Stuart Milne

BigBeezer - When it comes to ensuring that the game is accurate, I think we do a pretty good job. We don't live in a binary world where there is no wriggle room for a video game to stray from reality. From what I've read there, you want us in February to know exactly who will finish in each position and rate players and clubs in such a way that there can be no deviation from that? I neither think that's realistic, nor do I see that as something to aspire to. Of course, I'm not trying to suggest that it should be a free-for-all where literally any team from a league could win it. We want to be able to achieve something that resembles reality, where the challengers for the league title are challenging and the teams most likely to be in a relegation dogfight are going to be down at the bottom, and I think we manage that. In fact, there have been a few case studies over the years that have highlighted that in FM, Scotland is perhaps the best example of things working largely as they should. When my team finished researching for the mid-season update in mid January, there's no way I would expect them to make significant changes to the data to *ensure* that Dundee and St. Mirren would finish in the top six and Aberdeen and Hibernian wouldn't. That would just be silly. On Feb 1st, 4 points separated 6th - 10th. When it comes to players not being picked when they might be in real life, there could be a number of reasons for this, including players being injured, unfit, a change in system, falling out of favour of the manager or unexpectedly emerging into the first team. So if you look at the example of Miller Thompson, he came into the Dundee United first team way after our deadline, and played in a position he'd never played in before (right back). How do we legislate for that? And on top of all of that, what you're not considering is that from the moment you start a game it's a completely new world where there are so many variables that within reason, anything can happen. Players get injured, transfers happen, form counts, managers move; that's the joy of Football Manager and I would not want that to change, otherwise why bother playing it? Why not just make the game a series of unplayed 1 season test runs? Also, just to clarify, we do run tests like the ones you mention; the difference is, we did it without the benefit of hindsight. To your point about legends, I wouldn't want you to waste any of your time even posting about them; the legends and icons are chosen by the clubs themselves, so we go with who they want.

Hello Kilmarnock, thanks for the feedback. On the TV dates thing; that's fair enough. These are things we should have fixed, and as a team, we should have picked up on it. The fact it's gone unchanged for 6 years suggests that it's gone largely unnoticed, including by us, so I don't think many people have considered it a huge issue. I note that there was a post about it in the summer in the FM23 feedback thing and we should have picked up on it then, but as I say, it's not really something that's ever been put in front of me as a problem that requires fixing until now. Rest assured we will now get this updated in the game as soon as possible. Indeed, we were already aware of the post split issue ahead of your post so that fix is already in the pipeline. The issue of Old Firm games is not a database issue and I would not be the person to confirm if this can get fixed. If there's a way for the coders to ensure a specific fixture is chosen for TV, they will, but we don't set that. Your comment that the Scottish database has been very poorly updated this year is an opinion you're entitled to have, although on behalf of my team of researchers who work incredibly hard, I would disagree and the feedback I have received has been overwhelmingly positive. Of course, we know that it's not perfect and never will be, and the two u18 teams in the wrong league is an example of that. And we've already got that fix lined up for the next update. The lack of u18 players however is not something I would consider an error. Looking at Ayr United as the example you've given, I see they update their twitter with lineups that simply state the player's surname and initial. That's not enough for us to add them in, so the next stage would be to go to the website to find there's only a full name and whether they are a defender, midfielder, attacker or goalkeeper. That's not enough to add them, especially when there's a chance that we might be adding a player who is below the age where they are legally allowed to be added. Hopefully that answers some of your points.

As Brentford Alan says... This data update was done centrally for the whole database, not just Scotland or indeed Celtic, and was to prioritise factual errors and key changes that have happened across the world since the data was last locked. Doing a general update of player Current Abilities was not something that was done. That will be reviewed in the major winter data update. As you're aware of hidden attributes such as Current Ability, I'm assuming that you're familiar with either the pre-game or in-game editor. What you'd like to change before you're happy to start a career save is a very quick fix for you in those editors, but what is a quick fix for one club and a handful of players is not a quick fix or indeed logistically possible for this data update when you take the entire database into consideration.

