I've been having a rethink on my ideal player templates, trying to improve them. In testing certain changes to attributes one-by-one I've had some interesting results.
I'll explain my process a bit first. Let's take a more nuanced attribute, 'dribbling'.
First I look at other people's findings:
HarvestGreen22, using a very artificial setup method (all attributes 10 bar the one being tested) and assessing without regard for position, claims dribbling is 4th most impactful attribute and follows a largely but not entirely linear benefit through 1-20.
And then there's the FM Arena testing of course.
Orion uses a different method, he derives his attribute values from the match ratings from the actual leagues as they exist in the game, and he does it for each position. For the DR position, dribbling is ranked 6th. For DC, it is not in the top 8.
But for DR and DC, I plan to give them perhaps ~14 and ~16 dribbling respectively in my updated ideal templates. This is for several reasons:
1. With the Knap tactic I'm using, DC has 'dribble more' instruction. Normally this would be an automatic ~2 boost for me. 2. Dribbling has a very low 1.0 weighting for DC. After doing the math on it's relative value once weighted, it's clear this is worth setting very high. 3. I've read a comment that perhaps the match engine favors dribbling in general, not necessarily because dribbling is good in itself, but because simply continuing to run with the ball prevents other calculations coming into play. For instance, if a player decides to pass instead, then a decision/technique/etc error may occur, and all these calculations cause time delays. 4. According to the SI staff hints from long ago, dribbling combines well with high pace & acceleration. It intriguingly adds 'don't have too many dribblers as they'll tend to ignore any passing tactic you might have'. 5. Someone (HarvestGreen22?) theorized that attributes are simultaneously ability and tendency. Given that I expect my DC and DR to still do a fair bit of passing, that means dribbling needs to very high to take precedence. 6. A dampening factor must be applied, which is the actual availability of the attribute value. In a save I've loaded up, there are 489 DCs who are 100+ PA w/ 12+ dribbling. There are only 18 who have 14+ dribbling. Technicals decline or stagnate with HarvestGreen22's optimal training. Let's say you could take 1 of the 120 players (or newgen) with 13 drib and boost it by 1-2 with training, that's 14-15 max dribbling you're looking at. For DR it's a bit better, a small handful already start with 16. If it were not for this reason, I would get 20 drib for both positions (this is what I'm trying to communicate through my 'high' ideal templates).
In this case it's quite clear that regardless of whether the speculations are true or not, it's well established that dribbling is high performance and/or low cost. You can safely assume it without even running tests.
But sometimes there are contradictions, or nuances that haven't been explored enough, and these I perform tests to clarify.
I seem to be finding that technique and flair aren't always bad as HarvestGreen22 found them to be. Technique seems best at ~6 for most positions, flair I have around ~12. I get at least about ~10% performance loss if I drop either to 1, and 20 technique comes at high CA cost but does no better. I'm not sure what is going on here exactly. Perhaps it is that technique increases the number and quality of so-called 'tricky passes' - too much would detract from dribbling, too little would result in exponentially more lost possession, '6' takes advantage of only the most assured & promising tricky passes to nab a few extra goals that make up for any lost possession - particularly in top leagues, where the easier chances are very few and far between. Pure speculation of course.
Some others I wonder about are strength, agility and stamina. I figure that knap tactics can be weaponized against you in just the same way by certain AI managers, and that attributes have direct counters. So the counter to your AML with 20 speed (acc then pace) making a 10m charge towards goal cutting in from the left flank may be 15 agility (rapid direction change to sideways left) + 10 acc/pace to reach your AML in 3m the time it takes him to do the 10m. So if your DC has 20 agil/acc/pace, good luck to your opponent.
Yet we also see that HarvestGreen22's results show high agil/strength does relatively little. But then again, in his test his opponent has DCs with 10 agil/strength. In a tussle or direction change, they'll neither totally dominate you nor lose every contest. And what is clear is that 10 - that is, equaling them - does the job. Now in the premier league the best DCs you'll be coming up against have agil/pace/acc/strength around ~15. My theory is that it's probably best to at least equal that for optimal play, as your chance of winning a tussle probably exponentially decreases the wider the gap between the DC's strength and your striker's strength.. so agil/strength 15 on a striker. And if you put strength down to 6, because strength doesn't seem to overall matter much, are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into, because HarvestGreen never put a 6 strength striker up against a 15 strength DC.
So that is why I am in two minds about these attributes in particular. What I've found so far is that 6 str/11 agil is significantly worse than 15 str/agil, but it's not that bad (~7% worse maybe). For comparison, I found difference in off the ball to be fairly negligible.
Note that in the SI staff notes, it says of agility 'agility is an attribute which is most necessary for players in top flight football...combined with high acceleration and dribbling a high agility rating can make for a great attacking footballer'. And if you look at top goalscorers, they seem to have high agil/str - Haaland has 17 agil/17 str.
I have also tried to replicate the success of the Chinese forum member who won the Premier League with 1 CA players a few years ago. I've managed to nab a few wins and draws, but overall no cigar. This tells me that there are indeed certain non-meta attributes that you need to have certain minimums in for success, which makes me feel more justified in being wary of 6 strength and 1 technique.
Yarema said: Pretty sure you can get a new position to 20/20 unless they changed something in FM26, quite easily actually. New position might trigger some attribute relocation though due to different CA weights. Expand
tam1236 said: You can - tested many times. Especially at youngsters and with close positions. Of course it depends on versatility hidden attribute.
In theory professionalism is better - somebody on yt tested that there is no chance to make a good player with low prof. and sometimes it happens when a determination is low. But irl players with really low profess. are very, very few and very, very far between in FM base and in newgen. Balotelli is a lonely knight. And low determination you can see quite often Expand
I'll take your word for it on the position proficiency. I haven't done any testing on it, I've just always had the assumption from way back that 18 is the limit and I don't retrain players to new positions in my own saves.
I'll probably do a quick test of it to make sure later and update my main post later to reflect the fact that 20 proficiency can be trained.
In regards to pro vs det, aren't both just random generated for newgens now? To me, newgens are the main source of high PA signings. If I search in genie scout for players >140 PA w/ det 10< I get 472 players, 598 for pro 10<. So I still think it's clear if you had to choose one to search for, it would be high professionalism.
BLS122 said: Should you move all of your players into the “attacking” group or leave some in the defending one? Expand
I didn't look into the training units at all myself, but according to EBFM training units do have an effect
In the schedule I favor, it doesn't seem any of the units are split between attacking and defending, not even the 'attacking' units, so I would assume it makes no difference what group the players are in.
Robbo84FM said: So you would recommend not using the x7 Recovery? Have you done anything with developing your youth as FM26 doesn't allow us to actually manage the youth training, i have put all my 4+ star potential youths in my first team and made them available for the u18/u21 they are developing well as it's the only way to customize their training. Expand
I'm doing FM24, not FM26
Right now, I wouldn't recommend x7 recovery. But it doesn't matter much, we're probably talking like ~5% or less difference. I recommend Quick + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quick focus (Agility for GK) + remainder rest. 'No pitch or gym work' for first 3 condition icons, only 4-5 pre-season friendlies.
ZaZ said: As a matter of fact, Rest sessions are only triggered if you have three sessions in the same day, so if you do only two rest sessions and something else, it is equivalent to doing two Recoveries (and that something else). Expand
Is this so? I didn't know this
I am skeptical. If this is true, then why do recovery sessions seem to impact training results as compared to rest? Is it only because of the 3 period rest days? How can recovery also make such a large condition/jadedness difference over time if its just those infrequent 3 period rest days?
Steelwood said: Another post talked about how important match sharpness is to results so I think it is probably better to use recovery where possible, though my thoughts on that are more skewed towards winning matches rather than training results Expand
I agree with ZaZ's comment that rest works for match sharpness so long as you manage your squad correctly through rotation and playing them occasionally in youth friendlies if necessary.
I actually think recovery has more downsides than just slightly worse training. In my own save I was using the exploit trick to use all recovery sessions instead of rest, and found it was a bit too harsh on condition and caused excess jadedness. Jadedness isn't that bad as EBFM found it's self-limiting and it's difficult to reach and easy to solve, but it does have some impact on performance. So I've been advocating for a mix of rest and recovery, but after doing some testing, you can actually get away with no recovery sessions at all. And for the slight training bonus, you would want to.
