Bowser

Introduction

As I have been unable to find anything concrete on how manager reputation increases in this forum, I have decided to dedicate this thread to the underlying mechanics of manager reputation. Hopefully it will turn out to be an article in the end, but before then a lot of research needs to be done.

To do this I will be using FMM to explore hidden variables in the game, so if anybody doesn't want to know how these variables work you should stop reading now.

Hopefully an understanding of how the mechanism behind the partially hidden attribute "manager reputation" will be a great help to Career players, who want to start on the bottom of the food chain and eventually winning the CL with Real Madrid (or something like that) plan their career, and/or help them develop an understanding of what will be required to be eligible for a manager job at a certain club. But this thread should be useful to all players willing to change their turf.

Basics first...

Manager Reputation is a partially hidden attribute in FM. If you read your own manager screen you can see your reputation described as one of the following:

1. Unproven
2. Obscure
3. Local
3. Regional
5. National
6. Continental
7. World Class

These are actually simple categorizations of a hidden variable that goes from 0 - 10000. These categories depend on the reputation of your current or last played league (probably it's the nation of the league), so you can have unproven reputation in England and change to national reputation if you take a job in Malaysia without your reputation actually changing.

The game engine differs between "Home Reputation", "Current Reputation" and "World Reputation".
As I understand these Variables "Home Reputation" is your reputation with teams of the same nationality as you (Possibly secondary nationality as well, needs testing). "Current Reputation" seems to be a short term variable that can change from game to game (I am not yet certain what effect it has). While I think "World Reputation" is your reputation with all clubs excluded from the "Home Reputation" category, I'll admit I am not yet completely certain of how it works.

When you apply for a job the game compares your reputation to the clubs reputation and if your reputation is equal or greater to that of the club you might get the job. Which of the two reputations the game uses for this comparison depends on your managers nationality. If the club has the same nationality as you the game uses "Home reputation", if not it uses "World reputation" (Testing implies that it's not actually quite this simple, updates will come).

Your starting reputation scores depend on your starting difficulty. These scores ranges from 0 to 10000 and are completely independent of nationality, age or Starting Club. The difficulty levels give you the following scores:

1. International Footballer, "Home Reputation", 8000, "World Reputation", 4000

2. Professional Footballer, "Home Reputation", 6000, "World Reputation", 3000

3. Semi-Professional Footballer, "Home Reputation", 3250, "World Reputation", 1625

4. Sunday League Footballer, "Home Reputation", 1500, "World Reputation", 750

5. Automatic, This one depends on the reputation of the lowest playing league in your game. Values range from 500, 250 (Lowest league in the world) to 9500, 4750 (Spanish First). It's completely independent of nationality, age or Starting Club. Proven by testing.

To give you some reference Man Utd has a starting reputation of 9250, Q.P.R. has 4750 and Scarborough has 1750.

As I said before these values fall into different categories in-game, Unproven - World Class, depending on what country you currently or last played in. Starting as a Sunday league footballer I would have Unproven reputation in England, Regional in Norway and National in Malaysia at the start of the game. Just try starting three managers with each of these nationalities and you will see that it's true. Reported reputation values in FMM is the same for all three though. If now my Norwegian manager got the job of Malaysian team Malaka his reputation label would change from regional to national, without any value change in FMM, and this label would stick with him when he resigns until he gets another job.

The important thing to draw from this is that your in-game label depends on your current, or last played, league. A national reputation in England is worth more than in Malaysia. This seems to be linked to the nations reputation, but exactly what variable governs it is not of great importance as long as we know roughly how it works.

Reputation can change after every match

Testing has shown that the outcome of every match you play, even friendlies, can change your manager reputation either positively or negatively. The amount of reputation change you get depends on what the game predicts your chance of winning the match is.
My first preliminary draft at an equation looks like this:

"Predicted goal difference" - "Actual goal difference" = "change in reputation" Given the win is greater than predicted for the favorite, or the outcome (Win, draw loss) better than predicted for the opposition.

