English research in the DB (Some sort of CA-spoilers)

[DiasV]

My biggest problem with this game for ages is that the researchers doing the english teams are not setting their ca/pa realistically compared to other leagues and other teams.

Even though spanish teams have been more or less unbeatable for the last years. This has been the case for years. As an example: In the 2013-14 season, except for Real Sociedad who were eliminated from the Champions League in the group stage, all Spanish clubs in that competition and the Europa League were only eliminated by fellow Spanish clubs and since that is has more or less been that way. The Spanish UEFA coefficient ranking also continues to comfortably lead the rest of the European leagues by a considerable margin (PL being third), but in the game database the teams from the PL with a good margin is rated better than the spanish teams.

To give some examples (out of a million) on how engslish teams are rated compared to others.

Lets take a look at Aston Villa. Barely avoided relegation last year, this year bottom in the table.

7 players rated CA 130 or better

15 players rated CA 125 or better.

Ok, lets compare them with som other teams:

Basel: 2014/2015 season - last 16 in CL after beating Liverpool out of the group, 2015/2016 season - in the last 16 of Europa League

4 players rated CA 130 or better

9 players rated CA 125 or better

So Basel, a team that has done well in Europe for many years. Last 5 years 2 times among last 16 in CL and semi and quarter finals in EL. Beaten MU, Chelsea and Liverpool in this period cleary has worse players than a relegation team in PL.

What if we compare them to some teams in Championship?

Lets take Derby: A solid Championship team. 8th last year, this team in play off position.

5 players rated CA 130 or better

13 players rated CA 125 or better.

Seems like if they played in Europe they would do rather well!! Well, not if you see how other English teams has done in recent years. And Derby is not the only Championship team lots better than Basel, Gent (last 16 in CL) and other teams doing fine in European competitions......Hull and others is the same story.

Lets take a look at some of the big clubs in Europe. Man Utd. What have they done lately. Last year they got 4th in PL and in Europe they were not even qualified. This year they are 5th in PL, beaten out of CL by PSV and Wolfsburg and now in Europa League.

So, how is their team:

Now we dont even have to use the same numbers as Basel. The Basel-players would hardly beat the reserve team of Man U (Basels best player would be the 21st best player at MU).

Man U has got:

3 players CA 160 and above

14 players CA 145 and above

Lets compare them with some other good teams.

Atletico Madrid: A team that has got a final and and a QF in CL the last 2 seasons and 1st and 3rd place in the league. This season they are 2nd in the league and their defence is seen upon as the strongest in the world.

Atletico has got:

3 players CA 160 and above

14 players CA 145 and above.

So Man U and Atletico has got more or less identical teams when it comes to quality in the database....I think most people who has watched football for the last 3-4 seasons would disagree on this one.

Just for fun, lets have a look at the teams that beat ManU out of the CL

PSV:

1 player ca 145 and above.

Wolfsburg:

0 players CA 160 and above

9 players CA 145 and above

How about a team like Liverpool - 2nd in PL two years ago, 6th last year and 8th this year. Beaten out of CL 2 years ago by Basel, and Besiktas from EL. this year through to the last 16.

0 players CA 160 and above

15 players CA 145 and above, so actually they too has got the same amount of good players as Atletico Madrid, the difference is that AM has got 3 players sligthly better than the best of Liverpool

A team like Villarreal, 6th - 6th - and now 4th in Primera. Beaten by Sevilla out of EL last year (a fellow spanish team), this year through to the last 16.

0 players CA 160 and above

4 players CA 145 and above.....and that is a regular top team in the league that has dominated Europe for many seasons now.

Could have continued this for a long time. The thing is that as long as there seems to be no one comparing the leagues and teams systematically, there will be lots of wrongs when you start to compare teams. It seems like the researchers use guidlines for their own country, and not compare with others, and that clearly becomes wrong. The factor I find most often is English teams having far to good quality, until PL starts dominating like they did 6-7 years ago the whole english rating system needs a good cool down to get down to the level where it should be. Sorry for not making more examples, but it takes time, so that will be for some day where I have more time.

