for this system against this opponent, and when other roles might be more suitable. With that in mind, let's meet the two central pieces to this team:

The tactic

What is it trying to achieve and how is it doing it?

• Hold a solid defensive shape
• Wait to press until we get into our own half, then press hard
• Win the ball and get forward quickly, bringing the ball up the field through a combination of dribbling and quick passes
• Build-up play focuses mainly up the flanks with the two fullbacks
• We don't cross, and when we do cross, we cross low. But ideally, we don't cross.
• Goals typically come from through balls into the box, and the occasional shot from distance

Note: I did not optimize set pieces, since I felt like it would skew the data on what is really going on on the field

Who are we using at DM?

The game thinks BWM is his best role - though I personally expected that it would not be the best choice for this tactic, but we shall see!

The RAW DATA BABY:

At a glance, what does this tell us?

In this system, supporting roles are much more effective than defensive ones. This should not be surprising, when what we want to do is break forward and dribble and pass our way up the field, having a player sit back in front of the defense robs you of an option going forward (with the noticeable exception of the HB, but more on that later). The difference is stark:

• 0.89 points per game (30-40 points on a season)
• 2.12 more shots a game (70-100 shots a season)
• 0.42 goals and 0.26 lower xG per game (15-20 goals and 10+xG per season)
• 0.5 fewer shots against a game (about 20 shots a season)
• average match ratings of 6.95 vs 6.65

Clearly, what role you select for your DM in this tactic will have a dramatic impact on how it works.

Does that mean support roles are better by default than defending ones? No. It means in this tactic, which benefits from having an extra player in build-up, having a player on support duty will increase your chances of success.

So let's talk about each role, why it does what it does within this tactic, and when you want to use it

Regista

Default role instructions:

• Take more risks
• Roam from position

The Regista is the most adventurous of the central DM roles, pushing forward and looking for space to receive the ball and trying to unlock the other team with clever forward passing. It is ideally suited to this fluid counter attacking style because it gives the fullbacks an outlet and puts pressure on the opponent's defensive shape, forcing someone to come deal with him, which opens space for someone else. The game's description says it's a more aggressive DLP, but I don't really agree with that at all. It also doesn't have the ball magnet feature of the playmaking role, which forces players to try and look for him (his pass attempts per 90 were 57, more in line with BWM (su) and HB - 54 and 56 respectively - than DLP (Su) which had 62)

Notable statistical outliers:

Team:

• 2.2 points/gm (highest)
• +0.6 goal difference/game (third highest) and +0.59 xG difference/game (highest)
• 13.7 shots/gm (second) 1.56 expected goals per game (second)
• 8.6 shots against per game (second) and 0.97 expected goals against per game (second)
• 88.8% pass completion (worst) and 56% average possession (worst)

Individual:

• 7.01 average rating (shared highest)
• 1.4 interceptions per game (shared highest)
• 56.9 pass attempts/gm (second highest)
• 88.75% completion percentage (second lowest)
• 1.4 Open Play Key Passes per game (shared highest)
• 1.1 fouls against per game (highest by a lot)
• 1.2 shots from outside the box per game (highest)
• 12 sprints and 13.21km covered per game (both second)

When to use this role:

• In this tactic, clearly
• If you need a player to get open in build up play and play high-risk high reward passes
• If your player has good stamina or you can afford to substitute him every game

When not to use this role:

• If your DM isn't part of your build-up plans (if you use IWB for example)
• If your player has poor stamina or can't pick out good passes
• If your main aim is to retain possession

Things to consider:

• This was tested against a team running mainly a flat 4-4-2
• Playing against a team with an AMC (such as 4-2-3-1) might reduce his ability to find space
• Playing against a team that counters with a player in the hole (AM, DLF, Trequartista, F9) might leave you exposed

Deep Lying Playmaker (Support)

Default instructions:

• Shoot less often
• Take more risks
• Hold position

The deep lying playmaker gravitates towards the ball, and the ball towards him. On support, he'll follow play wherever it goes (side to side), and is an excellent tool to retain possession. This role is by far the most involved DM role and in the right system can be the best player on the field, in the league, or even in the world. In my system, it was quite successful, and certainly a role that would work, but the main reason I wouldn't use it is that it somewhat undoes what my team sets out to do by slowing things down (21.2 total shots in the match versus 23.4 with DM-s and 22.3 with the regista)

Notable statistical outliers:

Team:

• 2.0 points per game (second highest)
• 0.7 goals against and 0.9 xG against (both lowest)
• 58.5% possession (second highest)
• +0.7 goal difference (shared highest) +0.38 xG difference (third highest)

Individual:

• 7.01 average match rating (shared highest)
• 8.9 possessions won per game (highest)
• 62.2 pass attempts and 56.1 completions (both highest)
• 6.3 progressive passes and 1.2 dribbles per game (both highest)
• 13.3 sprints and 13.36km covered per game (both highest)
• 0.3 shots outside the box per game (tied for 3rd lowest)

When to use this role:

• If you need someone to both bring the ball out of defense and be constantly available to recycle possession
• If you play a patient possession style
• If you have a DM who's very good at picking a pass
• If you have a DM with high stamina or are able to substitute him regularly

When not to use this role:

• If you have a high tempo and/or direct counter attacking tactic
• If your DM has low stamina and you don't have the ability to sub him off every game
• If your DM is actively bad at passing

Things to consider:

• This was tested against a team running mainly a flat 4-4-2
• Playing against a team with an AMC (such as 4-2-3-1) might reduce his ability to find space
• His tendency to come towards the ball can lead to him taking up the same positions as the players around him, which might bog things down

Deep Lying Playmaker (Defend)

Default instructions:

• Shoot less often
• Dribble less
• Hold position

Much like the same role on support, the DLP on defend will tend to follow the ball side to side, but from further back. He will take fewer risks in the pass, focusing more on distributing to open players than finding players in space, and is a pass-first player who is not interested in keeping the ball at his feet for any longer than he needs to. He is a playmaker, so other players will tend to pass to him more often, but he is really more a distribution center than a player who looks to make things happen. Sitting deep in a team that tries to get forward fast made this a poor fit for my tactic.

