Where are they now ... Relegation Fodder

Back in season 5 something special was taking place at the Playing Fields; the club's under-21 and under-20 teams went 2 seasons undefeated in a highly competitive SFA league. The club had the number 1 ranked youth team in the world and the future looked bright. Eight seasons on the Cloughite is looking back to the players that started season 5 as part of that "golden generation"...

Joe Lynch
Goalkeeper, 751 senior appearances for the club. Season 3 to present day. Recently re-established himself as the club's #1 goalkeeper after displacing Rene Adler midway through season 12.



Cristian
Right back, 321 senior appearances for the club. Season 4 to present day. Cristian had to bide his time for a regular spot in the first team after the signing of fellow Brazilian Rafina. Originally seen as a utility player able to cover both full back positions, Cristian has continued to progress well into his 20s and is now one of the first names on the team sheet.



Guido Boncompagni
Left back, 1484 senior appearances for the club. Season 1 to present day. A first team regular from the age of 16, "Bonco" has become a club legend and has played more games for the club than any other player.




Alexandre Fernandes
Centre back, 1230 apearances for the club. Season 1 to present day. Alex "Assault" Fernandes learned his trade from compratriate Naldo, and went on to take on the captaincy the club following the sale of Naldo to London Town. Still only 26, Fernandes has recieved bans for assault on fourteen seperate occasions, a fact that is partly responsible for his cult status at the club.




Mariano Gamboa
Centre back, 709 appearances for the club. Season 4 to present day. Fernandes partner in the centre of defense initially found himself deployed in an anchor man role for the club when he progressed to the senior side. Following the departure of Gioda, Gamboa found himself partnering the great Brazilian once more in back 5 that has lasted the test of time.




Enrique Galvan
Defensive midfielder. Season 4 to season 8. The only player of that golden generation to find himself surplus to requirements at the Fodder. Galvan was released after only 22 senior appearances in his four seasons at the club. Enrique is currently in his 4th season at Melchester Forest, but only finds himself on the fringes of the fist team.



Sean Buxton
Central midfielder, 323 senior appearances for the club. Season 4 to present day. Currently first choice in the anchor man role. After graduating from the club's academy, Buxton found himself mostly used as a backup player, however following the departure of Luca Cigarini he found himself thrust into the first team, and it proved to be the making of him as a player. He excelled in a role that few at the club expected him to be able to make his own and is now considered as important a part of the starting XI as anyone else at the club.




Mirko Esposito
Central midfielder, 212 senior appearances for the club. Season 4 to season 9. Mirko was transferred to Firenze for £600k in season 10, after 6 years at the club, he never managed to establish himself in the starting XI, despite his starring role for the academy. After 2 seasons at Firenze Esposito was transferred to Polytech Grenoble for £600k and made 55 appearances for the club last season (season 12).




Edimar Teixeira
Central attacking midfielder, 604 appearances for the club. Season 3 to season 9. "Eddy Tex" was sold to Rapid Pitesti for £5.8m in season 9 much to the chagrin of the club's supporters. Seen as the successor to club legend Caio, many fans questioned why the club would sell one of it's best players even though he was only 22. However the £5.8m transfer fee was just too good to turn down and was part of the club's plans to secure it's long term financial future and ensure that never again will they have to sell a player they want to retain. The signing of Frenchamn Jeremy Menez went some way to appeasing the fans following the loss of Teixeira. Teixeira is still at Rapid Pitesti, having made 606 appearances for the club in the 4 seasons since leaving the Playing Fields.




Fabio Bernardi
Striker, 1103 appearances for the club. Season 1 to present day. Transferred to Phantoms in season 10 for £6.8m. "Berni" was and is a club legend, having lead the forward line for a decade, it was a huge shock to everyone at the club when manager David Parker negotiated a £6.8m deal for the player at the end of season 10. Following the sale the club promised the fans: "This is the last sale we will ever sell a player for financial reasons. The club's financal resources are now sufficient that normal market forces will no longer influence the club's transfer strategy".




