Understanding match stats

Don't you just hate it when you lose 0-1 despite having 70% of possession and creating 20 chances to 1? Those are the results that stick in the mind, but in reality there is probably nothing you could have done to change a result like that. However reviewing the match and player stats whilst the game is in progress are key to making those changes that can affect the result before the final whistle.


The match stats page contains the following statistics:

• Possession % - you should be aiming for 55-60% when playing attacking football
• Shots - you can't score if you don't shoot, but sometimes high shots are bad
• On target - 50%+ of all shots is good
• Off target - 50%+ of all shots is bad
• Blocked - due to good defending or poor decision making
• Long Range - the bane of most managers; you want to keep this figure low
• Clear Cut Chances - chances you 'should' have scored from - measure against your goals
• Corners - indicates the amount of pressure you are applying outside of your chances
• Free Kicks - how many times your players were fouled
• Throw Ins - ignore
• Fouls Committed - how many times your players foul - compare with Free Kicks
• Offsides - if it's high either the opposition push up or you have a culprit in your team
• Passes Completed % - below 75% is unacceptable unless you are a direct team
• Crosses Completed % - 25% is decent, 40% is outstanding
• Tackles Won - 75%+ is superb
• Headers Won - not as important as the individual player version
• Yellow Cards - self evident
• Red Cards - self evident
• Rating - again not as important as the individual player version

Goals win games but not all shots are good news. Many teams have high shot totals and managers get upset when the team with less shots wins. It's important to analyse two factors over time with your own team.

Firstly how accurate are your players at getting shots on target? Too low an accuracy rate may mean you are forcing or encouraging your players to take too many shots from very optimistic positions. Too high a setting for creative freedom, high attacking mentality and high tempo all contribute to taking too many shots. A more defensive, slower tempo, short passing game will result in less chances overall but chances of higher quality. The accuracy of your strikers is obviously a contributing factor too. Many managers (including myself) prefer fast strikers and then get upset when their 12 finishing 12 composure star striker can't find the bottom corners with any consistency or regularity.

If you find yourself creating loads of chances but not scoring many goals, try slowing things down, shorten up your passes and setting striker mentality lower.

Secondly, too many long shots flatter to deceive. It's wonderful if you have Wesley Sneijder in attacking midfield with 20 long shots, but most mortal players cannot regularly hit the back of the net from distance. If you set players' settings to frequent long shots, they will take more long shots than they are naturally inclined to do, a bit like Frank Lampard at the World Cup in 2006. If 50%+ of your overall shots are long shots you have got to reduce the amount of times you are asking your players to shoot from distance. However, if you are playing against a packed defence, without a world class playmaker to pick the lock your players will have to resort to shooting from distance. As a manager you need to decide when it's your settings that are causing this and when it's the style of the opposition.

The way I read Clear Cut Chances is, on another day the chance should have been a goal. The ratio of CCCs to Shots is a measure of the quality of your chances. The ratio of CCCs to Goals is how good your finishing is. It's kind of the opposite of mistakes leading to goals - because only defenders really commit these - this is the striker's version.

Passing completion percentage is also an important statistic. If you rate is 80%, there is a 50% chance you team will string 3 passes together (80%x80%x80%). If you pass completion rate is 70% there is a 34% chance your team will string 3 passes together. Defenders should be averaging 75% completion, midfielders anywhere from 75% to 85% and attackers 80%. Sometimes if you are very cautious with your play you can achieve high completion rates without ever creating a chance. Whilst technically defenders are not as good at passing as their colleagues in midfield, they shouldn't be under anywhere near the pressure your midfielders are under. Any defender who can't average 70% completion in passing is an accident waiting to happen in your team. Giving the ball away in your own half is a sin. You could also be contributing to a low completion rate by instructing your defenders to be too progressive with their passing. For example instructing low passing attritubes fullbacks to play through ball often is akin to just giving the ball to their goalkeeper. Goalkeepers themselves often have pass completion rates of 40%. If you are a passing team you should instruct your keeper to throw the ball out short.

