The Background
If you are reading this, hopefully you’ve already read my two recent articles, Additional statistics in Football Manager? and Player Search Tool – Moneyball, data recruitment etc.
If not, please take a look. They will give you a background into my thoughts and feelings around statistical analysis in football, introduce some new metrics I’ve thought up which could be useful when playing Football Manager, and also provide a free downloadable Excel tool to contrast and compare player performances through a new lens.
What’s this all about then?
This post is to give you free downloadable access and a guide to this exciting new tool instead!
This new tool is an Excel-based Player Comparison Visualiser and it came around as a result of my amigo A FM Old Timer getting in touch with me after I posted the previous tool.
After some back and forth, some Excel-wizardry and some visual branding and layout, the above is the final result.
Basically, you can export the results of a Player Search in Football Manager 2022, import them into the Excel, and then use two drop-down menus (left and right) on the interface, to visually compare the performance metrics of any two players in the results.
The download
You will need two things. The Player Search custom view for FM22 and the Excel spreadsheet with the tool in it. Both are bundled and available as a free download here. Just download from Mediafire using the link below and unzip the folder, and you are ready to go.
Drop the custom view (FM Stag Old Timer – Visualiser.fmf) into your views folder, which will be somewhere like Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2022/views. Then in-game, go to Scouting > Players > Player Search > Custom > Import View, like below, and select the Player Search view you’ve just downloaded.
Then save the downloaded Excel sheet (FM Stag Old Timer – Player Comparison Visualiser.xlsx) wherever you fancy, then open it up and it will look something like the below, depending on your monitor size and resolution. You might need to scroll left and right to see all the columns if you are using a smaller screen or don’t have binoculars to hand, and that’s ok. (Yes, I’ve used this joke before.)
That’s you set!
Time to tab over to FM22, run a Player Search and get comparing!
The Player Search
When using data in FM, it’s crucial that you only consider players who are playing in leagues which are loaded in full detail in your save. This is because there is a known discrepancy between the data output from leagues loaded in full detail in FM22 versus those which are not.
It makes sense, only fully-loaded playable leagues have all the in-depth detail. Data can only be truly useful if it is consistent.
Therefore, when wishing to utilise data-driven recruitment, always filter your results to only show players from teams in leagues which are loaded in full detail, i.e. those appearing in Add/Remove Leagues which are listed as ‘Playable,’ as per below. To find this, click the ‘FM’ in the top right of your screen.
In this save, I am managing in the Eredivisie and have just reached the end of a season, so a promising search to run would simply be all the strikers in the Eredivisie who have played 10+ games, since I am interested in buying a new number nine.
I move over to Player Search, make sure the custom view is selected, and run the search.
With the results, I’ve ensured that they only include players who might be interested (Interested in Transfer – ticked) and sorted the results by goals scored. You can do whatever is relevant to your search of choice.
The export and Excel bit
Now we are ready to export the data from our results and import them into the Player Comparison Visualiser.
Export from FM
Next, click to select the very top result, then press Ctrl + A then Ctrl + P (or the Mac equivalent). It’s crucial not to scroll or click anywhere else at this point. Just click the top result, then Ctrl + A then Ctrl + P. Your screen should look like this…
Now click ‘Ok’ and save the ‘web page’ wherever makes the most sense for you. I’ve got a folder called ‘exports’ in my documents that I use just for that. Call the file something like “scouting striking targets” or something memorable. It will save as a .html file that will merely open in your internet browser if you double click on it rather than doing the next step.
Open in Excel
Next, open up Excel and go to File > Open and open the html file you just exported from FM.
When you open it, it will look something like this…
Next select all of the columns from cell C2 all the way along including the Wage column and down to the bottom of your list of players. Right click and Copy.
Paste into the Player Comparison Visualiser tool
Next, separately but simultaneously have another instance of Excel opened with the Player Comparison Visualiser from the earlier download open and on screen. Right click on cell B3 on the ‘Player List’ tab and then select the paste option with the ‘123’ symbol. This is crucial, as it will be pasting only the values from the other sheet, not the formatting and font sizes etc. It has to paste the values only, which is the ‘123’ icon here.
Your screen should now look something like this…
Fix the formatting
You will notice that there are a lot of dashes – where there should be zeroes (0), and that’s what’s making all the formulas on the right serve up errors like #VALUE!.
Therefore, you need to select the area with the darker blue background (rows D to Y and down to the bottom of your list of players) then click Find & Select and replace any dashes – with a zero (0) using the Replace All button. The screenshot below explains this part.
Next, to ensure the value calculations work properly, highlight the entire contents of column Z, ‘Salary p/w’ and use Find & Select > Replace All and replace ‘ p/w’ with a blank space only.
After you hit Replace All, you’ll notice that all the money-related columns with a green background on the right hand side now work properly. This works by default if the salary values you are pasting in are in £ GBP. If you are importing a column of salary values in another currency like Euros or Dollars, do the same Replace All again, but replace the € or $ sign with a blank space and make sure that the Accounting preference at the top is in the correct currency for you.
Tidy up
The next thing to do is select the first empty row below your search results, click on the number (in this example it’s from line 31 downwards, then click Ctrl + Shift + down arrow to select all of the unused rows all the way down to the end of the sheet. Then right click and Delete those rows. If your search results included the maximum of 150 players or more, you won’t need to do this step.
Fix the final errors
The final step is to select any of the cells in the green columns which have an error in them like #DIV/0! and change the value in that cell to zero (0).
You could click on each cell with an error individually and type a 0 over the cell error if you wanted to, but the quickest way is to drag and select all of the green columns from the top of the sheet to the bottom, then use Find & Select > Go To Special > Formulas – Errors and click Ok. Then if you hit 0 then Ctrl + Return on your keyboard, Excel will automatically change all the errors in the selected cells to zeroes at once, saving you the hassle.
Job done!
The Visualiser
Now for the exciting bit. Click over to the ‘Visualiser’ tab, select any two players from the pink box drop-downs, and the tool is working! Compare two player’s per 90 performance statistics side by side, complete with radar charts, percentiles and cost comparisons.
Conclusion
Now that you have the tool and this guide, please have a play around comparing potential transfer targets and let me know on Twitter all the interesting ways you are using it!
A FM Old Timer has also written an accompanying article, giving an example of exactly how he used the Player Comparison Visualiser tool for his Southampton save. Please give it a read here!
Thanks for reading.
FM Stag