I've thought long and hard about this decision and even at this moment am still less than fully confident about my choice in specialized skills. What follows is my analysis of the 5 skill sets followed by my choice of specialization. Hopefully it will prove a useful analysis to anybody who is still on the fence regarding their choice of skills!
C
OACHINGCoaching appears to be a very popular skillset judging from some of the reactions on the forums and some polls done in gameworld Clough. However, most of this popularity seems to stem from the fact that the Coaching skill set features the largest number of individual skills out of the 5 sets. While this is true, I believe that the number of individual skills in a given set should NOT be your motivating factor in choosing to specialize in that skill set. Rather, you need to consider the long-term benefit that your team can gain from specializing in that skill.
In order to understand the benefit to specializing in the Coaching skill set, we must first understand exactly what the benefits to the Coaching skills are. Every player in FML has both a Current Ability (CA), which is a 0-200 number representing their footballing ability at the current moment in time, and a Potential Ability (PA), which is a 0-200 number representing the football ability that the player could reach given the right training. As players play in matches and train, they progress at certain rate towards their PA. This rate is augmented by factors such as match performances (small factor) and age (large factor). The Coaching skills serve to increase this level of progression relative to a player's "base" level of progression. So a manager with Coaching Level 5 would have his player improving at a rate 25% faster than a manager who has the identical player but no Coaching skills.
However, what Coaching skills DO NOT do is allow a player to go very far beyond his PA. If you happen to have a player with a low potential, he will not be able to develop into a world-class talent regardless of how good your coaching skills are. Additionally, in my experience, very good potential players will develop well regardless of your level of coaching skills.
Finally, it is important to know that once you learn Coaching Level 4, you can unlock and learn a whole subset of individual Coaching skills all the way to Level 3 at the "normal" rate of learning (Non-specialized skill sets still learn at the "normal" rate for all Level 1-3 skills). Other skill sets feature more desirable and more hard to get "tiered" skill trees (i.e. for Judging Potential Level 5 in the Scouting tree, you need to learn Scouting Level 5 before you can get to Judging Potential Level 5).
For all of the reasons covered above, I have chosen not to make Coaching a specialized skill for my club. However, it can be a good skill to specialize in if you want to have very talented youths at a young age (which can result in a higher sale value and more competitive squads in youth competitions).
PHYSIOTHERAPYThe Physiotherapy skill set is another one that seems to be popular among managers, many of whom are very concerned about the number and severity of injuries in the 1.5 version of FML. I'm not going to lie to you - injuries will be a very real concern for every club once FML re-launches and having higher levels of the Physiotherapy skills will help to lessen the pain somewhat (wordplay!) but before selecting this specialization it is once again important that you understand what benefit it can give your team.
Injuries in FML work in a somewhat mysterious way but what you should understand is that when a player gets injured, the TYPE of injury that he gets is very important in affecting how long he will be out of the team. So while a gashed head may only keep him out for 2-3 games, a torn hamstring or achilles tendon will end up keeping him out for some much larger (14-35?) range of games.
Physiotherapy skills work in 2 specific ways. Firstly, they lessen the chance of every player getting injured by some percentage. Secondly, if a player does get injured, they decrease the length of that injury. However, this second benefit will only reduce the length of the injury UP TO THE MINIMUM RANGE for that specific injury type. So if your player Bavid Deckham gets a Torn Achilles tendon, which happens to be coded into the game with an injury range of between 18-32 games (making these numbers up), even if you have every Physiotherapy skill to level 5 he will still be out for 18 matches. Some people seem to think that maxing out their Physiotherapy skills means that they will be able to sacrifice squad depth; while this is true to an extent, I think you can see from the above example that having substitutes who can step in and perform at a senior level will still be very important, regardless of your skills.
Additionally, you should note that Physiotherapy is another one of those skills (like Coaching) where learning Level 4 suddenly allows you to learn a lot more individual skills up to level 3. So getting all the way up to Level 5 in Physiotherapy is not completely necessary to have a pretty comparable skill level to people who choose to specialize in this skill set. As a further disadvantage, I think I am right in saying that Physiotherapy has one of the smallest collections of individual skills of all of the 5 skill sets.
Specializing in Physiotherapy can be a very good choice if you want to try investing in a smaller number of very good players and run with a slightly smaller squad than most other players. However, I believe this is a gamble that is bound to fail over time and will be looking elsewhere for skills to specialize in.
SCOUTINGWe can think of the Scouting skill set as being composed of two skill types: Scouting and Judging Potential. The Scouting skills themselves allow managers to view a higher % of players in the database while the Judging Potential skill allows managers to see an approximation of the PA of a player over time. Higher levels of Judging Potential (JP) allow for more accurate approximations of a player's PA as well as faster assessments (7 days with JP5).
