KickAbout Rulebook

It appears that some managers still have little idea how the Ball Winner and Creative statistics affect the game as a whole. They have opted to ignore these rather than try to grasp WHY they have been introduced and when their team loses 1-0 and the newsletter reports how superbly creative their opponents were, those same managers start moaning about their ill fortune.

The Ball Winner and Creative statistic were added to the game for a good reason in that they differentiate between players of the same basic type in a manner that was previously untouched. There can be no doubt that certain players in real life are very similar types of players. Let us assume, for sake of argument, that both can be called level 11 MF/D’s and, again for the sake of argument, both are power players.

In ‘old’ Kickabout that would be that. There was previously no way of trying to simulate the fact that one player was the kind that could break from midfield with powerful runs and get into the box while another was more likely to play just in front of the back four. The Ball Winner and Creative stats were introduced to make that difference. A player who is a good Ball Winner is one that will be in there where the tackles are flying and will, basically, have an edge when it comes to breaking up the moves of the opposition. He will have the better chance of coming away with the ball from a 50-50 challenge than normal. His ability to put his foot in will make the difference between someone getting in a shot and having it blocked. Ball Winners are designed in a defensive frame of mind.

Creative players are just the opposite and, as you would expect, it is they that have the ability to turn a loose ball into a goal scoring chance. They thrive on the more skilful type of play, getting the ball on the floor and playing it to feet. They may not be the greatest of tacklers but they will be able to provide that extra touch that puts a striker through on goal. Every player in Kickabout, with the exception of Goalkeepers, has two figures recorded against them to show their abilities in both these basic areas.

Often, these two figures will add up to a 100, and in this way they can be looked upon as percentages. The first of the two figures is the player’s ball winning ability while the latter is their creative skill. So if a statistic reads “65/35” it becomes immediately apparent that the player is far more suited to a physical, tackling game than he is likely to be putting in killer passes. These figures may sometimes not add up to a hundred, or may total to a good deal more or less. Some player occasionally have figures of “65/65” and above which are very formidable, a type of character who has no problem in tracking back and winning the ball when required. Whatever the case may be, these two numbers DO have an importance in the game now and they should be taken note of by EVERY manager.

The new statistics are aimed at a simple game mechanic - they are used to give a side additional chances of scoring during a game or they are used to nullify efforts created by the opposition; it doesn’t take a genius to work out which does which. The individual statistics of each player are only the “base value” for each formula that uses them. The figures shown are modified by any number of different conditions before they are given a final rating, which is used to determine if he directly affects the match in any way. The kind of players he is playing with, the number of players in his part of the pitch, the weather and the team’s formation are all mitigating factors in how this base value is modified.

Ball Winners are players that thrive in the heat of battle, that love to mix it with the opposition and find their talents easier to use when in packed areas of the pitch. They are primarily defensive players and tend to have more effect if the overall stance of the side is weighted in that direction. For each element of this make up that goes their way, they receive a bonus on their ball-winning ability, along with a subsequent penalty to their creative skill. So, if the Batty of our example starts the game with figures of 75/25 then he will be completely happy playing in a full Power side, with a 4-4-2 formation that uses a negative style. If the weather is cold and the pitch muddy then he has about everything he can get in his favour.

The only ways of bettering this if for him to be playing in a five-man midfield, but then you lose the negative advantage and his figures won’t look all that much better. Each one of the factors in his advantage will add a certain percentage to his abilities and in the example shown it would not be a surprise to see one player’s eventual stats change from 75/25 to perhaps 105/10 or so.

Creative players are the opposite end of the scale, they like warm days with a good surface to play one, they like space to play in and a style that allows them to attack the opposing goalmouth. It doesn’t take too much to work out what sort of formations and playing positions will get the best from them. It may well seem that there are more opportunities in the game for ball winners than there are for creative players - this is a fact. The balance to this is that when a BW or CR affect kicks in, it only kicks in at the position the player is located. A BW chance by a player in midfield will kill off a shot from the opposing midfield area for example, while a striker picking up a creative chance will do so from his forward position. The creative chances always result in an additional chance whereas ball-winners need to have something to stop if they are to be effective. If a side adds an extra four Ball-winner chances to their midfield and the opposition isn’t creating anything in that area, then these efforts are wasted. Thus, while there are many more ways of aiding your ball-winning players, their abilities are not always as valuable as the creative players.

Basically, if a player’s individual ability tops the 85 figure then there is a chance that he will have some effect on the match. If it tops 100 then he will definitely have some effect. In each case it means that he will add a ball-winning stop or a creative chance to the side’s usual tally of stops and shots. Every percent above 85 tests that player’s ability against a simple dice roll and, if they do come up trumps, you will see them registered in the CR/BW report underneath your normal match stats. If they top the 100 range then they will activate without any number being tested and will again show up in that area.

These chances are also shown in another way, particularly in terms of the creative chances. If a team is listed as having no shots but, say, two on target, then you will know where these two efforts came from.

The same may well apply to a side getting no shots on target from a host of chances. That, for individuals, is the basic way things work. However the way that the whole team performs is also affected by these figures and this is done by generating the average BW/CR figure for all the players playing in the same area of the pitch. These averages are also used to find out if that area manages to create or stop a chance that would otherwise be ignored.

The best way of showing this is by an example; let us assume that a side has players out in a 3-4-3 formation and that the players have BW/CR stats as shown here;

65/35 60/40 80/15 - Defence

50/50 30/70 75/25 60/40 - Midfield

50/50 60/40 55/45 - Attack

These figures are checked to give averages of 68/30 in defence, 52/48 in midfield and 55/45 in attack. None of these are particularly outstanding, as you can see, and each is tested in the same way as a player. Any figure above 85 has a chance of making something happen so, in this case, nothing does.

Let us assume the opposing team is set up as follows;

30/70 20/80 40/60 - Defence

20/80 10/90 50/70 10/90 - Midfield

10/90 0/100 10/90 - Attack

This is a far more attack-minded side with better creative players in it. Their averages are 30/70 in defence, 30/82 in midfield and 07/93 in attack and immediately we have a chance of an additional creative chance from up front. One chance might not sound a lot and there is a second test applied to every area in the game. In this test the area BW figure of the defenders of a side are tested against the CR figures of the opposing forwards and the BW of the midfielders are tested against the opposing midfielders CR stats for both sides.

In our examples we would compare a 68/30 DF with a 07/93 FW, on both sets of stats, both ways. While the second side’s creative ability has the edge on the BW ability of the defenders, the strikers own BW ability is way, way below the creative skills of the defenders they are facing. This disparity gives us a new figure (in this case 25) and this number is plugged into a second set of formula. Any figure above 15 has some chance of giving that AREA of the pitch an additional affect, be it ball winning or creative. This figure of 23, for example, means that the defenders might find themselves able to break away quickly without much effort to stop them by the forwards of the opposing side. With this comparison being done both ways, for both teams, there is clearly a fair chance that the figures in these areas might provide a game-turning event too. These are also shown in the BW/CR reports beneath your match statistics. So it should hopefully be clear that while these new figures are not a truly earth-shaking chance to the game, they are not something that you can simply ignore. A good set of BW/CR stats can make a player very valuable indeed, particularly if he is a Skill player with good BW figures or a Power player who is exceptionally creative.

See also…

• Calculating the Result