Recruitment with Man Utd results

The aim of this project was to assess new and different recruitment models in football manager. We have used Man Utd as they have plenty of resources and are underperforming in the league in real life so it would be easy to improve overall with a successful recruitment model.

The way it worked was we played out a the first season to gain some game data. I then turned that save game into five other game files. Each save game would follow a strict recruitment model and we assess the results off the back of these save games.

Each save game had a two part blog, one for documenting half way through the season and the other at the end of the season. I will link these blogs in if you wish to read them for yourself, they make for interesting observations.

Read on to see how the recruitment models fared.

Man Utd results

So straight away you can see that there was a clear difference between the highest performing recruitment model and the worst performing. First of all we won the league with Man Utd in the second season with current ability, which is impressive in itself. I will go through each model and explain how they work and what resulted from them.

Recruitment	Pos	GP	W	D	L	For	Ag	GD	Pts
Current Ability	1st	38	28	5	5	93	28	65	89
Win Rate	2nd	38	24	5	9	89	41	48	77
Potential Ability	3rd	38	23	8	7	77	36	41	77
Goals and Clean Sheets	4th	38	20	11	7	79	44	35	71
Stretch Target AVG	6th	38	20	8	10	68	42	26	68

Current Ability

This is the most basic and straight forward recruitment model as it is the one which is built in the game that we have been using forever. The art of this recruitment model is to have the best staff and scouts in assessing current ability. Ass well as that it is easy to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a team by looking at the star rating.

As you can see, in this isolated season it worked great guns and returned the premier league back to Man Utd. What I saw with this strategy is that the number of players we could buy was very limited, according to our scouts.

WIN RATE

So if you want to win titles then you want winners right? The recruitment method was based around recruiting players who had a certain win rate in the top five leagues. The benchmark was set by the team who had previously won the league, how many wins they had from games.

We would then go on to look at the squad and see which players were letting that benchmark down and list or loan them. We would then go out to market on the player search and using a customised tab find players who had the recommended win rate. After that it is pretty straight forward, replace the players you are selling or loaning.

Potential ability

Again another basic recruitment method, but I wanted to compare the current and potential stars, to see if it makes a difference. It was a lot of fun and we build a great team, or a great future team anyway. The key to making this work is a little more involved than the current ability.

We would nee to look at coaches that were good at judging player potential and working with youngsters. The scouts would need to be good at judging potential ability. We would then need to look at developing the club in the youth facilities and coaching. It then becomes a project of playing them enough and setting up good mentor groups.

What was happening with this style was inconsistency. We played so well, but it’s potential you are buying, it’s cheaper than current superstars. The problem is that you must nature it, develop the ability.

Goals and Clean Sheets

Goals and clean sheets is a straight forward theory. To be successful you must win cups and games, to win you must score goals and concede as few as possible. We changed the formula, strikers still were required to score goals, the midfielders would be based on team goals scored. At the other end, defenders would be based on team goals conceded and the keepers would be based on clean sheets.

This gave us plenty of options in the top five leagues and worked with any budget. It is just a simple exercise of ranking each player by the metric in their position and compare it to the transfer market. What happened here is that there was a small amount of change and we recruited for strengths.

stretch target average rating

This recruitment method was literally to test the average rating metric. It took me a while to put it together, but I decided on cutting the bottom 40% of the team based on average rating metric. We would then replace them anyone who had above the benchmark of the bottom 40%.

This caused a lot of change in the squad and upset a fair few players. The idea is to push standards in the team, so that they better in their performances. In hindsight, I would probably favour the 80/20 rule or the silicone valley shuffle of binning the bottom 10% and replacing them.

Stretch targeting is great, but at those numbers we are trying to get the standards up rapidly. This in turn could cause a rift in the team, as well as not being able to replace players due to budgets. This project ended up running like a Moneyball scheme, which is great in getting us to a certain level and budget, but not winning.

Conclusion

After running these season with Man Utd, it is amazing to see how different they end up. I am interested to see where they end up after season three, after the strategy has engulfed the club. There are some very promising signs so far.

The best strategy is buying current high ability players who hit the ground running. They do not need a huge set, it doesn’t require time to build a strategy. It is the most expensive model, so would mean it is not suitable for every team. Man Utd are capable of doing this. It depends on the type of club that you are managing.

If you have the time, incorporating any of the other strategies in the clubs will provoke reward, it’s just about the preparation and set up. The main thing is to use a strategy and stick with it, assess it and improve it. At the end of season a consultant will look at the problems the club has. There will then be a meeting regarding a number of solutions using logical structured arguments. Off the back of that, there will be a working hypotheses of how to improve in the future using facts.

Even if you do not use these methods in football manger, they will be useful in managing a sales team in real life. I am in the processing doing other recruitment styles like criteria/elimination recruitment and also packing. I will be doing this series again with a weaker team in the premier league, as it has been too easy with Man Utd.

Please let me know what you think about blog through comments and likes, they are much appreciated.