Well there's a classic example of someone talking absolute nonsense. The Dundee United researcher is - and has been since 1997 - me. The Dundee researcher is a Dundee fan who isn't me. But the entirety of Scotland falls under my remit, so no doubt the Chinese whispers will have started because I'll have tweeted out questions asking about Dundee youth players in my role as Head Researcher.

Fair points on Scales and O'Riley. Maeda is a nightmare to rate because of his Acc/Pace as you say. On Fringpong, a quick search of this forum will find a post by our Celtic researcher in the German data issues thread saying they needed to add the sell-on. So even though it's entirely their responsibility, he did try. And no worries, it's always fine for there to be constructive criticism. But...and I hate to bring it back to this, you genuinely are wrong about the -8 stuff. Like I say, I am able to look back at every individual attribute and see when it was changed and who changed it. And for what it's worth, Hepburn was moved by my Celtic researcher to Bayern in August 2020 at which time he had a -7. He remained unedited by the German team until October 2020 when his Potential was downgraded to a -65. Josh Adam was never at Celtic in FM, He was created in the database in August 2020 as a Man City player at which point he was given a -75 by the English research team and that literally has never changed. Morrison's move predates my ability to check what he had at Celtic but he did have a -8 at one point and that may have been amended by the German research team or it may have been what he had when he left. Even if it was changed then of your original four, that's the only one. Maybe you're referencing a custom database? But look, I get it; potential ability gets changed upwards and downwards all the time at all levels. But you have to be a pretty special talent to justify a -8 or higher and there have been plenty at Celtic who have been given that over the years and its amounted to nothing, so perhaps our Celtic researcher is just a little more cautious? Even if he is, a -75 is still a really good rating.

I'm really not sure how my third sentence is "completely irrelevant" to your point, which - let's not forget - was "Why is it that when when a Celtic youth leaves the club for a top academy they invariable get given a -8 straight after leaving (Josh Adams, Liam Morrison, Barry Hepburn and this summer Aidan Borland) yet when they reject a move to a top academy and decide to stay at the club (Rocco Vata, Josh Dede and this summer Mitchel Frame and Ronan Ferns) they're given lower PA ranges? " So to break this down... Rocca Vata - who you have suggested has a lower PA because he decided to reject a move to a top academy and stayed at Celtic - has a -75 for his PA. That PA will mean that he gets a randomly generated PA between 120 (Celtic First team level) and 150 (quality player at English Premiership level) The comparisons you made include... Josh Adam - Josh Adam has a PA of -75 which is equal to Vata Liam Morrison - Liam Morrison has a PA of -7 in the database which is less than Vata. And in fact, looking at the field history in the database which stretches back to 2020 when we took it online, he had a PA of -8 initially, then in 2020 it was downgraded to -75, in 2021 to -65 and in 2022 back up to -7. So either he came in to the German database with a -8 given by the Celtic researcher, which was wrong, or the German team increased it wrongly and then decided to revert it back to what he originally had. Barry Hepburn - Again, our records for field changes go back to our move to an online database in 2020, but I can see that in 2020, the German team moved Hepburn from having a -7 PA down to a -65 and then a -6. Aidan Borland - He's 16 years old and hasn't been in the database before, so has never been rated by the Celtic researcher to either get an upgrade or a downgrade. So with the examples you've given, the players have either been rated the same or downgraded when they've left Celtic in the database, or in the case of Borland was never at Celtic in the database to be rated differently. Also, Ferns has a PA of -75 and Jack Wyllie has a PA of -7. Mitchel Frame has a PA of -75 and Stevens has a PA of -8. To your other points about contracts, it's the responsibility of the researcher for a player's new club to ensure that his contract information is correct when that player is sent across. So if Celtic were paying a portion of Scott Sinclair's wage for several versions of the game, or if the German research team didn't ask for a sell on fee for Fringpong when the transfer was made and then subsequently missed it in other versions when we as the Scottish research team don't have access to that player to edit anymore, then how is that any fault of the Celtic researcher? The answer is that it's not. If what this boils down to is "I think this player should be given a higher or lower PA and I disagree with the opinion of the Celtic researcher" then fine; you are entitled to that opinion, but in the event that you truly believed that players got a PA boost when they left Celtic, I would hope that the factual information provided above will evidence that you are incorrect.

