Attributes, what attributes! FM23
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I feel that while attributes are a vital part of Football Manager, I think we have all become far too reliant on the actual numeric value of the attribute above all else. My aim is to take control back and use all the utilities the game has to offer to show that focusing on attributes isn’t the only way to play.
Some of you might find this way too time-consuming, and that’s fine. It probably is for some of you. That’s the beauty of Football Manager; there are many different ways to play the game and we all do quirky little things to bring us enjoyment and add longevity to the game.
Attributes, what attributes! FM23
Playing Football Manager attributeless isn’t something new or revolutionary, lots of people have done it in the past. If you’ve followed my stuff for a while on the older website, you will know that I have done it a fair few times too and wrote about it too. This year is no different in that sense and I’ll be doing it again. So first things first, people always ask me why I would play with no attributes and what’s the point of it all.
Well, the answer is simple really, there is no point to it other than adding another layer of difficulty to the game. This keeps me interested in the game and lets me immerse myself in it fully.
As a game Football Manager hasn’t really changed much, it’s still a simple game and the basics of what it’s about will never change. The game might get new features added but at its core, it’s still a football game. This means that some of us who try to stop ourselves from getting bored or want to increase the difficulty for ourselves, try to do these other ways.
That’s why I and others go attributeless. But this isn’t the only thing I do to try and retain my interest in the game and make life more difficult by doing other things on top of this.
I don’t see the point of playing attributeless if you still use real player names in the game as a lot of them will be familiar to you. So for me, I always play with fake names in a proper long-term way. Again it makes sure that I don’t kind of cheat and sign players that I know. I know it’s a single-player game and it doesn’t really matter if you do, do it that way. I’m not judging those that do but for me, I like to go all in.
In regards to attributes, I have someone make me panels every year for a skin that removes attributes and their references completely from the game. You can kind of do this via altering the attribute skin colours in the options but the attributes are still visible in graphs on certain screens like the player development page within the game. So I like to get these deleted so I don’t stumble across them and forget I shouldn’t visit that page. They also remove all star ratings and potential from the skin too.
What all of this means is that I just focus on playing the game and become really involved in the day-to-day running of the club. The staff become invaluable for me playing this way and while the feedback they give isn’t always the best it usually is enough to aid me in the way I’m trying to approach the game. Ultimately I’m the one still making all the final decisions at the club but I like to hear the opinions of my staff no matter how right or wrong they may be.
Data
I still don’t know what club I will be at either yet because I plan on holidaying for 10+ years so I can have some kind of historical data available to me in-game. It’s a real shame that this will likely be the trickiest part of the game though as Football Manager doesn’t actually allow you to see season-by-season historical data in the game. For this, I’ll have to create several saves for every season played before I take over a team, so I can refer back to check things out. This is annoying as hell but worth it in the long run.
It would be a godsend if Football Manager 23 allowed us to do this though right? Maybe I am lucky and this is one of the changes (nothing announced so far for FM23 when writing this) this year.
The reason for wanting data is because I want to do some kind of save that focuses heavily on data and uses it to identify possible players to sign. I hate the term Moneyball on Football Manager as people usually think signing a wonderkid for a low price and selling them for a massive profit in 3 years time is Moneyball. It isn’t. What I’m hoping to do is to use the data correctly more in line with that of a Moneyball approach. This brings me on to scouting.
Scouting
This is likely the part where I reaffirm I’m a massive knobhead to you all (like you all didn’t already know eh?!!). While my scouts will be identifying players for me all I’ll have to go on is the feedback they give about each player. So the player reports will be vital for what happens next due to me not being able to see any of the player’s potential or current potential.
Any player I view is because my scouts identified the player first or because I’ve asked them to look at someone based on specific data. My scouts will scout everywhere that I’m allowed. Then I will create various shortlists to help me maintain a proper scouting network long-term. This is important because I’m not just looking for players, for now, I’ll be looking for players, for now, next season, the season after etc. And all of this will change depending on what type of success I have. So it becomes really important that I cover all bases and have identified players for all different types of scenarios short-term and long-term.
These Football Manager shortlists will be along the lines of youth players/older players and then I’ll have specific ones that I add for various phases. These phases are things like the player is ready now, needs a year, needs 2 years, could fill in short-term but I need better long-term and so on. To give you a better idea, here is a picture of some of the shortlists I have used in the past;
It sounds like a lot of faffing around but it’s much simpler than it sounds. The hardest part is deciding who makes which list and the manual scouting I do of the players myself. When a scout identifies a player, I’ll look at the scout report and request an analyst report.