It's not actually this simple, but this equation will give you the general idea. It means that the favorite team has to win by more that a certain goal margin for their manager to gain any reputation, if they win by less nothing happens. If they don't win, their manager will actually lose reputation, so it pays to live up to the expectations. Alternately, the outcome has to be better than predicted for the opposition for their manager to gain reputation, but even a draw will see them gain. The size of these increases or decreases depends on the match odds. The more unlikely the outcome the bigger the reputation change. The game predicts the result based on each clubs reputation and home advantage, and sets the odds accordingly.

It follows from these observations that winning many matches with a low reputation club, against more reputable clubs, is a relatively quick way to gain manager reputation. This also holds true for friendlies, so you can use this to your advantage by planning these accordingly. If you need to generate cash for your club, and thus play friendlies against big teams, it might be a good idea to let your assistant handle the match (unless you think you can win or draw the match of course.), as you will not lose reputation if your assistant loses the game. Alternately you can play away games against teams you expect to beat to build your own reputation (+morale), the more reputable the team you beat the bigger reputation increase you get.

It also follows from this that the players you should prioritize first when spending your transfer budget are Strikers, Goalies and Central defenders, in that order. The reason for this is that you absolutely need players who knows how to score and players who reduce the amount of goals you recede, as every goal counts towards your reputation. Somebody else can tell you what stats these player should have, but I find that exceptional Pace and Acceleration (Off the ball helps a lot too) are key for strikers in the lower divisions.

My game

I am a fan of journeyman games. The thought of starting at the bottom and working your way to the top appeals to me very much. However, working your way up can be a tedious and time consuming experience for any of us. For different reasons we might want to change turf in the game, just to find that none of the teams we thought ourselves qualified to play for would even consider hiring us.

This is exactly what happened i my current game. I started as a 29 year old manager with Norwegian nationality, Sunday league experience and No job. After a few weeks I got a job at Norwegian second division side Modum, which gave me a contract worth 300 £ a week, Wage budget of 4K and no Transfer budget. Modum was at the time a semi-professional team, worth roughly 45k (100k debt at start), predicted to lose the division. It did have relatively good facilities though, average training and adequate youth, which was the main reason for me accepting the job.

I did a complete overhaul of the team, fired all my current staff and hired new ones. Gave the players i could be bothered to keep full time contracts, and fired or sold the rest. The first season went relatively well considering the media prediction and my violent upheaval of the teams foundations (players and staff), after having sniffed around mid-table for most of the season we finished 10th, (of 14) just above relegation, after a slump at the end of the season. I was confident that the second season would go much better though, after my new players and staff had some time to gel together, especially after I got Premier Division side Stabæk as my new parent team.

In the second season I was able to Loan a fast striker and a Left Winger from Stabæk, paying 0% of their wages, for a whole year. These two were considered my two best players of all my staff, and the striker would indeed end up as the leagues top scorer and top rated player, while the winger would have most assists. Having also signed a quite decent captain (20 inf, 12 det) things might be starting to get a little better i thought. During the first season I had managed to get rid of the 100 K debt and by the end of this season i would have 250K in plus. All this time I had managed to keep my wages about 1k below the limit set by the board (despite it just being 4k to begin with), so my board was very pleased with me. A big reason that I managed to do this was by arranging lots of friendlies with Rosenborg (Top club of Norway), which would net me a ticket income of about 20k each game. Might not be realistic that the club would agree to multiple friendlies in real life, but you need all the help you can get in the lower leagues .

The second season went incredibly well considering the last seasons result and odds of 150-1 against me winning the league. 10 First games saw me in second place, with something like 6 wins, 2 evens and 2 losses I think. Unfortunately newly relegated team Nybergsund was almost unbeatable. Despite my keeper conceding least goals in the league, by a good margin, Nybergsund was 8 points ahead of me with only 3 matches left of the season. I would have to win the league to get promoted. By bidding on their best players earlier I had seen to it that they were snatched up by bigger clubs, so they had lost part of their teams backbone towards the end of the season. They were beginning to slump in results and I had incredibly managed to fight through a slump mid-season and was currently on a winning streak. Could it hold though? Nybergsund would only need 1 point in their last three matches unless i was able to win all my matches by big margins. It should be impossible.