The Celtic players are rated by the Celtic researcher who - like most of our assistants across the globe - is a fan of the club he researches. So if he's giving a player a certain potential ability, it's because he's judged that player should have that. If a player moves club and the researcher who researches that club is in control of the player and decides to give him a higher potential ability, there's not a lot that the Celtic researcher can do about that. As it happens, Vata has a -75 which is the same as Josh Adam and more than Liam Morrison (-7) and Barry Hepburn (-6), Aidan Borland was never in the database prior to being created by the Aston Villa researcher. Hopefully this addresses your concerns.

Just to respond to a few things... 1) While the ALF issue is a genuine error because it hasn't been set, I don't think it's too helpful to go round in circles about suspecting a player's wage is too high or too low. We can review these things but try to keep the discussion to genuine errors (like if a wage was set as £200,000 p/w instead of £20,000, but not £23,000 instead of £20,000) 2) As has been pointed out, we don't set player values in the database, so this thread isn't the place for it. For Matondo, he's set as something like the 27th best player in Scotland and his reputation is equal to his value. If it's too high, that's more of a coding issue. 3) Taylor Steven's transfer has been missed. That's a fair cop. We didn't have a dedicated Alloa researcher beyond May, so it's slipped through the net. Apologies for that. 4) Bang on about the Gardyne Campus. We should have updated that and we will as soon as possible. I believe that the stadium is still Kilmac as well, but with the licensing that goes on with the SPFL it can be a longer lead time to make changes. I'm surprised it hadn't been picked up but I'll hold my hands up on that one. 5) Abada has never had 170 for Potential ability. I've gone back through the field history for Potential ability and the highest it got was 165, which is high, but that's *potential*. He's 22 and isn't in his prime yet. But if the Celtic researcher believed that, then I'm happy to back him. Having looked, it's a little less this year that it was last year but he's still highly rated. 6) Adam Devine does not have every attribute filled in, which is perfectly reasonable for a player who hasn't played a huge amount of game time at first team level. I'd say it takes a good 15-20 games to get a proper feel for a player, but looking at it, he's only played about 9 hours of football at first team level. With that in mind, the Rangers researcher is then able to use an option within our database that asks that the game randomly generate attributes for a player of a certain description. So in this case, Devine is described as a 'Complete Wing Back' and thus he'll have stats to match. As for "a lot of the stats and ways players develop in Scotland don't make sense", I would ask that you expand on how specifically development in Scotland doesn't make sense relative to other leagues in the game. 7) Hatate will be able to play in those positions if you play him there in the game, but he's not set as that as a primary. That being said, if he regularly does play there on international duty, it's something we can review. What I would say is that how good a player is rated will always be - within a certain margin for errror - subjective within the ratings guidelines FM uses. I back my team to rate players how they see it; that's the joy of the game. We have fierce debates within the research team on who should be rated at X and who should be rated at Y but i trust the team to rate it as they see it. You might disagree, and that's ok. But we should keep it respectful. And hopefully, we can keep the thread to discussing errors rather than matters of opinion. I just hope there aren't too many errors to flag up :-)

Looking at Le Fondre, he came in to the Hibs squad quite late and as part of that his contract is still set as 'Designated Player', which may or may not have caused the game to make up that he's on £15k. Either way, it's not what we set

As the game is licensed, Celtic set who are the Club Legends, Club Icons and Favoured Staff. They have taken out the likes of Brother Walfrid in the past, Dembele is not set as a legend in the game, I believe he's set as either an icon or fav staff.

