Captaincy and Set-Piece Takers

When considering your captain, one of the primary things to look for is a high Influence attribute. Anyone with 17 or above here should immediately be considered as a candidate, but there’s more to look at than just that. Your captain should be mentally strong enough to be a capable leader of his team-mates. In FML you can't see the player's Personality, therefore you have to figure it out from his mental attributes and his performance on the pitch.
Also consider the player’s age and experience – ideally he’ll have been at the team for a few years and been in football long enough to understand what it is to captain a team. Besides Influence, other things to look would be: Determination, Bravery, Teamwork and Work Rate.

Good set-pieces can be the difference between no points and one, or one point and three. Taking advantage of the numerous dead-ball situations which occur in matches can work massively to your benefit.

Primarily you need to identify your best corner, throw-in, and free kick takers. Each of these have their own attributes, so initially look for 15 and above in these areas. If your squad isn’t blessed with anyone particularly capable, consider bringing one in. Once you’ve identified potential takers, you can start narrowing the selections down.

A good corner taker will also have good Crossing, naturally because they’ll be using these crossing skills to put the ball into dangerous areas. Also consider the footedness of a player – do you want your corners to be in-swinging or out-swinging?

A good free-kick taker will also have good Crossing if the attempts are not direct at goal, since the free-kick will likely be put into a dangerous offensive area. If the shot is direct on goal, