Return to PPMs

There was a debate on the tactics chat room today about what exactly PPMs do. I've never read anything official explaining exactly what they are, but I thought I'd share my personal opinions and welcome any debate if anyone can put me straight.

Most PPMs are neither absolutely positive or negative - most are situational, and describe actions a player might make to overrule your personal instructions to them. So here goes:

1. Moves into channels - will look for space in wide areas if a striker - harder to mark but will make runs even if you set to rarely
2. Plays with back to goal - don't put through balls ahead of him, also don't tell him to make loads of runs because he would prefer to receive the ball with his back to goal. Even if you put his mentality to the max he will struggle to play on the last shoulder of the defense.
3. Shoots with power - you will see the shots fly in faster than normal - so higher percentage of shots on target will probably beat the keeper but ratio of shots on goal maybe lower
4. Places shots - opposite of above - higher accuracy, lower percentage of on target shots beating the keeper - but probably marginal if at all
5. Shoots from distance - will take plenty of long shots regardless of his long shot instructions
6. Runs with ball (left, right, centre) - will run with the ball a lot regardless of your run with ball setting
7. Likes to beat man repeatedly - over indulges in dribbling - good at beating players but likes to take it past them again rather whipping in an end product
8. Tries killer balls often - will play plenty of through balls whether you instruct him to or not
9. Tries long range passes - will play long passes even if you set passing to really short
10. Hugs line - will play wide even if you set your formation to narrow - this could be problem in defensive formations where you don't want gaps on the inside of your formation
11. Cuts inside - most players cut inside to shoot rather than cross - normally the sign of a winger who players on the side of his weaker foot - Joe Cole, Ashley Young etc...
12. Knocks ball past opponent - backs their pace to beat players - obviously works much better against a high defensive line
13. Likes to try to beat the offside trap - will play on last shoulder - regardless of mentality - just check the level of offsides they get and adjust accordingly
14. Gets forward whenever possible - will ignore forward runs instruction and make plenty of them
15. Curls ball - a skill that most players can't do - good for free kicks and ranged shooting - pretty positive
16. Dwells on ball - not good for two touch fast passing teams - maybe helps with decision making - but I would say negative overall - seen Moutinho give away so many chances by being caught in possession
17. Avoids using weaker foot - don't play these guys on the wrong side - ie if you play 3xMC don't play a left footed player on the right with this PPM
18. Moves ball to other foot - makes it easier for a tight maker to win the ball
19. Switches play - good unless you are focusing passing down the that wing
20. Arrives late in opposition area - pretty good to me - hard to mark
21. Plays one-twos - good for MCs and slow build ups or pass and go with good off the ball attributes
22. Dictates tempo - when two conflicting styles come into contact the game is more likely to be played in your style with one of these guys pulling the strings
23. Doesn't dive into tackles - great - especially for DCs, for other players - put them on hard tackling with little fear of yellow cards
24. Dives into tackles - don't set their tackling to hard
25. Plays no through balls - don't set through balls to high - they just won't play them
26. Plays short simple passes - great for a DMC - don't tell the player to play long and through balls - they won't like doing it
27. Tries tricks - good for flair players - will create chances if it comes off - but will surrender possession if it doesn't cheaply
28. Looks for pass rather than shot - pretty self explanatory - unlikely to shoot unless there are no other options
29. Likes ball played to feet - if you use this person as a target man - set targetman supply to the correct option and you will benefit
30. Winds up opponents - liable to get opponents yellow or red carded - watch out for reactions in the commentary
31. Gets crowd going - don't know if this works in FML, but I would guess if there is a home advantage coefficient, I guess it might effect it positively - but total conjecture

There are 48 PPMs I think - so this is a good spread, but as I said these are just my opinions. Key thing to remember is PPMs give players character rather than absolute advantages.

Early season transfer strategy

The first few days of the 1st season in a gameworld are indeed a strange time. The first week in a gameworld representing pre-season and lots of desparate attempts to sign players. Many players bolster their squads with trial signings.

When the 1st season begins in the second week, things change. Firstly you get about £300k of media money. Secondly you have to play some official games, with far more ranking points on offer. It is really important that you get your transfer strategy correct in this week. You will see all the best players under £600k start to get signed up in rapid time. You have to make this period count and get the players you need to bolster your squad.

So - be honest about your squad. Where are the weak links? I'd focus on making sure you have the best striker, playmaker and central defender you can sign. Minor positions can take a back seat for now. You could either spend your entire transfer fund on one player - or spread it across 2 or 3. However how you bid for players is vital to your success. I recommend following this approach:

1. Write down your team on a piece of paper and put tick, question mark or cross against each of your starting 11. Tick the ones you think are strong enough for the league, question mark those you are not sure, cross the ones you know are too weak. Which positions are the crosses in? Are they concentrated in one area? Congratulations you have just prioritised your targets by position.