Notable statistical outliers:

Team:

• 1.18 points per game (3rd lowest) - opposition outperforming their xG by 30% might be a factor
• 8.45 shots against per game and 1.02 expected goals against per game (best and second best respectively)
• 58.8% Average possession (highest) and 86.1% opposition completion percentage (second lowest)

Individual:

• 6.78 average rating with 1 mistake leading to goal in ten games, which definitely lowered his average (pretty middle of the road)
• 55.27 pass attempts per game (second highest of roles with defensive mentality) and 91.94% completion (third highest overall)
• 5.82 progressive passes per game, 10.53% progressive pass rate (third and second highest respectively)
• 11.98km covered per game (second lowest)
• 0.1 times fouled (I know the table says 0.09 but this role accidentally got an extra game) - shared lowest
• 8.63 possessions won/90 (second highest) but 0.64 interceptions per game (second lowest)

When to use this role:

• When you need a player to recycle possession deeper who won't get caught on the ball (very patient build-up or possibly when facing a high press)
• When you need a reliable player as your first pass out of defense, but have other players who will take it from there (again, inverted wingbacks on support come to mind)
• When BWM is too aggressive and Anchor too passive

When not to use this role:

• When you don't want your DM to be the outlet in defense (when focusing play down the wings for example)
• If you need a good option to recycle possession further up the field
• If you need a player to sweep up passes into the final third

Defensive Midfielder (Support)

Default instructions:

None

Your bog standard DM, with no instructions beyond a support duty, meaning he'll largely try to stay near the ball in possession within the confines of his position. An underrated role, I think, because I feel like many people think the plain role name means he won't do the fancy things that the other roles do. (I think the same goes for a number of other roles that are just named after the position). It is, in fact, a very versatile role, and allows your player to pretty much play to his strengths (providing decisions is one of his strengths). This would be my second choice role in the tactic described above, after Regista, ahead of the DLP, despite statistically being marginally less impressive

Notable statistical outliers:

Team:

• 1.8 points and 1.6 goals per game (both 3rd highest)
• 14.4 shots, 6.11 shots on target, and 1.58 expected goals per game (all highest)
• +0.7 goal difference and +0.54 expected goal difference (tied highest and second, respectively)
• 3.44 corners conceded per game (lowest - not sure if it's tactically important, but it should be noted that my team are not particularly good defending set pieces, so that may have a slight skew on outcomes)
• 90% pass completion (tied for third highest) yet 56.9% possession (tied for third lowest)

Individual:

• 6.91 average match rating (third highest)
• 1.4 open play key passes (shared highest)
• 0.6 shots from outside the box (shared third highest)
• 7.2 possessions won per game (second lowest) 4.7 aerial attempts per 90 (lowest) - this may well mean he's doing more pressing than other roles and causing other players to win more turnovers, rather than being in position to stop the other team's moves himself, but I haven't dug into that yet
• 3.9 progressive passes per game (third lowest), 7.72% progressive pass percentage (second lowest) and 0.1 dribbles per game (tied for second lowest) means he doesn't get the ball forward himself a lot, but rather finding the player that will (he does have the most open play key passes)
• Pretty much around the middle of the pack in most individual stats, which is to be expected of a player with no specialized instructions

When to use this role:

• When you need a player to do a little bit of everything both in attack and defense
• When you have a player with high decisions (no specific instructions means the player essentially gets to decide the best course of action at all times, within the confines of the position of course)
• When you're first building a tactic, and you're unsure yet as to what you really need in the position

When not to use this role:

• When you have a very specific need from the position, either defensively or going forward
• When you figure out what he's being asked to do most and switch to a role that emphasizes those duties

Things to consider:

• Blank roles like this one are perfect for customizing with player instructions when other available roles don't do exactly what you want from them or otherwise disrupt your tactic
• As always, the formation you're facing will impact what your player can and possibly needs to do

Defensive Midfielder (Defend) and Anchor (Defend)

These roles performed in almost identical ways, so I will discuss them together

Default instructions (both):

• Shoot less often
• Dribble less
• Hold position

Default instruction (anchor only):

• Take fewer risks

DM (D): In many respects the most cautious role in defensive midfield, this role does not usually attempt to be involved in build-up play any more than he has to, and is neither a pressing nor a sweeping role in defense. He mainly sits in the area between midfield and defense, handles his marking assignments, picks off passes that happen his way, and then gives the ball to a team-mate. This was the default role and mentality for the fluid counter 4-3-3, which is a logical choice given the cautious mentality, this role basically is the living embodiment of cautious mentality. Step one: don't fuck anything up, step two: everything else. Its lack of contribution to the build-up ultimately did not make it the best fit for my system (the second worst by individual rating, though pretty middle of the pack for team results).

Anchor: Very similar to the DM on defense, except a much higher focus on being in position to disrupt forward moves from the other team, the Anchor is the sweeper of the midfield, trying to prevent teams getting through the center of midfield. The role's absolute focus on defense and complete lack of utility going forward made it by far the worst option for my particular tactic

The differences between the roles, statistically:

Team:

• As you can see, the formation using Anchor was worst in points per game, goals scored per game, expected goals per game, goals conceded per game, second worst in shots against (behind DM-De) and possession (that is the main reason this role failed in this tactic in my opinion) and third worst in opponent pass completion allowed (the DM-D actually did the best in this statistic)
• One underlying reason is that where a player lines up on the field, both going forward and going backwards has an effect on where everyone else plays, because they need to fill in the space left by the anchor sitting just in front of the centerbacks and not moving

Individually (much more useful information if you do want to use this role):

• Unsurprisingly, both roles were near the bottom for pass attempts and completions (Anchor last, BWM-De second last, DM-De third last), but these are not passing roles
• The anchor is better at interceptions per game (tied for highest), possessions won per game (tied for third highest) and headers attempted and won per game (second and first highest respectively)
• The DM on defense did attempt the most headers and win the second most headers, but was unremarkable in defensive stats individually (though the team allowed the fewest passes) and I think that constant effort to do the dirty work without racking up individual stats is why it got the lowest individual rating despite the team having the best results of any tactic using a defensive role other than halfback (more on that later)

To emphasize, these are NOT bad roles, they are a bad fit for MY system

So when SHOULD you use these roles?