[Ross Ingersoll]

This will be kind of short because i dont have time to get detailed but what you are suggesting is that because a certain team in another country is doing better, They should have better players. While i am not going to dispute that how good players are will impact how good the team is... You also have to ask yourself about coaching, how the players are being used, etc. The team with the best players doesnt always win , Its the team that has quality but also has proper management and will put his players at his disposal in the correct position to carry out a gameplan. That goes for every sport. what players are rated is not the end all, be all.

This is just my opinion on the subject. I dont know enough about the spanish leagues to delve in it deeper and if i did would be guesswork.

[Welshace]

This thread is still open because a discussion is always good... however Entryway, you couldn't keep it constructive, there is no need to embellish your point by being aggressive or telling people they don't know anything about football..

Discuss this like an adult and I see no reason why this can't stay open.

[entryway]

Well if I am not allowed to express my opinion without actually insulting, blaming or whatever anyone ... okay, it's up to you to use your powers on that, I'll accept this. No problem at all.

I'll try it in a less direct way then, maybe you like it more this way:

FM 2016 and its predecessors are the best football managers out there, that's unquestionable. But they have one big flaw in my eyes, and that's poor balancing of BPL teams compared to the rest of Europe, that's unquestionable too. Personally I can't see any point why BPL teams like Man Utd, Man City etc are crazy overpowered compared to actually in real life comparable teams in Europe.

Man Utd rather is on the level of 3rd class teams (on European Level) like PSV, Wolfsburg - as we all saw they clearly have not been to able to come out on top of those this season. Neither have Man City etc. been even near the performance and strength of top notch teams like Barca, Real, Bayern for (nearly) the last decade. Only exception here is Chelsea, which in my opinion didn't perform to well, but clearly knew how to punish Barcas and Bayerns inability to score.

So I am totally with the OP DiasV, english teams are way too strong compared to other European league's top teams.

[Welshace]

Thanks for re-writing it, much clearer and coherent.

[callamity]

This to me is a difficult thing to balance.

I think the researchers in the English leagues are probably some of the most accurate.

If you consider the teams mentioned how many would finish in the English prem top 6 or seven teams over a full season. Almost all European leagues are dominated by the same 3 or 4 teams. Outwith the obvious giants of Spain Germany etc the rest would be fighting relegation in a full season in the English league. Yes on a big night in europe they could raise their game and take an arsenal or a man u but over 38 games. I think they would be mediocre at best.

[Raniel3]

What most of you probably don't know, is that the researchers actually have nothing do to with it. Every country gets a limit or contingent set (by SI I suppose) which rougly prescribes the amount of teams that are allowed to have a certain number of CA-11 (that is the average CA of the best 11 players IIRC). So for example the EPL is allowed to have 4 teams with a CA-11 of 150+ (the numbers are made up by me, I don't know the exact numbers, so don't take them literally) while the Portuguese league has only 1 or so, and so on. That is a necessary limitation, to prevent some over-ambitious researcher to give his favourite team's players in e.g. Romania a CA of 170 or something like that.

That means, however, that IF english teams are overrated, it is actually designed by the developers to be like that (NOTE: I have no idea if the EPL actually gets higher limits than the spanish league e.g., IIRC they use the UEFA 5-years-coeffecient to define the limits)

I also think that English teams are overrated, you just have to compare the continental performances of english teams on the last FMs with the performances in real life, but I can also understand that it is like that for a game that is developed by an english developer and that sells best in Great Britain.

Another problem is the amount of money in the EPL that basically allows to assemble a high number of good CA players, which in real life however isn't enough to win in continental competitions (here we come back to the topic of managers, football innovations, tactics, training etc.). That is really hard to depict in the game.

[s1111]

English clubs tend to assemble a squad of random good individuals with no great plan behind them. They have so much money that they feel they don't need to be careful about who they sign. This is why Leicester and Spurs are massively overachieving relative to their net spend and wages, because they actually have a clear way of playing and bought players to suit it. This is also why English clubs have been hopeless in Europe in the last few years.

If you want to compare say PSV and Man Utd, Utd bought Memphis last summer. He was PSV's best player, probably the best player in Holland since Luis Suarez. Yet he's struggled to even get in the team while PSV knocked Utd out. Or PSV's captain and Dutch player of the year last season Wijnaldum, who has been average at best for the team 19th in the PL. But because PSV were well coached and had a cohesive squad they put Utd out. Unfortunately that's something the AI can't replicate too well in FM.

