Football Manager 2011 general questions

[yuris125]

With the recent FM discussions, looks like there's interest in the game. I got it a couple of weeks ago, and am having a lot of fun with it. However, there are quite a few things I don't understand about the game. I thought creating a new thread rather than going off-topic in SG threads would be a good idea

So, here is the first thing which is a mystery for me. I have 2 first-choice strikers in my Bromley team





McBean was on the team before my time, and he's the only old player who has permanent place on the team. Hopkinson is my signing

My ass man and coaches tell me that Hopkinson is a better striker. When I look at their comparison, Hopkinson has advantage in almost every attribute



However, in the most important stat, McBean scored 22 goals in 26 appearances, Hopkinson just 9. Seems to me that Hopkinson is not shooting often enough: he made 43 shots, McBean 87. I certainly see it when watching matches: McBean gets the ball and strikes, Hopkinson tries to bring it forward or passes backwards

What can I do to improve Hopkinson's scoring record? I can't depend on whether McBean is in good mood going into a match

My formation



McBean is played as a poacher, Hopkinson as a complete forward

[Mist]

McBean is played as a poacher, Hopkinson as a complete forward

And here's your answer.

McBean is told to do one thing - shoot and hopefully score.

Hopkinson is told to drop deep, create, play bruiser, challenge for high balls and generally attempt anything striker might want to do. At his own discretion. This gives him both less time to go after goals directly and much more responsibility on the pitch, which to be frank, he can't handle. His mental stats are low, he will not make good use of creative freedom and would benefit from strict, simple role much more.

[yuris125]

Heh, I thought his mental stats were good enough to outplay defenders in BSS

How would you assign roles to these forwards then?

Also, I set Hopkinson as the primary target man in team instructions, should I keep doing it?

[Mist]

Heh, I thought his mental stats were good enough to outplay defenders in BSS

They are good enough to outplay his opponents, but not good enough for him to figure out how to go about it on his own. Think of a school kid, he might be head and shoulders above his peers, but still dumb as a brick and requiring simple and precise directions.

How would you assign roles to these forwards then?

McBean is a Poacher, quick, with a decent read of the game and not bad at finding space. He can be a target man with running onto balls.

Hopkinson is an odd duck, but since he can run a lot and put in a half-decent tackle I'd set him up as Defensive Forward. He can't do a target man though, lacks the strength and jump to really impose himself.

[yuris125]

Thanks! I'll try it and see how it goes

I just hope I can re-sign Hopkinson on a full-time contract, so that he can develop better. Just need to get rid of some of the highly paid players signed by the previous manager. My 3rd choice goalkeeper is getting £300 pw; I signed 2 young guys at £25 and £20 pw, both are better than him! And nobody wants to buy him "following recent arrival"

[yuris125]

Another question. Hopefully I will secure promotion, and I strongly suspect my current backroom team is not good enough for BSP. I'm not quite sure which attributes to look at when searching for staff

* Scouts - obviously I need high Judging player ability and Judging player potential attributes. Do I need to look at other attributes?
* Coaches - I believe I should hire coaches with different high attributes in the Coaching category; how many of them should be high, and how high, depends on how many coaches I'm allowed to have. Is it correct? What are the most important mental attributes?
* Ass Man - treat him as another coach? Or are there extra requirements?

Thanks!

[Twinkletoes89]

Scouts - JPA & JPP are the key ones, but there are other helpful ones. A decent Level of Discipline means more detailed reports (I think) and Tactical Knowledge can help if you are looking for a scout to report on next opposition.

Coaches - It used to be the case that it was just about high attributes in the select specialist areas, but now there are other factors. For top coaches, they will have high Determination, Motivating and Level of Discipline.

For lower leagues, you will probably be better looking for coaches with 10+ scores in those 3 mental attributes as they will then cover a few areas to a decent quality. The webpage below is really useful for figuring out how good the coaches are.

Coach Calculator

Ass Man - These are more tricky. For the most part, you will want to have someone who can at least chip in when it comes to coaching in the lower leagues and you can't have many coaches. An ideal Ass Man will have high JPA & JPP along with Man Management and Motivating. He will be dealing with your players so he needs to be decent at it, and it helps if he can tell you who is half decent and who's crap!