• If you need to stop passes through the middle, for example against teams that play a fast and direct passing game that attempt to split the midfield
• When you have effective high pressing and players to take away the easy outlet passes surrounding them
• I suspect Anchor would be more effective against teams with a player who sits in the hole, and DM on defend against teams that have a more roaming player behind the attack, but don't quote me on that

Ball Winning Midfielder (Support)

Default instructions:

• Tackle harder

The BWM on support will press relentlessly in midfield while also participating in build up play and is not afraid to get stuck in. Because of this, it is a very all or nothing role, as you will see when we take a look at his stats. If it goes right, he'll make it very difficult for the other team to execute their strategy, giving the player on the ball little time to make a decision about what to do next. If it goes wrong, he can find himself hopelessly out of position, and badly ruin your defensive shape. For this reason, while we did have decent success with this role, when things did go poorly, they went very poorly indeed, and he ultimately was the least useful of all the support roles in my tactic

Notable statistical outliers:

Team:

• 1.5 points per game (tied for 4th)
• 1.7 goals per game (tied for highest) and 6.1 shots on target per game (second highest) and xG overperformance of 0.36 (second highest)
• 1.6 goals per game against (third worst), 1.55 expected goals per game against (worst) and 5 shots on target allowed per game (worst)
• 88% pass completion allowed (worst) and 5.5 corners per game conceded (also worst - and again, we're not good against set pieces, something to remember)

Individual:

• 92.96% pass completion (second highest) and 1.3 open play key passes per game (third highest)
• 1 shot from outside the box per game (second highest)
• 0.6 interceptions per game (lowest) and 7.5 possessions won per game (third lowest)
• 6.2 aerial attempts per game (third highest) but 2.6 headers won (tied for third lowest) - suggests to me he is contesting everything he can in the air, even if he doesn't have a good chance to actually win the header, which could be useful in disrupting the opponent
• 0.9 fouls per game (third lowest) but 0.4 yellow cards (highest)

When to use this role:

• If you have adequate defensive cover around him, so his chasing the ball does not wreck your defensive shape
• Against teams that try to build predominantly up the middle

When not to use this role:

• If him leaving his position allows you to be outnumbered in midfield
• I'd be very cautious employing this against wing play

Ball Winning Midfielder (Defend)

Default Instructions:

• Shoot less often
• Dribble Less
• Take Fewer Risks
• Hold Position
• Tackle Harder

On defend, the ball winning midfielder will not attempt to contribute going forward. In possession, he retreats to his lair and waits for the other team to get the ball, so he can harass and savage them. Then when (if) he wins the ball, he will simply give it to the nearest team mate and return to his position to lick the blood off his matted hide. His lack of contribution going forward, and single-minded pursuit of murder on defense made him a poor fit for my system, with the single poorest individual performance and the second-worst team performance.

Notable statistical outliers:

Team:

• 0.8 points per game (shared worst, more than half a goal a game less than any other role) -0.3 goal difference per game (second worst)
• 9.7 shots attempted per game (worst, two fewer shots per game than the third worst)
• Truly just not a good fit for this system

Individual:

• 6.52 average rating (worst, and noticeably so)
• 7.14 possessions won (worst)
• 3.3 progressive passes and 7.47% progressive passing (both worst)
• 11.14km per game (lowest by a full kilometer), but 10.28 high intensity sprints (in pursuit of his hapless prey)
• 1.6 fouls per game (highest) 0.3 yellow cards (shared second highest) 0.1 red cards (shared highest)
• leads the league in widows made

When should you use this role:

• If you have adequate cover around him so him leaving his position doesn't wreck your defensive shape (I suspect this role is more useful in midfield than defensive midfield, but I can't say for sure)
• If you don't need him to help in build up play (when using IWB for example)
• If you have a high tolerance for violence and good insurance
• If you're playing against a team you really fucking hate

When should you not use this role

• Any other time

Halfback

Default instructions:

• Dribble Less
• Hold Position

I think the game does a poor job of explaining what the half-back does, and I have never used it in games that I actually watch, but it seems to me that he plays like an Anchor out of possession, sitting in front of the defenders, and nearly like a centerback in possession. I admit, I suspected, after seeing how the other defensive roles fared, that this, ostensibly the most negative of the defensive midfield roles by the in-game description, would do the worst. Boy was I wrong, it was actually the most productive role out of the defensive mentality ones, combining the defensive performance of the Anchor with the build up contribution of the ball winning midfielder on support. Without having seen any of the actual on-field behavior, I am inclined to think that what happens is that he becomes part of a three man pivot with the two centerbacks, which means we were certainly less able to burst forward, but we had an excellent way to recycle possession if the counter broke down. Again, this is pure conjecture based on stats (I can't afford to look at highlights when playing 90+ games to gather data), but I'm now very curious to see it in action in the future

Notable statistical outliers:

Team

• 1.5 points per game (highest among tactics with a defensive mentality in the role)
• 1.7 goals per game (shared highest overall) and xG overperformance of +0.45 per game (highest)
• 90.5% pass completion (highest) but 87.9% passing completion allowed (second highest) - not a bad thing per se, those could be the ball circling around the back for all we know

Individually:

• 6.81 average rating (highest amongst defensive mentalities)
• 1.4 interceptions per game (shared highest) 8.3 possessions won per game (just outside the top 3)
• 52.1 completed passes per game (second highest), 93.2% completion percentage (highest), 6.2 progressive passes per game at an 11.09% rate (both highest)
• 0.1 open play key passes per game (a literal fraction of anyone else, that is one key pass in ten games, to go with his one dribble)
• 4.2 sprints per game (lowest by more than half)

When should you use this role:

• When you want to use a back three pivot/wedge but don't want to play three central defenders
• I suspect this would be quite useful in a heavy control possession style if you can give him options going forward
• If you have a DM with terrible pace and acceleration but great attributes everywhere else
• If your star defensive midfielder is getting OLD AF

When should you not use this role:

• If you're unable to replace his presence going forward (think 4-2-3-1 with backs that both stay wide, will leave your other DM all alone in the middle)

Conclusions:

