Gaining Part 1: Oldies & Player Gains (26/02/2014 05:37)

"If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere."

- Groucho Marx

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I thought I'd better jump straight in and tackle the big one. I've seen more theories and superstition and frustration over player gains than anything else here (OK, teamstats run them close...). Even winning matches in Managerleague seems to take second place to getting that extra perception stat on your young midfielder. The forums are dominated by gaining contests. Champion's League teams sell all their decent players at the start of the season and throw their youth players in to get torn apart - and maybe, just maybe, gain some quality to make the humiliation worth it.

I totally understand. In the previous post, I touched on how the game's depth keeps us challenged and prevents us getting bored. But I think it's the pace of the game, and especially the opportunities for gaining, which get us really addicted. Who hasn't sat and refreshed frantically to see whether their training camp has bumped their striker up a quality point? Or jumped straight onto ML-Reports after a league match to check what they earned? Or squeezed one last friendly in before training, convinced this is the one that's going to give you 4 great attribute gains and make up for your run of blanks? Yeah, me too. That frequent, satisfying little dopamine rush keeps us coming back.

That said, I don't ever see myself selling all my players and starting from scratch with an army of identical 17-year-old clones, or buying a young prospect with the sole intention of selling him a few weeks later. I enjoy building up my squad organically, and forming an attachment with my players. I'll take good old Danny Vanderhaeghe, my limited but industrious midfielder, over any five-star teenager using my team as a stepping stone to greater things. Ultimately, I expect I'll hit a ceiling around Q88 in division two, but so long as Danny's still puffing away in midfield and outperforming his moderate quality level I'll be satisfied. So I guess keep that in mind - this article isn't really from the perspective of someone looking for monster gains on six players surrounded by a hollowed-out husk of a team sitting in division 5.

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OK OK, I get it. You don't want to be a youth farm. But how do I get my players to gain?

Make the appropriate sacrifices to the gaining gods and your Q67 youth player might just become the lynchpin of your side for years to come. Anger them and you'll end up with a midfield full of exceptional goalkeepers.

But what are the appropriate sacrifices? Nose around on the forums and you'll find dozens of confident mantras:

 

"Make sure you surround your young players with 36-year old goalkeepers, they won't steal all the gains."

"Play your midfielders up front to boost their shooting skills."

"If you're not getting any gains in your friendlies, take a break and try again in an hour."

"Only play against Q90+ teams, you'll get more gains against them."

"Never play on a full moon, all of your gains will disappear and turn back into pumpkins in the morning."

 

Spoiler alert: I ignore all of these. Nevertheless, over the last three and a half seasons I have gained almost 1800 attributes, ranking 110th, 4th and 27th at the last 3 season ends (as I write this we're in the top ten for this season). And though I once found a pumpkin in my house, I think my wife must have bought it because there were no attributes missing from my players.

Now, just getting a bunch of attributes each season isn't necessarily that incredible - they're spread out over quite a few players, so not so useful if I was trying to sell Q80 18-year-olds every year, and my team is pretty young and low-quality, so I don't have many players hitting their maximum quality yet. Besides, out of the 40,000 teams in these rankings only a small proportion of them will be active and playing 200 friendlies a year. But even if I'm only in the top 10%, my point is that I can't be doing that terribly by breaking the rules above. Am I just getting some unusual luck? Or are these rules not as firm as they seem?

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Data to the rescue!

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this, but I've been keeping track of some of my team's data. For the last 2.5 seasons, I have a record of all the attributes each of my players has gained in friendlies or competitive matches, as well as the number of friendlies/matches they've played. That gives us about 1200 attribute gains to look at. I've also got a list of roughly 250 matches where I've recorded the quality of the team I've faced, the type of match (player-cup, friendly, league etc.) and the number of attributes my players gained. Armed with this, let's take a look at some of the claims above in the next series of blog posts.

First, does surrounding your young players with older ones help? I think Spinner has confirmed that player gains are not zero-sum: they're worked out individually, so you don't have to worry about your older players "sucking up" gains that would otherwise have gone to someone younger. More interestingly, though, he's also told us that it helps to have some experienced players on the pitch alongside your youths. The only question is how much does it help, and is it worth it to spend valuable game time on those useless older players? To a certain extent this is a question of priorities - mine is to build and maintain a team organically, without selling many players young. If you just need those three valuable youngsters to gain and you don't care about the rest of your side then your strategy is going to be different. But let's take a look at some of the data.

Remember how I said I kept track of each player's match gains, as well as the number of games they played in? Well this means I can work out how many attributes per game each of my players earns on average. Looking at my younger players, an average gain of just under 0.2 attributes per match is typical (or 0.14 per friendly). In other words, if my 18-year-old plays in 5 league games or 7 friendlies, he should gain one attribute on average. Maybe none, maybe a couple, but over the course of a season that's the average gaining rate from playing games.

Now, suppose I wanted to make sure this guy earned as many attributes per season as possible - exactly like a youth farm team, except I'm going to keep playing all my usual 20-25 year olds alongside him. I could play him for 15mins in 200 friendlies, and let's say 65 competitive games in the league, cups and player cups: That comes out at 40 attributes per season on average. Even if I'm having to rest him on every training, he's got 5 camps to add a couple more attributes, so let's call it 42 per season. Maybe 30 one season, 55 the next, depending on the dice. That means that even with the moderate and low star players I have, surrounded by other young and medium-aged players, I could still be getting quality gains of 5-7 for an individual player simply by making sure I play him.

Now, this means that in order to justify using up some of those matchtime slots for old players, a youth farm team surrounding his player with decrepit goalkeepers has to see much better gains than 42 attributes per season. Not just on one player a season: He needs his chosen players to be putting on +50 on average. It's possible that's the case, and certainly a few players every year will get those kinds of gains, but my sense is that they're more the exception than the rule. Huge gains come mostly from playing huge numbers of matches - the average gain per match doesn't seem to be affected that much by the ages of the other players on the field.

So to address the first strategy from the list above:

 

Surrounding young players with older ones probably helps their gains - but perhaps not that much.

 

Does it sound like I'm on the fence? Well, put it this way: I'm not going to be in the market for 35-year-old benchwarmers any time soon. I think this mantra is overrated. I'd love to hear what you think though - has this made you think differently about your gains, or do you reckon I'm underestimating the influence of experience? Let me know in the comments!

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In the next post, I'll be tackling the question of how position affects your attribute gains. Should you be putting your midfielders in attack to help improve their shooting?

 

- Belizio

 

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