Semi-related - At the moment I'm re-analyzing attributes. For some reason a few months ago I decided quickness + attack was the best, without match practice. When I returned to it for my post here recently, I thought I made a mistake of simply forgetting match practice. But now I vaguely recall it could be that although it's a "worse" training regime, it favors 'decisions' less say, making it actually better overall. So for me, the best training regime is still in flux, I will re-assess after completing my attribute re-analysis.
tam1236 said: 1. As far as I can see good physical progress can be observed at u19 players. If You buy 20 yo player with pace/acc 8 You lose your money. What's more if You have money to buy 140 PA young players there's no need to risk with very slow (speed 8) 18-20 yo players (BTW if you don't cheat with GS You don't know CA/PA ) 2. I would say determination is in a way more important because I dont remember players with professionalism 6-7, and not talking about less (I always try to search minimum in my teams for my information) but determination 2-3 is quite often in lower leagues - and drastically slower youngster progress - there is a hope for such a player but if you are not desperate dont risk with him. 5. You can change natural position and reach a new one to level 20 . Especially if You have a good newgen playing as CB with aerial reach ~9 you should do it. Apart from everything else aerial coaching doesnt work good. 6. If (IF!) You have money - why not. 7. Avoid players with low mental - concentration, compassion, determination have a great impact and are really hard to improve. From my experience GK with low consistency is a fail. Injury proneness IS important if You dont have good subs - on the other hand a game is buggy and player with this attribute 5 can have (in 4 years time) more injuries then the one with 15 - but statistically it is important, though You dont see these numbers without GS.
And maybe I'm wrong , but I have an impression that in FM24 loaning above-average young players to lower leagues doesnt work very good because their progress is capped by the league level. Expand
Mostly agree except a few small things
Determination 3 > 15 is equivalent to professionalism 5 > 13. But also 20 Determination = 14 professionalism, and determination 6 does most of it. (source). I do say on my initial post to get 10+ determination for optimal, but because CA growth is capped each year you only really need say half the optimal, so having 13 professionalism alone is probably enough to do the job.
Also there was another reason professionalism is better, I can only vaguely remember now; I think it was that professionalism allows the player to develop even if they don't end up getting match experience.
I may be mistaken but I don't think you can train player position to 20, it can be 'natural' but it will still be 18. That said, I was doing some more testing of 18 vs 20 and it seemed to have negligible effect. I was testing it in the first place because I figured it's likely 15 > 20 isn't going to be linear. I'll have to run it a few more times to be sure there is no significant effect of 18 > 20.
Robbo84FM said: Hello i know im being completely lazy here but i just haven't got the time atm to read back through the post has anyone done any testing yet or found the best training schedule to use FM26? so far i have just been using the Quickness/Physical - MP x2 - Attacking - Recovery x7 from FM24 Expand
From what I've heard, the FM26 training file is identical to the one in FM24, and HarvestGreen22 found that attribute importance remains largely the same (long shots, finishing were boosted somewhat)
Separate to that, I wouldn't use recovery. It actually seems to affect training gains, and you can maintain match sharpness well enough with this instead (this also has the most gains in FM24 according to Piperita a few posts above): Quickness + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quickness focus (Agility for GK) + remainder rest
Comaring training regimes after 19 days with 4 friendlies
Man City default:
Before final match - condition 83-91%, match sharp 91-95% After final match - condition 69-80%, match sharp 96-100%
Pure rest:
Before final match - condition 84-91%, match sharp 66-80% After final match - condition 67-81%, match sharp 72-86%
Quick + Attack + Match Practice + Quick focus + double intensity:
Before final match - condition 84-92%, match sharp 85-92% After final match - condition 71-81%, 93-96%
So HarvestGreen22 training is slightly better for condition, but a little lacking in match sharpness. However this may be about the right balance, as this was still before end of pre-season. Pure rest training is clearly problematic.
Training & rotation is something that has to be micromanaged as you go along, but here I've kept the same starting starting 11 for about 2 months in (5 friendlies + 6 competitive) and on the HarvestGreen22 training regime:
Before final match - condition 96-100%, match sharp 96-99% (all but one are 99%) After final match - condition 69-83%, match sharp 100%
So it happens to be well suited to fitness management to begin with. But if you were to try to keep your subs & backups at 95%+ match fitness, that would no doubt change things. So I did a full rotation (using only 7 subs though) every match:
Before final match - condition 95-100%, match sharp 79-99% After final match - condition 73-99%, match sharp 83-100%
Those figures include all the subs. 11 players had 100% match sharpness after the final match. So overall, it's not bad, but definitely needs more match sharpness for subs.
Now going by Piperita's clarification on the best HarvestGreen22 training regimes, and taking into account match sharpness, the top ranked one still overall looks viable: Quick + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quick focus. Since injuries are an enemy of match sharpness, I won't change the middle condition to double intensity, but just try and manage the players better. Additionally I've promoted more players to the first team squad, to make it 18 outfield + 2 GK, and added some more pre-season friendlies.
Results:
Before final match - condition 95-100%, match sharp 62-100% After final match - condition 69-100%, match sharp 78-100%
My observation here is that there were a significantly greater number of injuries, which led to low match fitness in a number of players throughout. Resting from training was also more frequent. You probably want just enough match sharpness so that low condition doesn't result in missed training days, which means either using a lighter training regime, or not scheduling too many friendlies.
I decided to have another go, cancelling the default friendlies and not adding too many. Because why not try and see if one can hold onto the optimal training regime.
Results:
Before final match - condition 96-100%, match sharp 89-100% After final match - condition 67-100%, match sharp 92-100%
So if you manage things right, it does work pretty well. I used just 4 pre-season friendlies here. I'm sure with some minor adjustments, you could get maintain match fitness of all players at 95%+ without having to field any low match fit players in competitive games (a handful of the backup/sub players could be played in u23 matches for the first month after pre-season to get them to 95%+).
tl;dr Use Quick + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quick focus (Agility for GK) training regime every week, even on congested schedules. 'No pitch or gym work' for first 3 condition icons. Don't do too many pre-season friendlies, it's counter-productive, 4 or 5 might be best. Full rest training lowers match sharpness far too much, but you don't need to change rest to recovery sessions or increase intensity at lower condition.
It says which training regime as caption when you expand the image. That one is 'Walters_mixed = My dense but optimized regime based on theories above. 80 injuries.'
I can't remember what training schedule I used, but it doesn't matter because it was inferior to the HarvestGreen22 training regardless of whatever that image may indicate to you.
So I have concluded so far that for condition, playing 1 in 2 matches is ideal. For match sharpness, typically 2 in 3 matches is ideal, with natural fitness allowing some variation to this. But notably some players will even need weekly matches just to keep up and avoid exponential match fitness decay. I had a look at the availability of 12+ natural fitness in genie scout amongst players, and its fairly common, so I would say try to get players of 12+ natural fitness if you can, as 10 or less is quite unforgiving.
Now, the implications for squad composition. If you think about it, this is really something that hasn't been examined at all, in spite of how consequential we all know it to be - that ill-fated tendency of us to bloat our squads; what even is the actual optimal number of players for a first team squad?
In my view, the number is 20 outfield + 2 goalkeepers + the occasional promotion from reserve/youth squad or loan to cover an injury.
9 matches need sub replacements (10 x 9) 17/53 matches permit sub replacements (6 x 17) 26/53 matches permit sub replacements for high Nat players (4 x 26)
4 developing players (AML/AMR/DL/DR) get 35 matches 6 players (2 ST, 2 DM, 2 DC) get 26 matches
Remember that 25-30 matches/season is the ideal for player development. The reason why the wonderkids should typically be wingers not centre backs or strikers I would reason is that you don't want to interrupt your ST's bucketload of goals and young players aren't usually developed enough to fill the shoes of a proper DC, but also that wingers seem to tire fast and only have 1 of each position instead of 2 on the pitch.
It is definitely adjustable to some extent according to personal preference. Basically, for each wonderkid you add, make one of your starters a high Nat player so they can handle the reduced playing time.
Some extra info:
My figures are based on using the optimal HarvestGreen22 training regime, using rest not recovery. So it is safe to combine this info with those training regimes.
Stamina does NOT effect condition recovery post-match. It only affects condition usage during the match itself.
