ZaZ said: He tested Blue 2.0, which is better than original Blue. That tactic didn't get selected for tests here.
@Mark , can you make a compilation of each teams average attributes, from team report? It would be interesting to know the first touch, determination and other attributes to find some correlation. Expand
I have struggled to find too much correlation. What I thought might help was to turn the approach around.
We covered 6 leagues with the top ranked side and the bottom ranked side for each league. So I looked at the top ranked side that performed the worst and looked at the attributes where they were ranked top or second in the league overall going in to the season. Salford performed the worst of the top ranked sides, being substantially below the other top ranked sides with just 1.844 points per game, and even below one of the bottomed ranked sides.
Interestingly they also had the highest number of attribute rankings at highest or second highest in the league. I looked at all these attributes, because you would expect if these mattered Salford would have performed much better.
Interestingly Salford only had 2 attributes that ranked badly, both at 23rd for their league (the remainder average just over 4th). These attributes were Acceleration and Pace. The second worst performing side of the top ranked sides, Notts County also performed badly on just these 2 attributes plus Determination. Adding weight to these attributes, is that St Albans were ranked 2nd and 3rd for these in their league and they were easily our best lowest ranked side beating Salford in points per game. All the top 4 sides in our test were ranked above average in Acceleration and 3 were ranked above average for Pace.
Safe to say Acceleration and Pace are very important.
Next I looked at where an attribute was ranked 4th or better for the 3 of the 4 top scoring sides and not in the top 10 for Salford or Notts. The one that stood out is Vision. Ranked 4th or better for the 3 top sides in our test, and 6th for the other top 4 side. Ranked 13th for Salford and 10th for Notts.
I will put Vision in at 3rd in most important attributes.
Out of the top 4 sides in our test, 3 had Decisions ranked number 1 in their league with the other being well above average at 7th. Salford and Notts had it ranked 2nd and 3rd in their leagues. Not sure. However, St Albans (lowest ranked side in their league) were ranked 6th for Decisions, and finished 6th of our sides, the only top 6 side not to be top ranked.
I think this swings it for Decisions to be the 4th attribute I will be looking for in finding players.
There are 2 other attributes that were of interest, being the only attributes where the top 4 sides in our test all had them ranked 4th or better in their leagues - Composure and Passing. Salford were ranked 1st for Composure and 2nd for Passing, and Notts were ranked 10th for Composure and 9th for Passing. Jury is out but worth thinking about these 2 as well.
PS: @ZaZ, what is happening with the Leamington save.
@ZaZ A few interesting observations as I drill into the data.
Sides that had a lower number of players in the Squad were either worse off or more variable in their results. Weymouth had the smallest squad with just 16 players when I stopped them recruiting. It would only take a suspension or injury to impact them.
The stats that they all seemed to have that were consistently high for their sides were (in order):
Determination Natural Fitness Work rate Stamina Team work Acceleration
Of these there were 3 that increased in importance as you moved up through the grades ie you needed these to increase as you move through the leagues:
@Droid and @Zippo I would be interested in your thoughts on the original question. How do we test the tactics for the Lower Leagues. That was all I was attempting to do. Viola was only behind due to performance with lower ranked sides. I think they were all impressive in my tests but my observation was there was a small but measurable difference.
Poacher said: @Mark, if you'd ask me then I wouldn't say there's a clear winner
ZaZ Blue 2.0 tactic: Avg. points per game = 1.916
Phoenix 3.0 tactic: Avg. points per game = 1.849
The difference in PPG is less than 3.5%
I guess you tested without eliminating RNG factors like in the fm-arena testing, I mean freezing the morale and conditions and so on. In the fm-arena testing Phoenix tactic has 2.114 PPG and Blue tactic has 2.092 PPG so in fm-arena testing the difference in PPG is less than 1.1% and I'm sure if you were eliminating RNG then you also had like a 1.1% difference in PPG and you really can't say that there's a clear winner when the difference is less than 1.1% Expand
Just an observation, but you cant average the numbers from that table because they played different numbers of games in each league. The real average points per game are in the summary and details tables for each tactic.
ZaZ Blue 2.0 is 1.905269058 Phoenix V3.0 is 1.832399103 Viola V1 is 1.755605381
Using these figures the overall percentage differences are as follows:
ZaZ Blue 2.0 is 3.977% higher than Phoenix V3.0 and 8.525% higher than Viola V1. Phoenix V3.0 is 4.374% higher than Viola V1
I dont disagree with your points about points per match being the most important stat @Nikko and @Milakus. This is why it is the main stat I have used in the summary results. However, I think winning the league means you had the best side that year in that league, so I think it is a supplementary indicator.
In terms of the variables and random factors, I think that the extent of the testing would reduce these somewhat. The higher the number of games played the lower the random impacts will be. For example. 1800 games testing should provide a much better picture than say 150 games.
I love FM Arena. The concept is brilliant and value to the FM community is huge. However I have often thought that by using teams with talent at the levels of EPL and Champions leagues, the testing doesnt always assist us lower league players. And I certainly like that there are differing views put forward on the forums.
