I'd heard it in a few places that someone had won the Premier League with a team of 1 CA/PA players. As it turned out, it was done back in FM21 with a strikerless tactic, exploiting the low weighting cost of DMs. I had a go at recreating it, mainly as a bit of fun, but also to confirm it for myself as I've heard people deny it's possible. And it needs an update for FM24.
Mid-table results were easy with just 20 pace/acc/drib (not sure if I included jump), but it required careful tweaks — closer to Orion’s data than HarvestGreen’s — to push into the top four. Winning is barely possible and inconsistent, but the experiment taught me a lot about how attributes, combinations, fitness, morale, and form affect outcomes. I wanted to wait until I'd worked out a way to win consistently, but I'm a bit burnt out by it now - at least the main point is proven, that you can actually win with just 1 CA/PA players, and I may try and improve it more later on. Coming 2nd I can do consistently. I may also retest without the 210cm height & player traits, I actually doubt those impact the results much.
The winning result:
Scroll to bottom for attribute stats by position
Setup:
• Use Knap’s EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC tactic and Blue Routines set pieces. • No strikerless exploit. • Allowed: friendlies, training, captains; no reloads. • Squad: 22 players, all 1 CA.
Findings:
- It is possible to win with 1 CA players without strikerless exploit - Concentration ~16+ on CBs+FBs (no other combo) was key to winning the league - Pace+Acc alone = 0 points, 0-7 loss typical - Jump+Acc alone = a draw or two, 1-7 loss typical - Drib+Pace+Acc alone = mid-table - HarvestGreen data skew = bottom to mid-table - Orion data skew = mid-table to top 4 - Orion data skew + pace/acc 16 or less = bottom - Orion data skew + pace/acc 20 = mid-table - Orion data skew + pace/acc ~17-20 (mix) = top 4 - 20 in key attributes + maxxing out other lowest weighted ones = high mid-table - Lowest weighted attributes (i.e. finishing '1' weight on CBs) had negligible effect (i.e. no extra goals or overall team dominance) - Most attributes make no statistically significant difference, very low values will even dominate many in-game stats - (Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table - (Only) one slow ST target man = high mid-table - League position more consistent than points (i.e. one case, almost always finish 2nd but was 66-91 points) - Winning formula finishes ~4th majority of the time, 2nd place was more consistently 2nd - Fitness management, particularly of match sharpness, is important - difference between ~mid-table and ~4th say - Morale & form somewhat important, difference between ~4th and ~2nd say - Squad rotation (even if perfectly done) or too much rest detrimental to results (maybe this is why AI managers rarely rotate, and why the game says 'I want to play you but X is in the form of his life right now' when players pipe up for more playing time) - Altering knap tactic (i.e. 'very attacking'/'defensive', 'work into box', etc.) was worse than default - 1 consistency doesn't matter, since consistency reduces CA but 1 is already the minimum; seemed to be the case in testing, but hard to verify 100% - Biggest premier league win I got was 9-0
What stayed the same/correlated with top results:
GK - agility 15-20, acc 5-6, pace 5-8, sta 3-6??, composure 6-10?, work rate 6-7, aerial 16-20, communication 3-8?, reflexes 10-13 DL/DR - acc 20, pace 20, jump 20, off the ball 20? (unlikely), vision 5-7?, work rate 7-11, dribbling 20, finishing 20 DC - acc 15-20, pace 18-20, jump 17-20, strength 4-6, flair 20?, vision 15-20?, dribbling 20 DM - acc 19-20, pace 20, jump 20, bravery 12-20?, flair 20?, vision 3-4?, work rate 7-10? AML/AMR - acc 15-18, pace 16-18, jump 20, flair 20, positioning 18-20, work rate 7 ST - pace 20, acc 18-20, flair 20, work rate 7
Question mark indicates I think it's unlikely to be essential.
I tested certain attributes (at '20', with CA boost added so no decrease of other attributes) specifically to see if they mattered (i.e. changed league position), most didn't. Some examples:
ST - finishing, agility, dribbling, work rate, decisions, stamina, strength, off the ball - not any of these DM - strength, vision, dribbling - none of these DC - agility, balance, strength, tackling, marking, heading - these do win/make close 2nd, but only slightly
I haven't tested all attributes and their combos exhaustively, so there may be some things left, but I tested a lot of them.