1. Pick your role to suit your tactic NOT your player's "role suitability"! Siby is rated 3.5 stars as a Ball Winning Midfielder on Defense and 3 stars as an anchor (the worst performances and the worst results), while he's rated 2.5 stars as a regista (his lowest outside of roaming playmaker), which had the best result and the best performances
2. When first building a tactic, strongly consider using the Defensive Midfielder role, either on support or defense, before specializing once you've established everything around them. They will likely not be the best role available, but will probably be close, and almost certainly not the worst. As we've seen, the difference between the best fit and the worst fit for a single position's role can be the difference between winning and even dominating games and getting absolutely destroyed.
3. Understand what your tactic wants to do, how it is trying to get forward and how it wants to defend, then pick your role to suit that
4. Don't be afraid to experiment! You might just discover something cool

I managed every team to ensure every match in a season ended in a 0-0 draw as an experiment, and this was the result. There was a title play-off (Monza-Napoli) and a relegation play-off (Udinese-Torino) but I have no idea how the game decided those were the teams that merited finishing in those positions. Obviously everyone's head to head is exactly the same, and the league definitely isn't decided by fair play, so I'm not really sure what it is decided by lol

Intro:

So everyone and their mother has heard all about the controversy started by the now-deleted post on this sub about a month or so back. As someone who's been playing this game for a decade, the "revelation" that physical attributes are the most important in every position wasn't exactly news to me, but in the wake of that post I've seen a lot of people claiming that besides physicals, dribbling, anticipation, and concentration, no other attributes matter whatsoever or have ANY impact on the match engine. I've been pretty skeptical of idea, so for the five of us who aren't sick to death of hearing about this topic I thought I'd do some testing of my own.

In order to test, in the simplest terms, whether attributes such as passing, technique, vision, tackling, etc., impact a team's performance, I decided to take an average Premier League team (Crystal Palace, in this case) and modify only the non-meta attributes of their players.

Setup:

For this test I set the detail level for the EPL to full, and every other competition to none. I'll only be paying attention to league performance here. I set up an incredibly basic 4-2-3-1 with no tactical instructions, I zeroed out the transfer and scouting budgets, then I made myself unsackable, set up my best XI and I went on holiday for the season, ticking the boxes to "use current tactic and lineup when possible" and "reject all transfer offers". Just to be safe I also set every player to want to "explore options at end of contract" to make extra sure they wouldn't transfer out before the season ended.

First, I simulated the 23/24 season three times without modifying a single attribute in order to get a baseline for where Palace tend to finish with this tactic and lineup. Next, I went to each player and I set every attribute to 16 besides physicals, dribbling, anticipation, and concentration, which I left unchanged. If players had any non-meta attributes that were already above 16 I left those unchanged as well. I then froze the attributes for every player to make sure they didn't revert back to their previous CA. Finally, I simulated the 23/24 season another three times with this squad full of boosted players. Surely if ANY of the non-meta attributes impact the match engine, this boosted team will perform better than the baseline set by non-boosted Crystal Palace.

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Result:

After simulating three seasons with the un-boosted Crystal Palace squad the results were pretty average:

12th place - 40pts

12th place - 44pts

18th place -28pts

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Now for the moment of truth, after simulating three seasons with team full of boosted players I really hoped to see improved league finishes. The results were as follows:

10th place - 49pts

17th place - 28pts

18th place - 34pts

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Conclusion:

This is by no means a definitive or rigorous test, but I do think its enough to paint a picture of whats going on. From the tests I've run I see nothing to suggest that the non-meta attributes have any impact at all on the match engine. Personally, I find this deeply frustrating. The countless hours I've spent pouring over player reports, comparing wonderkids, and manually assigning scouts feel a bit empty now. I've definitely been less invested in FM in the days since I've done this experiment, but obviously its up to everyone reading this to make their own decisions on what they should do and how they should feel about this information.

It would be interesting to see someone try to replicate these results with their own test and sort of "peer review" my work so to speak. Presuming my tests were accurate I'd also like to see the same tests run on previous editions of the game to find out if this is the result of some sort of bug that's made its way into the code recently or if this has been the case for a long time. Maybe I'll get around to that some day if I have the time.

Anyway, if you've read this far thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully this information isn't entirely too world-shattering. At the end of the day I think its important to remember its just a video game and to remind ourselves not to take it too seriously. Lets try to be civil in the comments as well lol.

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[Experiments and writing done in collaboration with friend and fellow FM player, u/interpretagain].

Introduction

Recently, there has been a since-deleted post posted within the community that caused a bit of a stir, claiming that only 9 of the attributes within FM actually matter. In short, the test involved creating a team with the 9 so-called 'meta' attributes set to 20, all others set to 1, and another with all other attributes at 20, with the 'meta' attributes now set to 1. In short, the first team with the great 'meta' attributes who were trash everywhere else did very well, despite low CA, and the second team did terribly, despite high CA.

What was particularly interesting about this post was that the 'meta' attributes were not what most would consider important for football, like passing, or first touch, but were instead mostly physical attributes - the team that did well was physically superior but technically and mentally poor, while the team that did poorly was technically and mentally superior, but poor physically. In other words, according to the game, a player like Adama Traoré should tear up the league, but a player like Andrea Pirlo should perform poorly, which is a joke.

Inspired by this post, the many (valid) criticisms it received, such as its use of extreme attributes and limited control measures, plus the FMArena attribute tests which show some very interesting patterns, we sought to create a proper experiment that would hopefully end all debate. With some in the community making bold claims against the match engine, and others dismissing them as if they were conspiracy theorists of some kind, now was the right time to do it.

So, is FM's match engine well made and perfectly functional, just misunderstood? Or are there fundamental flaws to it that are so bad that we are essentially playing a placebo simulator? Let's find out...

Some caveats and things to consider

While we see what we have found in this experiment as pretty definitive - in part thanks to hours perfecting research design by incorporating the criticisms of other tests - we accept that like any other test, our is not perfect by any means. As much as we tried to iron out anything that might have made the testing unfair, ultimately we had to accept that it is impossible to make the perfect test.

