State of the Economy: Season 7

UFFA representative Rob Cooper presented his "State of the Economy" report earlier today, this first report for 2 seasons, and it makes good reading for UFFA members, inflation has gone from a record low of -81% to a more manageable +18%.

The amount of money in the economy has almost doubled from £285m to £438m, seeing the average team's bank balance increase from a little under £600k to just under £1m. Finally, the PPI has risen 30% from two seasons ago's figure of £2.2m.

	Season 7	Season 5
Inflation (28 days)	18.09%	-81.86%
Player Price Index	£3,012,740	£2,186,780
Size of Economy	£438,347,441	£285,539,93
Average Balance	£978,454	£578,016

- Source

Player Progression Conference

UFFA representative Rob Cooper took some time out to discuss youth development with managers yesterday, offering many interesting insights and tips to make the most of your players' potential. The Cloughite has gathered the highlights of that discussion in an article that makes cruicial reading for any manager working with young players.

On the system of youth development/progression:

So, to start, how things work

As you guys all know players progress over time. But there is a little confusion about exactly what impacts their progression so I wanted to post a quick list of the main factors below :

• Player's Age
• Player's Potential
• How much football they are getting
• The standard of football they are playing
• Average Rating
• Manager's skills
• Player's Ambition
• Player's Professionalism
• Player's Work Rate
• Whether the player is injured
• The player's morale

Now, obviously each of those factors are not equal, some have a bigger effect than others, but generally if you have a professional, hard working young player who is playing regularly, is playing well, and is happy at the club, then they should progress pretty much optimally.

It is worth pointing out here that average rating is more important than the standard of football they are playing - so it is better if they are getting a 7.5 average for the youth team than a 6.0 for the senior team, though of course, a 7.5 for the senior team is better than the equivalent for the youth team! Also, the average rating expectations are different according to age, so a 15 year old player with a 7.0 average will progress better than an 18 year old with the same average.

Another important point is that as many have said, if a player lacks the ambition and professionalism to train well consistently they will likely never reach their potential no matter how well taken care of they are by their manager.

- Rob Cooper

On why you shouldn't worry too much about a small downward change in a player's attributes:

One other thing I meant to mention is that even though the attributes are displayed in the 1-20 range on the screen they are actually stored in the 1-10,000 range behind the scenes to give extra accuracy during progression. Because they are rounded down to be displayed a small change behind the scenes can manifest itself as a fairly big change on the screen.

For example a player with 19 for finishing on the screen may have 9,050 behind the scenes. If they then drop to 8,950 during processing this is only a drop of 1 or 2% however on the screen it is the difference between 18 and 19 and so a red arrow is displayed and it looks like a drop of 5%. Rest assured though that for all processing the 'real' figure is used.

- Rob Cooper

On reaching potential early:

Some players simply start out with an ability that is closer to their potential - so players can burst onto the scene as a first-team quality player let's say, but then not take the step to the next level. But ... these will typically be players who have performed very well early in their career and so progressed quickly.

Players who haven't performed as well will progress more slowly but still have a good chance of reaching their potential eventually - it really depends how much more slowly they progress. The older a player gets the less likely he is to reach his potential, so if a player still has a long way to go by the time he is 22/23 let's say, then it is unlikely he will make it!

- Rob Cooper

On coaching reports:

Coaching reports are triggered if the player has progressed well over the last 3 months (game time) in terms of CA [Current Ability] improvements. For a new signing this might be confusing because the arrows you see are based only on while he has been at the club whereas the total improvement takes into account his progression before he joined as well.

- Rob Cooper

On future changes to youth development:

Ok, so finally, I guess since you are all using this system it makes sense for me to outline how I plan to improve it. The disclaimer here is that this is all planned for the time being and so is inherently a little sketchy and of course may or may not turn out to be feasible and so may or may not turn out to be done. It will all be in the patch notes though as and when it is implemented! So, the plan right now is to make the following changes...

• Prevent negative attribute changes for newly generated youngsters until they have been on the free agent list for at last a certain amount of time, perhaps 3 game months i.e. a week real time
• Improve progression arrows to avoid the dreaded red arrows when only minor attribute changes have been experienced - perhaps by having diagonal arrows for minor changes (such as the ones used on the morale and feedback graphics.)
• Somehow tie player average rating into team average rating so that a player who is the best player in a rubbish team still progresses well - they shouldn't progress as well as the best player in a good team of course but it should at least make a difference
• Tie player average for progression into the average rating for their position, rather than just the average rating for all players, this should iron out any potential problems caused by the ME giving lower average ratings for GKs perhaps than other positions which could have a progression knock-on.