What happened next was like watching a miracle. Nybergsund lost their first match in 10 rounds 2-3 while my boys banged in the biggest win of the season 6-0! Next I faced the leagues nr 3 while Nybergsund faced the third to last team of the league. I went into this maxt with little to no hope as Nybergsund would surely win against such a poor team. My boys did their job and won 4-1, but when I checked the results of the other matches I saw that Nybergsund had actually lost 1-3! Now my goal difference was equal to Nybergsund, so they would actually have to win their last game to be certain of promotion. Luckily I faced the jumbo team of the league for my last match and won comfortably 3-0. Nybergsund however was facing the team I had just beat 6-0, surely they would win... By what seemed like a miracle at the time they actually lost 3-0 to the team I had just beaten 6-0. Nybergsund rounded of the season incredibly poor, got stuck in second division, while I won the league by 1 point and got promoted to first division. There must have been quite a bit of head bashing going on in the Nybergsund board room after that .

However, when my board learned that we had got promoted they did what must have been one of the most idiotic economic decisions I have ever heard of. In their ecstasy they took up a loan of 4.8 million £ to build a new stadium! At the time the club was 250k in the green, and I had only earned 350k in total over the last 2 years. The club was immediately declared bankrupt, went into receivership, and those bastards started selling of my players for next to nothing.

This naturally de-motivated me a lot from taking on another season with this team, as I could see no immediate solution to the clubs economic problem, I would probably be unable to retain good players for any period of time, let alone buy any players, and as a result of all this I would probably be relegated. On top of this Stabæk had just been relegated to the same division as me, so they would no longer be my parent club. Prospects were grim indeed. Thus I wanted to change turf, but I soon discovered that this wasn't as easy as I had expected (Seeing as I had won the starting league and a promotion, for a team predicted to lose the league, after all). That was when I decided to start investigating the mechanisms behind manager reputation.

As my only other alternative now was to go back to another team in the second division I decided to try and rough it out with Modum for another season. My salary had gone up to 500k by now btw. Luckily I was able to get another big team as a parent club, and through sheer force of persistence I was able to loan 5 players from them for a year without paying any wages. I was also able to loan my best striker from last season again, plus a midfielder from another club. 6 of these loaned players would form the backbone of a team that I hoped would be able to fight of relegation. I was aware that this tactic was not going to be very good in the long run, but hopefully it would work long enough for me to get a better job. I had been unable to loan any good Central Defenders though, so this season would see a lot of goals on both sides of the pitch. In the end I finished 9th of 16, with 41 points and 47 goals, which I thought was great all considering, but not anywhere near promotion though and the winner (my previous parent club) won the league with 76 points and 74 goals (nearly twice as much as me). On the financial side the board started to show some sense after mid-season, having blamed me for their loan extravaganza all season those (insert colorful language here)! They started investing money in the club at non-regular intervals, and although no investment was greater than 400k they started adding up, so that by the end of the season the clubs debt was reduced from 4.8 mill to 1.5 mill.

This is where I am currently at and I am still not able to get any other job I want. I am not very motivated for another season with Modum, as I will probably not be able to build a long term team that can survive in this division while the club is Bankrupt, but we shall see what happens.

I have decided to stick with Modum for one last season to try to get some data. I am currently one month from the season switch, so I will have a good opportunity to see if something happens to your reputation when your stats change. Stay tuned...

Starting variables and applying for jobs

I have done some experiments to try to discover how the different manager reputation variables work. My main working hypothesis has been that when you apply for a job the game compares your reputation to that of the club, and if your reputation is equal or better you would get the job.

However, it's not as simple as Manager reputation > Club Reputation = You get the job.

