Did you know that in Football Manager Live, if you do not choose a team captain, your goalkeeper is chosen automatically?
Now doesn't that explain a lot?
It came up while we were analysing a match about which I'd made a rather rant-ey post (which I actually edited the following morning to tone down, but still came across as rant-ey). I'd taken my level 17 Premiership side full of world class players away from home to a level 9 side in a competition where I had bad form, and come away with a 6-0 hammering in which at least three of the goals were the result of blatant ME flaws, and possibly a fourth.
Giving all credit where credit is due, Paul's acknowledged and agreed with my points, at least to a certain extent. It's the other analysis he provided unrequested that was fascinating though:
- Your captain had leadership 7 and a far lower reputation than most of your team. They dont like this. The FM assistant analysis would actually pick up on this I believe.In other words, a big part of the reason for the scoreline and the abject performance was the captain. Good captain = higher possibility of a turnaround and dragging out a result. Bad captain = 6-0 thrashing and forum rant.
- The two teams are way apart in terms of reputation, but not so far apart in terms of CA. Think Villa-Arsenal. Your team expected to win, based on the team reputations. I expect they got caught cold, and didnt have the right captain to deal with it.
As part of the discussion, I've asked if there's any scope for changing that auto-assignment, but let's think about some of the potential consequences of the auto-captain usually being the goalkeeper:
- If Captain Keeper in a poor team is playing well, the team is more likely to rally around him and produce a shock result. How does that play into your superkeeper theory?
- If your own Captain Keeper isn't playing well (perhaps doesn't have much to do), that makes it more likely your team won't play at its full potential (think comebacks, one shot wonders, defenders losing concentration).
- If your Captain Keeper has lower reputation than the rest of your team, the second effect is more likely even if he is playing quite well.
As I said before, doesn't that explain a lot?
Lesson learned, folks. ALWAYS assign your captain if you don't want it to be the guy with the LOWEST teamwork in your squad!
Paul C here:
ReplyDeleteI think the gap between reputations vs the gap between CA's is very instructive in terms of the way FML users perceive their teams and their results.
Andy's team, playing away from home had a CA average ( first XI ) of 158, while his opponent had 144. Yet in terms of reputation the gulf was far bigger, in equivilant terms 170 vs 90. You can see how this would create all sorts of player mentality issues on the day, as its the team and player reputations NOT the CA's that create the expectations for how the match will pan out.
What a can of worms. :)
ReplyDeleteSo then that would explain the higher instance of "upsets" as you'll get teams who are going into the game thinking as though they're playing a team half their standard when they're actually playing a team 90-95% of their ability.
I wonder how that could be adjusted, or even whether it should. Maybe using the relative player reputation/ability figures instead of the overall club rep?
It will be a factor, yes. But I dont know how representative of the live world Miller is in terms of CA and reputation spread ;)
ReplyDeleteRight now, completely unrepresentative.
ReplyDeleteIn future though, Returning Stars code will probably mean that the balance is completely skewed in that respect, just as it is in Miller. You can get teams in the bottom tier with CAs to rival top division teams, purely because they've just restarted and filled up on Returning Stars. That's what seems to be causing these giant gaps in reputation between teams of similar CA.
I know from my recent experience in miller that there are massives gaps between CA and rep. I'm currently a 4 star rep team but my current ability is showing as 14.1! Even off my initial team it was over 12. I could quite easily upset a 'bigger' more established team just on ability alone so throw in the mentality issues and i'm probably gonna cause a lot of upset!
ReplyDeleteAlso experienced this from the other side in shearer when the reset was approaching and some people restarted. Its not a nice feeling at all to be beaten by a brand new team. To me its just as bad as some new guy playing the top team in his gameworld and feeling rather disheartened about the game afterwards.
In which case, tying performance expectations more into the player side of things might give a more "normal" range of performances. It's a tricky one, and begins to demonstrate why FML handles so differently to FM10 when they're both using the same engine (to continue T-Bag's analogy from http://fml-ragequit.blogspot.com/2010/05/teenage-kicks.html ).
ReplyDeleteFor those with access, the beta thread discussing all this is http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=208534
Very interesting indeed.
ReplyDelete'Leadership of 6' ? This isn't an hidden attribute I am aware of or able to locate in the FM database?
It's just another way of saying his Influence attribute.
ReplyDeleteGuys, i am sure you all have seen the Biography of your Team where down below calculates your team's Reputation. Under the 25% of the Team rating weight there is the top 16 players rating by Ability and the the top 16 players by Reputation. this is always good information to check for managing expectations against an opponent just before playing with them. most of the times team ability is quite different than Rep.
ReplyDeletenow that u mentioned captains and leadership...
ReplyDeleteWhat about Bruno Alves as captain?
I have him in my team Bascots in Ramos and the guy is just brilliant av.rat7.30. i also have Iaquinta who has the best average rating and in my opinion is the flag of my team, av.rat7.50. So, do i choose Alves as captain with 18 influence, or Iaquinta with the best av.rating and 15 in influence?
Provided there isn't a massive difference in reputation between them, I'd take Bruno Alves as he's playing extremely well and comfortably the more influential of the two.
ReplyDelete