Having a physio reduces match sharpness decay significantly, but it doesn't matter how good the physio is or how many extra you have - you just need one for the benefit.
50% match sharpness or 1 natural fitness recovers condition to 66% vs 68% for 100% sharpness. 20 natural fitness recovers condition to 74%. I mention these select figures to illustrate that natural fitness is kind of important to condition recovery, and match sharpness less so, but overall condition recovery is pretty stable and predictable regardless of the player.
There is a way to kind of exploit match sharpness gain:
friendlies:
~10 minutes for 100 (1%) match sharpness gain ~25 minutes for 200 (2%) match sharpness gain ~43 minutes for 300 (3%) match sharpness gain ~60 minutes for 400 (4%) match sharpness gain ~78 minutes for 500 (5% - max) match sharpness gain
So if you want to play absolutely optimally, you could sub a player at 78 minutes in friendlies to maximize match fitness. And throwing a player on for 10 minutes gives the most efficient match sharpness boost, while you'd know not to do 7 minutes as it gives them nothing.
For competitive as I mentioned before, it's 9% max instead of 5% max. However, EBFM did find that sometimes players would inexplicably get 10-11% max for a reason he could not identify, but I would just treat this as a kind of bonus.
9% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 50-65% sharpness 8% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 70% sharpness 6% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 80% sharpness 2% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 90% sharpness
I stated in a post that jadedness doesn't matter much, but match sharpness is crucial.
I feel like this topic deserves it's own thread and I've done some original research for it. And I think that in a way it's one of the last remaining actual challenges of the game to make it fun. If you don't use gegenpress tactic or pick/train high pace/acc then you lose a lot, simple as that. But even if you work out the mechanics of fitness management as I am trying to do, it remains a challenging and rewarding aspect of the game. In fact, just knowing how much it effects win rate to me brings back some significant enjoyment to the game.
My overall impression is that counter-intuitively to my mind, it's better to sacrifice condition for match sharpness. Maybe this is why the AI often/always plays players with 87% condition without any rotation. It's because low match sharp players suck in terms of performance, low condition not so much (injury risk is bigger downside here). The other thing about it is that you can deal pretty easily with the problems of low condition - rotate them, pick low injury proneness players, rest them. Match fitness is much trickier, there is only one modest offset for it (natural fitness), it also has a high injury downside, you have to pay the price of lower performance to get their match fitness up if you neglect it, and as I'll show below even friendlies have a limit to recovering match fitness so there's no get out of jail free card really.
I've taken this graph from EBFM's video on match sharpness. What it's telling you is that the difference between 90% and 100% match sharpness is 33% difference in win rate.
For comparison, the difference of pace/acc 10 > 18 is 23.5% win rate according to HarvestGreen22.
To boot, match sharpness significantly impacts injury rate, even at 90%:
So how do we optimize for 100% match fitness of all players every match? And also, how to handle condition in concert with match fitness? There's a lot of variables to consider, it's fascinating to contemplate, but I will try and lay things out in the most straightforward way:
Starting at 100% condition, 90 minutes will reduce to 75% condition (typically).
Condition & match fitness update at midnight (00:00), starting the midnight that may be just a few hours after the match.
It takes 10 days for full recovery to 100% condition.
In FM24, Man City (English Premier League) has the following schedule in a save I looked at:
67 games (excluding national games):
38 league 13 cup 16 continental
Total recovery days between matches:
53 x 7 days 4 x 3 days 5 x 2 days 1 x 16 days 2 x 13 days 1 x 11 days 1 x 9 days
So there are 9 matches where condition recovery will be insufficient, and another 53 which would be sub-optimal. With a weaker team with a less filled up schedule, such as Burnley, I found it could be as low as 6 + 35. In both cases, we would conclude a player should be ideally be rested every 2nd match.
But before we continue, let's look at the other half of the picture, match fitness:
after 3 weeks, match fitness dropped to 98% (recoverable in 1 game) (20 nat) after 4 weeks, match fitness dropped to 94% (20 nat)
after 6 days, match fitness dropped by 1% (10-12 nat) after 8 days, match fitness dropped by 2% (10 nat only) after 9 days, match fitness dropped by 3% (10 nat only) after 11 days, match fitness dropped by 4% (10 nat only) after 12 days, match fitness dropped by 5% (10 nat only) after 13 days, match fitness dropped by 6% (10 nat only) after 14 days, match fitness dropped by 7% (10 nat only) after 15 days, match fitness dropped by 8% (10 nat only) (99% > 91%) after 18 days, match fitness dropped by 11% (10 nat only) after 21 days, match fitness dropped by 15% (10 nat only) after 4 weeks, match fitness dropped by 22% (10 nat only) (99% > 77%)
Friendlies gain match fitness at 55% rate of competitive. As you can see, this is adequate for when the player has low match fitness, but once it hits around ~90% you run into the following complication: You can't have a friendly the day straight after the last one, so you are likely giving at least 2 days rest, yet only gaining 1% match fitness with the friendly.. so potentially you are losing 1% match fitness to later gain 1% match fitness. Hence, at 90%+ match fitness, competitive matches for gaining are recommended, and that means you have to consistently give players playing time - you'll note that the decay rate increases as a player becomes less match fit. Edit: On reflection and doing some testing, this part about friendlies hitting diminishing returns is in error. Unfortunately, I may have to re-evaluate certain conclusions I've drawn based on this presumption, which I'll revisit tomorrow.
If you do the math with the league schedule previously mentioned:
10 nat player needs to play every 8 days 12 nat player needs to play every 11 days (2 in 3 matches) 20 nat player needs to play every 21 days (1 in 3 matches)
So while for condition, a player should ideally play no more frequently than 1 in 2 matches, for match sharpness, a player typically needs to play either every match or 2 in 3 matches in most cases.
I accidentally pressed submit on this thread, so I will add more detail and my theory on squad composition in a followup post soon.
I did a test of dribbling specifically. HarvestGreen22 tested dribbling individually, and found it's the most important mental/technical attribute, with +8.2% win rate 12 > 18 drib; +33.5 goals 10 > 20 drib. But we don't know if that's still the case if the player already has high physicals, plus it's worth verifying the claim, so I did two types of tests:
8 vs 20 drib, with 20 pace/acc/jump + 8 other attributes
8 drib:
+52, 83 +77, 90 +67, 92 (came 2nd) +83, 92
20 drib:
+107, 97 +99, 95 +84, 97 +104, 100
Overall result: +30% goals, +10% points
-------------
140 PA 'ideal' templates with 8 drib and freed up CA reassigned randomly to other attributes vs 10-18 drib in my templates. I consider this test a more realistic indication of what you will get if you favor or disfavor dribbling.
8 drib:
+127, 104 +110, 106 +119, 102
10-18 drib:
+121, 107 +146, 107
Overall result: +13% goals, +3% points
--------------
So dribbling is quite significant, even with high physicals.
Note that my tests for this were poorly controlled due to laziness, but I feel it's adequate as a general indication. So it might be +20% or +40% rather than +30% say, but it's clearly a sizable difference. Maybe in the future I will do some more proper testing, so I can present it alongside results of other attribute combos or whatnot.
Sanfierro said: One last question Are U-18 leagues or custom made friendly tournaments enough matches for development? Or does the player have to play in the senior team’s league instead? Expand
For age 14-18, no matches will cap growth at ~60% (~12 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~20 CA/season.
For age 19-20, no matches will cap growth at ~35% (~5 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~14 CA/season.
For age 21-26, no matches will cap growth at near 0% (0 CA). 20-30 matches ~12 CA/season.
For GK, no matches is viable 14-20, but growth will be capped at ~20-35% throughout.
For age 14-18, u18/u23 friendlies are worth ~75% of proper senior matches.
For age 19-20, it's ~64%.
For age 21-23, it's ~50%.
For age 24-26, it's ~30%.
At all ages, senior friendlies are actually a bit worse than u18/u23 friendlies.
So u18/u23 matches are fine up to age 18, even 20 is ok, but 21+ you should loan them out even if it's to a team with poor training facilities. If you can play your best youth player(s) every match in your first team, do so even at age 14.
Subbing players in after 70th minute may actually make growth worse than no appearance, possibly due to foregone training. A crucial point I'll make here is that the game counts cumulative minutes played, not appearances.