The most straightforward variable seems to be "Home reputation". If you home reputation is grater than the clubs reputation you would usually get the job, given club has same nation. If this variable only applies to clubs of your nationality it could explain why people report that Nationality has an effect on reputation, even though my data proves that nationality does not change the variables in any way.

It doesn't seem quite as easy as "Home rep" applies to certain clubs and "World rep" applies to the rest though. I have not found any data to contradict my theory of the "Home reputation" variable, but I have found plenty of data to contradict my assumption about "World rep".

In this experiment I created 4 Norwegian managers in the same game at the same point in time, one for each of the difficulty levels except Automatic (I will be ignoring this difficulty level from now on, as my testing has proven that the only thing that changes it is what your least reputable playable league is). In contradiction to my "World reputation" hypothesis I found that my manager with 8000 home rep and 4000 world rep got the available coventry job, while Coventry has a reputation of 4850. 4850 > 4000 obviously, so it's not as simple as I originally thought. It could be that Home reputation applies to all countries in the same continent as your home country, but my second manager with 6000, 3000 was rejected for the Southampton job, while Southamptons reputation is 5500. 6000 > 5500 so this hypothesis doesn't seem to work either.

To further confuse things my 8000, 4000 character got the Ukrainian National job, reputation 6000, and my 3250, 1625 character got the Nigerian national job, reputation 5500!. Seems like national teams follow their own set of rules.

Hopefully we will be able to make sense of these thing as more data turns up.

Reputation changes from friendly matches

For this experiment I played a friendly match at home with Modum (Rep 2185) against the third best Norwegian team Brann (Rep 5554), the match odds were 9-1 (home), 4-1 (even) and 1-4 (away) in favor of Brann.

I found that the following results gave me the following changes in reputation afterwards (Sorted by goal difference):

Modum 5 - 1 Brann, +7 Home rep, +7 Current rep, no change for world rep.
Modum 2 - 2 Brann, +2 Home rep, +2 Current rep, no change for world rep.
Modum 2 - 3 Brann, No change
Modum 0 - 2 Brann, No change
Modum 0 - 4 Brann, -1 Home rep, -1 current rep, -1 World rep.
Modum 1 - 6 Brann -2 Home rep, -2 Current rep, -1 World rep.
Modum 0 - 6 Brann, -3 Home rep, -3 Current rep, -1 World rep.
Modum 0 - 10 Brann, -7 Home rep, -7 Current rep, -1 World rep.

From these data I draw that the game predicts the favorite to win by a certain goal difference and sets a threshold there. If the favorite wins by this threshold or less nothing happens, if the difference is greater the manager of the favorite team gains reputation points at the cost of the other manager. Each goal the result differs from the predicted threshold represents either 1 point gained or one point lost for each of the managers (unless the favorite wins, which seems to prevent gain for the other manager). In this case the threshold seems to be between 2 or 3 goals in favor of Brann. Why two thresholds and not one? It's tempting to guess that the game calculates the difference by dividing the reputation of the favorite club with the oppositions reputation. In this case that would mean 5554/2185 which equals 2.54, as you can see quite in the middle of 2 or 3 goals.

This equation does not incorporate home advantage though, so the equation might have more to do with the odds, but then again you would usually play roughly as many home as away matches during a season so it should even out in the long run. 4-1 in favor of Brann is a margin of three goals, but that doesn't explain why a 2 goal margin would be counted as a no change score. More data will be required to fine tune the equation. But for now a seemingly satisfactory equation could be "Predicted goal difference" - "Actual goal difference" = "change in reputation." Given the win is greater than predicted for the favorite, or the outcome (Win, draw loss) better than predicted for the opposition. If this number is positive the favorite manager would lose this much reputation, if it's negative he would gain this much reputation. The opposite holds true for the other manager. This equation predicts that if a draw is the favored result either manager would gain or lose the goal difference as if the equation had no given condition.

World reputation behaves unlike the other two variables, but I'll leave it until I get more of an idea what it does.

If you let your assistant handle the match you get no change to reputation.

