Special Ability - Useless or useful?

[kullehh]

Most of them are useless, even the aerial defenders. However most of the goals in the game are scored form set pieces, one-on-one situation and long shots. Too bad we have playmakers and dribblers and not a long shot specialist. If you really want a 0 to 3 assists player per season make him a playmaker Dribblers never dribble anyone and penalty kick takers usually miss more penalties than the non specialists.

i agree with you 100 % ,

[Morgan O'Bree]

Free kick specialists and ck ones are overrated. It's indeed true they provide a goal source but any ST with good finalization/shoot quality is able to score pretty often from free kicks. As example, i used hutton for left fks last season (he is left footed) while i used callaghan (fk specialist) on right, and found out that averagily they scored/missed the same amount. That said, i try to alwais have one on field anyways.

As for corners, i do pick specialist but ONLY if they are scout level, hence with a crossing ablity near the highest one i have in team. If i got a ! 38 ck specialist i'd leave him for a scout (Q45) with 10 more points in crossing than the first one.

As for dribblers, they are useful but at given times. They might solve the riddle when your sts are struck, and manage to get past their markers. It becomes a lot more useful when you play through middle mode instead of through flanks, expecially on red arrows. Rob Denton scores a lot this season with his red arrow being a mc, usually overlapping on the amc.I do reckon that being able to raise the dribbler SA on a 18 yo MC which received power training to learn AMC and ST roles would be SO good, since sts tends to "tries get past markers" quite often.

Playmakers: I believe you are slightly mistaken over here. The fact they tend to get lots of yellow cards isn't due to being playmakers, but to them being usually DMCs. That said, i do believe playmaking ability is related to only one aspect of the game, being it the:

"XXXX with a YYYY pass"

part. When this shows up, you either:

a) see the receiver shoots towards the goal
b) opponent intercepting.

where the playmaking ability raises the % of a successful pass and probably (imho) raises the % of scoring from that shoot too. Combined with a shadow striker ability it becomes a quite nasty combo. So far whenever Becker (amc, ss) received from either my Ross, Diamond, Le Blanc - PM) he either scored or got a corner kick. Proof is thatcompared to last season my AMC scored A LOT more goals since when i play with either 2 or 3 playmakers.

One on one scorer might seem appealing, but it's just bullcrap. Since when i power trained Lenders into 1on1 he fails MORE than before his 1-1. Full stop.

Agreed on the rest.

[Macquarie Uni]

my personal experience, only defense wall are useful

[Ljepoje]

x1 one-on-one stopper
x1 aerial defender
x2 corner specialists
x2 free kick takers
x1 one-on-one scorer
x2 shadow striker
x1 play maker
x3 penalty taker

These are my favourites, and the SA my players currently possess. Also, I noticed that my ST (SA: one-on-one scorer) manages to score goals on the given Free-kicks much better than my FK "specialists". So far, he scored 4 of 5 FK. He is my penalty taker as well (scored 2 of 2). Also, since I trained my DC/DR and gave him a SA as ariel defender, we stopped conceiving goals through corner-kicks.

Btw, good thread @dv8r! Should be a "sticky" one!

[jey2208]

made me think that there're these hidden attrubutes:
one on one (gk), set piece, penalty taking, composure (st), and flair.

[Too Deadly]

Ive had some good results with the free kick, Ariel defender, & corner takers but the others I find are not as important

[dv8r]

Sorry for the bump but this is a useful thread for anyone

[dv8r]

updated this and it should really be a sticky as someone said earlier

[Sjenon]

Free kick specialist - Useful - These players are brilliant at scoring from free kicks. Sometimes the goalkeeper will make a great save but that's nothing you can do about it, that's just the gave engine throwing in some drama. My player currently on free kicks doesn't even have this ability and scores quite a lot of goals from free kicks, so if you have a player with the ability and another player without one but with a much superior shooting stat, then it is better off choosing them. Having said that, you still need one of these in your team.

Personally i would go as far as saying "Extremely Useful" on this. My MC with Freekick ability scores goals left right and center, in 13 league matches he's scored about 10 Freekicks (2 new ones in today's win). I've had my ST take them on some occations, but he blasts them over or into the wall mostly (and this guys as alot higher Shooting/Finishing than my MC).

So all in all I agree with most of your post, but i would upgrade the Freekick SA to somewhat better than only "useful" - and 2ndly i disagree about having your other player with higher shooting (unless its REALLY considerably higher atleast) to take them instead of the one with SA.

Other than that, well written post and it gave a little to think about atleast

[Tornado88]

Personally I don't bother with SA's. I don't look for them when buying a player (Just see them as a bonus every so often). I always look for quality and age.

In my opinion quality is always the most important thing in a player. In fact my team only has two or three players with SA's and most of them are benched old players.