Undercover: Judging Potential

Following on from Rob Cooper's player progression conference the Cloughite have decided to lift the lid on one of the most mis-understood aspects of youth team management -- judging potential!

The core concept in judging potential is a player's Potential Ability (PA). This is a rating between 1 and 200, and represents the absolute maximum ability that a player can reach. Potential can not be exceeded under any circumstances, and whatsmore there are no guarantees that a player will ever reach his potential. For more details on the factors that influence whether a player lives up to his potential take a read through The Cloughite's summary of Rob Cooper's player progression conference.

Alongside PA, every player has a Current Ability (CA). As a player improves his CA increases. When a player's CA equals his PA he has reached the peak of his ability and can improve no further. CA is a complex subject but here are the key facts you should know about how CA is "spent" improving your players:

• Not all attributes are equal: Attributes are weighted based on the importance of that attribute to the position(s) a player can fill. For example Finishing carries a very high weighting a striker, but for a defender the weighting is zero, because the attribute is of no use to that player's position. This means that attributes that are not relavent to the players position do not use up any of their PA, and those are key will use up more PA than those that are only complementary.
  
• Players who can play in more than one position use up PA for being able to do so. They also suffer the highest weighting for each attribute from each position they play -- the more positions on a pitch a player can play the harder it is for them to become world class in any one of those positions.
  
• Two-footed players use up a chunk of their PA simply by being two footed.
  

Please bear in mind that the following is speculation based on what little we do know about the system, in-game experience and my thoughts on how I would have implemented the system.

With all that in mind, we move on to the Judging Potential (JP) skill. To explain this skill I will introduce a term that is probably new to most of you:

Visible Potential Ability (VPA). This is calculated from a players' PA, within a given margin of error dependant on your level of the JP skill. The margin of error is spread equally either side of the true PA, so a 10% margin of error means that the VPA will be a maximum of 5% off the PA. The margin of error for each level of JP is listed below:

Level	Margin of error	PA Range
JP 1	50%	+/-50PA
JP 2	40%	+/-40PA
JP 3	30%	+/-30PA
JP 4	20%	+/-20PA
JP 5	10%	+/-10PA

JP displays the error adjusted VPA (0-200, the same as PA) as a Potential Rating (pot) between 0.5 and 5. The exact boundaries for the ratings are unkown, but I believe the following to be the logical choice:

Pot	JP 1 (+/- 50)	JP 2 (+/- 40)	JP 3 (+/- 30)	JP 4 (+/- 20)	JP 5 (+/- 10)	True PA
0.5	0-70	0-60	0-50	0-40	0-30	0-20
1.0	0-90	0-80	0-70	1-60	11-50	21-40
1.5	0-110	1-100	11-90	21-80	31-70	41-60
2.0	11-130	21-120	31-110	41-100	51-90	61-80
2.5	31-150	41-140	51-130	61-120	71-110	81-100
3.0	51-170	61-160	71-150	81-140	91-130	101-120
3.5	71-190	81-180	91-170	101-160	111-150	121-140
4.0	91-200	101-200	111-190	121-180	131-170	141-160
4.5	111-200	121-200	131-200	141-200	151-190	160-180
5.0	131-200	141-200	151-200	161-200	171-200	181-200

So, if you look at a player with a PA of 170, using JP 4 he would be reported as having a PA of anywhere between 150 and 190 (+/- 20PA of the actual value), so he will show as a 4, 4.5, or 5 star potential for different managers with JP4.

From the table above you can see why JP must be taken with a pinch of salt, even with JP 4 a player that you see as 3.5* potential (101-160PA) may actually be no lesser prospect than a player you see as 5* potential (161-200PA), and could in-fact be a better prospect than a player you see as 4.5* potential (min possible 151-190PA).