[Gaspar]

Another question. Hopefully I will secure promotion, and I strongly suspect my current backroom team is not good enough for BSP. I'm not quite sure which attributes to look at when searching for staff

* Scouts - obviously I need high Judging player ability and Judging player potential attributes. Do I need to look at other attributes?
* Coaches - I believe I should hire coaches with different high attributes in the Coaching category; how many of them should be high, and how high, depends on how many coaches I'm allowed to have. Is it correct? What are the most important mental attributes?
* Ass Man - treat him as another coach? Or are there extra requirements?

Thanks!

The thing is, the coaching module looks a lot more important than it really is. By and large even with stellar coaches in the lower leagues your training facilities are of so low standard you're not going to get much out of them. And on top of that the percentage of how much a player improves that can be put down to coaching is relatively small. Ultimately, match practice, hidden attributes (CA/PA) and luck play about 90%. Coaching at most is 10% - there are players on the SI boards who believe that its closer to 0%.

For scouts, the only stats I think that matter are Judging PA/CA and determination. I don't believe their knowledge of tactics has any bearing on the scout reports they send you, though I could be wrong - I haven't dug my head into the underside of FM11 as much as I had the previous ones (been playing more Civ, oddly enough.) Of course this is assuming you're playing with player attribute masking ticked. If you're not, the scouts are completely worthless other than to avail players to you and you can just use the search feature. Really depends on your personal degree of LLM-zealotry.

As far as an AssMan, in the lower leagues, again assuming you're playing with masking on, the best use I think is his ability to find players to suggest to you via the team screen. So I try and hire the best scout I can find as AssMan. Motivating is maybe the only other important skill if you leave him in charge of anything (friendlies, team talks, etc.) If you don't, that doesn't really matter either.

The thing about FM is there's a ton of depth to the game, but not as much as you think there is. At the end of the day results mostly come from a combination of player finding skill, tactics and your ability to keep squad morale up. Most of the other stuff is just noise. There's other factors, but those are the three you can largely control and if you can get them nailed on you'll win more oft than not. All this chatter kind of makes me want to fire up a new save. But I find I can only get psyched for one long save a year these days as opposed to, oh 10-15 back in the day.

[yuris125]

Heh, I read the great posts by Mist in the first SG thread, about how you can shape the players according to your needs via training, so I thought training is very important. Definitely didn't think its influence is only 10%

Anyway, if I'm hiring coaches, best not to pick them at random

I don't play with attribute masking, because it's my first game, I'm still finding my feet, and am not treating it too seriously (I even allow myself to reload in case of an unfavourable result from time to time). But I think scouts are valuable in any case, because they can see hidden attributes like adaptability. In one of early unsuccessful attempts, I tried to build a team without paying attention to scouts' opinion on whether players will fit into the squad; the result was a team which had reasonable players who absolutely couldn't play well together

Thanks for the advice! Hopefully I'll get that promotion (I lead the league after half-season, but just by 5 points, and the other contenders have an extra game to play)

[Brian Shanahan]

Another question. Hopefully I will secure promotion, and I strongly suspect my current backroom team is not good enough for BSP. I'm not quite sure which attributes to look at when searching for staff

* Scouts - obviously I need high Judging player ability and Judging player potential attributes. Do I need to look at other attributes?

Yes. Determination helps here, but there really is nothing else.

* Coaches - I believe I should hire coaches with different high attributes in the Coaching category; how many of them should be high, and how high, depends on how many coaches I'm allowed to have. Is it correct? What are the most important mental attributes?

Determination, Level of Discipline and Motivating are the 3 important attributes here. A coach with these three and mediocre technical attributes will train better than a high technical coach with bad scores in these three.

* Ass Man - treat him as another coach? Or are there extra requirements?

Thanks!

It depends, if you get his advice a lot he needs good player judgement and tactical skills, if you give him control of the reserves/u-18s he needs good tactical knowlege, man management and working with youngsters. As regards coaching, he'll be important at BSP but at PL he'd be at best a secondary coach so the technical attributes are not necessary.

@Gaspar, what it actually is is that CA gains are through match time, the allocation of those CA points (and re-allocation of existing ones) come through coaching. So if your top forward is picking up a lot of points in tackling you know that you have him in a schedule best suited to defending, but that he is also (in all probability) improving.