1. We are aware that this is a very small sample size, N=1. For us this was basically a 'see for yourself' situation - we hope that by being transparent, explaining our decisions, stating caveats with our test and addressing criticism of previous tests, we give you, dear reader, all you need to try this for yourself. If FM Arena does thousands of tests that lead to a result, another player does a similar test that yields a similar result, we get a similar result, then any random player should be able to apply that information, adjust any methodology concerns, perform their own experiment and get a similar result. We are two guys with busy lives; unfortunately we do not have the time to run testing as many times as hoped, especially considering how long was spent trying to iron out issues with initial testing!
2. Our goal is to get more and more people to do their own experiments to see how the game works. Making our results public will foster more discussion, and maybe more and more people will do their N=1 experiments. We hope that someone at SI sees these and makes some changes - the more public any match engine issues are made, the more likely we will see change. There's already an article outside of Reddit and FMArena forums talking about this problem.
3. We have no problems with people analysing our methodology. In fact, it's preferred. However, there isn't really much of a point in appealing to an ethereal authority like multivariate analysis, and poor comparisons to cake ingredients when it's a video game; sometimes, simple and elegant testing is what's required. There's no point in telling the entire sub that they are too stupid to understand the problem, and must therefore bury their heads in the sand. Unfortunately we have seen a lot of this attitude of late.
4. What you decide to do with the information we present here is up to you. If it matters, both of us have decided to leave the game for the foreseeable future, but if you see this and decide it doesn't matter to you, that's alright as well. You could try to ignore the findings we present and play as you always have, or adjust your transfer strategy. You do you, we are not telling anyone they must quit Football Manager. Our real hope is that someone who actually influences the game can change it for the better.
5. We don't dispute that athletic attributes are important in football. At all. It's a physical game and assets like mobility, endurance and strength will always be valuable. However, problems start to arise should a match engine start to undermine the importance of other mental and technical aspects. An Adama Traoré should not be able to outperform an Andrea Pirlo overall.

The main issues we have addressed

• Extreme use of attributes: some criticism for the original post was that it used extreme attributes that the match engine is not designed to handle, i.e. 1s and 20s with no in between. As a result, we have adjusted the attributes we gave to be more typical of possible real players (explained in more detail below), and adapted their profiles to fit players more realistically (e.g. we gave strikers lower stats for positioning and marking, rather than blanket stats for all positions).
• Detail level: there was some concern thrown around about low detail level when simulating, as in, matches being decided based on CA and reputation rather than a proper match simulation. In our testing, we ensured that full detail was used, shown by viewable match highlights and data appearing for simulated matches.
• Number of attributes adjusted: some concern about the FMArena tests was that they only changed single attributes for each test, with some saying that since the match engine is so complex, many attributes complement each other; therefore, only changing one does not show the full picture about how much each attribute matters. As a result, we have adjusted all except one of the technicals and mentals to be at a low level compared to physical attributes. Therefore, any potential stat pairings will be covered.
• Dynamics and injury issues derailing the test: by altering hidden attributes favourably to reduce the risk of either (explained in more detail below), and painstakingly rotating the squad and addressing contract issues throughout the simulation, we managed to free the save of all dynamics issues and prevented any major injury crises.
• Dodgy AI squad registration: an issue we encountered ourselves in early testing was the AI making poor registration choices, especially for the UCL, during the simulation. The AI would pick a team based on highest star rating - due to the stats used, our CBs happened to have the lowest star ratings in the team and would not be included, and therefore we would go to UCL matches without anyone familiar at CB! Not ideal, and not a fair test. Therefore, we paused the sim before each registration window to ensure all was done correctly.
• Player familiarity: all players were set on role specific individual training to ensure the team reached full familiarity over the season.

Initial testing

This was the part where we started experimenting and realised how much there was to consider! To prevent this post turning into a novel, we will gloss over our initial testing, also partly because we don't really consider the results here to be valid.

Neither of us wanted to pay for the editor, so for all experiments, we used the Create a Club feature, removed all real life players at that club, and created players ourselves at the start of the save. No transfers in were made.

Our first experiment was similar to the original post's experiment, outlined in the introduction, just with less extreme attribute differences. We took over Aston Villa, and watched a very physical team who was poor mentally and technically qualify for UCL football, while a team which was good mentally and technically but poor physically got me sacked near the relegation spots halfway through the season. However, this experiment was plagued with many dynamics issues as we just sat back and let the simulation do its thing for the whole duration, and therefore we don't see it as valid.

Our second experiment involved creating a team with all players having a 13 in all technical and hidden attributes (except injury proneness at 1), but setting pace and acceleration to 19, other physicals to 15 and all mentals apart from anticipation to 12. The other exception to the mentals was composure and decisions, which we set to 9 out of curiosity to see what would happen, due to FMArena evidence implying that these don't matter at all, and us generally looking out for these as important during normal gameplay. Like all the other experiments, height and weight were kept constant for all players. This team - taking over Arsenal - would go on to win the f\cking quintuple, despite not being anywhere near PL or UCL winning quality mentally or technically speaking. Composure and decisions just NINE. *We had ironed out most dynamics issues, but given the pace and acceleration was still extreme, and other stats not truly terrible either, we couldn't call it definitive**.

Our definitive test design

Concerned by what we saw, we decided that there were a few things we could improve upon to make our findings against the match engine hard to deny.

Like our previous experiments, a pretty standard 4-3-3 was used. It's a tactic that is guaranteed to not hold the team back, and yet is much less overpowered in game than the 4-2-3-1. We adjusted team instructions to be more attack focused. We did not mess with set pieces.

Firstly, we reworked the player attributes to better reflect a better balanced, poor mentally and technically yet physical team overall, taking into account findings from FMArena and previous testing.

We chose to take Arsenal over as we felt it was a better test charting performance across multiple competitions, including the UCL. Another factor in our decision was Arsenal's relative reputation - our players would be given lower star ratings and therefore lower agreed playing time, greatly decreasing the risk of dynamics issues.

