The Secret Nature of Form

Diego MaradonaDuring week two of most seasons the conferences are spammed with posts complaining about low form. I sometimes glance through these posts only to discover what I already know – newbie or oldie – they all got the nature of form completely wrong.

I have seen national coaches; game masters; cup winners and alike describe that if a player is fielded during the week chances decree that form will improve come first training update. This, however, is a load of crock.

The rules are quite undemanding on the topic of form, but most managers seem to either ignore or misinterpret these rules. Let us explore some of the more important rules on form:

Every player has an attribute that shows his "current form" (the real figure at the moment) and another one that is hidden, called "background form", which shows where his form is heading.
Each week, during training, the current form figure (simply called form) of every player will change, moving towards the hidden background form figure.

… when chance decrees that a player's background form will change, there are several factors that influence what the new background form will be. The most important one is whether or not the player has played a match during the week.

Most managers know of these very simple rules and most do kind of understand them. However, in order to really understand the nature of form no rule is more important than:

After current form has been changed during training, there is a chance that background form is changed for each player.

In essence the latter states that current form is updated before background form. And that my friends is the secret of form.

When a players is fielded several updates are neccesary in order for form to improve. The fielding (or benching) of players only affects their background form, and as current form is updated prior to background form the fielding has no effect on current form come first training update. In effect you will have to wait until the second training update before chances decree an improvement in current form – and even so the rules describe how there is only a random chance of an update of background form come first training update and thus only a random chance of improved current form come second update.

Confused? Then ignore the randoms*** for now. Just delay the effects of fielding (or benching) a player by one week in the assessment of form behaviour. You will then start to see that form is not all that random. Either background form is updated or background is not updated. In any case the knowledge of changes in background form is postponed one week as they are not visible and do not effect the visible current form before the second update.

Despite now being an expert on form you are hardly to obtain much advantage over your rivals. However, you now know that surviving the seasonal break in seemingly high form is worthless as the damage of lesser match practice won't hit you before week two. You will not panic selling players in high form as you are entirely aware that benching players while fishing for higher prices will not impact form before you have the chance to re-list several times. National coaches will not make the obvious mistake of calling up players who did not play the previous week thinking the player can only improve due to match practice of the current week. And last but not least the spamming of the conferences during week two will hopefully be less unruly in coming seasons.

- RudeBwoy

***Adding randoms is very complex – perhaps too challenging to be understood in accuracy – but it's evident that either current form or background form in few cases can suffer even though a player is fielded during the week or previous week. Theories span from simple random value added/reduced for background form or complex over-/undershooting behaviours for current form.

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Published:
April 29, 2006 / 10:31 pm
Category:
Form
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