Help Recommended Player Roles

[Mr.Manager]

Hey guys, how's it going? 

I've not had as much chance to play FMM18 as i would've liked so far, but I'm aiming to get stuck in to it properly now. Everyone still enjoying it?

I was wondering whether anyone can help me... I always like to look at a players' recommended role at the beginning of the game, so that i can see what attributes the game seems to think are key for each role. As an example, from looking at the likes of De Gea, Neuer and Rulli, i can see that Sweeper Keepers tend to have excellent kicking as well as better physical traits than their non-sweeper counterparts.

It's easy to do for the popular roles, but i'm really struggling to find any examples of players for some particular roles. 

Has anybody stumbled upon any players (at the start of the game) that have recommended roles of the following:

* Defensive Midfielder

* Anchor Man

* Wide Midfielder

* Attacking Midfielder

I also only have a few examples for the following:

* Libero

* Box to Box Midfielder

* Trequartista

* Shadow Striker

* Deep Lying Forward

* Advanced Forward (weird, it was one of the most popular positions last year!)

* Defensive Forward

If you happen to find any players that are recommended those roles i'd really appreciate it!  Cheers.

[Titjes]

B2B Midfielder --> Goretzka is a gem  

[Mr.Manager]

22 hours ago, Titjes said:

B2B Midfielder --> Goretzka is a gem  

Absolutely! Thanks man. Aside from Goretzka, the only other box-to-box midfielders i can find at the start of the game are Nainggolan, Keita, Parolo and Kucka. All pretty awesome players. 

[rafa]

That's quite a broad question

I must agree that the game is not very good at pinpointing which attributes are required for certain roles. From some comments posted by developers, it seems to be designed this way - we should be able to investigate and experiment ourselves.

However we can get some head start by analysing the role description. Let's start with the Defensive Midfielder:

So on your Tactics screen, if you set a player to the DM role, we get a short explanation:

Quote

The Defensive Midfielder's main duties are to protect the defensive line from breaking attackers by closing them down quickly and to support the creative midfielders when in possession.

That gives us a couple of hints - the DM is a defensive player, needs some Pace to close in quickly, strong Tackling to win the ball back. When in possession, he must support creative midfielders. From my interpretation that means the DM should have a decent Passing, but not necessarily any creative skills. Short passes to the guys that know what to do.

Now we need to dig deeper in the rabbit hole. Select a bunch of players that can play in any DM role and check their Position Screen. Tap the DM slot on the field view, and select the Defensive Midfielder option from the drop-down menu.

You will get a list of Role Traits. This list is different for each player, and different for each role selected. After scanning through a bunch of players for their role traits as DM I found the following important traits for a DM:

• Marks Opponent Tightly
• Knocks Ball Past Opponent
• Does Not Dive Into Tackles
• Moves Ball to Right Foot Before Dribble Attempt
• Dives Into Tackles
• Tries Killer Balls Often
• Plays One-Twos
• Plays With Back To Goal
• Likes To Round Keeper
• Dictates Tempo

Interesting enough, I have not found any trait coloured green in this list. All traits were coloured black, except by Plays With Back To Goal.

But then you say "Rafa, you're only confusing me! What all this madness mean?"

So, from my understanding:

• Green traits are awesome for the role. Perfect fit.
• Black traits affect the way the player plays on the role, but are not necessarily a plus or minus for performing it. So a DM that dives into tackles will not be better or worse as DM for it, but he will do it.
• Red traits are a no-no. You don't want a DM that Plays With Back To Goal.

So on further analysis, there are no special traits a player needs to be a DM. Basically, the DM is a generic defensive minded player. He will protect the defensive line, close down the opposition, support play - but he does not have to mark the opponents as tightly as a Ball Winning Midfielder.

Therefore, it is safe to assume that as long as a player does not Plays With Back To Goal you should pick your best defensive midfielder and let him do his job. The better the player's defensive stats, the better he will perform. Follow the generic description (close down quickly, support creative players), pick some good defensive stats and voilá - you should be good. As the role is so generic, I would also pick someone with good Decisions, as they will have to figure out much for themselves.

I don't have time to dig into all the roles you mentioned, but I hope this helps you to make the analysis for other roles by yourself

[rafa]

23 hours ago, Mr.Manager said:

Has anybody stumbled upon any players (at the start of the game) that have recommended roles of the following:

* Defensive Midfielder

* Anchor Man

* Wide Midfielder

* Attacking Midfielder

 

Just to add to this, I think that one reason it is really hard to find some roles is because most players have some attribute or trait that is beneficial to the more specialised roles - so a DM with great tackling will always be recommended to be a Ball Winning Midfielder, while a DM with good Passing and Creativity will certainly be recommended to be a Deep Lying Playmaker.

It doesn't mean that these players will not perform well as Defensive Midfielder or Anchor Man, just that the recommendation system is designed to overwhelmingly match any player to the other DM roles whenever they have one attribute or trait that stands out.

Edited February 7, 2018 by rafa
grammar

[Titjes]

35 minutes ago, Mr.Manager said:

Absolutely! Thanks man. Aside from Goretzka, the only other box-to-box midfielders i can find at the start of the game are Nainggolan, Keita, Parolo and Kucka. All pretty awesome players. 

Corentin Tolisso from Bayern also if i'm not mistaken  

[Mr.Manager]

@rafa

Woof! that is an excellent and thorough reply! Thanks man, really appreciate it. 

However, maybe i should explain exactly why I'm looking for in-game examples...

I wanted to look at the best players in the world in each role and see what numbers they post for each attribute. As an example, here's the movement attribute for the top 10 wingers vs top 10 inside forwards:

Winger	Mvmt	Inside Forward	Mvmt
Willian	18	Eden Hazard	17
Isco	16	Bernardo Silva	13
Arjen Robben	18	Pedro	20
Ousmane Dembele	16	Alexis Sanchez	19
Douglas Costa	16	Antoine Griezmann	19
Franck Ribery	16	Neymar	20
Andriy Yarmolenko	16	Gareth Bale	20
Emil Forsberg	16	Arjen Robben	18
Kingsley Coman	15	Ousmane Dembele	16
Andre Schurrle	19	Yannick Carrasco	18
Average	16.6		18.0

So there you can see that movement is important for both, but especially so for inside forwards. I was hoping to find at least 10 players for every single role but it doesn't look like that's possible....

[rafa]

Cool table

Yeah, I don't think it's possible due to the way the recommendation system is designed. 

What you could do for these odd roles is to define yourself the main attributes and rank any player that is a natural for the position using your criteria. 

Or even better, just stick to the ones you have - they're the most often used in the game anyway

[Mr.Manager]

24 minutes ago, rafa said:

Cool table

Haha thanks!

I think you're right, i think that i'll have to either ignore them or go with the players i think best suit the role. 

Cheers mate.