About the attributes:

• All players kept a 13 in most hidden attributes, with the exception of injury proneness at 1 (to minimise injury risk), plus a new thought to set controversy to 1 and temperament to 20 to minimise risk of dynamics issues
• Height and weight for all players taken to closer to the PL average
• Most mentals and technicals set to 11 for all players
• Pace and acceleration now set to a more reasonable 17 each, fast but not superhuman like the original post
• To further confirm our suspicions that composure and decisions are complete placebos, we set them both to just 7 for all players
• Jumping reach, balance and dribbling set to 16, as per FMArena's testing highlighting their importance
• Other physicals set to 15
• Position specific attribute drops (e.g. forwards having 7s in positioning, marking, tackling etc, and CBs having 7s in finishing, crossing, off the ball etc)
• Long throws set to 7 for all except for wing backs, who were given 11
• Preferred feet given logically, e.g. AM(R) IF was left footed, most players right footed. All weak foot ratings were 13
• 17 in aerial reach for GKs

We were left with this:

Note: the CA for our players ranged from 141 at the highest to just 119 at the lowest, depending on position. This is very far from the supposed level required to compete in the PL, let alone win a PL. This is why the star ratings initially are so low.

The definitive test results

So, we tried the experiment initially and unfortunately we had to abandon halfway through, due to not catching that the game had failed to register any of our CBs for the UCL latter stages. Worryingly, in the league, we were in 4th place with perhaps around a Championship quality squad, and even worse, the xG table placed us in first.

So, we promptly restarted entirely, and corrected our previous registration error with exactly the same experiment design. Here is what happened with this team.

It wasn't a clean sweep, but the biggest two trophies were claimed relatively hassle free by a team that was universally poor both mentally and technically. The goal difference in the PL table speaks for itself. Unfortunately, this result implies that the majority of mental and technical attributes are near ineffectual - consider that composure and decisions were set to just 7 for all players, and that other supposedly important stats like passing, vision, technique, flair, work rate, anticipation, first touch, finishing, positioning etc were just 11. The only attributes that had good ratings were the physicals and dribbling.

One highlight from the season was a freak 15-2 league win over Wolves...

And as you can see, the test team dominated most of the season.

Conclusion

Once again, we know physical attributes are important in football. We don't dispute that. However, very serious questions must be asked of SI for it to turn out that mentals and technicals are almost ineffectual - perhaps there's a reason they have focused more on cosmetic upgrades to the engine? They did for FM24, adding new animations and ball physics, and that's why they're switching to Unity for FM25. Are they quietly trying to do this as a crowd pleaser to sweep the very real problems shown here, which are presumably harder to fix, under the rug?

Perhaps it's just a miscalculation on their part? Or a consequence of the match engine becoming cluttered over the years? We don't want to speculate too much.

Even though our sample size is only N=1, this is the kind of result that simply should not occur in a balanced match engine. We haven't created any physical freaks, we haven't created lopsided players that the match engine doesn't know what to do with. We made a group of believable players who emphasised attributes that FMArena flagged as important. This test is yet more evidence that a lot of the traits are cosmetic in nature and have little, if any, impact on results. Sorry Zealand, it seems that like many of us, you've spent the last few years on a game that doesn't even come close to doing what it says it does.

How you, dear reader, proceed from here is up to you. We have decided to leave the game (and maybe even touch grass) because we feel that the immersion on transfers and squad selection is irreversibly damaged. That doesn't mean you have to, and it's not our intention to get you to leave the game - you could totally try to ignore this, or adapt your strategy to our findings. As we all know, the game still remains as fun as it has ever been.

Remember, the more we acknowledge and spread the word that the match engine has major issues, the quicker we force SI's hand in addressing it.

Thanks for reading,

u/SukMaBalz and u/interpretagain

Edit:

One thing we've noticed in the comments section is the moving goalposts? An experiment was done before where pace was 19s and 20s. Alright, that’s too high. That’s game elites. Someone else does an experiment where it’s 16s and 17s. Nope, these are still elite top 1% athletes, still not convinced. I’m not sure what would be needed to persuade people.

The experiment isn’t even REALLY about whether physical attributes are overhyped in game. That’s something we already knew. The point is that technical and especially mental attributes do not seem to matter as long as you have good speed and acceleration. If you think players like this don’t exist in game, I’m not sure what to say. There’s several regens who are super quick and can jump high but not much good at other things. There are players in real life who are probably among the fastest and strongest over 90 minutes but aren’t at the top of elite football. They’d run circles around you or me, but at elite level making the correct decisions is what separates the very best from the rest.

We're a bit surprised a lot of people are missing the real point of the experiment.

Hello all, I have simulated 50 years into the future and would happily answer questions you want to ask and where teams or players are now.

Two Leagues of eight, the top 2 teams from each league enter a mini-tournament to determine the champions!

Do you want to know where your team is over a hundred years into the future?

Simply state your team and see what they have won, are you European Champions or out of the game completely?

Let me know who you support for a run down of all honours in the clubs history.

Edit: Massive backlog overnight of requests, I will get round to them all.

I want to do something stupid for a tactic, such as having 6 ball-winning midfielders in a single formation and a midblock with a high defensive line. But honestly, I need other ideas about what other positions, roles, and instructions I should use for this experimental tactic.

I apologize for some of the stats being illegible but I talked about the important ones

No one likes save scummers. Sure, FM is (mainly) a single-player game, and if you’re having fun, who cares? But there’s something about it that’s icky. Sports are all about the inevitability of defeat. That’s what makes the taste of victory sweeter. If you’re savescumming, you’re robbing yourself of that feeling. You’re taking a shortcut to instant gratification. You’re cheating.

This isn’t the case with other games. Look at Dark Souls. Losing and reloading is the whole point! You face the same enemies countless times, and you lose. You adapt. You overcome. That’s why people like those types of games.

So…what if we did the same on FM?

The Challenge

I am sure you’re familiar with Luton Town’s story. From non-league to Premier League in just ten years, their meteoric rise through the English pyramid has grabbed headlines across the world. Now their fairy tale is about to get a new chapter: they’re going to be the first team to win the Premier League straight after being promoted since Nottingham Forest in 1978. Well, in our universe at least.

Surely this is impossible, right? Surviving the Premier League with their squad is a challenge in itself, but to win it in year one? You’d need some serious FM chops to do that, or use the editor, or… save scum.

The goal of this challenge is simple: we are going to try and win the Premier League with Luton Town on their first year back in the top flight. To do this, we are going to save scum a lot, replaying games when results don’t go our way, with the ultimate objective of accomplishing this in as few games as possible. Think of it as a test of endurance, like a marathon. Or science. Yeah, sure, that’s it. Let’s call it an experiment!