Sergey Stepanov
Striker, 712 appearances for the club. Season 4 to present day. Released by London Town after 2 seasons at the club Stepanov has come back from that early setback to prove himself one of the world's top forwards.

Undercover: Judging Potential Revisited

Editors Note: The following is subject to change, v1.4 is still in the early stages of beta testing, nothing is set in stone and beta testers have only recently been given permission to publicly discuss these changes. The changes detailed here are only a small part of what looks likely a major reworking of the way that the youth system works in FML that will extend far beyond the version 1.4.

Judging Potential; you either love it or loath it, and if you fall into the former category then you are a big pansy girl who should stick to playing Barbie Horse Adventures and leave this football management lark to the real men!

After what seems endless seasons watching the transfer market for youth team players spiral ever further out of control -- largely due to the propagation of the Judging Potential skill -- the powers that be have finally commenced a long overdue refactoring of the skill to coincide with the introduction of a formal Youth Academy system.

If you have a JP skill, then you would either need to have them in your squad, or add them to your assessment list, of which there is a limit to how many you can add before it starts taking longer to learn the potential of each player.

Either way their potential will then become apparent over time.

So to decide which free agents to bid on you would either go on their attributes as they are now and take a gamble, or use JP to assess them before bidding.

My hope is that this means more youths actually get signed-up because people take a gamble on more players without instant judging potential narrowing the focus on a smaller group of players and leading to their wages rising.

- Ov Collyer

In terms of bids happening before assessments are completed, I don't mind if this new JP becomes a more reactive system, ie people gamble more on a wider number of players and then chop and change as they assess players.

I think it will make for a more interesting youth market.

- Ov Collyer

As I've said earlier, I don't mind if JP becomes something used mainly after you've signed a player, or to assess players at other clubs who you might want to make a bid for, as opposed to something used in advance on free agents.

It's still a useful tool, but not something that can be used to monopolise the free agent market.

- Ov Collyer

That's right folks, everything the anti-JP-bandwagon has been saying for the past year has been fully taken on board by SI and there is genuine reason for optimism. Now contain your excitement and read on.

Here's summary of the current proposals as I understand them:

• All managers will recieve a skill points refund for the current Judging Potential skill, which they may reinvest in the new version of the skill or in any other skill they choose. A new skill will take it's place, which for the sake of clarity I will call "Assessment" rather than "Judging Potential" to make it clear from this point when I am referring to the old skill and the new skill.

  Yes there would be a refund and the chance to learn it again for fewer points.
  

  - Ov Collyer

• The "Assessment" skill will not grant a manager instant knowledge of the potential of every player on the planet under the age of 25 as the current Judging Potential skill does. Instead it will take a number of days, dependant on the level of your Assessment skill to reach an accuracy comparable to Judging Potential. Currently this ranges from 7 (level 5) to 28 days (level 1).
  
• In addition to your Shortlist each club now has an Assessment List. Adding players to your assessment list begins an assessment process for the player.
  • Whilst under assessment you will gain knowledge of the player's potential, as you continue to assess a player the accuracy of the potential you see for that player will increase up to the maximum accuracy possible for your current level of the Assessment skill.
  • To begin with each club can assess up to 10 players at once.
    
  • You may add more than ten players to your assessment list, however this will slow down the rate at which all assessments progress. Thus if you add 20 players to your assessment list you will complete assessment of all 20 players in the same time that you would have if you had first assessed 10 of them and then assessed the other 10 afterwards. There are advantages to both approaches; with the former, at the halfway stage you will have a rough assessment of all 20 players available, with the latter approach you would have a complete assessment of half the players, but no information at all about the other 10.
• Players in your squad (excluding out on-loan, including in on-loan ) will automatically be assessed without you having to do anything (if you have the Assessment skill obviously).
• At any time you'll be able to see the % of the assessment that is complete, if you stop assessing a player the progress you have made in the assessment is saved.
• You'll start getting a reading when the accuracy reaches 25%, but it'll fluctuate regularly until gradually settling down on a final value as you reach 100% completion on the assessment.
  