Again, let's examine the benefits of the Scouting skills. Scouting skills themselves allow you to view a larger % of players in the database. At first this may seem like a very useful skill but you need to consider a couple of things. First of all, the players who will be "hidden" by low levels of scouting are all going to be low-reputation players and youth players. Therefore, if you are looking to compile a side full of strong senior players, the Scouting skills will probably be of almost no benefit to you. Secondly, the benefit to having Scouting skills decreases as the number of Youth Academies in the gameworld increases. This is because the youth players with the highest potential are preferentially assigned to Youth Academies rather than released to the free agent list. If the gameworld is swamped with Youth Academies, the quality of youths who appear as free agents will be far lower than in a gameworld with very few Youth Academies. Personally, I foresee a large number of Youth Academies springing up in the new Gameworlds and thus don't believe the Scouting skills to be very attractive as an area for specialization.
However, the REAL reason that many people are choosing to specialize in the Scouting skill set is the (once) very powerful Judging Potential (JP) skills. With high levels of JP, resourceful managers can identify who the youths with the best potential are and buy them at a young age when they are cheapest. These youths will then go on to become the World Famous players of the future. While I do believe that JP can be a tremendously useful and powerful skill when used appropriately, it is not nearly as useful as it once was. Consider that it takes 2-3 days to get a initial assessment on any player, and that this initial assessment is not very accurate, even with JP Level 5. It takes 7 days to fully assess any player with JP Level 5 and you can only assess 10 players at any given time. (Just as an aside, if JP Level 5 allowed you to assess vastly more players it would be very desirable to me. 10 players at a time just isn't enough though, regardless of how fast the assessment is). Additionally, given the introduction of youth academies, most promising youths will now be showing up in Academies rather than the free agent list as was the case in the past.
As a case against Judging Potential, consider that most experienced managers can identify high-potential players from a number of factors, even without any JP! Things such as high levels of CA, rapidly increasing Acquisition Fee and Market Value, and lots of other clubs bidding on your player are generally good clues that he may have very high potential. :) Training reports also have clues in them that illuminate high potential players if you know what to look for. So while JP Level 5 is definitely a nice tool to have, it is far from essential.
I was strongly considering specializing the Scouting skill tree myself but in the end decided against it. Unfortunately this will take some of the drama out of my last two skill categories, as by process of elimination you can see that these are my choices for specialization!
MANAGEMENT (MGMT?)Of all the skill sets, Management is the one that is the biggest no-brainer to me. It consists of a number of powerful and "expensive" skills that can help any team, no matter how big or small. Nearly every skill in the set is desirable in some way (save for Finance, in my opinion, which is still nice but hardly essential). Specializing in Management will allow you to save/make tons of money (Transfer Negotiation, Contract Negotiation, Finance, Commercial) and provide affect your teams morale and availability (Team Management, Influence).
Many people seem to think that the Management skill set is not a good choice for specialization due to the fact that SI have made the (probably correct) decision to nerf the effectiveness of some of these skills (Transfer Negotiation and Commercial) for the first 3 seasons of a new gameworld. These people are merely being short-sighted. Management is a skill tree with a huge benefit to your team over the long-term lifetime of the game and is now more necessary than ever, with some of the changes implemented in version 1.5 with regards to the price that you will be paying to auto-extend contracts.
I fully expect to specialize in Management upon relaunch and I can't think of a very convincing reason why somebody would not want to do the same. The ONLY instance I can think of eschewing the management skill is if you are taking one very specific approach to the game and think that other skills will serve you better in this specific approach.
INFRASTRUCTUREInfrastructure is my second selection for a specialized skill and while I don't think it presents as strong an argument as Management does, it does feature some very powerful skills that can help to save you money and improve your team. Specifically, the Construction Level 5 and Academy Expansion Level 5 skills are desirable to me. Construction Level 5 will save me ~3 million off of the costs associated with constructing my stadium once all is said and done, while Academy Expansion will allow me to build lots of small Youth Academies rather than one large one. This might not seem like a huge advantage, but it can be. One large, expensive Youth Academy means that you are committed to that country and changing your Academy approach will cost a lot of money and time. With several small academies, I can adjust to changes in the Infrastructure of the Gameworld with relative ease and little cost while still getting the same number of youth graduates. I can also spread myself across several countries and, depending on the layout of other youth academies, possibly increase the quality of youths I could get as opposed to building a 5 Star Youth Academy in just one country.
The big disadvantage that many of the Infrastructure skills have is that they only provide a one-time benefit. Once your stadium and Youth Academies are built, the Construction and Academy Expansion skills aren't helping you at all. While this is less than desirable compared to some other skills, I still think it is the best choice for me and the strategy that I plan to adopt in my new gameworld. Others may disagree.
I hope this has been a worthwhile guide for you through my thought process when deciding which skills I am choosing to specialize in once the new FML gameworlds open. It took a lot of thought and consideration from me and I hope it does from you as well as it could very well define the success of your club and your FML experience for the foreseeable future!