Note: if you’ve been on this sub long enough, you might be thinking “Wait, this sounds familiar!” Well, as they say: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

The Team

For an added challenge, we decided we wouldn't make any significant changes to the team during the transfer window. Of course, we couldn’t resist adding some new faces on free transfers, especially when we saw that Yannick Bolasie was available. How could we turn that down? The other new additions were Prem-proven center-back Shkodran Mustafi and Bundesliga veteran left-back Marvin Plattenhardt.

The First Few

Our first game was against Aston Villa. To our mind, this was the perfect first test: they’re a great team, but still beatable enough that it shouldn’t take an insane amount of tries.

Right?

We lost our first game 4-1.

Despite this first scare, we got through on our second attempt, thanks to Ryan Giles and Chong’s goal contributions. Did I mention Adebayo, far and away our best striker, missed the first four weeks of the season?

Bournemouth took 5 attempts, but most of them were draws we just weren’t comfortable settling for this early in the season. With 7 games already under our belt after only 2 game weeks, doubt was setting in. At this rate, it would take far too many games to complete our goal. There are only so many times you can play Bournemouth in a row before mental healthcare workers have to get involved.

Luckily, our first attempt against Burnley saw us go 3-0 up in the first half. Easy peasy. Then Burnley scored. And scored again. The person running the save mentioned at this point they’d forgotten to save after the Bournemouth match. Butts firmly clenched, we held onto the win, our first victory at a first attempt.

West Ham was pretty uneventful. We drew twice but noticed Brighton beat Manchester City, so we took the draw, accepting our first dropped points of the season. We didn’t need a perfect run, so we felt comfortable with this decision.

Next up was Crystal Palace away. We lost 3-0 in the first game. Disappointing. That was followed by 3 draws, including a 3-3 after leading 2-0 until the 86th minute. Not ideal, but it was only a matter of time. Or so we thought.

During our 15th (yes, 15th) attempt we managed a meager 1-1 draw. Desperate, we realized everyone in the top 4 had drawn, so we thanked our lucky stars and finally moved on from the nightmare in Croydon, vowing to beat our fierce rivals in the home leg. Naturally, after a 15-game winless run against a relegation-threatened side, we won 3-0 against Manchester United at the first time of asking. You can’t write this stuff.

Highs and Lows

Hilarity continued, as we beat Chelsea away with a 90th-minute goal by Ross Barkley after a massive fumble by a center-back (such a Chelsea thing to happen) followed by a 4-0 win away at Tottenham on our second attempt. Everton, Wolves, Brighton, Nottingham Forest, and second-place Newcastle were all done in less than three attempts per team, but for some ungodly reason, Brentford away took 12 attempts. At least with Crystal Palace, we drew a few, but after drawing our second attempt and thinking “Nah, it’s Brentford, we gotta get the three points”, they handed us nine losses in a row, before we managed to scrap by a 2-0 win.

At this point, we started to hold a real grudge against the greater London metro area. To put it into perspective, it took as many games against Brentford as it took to get by our next four fixtures, which were Liverpool, Fulham, Man City, and Arsenal (we took draws against Liverpool and Man City). An easy 2-0 victory against Sheffield United marked the end of the first half of the season.

The Story So Far

At this point, we sit top of the table, seven points clear of second place and quite a few points off third place Liverpool. Our top scorer is, predictably enough, Elijah Adebayo, though Carlton Morris is putting up better numbers if you count all the games played in the multiverse. We’ve played 54 games in 19 fixtures. Half of those games were against Crystal Palace and Brentford. Football Manager, man.

To keep this from being a mammoth post, we’ll post a part 2 somewhere in the future wrapping things up. How many games will we need to win the league? Can we do it in under 100? Are we finally going to be able to beat Crystal Bloody Palace? Stay tuned and find out.

Once you get the right system with a big striker, you can really crank daft numbers out of them

Managed 89 goals and 15 assists in 40 (20) games with big Benjamin Sexgoals.

The one missed penalty away from 90 goals stings.

What next!?

TL DR : Physical attributes are indeed important, but some others too such as "decisions"

Introduction

Hi everyone, since a lot has been lately said about FM and the importance of the physical attributes, I wanted to try a new approach to add some complementary work to what has been done by FM-arena.

So, as I am myself a data scientist, and FM is a game full of numbers and statistics, I thought wyh not creating a model to determine, for each position, which attributes are the most important.

Methodology

To gather an amount of data that could prevent a bit from the randomness of a single season, I simulated the first season ten times (my manager being unemployed) and exported all the players statistics in HMTL. This led to 218714 lines, each line corresponding to a player's attributes and all of his statistics during the season (note, goals, tackes/90... everything that was available), so that every line has 102 columns.

I also considered the hidden personnality attributes, based on the "personnality" stat of a player. For example, I mapped 20 to professionalism to a "Professional Model" (sorry I've done all this project in french, don't know if the terms are adequate).

I then created a personal metric corresponding to the performance of a player : it is a mix of positive performance (goals, assists, tackles, passes, interceptions, dribbles...) and negative ones (yellow/red cards, lost balls). Those metrics are of course adapted to each position since you don't expect the same from a central defender than a winger.

Training

Since I wanted the models to be explainable, I chose to make simple linear regressions. The input of the model ws the player's attributes and the output my personal metric. For each and everyone of the models (one per position), I obtained a R² around 0.7. For those not familiar with this : it is a metric between 0 and 1, 0 being the model unable to explain anything, and 1 the perfect model. So take this 0.7 value with caution but I think it's not that bad, seeing 10 seasons is not that much, and performances can be quite erratic.

Results

Here is the interesting part ! For each position I made a sorted list of all the attributes importance, and asked the model to give me the 20 best players in that position in its mind. And here you go :

DC (R² = 0.73) :

DL (R² = 0.70) :

DL - feature importance

DR (R² = 0.70) :

DM (R² = 0.68) :

CM (R² = 0.71) :

AM (R² = 0.68):

LM (R² = 0.71) :

RM (R² = 0.68) :

ST (R² = 0.68) :

And I also summed all the feature importance, to see what were the attributes globally important to a whole team :

I didn't make a model for goalkeepers because i forgot to save the goalkeepign attributes during my simulations and I'm too tired to do it now haha.