You can deduce a lot of the above yourself from the following images (I've kept the roles highlighted to show how misleading they are):
GK:
DL/DR:
DC:
DM:
AML/AMR:
ST:
Note: If you're wondering *why* I've changed certain attributes and in the way I do, it's that I'm following the money. The reason finishing went from '5' to '3' for strikers isn't because I never tested above 5, but because I probably did a dozen different combos with finishing above '5' that didn't work out. I think there are knock-on effects to other positions as well (i.e. if your winger has better finishing, he'll probably do most of the goals), so I'm kind of forced to just take the approach of 'if it works, it works' and I move on to try and improve another position until I can't squeeze anymore out of it and then move on to the next one.
I have this striker who came in on a free transfer and was always a substitute, but whenever he played he scored regularly, so I eventually had to make him a starter. Out of curiosity, I checked his CA and PA: 135/135. I wasn’t expecting a player with 135 CA to be able to score so many goals.
To see if I understood the post correctly, this striker is very strong because he has acceleration, pace, flair, and work rate.
BaZuKa said: To see if I understood the post correctly, this striker is very strong because he has acceleration, pace, flair, and work rate. Expand
It would be at least most of the reason why.
You have to be a little careful extrapolating the 1 CA results to higher CAs. Even at 1 CA, it's clear other attributes do matter, just not much. For instance, I can say for certain that if you give ST higher finishing, he will do most of the goals instead of the wingers (that doesn't mean a necessarily better overall team performance though). But also it's possible that consideration of certain attributes only kicks in at say 120+ PA. This was the case in Championship Manager based on what I've read, and whilst that mechanic is probably gone now, I think there's a fair chance something similar still exists.
Another thing btw is that apparently the match rating is skewed towards technical ability, and biased against physical ability, even though physical ability beats the technical ability. Source. This is particularly interesting to me, because it helps to explain why Orion's coefficients doesn't produce a winning 1 CA team, even though it gets most of the way there - Orion's coefficients are basically comparing the match ratings, and if its biased towards lesser-performing technical ability, this would explain it.
Also I'm not 100% confident on flair yet, I should test it more, but I did a little testing, and so far it seemed it was beneficial in spite of what HarvestGreen found.
In my current save, I’m already in 2032, and I use my own spreadsheet to scout players. At the moment, I’m using Orion’s Coefficients as the evaluation formula, and I use this website to analyse the players.
For example, my player has 14 as a AF.
This is the best AF up to 18 years old in the game, according to the spreadsheet. 13 rating.
Kma said: I think that the 210cm height who make all the difference can you please test with 180cm height???? Expand Changed to more realistic heights & weights (173-190cm, 67-89kg)
No significant difference:
I didn't expect it would change it much, if at all. I can't remember if height is taken into amount in jumping calculations, or if it just influences what jumping reach players are set initially with. Even if it is in jumping calculations, most of the players have 20 jumping reach already anyway, and pace/acc are more important
Kma said: After that 1 CA test please can you make a liste of attributes for : - GK - DC - DR/DL - DM - AMR/AML - AMC - ST I will create filters in game Expand If you mean updated attributes for my 'ideal' ~140 CA players, I made improvements to them before the 1 CA test which are ~10% better, and I've also made a ~70 CA version, but these 1 CA results have thrown a lot of attributes into question. So I'm sitting on it right now.
My plan is to test each attribute one by one at ~140 CA. And I'll have to test certain attribute combos as well to be sure.
Not sure how long it will take me to get this done, could be a few days, could be a few weeks.
BulldozerJokic said: So, basically retrain wingers into DL/DR, retrain DL/DR into wingers Expand Yes, this is what kind of struck me about it.
In my post, you'll see I say "(Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table". The reason I tested this is because if you look at the knap tactic, the wingers are told to dribble more, cross less often, but also hold up ball, while the fullbacks are to dribble all the way up the pitch. I put all those leftover CA points into making the wingers technical/mental geniuses. My thinking was that that way my team would dominate in every area appropriately.