As you can see, EBFM's videos have a ton of gold in them that isn't immediately obvious. I also recommend watching the second half of this video for anyone who wants all the precise detail on a bunch of other factors affecting player development. I'm surprised it only has 900 views still.
Trappkjeller said: I really want to try out this method so I just want to kinda get it right. But it seems like my striker would be something like this if I got this right.
Age max 22, preferably only Striker position thats dark green. Good Professionalism
Acceleration/Pace 14 min Bal 12 min Ant/Con 11 min Fin/Head/Comp/OffBall/Work/Det/Aggro/Brave/Jump/Sta/Agil/Drib/Tech/Touch 10 min Long/Pass/Vis/Team/Dec 9 min Cross/Tack/Mark/Pos/Nat/Strenght 8 min
and preferably low on the rest of the stats like Pen/Corner/Free Kick etc..
Am I doing this right or am I dead wrong? Haha! Expand
So what I wrote is the nitty gritty of it all, but really you can reduce it to these general principles:
1. It doesn't matter much what player you sign, because even a low PA 8 pace/acc player can still become a beast with HarvestGreen22's training regimes. 2. What will matter is training progress rate. So sign young players with at least decent professionalism and give them 15-30 matches/season or loan them out. 3. If you want extra performance and/or more rounded players, sign players with mid/high mentals/technicals to begin with. These mostly stagnate or drop with HarvestGreen22 training. 4. Sign players with low 'decisions'. 'Decisions' is a very costly attribute in terms of CA for all positions, yet it's performance impact is negligible. Low decisions frees up CA for better attributes like pace/acc/drib/jump. 5. Sign 'natural' (20) position players only. They have the equivalent of a starting +2 pace advantage over 'accomplished' (18) players, and 18 cannot even be later trained to 20. 6. Try to sign or train up players in line with the ~140 PA ideal attribute templates if really want to optimize things. 7. Avoid dirty players. Worry less about consistency, injury proneness, set pieces. Get a captain GK.
So let's look at 2 examples:
Both of these players will do good when paired with HarvestGreen22 training, but if I had the choice I would choose the second player because he has decent to strong starting technicals/mentals, whereas the first player will always be stuck with his ~3 long shots and whatnot.
Neither player would pass your filter, and this is why you need to be careful about setting filter attributes too high or having too many. If you do use a filter, something as low and simple as 8 pace/acc min can be enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, then just do an overall visual judgement of the attributes.
Possebrew said: I am beginning to develop the suspicion that the single most important attribute for a striker is not pace, height or acceleration. It's "off-the-ball". Expand
Above + 20 off the ball (for 2 strikers) = +93, 93 2nd sample = +92, 90
Looking at the striker stats specifically, there was no improvement, taken together they were overall slightly worse in line with the overall team result.
what do you think about the find that CA can win games? as mentioned i increased my player’s CA and PA (but not the attributes) directly before a match (so that everything stayed unchanged) and suddenly i started winning against the same team I always lost against (reloaded a savegame many times) it would mean that mental and technical attributes can make a difference because the game assigns CA to them.
maybe this is sports interactives trick to make attributes matter - even if they cannot show things like passing in the match engine (pace / acceleration are very easy to show in the match engine) they just generally change the odds of winning 😀
that’s why i made another small experiment, i gave a player a 20 in passing/technique/vision/flair and compared this to him having a 1 in these attributes. My team won more games because of higher CA but the “passing match stats” like “passes completed” or “key passes” did not change at all Expand
I did a few tests
---------------
(All outfield) 20 pace/acc/jump/drib + 8 other attributes:
I didn't isolate things 100% or take many samples, but I think it's good enough to draw a few key conclusions.
Those technical/mental attributes don't do much, even in combination. And the extra cost is ~40 CA, which is really the nail in the coffin. ~40% extra cost for ~18% extra performance.
It's more difficult to draw a conclusion about whether attribute combos compound performance, but I would say it doesn't seem so. HarvestGreen22's data showing effect of 12 > 18 of each attribute has ~2-3% increased win rate for each of these attributes I boosted. 5x2.5% = 12.5%. I boosted from 8 to 20 and got ~14%-21% extra depending on how you look at it, which is about the same as you'd expect from each attribute alone.
Also it shows that its not just judging based on CA, and my ideal 140 CA templates which are around about the same CA did significantly better
very attacking + shorter passing + be more expressive + shoot on sight = +259, 114 very attacking = +270, 112 very attacking + shorter passing = +286, 114
very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +306, 114 very attacking + shorter passing + work into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +309, 114 very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114 attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114
very attacking + shorter passing + work ball into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +339, 114
Some observations:
The +339 result was not from the test with the most optimizations. So training schedule, pre-season team talk morale boost, match plans, all that mustn't have mattered much. I'm guessing what made the key difference was match fitness. A repeat of the same settings produced +309.
The changes to the tactic of 'very attacking', 'shorter passing' and 'work ball into box' seemed to produce slightly better results, or at least they weren't worse, whereas some others obviously were.
Biggest premier league game win I saw was 23-0.
I realized that penalty taking, and other set pieces, for goalkeeper has 0 weighting. This is potentially useful. I've said before that set piece attributes are not worth picking for. But you may as well select a goalkeeper with decent penalty taking and composure (which there are quite a few of), and make them your penalty taker. It will also have the satisfying effect of making your GK a goalscorer.
However I think I created this before I created my templates so it will be a little different perhaps, and GenieScout also doesn't allow negative weighting for certain attributes. But overall it should be close enough.
Alxy said: Thanks for this post - please can I ask you which skin did you find had the largest player faces (e.g. when you check attributes)? Or is there any skin that would allow you to fit in a whole shot of a player instead of just the player face?
Also is there any way to get player faces in-match (so rather than seeing player shirt numbers you see the player faces?). Thanks Expand
For face size:
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 9 Sas2025Final-Hidden - 4 (what brought this skin down from no. 1 for me) Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 6 FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 9 Chove Skin for FM24 - 9
Tato is a popular skin I didn't rate highly, I gave it 5 for face size.
In my view, WTCS 'profile' page for viewing attributes is usable as your default attribute view page, unlike many skins were its just too cluttered. And I like that it gives you 4 different options (i.e. face with kit behind, or just face, etc.)
Chove has perhaps the biggest face for attribute + profile pages (and its centered on profile page), but its quite non-vanilla.
FusionDB is smallish on profile page, but large on attribute page.
I definitely didn't see any skin with full body, and to me face pic can be too big because it just stretches it too big at a certain point (though I only used the sortitoutsi pack).
I took into account 2 other minor face things when giving my overall score btw, which is face icons on squad list screen, and big photos of the board members on the club vision screen. Many skins don't have either of these at all.
5 or above is good/playable 3-4 may even be great in some ways but has serious issues 1-2 trash
I am strongly inclined towards a default-style skin, but I've tried to be somewhat open-minded.
My criteria is:
font clarity responsiveness hidden attributes (footedness, CA/PA, personality, instant result, fitness %, etc.) lack of crowdedness stadium imagery info/data lack of logo intrusiveness comfyness face size lack of bugs
For score 6 or less, I just went with overall initial impressions, with the criteria in mind.
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 7.64 Sas2025Final-Hidden - 7.09 Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 7.09 Chove Skin for FM24 - 7.09 FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 7.00
I'll explain my process a bit first. Let's take a more nuanced attribute, 'dribbling'.
First I look at other people's findings:
HarvestGreen22, using a very artificial setup method (all attributes 10 bar the one being tested) and assessing without regard for position, claims dribbling is 4th most impactful attribute and follows a largely but not entirely linear benefit through 1-20.
And then there's the FM Arena testing of course.
Orion uses a different method, he derives his attribute values from the match ratings from the actual leagues as they exist in the game, and he does it for each position. For the DR position, dribbling is ranked 6th. For DC, it is not in the top 8.
But for DR and DC, I plan to give them perhaps ~14 and ~16 dribbling respectively in my updated ideal templates. This is for several reasons:
1. With the Knap tactic I'm using, DC has 'dribble more' instruction. Normally this would be an automatic ~2 boost for me.
2. Dribbling has a very low 1.0 weighting for DC. After doing the math on it's relative value once weighted, it's clear this is worth setting very high.
