2025-03-27, 12:34 PM - Word count:
(This post was last modified: 2025-03-27, 12:37 PM by Draz0000.)
Question:
What is the relative importance academy players consider the various attributes. What, if any, players stick to the mold and who are outliers.
Methodology.
The data used was from the MD12 file, with all outfield players that were currently considered active at the time used for the analysis. (67 total)
To account for the changing costs of attributes, as well as the differeing ammounts of TPE different players have, all attributes were first converted into the TPE cost to achieve that level, then it was calculateded what percent of that player's invested TPE was invested into that specific skill.
While players of different positions will obviously prefer different attributes than other position, the existence of the rookie redistribution allowing one to change their position but only swap 100 tpe means that analyzing the entire population at once worthwhile.
Results.
Pace and Acceleration were by far the most invested in attributes. Accounting for 9.79% and 8.20% of the average player's invested TPE these two skills are massive standouts. Given the dominance of speed and the generally useful nature of these two attributes across all roles in nearly any situation, one should not be surprised by this result.
The next grouping of skills is Anticipation, Agility, Passing, and Decisions. They account for 5.06%, 4.92%, 4.85% and 4.79% of invested TPE.
Anticipation, Agility, and Decisions seem similar to Pace and Acceleration, but to a lesser extent. Skills that across many positions will get used constantly by players. You may only get a handful of shots or crosses in any given game, but how many decisions do you have to make, how many choices of where to stand, how many quick twists or turns? It's uncountable. Passing is also something that pretty much every team in modern football will do a decent amount of across the entire team. It is difficult to find success in today's game if all one does is hoof balls into the box and hope your strikers and acquire the ball and send it directly into the net.
Balance, Strength, Technique, Dribbling, Composure make the next batch at 4.25%, 4.07%, 4.07% 3.94% and 3.77%.
These attributes, while a bit more specialized are still all invested in by a minimum of 54 of the 67 considered players. Balance and Strength are interesting. While balance tends to be favored by attackers and Strength by Defenders - both desirable enough to warrant the vast majority to put a bit of points into both. A few players go above and beyond this. Damian Desoto with an 18 in strength, and Billy Elliott with his 20 balance (44.57% of his invested tpe in balance alone!) are having a massive effect on this attribute.
Taclking and Finishing. 3.48% and 3.44%
Few attackers take Tackling, and few defenders finishing. Both are important enough among relevant players that they reach 12th and 13th most invested in.
The rest of the data will be available in the linked spreadsheet, but for now I will focus on a few standouts.
Jumping reach comes in as 18th most invested in. It is the first attribute that less than half of players invested any points at all into and among those that did, there are 5 players that decided to invest a significant ammount more than the others.
The bottom 5 skills are Free Kick, Leadership, Corners, Penalty Taking, and Long throw, with only 8, 13, 6, 9, and 2 players investing any points at all, and only in small quantities. across the 5 skills the largest percentage of one's TPE invested for any is 5.16% a feat accomplished 3 times by the striker Ben Kaufmann in Free Kick, Leadership, and Penalty Taking.
Calculating how many standard deviations away from average for each attribute on a player, then summing those standard deviations can give us a measure of how typical one's TPE investment is. Doing this for all players results in a fairly smooth distribution between 15.35 and 36.14 with no major jumps or grouping. The only player outside of this is the Left Defender Stig Stampe at 11.87. By far the closet player to the theoretical average player.
Takeda Takahaski with his heavy investment in Composure, Positioning and Teamwork ends up being the furthest from average, narrowly beating out the aforementioned strongman Damian DeSoto.
Spreadhseet of data. https://workupload.com/file/T8F3uYcAcHY
What is the relative importance academy players consider the various attributes. What, if any, players stick to the mold and who are outliers.
Methodology.
The data used was from the MD12 file, with all outfield players that were currently considered active at the time used for the analysis. (67 total)
To account for the changing costs of attributes, as well as the differeing ammounts of TPE different players have, all attributes were first converted into the TPE cost to achieve that level, then it was calculateded what percent of that player's invested TPE was invested into that specific skill.
While players of different positions will obviously prefer different attributes than other position, the existence of the rookie redistribution allowing one to change their position but only swap 100 tpe means that analyzing the entire population at once worthwhile.
Results.
Pace and Acceleration were by far the most invested in attributes. Accounting for 9.79% and 8.20% of the average player's invested TPE these two skills are massive standouts. Given the dominance of speed and the generally useful nature of these two attributes across all roles in nearly any situation, one should not be surprised by this result.
The next grouping of skills is Anticipation, Agility, Passing, and Decisions. They account for 5.06%, 4.92%, 4.85% and 4.79% of invested TPE.
Anticipation, Agility, and Decisions seem similar to Pace and Acceleration, but to a lesser extent. Skills that across many positions will get used constantly by players. You may only get a handful of shots or crosses in any given game, but how many decisions do you have to make, how many choices of where to stand, how many quick twists or turns? It's uncountable. Passing is also something that pretty much every team in modern football will do a decent amount of across the entire team. It is difficult to find success in today's game if all one does is hoof balls into the box and hope your strikers and acquire the ball and send it directly into the net.
Balance, Strength, Technique, Dribbling, Composure make the next batch at 4.25%, 4.07%, 4.07% 3.94% and 3.77%.
These attributes, while a bit more specialized are still all invested in by a minimum of 54 of the 67 considered players. Balance and Strength are interesting. While balance tends to be favored by attackers and Strength by Defenders - both desirable enough to warrant the vast majority to put a bit of points into both. A few players go above and beyond this. Damian Desoto with an 18 in strength, and Billy Elliott with his 20 balance (44.57% of his invested tpe in balance alone!) are having a massive effect on this attribute.
Taclking and Finishing. 3.48% and 3.44%
Few attackers take Tackling, and few defenders finishing. Both are important enough among relevant players that they reach 12th and 13th most invested in.
The rest of the data will be available in the linked spreadsheet, but for now I will focus on a few standouts.
Jumping reach comes in as 18th most invested in. It is the first attribute that less than half of players invested any points at all into and among those that did, there are 5 players that decided to invest a significant ammount more than the others.
The bottom 5 skills are Free Kick, Leadership, Corners, Penalty Taking, and Long throw, with only 8, 13, 6, 9, and 2 players investing any points at all, and only in small quantities. across the 5 skills the largest percentage of one's TPE invested for any is 5.16% a feat accomplished 3 times by the striker Ben Kaufmann in Free Kick, Leadership, and Penalty Taking.
Calculating how many standard deviations away from average for each attribute on a player, then summing those standard deviations can give us a measure of how typical one's TPE investment is. Doing this for all players results in a fairly smooth distribution between 15.35 and 36.14 with no major jumps or grouping. The only player outside of this is the Left Defender Stig Stampe at 11.87. By far the closet player to the theoretical average player.
Takeda Takahaski with his heavy investment in Composure, Positioning and Teamwork ends up being the furthest from average, narrowly beating out the aforementioned strongman Damian DeSoto.
Spreadhseet of data. https://workupload.com/file/T8F3uYcAcHY
![[Image: 3euIliI.png]](https://i.imgur.com/3euIliI.png)