While 1 pace/acc for wingers surprisingly did ok, it didn't make things better. I had also tried making them decent tacklers/defenders with minimal pace/acc decrease, that didn't work either. I tried this with other positions too, i.e. 1 tall/strong/passing/slow DC, 1 fast/dribbling DC. Didn't work. By contrast, 20 pace/acc/drib on fullbacks seems to make them the most valuable players on the pitch.
And in looking at training, I notice that 'play from the back' aligns well with my attribute distribution. In fact a lot of training sessions names seem to match what they say they do in practice. So for example, 'play from the back' is the best way to give your defenders dribbling skill (+0.65 DC, +0.45 DL/DR), whereas 'defend from the front' gives forwards +1 drib but defenders get 0 drib. You can't actually simply just fill up your training with all these sessions, but in cases where you're deciding between two of the same types of session, i.e. 'endurance' vs 'quickness', you can pretty much rely on what the name is telling you in terms of what it will tactically achieve.
@GeorgeFloydOverdosed what I am getting from your data is that I can actually focus less on pace/acc on my wingers in my saves. Potentially opening up a carreer where I get a winger regen I can play until his 40s
Also, I know that jumping reach on wingers is quite important as I saw a lot of goals from them when they respond to crosses and score headers. From your tests, having tall striker didn't make a difference? And what about short DMs, is that a no-go?
( edited 1 day, 18 hours ago by GeorgeFloydOverdosed )
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BulldozerJokic said: @GeorgeFloydOverdosed what I am getting from your data is that I can actually focus less on pace/acc on my wingers in my saves. Potentially opening up a carreer where I get a winger regen I can play until his 40s Expand No, I strongly recommend maxxing out pace/acc for all positions including wingers.
This is a bit complicated to explain, so I'll just put it in separate points:
- I think you can get away with 1-2 slow players because of the red card system where teams lose 1-2 players in matches sometimes yet can still play on decently. This is pure speculation though. - My players were constrained to 1 CA, and wingers are most CA demanding, so I had no choice but to make them the least useful players. - If you make a player useless, another team member will seemingly pick up the slack where they can. For instance, my STs had 1 finishing, so my 6 finishing AML/AMRs did most of the goals. If I made AML/AMRs 1 finishing, my ST or DL/DR would score the goals. - 10-20 CA is adequate to make wingers non-useless - Because I only had 1 CA, I basically made my AML/AMRs into extra striker pressure while my DL/DRs did all the heavy lifting, but I think how it's supposed to work in the tactic is that the AML/AMRs are an extra set of runner options who do strong pressing work to reclaim the ball quickly as well - My testing was in premier league, and I found even 16/16 pace/acc for all players to fail badly. So you can't skimp on pace/acc, unless in low leagues I guess.
BulldozerJokic said: Also, I know that jumping reach on wingers is quite important as I saw a lot of goals from them when they respond to crosses and score headers. From your tests, having tall striker didn't make a difference? And what about short DMs, is that a no-go? Expand I think I fiddled around with jumping reach a bit but not too much. Mainly on the STs and DCs, because jumping reach on all other positions such as AML/AMR is so cheap.
As you can see, 1 jump ST won out. I don't know if this is because AML/AMR picked up the slack. I think heading also ties in with a bit - and you can see heading was 6 or 20 on my AML/AMR in spite of the painfully low CA to go around.
I did try a slow tall strong ST + fast short finish ST combo. It did high mid-table, but was inferior to fast 1 jump 1 drib STs in the end. I tried 20 pace/acc/jump STs early on of course.
With DM, they have 20 jump, but I think I didn't bother testing 1 jump because their jump CA cost is minuscule and DMs have the highest abundance of CA as well. I doubt it would be significantly detrimental if they were short, but I can't really say.
I'd heard it in a few places that someone had won the Premier League with a team of 1 CA/PA players. As it turned out, it was done back in FM21 with a strikerless tactic, exploiting the low weighting cost of DMs. I had a go at recreating it, mainly as a bit of fun, but also to confirm it for myself as I've heard people deny it's possible. And it needs an update for FM24.
