When do players peak in Football Manager? (the advise from SI is a lie...)

When do players peak in Football Manager? If you’ve already played the game a fair bit you’ll know that the answer is obvious, because it pops up as a tip whenever the game is loading.

So there we have our answer

• Goalkeepers peak 31-35
• Defenders peak 27-32
• Midfielders peak 27-32
• Strikers peak 26-31

But if it’s so obvious why do we need an article on the subject?

Well we noticed something interesting in the files that generate these tips. Here’s a screenshot from those files written in XML.

You’ll notice that it’s written twice with different ages given. One tells us that strikers peak 26-31 and the second tells us that strikers peak 24-28. For those who don’t full understand code basically the bit after “COMMENT” is a comment by the developers to themselves, or other developers, and isn’t meant to be seen by me and you. Why would these be different? It’s probably just a mistake where someone was tasked with changing the values and forgot to do it in both places. But then that raises the question, which one is correct? Have we been reading typos for the past 15 years (I loaded up FM09 and the difference is present there as well).

An experiment to find the real peak ages in FM

Thankfully we have an answer to when players ACTUALLY peak in Football Manager thanks to the hard work done by Futek.

Futek ran an experiment which involved running a 10-year simulation in Football Manager 2024 to analyse player progression and trends over time, with a focus on identifying the typical peak age for players who were present at the start of the game. To track their development accurately, the player data - including 371 attributes for 474,251 real-world players - was exported at the end of each season for 10 years. This approach allowed for a detailed year-by-year look at how players grow, peak, and decline, shedding light on the dynamics of player ability over time and offering insights into the ages at which players typically reach their peak performance.

Here are the results:

According to Futek’s experiment most players reach their peak (maximum Current Ability) around age 24, with the primary peak age range falling between 23 and 28.

But what about by position? FM tells us that a players position has a big impact on when they peak ranking from as low as 26 for strikers to as high as 35 for goalkeepers.

Futek has provided the following graph for positions

It’s not quite as easy to read as the first graph and it rather confusingly combines defenders and DM’s, which FM doesn’t, but still we can get a rough idea, mostly because the graphs for all positions other than goalkeepers are almost identical. There is no difference in when outfield players peak according to this experiment, they all roughly peak around aged 24 and then slowly decline up to age 31 when the drop off in stats massively accelerates.

For goalkeepers we can see that it is true they definitely do peak later, commonly peaking around 26, but this is well below the 31-35 claimed by the in game hints and tips, if anything this isn’t a goalkeepers peak period, it’s his period of biggest decline, the exact OPPOSITE of what the in game tips are telling us.

Perhaps what SI mean by “peak” isn’t the obvious interpretation of when the players are at their highest level, but when players are past their peak. It would be alot more accurate if we changed these tips to say:

• Goalkeepers will peak by 27 and you should look to sell between 29-33
• Defenders will peak by 24 and you should look to sell between 27-31
• Midfielders will peak by 24 and you should look to sell between 27-31
• Strikers will peak by 24 and you should look to sell between 27-31

This would be a truer reflection of how the game actually works. Plus it totally validates all that wonderkid hoarding you’ve been doing.

You can find the full write up of Futek's experiment including more fun insights on his medium page: https://medium.com/@futekcontact/i-exported-the-entire-football-manager-2024-database-475k-players-371-attributes-194b62e42a3c or reach out to him on Twitter https://x.com/futek_io 

Hidden Attributes

Except that isn’t exactly true, older players (by which I mean players over 24!) can still develop in some other ways and they can help other players develop to.

When we say a player has peaked its because his current ability is at its max, all players have a current ability and a potential ability between 0 and 200. A player might have a CA of 160 and a PA of 170. Once the players CA has hit 170 as well he will have “peaked” and he can’t develop any further.

A players CA is calculated by his attributes (finishing, flair, pace etc) when these attributes go up their CA goes up too and once the CA is maxed out these attributes won’t go up anymore.

But there are a number of hidden attributes which can still change after a player has “peaked”.

Hidden Attributes

• Consistency: reflects how often a player performs at their best. High consistency means fewer off days, making the player a reliable choice in important matches.
• Ambition: indicates a player’s desire for success and career growth. Ambitious players often push themselves harder in training and games.
• Controversy: measures a player’s tendency to attract media attention or cause disruptions. High-controversy players may need extra management to maintain team harmony.
• Dirtiness: shows a player’s tendency to engage in questionable tactics, like fouling or diving, which can impact game outcomes.
• Important Matches: measures how well a player performs in high-stakes games like finals and derbies.
• Injury Proneness: players with high injury proneness are more susceptible to injuries, affecting their availability.
• Loyalty: how likely a player is to stay at the club, even with other offers.
• Pressure: shows a player’s ability to handle stressful situations, like facing tough opposition or playing from behind.
• Professionalism: reflects a player’s work ethic and dedication to improvement, especially during training.
• Sportsmanship: indicates a player’s commitment to honest play. Players with high sportsmanship are less likely to engage in foul play or dive.
• Temperament: measures how well a player keeps their cool in tense situations, avoiding unnecessary reactions.
• Versatility: shows how well a player can perform in different positions and how quickly they adapt to new roles.
• Adaptability: indicates how well a player adjusts to new clubs, countries, or styles of play.

These attributes can all continue to both increase and decrease after a player has maximised their CA potentially leading to noticeable performance increases, particularly if consistency, important matches, pressure or professionalism increase.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find much research about exactly how much these tend to change over time. If you have some insight please leave a comment!

Player Traits

Player Traits also don’t cost CA. That means even after a player has maximised their CA they can still be modified to suit your tactics by learning to run into channels or trying killer balls more often.

However it is much more difficult to learn traits as a player gets older. Players aged 24 and over will find it much harder than players under 21. If you’ve been developing in house you should really focus on developing traits before 24 so that this isn’t a concern.

Mentoring

I said earlier you should sell players who are past their peak. They do also have some value as mentors, who can help develop your young players. However I specifically said you should definitely be looking to sell by the time they’re past 27, this is because the drop off can be quite substantial and you don’t want to be keeping players around just for mentoring who are only going to continue to deteriorate.

I think most people will have already known this but assumed the age range was closer to 31-35 than 27-31.

How realistic is Football Manager?

Okay so we know that FM lies to us and players peak considerably earlier than they say. But which is more accurate to real life, do the in game tips just reflect real life and the game itself is a poor implementation, or is the FM truly the most accurate football simulation in the world?

Thankfully The Athletic has done a great write up on how players develop in real life.

So here’s how players peak in real life

• Goalkeepers peak aged 28 or roughy between 27-31
• Centre Backs peak aged 27 or roughy between 26-31
• Full Backs peak aged 25 or roughy between 25-29
• Central Midfielders peak aged 25 or roughy between 24-30
• Wide Attackers peak aged 26 or roughy between 23-29
• Central Attacking Midfielders peak aged 26 or roughy between 25-29
• Strikers peak aged 27 or roughy between 24-29

So both the in game tips and the implementation of player development are wrong. While the hints and tips tell us a centre back in FM peaks between 27 and 32, they will infact peak between the ages of age 23 and 24 in game and the reality is slap bang in the middle of the two at 27. Similar is true for goalkeepers, midfielders and strikers.

So there you have it. Don’t blindly trust the advice of FM, follow your instinct, hoard those wonderkids and sell everyone quickly to make room for even more.