LONG READ: What it takes to put Football Manager together from the perspective of Ross County researcher Caylum Matson
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For most football fans, the closest they will come to being involved in the day-to-day running of their club is through games like Football Manager.
At Ross County's level in the Scottish Premiership, it is only the best of the best who get the chance to run out on to the pitch as players, and the coaching staff is an even more select group.
The long-running management simulation franchise, then, is one of the only ways the everyday supporter can get any sort of semblance of what that feeling is like – but what goes into creating the game behind the scenes?
Every club will have a researcher assigned to them by Football Manager, whose job it is to make sure that behind-the-scenes information like staff members are up to date, as well as judging players' abilities to decide on attributes.
Caylum Matson took over that job for the Staggies last summer, and he says he tries to gather information from as many different sources as possible to help make his job easier.
"I've got a little soft spot for Ross County so I offered to take them on in the summer," he explained.
"I was happy to do it – I quite like the idea of looking at all the geeky stuff around the club and trying to put in all the stats.
"Basically we've got an online database full of all the players that are in Football Manager. We are given access for whoever we are a researcher of, and then throughout the year you have certain deadlines to go in and update stats that go towards games.
"I'm quite geeky about it, so I've followed lots of different Ross County forums and fan pages on social media to get their opinions, and when I have a spare couple of hours I try to watch full games. That's how I keep track of them because I can't go to every single game.
"I look at data as well – I'm quite data driven. I quite like looking at stuff and seeing that someone maybe isn't that active in their finishing, so I might put them down because of that."
Matson's real-life affinity for Ross County stemmed from a save he had a decade ago, when the Staggies first earned promotion to the top flight.
Always looking for an underdog, he took on the challenge and filled the trophy cabinet in Dingwall with silverware – even making it to European finals after years and years of in-game play.
That success as a player does not make his job as a researcher any easier though, with attributes and ratings often a point of contention among the researchers.
"There's a group of us who are Scottish researchers, so we often have debates on whether this player should be this and that player should be that," Matson said.
"Someone said that Alex Iacovitti was very overrated this year, but it is quite hard to say whether someone is a 10 or a 12 at something. Their performances can fluctuate so much.
"One year they can have a really good season, and a good example of that was Eamonn Brophy – he did really well at Kilmarnock playing for Steve Clarke, but maybe he's just an average player playing for a really good manager.
"You've still got to make him as good as he is playing in real life, no matter what the future might hold, but it is quite hard to read players.
"You can see if someone is fast, but how can you tell if someone is faster than someone else if they're not a wing back or a full back? Central defenders especially are hard to rate on pace just because they don't run so much during a game.
"It can be hard to say what a 10 or an 11 is in finishing, but you've got the database. We can go on to the Premiership and sort it by attributes, so you can see that Lawrence Shankland might be the best finisher in Scotland, and then there's Antonio Colak at Rangers and so on.
"You can grade it on that, because you can say someone isn't as good as this other player at finishing."
It stands to reason that the more researchers can watch players, the more accurate their attributes will be in the game for on-pitch matters.
However, that can make periods such as the current January transfer window challenging for the likes of Matson, who will have limited opportunities to see new signings in action before the next data lock.
There is also the issue of off-field characteristics that all add to the complexity of Football Manager, which can be some of the most difficult parts of a researcher's job.
"An example for Ross County was Kazeem Olaigbe – he came over from Southampton, so he comes into my database when he transfers and the Southampton researcher puts in his details, his contract and stuff like that," Matson reasoned.
"Then I leave it as it is at first. They've rated him up to the summer, so if there is a glaring mistake I can make that change before the game comes out, but you get more of a true reflection of them in the January update.
"You try not to touch attributes too much before you get the chance to look at them. People don't always realise the data deadlines and how much we've got to watch a player to decide that.
"There are a lot of hidden traits like ambition and sportsmanship, professionalism, and stuff like that that are hard to whittle down to an actual attribute that you're happy with.
"It's the same with attributes like free kicks and corners. If they don't take them in a match, do you take that to mean they're not as good, or do you just not put in a stat at all?
"If you do that it randomly generates. I think there is an algorithm behind it that will keep it a respectable number and not end up with a centre back having 18 for free kicks for example.
"The Scottish team especially is such a big team, we work so hard at what we do to always try to get the miniscule data. Our head researcher is fantastic at getting the little things in, and there's another one who is unreal too, and they will find out players' liked clubs and stuff like that.
"We go into a lot of detail of what that player actually is like and their personality, so it's quite hard to do. It's not an easy job that we can just stick anything in and say that will do."
While debates may rage between the researchers and fans about attributes and abilities, Matson says it is rare to get complaints from the players themselves.
What gathering such intricate detail has done, though, is change how he plays the game – and even just his general football experience.
"At the start of the game, you know what everybody's stats are and who's got really good potential – and who you might be able to get in cheaply," he added.
"At that point it can taint the enjoyment, but once you get two or three seasons in you start getting a bit more random.
"It's maybe tainted my enjoyment for Football Manager in the sense it's not as random, but it has made my football viewing better.
"I'm looking at all these players and trying to work out what they're like and how good they are, which is quite interesting to see."