Mid-table results were easy with just 20 pace/acc/drib (not sure if I included jump), but it required careful tweaks — closer to Orion’s data than HarvestGreen’s — to push into the top four. Winning is barely possible and inconsistent, but the experiment taught me a lot about how attributes, combinations, fitness, morale, and form affect outcomes. I wanted to wait until I'd worked out a way to win consistently, but I'm a bit burnt out by it now - at least the main point is proven, that you can actually win with just 1 CA/PA players, and I may try and improve it more later on. Coming 2nd I can do consistently. I may also retest without the 210cm height & player traits, I actually doubt those impact the results much.
The winning result:
Scroll to bottom for attribute stats by position
Setup:
• Use Knap’s EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC tactic and Blue Routines set pieces.
• No strikerless exploit.
• Allowed: friendlies, training, captains; no reloads.
• Squad: 22 players, all 1 CA.
Findings:
- It is possible to win with 1 CA players without strikerless exploit
- Concentration ~16+ on CBs+FBs (no other combo) was key to winning the league
- Pace+Acc alone = 0 points, 0-7 loss typical
- Jump+Acc alone = a draw or two, 1-7 loss typical
- Drib+Pace+Acc alone = mid-table
- HarvestGreen data skew = bottom to mid-table
- Orion data skew = mid-table to top 4
- Orion data skew + pace/acc 16 or less = bottom
- Orion data skew + pace/acc 20 = mid-table
- Orion data skew + pace/acc ~17-20 (mix) = top 4
- 20 in key attributes + maxxing out other lowest weighted ones = high mid-table
- Lowest weighted attributes (i.e. finishing '1' weight on CBs) had negligible effect (i.e. no extra goals or overall team dominance)
- Most attributes make no statistically significant difference, very low values will even dominate many in-game stats
- (Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table
- (Only) one slow ST target man = high mid-table
- League position more consistent than points (i.e. one case, almost always finish 2nd but was 66-91 points)
- Winning formula finishes ~4th majority of the time, 2nd place was more consistently 2nd
- Fitness management, particularly of match sharpness, is important - difference between ~mid-table and ~4th say
- Morale & form somewhat important, difference between ~4th and ~2nd say
- Squad rotation (even if perfectly done) or too much rest detrimental to results (maybe this is why AI managers rarely rotate, and why the game says 'I want to play you but X is in the form of his life right now' when players pipe up for more playing time)
- Altering knap tactic (i.e. 'very attacking'/'defensive', 'work into box', etc.) was worse than default
- 1 consistency doesn't matter, since consistency reduces CA but 1 is already the minimum; seemed to be the case in testing, but hard to verify 100%
- Biggest premier league win I got was 9-0
What stayed the same/correlated with top results:
GK - agility 15-20, acc 5-6, pace 5-8, sta 3-6??, composure 6-10?, work rate 6-7, aerial 16-20, communication 3-8?, reflexes 10-13
DL/DR - acc 20, pace 20, jump 20, off the ball 20? (unlikely), vision 5-7?, work rate 7-11, dribbling 20, finishing 20
DC - acc 15-20, pace 18-20, jump 17-20, strength 4-6, flair 20?, vision 15-20?, dribbling 20
DM - acc 19-20, pace 20, jump 20, bravery 12-20?, flair 20?, vision 3-4?, work rate 7-10?
AML/AMR - acc 15-18, pace 16-18, jump 20, flair 20, positioning 18-20, work rate 7
ST - pace 20, acc 18-20, flair 20, work rate 7
Question mark indicates I think it's unlikely to be essential.
I tested certain attributes (at '20', with CA boost added so no decrease of other attributes) specifically to see if they mattered (i.e. changed league position), most didn't. Some examples:
ST - finishing, agility, dribbling, work rate, decisions, stamina, strength, off the ball - not any of these
DM - strength, vision, dribbling - none of these
DC - agility, balance, strength, tackling, marking, heading - these do win/make close 2nd, but only slightly
I haven't tested all attributes and their combos exhaustively, so there may be some things left, but I tested a lot of them.