2. Create a shortlist of players who fit your positional, value and attribute parameters. Check each on to see if he is on a trial, is currently being bid on or is currently idle. If someone else has bid, the clock is already ticking.

3. Don't bid on the player you want. Draw up a list of players you want and check out when their trials expire, or their auctions end. I wanted a DC or a MC yesterday.

4. The strategy you should follow is to put all your money into one bid to get the best player possible. You never start a bid unless a trial is about to end. That means you have tied up all your money for 24 hours and have no flexibility. Don't spread your money thin by bidding on average players. You will outgrow average players and nobody wants to buy them from you. My strategy is to sign the first person on my list, and everytime I miss out I move onto the next target. It guarantees me one good player, and then I start again with however much money I have left.

Here is my list, along with auction time and who started the auction:

Pique 22:42 - KadowMeaw 31th - bid £24k =bank limit, lost

Davies 01:00 - AZ Bruntsfield - passed - not good enough

Fazio 17:28 - Phantoms - bid £26.9k, won £20k

David Luiz 19:29 - KadowMeaw 31th - went for £8k

De la Red 20:01 -Busted Flush

Taylor 20:05 - Maceys Magicians

Naldo 20:12 - Gesh Utd

Burdisso 20:24 - JuJu FC

Sobis - 23:58 - mighty magpies - went cheap

Martinez 01:01 - AZ Bruntsfield - went for £37.5k wages

So I started with bidding on Pique, lost him and then went all in for Fazio. Luckily I won him, I think he is an excellent player and still 21. If I had lost him, 2 hours later I had a chance with David Luiz, another great DC. Had I missed him I would have gone for De la Red (I like his PPMs), then maybe Steven Taylor (but I am not convinced on him) then Naldo, Burdisso, Sobis or Javi Martinez.

Notice how Nick from AZ Bruntsfield started auctions exactly 24 hours apart. He is following a similar strategy but he is starting auctions because he has clear targets in his mind. He had Martinez in GW10 and he was a legend (I would not have bid £37.5k wages for him). Also notice mighty magpies starting an auction at 23:58. This is very clever because it means the auction ends just before everybody gets paid their daily money - and stops new bidders coming into the race.

A really important point here is that if you want to be successful in FML, you should forget about signing an individual player and be prepared to sign one of a handful of players who fit your requirements. At the end of the day, I didn't really mind whether I won Pique, Fazio, Burdisso or Luiz - I just wanted one of them.

Don't tie all your money up for 24 hours, bid late and bid aggressively on wages. There is no prizes for coming second, and if you are prepared to pay £19.5k wages, you should be prepared to pay £20.5k and beat all the guys bidding round numbers like £20k.

Luckily for me I had enough money left to buy another £150k player, so I quickly moved former Dutch U21 Ajax player Hewiges Maduro - who has locked down my midfield quite nicely. However I still need an authentic playermaker, but that can wait for now. Just need to sell Lucas Trecarichi to fund the move!

Jumping and regens

Jumping and heading as attributes are sometimes mixed up.

Heading dictates how accurate a player's headers are. Players with high heading score from corners and their clearing headers are more likely to fall to safety or their teammates.

Jumping dictates (amongst other things like positiong, strength, aggression and determination) whether a player will win an aerial challenge. A striker with a higher jumping will win more goalkick and long balls thrown forward to him. A striker with a higher heading ability will score more goals from crosses.

A central defender with a higher jumping ability will win more defensive headers or at least do enough to put the striker under pressure. A central defender with high heading ability will score a great deal of goals from corners.

So jumping doesn't equal leaping ability - it's leaping plus physical size. And here is the interesting part, height directly influences jumping - it's built in. To prove this point I created an FM08 game with only regens. After 5 years the game had generated over 32,000 regens. The analysis has to be calculated from regens because regens are pure - not biased by the researchers at SI. Biases blur the underlying patterns in the data.

Anyway of the 32,000 regens only 125 have a jumping attribute of 16+. 124 out of 125 of those players were 1.92m to 1.98m tall - or 6 feet 3 inches to 6 feet 6 inches. The 125th, well he was 1.89m. There is nobody below 6 feet 2 inches with a jumping attribute of 16 to 20.

This doesn't mean all tall players have high jumping, but it does mean that all high jumping attribute players are tall in regens. This is important when you judge regens in FML. If you are looking at a target man or a central defender, check out their height - because their jumping ability may never get over 15 if they are too short. And jumping is a vital attribute for both those positions.

Some people say height is a cosmetic attribute. This analysis proves otherwise. The match engine may not use height to determine who wins headers, but the jumping attribute is directly influenced by it - so in a way, it does.