• The new Assessment skill is more accurate than Judging Potential:
  • Level 1 is accurate to +/-30 PA
    
  • Level 2 is accurate to +/-25 PA
  • Level 3 is accurate to +/-20 PA
  • Level 4 is accurate to +/-15 PA
  • Level 5 is accurate to +/-10 PA
• Remember, this is the just the beginning; there are many more changes coming to the game that affect the market for under-21 players. As and when the other elements become more defined I will bring you an update.
  

Regarding assessment duration:

I have a question I have JP4 at the moment and to assess a player it will take ten days to get a result of the old JP4.If i was to have JP5 would it still take 10 days to get an assessment of the old JP5 or would it be quicker.

JP5 will take 7 days to complete the assessment - as soon as you have JP5 it'll start increasing the % more quickly on any partially assessed players.

- Ov Collyer

Assessment lists:

If you go above 10 players on your assessment list (excluding any on the list who might be in your squad) then it'll start slowing down. E.g. 20 players would make it take twice as long, 30 players three-times as long etc.

Players loaned-out take twice as long to assess (for the loaning out team), but normal speed for the team who has loaned them in.

You'll get a news item when you reach 25% assessed with a ball-park potential 'reading', and a final one at 100%.

- Ov Collyer

Assessment/Judging Potential accuracy, of course we still don't know exactly how PA maps to the star ratings used in game, which makes this knowledge mostly useless:

Under the old system JP was accurate to within *+/- 10 of a player's PA for JP5, down to an accuracy of +/- 50 of a player's PA for JP1.

The new system is accurate to within +/- 10 at JP5, and +/- 30 at JP1, once fully assessed.

To get more technical, at the start of the assessment it generates two values:

- random final offset (in the range +/- 30) and this is what will be used for the 100% assessed figure
- random rough offset (in the range +/- 40)

At 0% assessed, you see (or you would if we didn't conceal it until 25% assessed) purely the rough offset.

As the assessment continues, it mixes the rough and final offsets according to how much of the assessment has completed until at 100% it's purely the final offset you can see.

All converted to stars of course.

*At least, this is what I thought it was, until I discovered at the start of writing the assessment stuff that it was actually +/- 8 at JP5 going to +/- 43 at JP1 due to, shall we say, a "discrepancy".

- Ov Collyer

Reminder: Everything discussed above is subject to change, v1.4 is still in the early stages of beta testing, nothing is set in stone and beta testers have only recently been given permission to publicly discuss these changes. The changes detailed here are only a small part of what looks likely a major reworking of the way that the youth system works in FML that will extend far beyond the version 1.4.

The CPUFA Challenge

After watching my team be dismantled by level 14 CPU teams I figured I'd set the GW a little challenge ... I've duplicated the 10 team league competition I've just played through, with the exact same 9 CPU teams I played against. The challenge is simple: Finish the league with more points than the other challengers

Who's willing to accept the challenge and battle to prove their team is #1!

By the way; the competitions are non-ranked, entirely against CPU opponents which means (unless I'm mistaken):

• No sticky injuries
• No effect on team morale or form
• No effect on win/lose streaks
• No effect on player ratings

Your opponents are:

1. Clan Na Gael
2. Falls Park
3. Dunham Village Bishops -- Watch out for Yuji Sato -- he's a monster!
4. Northpool Dockers
5. Lea Grange Engineers
6. Sandhaven
7. South Foreham Athletic
8. Lorton Abbot
9. Toneborough Yeomen

The Standings ...