What does everyone think? I am hopeful that these changes could make the system a lot better but of course comments and feedback are always welcome as there may well be things I haven't thought about!

- Rob Cooper

State of the Economy: Season 5

UFFA representative Rob Cooper presented his "State of the Economy" report earlier today, this was the first report of it's kind to go into such depth about the state of the economy so we have little to compare the figures with.

However, we do know that the UFFA reported deflation at 58% as of mid-February, today's numbers show that this figure has risen over 20% in the 2-3 weeks since.

Inflation (28 days)	-81.86%
Player Price Index	£2,186,780
Size of Economy	£285,539,936
Average Balance	£578,016

- Source (The figures above are from March 9^th )

Player Burdon Lifted

Over the past few days young players across the world have come under increased media scrutiny leading to many becoming unhappy at their club's failure to protect them from the media spotlight as they feel the burdon of the expectation surrounding them. UFFA representative Rob Cooper anounced he would be working with the Players' Union to investigate the cause of the recent spate of player unhappiness (source):

The issue is caused by a youngster not being able to handle the pressure of playing in a side which is performing well. Over time the player will adjust and be able to cope better but the only short-term solution is to give them a less important role in the team. This issue does seem to be happening a lot more in the latest release though which is something I am looking into at the moment.

Following this investigation, Players Union representatives have today agreed a deal with the media at large that will see that spotlight reduced drastically, however they stress that this is not a blanket ban and that there will still be some players that this agreement will not be able to protect, in these cases it is the players' manager that must act to protect the player.

The Player's Union has issued these guidelines to assist managers in handling players feeling burdoned by the expectation surrounding them, or feeling the weight of recent media attention (source):

• It is triggered by a low rep player who is also either a very young player, or a young player who can’t handle pressure very well playing an important role in a team that is overachieving.
  
• It is resolved either by the player becoming more famous through playing well for the side, or by the team ceasing to overperform, or by the player being dropped for a while so they are no longer playing such an important role
• If it isn’t resolved then the player’s morale will suffer so they won’t play as well in matches, won’t train as well, and potentially may even refuse to extend their contract.

Deflation at Record High

Rob Cooper announced today the findings of the UFFA's economic review concluding that, as of mid-February, the Player Price Index is facing deflation of 58%.


Transfer Desirability
All players in the game world have a ‘transfer desirability.’ This is a score between 1 and 10 which determines how ‘good’ the player is, based on their ability, perceived potential and their world reputation. Whenever a player is transferred their transfer desirability at the time is stored along with all the other details which include transfer fee, date and the acquisition fee of the player at the time of the transfer.


Market Value
To calculate Market Value (MV) for players we get the details of all the transfers (private deals, auctions and exchanges) that have taken place in the last year (28 days, real time). We then give each of these transfers a weighting based on how recent they are, so more recent transfers will be given higher weighting than older ones. Once we have the list we remove the top and bottom 5% (in terms of fee) to avoid any erroneous transfers upsetting MV. This leaves us with a weighted list of all the transfers that have taken place in the last year.

We are then able to divide up the transfers according to the aforementioned transfer desirability score so we can get at just the transfers amongst players with the same transfer desirability as the player we are calculating MV for. Because we store both the AF of the player and the fee when each player is sold we can calculate the difference, on average, between AF and transfer fee for all transfers that match this player’s transfer desirability. From this we can calculate a basic MV for the player in question e.g. if the average 8/10 player is being sold for 2x his AF then we can simply double this player’s AF to get his MV.


Age and Position
That is nice to know, but we aren’t done yet. In order to get more reliable MV information we go back to our weighted transfers and divide them up by age and by the best position of the player. Once we know what the typical difference is between AF and transfer fee for a player of his transfer desirability rating, age and best position we have a final inflation score for this type of player. We then take this and multiple the AF by this score to come up with MV.


The Player Price Index
Ok, and relax! We now know pretty much how MV is calculated and so, we are now ready to look into how we calculate player value inflation. As discussed above we calculate inflation values based on transfer desirability, age and best position – there are of course only so many combinations of these and every player must fit into one of these combinations. Using this we create a ‘Player Price Index’ which is similar to the Retail Price Index used by the government in the UK to measure inflation.

The way we construct this price index is to come up with an average FML team and give each of the aforementioned combinations of transfer desirability, age, and position a weighting based on how likely a player of that type is to appear in the squad. Once we have this we simply look at the inflation value for each type of player, multiply it by the weighting and add all the scores together. This will give us the current cost, in the market, to buy an ‘average’ FML team. By comparing the Player Price Index (PPI) at different points over time we are able to calculate inflation or deflation in player prices over that period. Typically, the period we look at is 28 days, which corresponds to a year in game time and so gives us an annual inflation rate.