FM24 Age Curve: When Do Players Peak & Decline?

So what I am trying to achieve here to find a players peak performance through 4 areas. These areas are Duelling, Possession, Creation and Shooting. Each one has a series of metrics sitting behind it to assess players on their performance and then we compare the players of age creating a benchmark, or average.

Players who are above this benchmark and in this age range will be players I buy in game. This data will also tell me when to sell a player based on the benchmarking score in each area. This is what they call data driven decisions.

The data I am using is FM24 data using all the players from the Top 5 leagues who have played at least 500 minutes. I wanted to gauge how good the players in the Top 5 leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) first to compare with other leagues.

FM24 Age Curve: Duelling

So our first FM24 Age Curve is the duelling metric. This is an interesting metric as it is often looked down on, but teams who out duel their opposition tend to win over 50% of their games. That obviously does not mean just focus on duelling and hope the ball goes in the opponents net.

So here is a FM24 Age Curve for Duelling. Duelling assesses players on ground, and aerial duels as well as defensive movements like interceptions. What we can see here is the peak age for duelling is between 21 and 27 and then after 28 it declines gradually, while mid 30’s completely drops off. The outliers are the late teens and the sudden jump at 40, this is due to low sample sizes.

What this means from a recruitment perspective is that I need to buy the best players (players with higher averages than their age) at 21 and then look to move them on at 27. This is great because the general consensus is that 27 is peak, so we could be making some real money here to reinvest.

The great thing about this sector is that this basically highlights great defenders and defensive midfielders with a twist of target men too. Looking at this data you can see why counter press football can be so effective.

FM24 Age Curve: Possession

Now onto one of the most talked about sectors, the FM24 Age Curve for Possession. As this is one of the areas that teams strive for I think it may bring up some controversial points. Let’s take a look at what the curve offers us.

So let’s look at the life cycle of the FM24 Age Curve for Possession. There is a fairly sharp increase to 25 years old which indicates a rapid improvement in skills associated with possession football. This is no real surprise as we know that there is a strong for pre-peak players at 20-24.

The peak is 25 to 32 years old. What this means is that to play effective pressing and possession your window is players who are 25-27 are the perfect match. On a separate note is what we see are older players are better with the ball than younger players. This gives older teams the encouragement to play possession football.

After 32 years old the possession ability drops off and and after 35 it drops significantly. This is interesting, as a lot of people are under the impression that 30 is the drop off point.

FM24 Age Curve: Creation

Now this is an interesting Age Curve, the creation curve! This is based on a number of metrics that are involved in creating goals. If you create more chances than your opposition you have 70% chance of winning the game.

So same as last time, let’s look at the life cycle of this Age Curve for Creation. As we can see the line starts up high in players under 20. This is impressive and indicates that young players have a great career ahead if they can create goals. What I mean by that, is we can buy them at 20 and keep them for 9/10 years before we let them go. This is a great investment for any club.

The peak age looks to be 20-25 judging by the line, so anytime after 25 a good bid will have to be accepted. Chance creation actually runs alongside Duelling it would appear in terms of ages.

After 30 the score declines and then 35 it starts to rapidly decline. There are teams which would be happy with that to get by on and replace.

FM24 Age Curve: Shooting

So here we are, the FM24 Age Curve for Shooting. Forwards come in many different guises so this is not as straight forward as I thought.

Let’s look at the line of best fit in a life cycle. To my surprise forwards that are under 20 are the best for shooting in volume and quality. The peak age is 20-23 so the strategy would be to get them at 19/20 if they are over their benchmark and use them. Once they hit 23 it’s time to push them towards the door and at 25 they need to be gone.

After 25 there is a slight decline, and after 35 the decline is much more rapid. This again highlights the dangers of having an old squad.

Conclusion

So this research has been interesting to me, I have actually learnt a few things about the players on FM24. The age curve can be a useful tool if used in the right way, giving a good indicator of how good at player is today.

To summarise what we have found, buy your possession players over 25-32, your duelling players around 21-27, your chance creator should be 20-25 and your players that are shooting 20-23.

There you have it! A great recruitment system for everyone to enjoy.

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