Rank	Club	P	W	D	L	GD	Pts
1.	Funky Town	18	05	03	10	-08	18
2.	Relegation Fodder	18	03	05	10	-16	14
3.	The Mighty Iron	18	02	07	09	-14	13
4.	Dueling Dragons FC	07	03	01	03	-01	10
5.	Halifax Leafs FC	11	03	00	08	-11	09
6.	Real Manchester United F.C.	13	02	00	11	-17	06
7.	Camembert Harriers	06	01	02	03	-02	05
8.	Ehcoelavon	08	00	03	05	-08	03
9.	Harlow Town FC	04	00	02	02	-03	02
10.	King Krimson FC	06	00	02	04	-06	02
11.	Nottingham Forest 1865	00	00	00	00	00	00
12.	All BiDoNs Fc	01	00	00	01	-01	00

FML Community: Embarrassment of Riches, or Simply an Embarrassment?

BertieBG explains why the new "subscriber discussion" forum has no public access:

The reason we have set the current subscriber forums to private is because it will make us feel more comfortable in talking in detail about updates, your concerns and new features without feeling like we are sending confusing messages to those using the forums to find out more about the game and to find out whether they want to give signing up to the game a go.

*cough* Horseshit *cough* You'd have to be pretty naive to believe that:

I think people understand that persistent world online games are ongoing development projects that will constantly receive updates/patches/whatever-the-developer-labels-them -- it's part of the justification behind the monthly fees afterall, so this shouldn't concern anyone at SI or SEGA really

I don't think that anyone who'd consider playing a game like FML is going to view the fact it receives regular updates, including substantial new function such as the upcoming Academies, in a negative light.
- Durera

MyNameIsJohn was pretty blunt in his take on the changes:

Dress it up how you like but it's pretty obvious that the current subscriber forum has been made private to avoid potential new users being put off by negative posts. Surprised it's taken this long. Not surprised that SEGA/SI can't be honest about it though.
- MyNameIsJohn

In fairness SI responded to the criticism when it would have been very easy to simply ignore it:

It would be a lie to say that this wasn't a consideration, but the reason why we decided down this route was that we strongly felt that new users were potentially intimidated by the forums and wanted to change things to make it so that new people feel more comfortable about getting involved.
- BertieBG

Others raised the point that rather than improving the public perception of the game this move makes it look as if there is a problem:

Ok i think it is a terrible idea just like the person above does, in away you showing/proving that you have something to hide and therefore, you are saying yourself that the game/community has BIG problems.
- mkij

At the end of the day it seems to this cynical old man that the new structure looks like something a marketing dept would dream up without any real understanding of online communities. The General Discussion board is pretty messy and could definitely do with stronger moderation and some structure, however it is by no means any worse than any other gaming message board.

So, are SI ashamed of the community? I guess you can understand why they might be when you see "contributions" like the following:

KEEP YOUR STADIUM - It'll just be half full for a while;
KEEP SOME CASH - probably more than you will ever earn in real life anyway; and,
call your mum, she is concerned that having you as an only child has led to you wasting your life as a miserable selfish cokhaed that couldnt string a sentence together if it was for a chance to lose that virginity that keeps you locked inside all day.

How about some constructive criticism? Or build on it? Or learn to tie knots so you can hurry up and hang yourself?
- oscclever

FML Gameworld Census October 2009

In an attempt to gain some insight into the strenth of the UFFA in relation to rivals the Cloughite have undertaken the following survey, unfortunately many rivals are unwilling to release their figures, perfectly illustrated by an organiser from Blissett:

Sorry and the point of this is? I'm sure SI could give you it if you asked...you won't be getting Blissett's
- Kev `BYFA` ORG

A very helpful attitude I'm sure you'll agree. Make of that what you will.

Note: inactive users = teams assigned to the Casual Inactive Football Association, active users = all other teams assigned to a Football Association.






Gameworlds Surveyed: 9/34
Total Active Population: 3103 managers
Average Active Population: 344 managers/GW

Total Inactive Population: 1003 managers
Average Inactive Population: 111 managers/GW


If you wish to contribute to the project you can do so on the Sports Interactive Forums.

