Judging regens

How do you judge a regen without the judging potential skill? Or how do you sort out the good 4 star potentials from the average 4 star potential players? Similar to the last post, I've analysed a set of data from FM08 to determine which attributes are correlated with potential ability.

Sometimes when you see a regen you head gets turned by 18 to 20 scores in certain attributes. Depending on which attributes those scores represent it could mean absolutely nothing, or something very special. Just like the previous post on strikers, I conducted similar analysis but opened it up to all positions. This analysis therefore doesn't factor in position specific attribute importance (e.g. heading, marking and tackling for DCs). So just treat it as a rule of thumb.

The five attributes that are most correlated with potential ability - that means the higher these attributes are the higher potential ability will be (and vice versa) - are:

Technique 0.49
Anticipation 0.47
First Touch 0.45
Composure 0.45
Passing 0.43

Good players invariably have good technique. This should be the first attribute you look at (ignoring position specific attributes for now). Anticipation, first touch, composure and passing round out the top five. Sometimes when you watch the match engine (ME) it's easy to see the effect of pace and acceleration on a match because you can see that some players are physically faster than others - and it's easy to assign that fact to the reason why you scored or conceeded. How do you observe technique? How do you measure composure?

Michael Lewis in his great book Moneyball, a story of revolution in baseball scouting, reported that young pitchers are measured on the speed of their fast ball rather than control or disguise because all you need is a speed gun. Control and disguise are much harder to measure, but ultimately far more important if you want a successful career in major league baseball.

So maybe when you think the ME is biased towards fast players what you are really doing is judging what is easy to perceive rather than what is really important. Just like going to a football game in real life you spend most of the time watching the ball - which means you miss the off the ball movement or anticipation of a striker. It's easy to witness a composed finisher in action - but how does composure manifest itself in your midfield general?

Out of interest the five attributes you should completely ignore when evaluating a regen because they have no bearing on potential ability are:

Influence 0.18
Natural Fitness 0.16
Long Throws 0.15
Flair 0.13
Aggression 0.09

You will often find regens with 17+ for long throws and natural fitness - and I think this analysis proves, if nothing else, that those attributes are meaningless in judging the quality of the player.