3. I've read a comment that perhaps the match engine favors dribbling in general, not necessarily because dribbling is good in itself, but because simply continuing to run with the ball prevents other calculations coming into play. For instance, if a player decides to pass instead, then a decision/technique/etc error may occur, and all these calculations cause time delays.
4. According to the SI staff hints from long ago, dribbling combines well with high pace & acceleration. It intriguingly adds 'don't have too many dribblers as they'll tend to ignore any passing tactic you might have'.
5. Someone (HarvestGreen22?) theorized that attributes are simultaneously ability and tendency. Given that I expect my DC and DR to still do a fair bit of passing, that means dribbling needs to very high to take precedence.
6. A dampening factor must be applied, which is the actual availability of the attribute value. In a save I've loaded up, there are 489 DCs who are 100+ PA w/ 12+ dribbling. There are only 18 who have 14+ dribbling. Technicals decline or stagnate with HarvestGreen22's optimal training. Let's say you could take 1 of the 120 players (or newgen) with 13 drib and boost it by 1-2 with training, that's 14-15 max dribbling you're looking at. For DR it's a bit better, a small handful already start with 16. If it were not for this reason, I would get 20 drib for both positions (this is what I'm trying to communicate through my 'high' ideal templates).
In this case it's quite clear that regardless of whether the speculations are true or not, it's well established that dribbling is high performance and/or low cost. You can safely assume it without even running tests.
But sometimes there are contradictions, or nuances that haven't been explored enough, and these I perform tests to clarify.
I seem to be finding that technique and flair aren't always bad as HarvestGreen22 found them to be. Technique seems best at ~6 for most positions, flair I have around ~12. I get at least about ~10% performance loss if I drop either to 1, and 20 technique comes at high CA cost but does no better. I'm not sure what is going on here exactly. Perhaps it is that technique increases the number and quality of so-called 'tricky passes' - too much would detract from dribbling, too little would result in exponentially more lost possession, '6' takes advantage of only the most assured & promising tricky passes to nab a few extra goals that make up for any lost possession - particularly in top leagues, where the easier chances are very few and far between. Pure speculation of course.
Some others I wonder about are strength, agility and stamina. I figure that knap tactics can be weaponized against you in just the same way by certain AI managers, and that attributes have direct counters. So the counter to your AML with 20 speed (acc then pace) making a 10m charge towards goal cutting in from the left flank may be 15 agility (rapid direction change to sideways left) + 10 acc/pace to reach your AML in 3m the time it takes him to do the 10m. So if your DC has 20 agil/acc/pace, good luck to your opponent.
Yet we also see that HarvestGreen22's results show high agil/strength does relatively little. But then again, in his test his opponent has DCs with 10 agil/strength. In a tussle or direction change, they'll neither totally dominate you nor lose every contest. And what is clear is that 10 - that is, equaling them - does the job. Now in the premier league the best DCs you'll be coming up against have agil/pace/acc/strength around ~15. My theory is that it's probably best to at least equal that for optimal play, as your chance of winning a tussle probably exponentially decreases the wider the gap between the DC's strength and your striker's strength.. so agil/strength 15 on a striker. And if you put strength down to 6, because strength doesn't seem to overall matter much, are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into, because HarvestGreen never put a 6 strength striker up against a 15 strength DC.
So that is why I am in two minds about these attributes in particular. What I've found so far is that 6 str/11 agil is significantly worse than 15 str/agil, but it's not that bad (~7% worse maybe). For comparison, I found difference in off the ball to be fairly negligible.
Note that in the SI staff notes, it says of agility 'agility is an attribute which is most necessary for players in top flight football...combined with high acceleration and dribbling a high agility rating can make for a great attacking footballer'. And if you look at top goalscorers, they seem to have high agil/str - Haaland has 17 agil/17 str.
I have also tried to replicate the success of the Chinese forum member who won the Premier League with 1 CA players a few years ago. I've managed to nab a few wins and draws, but overall no cigar. This tells me that there are indeed certain non-meta attributes that you need to have certain minimums in for success, which makes me feel more justified in being wary of 6 strength and 1 technique.
tam1236 said: You can - tested many times. Especially at youngsters and with close positions. Of course it depends on versatility hidden attribute.
In theory professionalism is better - somebody on yt tested that there is no chance to make a good player with low prof. and sometimes it happens when a determination is low. But irl players with really low profess. are very, very few and very, very far between in FM base and in newgen. Balotelli is a lonely knight. And low determination you can see quite often
I'll take your word for it on the position proficiency. I haven't done any testing on it, I've just always had the assumption from way back that 18 is the limit and I don't retrain players to new positions in my own saves.
I'll probably do a quick test of it to make sure later and update my main post later to reflect the fact that 20 proficiency can be trained.
In regards to pro vs det, aren't both just random generated for newgens now? To me, newgens are the main source of high PA signings. If I search in genie scout for players >140 PA w/ det 10< I get 472 players, 598 for pro 10<. So I still think it's clear if you had to choose one to search for, it would be high professionalism.
I didn't look into the training units at all myself, but according to EBFM training units do have an effect
In the schedule I favor, it doesn't seem any of the units are split between attacking and defending, not even the 'attacking' units, so I would assume it makes no difference what group the players are in.
I'm doing FM24, not FM26
Right now, I wouldn't recommend x7 recovery. But it doesn't matter much, we're probably talking like ~5% or less difference. I recommend Quick + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quick focus (Agility for GK) + remainder rest. 'No pitch or gym work' for first 3 condition icons, only 4-5 pre-season friendlies.
Is this so? I didn't know this
I am skeptical. If this is true, then why do recovery sessions seem to impact training results as compared to rest? Is it only because of the 3 period rest days? How can recovery also make such a large condition/jadedness difference over time if its just those infrequent 3 period rest days?
Steelwood said: Another post talked about how important match sharpness is to results so I think it is probably better to use recovery where possible, though my thoughts on that are more skewed towards winning matches rather than training results
I agree with ZaZ's comment that rest works for match sharpness so long as you manage your squad correctly through rotation and playing them occasionally in youth friendlies if necessary.
I actually think recovery has more downsides than just slightly worse training. In my own save I was using the exploit trick to use all recovery sessions instead of rest, and found it was a bit too harsh on condition and caused excess jadedness. Jadedness isn't that bad as EBFM found it's self-limiting and it's difficult to reach and easy to solve, but it does have some impact on performance. So I've been advocating for a mix of rest and recovery, but after doing some testing, you can actually get away with no recovery sessions at all. And for the slight training bonus, you would want to.
Semi-related - At the moment I'm re-analyzing attributes. For some reason a few months ago I decided quickness + attack was the best, without match practice. When I returned to it for my post here recently, I thought I made a mistake of simply forgetting match practice. But now I vaguely recall it could be that although it's a "worse" training regime, it favors 'decisions' less say, making it actually better overall. So for me, the best training regime is still in flux, I will re-assess after completing my attribute re-analysis.
What's more if You have money to buy 140 PA young players there's no need to risk with very slow (speed 8) 18-20 yo players (BTW if you don't cheat with GS You don't know CA/PA
2. I would say determination is in a way more important because I dont remember players with professionalism 6-7, and not talking about less (I always try to search minimum in my teams for my information) but determination 2-3 is quite often in lower leagues - and drastically slower youngster progress - there is a hope for such a player but if you are not desperate dont risk with him.
5. You can change natural position and reach a new one to level 20 . Especially if You have a good newgen playing as CB with aerial reach ~9 you should do it. Apart from everything else aerial coaching doesnt work good.
6. If (IF!) You have money - why not.
7. Avoid players with low mental - concentration, compassion, determination have a great impact and are really hard to improve. From my experience GK with low consistency is a fail. Injury proneness IS important if You dont have good subs - on the other hand a game is buggy and player with this attribute 5 can have (in 4 years time) more injuries then the one with 15 - but statistically it is important, though You dont see these numbers without GS.
And maybe I'm wrong , but I have an impression that in FM24 loaning above-average young players to lower leagues doesnt work very good because their progress is capped by the league level.
Mostly agree except a few small things
Determination 3 > 15 is equivalent to professionalism 5 > 13. But also 20 Determination = 14 professionalism, and determination 6 does most of it. (source). I do say on my initial post to get 10+ determination for optimal, but because CA growth is capped each year you only really need say half the optimal, so having 13 professionalism alone is probably enough to do the job.