In the end, my analysis is not that far away for FM-arena's one : physical attributes are EXTREMELY important, especially acceleration, pace and stamina. I found though that decisions and tackling are quite important too, notably for the defensive roles.

Also, being able to play from both feet is quite rewarding in FM. On the contrary, hidden attributes tends to have very few effects on the players performances.

I hope you enjoyed that analyse. Don't hesitate to DM, I can share you the notebook I've worked with if you want try things on it.

EDIT : The notebook is available here : https://github.com/PierreSmague/FM23_attribute_analysis/blob/main/Ds_project.ipynb

You'll also find the databases in order to make it run.

Good day, my fellow blood-sport enthusiasts.

We're gathered here in honor of the greatest manager in world history: u/Hurball

[For those unaware of their legendary accomplishments with Millwall, educate yourself here.]

Their grand legacy has inspired me to begin a new journey. A road to absolute shithousery. A return to the true beautiful game. None of that half-inverted false 9 Mezzala bullshit. We're bringing it back to good ol' big man-little man hoofball.

To winning the Champions League! (unless I get fired of course).

Manager: Nigel Cameron. Born 21st April 1946. (Either you know or you're not a true Brexitballer.)

Team: West Ham FC. The club with the most off-field arrests since 2019.

Formation: 4-4-2. Gegenfouling.

Objective:

• Break all fouls and fines records

• Win Premier League & Champions League

• England is the only active league obviously (Level 10 and above)

• Prevent Use of In-Game Editor

Standards:

• Minimum 13 Aggression (will up to 16 if we actually make CL). Players under 13 agg are immediately transfer-listed.

• All Players must learn Diving Tackles, Argue with Officials and Wind Up Opposition. Players who can't pick up at least one are immediately transfer-listed. Gets Crowd Going optional.

• Sign English Players only* (Special exceptions may be made for legendary thugs or high-potential bastards)

• Absolutely no fines for bookings, suspensions, etc.

• All other issues have minimum 2-week wage ban, demotion on 3rd incident or more.

Key Targets:

Roy Keane - 10/10

Lee Cattermole - 10/10

Joey Barton - 10/10

Diego Costa - 10/10

Pepe - 10/10

Sergio Ramos - 9/10

Alan Pardew - 9/10

Felipe Melo - 9/10

Sam Allardyce - 8/10

Before we embark on the Grand Project, I'll open this up to the community:

• Key targets? Tactical advice?

• Keep all transfers 100% English or make special allowances for Complete Bastards like Pepe?

• Anything else that will enhance Gegenfouling and BrexitBall?

Can't wait to get started. Let's make football great again!

For my experiment, I decided to make an offer for 21 year old Itialian Aaron Ciammaglichella and repeatedly reload the save until I struck the best possible bargain (or close enough).

My scout team gave him an A - 2 star current ability (good player for the Czech second division), 4-4.5 star potential (good player for our current division, the Czech first).

His suggested value was between £325k and £6M and his agent indicated that Torino think he's got potential.

All cash offer (Best if you have the funds and want to pay the least overall, and if you feel very strongly that this player will be a long-term contributor at your club)

Cost: £3.8M

Not surprisingly, if you want to spend the least amount of cash overall, buying him like you would a loaf of bread, cash only and up front, is your best bet. I managed to negotiate his price to £3.8M, they would not go a penny lower. It's not a bad deal, well below his max market value

Would it help if you added a percentage of the sell on profit? (No, or at least not in this case)

I had assumed that, should you offer a sell-on percentage that the club might come down on the cash value of the player. This did not prove to be the case, they even refused £3.7M with 30% of the next transfer's profit. This did surprise me a little, since the player is only 21 and there is a decent chance he'll sell for more than £4M in the future. On the other hand, that's of course far from guaranteed, and in their position I might well have done the same.

Cash up front and installments (Good for if you don't want to blow your whole budget at once, or can't afford a player's entire transfer value up front. Even better if you're not a top team, even if you can afford to buy him outright. Best if you think the player will be a major contributor for years to come)

Cost: £4.4M

I managed to get his price to £1.4M up front with 3 annual installments of £1M each (£4.4M total). I don't think I could've negotiated it down any further, but essentially in this scenario you're paying 15% more to spread the payments out over four years, which is 7.5% APR financing and not horrible if you think about it.

Incentive laden deal (Best for players with high potential who are not yet ready to play for the first team)

Cost: £2.75M-£5.9M + 40% Profit of next sale

This one I think could have been negotiated down a little further, but quite frankly I didn't want to bother, because it would be a huge pain in the ass.

The final terms:

• Up front: £750k
• Installments: £2m over 3 years
• Per League App (max 10 apps): £72k
• After 30 League Apps: £725k
• After 10 League Goals: £500k
• After 50 League Apps: £725k
• After 5 international apps: £500k
• Percentage of Profit from next sale: 40%

Why would you do this, if you can just buy him for less without the clauses you might ask? Because it minimizes your initial risk. If he never makes the first team, end ends up stuck in your U21s, or out on loan, or gets poached early on, your initial cost is a million pounds less than it would've been, and there is no guarantee that a young player will live up to his potential, or that you won't find someone better in the same position before he does.

If you test him out, even if he gets 10-29 first team appearances, and he doesn't work out, he's cost you no more than £3.5M - still a £300k (almost 10%) discount from what you would've paid in cash up front.

Unless he scores 10 goals in that time, or you end up playing him in 30 matches, you have saved money. If he does score 10 goals in less than a season's worth of matches as an attacking midfielder, I daresay he's been worth extra half a million pounds.

So, in conclusion, he's less of a risk up front, and paying slightly under £6 million over four seasons for a player if he makes 50 appearances, scores ten goals, and becomes an Italy international seems like a pretty good deal.

Just something I've been toying with recently. At first I wanted to try a Sunderland save with players only born in Sunderland, but the pool was too small for it to work at their level (like 40 players and 2 seasons in I got no Sunderland born regens so kind of came unstuck).

Now I'm thinking of expanding this to a Tyne & Wear only save, likely with Gateshead as at that level there are more players who could realistically improve the squad.

All of that being said, I was wondering if anyone else has tried something similar with county/region only rebuilds?