Even though I play Champ Manager myself it still amazes me how much we refer to it as an evaluation of players and player potential in real life. It is IMO at times incredibly accurate and as has been seen in the past, very good at spotting potentially world class players. Judging by the postings on other threads others among you share this view. So why is Bobby relying on his scouts. Save the club some money and by the game, it seems more reliable.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Answers

Perhaps they already do. Silvio Maric was down with a 20 for shooting 3 years back...

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

If it really is so accurate, wherebouts does the info come from? Presumably they are very good at getting up-to-date info and more importantly opinions from good sources. Do they disclose who they use?

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I used to enjoy messing around with one of the current version's forerunners a few years back - CM2 it might have been. All I wanted to do was field my version of the classic Keegan team every game and watch it terrify 90% of the opposition ... which funnily enough it never seemed to do, so I lost interest.

Thing is, in those days at least, a few days of fiddling around with a downloaded editor would show you that most of the stats for most of the players (other than the well-known ones) would come up as zero until an actual game was initialised, then they would be random. That is, the two Everton supporting brothers (Collyer?) had no idea what the right value was, and left it to a random setup for each new game.

I don't know if it's still the same. However, I suspect that some of the amazing foresight of CM might be the "horoscope effect" - you just see the really good fits and gloss over the bits that don't make sense, like Sylvio's 20 for shooting.

Still a good game if you have the time for it though.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

CM gets it's stats from all over the world. At the time of the game development the developers ask for reps from all over the world. I've actually been the Newcastle scout before along with a couple others where we basically send it the entire squad, with stats info etc etc etc.

I remember a while ago there was an interview with Strachan when he was at Cov. There was a copy of CM sitting on the PC in his office. About 6 months later he sigend Nii Lamptey. Basically he was an unknown in real life but was a GOD in CM. Makes you wonder...

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Stats in CM are actually very clever. For example if you have a 16yo lad playing for Gateshead he might have 20 for shooting. Take Shearer for example, he may also have a 20 for shooting. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are of equal ability.

There are a lot of hidden stats just as current ability, potential, reputation etc that determine how good the player is. Shearer's current ability may be something like 150 out of 200 whereas the 16 year old may only be 1 - but might have a potential of 200 which means that he SHOULD go on to be a great - depending on transfers, injuries etc.

I've been very impressed with the new CM stats system - it works so well - some players have random futures so who knows what they will become.

I've harped on a lot obout CM and I'm glad that the game is also recognised here. If I was a real life manager the FIRST thing I would do is play CM to scout for players etc. Bobby might know a lot of players, as might the scouts but there is noway that they could cover the 30000 odd players in CM's database

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

One of the Toons scouts is my insurance man

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

The basic stats syste sounds very much the same as when I was looking at it, TJC. So, how many of the 30000 on the database still have individual figures left to be filled in randomly each time a new game is initialised?

I first twigged it with CM2 when I had two games running simultaneously, and Warren Barton's stats were completely different on each. Waiting for the come-back on Wozza now...

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

depends on how many leagues you have running in the foreground. For example if you don't select the Icelandic league then only their main players (are there any?!?) will be in the game and the rest will either be left out or given random stats (random but still weirdly accurate). The new game has introduced hidden/masked stats where you have to actually scout the player in order to find out his strengths weaknesses etc and depending on how good the scout is, he will say whether he will be any good in the future - he's just able to view his hidden stats.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I still don't understand why CM is treated as if it has intelligence (in both senses of the word)of it's own. It's either got some good sources of information, or it's the horoscope effect as mentioned above. If a professional football manager such as Bobby Robson used it as an information source, or worse still for tactical training, I'd shoot myself out of despair.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

what you've got to remember with CM is it's the biggest selling PC game series ever. The new game smashed world records by selling over 100,000 copies in the first week. There has got to be a reason for this and I put it down the the superb database of players, including unbelievable realistic stats, potentials etc. The CM team have got 1000s of scouts based all of the world in far out countries that EPL teams just wouldn't scout.

I always remember buying a 15 year old Danny Murphy from Crewe in the 93/94 version of the game, after 10 years he was playing for England and eventually captained them. This is a 15 year old kid - it takes a lot of intelligence and work to research how good a player he will become. Of course it's all guess work but it's certainly educated guesses.

The 2 young lads from River in Argentina - Saviola and Aimar were both pretty much unheard of 4 years ago when they were 16. My CM scouts in the game found these 2 as excellent prospects and look at them now in real life.

The fun in CM, for me anyway, is scouting the far regions of the world for some 15 year old kid from Burkino Faso etc and seeing how he develops in the game, if he becomes good then I almost guarantee that he will become recognised in real life.

CM is a game and always will be, but if you take the front end of it and have a look at the database it would be useful to anyone involved in football. I'm sure teams have got a database (albeit a paper one!) of players they have looked at. I'm sure at least a few managers use the CM database as well.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I'm sorry to be so sceptical. I can see how a list of promising youngsters can be put together - not that difficult and fairly readily available. Of course some of those will actually become established players. Many of them won't though, for various reasons. You say you picked Danny Murphy, so he was presumably identified as a promising youngster at 15 (although he was 16-17 in the 93/94 season), which doesn't surprise me since Crewe is a good feeder club for youngsters with an excellent academy. In CM you've managed to train him up to be an England captain (if I understand correctly) ie well above his actual potential, I would say. So the example you give rather disproves the usefulness. What Newcastle youth players does the game have on the database as an example? It would also be interesting to see ALL the youth players the game had in it's version say 5 years ago, with their attributes, and then to compare how they've actually done. That would be a more realistic test, since there'll always be correlations between players that actually make it, and those that have 'virtually' made it from a list of promising players input to CM's database.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Hmmm - still leaves some questions unanswered doesn't it?

