Backstory
Ever since star based category ratings of coaches was introduced in FM 07, a lot of virtual managers such as myself have been looking for the coaches that provide the best training in the various categories. The issue was understanding how the star ratings are produced. Some categories such as the Fitness training categories (Aerobic and Strength) and the Goalkeeper training categories (Handling and Shot Stopping) weren't too challenging to figure out. You just look for a coach with a high attribute of either Fitness or Goalkeepers respectively. But what with the more vague categories, such as Ball Control and Shooting? What attributes determines the star rating for those categories? And to make things worse, with FM 09 (patch 9.3.0) came a star rating change that made previous top rated coaches become barely above average.
There has never been a way in game to figure out a coach's star rating if he's not part of your club. You cannot simply scout a coach to determine which categories he excels in, you must hire him which is a very ineffective screening process. Thankfully, bright minds were able to figure out ways to calculate star ratings based on attributes, and that you post-9.3.0 would need to add in a mixture of the key attributes Determination, Level of Discipline, Motivating. So with the formulas (FM07 | 9.3.0) in hand we could easily find the coach we want to hire.
Inspiration
Based on the formulas provided, people started making tools that would allow people to find their coaches. I've been using tools a lot over the years to find my coaches. The most recent one I've been using is the Football Manager Coach Calculator made by BonzoLLM. The only problem I had with this and similar tools is that for each coach I wanted to judge, I had to re-enter the attributes. And when I wanted to judge multiple coaches this process would take more time and effort than I thought was necessary. So I started looking for ways to make this process easier
Enter FMScreener
FM has the ability to export views such as a coach's profile to an HTML file or an RTF file. I thought "Hey, why not use that as basis for calculations rather than user input?". Having some PHP knowledge I decided to write a class that parses these files and makes the necessary calculations without having to manually enter a single digit. I made the class support multiple languages so that it would require minimum effort to find the ratings for the coach. Just export the coaches bio as either HTML or RTF, and upload them and have them screened. Simple as that.
Special thanks to
- Barış Özdağ for contributing Turkish translations!
- pauso for contributing Italian translations!
- Tó_Madeira for contributing Portuguese translations!
- Marcin Prokopiak for contributing Polish translations!
- Barış Özdağ for contributing Turkish translations!
- vikisko (FM Slovakia) for contributing Czech translations!
- Marshall777 for contributing French translations!
- Mortug for proofreading
- The following TV shows for keeping me entertained while developing FMScreener