Is Your Wonderkid Improving?

I learn new things about Football Manager almost every time I play it. A small tactic tip, a little training thing, a small scouting trick perhaps - but recently I discovered something huge that I wish I had known about before. I always struggled to understand how much my wonderkids develop on FM. Hard numbers, how many points their attributes went up (or down if I’m unlucky), was always hard to come by unless you maniacally track the numbers at the end of each season or something.

If you use this trick, it will be much easier to see who has actually improved and who is just a poser with high potential and few upward attributes to make you feel better. WILL THE REAL WONDERKIDS PLEASE STAND UP. I could have turned this into my first Football Manager rap really, but fortunately for you all, I spared you on that front. I could drop a beat someday, it would certainly be about wonderkids and attributes, so maybe I’ll just make this video again in a few years to launch my music career.

Much Love,
FM Senpai

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[ZealandonYT]

Get 20% off Stuff + Free Shipping with the code ZEALAND at Manscaped.com

[_girltype]

the secret that football manager has been hiding is that atributes are decimal values out of 200 (or strictly 20.0) on the backend, not 20. in earlier versions of the game, the progress graphs used to a) be functional and b) show the decimal values of each value, e.g. a 15.4, so you could track progress in a more granular way. the game still functions like this under the hood and just rounds off the decimals, but you can no longer see this in game (unless there's somewhere i'm missing it?)

a good test case for this is to edit a player's atributes with the in-game editor and then advance time. immediately after making changes, you'll notice any atributes you change will show the progress arrows (the ones next to atributes that tell you about atribute changes) you might expect up or down - but unaltered atributes will show minor to moderate downward changes, because the editor has truncated the decimal on those atributes, e.g. changing your 14.1 in dribbling and your 14.8 in finishing down to 14.0

[jamB]

I spend more time developing wonderkids than i spend time with mates, happy to be a new member of the hammers!!

[nicklasbille]

Hey Z - here's two suggestions on themes for future videos:
1: Sending players on leadership courses -> who should you send, what is the expected gain in stats from a course and who is more likely to be accepted by the board?
2: Intensive language courses -> Does it really matter if people speak the language? Does it matter a lot for players? What about backroom staff? Would my performance analyst perform better if he spoke the language or not?

[jeps]

You used to be able to see like 18.2 and 18.4 etc attributes in the graph back in the day. Was nice when you could actually see how close they were to the next attribute. Good times.

[LankyLegs]

If attributes are the same in 21 as in 19 they're on a 100 scale. It shows you specifically where they are on that in the development section on 19 - i.e. 17.2 changed to 17.4 or whatever.

[bigg]

The live channel is actually very worth checking out! I feel part of the cool twitch kids, without ever needing to go on twitch... the bacon jokes do confuse me though🤣

[Roscododger]

Great ad, but I personally would've just shown your mom shaving ODFC into your chest with no context for the ad.

[Devutrix]

@Zealand What have you done!!!! You have engaged the analytical side of my brain on this. It has opened a Pandora's box of possibilities in which I could run statistical analysis of player development in the game.

You have the impact of....
Coaching attributes (How much does a coaches individual attributes impact the effectiveness of coaching?)
Training Schedules. (How impactful are the different sessions on coaching)
Facilities. (How much does the grading of facilities impact player development?)
Player attributes and mentality. (Do specific player attributes impact player development outside of Professionalism etc)
Coaching mentality and playing style (does a coaches preferred playing style and formation conflicting with the way you actually play impact effectiveness of coaching?).
Loan impact which will feed from facilities and coaching as well.
Coach Reputation (does a better reputation coach produce better results?)
Coaching hidden attributes (do these have an impact on player development? e.g Does higher pressing intensity have an impact on coaching defence?)

These are just the ones i've come up with taking a 2 minute look at the ingame editor (always purchased but never bothered with it before).

[sumandark]

The attributes go from 1 to 200 (or have increments of 0.1 to be more accurate). They work on the same scale as CA and PA

[Nosceteipsum]

I revamped my entire squad and now I have eighteen 18~21 year old wonderkids and 4 older players. Finally. It took quite some time. We went from 6 consecutive league tittles before this major revamp to 5º place and almost getting me fired, but it was worth it. The speed at which those boys have been developing is amazing to see. I think this is the best way to develop wonderkids. It's risky af but worth it.

[IIIIXtremeIIII]

I've had a player come through my youth system whose finishing went up from 9 to 17. That's a +8. And he also had a whole bunch of +5s, +4s etc. Sold the guy for 169M€ (nice) to Man Utd

[TomGRV]

I had no idea you could see how much the attributes improved!! Always learning with Zealand Thank you!!

[tamagonbagel]

The world needs Jeisson Serna's PR team to release a training video

[RAUever]

Actually, Zealand, I disagree with you, because I'm actually seeing something different happening in my own save.

My Calafiori, with balanced personality, has improved a total of +72 of what I'll call skillpoints from the age of 17 and some months until 22 years old now (4, 5 years total, a little bit longer than your guy). Without an additional focus, he's improved +7 (skillpoints) in positioning, +6 in decisions and +4 in anticipation, marking, leadership and stamina. The 68 skillpoints of your star improver seem to be quite spread out over all of the possible attributes. +3 in heading, +2 in corners and penalty taking for example. Is that really what he's there to do? My Calafiori has put 53 of those 72 skill points into attributes highlighted for his role as an attacking wingback, with only the spare +1 in penalties and corners. Your guy put 31 of 68 skillpoints into those highlighted attributes, even though I'll acknowledge that his role has far less highlighted attributes to begin with.