Average rating can also sometimes be misleading. Ratings are massively boosted by assists and goals. Mistakes and penalties given away significantly reduce a player's rating. Your set piece taker's stats will look different to everybody else and you need to factor that into your calcluations too. Your job as manager is to see beyond the average rating of your players. My personal favourite stat is key passes. If your players are making key passes they are generating chances. Regardless of their rating if a player is making several key passes I would never take them off. Experienced managers will not look at average rating to judge a performance, they will look for the other signs mentioned above.

Understanding attributes

Every outfield player has 36 individual attributes that make up their player profile. That's a lot of data. They also have a number of hidden attributes that we can't see including dirtiness, consistency, important match temperament, injury proneness, sportsmanship, ability to handle pressure, loyalty and ambition to name a few.

Each player is practically unique, far more complicated an individual than any NPC from any RPG game. They are also constantly changing. Young players go through growth spurts; veteran players decline. They also have Player Preferred Moves (PPMs) which provide yet another level of sophistication to their unique identity.

So why do you let in so many late goals? Why is your shots to goals ratio so bad? Why does your star striker sulk on the half way line every other match? Why don't your players follow your instructions? Why does the atmosphere in your dressing room stink? The answers to all those questions and more can be revealed by examining a player's attributes.

Attributes are grouped by the game into Technical, Mental and Physical sections. There are 14 Technical attributes (including 3 set piece attributes), 14 Mental attributes and 8 Physical ones. The way they actually interact within the match engine is more complicated than those groupings and different groups of attributes overlap. Let's start by examining speed.

The speed of a player is directly influenced by pace (top speed), acceleration (rate of change of speed), agility (rate of change of direction) and stamina (ability to maintain high speed). It's also indirectly influenced by anticipation (off the mark speed), balance , strength and determination - without these a player can be stopped from fulfilling their top speed. I guess the point is, you can't just look at pace to determine how fast a player is around the park.

A player with great pace but low stamina will fade during a game and should be best used as an impact substitute. After 60-70 minutes of a game their speed will diminish. Henri Saivet, the much admired French youngster has 18 pace and 8 stamina in GW15. This explains why currently he averages 6.6 in senior football and is probably best used as a sub until his stamina improves. Sylvan Ebanks-Blake has pace 17 and agility 10 in GW15 - which maybe suggests that his running is a bit one dimensional and why he plays for Wolves and why Manchester Utd let him go. Even Gabriel Agbonlahor who has pace 20, has anticipation of 9 - which again suggests he doesn't always skin every defense he plays against. And spare a thought for the dribbler who doesn't possess these attributes.

What makes David Villa, Andrey Arshavin and even Andy Johnson deadly in FML is that they score consistently high across the majority of speed factors.

Anticipation, off the ball and positioning are the next three attributes that together form a compelling factor in a player's character. Maxi Rodriguez and Christian Poulsen are great examples of constructive players who are excellent at finding space - infuriatingly so. And it's interesting to talk about Poulsen in the week when Claudio Ranieri suggested that he preferred to buy Poulsen in the summer because Xabi Alsonso's movement was surprisingly slow. As a creative player Alsonso is one of the best pure MCs in the game - yet his low acceleration, off the ball and dribbling make him quite a static target.

The star factor that separates the good from the great playmakers are a combination of passing, technique, creativity and first touch. Having these four attributes in abundence (16+) means you are sharing company with Kaka, Pirlo, Ronaldinho, Sneijder, Robben, Totti, Iniesta, Modric, van der Vaart and Montolivo - the best playmakers in the game. Only veterans like Kanu, Di Michele and Blanco possess these skills at the bargain end of the market (ok there are more but I won't list them all).

In terms of winning headers, jumping, heading, strength, determination, positioning and balance all come into the equation. I've talked about heading before and I think it's a straightforward area so I am going to pass on it for now.

