Five Search Filters you didn't know you needed | Wednesday Wisdom

This week's Wednesday Wisdom focuses on player recruitment, a vital part of any manager's responsibility. To recruit effectively you need to know what to look for. @FM_Grasshopper is here to give you five search filters you need to add to your scouting process. 

Football Manager 2019 allows you to build the perfect squad from a database of literally hundreds of thousands of players from across the globe. The Player Search screen within the FM19 Scouting Centre is your access to this pool of players, which is directly affected by the level of Scouting packages you have chosen. The more expensive package, results in more players available to you. 

In order to find the right player, almost all aspects related to a player can be used as search criteria. Here are five that you probably didn’t know you needed…

1. Contract Expiry 

This is a really useful search if your current transfer and wage budgets are tight. A player's contract expiry is a really important influencer on dictating the ease at which a club will sell a player. So the search looks something like:

The above search shows those players that are not considered first-teamers at their clubs and whose contracts expire within a year. I guarantee you that those AI clubs will sell those players listed at either market value or below. You can tweak this further to find a little extra value by looking at those players whose contracts expire within six months or those players who are not even a rotational option at their clubs.

2. Contract Clauses 

If you hold a bigger budget, and want to 'splash the cash', perhaps consider searching by Minimum Fee Release Clause and then sorting by value.  You may be able to see some players that have a release clause close to, or even below, their market value:

Additionally, you can alter the type of clause because Football Manager does a good job of replicating real-life clauses such as Relegation release clause, Non-Promotional release clauses and Minimum Fee clauses with an expiry date.  Here is a chance to invest in a potential bargain for your club.

3. Hardworking Youth 

Ever heard the phrase "Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard"?  Professionalism is a personality trait that directly correlates with how hard your players apply themselves in training.  Therefore it is something that you may want to install within your club. 

This search can swing both ways, you might want an elder statesman to come in and help mentor your youth, but another solution is to sign upcoming talent who are already willing to work hard in training. 

I like this search, particularly when viewing players' mental attributes. Get creative and adjust the ages to suit your recruitment model or check out other personality descriptions in-game.

4. Attributes 

Searching by attributes is extremely useful but it’s all dependent on what you’re looking for: age, position, role etc. However, there are some universal attributes that I tend to place extra emphasis on, such as Aggression, Determination, First Touch, Natural Fitness, Teamwork and Work Rate.

I wouldn't necessarily search all of them together, and I wouldn't normally have 15 or above as criteria. However these are important 'universal' attributes (position-focused searches give priority to other attributes such as Finishing for a Striker and Marking for a Defender).
 
So why these three, for example:

• Natural Fitness - FM's most important and underrated attribute?  I think so, it could be the reason why your £30m signing makes only 15 appearances a season at 95% fitness or above.
• First Touch - How often do we see moves fall apart in the match engine because a player has a poor first touch?  There's a reason why First Touch improves in real life as you move up the football pyramid.  It's the first sign of a good player and a demonstration of his hard work and learning.
• Work Rate - I want my players to work for the whole 90 minutes.  The intensity, in theory, should be the same in the first minute of a match as it is in the last.

5. Favourite Club 

A fun one here, how about finding the players that already have an affinity with your club? This could be the ex-star player who is due a romantic return or the youngster who was let go too early and now has a point to prove. 

General – Favourite Club/Staff – Your Club 

It's a search that can help build a narrative and create a backstory that enriches your save… or it can simply just help you during contract negotiations with that player (as they will likely be more agreeable to joining you).

Most importantly - have fun with it! 

I encourage you to have some fun and play around with the Player Search screen in order to find the right search for you.  There are so many possible ways you could find players, and this piece only briefly touches on five. Here are some others that I’ll leave you to experiment with at home:

• Club/Based - Search a particular country 
• Two Footed - Find those ambidextrous world beaters 
• Media Descriptions - Find the latest prodigy to be labelled a Wonderkid 

Good luck, FM Grasshopper