Aggression

[Sarmatian]

It's the attribute I've never paid attention. Most of the players playing in position you want aggression, they naturally have it, like DMC's for example. They usually have too much of it, resulting in lots of yellow and red cards. This time, it's 2017 and my team, Stuttgart, has lowest aggression in the league, even though I'm a title challenger, was 2nd last year, won the league year before.

So, I'm curious how does aggression translates into match engine? Is a lack of aggression a significant flaw? Can it be negated with higher closing down/harder tackling?

I'm interested in what you people think of it, do you pay attention to it and if you try to have more or less aggressive squad.

[furiousuk]

I've never found aggression to be overly concerned with giving away fouls, I have defenders with high aggression but good tackling, marking, positioning and technique and they rarely get carded. Committing violent fouls is more to do with hidden attribs and can be found out in a scout report.

Aggressive players get involved. Linked to work rate & bravery, aggression controls how active a player will be, how aggressively they will seek the ball. Passive players will let the game pass them by, aggressive players want to be a part of everything. Aggressive players will also be more likely to adopt high risk/high reward strategies and will look to make things happen.

This is pretty much summed up in the online manual and an article by mantralux on player attributes (sorry, I can't provide a link right now)

[qqq]

Vidic for Man UTD in real life is an aggressive player with lots of bravery and it is a big reason why he is such a good player. Some of my best players have very high aggression and this does not manifest itself as getting yellows and reds all the time, in fact my last red card was from a player with 8 aggression (the ref was a blind b*****d) I look at it as a positive mental attribute rather than a potential problem area.

Here is the link furiousuk mentioned

[Sarmatian]

Interesting stuff, guys. I've always seen aggression as an attribute that is basically both good and bad, but you guys see it as a mostly positive attribute. Based on that guide, it also seems that there's not much difference between aggression and determination/workrate.