The importance of determination

I've always believed that Determination was critical to player development and achieving the maximum Current Ability possible. However, anyone who's been following our recent discussions on twitter may have seen that, that may not be the case

@cook1e_mr @fmpundit @shrewnaldo @sortitoutsi Determination doesn't impact training at all

— Cleon (@Cleon81) December 19, 2012

@fmpundit @cook1e_mr @shrewnaldo @sortitoutsi Determination doesn't have an effect on training.

— Cleon (@Cleon81) December 19, 2012

Some research was performed over at The Dugout in this article a few years ago, which indicated that a players determination didn't actually have much of an effect on player development at at all.

Rather the important the factor was professionalism and game time. While it's not mentioned in that article, it seems that ambition is also widely associated with development as well. So why do so many people see Determination as important? The misunderstanding may stem from its correlation with ambition and professionalism:

@sortitoutsi true. There is a high correlation between determination and professionalism / ambition which is where I think misunderstanding

— Shrew Naldo (@Shrewnaldo) December 18, 2012

What does this mean? Well in more recent versions of FM player personalities play a massive part. So having a player who's a "perfectionist" is preferable to a player who is "unambitious". These personalities come from hidden attributes that you can't see in the game such as ambition, temperament, sportsmanship, professionalism, loyalty etc.

You can see from this guide to player personalities that Determination plays a big role in a number of these personalities; a perfectionist for instance requires Ambition, Professionalism and Determination to be all over 17.

But surely if we want our players to be perfectionists Determination is important? Well yes, to some degree, but not to the degree that most would believe. Rather the important factors to a players development are supposedly Professionalism, Ambition, Game Time, Moral and Luck.

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From the guide above you'll see that there are however only two personalities with high ambition and professionalism and they are Model Citizen and Perfectionist. The former doesn't require high determination and the latter does.

So the question we still need to ask is, is Determination important? The answer is apparently that Determination is only really relevant during a match.

@cleon81 @cook1e_mr @shrewnaldo @sortitoutsi maybe you could use it contextually. You'd want determined players when your plucky underdog?

— Thomas Levin (@fmpundit) December 19, 2012

Okay so what have we learnt?

1) Determination is important during games, such as when chasing a lead or playing as the underdog.

2) Determination is not directly related to player development or training. However, since you can't search by player personalities, finding players with high determination does narrow down your search for players that have the "perfectionist" personality. However you'll still need to scout those players to find out what there actual personality is. So really, the best advice is to avoid players with low determination, but don't read too much into those players who have high determination.



What do you guys think? Would you buy a player with solid attributes but <10 Determination? Do you do anything differently with determined or un-determined players, such as using them as super subs, or giving them different team talks?

For me personally I generally don't like having players with a determination of 10 or lower in my squads and a high determination is one of the things I look for when scouting players.

In general I tend to look for players that have strong mental attributes, particularly in determination, work rate and teamwork as well as good physical attributes. Technical attributes are the last thing I look for in a player.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the players that really catch my attention are defensive midfielders or defenders.

Nothing wrong with building a team around solid defenders and solid midfielders.

Is determination an important statistic for scouts? I never though it was, and only focused on his ability to judge player ability and potential, but I'm sure i read somewhere about it being of some significance.

I think it has something to do with the quantity of reports gathered. I guess they're determined to find the best players and therefore watch more.