In some cases you could also argue that it's the non English research from smaller countries that underrates players rather than the other way round. Basel don't compare too well in CA with the poorer teams in Germany or Spain either. They have a squad clearly lower in CA than Rayo Vallecano, Ingolstadt, Hannover, Frankfurt, Eibar, Granada etc. For a club that's won nearly every title in the last 15 years and is running away with this one, Basel don't even seem to be that much better than other Swiss teams.

[Raniel3]

English clubs tend to assemble a squad of random good individuals with no great plan behind them. They have so much money that they feel they don't need to be careful about who they sign. This is why Leicester and Spurs are massively overachieving relative to their net spend and wages, because they actually have a clear way of playing and bought players to suit it. This is also why English clubs have been hopeless in Europe in the last few years.

If you want to compare say PSV and Man Utd, Utd bought Memphis last summer. He was PSV's best player, probably the best player in Holland since Luis Suarez. Yet he's struggled to even get in the team while PSV knocked Utd out. Or PSV's captain and Dutch player of the year last season Wijnaldum, who has been average at best for the team 19th in the PL. But because PSV were well coached and had a cohesive squad they put Utd out. Unfortunately that's something the AI can't replicate too well in FM.

In some cases you could also argue that it's the non English research from smaller countries that underrates players rather than the other way round. Basel don't compare too well in CA with the poorer teams in Germany or Spain either. They have a squad clearly lower in CA than Rayo Vallecano, Ingolstadt, Hannover, Frankfurt, Eibar, Granada etc. For a club that's won nearly every title in the last 15 years and is running away with this one, Basel don't even seem to be that much better than other Swiss teams.

I just explained that the researchers have no real say in that... The researcher for Basel cannot give those players a higher CA because that would conflict with the general limit set for Switzerland.

[themadsheep2001]

Reading some of the posts, I'm not sure if many people actually understand how the research actually works...

[sporadicsmiles]

You guys should pay attention to the old adage of a team "being more than the sum of its parts". There are so many extenuating circumstances that go into whether a football team is successful beyond simply how good their players are. For instance, Basel benefit from playing in a relatively weak league, allowing them greater scope to rotate their squad (I should imagine) and therefore keep their main players much fitter. Thus, they can rest key players before a big European game and that can only aid their performance. The same is true of other leagues where you have a few very good teams - Spain to some extent where the bigger teams are much better than the weaker ones (particularly Barcelona and Real Madrid).

This is certainly less true of England, where the gap between the top and bottom is closing in terms of quality (whether you think this is because the best teams are getting worse, or the worse teams better, or both is a point for a different discussion). What this does mean is that there are not the same easy league games where you can rest your key players before a big European game (even compared to say 5 or 10 years ago) - there are no easy games in the Premier League, as we constantly see this season. This for sure will impact performance in Europe.

Of course this is not the only thing at work, but I hope to illustrate it is not a simple case of X team is better than Y team, so all their players must be better.

[Guest]

Excellent point, there are so many outside factors that player ability on its own is not enough to produce a realistic outcome.

[santy001]

It doesn't help when you have people like Raniel who come in, espousing knowledge about the workings of the research process which are so, so, so horrendously wide of the mark and declaring them as fact that people don't always get the right end of the stick. Posts like that should really be removed because there is no good from claiming to have a false knowledge of the research process. Clearly seen one or two posts which mention certain elements, remembered them wrongly and now regurgitating misinformation.

If SI wish to disclose their research process in full I'm sure they will when it suits them, but nothing is off the table. If any researcher can argue their point well enough, it makes sense, can easily stand up to scrutiny then odds are it will be reflected in game.

There's a whole host of tools for examining the data we put in, and of course they can be used to flag up something that is out of the range of what you'd expect.

Some of the games absolute best players are in the 110-140CA bracket, and some of the worst are in the 140-170CA bracket.

[Guest]

I've just tried a test save with every English player having their non-player attributes set to 0 so that the in-game values are defined by the nation player profile & in the first test the season 1 performance of English sides in Europe is much more realistic & there have been no impact on unbalancing the domestic results.

Obviously it's just one part of the larger group of factors but it's an easy change that people can make for themselves in the editor, that is if more than one test save shows consistent performance levels.