Personalities to Look For and Avoid

December 22, 2020 Dictate The Game Comments 0 Comment

Following on from my previous article: Personalities to Look For: 5 of the Best , I want to talk today about five Personalities it’s better to avoid. Once again, I’m focusing here on players in the main part of their career, not youth intake players. And I have deliberately eschewed the easy ones, such as Slack or Spineless. Without further explanation, let’s examine my five Personalities to look for and avoid.

Table of Contents

Temperamental

Often paired with a Volatile media-handling style, this Personality can just be more trouble than he’s worth. He has no better than average Professionalism, and his Temperament is very low. This means he’ll be more likely to lose his temper over small things not going his way. Criticize his training or his play, and he may well flip his lid on you, even if they’re objectively poor performances. With his low Professionalism, he will tend to have a slack or even casual attitude to training, which won’t help.

If you really must keep a Temperamental player around, always remember you’re playing with nitroglycerine. Drop on him too hard, and he’ll blow. This can be terrible for dynamics, depending on his influence in the team. If he’s got high Leadership, he may take the team with him when he goes up. That’s what makes him the first Personality to look for and avoid in this list.

Mercenary

This one may be a little controversial, but I have a hard time admiring players with no Loyalty, and this guy? He’s loyal only to the almighty $CURRENCY. If someone comes along that he thinks will offer him more money, he’ll be off like a shot. You’ll pay through the nose to keep him. Combine it with low Teamwork if he has that, and this guy will not be very popular in the dressing room without impressive Leadership skills.

Do not under any circumstance make this man a Captain, or a mentor. The more highly influential he is, the more damage he could do to young players in his social or mentoring groups. You’ll never see it coming, until the player suddenly turns “Fickle”, and then Mercenary himself. He’s a bad influence all around, and he’ll drag your youth into a bad crowd. Probably won’t floss his teeth either. Negotiating a reasonable yearly wage rise can help keep him in line, if you must have a Mercenary in your squad.

Fairly Loyal

From here out, I expect to have more disagreement with you, Gentle Reader, but I hope to convince you that I have a point. My third Personality to avoid is Fairly Loyal. The Fairly Loyal player is notable for having at best slightly above average Ambition, Determination, and Professionalism, the three attributes that heavily influence development speed. He does have the good quality of being loyal, somewhat, so it’s not all bad. But the name on the Personality might lead you to think he’s got more to offer than he does.

Fairly Loyal types can be kept happy with less money than other players, as they like to stay where they’re playing if they can. If you gain their trust, they’ll be loyal to you, too. But the caps on Ambition, Determination, and Professionalism mean that they’re just not going to develop as quickly as you might think from the positivity we associate with being Fairly Loyal. Mentoring might be able to help some, with this player, if he’s young enough. Match him with your Model Citizen, or Professional, and hope he grows to match his mentor. With development, could become Fairly Professional.

Fairly Ambitious

If nothing else, this article should convince you to be wary of the descriptor “Fairly”. That faintheartedness often leads to suboptimal Personalities, and Fairly Ambitious is a second good example of this. Different from the Fairly Loyal player in that he is not notably loyal or disloyal. But he does have good Ambition, and that will help his development. He is a good candidate for mentoring by a Professional, who will help him bring up his Determination and Professionalism.

If you need to motivate the Fairly Ambitious player, try appealing to his pride. Let him know he’s letting himself down with poor play or training, and he’ll be motivated to do better. It’s not as good or solid a reaction as you’d get from a Perfectionist, but it’ll get him started in the mornings. With development, could become Fairly Professional (which isn’t bad!).

Fairly Sporting

Again, faint praise damns the fair maiden, as the Fairly Sporting player sounds like a good bloke to have in the side. Unfortunately, he has all the flaws of the Fairly Loyal player, plus he’s not very loyal. The only thing he has going for him is that Sportsmanship. Which is nice, but it doesn’t necessarily get the net filled in a hurry, or keep your own empty. Mentoring may be a tough task, with so many attributes to raise. But it could result in, again, a Fairly Professional player.

I haven’t tested this, but I have suspected that a player like this could be motivated by his sense of fairness. Tell him that the result on the night was unlucky, and you might get his support or at least motivation, if it was. I could be wrong on that, though. You may find he responds badly to you being unprofessional in press conferences, playing mind games, or trash talking the opposition.

Conclusion

So there are my five Personalities to look for and avoid. What do you think? Do you disagree with any of these? How would you choose differently if we were talking about youth players?

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