You can deduce a lot of the above yourself from the following images (I've kept the roles highlighted to show how misleading they are):
GK:
DL/DR:
DC:
DM:
AML/AMR:
ST:
Note: If you're wondering *why* I've changed certain attributes and in the way I do, it's that I'm following the money. The reason finishing went from '5' to '3' for strikers isn't because I never tested above 5, but because I probably did a dozen different combos with finishing above '5' that didn't work out. I think there are knock-on effects to other positions as well (i.e. if your winger has better finishing, he'll probably do most of the goals), so I'm kind of forced to just take the approach of 'if it works, it works' and I move on to try and improve another position until I can't squeeze anymore out of it and then move on to the next one.
I have this striker who came in on a free transfer and was always a substitute, but whenever he played he scored regularly, so I eventually had to make him a starter. Out of curiosity, I checked his CA and PA: 135/135. I wasn’t expecting a player with 135 CA to be able to score so many goals.
To see if I understood the post correctly, this striker is very strong because he has acceleration, pace, flair, and work rate.
BaZuKa said: To see if I understood the post correctly, this striker is very strong because he has acceleration, pace, flair, and work rate.
It would be at least most of the reason why.
You have to be a little careful extrapolating the 1 CA results to higher CAs. Even at 1 CA, it's clear other attributes do matter, just not much. For instance, I can say for certain that if you give ST higher finishing, he will do most of the goals instead of the wingers (that doesn't mean a necessarily better overall team performance though). But also it's possible that consideration of certain attributes only kicks in at say 120+ PA. This was the case in Championship Manager based on what I've read, and whilst that mechanic is probably gone now, I think there's a fair chance something similar still exists.
Another thing btw is that apparently the match rating is skewed towards technical ability, and biased against physical ability, even though physical ability beats the technical ability. Source. This is particularly interesting to me, because it helps to explain why Orion's coefficients doesn't produce a winning 1 CA team, even though it gets most of the way there - Orion's coefficients are basically comparing the match ratings, and if its biased towards lesser-performing technical ability, this would explain it.
Also I'm not 100% confident on flair yet, I should test it more, but I did a little testing, and so far it seemed it was beneficial in spite of what HarvestGreen found.
In my current save, I’m already in 2032, and I use my own spreadsheet to scout players. At the moment, I’m using Orion’s Coefficients as the evaluation formula, and I use this website to analyse the players.
For example, my player has 14 as a AF.
This is the best AF up to 18 years old in the game, according to the spreadsheet. 13 rating.
https://fm-client-app.vercel.app
I think that the 210cm height who make all the difference
can you please test with 180cm height????
Kma said: I think that the 210cm height who make all the difference
can you please test with 180cm height????
Changed to more realistic heights & weights (173-190cm, 67-89kg)
No significant difference:
I didn't expect it would change it much, if at all. I can't remember if height is taken into amount in jumping calculations, or if it just influences what jumping reach players are set initially with. Even if it is in jumping calculations, most of the players have 20 jumping reach already anyway, and pace/acc are more important
After that 1 CA test please can you make a liste of attributes for :
- GK
- DC
- DR/DL
- DM
- AMR/AML
- AMC
- ST
I will create filters in game
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: DL/DR - acc 20, pace 20, jump 20, off the ball 20? (unlikely), vision 5-7?, work rate 7-11, dribbling 20, finishing 20
DC - acc 15-20, pace 18-20, jump 17-20, strength 4-6, flair 20?, vision 15-20?, dribbling 20
DM - acc 19-20, pace 20, jump 20, bravery 12-20?, flair 20?, vision 3-4?, work rate 7-10?
AML/AMR - acc 15-18, pace 16-18, jump 20, flair 20, positioning 18-20, work rate 7
ST - pace 20, acc 18-20, flair 20, work rate 7
So, basically retrain wingers into DL/DR, retrain DL/DR into wingers
Kma said: After that 1 CA test please can you make a liste of attributes for :
- GK
- DC
- DR/DL
- DM
- AMR/AML
- AMC
- ST
I will create filters in game
If you mean updated attributes for my 'ideal' ~140 CA players, I made improvements to them before the 1 CA test which are ~10% better, and I've also made a ~70 CA version, but these 1 CA results have thrown a lot of attributes into question. So I'm sitting on it right now.
My plan is to test each attribute one by one at ~140 CA. And I'll have to test certain attribute combos as well to be sure.
Not sure how long it will take me to get this done, could be a few days, could be a few weeks.