Pinning the reputation change equation

Game 1:

Modum (Player, Rep 2416, home) VS Rosenborg (Computer, Rep 5018, away), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266

Match odds: Modum: 13-2, Draw: 11-4, Rosenborg: 2-5 (Fav)

Modum 0-7 Rosenborg, -5,-5,-1
Modum 0-4 Rosenborg, -1,-1,-1
Modum 0-3 Rosenborg, No change
Modum 2-3 Rosenborg, No change
Modum 0-0 Rosenborg, +1,+1
Modum 1-0 Rosenborg, +4,+4
Modum 3-0 Rosenborg, +7,+7
Modum 8-0 Rosenborg, +7,+7

It seems like 7 is the biggest amount the reputation variables can increase from one single friendly match, as I didn't get a bigger increase by winning 8-0 than by winning 3-0. The changes does not seem to be quite as linear as I originally thought, but the equation still gives you the general idea. Interestingly the gain was smaller for a draw here than in the Modum-Brann match, possibly this was because the odds were better for a draw in this game, 11-4 (2.75-1) compared with 4-1.

Game 2:

Modum (Player, Rep 2416, away) VS Brann (Computer, Rep 5476, home), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266
Player manager2 (Brann) reputation: Home: 3250, Current: 3250, World: 1625

Match odds: Brann: 1-8 (Fav), Draw: 5-1, Modum: 12-1

Modum 0-4 Brann, Manager 1: -1,-1,-1. Manager 2: +2,+2, 0.
Modum 4-7 Brann, Manager 1: No change.
Modum 1-2 Brann, Manager 1: No Change. Manager 2: No change.
Modum 0-0 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: -1,-1,-1.
Modum 2-1 Brann, Manager 1: +7,+7,0. Manager 2: -3,-3,-1.
Modum 4-2 Brann, Manager 1: +7,+7,0. Manager 2: -3,-3,-1.
Modum 4-0 Brann, Manager 1: +7,+7,0. Manager 2: -8,-8,-1.

A pattern seems to be emerging. It seems like the biggest you can loose any match without a reputation loss is by 3 goals, as there was no difference in threshold value in either of my three matches so far (1-4, 2-5 and 1-8). The biggest increase you can get from a draw seems to be 2, as there was only 1 point difference between odds of 5-1 and 11-4 (2.75-1), still to early to say anything certain about this though. Your potential gain from winning against superior opposition seems to be highly correlated to the odds, as a 1 goal win gave a 4 point increase at odds of 13-2 while it gave 7 points at odds of 12-1 (which makes sense, as the odds is nearly twice as bad.).

Game 3:

Modum (Player, Rep 2416, Home) VS Brann (Computer, Rep 5476, away), Friendly game

Player manager1 (Modum) reputation: Home: 2629, Current: 2607, World: 1266
Player manager2 (Brann) reputation: Home: 3250, Current: 3250, World: 1625

Match odds: Modum: 7-1, Draw: 3-1, Brann: 1-3 (Fav)

Modum 0-4 Brann, (e), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +3,+3, 0. (pinned back, they dominated, 50%, 0-4)
Modum 1-3 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (near total domination)
Modum 1-3 Brann, (e), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +2,+2, 0. (had by far the better of the match and eased through, 50%)
Modum 1-3 Brann, Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +2,+2, 0.
Modum 0-2 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Near total domination, coasted through, 54%)
Modum 1-2 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Could and should have scored more, dominate game, 54%, 1-1)
Modum 2-3 Brann, (a), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Could and should have scored more, dominate game, 54%, 0-0)
Modum 2-3 Brann, (h), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: +1,+1, 0. (Good display, both side had chances, 52%, 2-1)
Modum 3-4 Brann, (h), Manager 1: No change. Manager 2: No Change. (entertaining, 51%)
Modum 0-0 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: -1,-1,-1.
Modum 1-1 Brann, (a), Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change. (massive superiority, 58%)
Modum 1-1 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change.
Modum 2-2 Brann, Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change.
Modum 2-2 Brann, (a), Manager 1: +2,+2,0. Manager 2: No Change. (superiority, 53%)

First thing to note here is that the odds are more in my favor than the last time I played Brann at home. I accredit this to the fact that my clubs reputation increased from 2185 to 2416 after the season change, while Brann had their reputation decreased from 5554 to 5476. The ratio difference (5476/2416=2.27) is quite a bit better than it was before (5554/2185=2.54). This seems a plausible explanation for the change of odds in my favor I think.