But why do you let in all those late goals? Does one of your defenders have low concentration and low stamina? Well concentration is the attribute that plays a role in determining mistakes. Low stamina means concentration is further diminished late in a game. Bendtner, dos Santos (Gio) and Jair Baylon are all strikers who you may find under performing in the last 15 minutes of a match. At the other end of the pitch two low concentration Belgian stars, Vincent Kompany and Antony Vanden Borre both averaged 2.5 mistakes per game in season one of GW15.

What's the difference between John Utaka (75 goals in 275 games) and Fernando Torres (316 goals in 392 games? Is it something to do with the fact that Torres' workrate is 18 and Utaka 8? Do you ever notice that your strikers hardly ever touch the ball? Other high profile strikers with low workrate include Krisztian Nemeth and Daniel Carvalho. Workrate tells us how much work a player puts into a performance. But workrate also requires the necessary stamina to run around the pitch effectively. Ever Guzman is a good example of a bright young striker who's workrate is writing cheques his stamina can't cash. Workrate is almost a super attribute, if you are a great player with a great workrate you are probably a superstar. If you are a great player with a low workrate you are probably a luxury. All the technique in the world won't help you if you are stuck on the half way line staring at your new boots.

Another super attribute is teamwork. Get a unit of your team all with high teamwork (right side, left side or midfield for example) and watch them click. Teamwork also tells something about how likely the player is to follow your instructions. Quaresma is a fantastic player in FML, but don't ask him to play a specific role in your team with plenty of instructions. You are better off giving him a free role and letting him do whatever takes his fancy. Same goes for Giovinco, Vukcevic, dos Santos (Gio), Capel, Trezeguet and Menez. These guys don't need your managerial interference getting in the way of how they play. If you consider yourself something of a tactical genius you might want to consider how many low teamwork players you have, and how little they seem to care about your carefully laid out tactic.

I used to love high influence players, but then I realised making them unhappy makes the rest of the team unhappy. Be wary of buying high influence players unless you are going to keep them happy and play them in your team. Unhappy or sold high influence plays can destroy a dressing room.

Players in FML are fully formed NPCs with their own characters, idiosyncracies, likes, hates and bad habits like the rest of us. Spend some time getting to know your players. Go through all their attributes and see if you can understand the type of persona they are. What makes them good? What are their weaknesses? How do they complement their teammates? And is it worth persisting with that flawed genius of a goalscorer when every other game he is averaging 6.3?

Let battle commence

Ok, today is the first day of the end of season wage auctions bloodbath. After winning my AEFA league I received £630k in additional prize money. I sold Asamoah to Azazel for £1.45m following a longstanding agreement with their manager that he would have first refusal. I also sold the three first team players I had who's contracts were up.

All three went for their instant buy out amounts in a matter of hours. Whilst I was happy to receive the money - it probably means I under priced them. A good tip (which I didn't follow) is if you get an opening bid within minutes of an auction started increase your buy out amount - because the bid means that it will be a popular player. My 30 year old £26k right back when for £200k, my 30 year old £80k AF DC went for £300k and my £90k striker went for £450k. So I received £950k for players who would have only given me £196k if I lost them on wage auctions. Many managers get upset about losing their players - I see it as a way to make more money. So £630k+£1.45m+£950k means I now have £3m more in the bank than I did two days ago. Nobody in my senior squad is now available on wage auction.

However I only have 15 senior players left in my squad now. I have sold two starting strikers, a DC and a DR. I've also sold a couple of under 21s.

Today's auction highlights include Zarate, Agbonlahor and Essien. I don't think I will be able to win any of those auctions with my strict wage structure. Therefore I will be looking for value amongst the less popular players. Following my last post, I went to great lengths to stress you don't need world class players to be successful. So I will report back on how successful I have been in signing some hidden gems - but I can't really say who they are yet...

I have all but stopped playing games whilst I rebuild my squad. I fully expect to drop down the rankings from my peak of number 2 (currently 7), but I am not really bothered. I'd rather focus on scouting and practicing the wage auctions.