Of these players, who's better at this role, and why?

Pick players, then a role

Click two or more names on the rail and the screen shows what it can without a role: Best roles, each player's best role in and out of possession, and Raw data, everything captured for him. Pick a role under Judged as and it moves straight to Order.

• Any of your squads: there's no upper limit, and a first-teamer and an under-18 can sit in the same comparison. Players out on loan can be compared too.
• Only roles they can all play: the list holds the roles every compared player can play, in possession or out of it. If they share no position, every role any of them can play is listed, and the screen says so.

Opened from a position on Squad depth, it's this same screen, arriving with that position's players, its order and its role already picked.

Four tabs, four questions

• Best roles: what is each player best at, in and out of possession? Needs no role.
• Order: who is better at the role you picked?
• Comparison: why is one player ahead, and on which attributes and figures?
• Raw data: what exactly was captured for each player? Needs no role.

Order and Comparison score the players against each other, not against your squad, so a score here can differ from the same role on the player card, on Squad depth and on Best roles, and the screen says so under the role.

What a score is made of

Each player gets an overall score, then one each for attributes, metrics and statistics. The overall score is one weighted average over every column the role weights, not an average of the other three, so a role weighting sixteen attributes and two statistics is decided mostly by attributes.

Attribute scores are out of 20 for everyone, so they mean the same whoever else is compared. Metrics and statistics have no ceiling, so they're scored against the best in the group: add or remove a player and they move.

Not ranked, not guessed

A column a player has no figure for drops out of his average rather than counting as zero. But a player missing a whole kind of figure the role wants, such as a new signing with no football yet, would be scored on what's left. So he goes below a Not ranked line, with his attribute score still shown.

A squad player who hasn't played is treated the same way: Football Manager exports him with rows of zeros, and his minutes give him away. When nobody compared has any football, everyone is ranked on attributes, and the screen says so.

Your order

Drag players into your own order, or press Place at on a row to settle a player into the bottom spot of those still in the running, ruling players out one at a time. Every tab shows the same order, and Back to the role's ranking drops yours.

Placing a player changes nobody's score. He still counts in what everyone else is measured against.

Comparison: why is he ahead?

Comparison asks about one player against the rest, and ranks them against three crowds, a tab each. At a glance, above them, gives each tab's answer on one line.

• Attributes: each other, on the attributes the role weights, biggest differences first. Green is where a player beats him, and the last row nets it up.
• Against each other: each other on metrics and statistics, each at his own latest capture, with his minutes under his name. Dials rank them among themselves, head to head with each slice halved between him and one rival, or side by side; charts show where the gap comes from and plot everyone compared.
• Against the league: the league's players in the role's position group, from a league capture, head to head or side by side, with each player's typical league rank on every dial. A player under the capture's appearance filter has his own capture stand in, and it says so.
• The other half too: under the role, what the position asks for in the other half of the game, scored on its own weights and counting for nothing in the order.

Graphs draws the role's radar three ways, two of them below: a radar each, him against one rival at a time; against the field, him over the range of the rest; and an overlay with up to three others, nearest in the order, most like him or least like him. Beside it, where the gap comes from and how far he is from the median on every spoke.

Raw data: everything, side by side

Raw data is every figure captured for the players you've picked, in one table each for attributes and for statistics and metrics, with each player's minutes under his name. Click any row to rank everybody by it.

It shows the figures as Football Manager sent them, before any of the adjustments a score makes. The columns the role weights are marked with their weight, the best figure in a row is in bold, and the category chips narrow either table.

Straight back to your depth chart

Compare from a position on Squad depth and this same screen opens with that position's players, from every squad, already in its current order and judged by its role. Drag, place or leave the role's ranking as it is, then Apply this order writes it back onto the depth chart.

Every keeper you own is one comparison: first-teamers, loanees and youngsters together, each row saying which squad he's in. Opened as a tab there's no position behind it, so there's nothing to apply to.