Having said all that, I did this for fun and dont claim it to be definitive. Take what you want from what I have produced. I play the lowest tier in each save and will certainly be favoring ZaZ Blue 2.0 until the next major update from SI.
An important thing worth noting is that ZaZ Blue 2.0 produced 18 champions from the 40 seasons across all leagues including one for a lowest ranked side. This is without buying any players. Very impressive. Also worth noting that Phoenix wasnt far behind and performed better with some of the lower ranked teams. Viola was a bit behind the other 2 tactics but mainly with underdog teams. Viola was still very competitive though.
Hope this has helped people who play the lower leagues. It certainly will inform my approach going forward. A special thanks to the people that develop the tactics, @ZaZ@Egraam and @Magician.
I will have more of a look through the results over the next few days and add observations here.
@ZaZ All the numbers are average points per game. The top ranked sides and low ranked sides were determined using FM Scout when the game was first saved. So low ranked sides were expected to be relegated and top ranked sides to be promoted. Non League sides are Vanarama leagues. Hope that helps
I have split the tests between 2 groupings - Van South, L2 and Champ/ Van North, Van National and L1. So halfway through it is hard to compare. Phoenix is the only tactic so far to span both groups. So probably unfair to compare them at this stage. Observations to date: ZaZ does look very strong for lower leagues especially those teams that are not favored. 6 of their 10 test groups have had both sides in the top 4 and twice the bottom ranked side has finished in front of the top ranked side. Viola seems to be behind with the lower ranked side always substantially behind in the finish order. Still waiting for test 6 to finish so probably done for tonight.
As it stands:
ZaZ Blue 2.0 Ave Pts 1.982 Top Rk sides 2.172 Low Rk sides 1.792 Non League sides 2.081
Phoenix v3.0 Ave Pts 1.782 Top Rk sides 1.977 Low Rk sides 1.588 Non League sides 1.762
Viola V1 Ave Pts 1.722 Top Rk sides 2.011 Low Rk sides 1.432 Non League sides 1.630
The tactics are Viola V1, ZaZ Blue 2.0 and Phoenix v3.0. No transfers selected, which I think disadvantages the tactics but keeps it even, so I would expect the results to be less than what you could do through recruiting decent players. I took default manager stats. Just running test 5 so test 6 should be finished in around an hour and that will be halfway through. Will post something after that run. Final 6 tests and final results might be a day or two.
League High Low Van South Ebbsfleet St Albans Van North Fylde Leamington Van National Notts Co Weymouth League 2 Salford Leyton Orient League 1 Charlton Accrington Champ Norwich Wycombe
I thought I would look to see how the 3 top tactics here go in all the English Leagues below EPL. I have loaded all the English and UK leagues only in a large database and custom added all UK region players. I then saved and looked at the top and worst ranked sides in each league. I am going to test each tactic 4 times at each level and compare the outcomes to try and see which tactic is best for lower ranked sides. I will post results here in the next few days
I like the idea of having a good park the bus tactic @ZaZ. I have just been changing mentality to cautious on ZaZ Blue 2.0. You might want to try it as the benchmark.
@ZaZ I have started with St Albans predicted 16th Vanarama South. Halfway through the season with ZaZ Blue 2.0 and on top with 17-2-1 record. Really havent been able to get players I want for the roles in Zaz Blue. Thinking of changing maybe 3 of the positional roles to better to suit the squad but keeping structure and leaving positional instructions as close as I can. What do you think? And loving your tactics by the way.
I played FM14 where shadow strikers ruled. Then didnt update until FM19. Here I am with FM21 playing shadow strikers again. I am going to experiment with some of the other pre 21.2.0 patch successful tactics with SS and see what happens. Will definitely be using this one though
This is the most downloaded tactic on FM Scout for FM21. I was wondering how it stacks up against the others already tested on FM Arena. If you get a chance it would be great to find out, I have attached the tactic. Thanks
@Mark , can you make a compilation of each teams average attributes, from team report? It would be interesting to know the first touch, determination and other attributes to find some correlation.
I have struggled to find too much correlation. What I thought might help was to turn the approach around.
We covered 6 leagues with the top ranked side and the bottom ranked side for each league. So I looked at the top ranked side that performed the worst and looked at the attributes where they were ranked top or second in the league overall going in to the season. Salford performed the worst of the top ranked sides, being substantially below the other top ranked sides with just 1.844 points per game, and even below one of the bottomed ranked sides.
Interestingly they also had the highest number of attribute rankings at highest or second highest in the league. I looked at all these attributes, because you would expect if these mattered Salford would have performed much better.
Interestingly Salford only had 2 attributes that ranked badly, both at 23rd for their league (the remainder average just over 4th). These attributes were Acceleration and Pace. The second worst performing side of the top ranked sides, Notts County also performed badly on just these 2 attributes plus Determination. Adding weight to these attributes, is that St Albans were ranked 2nd and 3rd for these in their league and they were easily our best lowest ranked side beating Salford in points per game. All the top 4 sides in our test were ranked above average in Acceleration and 3 were ranked above average for Pace.