Clough Boring Research Department

Originally written by Tony McDermot

So I got bored and decided to do some boring research, like the Deloitte tables and so on and so forth, comparing the top-flight leagues of all the FAs in Clough and comparing them on a more or less arbitrary basis. And here's the results!

FOOTBALL STYLE:

"The side have been applauded in recent times as a side who truly epitomise the 'beautiful game.' They manage to achieve great success with an open, flamboyant style which has resulted in the side becoming known as a favourite of the neutral supporters."

1. MLFA PREM: 87.5%
2. SFA PREM: 64.7%
3. EFA PREM: 60.0%
4. XEFA PREM: 40.0%
5. CFA PREM: 30.0%

This study seems to indicate that the MLFA is the most beautiful, open and flamboyant of the top-flight leagues, making it not only an international television success but also gaining the praise of the football purists who like to see the game played in an open and technical manner. The SFA Premiership and the EFA Premiership both strive towards this level of technical proficiency, with well over half of the teams in these leagues portraying the 'beautiful game'. The XEFA Premiership can't quite make the same claim, as only 8 of the 20 teams are described as such, while the CFA is clearly the least beautiful of all the leagues, although it is not without its own redeeming qualities.


GOALS PER GAME:
1. SFA PREM: 695 in 455 = 1.53 goal per game
2. EFA PREM: 901 in 627 = 1.44gpg
3. CFA PREM: 918 in 672 = 1.37 gpg
4. XEFA PREM: 1662 in 1230 = 1.35 gpg
5. MLFA PREM: 830 in 668 = 1.29 gpg

In spite of it's open football, the MLFA is also the lowest scoring of the top-flight leagues in Clough. the CFA and XEFA achieved a healthy goals per game ratio, which is interesting mainly because these two leagues ranked as the 'least beautiful' of the five leagues studied. Perhaps their sides, while not necessarily playing beautiful passing games, may in fact play a more direct attacking style of football. The EFA can make it through 1.44 goals per game, but the king of excitement in Clough is the SFA Premiersip, with on average over one and a half goals in every game played.


FOULS PER GAME
1. XEFA PREM: 13819 in 11.23 fpg
2. SFA PREM: 5203 in 455 = 11.44 fpg
3. CFA PREM: 8173 in 672 = 12.16 fpg
4. MLFA PREM: 8120 in 12.2 fpg
5. EFA PREM: 8352 in 627 = 13.32 fpg

The cleanest of the leagues is the XEFA, only committing just over 11 fouls on average per game. The SFA isn't far behind, with slighlty under 11 and a half fouls committed per game, while the CFA and MLFA are almost joined on an average of 12.2 fouls per game. By far and away the dirtiest of all the top-flights in Clough however is the EFA, averaging over a foul per game more than any other Premiership in the Game World. Certainly this is something for EFA teams to improve upon, and may be a contributing factor in their inability to make the top rankings of the goals per game or the beautiful football standings.


Financial State
Very Rich = 5pts
Rich = 4pts
Secure = 3 pts
OK (in credit) = 2pts
OK (in debt) = 1pt

1. CFA PREM: 43/100 = 43%
2. MLFA PREM: 34/80 = 42.5%
3. XEFA PREM: 41/100 = 41%
4. EFA PREM: 39/100 = 39%
5. SFA PREM: 32/85 = 37.6%

Using a percentile ranking system, each of the top divisions in Clough have had their sides assessed according to the above tables, and that has led to the CFA being revealed as having the richest top-flight of the whole game world. Only slightly behind them lies the MLFA Premiership, with the XEFA slightly behind that. The EFA manages a percentile score of 39%, well behind the leading pack, while the SFA has by far the poorest Premiership in the whole of Clough. This poverty does not necessarily have an adverse effect on their goalscoring, but might have a negative long-term effect on the SFA's development.