BulldozerJokic said: So, basically retrain wingers into DL/DR, retrain DL/DR into wingers
Yes, this is what kind of struck me about it.
In my post, you'll see I say "(Only) wingers 1 pace/acc = high mid-table". The reason I tested this is because if you look at the knap tactic, the wingers are told to dribble more, cross less often, but also hold up ball, while the fullbacks are to dribble all the way up the pitch. I put all those leftover CA points into making the wingers technical/mental geniuses. My thinking was that that way my team would dominate in every area appropriately.
While 1 pace/acc for wingers surprisingly did ok, it didn't make things better. I had also tried making them decent tacklers/defenders with minimal pace/acc decrease, that didn't work either. I tried this with other positions too, i.e. 1 tall/strong/passing/slow DC, 1 fast/dribbling DC. Didn't work. By contrast, 20 pace/acc/drib on fullbacks seems to make them the most valuable players on the pitch.
And in looking at training, I notice that 'play from the back' aligns well with my attribute distribution. In fact a lot of training sessions names seem to match what they say they do in practice. So for example, 'play from the back' is the best way to give your defenders dribbling skill (+0.65 DC, +0.45 DL/DR), whereas 'defend from the front' gives forwards +1 drib but defenders get 0 drib. You can't actually simply just fill up your training with all these sessions, but in cases where you're deciding between two of the same types of session, i.e. 'endurance' vs 'quickness', you can pretty much rely on what the name is telling you in terms of what it will tactically achieve.
@GeorgeFloydOverdosed what I am getting from your data is that I can actually focus less on pace/acc on my wingers in my saves. Potentially opening up a carreer where I get a winger regen I can play until his 40s
Also, I know that jumping reach on wingers is quite important as I saw a lot of goals from them when they respond to crosses and score headers. From your tests, having tall striker didn't make a difference? And what about short DMs, is that a no-go?
BulldozerJokic said: @GeorgeFloydOverdosed what I am getting from your data is that I can actually focus less on pace/acc on my wingers in my saves. Potentially opening up a carreer where I get a winger regen I can play until his 40s
No, I strongly recommend maxxing out pace/acc for all positions including wingers.
This is a bit complicated to explain, so I'll just put it in separate points:
- I think you can get away with 1-2 slow players because of the red card system where teams lose 1-2 players in matches sometimes yet can still play on decently. This is pure speculation though.
- My players were constrained to 1 CA, and wingers are most CA demanding, so I had no choice but to make them the least useful players.
- If you make a player useless, another team member will seemingly pick up the slack where they can. For instance, my STs had 1 finishing, so my 6 finishing AML/AMRs did most of the goals. If I made AML/AMRs 1 finishing, my ST or DL/DR would score the goals.
- 10-20 CA is adequate to make wingers non-useless
- Because I only had 1 CA, I basically made my AML/AMRs into extra striker pressure while my DL/DRs did all the heavy lifting, but I think how it's supposed to work in the tactic is that the AML/AMRs are an extra set of runner options who do strong pressing work to reclaim the ball quickly as well
- My testing was in premier league, and I found even 16/16 pace/acc for all players to fail badly. So you can't skimp on pace/acc, unless in low leagues I guess.
BulldozerJokic said: Also, I know that jumping reach on wingers is quite important as I saw a lot of goals from them when they respond to crosses and score headers. From your tests, having tall striker didn't make a difference? And what about short DMs, is that a no-go?
I think I fiddled around with jumping reach a bit but not too much. Mainly on the STs and DCs, because jumping reach on all other positions such as AML/AMR is so cheap.
As you can see, 1 jump ST won out. I don't know if this is because AML/AMR picked up the slack. I think heading also ties in with a bit - and you can see heading was 6 or 20 on my AML/AMR in spite of the painfully low CA to go around.
I did try a slow tall strong ST + fast short finish ST combo. It did high mid-table, but was inferior to fast 1 jump 1 drib STs in the end. I tried 20 pace/acc/jump STs early on of course.
With DM, they have 20 jump, but I think I didn't bother testing 1 jump because their jump CA cost is minuscule and DMs have the highest abundance of CA as well. I doubt it would be significantly detrimental if they were short, but I can't really say.