Then I have Gabriele Molena, with professional personality, who was a youth product joining the universe age 16. He's now 19. He's improved +98 skillpoints over exactly 4 years. I've been training him as an attacking inverted winger with additional focus on crossing. With the exception of pace, flair, passing and technique, he's improved all the highlighted attributes for his role with at least +4, with +6 in composure and +5 in in decisions and agility. Yet there is 1 more thing with Molena. He hasn't improved a single attribute since the age of 18. Suddenly at age 19 his potential dropped from 5 star to 3, 5 star and he just stopped improving like a madman. Basically, he reached +98 skillpoints in the age of 16-18 with professional personality and 5 star potential. Still, it might also have been because I haven't let him play enough during the new season...

These are 2 examples. No, not all my youth players are like that and sure, they tend to improve a lot more at 16-17 years old, but yes, there are more like them, and some with less than stellar potential to begin with.

The question is: why? I am not sure. Maybe I have better coaches, better training facilities and/or more luck, I don't know. But I do have an idea as to what might be the reason for this. I think about training differently than you do.

I have basically created my own training schedule by looking at what attributes I want my players to train on. If there is only one game during the week, my schedule will look almost the same every week, moving things around a little to account for traveling. It looks like this (based on a Sunday game the week before and a Sunday game the week after):
Mon: rest/travel ; recovery ; match review
Tue: physical, Def. Shadow play, rest (but recently: match tactics)
Wed: One on ones, attacking, chance creation
Thu: Transition - Press, Team bonding, Defending engaged
Fri: Goalkeeping, Chance conversion, Ground defense
Sat: def shap, att. movement, match tactics
Sun: match

Some of my reasoning behind the schedule:
1. The intensity of the schedule starts high in the beginning of the week and goes down later on. I do start off with a physical in there and here's why I think that works. I have set my training intensity scheduling to no pitch or gym work for the guys with the red or orange hearts, half intensity for the yellow heart, full intensity for the almost full heart and double intensity for the full heart. If I'm right, that means that the players that are still very tired from the previous game do not do the physical training, as the game says he does not do 'gym work' or maybe he'll do it at half intensity with a heart that is half full. Up to now I've had very few injuries during my seasons and the medical information always tells me it's a low intensity training schedule.
2. I do use 'attacking' as a general training, because I like my defenders to have passing, vision etc. and they still get to train their marking at 20% focus, but I don't use 'defending', cause I don't want my attackers to learn how to mark at all. Therefore I use the 'ground defense' (or aerial defense) and defending engaged to train my defenders, where my attackers get to focus on the stuff I do want them to focus on. I also rather like to use both ground/aerial defense and defending engaged to cover the defensive attributes my defenders need (that 'defending' covers in 1 training) because it balances out the amount of training focus the defenders get opposed to the attackers, that apart from 'attacking' also get to benefit as the main focus with the technical training options of chance creation and conversion that I do every week.
3. The goalkeeping training options I like because it allows for a relatively low energy training where my field players again get to focus on those individual roles.
4. I like using match tactics, def. shape and att. movement and teamwork a lot more than match preview, because it also trains attributes of the individual roles. Recently I've been experimenting with not doing any match preparation in weeks with 2 matches where one of the matches is against significantly worse opposition. I then just try and cram the Thu and Fri session in, even at the day before the match. It feels beneficial for improving my players.
5. This schedule also means I never use some of the other training methods. I never do att. shadow play, because those attributes get trained during 'attacking' or when they're training on their individual roles. I never use possession, because attacking hits more attributes, while passing style and tempo get trained enough during match preparation.

I set the same training schedules for my U20's and U18's, with the exception that I allow for even less rest. I usually rather have them doing one of the match preparations that also influences attributes than resting, even the day after a game, and I also like throwing a tactical in there whenever I feel like I can.

I might be wrong, I'm no FM guru and I don't know if it has been discussed before cause I don't dwell on forums, but maybe it's something to look into. For the sake of everyone's wonderkids.

[rizkipradana]

I think the best way to training to develop player after having good staff and facilities is just training them in all schedule training that availble in the game (general, match preparation, attacking, defending, etc)

[Njugi]

The smallest arrows (light green) are 0.2 changes, and the dark green arrows are 0.4 changes iirc

[charles]

I keep a spreadsheet. I look at the number of attributes required for the role I want them to play (e.g 12 for a winger I think), then add up the total of those attributes (say, 140). Divide the total by the role number (140 ÷ 12) and note it down at the end of every season to get the average attribute rating for the role. I've actually often been surprised by how much improvement there is when it isn't immediately obvious.

Yes, I might take it a bit too seriously. I definitely don't also have tabs on that spreadsheet for squad depth, scouting, and coaching.

[RhysBrownST]

0:30 I heard your whispering inside my soul 😂😂😂

[mrartdeco]

My players does improve….







My life on the other hand.. does not