The System
This is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole process of Football Manager, designing some kind of rating/grading system to help you use the information your coaches, scouts and analysts give you. But once you’ve created this system everything is straightforward, it’s just setting it up at the start that can be a ballache. You’ll also need custom views set up to allow you to see the data you are searching for. I’ll do a separate post for this at a later date once Football Manager 23 is out.
Each position and role has its own criteria, so the system I use is very dynamic and doesn’t follow the same criteria. I then basically rate each criterion in either an A (Excellent level), B (Good enough for the club), C (Not good enough for the club) and D (Really bad) and create a total score for the scout report. Now the scout report I mention here isn’t the scout report on the player’s profile, no sir/madame! This will be my own scout report from manually scouting every potential candidate my scouts find. These will be based on how reports are done in real life.
Now to play this way is very time-consuming initially until you come up with a system to help you with the process. What I’m about to show you, all the data might not be available for in-game so a lot of this is based on visuals from what I see. It also looks a lot more complex than it really is because the actual system I use in-game will be shortened down and grouped together. But to give you a general idea, here is the initial thought process.
Let’s call these timestamps because that’s what they basically are, where a player does an action and then I decide if he’s capable of doing the action or not.
Example of criteria
Defending
- Interceptions
- Space in his back
- Pressing
- Transitions between Attack to Defence
Attacking
- Operational speed (How quick does he act on the ball)
- Passing to midfielders/dribbling into midfield
- Short passing
- Long range passing
- Teamplay/reading the game
- Transitions between defence to attack
Physical
- Speed < 5 Metres
- Speed > 15 Metres
- Agility
- Challenges
- Aerial Ability
- Stamina
All of the above is similar for each position but I’d add to it depending on what the position I was looking at is. For example, wingers would have dribbling and one on one’s etc. I don’t want to devise a system that is universal for each role and position as that isn’t really helpful. Each report I do will be bespoke based on position, role and duty. In the end, I’ll also decide whether the player has potential or not based on what we’ve seen and whether there is much room for development. Then I will give them a grade based on what I think.
I was going to work along the lines of this for a centre back;
- Ball Control (becoming more important for defenders if playing out from the back)
- Bravery in attempting challenges
- Concentration
- Communication
- Height
- Position
- Reading of the game
- Speed
- Strong and accurate ball heading (defensive and attacking)
- Tackling ability
It will all depend on the roles I have planned too in the tactic I’m going to use. Believe it or not, I’ve not even put any thought into that yet. There are no such ‘fixed’ roles in real life as there are on Football Manager and players are asked to be much more versatile these days but specific criteria may not be as important for a no-nonsense defender for instance.
For example, speed and agility can be important to my team if we often play with a relatively high line. It can also be used to see how he copes with space at the back too. So judging these criteria will be the same for every team but some are more relevant and therefore more important to certain styles/teams if that makes sense.
If I used a box-to-box midfielder on Football Manager, I’d be looking for something along these lines
- Awareness
- Ball control
- Breaking into the opposing box
- Marking abilities
- Passing ability under pressure
- Positioning
- Stamina
- Tackling and defensive abilities
Defending
- Interceptions
- Positioning
- Pressing
- Transitions between Attack to Defence
Attacking
- Operational speed (How quick does he act on the ball)
- 360 degrees awareness
- Final passing (in the final third)
- Teamplay/reading the game
- Transitions between defence to attack
- Scoring ability
Physical
- Speed < 5 Metres
- Speed > 15 Metres
- Agility
- Challenges
- Stamina
As you can see this is my thought process so far and how stuff will be worked out. I’ve actually streamlined it to work in the game but just wanted to give you an insight into the actual thought process behind what I’m doing. The criteria are pretty similar across the board but have been tailored for specific roles and duties.
A lot of the above will be grouped together under stuff like ball control etc. All of this will also work hand in hand with the data when I’m looking to identify players to bring in. The whole point of all of this is to create a club philosophy and a real DNA for the club. I want the club to be the DNA that I’m creating and focus on this above all else.
I’ll share the more in-depth stuff in a future update and possibly share all the metrics I’ll be using if people are interested but there is an awful lot of them. I just wanted to get this post out there for you to have a little insight into my complex plans. Hope you enjoy it.
As well as blogging about the save game, you can also keep up to date with my adventures on Discord.