Hi @bigbeezer Apologies for not being very active on this forum recently; I note that you've made a few comments and suggestions. To your most recent one, Goodwin only just happened as you'll know and the update that was released today - as you may expect - been taken from a cut-off point from a little bit ago. So no, that one won't be in the new update. I can see that you've made some useful observations on Celtic, including a passionate support of Rio Hatate. I'll pass this info on to the Celtic researcher who I know does a tremendous job. Sometimes there can be differences of opinion on how one player should rate against another, and your points about the technique attribute are fair and will be considered for future updates.

We wouldn't be able to add every volunteer scout to the database, especially for a team that's not actually playable out of the box. I appreciate that Kenny has formed an army of volunteer scouts, but if Cowdenbeath were to have 7 or 8 scouts - when in the game it defaults with the boards of teams at part time level allowing for 2, tops - then the game would also give them all salaries (because it doesn't allow for unpaid staff) and it would have an effect on the finances. So no, we'll include Kenny, but that will be it.

The SPFL confirm what they want to be listed as used capacity for clubs.

That's a fair reflection

Hart is rated higher than Siegrist, We think this is an issue with how the game views older players rather than a data issue.

Yeah, pretty much. I think when it comes to any attribute taken in isolation, it's easy to do a comparison and say Player X should be better than Player Y or whatever, but ultimately it's the mix of all the attributes that makes a player what he is. If Mulgrew has lost his pace, to be able to sustain at the level he's still playing he needs to have compensated with mental attributes, meanwhile if Ryan Edwards is great at heading, then he should have a high rating for it. He came in with a high rating and I've never really sought to change that because I look at him and think that it's a strength. If all Edwards had to do was stand there and header it he'd be amazing, but there's more to defending than that. That being said, I'll keep an eye on the heading stats and amend in January if needed.

When it comes to both Birighitti and Eriksson, they have both come in to the Scottish database with good pedigrees, as both international caps and on the back of receiving credit for being the top goalkeeper in the respective leagues they have come from. As he's now been here since January Eriksson has had a mild current ability drop (though one that will still see him picked for Finland) , but Birighitti hasn't. Both are rated around the rough mark for decent at SPFL Premiership level in terms of their Current Ability. If by January there's any doubt on that, they will be reviewed. As a Dundee Utd fan, nobody needs to tell me that they are a little bit suspect Now that being said, I think what you've done is make a case for the argument that stats are only as useful as you want them to be to suit an argument. Birighitti, in spite of flogging a few goals, especially vs Alkmaar and Hearts actually has one of the highest save percentages in the league. So to me, that would suggest he is actually worth a good score on reflexes. 13 goals in 5 games only tells some part of the story. And it's similar to Eriksson and how he conceded 17 goals in 8 games. Well, I would argue - and I say this in spite of me personally not rating him very highly - of the 9 goals he conceded in that game against Celtic, 0 were his fault and he couldn't realistically have expected to save any of them. So United had a very poor start to the season and I had to think about that, wonder why it was and reflect it in the attributes. Is it that they were bad players who deserved reductions across the board? For me, no. It was that there were a lot of decent players who had shown that they weren't brave and the midfield especially had no aggression. So those are the stats that have been updated. On a general level, and I say this on here every year, I know that there's often a disconnect between the priorities of the research team and how we rate based on the hidden attributes such as current ability and how that links in with how it is weighted against attributes, and what the players of the game consider most important, which are the individual attributes. So, on that note, physical attributes such as pace and acceleration are among the most important attributes in terms of how they are weighted. Mulgrew has 6s and 7s for pace. acceleration and agility. To be able to still put in the level of performances he did last season (jury is still out on this season but it's not the first few games of a season we tend to rate based on) in spite of being slow, he has to know where to position himself effectively. And he does, hence the high rating for defensive positioning. That doesn't make him a better player in the game than Goldson though. The balance of Mulgrew's attributes makes him a player with a Current Ability of 110; someone who would be picked in the Dundee United starting 11. He wouldn't get picked in Rangers starting 11. Goldson's balance of attributes makes him a player with a Current Ability of 138. There's a difference there.

Please bear in mind that the data used in the beta is not the most up to date data, as we have continued to work on the database since the data you are using was taken. So please let us know of any issues, and if we've already sorted them, we'll let you know.