Also there was another reason professionalism is better, I can only vaguely remember now; I think it was that professionalism allows the player to develop even if they don't end up getting match experience.
I may be mistaken but I don't think you can train player position to 20, it can be 'natural' but it will still be 18. That said, I was doing some more testing of 18 vs 20 and it seemed to have negligible effect. I was testing it in the first place because I figured it's likely 15 > 20 isn't going to be linear. I'll have to run it a few more times to be sure there is no significant effect of 18 > 20.
From what I've heard, the FM26 training file is identical to the one in FM24, and HarvestGreen22 found that attribute importance remains largely the same (long shots, finishing were boosted somewhat)
Separate to that, I wouldn't use recovery. It actually seems to affect training gains, and you can maintain match sharpness well enough with this instead (this also has the most gains in FM24 according to Piperita a few posts above): Quickness + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quickness focus (Agility for GK) + remainder rest
Man City default:
Before final match - condition 83-91%, match sharp 91-95%
After final match - condition 69-80%, match sharp 96-100%
Pure rest:
Before final match - condition 84-91%, match sharp 66-80%
After final match - condition 67-81%, match sharp 72-86%
Quick + Attack + Match Practice + Quick focus + double intensity:
Before final match - condition 84-92%, match sharp 85-92%
After final match - condition 71-81%, 93-96%
So HarvestGreen22 training is slightly better for condition, but a little lacking in match sharpness. However this may be about the right balance, as this was still before end of pre-season. Pure rest training is clearly problematic.
Training & rotation is something that has to be micromanaged as you go along, but here I've kept the same starting starting 11 for about 2 months in (5 friendlies + 6 competitive) and on the HarvestGreen22 training regime:
Before final match - condition 96-100%, match sharp 96-99% (all but one are 99%)
After final match - condition 69-83%, match sharp 100%
So it happens to be well suited to fitness management to begin with. But if you were to try to keep your subs & backups at 95%+ match fitness, that would no doubt change things. So I did a full rotation (using only 7 subs though) every match:
Before final match - condition 95-100%, match sharp 79-99%
After final match - condition 73-99%, match sharp 83-100%
Those figures include all the subs. 11 players had 100% match sharpness after the final match. So overall, it's not bad, but definitely needs more match sharpness for subs.
Now going by Piperita's clarification on the best HarvestGreen22 training regimes, and taking into account match sharpness, the top ranked one still overall looks viable: Quick + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quick focus. Since injuries are an enemy of match sharpness, I won't change the middle condition to double intensity, but just try and manage the players better. Additionally I've promoted more players to the first team squad, to make it 18 outfield + 2 GK, and added some more pre-season friendlies.
Results:
Before final match - condition 95-100%, match sharp 62-100%
After final match - condition 69-100%, match sharp 78-100%
My observation here is that there were a significantly greater number of injuries, which led to low match fitness in a number of players throughout. Resting from training was also more frequent. You probably want just enough match sharpness so that low condition doesn't result in missed training days, which means either using a lighter training regime, or not scheduling too many friendlies.
I decided to have another go, cancelling the default friendlies and not adding too many. Because why not try and see if one can hold onto the optimal training regime.
Results:
Before final match - condition 96-100%, match sharp 89-100%
After final match - condition 67-100%, match sharp 92-100%
So if you manage things right, it does work pretty well. I used just 4 pre-season friendlies here. I'm sure with some minor adjustments, you could get maintain match fitness of all players at 95%+ without having to field any low match fit players in competitive games (a handful of the backup/sub players could be played in u23 matches for the first month after pre-season to get them to 95%+).
tl;dr Use Quick + Match Practice + Attackx2 + Double Intensity + Quick focus (Agility for GK) training regime every week, even on congested schedules. 'No pitch or gym work' for first 3 condition icons. Don't do too many pre-season friendlies, it's counter-productive, 4 or 5 might be best. Full rest training lowers match sharpness far too much, but you don't need to change rest to recovery sessions or increase intensity at lower condition.
It says which training regime as caption when you expand the image. That one is 'Walters_mixed = My dense but optimized regime based on theories above. 80 injuries.'
I can't remember what training schedule I used, but it doesn't matter because it was inferior to the HarvestGreen22 training regardless of whatever that image may indicate to you.
Now, the implications for squad composition. If you think about it, this is really something that hasn't been examined at all, in spite of how consequential we all know it to be - that ill-fated tendency of us to bloat our squads; what even is the actual optimal number of players for a first team squad?
In my view, the number is 20 outfield + 2 goalkeepers + the occasional promotion from reserve/youth squad or loan to cover an injury.
9 matches need sub replacements (10 x 9)
17/53 matches permit sub replacements (6 x 17)
26/53 matches permit sub replacements for high Nat players (4 x 26)
4 developing players (AML/AMR/DL/DR) get 35 matches
6 players (2 ST, 2 DM, 2 DC) get 26 matches
Remember that 25-30 matches/season is the ideal for player development. The reason why the wonderkids should typically be wingers not centre backs or strikers I would reason is that you don't want to interrupt your ST's bucketload of goals and young players aren't usually developed enough to fill the shoes of a proper DC, but also that wingers seem to tire fast and only have 1 of each position instead of 2 on the pitch.
It is definitely adjustable to some extent according to personal preference. Basically, for each wonderkid you add, make one of your starters a high Nat player so they can handle the reduced playing time.
Some extra info:
My figures are based on using the optimal HarvestGreen22 training regime, using rest not recovery. So it is safe to combine this info with those training regimes.
Stamina does NOT effect condition recovery post-match. It only affects condition usage during the match itself.
Having a physio reduces match sharpness decay significantly, but it doesn't matter how good the physio is or how many extra you have - you just need one for the benefit.
50% match sharpness or 1 natural fitness recovers condition to 66% vs 68% for 100% sharpness. 20 natural fitness recovers condition to 74%. I mention these select figures to illustrate that natural fitness is kind of important to condition recovery, and match sharpness less so, but overall condition recovery is pretty stable and predictable regardless of the player.
There is a way to kind of exploit match sharpness gain:
friendlies:
~10 minutes for 100 (1%) match sharpness gain
~25 minutes for 200 (2%) match sharpness gain
~43 minutes for 300 (3%) match sharpness gain
~60 minutes for 400 (4%) match sharpness gain
~78 minutes for 500 (5% - max) match sharpness gain
Source: EBFM
So if you want to play absolutely optimally, you could sub a player at 78 minutes in friendlies to maximize match fitness. And throwing a player on for 10 minutes gives the most efficient match sharpness boost, while you'd know not to do 7 minutes as it gives them nothing.
For competitive as I mentioned before, it's 9% max instead of 5% max. However, EBFM did find that sometimes players would inexplicably get 10-11% max for a reason he could not identify, but I would just treat this as a kind of bonus.
9% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 50-65% sharpness
8% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 70% sharpness
6% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 80% sharpness
2% match sharpness gain per 90min competitive match @ 90% sharpness
I feel like this topic deserves it's own thread and I've done some original research for it. And I think that in a way it's one of the last remaining actual challenges of the game to make it fun. If you don't use gegenpress tactic or pick/train high pace/acc then you lose a lot, simple as that. But even if you work out the mechanics of fitness management as I am trying to do, it remains a challenging and rewarding aspect of the game. In fact, just knowing how much it effects win rate to me brings back some significant enjoyment to the game.
My overall impression is that counter-intuitively to my mind, it's better to sacrifice condition for match sharpness. Maybe this is why the AI often/always plays players with 87% condition without any rotation. It's because low match sharp players suck in terms of performance, low condition not so much (injury risk is bigger downside here). The other thing about it is that you can deal pretty easily with the problems of low condition - rotate them, pick low injury proneness players, rest them. Match fitness is much trickier, there is only one modest offset for it (natural fitness), it also has a high injury downside, you have to pay the price of lower performance to get their match fitness up if you neglect it, and as I'll show below even friendlies have a limit to recovering match fitness so there's no get out of jail free card really.
I've taken this graph from EBFM's video on match sharpness. What it's telling you is that the difference between 90% and 100% match sharpness is 33% difference in win rate.
