Is Consistency Even Important?
Looking into an age old Football Manager question
Is Consistency Even Important?
Does consistency even matter?
I came across this Reddit post the other day:
There was also this post on FM Arena:
But are these tests valid?
I found two well designed tests that are more conclusive than these one-off posts.
The first came from a Reddit post 2 years ago that few people paid attention to:
Note that increasing consistency but keeping everything else the same didn’t make much of a difference in the long run.
Here’s the final table that the original poster attached:
The second findings come from FM Arena. The FM Arena team tested a drop in consistency in both FM22 and FM23.
Here’s the baseline in FM22 - this is what a completely average team did after over 900 matches:
And here’s what happened after they dropped consistency by 4 points across the board:
There is a difference, but it’s not a huge one. Compare that to what happened when they dropped either Pace or Acceleration across the board:
Here’s the same test done in FM23. The number of matches increased, which likely made the test more accurate: Football Manager has a very strong random number generator that will mess with low sample size tests.
So what can we learn from this?
Consistency matters a little bit, but not as much as you think.
Pace and acceleration matter a heck of a lot.
If you’re going to buy an inconsistent player, make sure he’s fast.
Finally - we need to put this report to bed:
This is an old post from FMM Vibe that has made the rounds over the past 13 years.
It’s not based in reality at all. It does not describe how the match engine works. It’s simply not accurate.
Inconsistent players will play below their current ability from time to time. We don’t know how far below their ability they’ll play, but we know that it will be more frequent for players with very low consistency ratings.
Now — if the player has an extremely high current ability, you might not notice the drop. However, most inconsistent players will be marginal, and you’ll be able to tell the difference right away.
Players do gain consistency over time, though those gains really only start after age 22 or so. It’s also slow. Mentoring will not help with consistency.
My advice is to simply stay away from inconsistent players.