If there are thousands of scouts reporting what they think, how do you know that their scores are consistent? That is, if I give some bright kid a 19 for shooting, an 18 for passing and a 20 for heading, how do you know that I mean the same as the other thousands of scouts? Inter-observer variability (sorry to be techie) is larger with more subjective measurements anyway.

How do we know how valid the division of abilities into these categories is anyway? How repeatable are the assessments of any one scout? What is the predictive value of an assessment of a 16 year old anyway?

All in all, I suspect that for every Danny Murphy that came good in one game of CM, there will be several that looked just as good but have never been heard of since. I seem to remember that the old BBS used to carry regular posts from keen CM fans suggesting that so and so was the next hot prospect - be really interesting if we could go back to ALL of those posts and see how many actally made it.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Something doesn't quite gel with the Danny Murphy details, TJC. He only joined Crewe when he was 17, in 1994, per soccerbase. It would seem CM operates on a sort of time-lag, which would obviously explain how they appear to pre-empt some young players actually making it.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Sorry, TJC, it must seem like I'm having a go - it's nothing personal :-). But you mention Nii Lamptey above as being a God in CM. Doesn't this again prove the falibility of the database? If I remember, he came over from Ghana and was touted around a number of places, even being on loan to Villa (not far from Coventry) for a few months. Again per soccerbase he managed just 3 games for Coventry in 2 years. A typical example of a player with promise that didn't make it.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Ah, admit it, your all pissed because you never can win a game in CM! =)

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Got it in one, Sudden.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I remember playing an early version (must have been about 10 years ago) in the days when floppy disks really were floppy and about twice the size. Has it moved on since then? ;-)

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I have so far found one flaw on CM

Ian Harte has 20 for acceleration and pace in my game. It is 2005, but he isn't going to be fast ever if Solano can beat him for pace.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I actually never used Nii Lamptey as a player who was a promising youngster in CM and became a god in CM which mirrored his career in real life. I used him as an example of real life managers using the CM database (read earlier posts, can't be arsed to write it down again).

It's up to you if you believe whether CM is realistic or not. Believe me this is the main topic of discussion on the CM message boards and has been since the GAME came out. The point I'm trying to make is the accuracy and detail of the CM database. The CM scouts are people just like you and me, they may be biased they may not. Think about how hard it would be to analyse EVERY member of the NUFC squad with stats from over 30 categories. Possible but I guarantee if we all did it it would be very rare that we each picked similar stats for each player.

I can probably list 20 or 30 players who none (maybe some then but only a few) of you will have heard of 5-10 years ago who are now greats in real life. Fair enough, some of them were always going to be good - the Jenas', Pennant's and Chopra's are pretty obviously going to be great players in the future (hope so anyway).

The example with Murphy is a prime example, even if I did get the date of the game/age of him wrong. The fact of the matter is that he has become a great player in real life. In the game I played him in my prem league team from the age of 15/16/17, whatever he was. He only joined Liverpool 2 or 3 years ago - who knows how good he would have been if he'd been in an EPL team. I'm trying to make an example out of one case that is similar to others not just picking Murphy as my only success.

The thing is, say Bobby wanted to sign this unheard of Argentinian in the 2nd division in S America, what will he do? He'll send a scouting team over to watch the kid in a few games and based on what they see they will make decisions on his price, potential, ability, strengths and weaknesses. Why not look at the kid in the CM database and view the stats that the CM S American scout has compiled after maybe watching him week in week out for 10 seasons.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I bought Bassedas a few years ago (CM2 maybe?) and he was really crap. There have been a couple of times where I bought players who became superstars yet when I bought them in another game they were useless.

What has amazed me at times is when a player is bought by one team in CM and also in real life ie Brad Friedel to Liverpool a few years back.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

How, it's only a game! Sometimes it gets lucky, sometimes it gets it horribly wrong. The database is fantastic and could probably be of genuine use to most football clubs but it's only really 'accurate' at the beginning of the game. On the Nii Lamptey theme - what about Tonton Mkoko (sp)? Another CM genius who hasn't quite made the grade. Djibril Cisse, a French striker, is heaviy touted in the current game. Remember the name...as you may never hear it again. Anyway, I've just started the 2004/05 season. Last season I won the UEFA cup and was runner-up in the Prem, so I've signed Barry Ferguson to bolster my midfield alongside David Prutton! You'll be pleased to know that Wozza has retired, and Rob Lee is playing in Scotland somewhere.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

Rob normally ends up in the lower English divisions on mine.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

They sure did find Saviola and Aimar some years ago.

Someone said that players turn out good in some games and in other not. Thats because they give promising youngsters a -1 or -2 rating. - 1 means they have a good chance of getting pretty good, they can also get pretty crap and the chance they get superstars is very small. With the -2 rating they almost everytime become good players and have good chance of becoming superstars.

The older players get another rating, from 0-200. 0 is random and 200 makes sure the player developes into a superstar if other things go right.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

I remember reading last summer that something like 50% of the applicants for a third division team submitting their application on the basis of their skill at CM. They'd never managed a football team but felt that, just because they were good at the simulation, they'd be able to do it in real life.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

I bet all the applicants could do one hell of a job of providing the appointed manager with a list of young stars for the future who may be available on frees etc. One of CM weak points is the tactics and interaction with players mind so I doubt they would get the full managers job based on their CM ability alone :)

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

Strange, Bassedas always does well for me, 15 goals a season and more assists than anyone in the league (playing right wing)

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002