For comparison, the difference of pace/acc 10 > 18 is 23.5% win rate according to HarvestGreen22.
To boot, match sharpness significantly impacts injury rate, even at 90%:
So how do we optimize for 100% match fitness of all players every match? And also, how to handle condition in concert with match fitness? There's a lot of variables to consider, it's fascinating to contemplate, but I will try and lay things out in the most straightforward way:
Starting at 100% condition, 90 minutes will reduce to 75% condition (typically).
Condition & match fitness update at midnight (00:00), starting the midnight that may be just a few hours after the match.
It takes 10 days for full recovery to 100% condition.
75% (day 1 - 16:00) > 83% (day 2 - 00:00) > 90% (day 3 - 00:00) > 93% (day 4) > 95% (day 5) > 96% (day 6) > 97% (day 7) > 98% (day 8) > 99% (day 9) > 100% (day 10)
In FM24, Man City (English Premier League) has the following schedule in a save I looked at:
67 games (excluding national games):
38 league
13 cup
16 continental
Total recovery days between matches:
53 x 7 days
4 x 3 days
5 x 2 days
1 x 16 days
2 x 13 days
1 x 11 days
1 x 9 days
So there are 9 matches where condition recovery will be insufficient, and another 53 which would be sub-optimal. With a weaker team with a less filled up schedule, such as Burnley, I found it could be as low as 6 + 35. In both cases, we would conclude a player should be ideally be rested every 2nd match.
But before we continue, let's look at the other half of the picture, match fitness:
after 3 weeks, match fitness dropped to 98% (recoverable in 1 game) (20 nat)
after 4 weeks, match fitness dropped to 94% (20 nat)
after 6 days, match fitness dropped by 1% (10-12 nat)
after 8 days, match fitness dropped by 2% (10 nat only)
after 9 days, match fitness dropped by 3% (10 nat only)
after 11 days, match fitness dropped by 4% (10 nat only)
after 12 days, match fitness dropped by 5% (10 nat only)
after 13 days, match fitness dropped by 6% (10 nat only)
after 14 days, match fitness dropped by 7% (10 nat only)
after 15 days, match fitness dropped by 8% (10 nat only) (99% > 91%)
after 18 days, match fitness dropped by 11% (10 nat only)
after 21 days, match fitness dropped by 15% (10 nat only)
after 4 weeks, match fitness dropped by 22% (10 nat only) (99% > 77%)
The gain rates are:
76% > 88% (1st friendly)
88% > 90% (2nd subsequent friendly)
90% > 91% (3rd subsequent friendly)
91% > 93% (subsequent competitive match)
Friendlies gain match fitness at 55% rate of competitive. As you can see, this is adequate for when the player has low match fitness, but once it hits around ~90% you run into the following complication: You can't have a friendly the day straight after the last one, so you are likely giving at least 2 days rest, yet only gaining 1% match fitness with the friendly.. so potentially you are losing 1% match fitness to later gain 1% match fitness. Hence, at 90%+ match fitness, competitive matches for gaining are recommended, and that means you have to consistently give players playing time - you'll note that the decay rate increases as a player becomes less match fit. Edit: On reflection and doing some testing, this part about friendlies hitting diminishing returns is in error. Unfortunately, I may have to re-evaluate certain conclusions I've drawn based on this presumption, which I'll revisit tomorrow.
If you do the math with the league schedule previously mentioned:
10 nat player needs to play every 8 days
12 nat player needs to play every 11 days (2 in 3 matches)
20 nat player needs to play every 21 days (1 in 3 matches)
So while for condition, a player should ideally play no more frequently than 1 in 2 matches, for match sharpness, a player typically needs to play either every match or 2 in 3 matches in most cases.
I accidentally pressed submit on this thread, so I will add more detail and my theory on squad composition in a followup post soon.
8 vs 20 drib, with 20 pace/acc/jump + 8 other attributes
8 drib:
+52, 83
+77, 90
+67, 92 (came 2nd)
+83, 92
20 drib:
+107, 97
+99, 95
+84, 97
+104, 100
Overall result: +30% goals, +10% points
-------------
140 PA 'ideal' templates with 8 drib and freed up CA reassigned randomly to other attributes vs 10-18 drib in my templates. I consider this test a more realistic indication of what you will get if you favor or disfavor dribbling.
8 drib:
+127, 104
+110, 106
+119, 102
10-18 drib:
+121, 107
+146, 107
Overall result: +13% goals, +3% points
--------------
So dribbling is quite significant, even with high physicals.
Note that my tests for this were poorly controlled due to laziness, but I feel it's adequate as a general indication. So it might be +20% or +40% rather than +30% say, but it's clearly a sizable difference. Maybe in the future I will do some more proper testing, so I can present it alongside results of other attribute combos or whatnot.
Are U-18 leagues or custom made friendly tournaments enough matches for development? Or does the player have to play in the senior team’s league instead?
For age 14-18, no matches will cap growth at ~60% (~12 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~20 CA/season.
For age 19-20, no matches will cap growth at ~35% (~5 CA/season). 20-30 matches ~14 CA/season.
For age 21-26, no matches will cap growth at near 0% (0 CA). 20-30 matches ~12 CA/season.
For GK, no matches is viable 14-20, but growth will be capped at ~20-35% throughout.
Source: EBFM
For age 14-18, u18/u23 friendlies are worth ~75% of proper senior matches.
For age 19-20, it's ~64%.
For age 21-23, it's ~50%.
For age 24-26, it's ~30%.
At all ages, senior friendlies are actually a bit worse than u18/u23 friendlies.
So u18/u23 matches are fine up to age 18, even 20 is ok, but 21+ you should loan them out even if it's to a team with poor training facilities. If you can play your best youth player(s) every match in your first team, do so even at age 14.
Source: EBFM
Match winning rate does not matter at all for development
Source: EBFM
Subbing players in after 70th minute may actually make growth worse than no appearance, possibly due to foregone training. A crucial point I'll make here is that the game counts cumulative minutes played, not appearances.
Source: EBFM
For age 14-18, u18/u23/II squad placement is ~95% of senior placement.
For age 19-23, it's ~90%.
For age 24-26, it's ~55%.
I didn't look into what is going here, but I can only suspect it's due to difference in training rather than the squad placement itself.
Source: EBFM
As you can see, EBFM's videos have a ton of gold in them that isn't immediately obvious. I also recommend watching the second half of this video for anyone who wants all the precise detail on a bunch of other factors affecting player development. I'm surprised it only has 900 views still.
Age max 22, preferably only Striker position thats dark green.
Good Professionalism
Acceleration/Pace 14 min
Bal 12 min
Ant/Con 11 min
Fin/Head/Comp/OffBall/Work/Det/Aggro/Brave/Jump/Sta/Agil/Drib/Tech/Touch 10 min
Long/Pass/Vis/Team/Dec 9 min
Cross/Tack/Mark/Pos/Nat/Strenght 8 min
and preferably low on the rest of the stats like Pen/Corner/Free Kick etc..
Am I doing this right or am I dead wrong? Haha!
So what I wrote is the nitty gritty of it all, but really you can reduce it to these general principles:
1. It doesn't matter much what player you sign, because even a low PA 8 pace/acc player can still become a beast with HarvestGreen22's training regimes.
2. What will matter is training progress rate. So sign young players with at least decent professionalism and give them 15-30 matches/season or loan them out.
3. If you want extra performance and/or more rounded players, sign players with mid/high mentals/technicals to begin with. These mostly stagnate or drop with HarvestGreen22 training.
4. Sign players with low 'decisions'. 'Decisions' is a very costly attribute in terms of CA for all positions, yet it's performance impact is negligible. Low decisions frees up CA for better attributes like pace/acc/drib/jump.
5. Sign 'natural' (20) position players only. They have the equivalent of a starting +2 pace advantage over 'accomplished' (18) players, and 18 cannot even be later trained to 20.
6. Try to sign or train up players in line with the ~140 PA ideal attribute templates if really want to optimize things.
7. Avoid dirty players. Worry less about consistency, injury proneness, set pieces. Get a captain GK.
So let's look at 2 examples:
Both of these players will do good when paired with HarvestGreen22 training, but if I had the choice I would choose the second player because he has decent to strong starting technicals/mentals, whereas the first player will always be stuck with his ~3 long shots and whatnot.