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that this calculation is quite more complex than I originally thought.
As you can see I lost 0-4 this time without any change in reputation, both the times I played Brann before (with worse odds) and lost by the same score I also lost reputation. I am going to gather some more data from this match before I try to analyze it further, but any input would be appreciated.

Reputation Changes over time

For this experiment I created 3 unemployed Malaysian managers, one with International reputation, 70 yers old, one with professional reputation, 50 years old and one with semi-professional reputation, 30 years old. I had only the three spanish leagues running to make this go faster.

Immediately after creation I sent all three of them on a 5 year long holiday and let the game alone to work it's way through the years. After five years I checked their reputation values in FMM and the results were unanimous. Time alone does not change reputation. This is given that going on holiday does not make you immune to reputation change, but I can't see why it logically would.

So I would say it's safe to falsify hypothesis 6, based on these data.

Hypotheses

I have some hypotheses about the mechanisms that I would appreciate your help in testing. If you feel like helping use FMM to check the values before and after an event, and report them in as much detail as possible on this thread.

Hypothesis 1. You get a boost to reputation after you play your last match of a league or a tournament.

Just record reputation levels before and after the last match and see if there is any evidence for a boost. This boost might also come at a later time (Like when your manager stats update, or between seasons). You might need a sufficiently great result to see a boost though, so try for first place. It would also be interesting to hear if you see any decreases in reputation.

Hypothesis 2. Manager reputation increases according to league result at end of season.

So you would get the biggest boost with a win, a little less for second, even less for third and so on. Try getting different league positions by winning or losing the last couple of games in the season. It might be possible that this boost is linked with promotion as well though, so check the difference between last promotion place and the one below. Also report potential loss to reputation if losing league or relegated.

Hypothesis 3. The size of these reputation increases depend on the reputation of the league.

So you would get a bigger increase from winning the premier league compared to the conference league or the CL compared to the FA cup. If this indeed linked to competition reputation you would see the highest increases from the CL or the World Cup and significantly lower for Blue Square leagues.

Hypothesis 4. Reputation can change from match to match, depending on result and opposition. (Verified, preliminary equation)

Preliminary equation: "Predicted goal difference" - "Actual goal difference" = "change in reputation" Given the win is greater than predicted for the favorite, or the outcome (Win, draw loss) better than predicted for the opposition.

I have done some testing on this and reputation can indeed change after a single match, magnitude of change depends on result and opposition. I also have to retract my previous statement about friendlies not affecting reputation as my data have proven that they can indeed significantly affect manager reputation (Though not club reputation). If you let your assistant handle the match it has no effect on your reputation. I have not yet had a chance to test this in a league, so if anybody does it before me please post results here so we can compare data. You need to include the reputation of both teams and the betting odds of the match, In addition to manager reputation variables of course.

Hypothesis 5. Home reputation also applies to secondary nationality teams.

Another easy one, just create a manager with a secondary nationality and apply for jobs in your secondary country.


Hypothesis 6. Reputation declines over time. (Falsified)

Testing has shown that time alone does not change reputation at all over a time period of five years. The only thing that's still uncertain is whether going on holiday makes you immune to reputation change, but pending data that proves this is so I declare this hypothesis falsified.

I would greatly appreciate your input on these hypotheses, especially input which leads to new testable hypotheses, and/or verifies/falsifies the current hypotheses. Or if you doubt my results feel free to try to replicate them and post here to tell me I'm wrong. All credit will be duly given in the main threads to those who contributes to changing it's contents.