Helloooooo and welcome back to another season of your favourite Footy blog/content/entertainment/journey (whatever you want to call it)! In this season, I’ll be surprising you each and every episode with some random topic that I believe will be of great benefit towards your Soccermanager experience.
So, you’ve played a lot of different matches within your SMW career, but have you ever tried to understand what these actually mean?
You see, these numbers aren’t just a representation of how your player has performed within a specific match, but also an indication of how they are going to perform in the future, how much impact they have on your X1, and if you need to switch things up or maintain the current role and responsibility that you’ve given to each player. Before we can actually identify the story each rating represents, we have to first identify what each number explains in terms of the performance from various players within your squad.
Let’s dive into them:
1-3
You’ll rarely see a ‘1’ or ‘2’ (unless you play someone terribly out of position), but a ‘3’ means that the player is not comfortable within that position or it’s a youngster who is not quite yet ready for the first team
4-5
Similar to the above, this player has had a complete stinker, not impacting the match at all which could’ve been a lot of different factors such as playing a more dominant opponent, having a bad day at the office or (in the case of a GK) having a bad game or not really having much to do
6
This is arguably the least understood rating, as a lot of people see their world class or best player on the pitch having this rating and start to panic. What you’ll realize is that this rating is very common especially against a rival or another managed club. What it represents is either a tight or challenging matchup against their counterpart (so, a D(C) vs a F(C) or a M(C) vs another M(C) for example). There are other instances where a player (let’s say Mo Salah) would obtain this rating even against a lesser opposition which is a very clear indication that he may not be quite suited for the role and position that you’ve decided to play him in.
7
This rating is another one that is misunderstood, but tends to be the median performance that you should expect from each payer. If you watch real life Soccer, you will hear a lot of commentators or pundits saying that a specific player has performed in a “professional manner” which means that he has given a solid ‘7’ out of 10 performance. He hasn’t done anything too spectacular, but he’s performed the job that was given to him. There are other instances where your world class players (94+) performed with a ‘7’ which indicates a very average performance from them, and you could also see a ‘7’ which is an indication that you’ve out performed your opposition so much that there was not a lot for that specific player to do.
8
Here we’re heading into the the top class levels of performance. Anything 8+ can be considered above averge which illustrates that you have a potential match, league, or cup winner at your disposal. The higher the rating of your player( 92, 94, 96 for example), the more you can expect them to perform at this level. Players who socre or assist would also get a boost within their match rating, and you could also expect that a top GK performance would showcase an ‘8’, but I personally am not a fan of high performances from a GK since it indicates that your team defended poorly.
9
You can consider a 9/10 to be a slightly better performance compared to an 8, but there really isn’t that big of a difference between the two…
10
The cream of the crop! This is the rating that should actually get you extremely excited since this is a flawless performance from one of your players who simply was unplayable. You’ll often see these performances against unmanaged clubs, but if you’re able to get this performance against one of your main opps, you’ve hit the pinnacle and should not consider switching up your tactics, no matter what.
With this knowledge, you can identify your next strategy without having to worry too much about if your tactics are actually working or not.
A QUICK NOTE ON M.O.T.M
The thing about SMW is that the Man of the Match award is kinda rigged…. Most of the time, the higest rated player will tend to get a M.O.T.M award (even if he didn’t do anything significant), or it would be given to a player who performed well from minute 75- 90, but don’t take the M.O.T.M award too seriously unless it’s extremely obvious, like if a player has scored a hattrick or if a GK has had a blinder.
Now, I would normally tell you what’s coming up next, but that wouldn’t be random, would it? 😉
The Soccermanager Experience 