Neither player would pass your filter, and this is why you need to be careful about setting filter attributes too high or having too many. If you do use a filter, something as low and simple as 8 pace/acc min can be enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, then just do an overall visual judgement of the attributes.
It's "off-the-ball".
I was curious about this so I did a test
20 pace/acc/jump/drib/pass + 8 others = +100, 96
2nd sample = +96, 95
Above + 20 off the ball (for 2 strikers) = +93, 93
2nd sample = +92, 90
Looking at the striker stats specifically, there was no improvement, taken together they were overall slightly worse in line with the overall team result.
what do you think about the find that CA can win games? as mentioned i increased my player’s CA and PA (but not the attributes) directly before a match (so that everything stayed unchanged) and suddenly i started winning against the same team I always lost against (reloaded a savegame many times)
it would mean that mental and technical attributes can make a difference because the game assigns CA to them.
maybe this is sports interactives trick to make attributes matter - even if they cannot show things like passing in the match engine (pace / acceleration are very easy to show in the match engine) they just generally change the odds of winning 😀
that’s why i made another small experiment, i gave a player a 20 in passing/technique/vision/flair and compared this to him having a 1 in these attributes. My team won more games because of higher CA but the “passing match stats” like “passes completed” or “key passes” did not change at all
I did a few tests
---------------
(All outfield) 20 pace/acc/jump/drib + 8 other attributes:
+96, 93
+71, 92 (2nd sample)
(All outfield) 20 passing + technique + decisions + composure + decisions + first touch:
+96, 103
+107, 107 (2nd sample)
(1 DM only) 20 passing + technique + decisions + composure + decisions + first touch:
+127, 102
+55, 85 (2nd sample)
+94, 98 (3rd sample)
(All outfield) 20 passing:
+100, 96
+96, 95 (2nd sample)
---------------
I didn't isolate things 100% or take many samples, but I think it's good enough to draw a few key conclusions.
Those technical/mental attributes don't do much, even in combination. And the extra cost is ~40 CA, which is really the nail in the coffin. ~40% extra cost for ~18% extra performance.
It's more difficult to draw a conclusion about whether attribute combos compound performance, but I would say it doesn't seem so. HarvestGreen22's data showing effect of 12 > 18 of each attribute has ~2-3% increased win rate for each of these attributes I boosted. 5x2.5% = 12.5%. I boosted from 8 to 20 and got ~14%-21% extra depending on how you look at it, which is about the same as you'd expect from each attribute alone.
Also it shows that its not just judging based on CA, and my ideal 140 CA templates which are around about the same CA did significantly better
(EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC) very attacking + shorter passing + work ball into box, GK 200 CA, other adjustments + 9 subs = +339, 114
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 8 rest (~100 CA) - 1st, 86 Points, +82
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 12 rest (~150 CA) - 1st, 107 points, +151
Low (~140 CA) Ideal Template - 1st, 108 points, +132
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 14 rest (~180 CA) - 1st, 109 points, +162
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 16 rest (~200 CA) - 1st, 112 points, +214
High (~200 CA) Ideal Template - 1st, 114 points, +268
very attacking + shorter passing + be more expressive + shoot on sight = +259, 114
very attacking = +270, 112
very attacking + shorter passing = +286, 114
very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +306, 114
very attacking + shorter passing + work into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +309, 114
very attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114
attacking + shorter passing, other adjustments + 9 subs = +312, 114
very attacking + shorter passing + work ball into box, other adjustments + 9 subs = +339, 114
Some observations:
The +339 result was not from the test with the most optimizations. So training schedule, pre-season team talk morale boost, match plans, all that mustn't have mattered much. I'm guessing what made the key difference was match fitness. A repeat of the same settings produced +309.
The changes to the tactic of 'very attacking', 'shorter passing' and 'work ball into box' seemed to produce slightly better results, or at least they weren't worse, whereas some others obviously were.
Biggest premier league game win I saw was 23-0.
I realized that penalty taking, and other set pieces, for goalkeeper has 0 weighting. This is potentially useful. I've said before that set piece attributes are not worth picking for. But you may as well select a goalkeeper with decent penalty taking and composure (which there are quite a few of), and make them your penalty taker. It will also have the satisfying effect of making your GK a goalscorer.
Have you came up with a rating system for those ideal players to implement on GenieScout?
Yes, here
However I think I created this before I created my templates so it will be a little different perhaps, and GenieScout also doesn't allow negative weighting for certain attributes. But overall it should be close enough.
Also is there any way to get player faces in-match (so rather than seeing player shirt numbers you see the player faces?). Thanks
For face size:
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 9
Sas2025Final-Hidden - 4 (what brought this skin down from no. 1 for me)
Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 6
FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 9
Chove Skin for FM24 - 9
Tato is a popular skin I didn't rate highly, I gave it 5 for face size.
In my view, WTCS 'profile' page for viewing attributes is usable as your default attribute view page, unlike many skins were its just too cluttered. And I like that it gives you 4 different options (i.e. face with kit behind, or just face, etc.)
Chove has perhaps the biggest face for attribute + profile pages (and its centered on profile page), but its quite non-vanilla.
FusionDB is smallish on profile page, but large on attribute page.
I definitely didn't see any skin with full body, and to me face pic can be too big because it just stretches it too big at a certain point (though I only used the sortitoutsi pack).
I took into account 2 other minor face things when giving my overall score btw, which is face icons on squad list screen, and big photos of the board members on the club vision screen. Many skins don't have either of these at all.
5 or above is good/playable
3-4 may even be great in some ways but has serious issues
1-2 trash
I am strongly inclined towards a default-style skin, but I've tried to be somewhat open-minded.
My criteria is:
font
clarity
responsiveness
hidden attributes (footedness, CA/PA, personality, instant result, fitness %, etc.)
lack of crowdedness
stadium imagery
info/data
lack of logo intrusiveness
comfyness
face size
lack of bugs
For score 6 or less, I just went with overall initial impressions, with the criteria in mind.
WTCS Gold 24 1.3.1 - 7.64
Sas2025Final-Hidden - 7.09
Dark Polish FM24 Skins v7 - 7.09
Chove Skin for FM24 - 7.09
FusionDB FM24 Classic Dark v1.1 - 7.00
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Make FM24 Better Skin v2.5 Desktop - 6
FM.Zweierkette Skin v24.0.55 - 6
Kojuro Skin v6.2.0 - 6
Cheetah Skin 24.1.3 - 6
FM24 Light Skin - 5 or 6 (with fixes)
Tato24 FM24 Skin 2.0 - 5
Classics24 1.3 - 5
Classics24 Dark Version 1.4 - 5
DoubleX Skin - 5
Vincechup FM24 Skin - 5
LIVID 24 - 5
Zealand Skin FM24 - 5
Default skin - 5
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Trung FM24 Skin v1.7 - 4
Jimbo Skin 3.0.1 - 4
Rensie Dark FM24 Skin - 4
NY Light FM24 - 4
Electric Panther - Mustermann Edition - v1.2.0 - 4
Echo Skin for FM24 - 4
OPZ Elite 2024 Blackout 2k (for 1440p) 19.3.0 - 3
Vince Skin 1.2 - 3
Mixed Skin 24.4.1 - 3
Statman FM24 Skin v1.5 - 3
TangFu Skin V24.3.0 - 3
Statman - NUMBERLESS v1.02 - 3
JMFM Base Skin24 2.0 - 3
Royal Crown Skin by Vasf 2025-04-13 - 3
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Mustermann Iconic v1.2 FM24 Dark - 2
FM 2024 Flut Skin Dark 9.0 - 2
Just 24 - 2
Andromeda FM24 Final - 2
Vince Skin 1.2 Star Attributes - 2
Material Skin 2.0.24 V2.0.1 - 2
NARIGON Skin FM24 V1.00 - 2
Dark Gold FM24 Skin v2 - 2
Just 24 Attributeless - 1
Mixed Skin 24.4.1 (Colored) - 1
Priisek Retro 24 Skin Updated 30.12.24 The Final Cut - 1
Ciki Skin FM24 Skin - 1
Enganche Light Skin for FM24 - 1
Priisek Green 24 Skins Updated 30.12.24 - 1
FM24 in 25 LIVERPOOL Edition - 1
Fusion Skin FM24 - 1