Safe to say Acceleration and Pace are very important.
Next I looked at where an attribute was ranked 4th or better for the 3 of the 4 top scoring sides and not in the top 10 for Salford or Notts. The one that stood out is Vision. Ranked 4th or better for the 3 top sides in our test, and 6th for the other top 4 side. Ranked 13th for Salford and 10th for Notts.
I will put Vision in at 3rd in most important attributes.
Out of the top 4 sides in our test, 3 had Decisions ranked number 1 in their league with the other being well above average at 7th. Salford and Notts had it ranked 2nd and 3rd in their leagues. Not sure. However, St Albans (lowest ranked side in their league) were ranked 6th for Decisions, and finished 6th of our sides, the only top 6 side not to be top ranked.
I think this swings it for Decisions to be the 4th attribute I will be looking for in finding players.
There are 2 other attributes that were of interest, being the only attributes where the top 4 sides in our test all had them ranked 4th or better in their leagues - Composure and Passing. Salford were ranked 1st for Composure and 2nd for Passing, and Notts were ranked 10th for Composure and 9th for Passing. Jury is out but worth thinking about these 2 as well.
PS: @ZaZ, what is happening with the Leamington save.
Sides that had a lower number of players in the Squad were either worse off or more variable in their results. Weymouth had the smallest squad with just 16 players when I stopped them recruiting. It would only take a suspension or injury to impact them.
The stats that they all seemed to have that were consistently high for their sides were (in order):
Determination
Natural Fitness
Work rate
Stamina
Team work
Acceleration
Of these there were 3 that increased in importance as you moved up through the grades ie you needed these to increase as you move through the leagues:
Work rate
Stamina
Team work
ZaZ Blue 2.0 tactic: Avg. points per game = 1.916
Phoenix 3.0 tactic: Avg. points per game = 1.849
The difference in PPG is less than 3.5%
I guess you tested without eliminating RNG factors like in the fm-arena testing, I mean freezing the morale and conditions and so on. In the fm-arena testing Phoenix tactic has 2.114 PPG and Blue tactic has 2.092 PPG so in fm-arena testing the difference in PPG is less than 1.1% and I'm sure if you were eliminating RNG then you also had like a 1.1% difference in PPG and you really can't say that there's a clear winner when the difference is less than 1.1%
Just an observation, but you cant average the numbers from that table because they played different numbers of games in each league. The real average points per game are in the summary and details tables for each tactic.
ZaZ Blue 2.0 is 1.905269058
Phoenix V3.0 is 1.832399103
Viola V1 is 1.755605381
Using these figures the overall percentage differences are as follows:
ZaZ Blue 2.0 is 3.977% higher than Phoenix V3.0 and 8.525% higher than Viola V1.
Phoenix V3.0 is 4.374% higher than Viola V1
All these are above your 3.5% threshold.
@ZaZ I will look at player attributes in the next few days to see if there is any correlation to the results.
In terms of the variables and random factors, I think that the extent of the testing would reduce these somewhat. The higher the number of games played the lower the random impacts will be. For example. 1800 games testing should provide a much better picture than say 150 games.
I love FM Arena. The concept is brilliant and value to the FM community is huge. However I have often thought that by using teams with talent at the levels of EPL and Champions leagues, the testing doesnt always assist us lower league players. And I certainly like that there are differing views put forward on the forums.
Having said all that, I did this for fun and dont claim it to be definitive. Take what you want from what I have produced. I play the lowest tier in each save and will certainly be favoring ZaZ Blue 2.0 until the next major update from SI.
Hope this has helped people who play the lower leagues. It certainly will inform my approach going forward. A special thanks to the people that develop the tactics, @ZaZ @Egraam and @Magician.
I will have more of a look through the results over the next few days and add observations here.
Points per match by league using top ranked and lowest ranked sides:
I think ZaZ Blue 2.0 is a clear winner for lower league management.
Points per match by club:
Weymouth are a bit of an anomaly. I feel inclined to take the challenge and try and win something with them on my next save using ZaZ Blue 2.0.
ZaZ Blue 2.0 Summary results and individual test results:
Phoenix v3.0 Summary results and individual test results:
Viola V1 Summary results and individual test results:
As it stands:
ZaZ Blue 2.0
Ave Pts 1.982
Top Rk sides 2.172
Low Rk sides 1.792
Non League sides 2.081
Phoenix v3.0
Ave Pts 1.782
Top Rk sides 1.977
Low Rk sides 1.588
Non League sides 1.762
Viola V1
Ave Pts 1.722
Top Rk sides 2.011
Low Rk sides 1.432
Non League sides 1.630
League High Low
Van South Ebbsfleet St Albans
Van North Fylde Leamington
Van National Notts Co Weymouth
League 2 Salford Leyton Orient
League 1 Charlton Accrington
Champ Norwich Wycombe
RESULTS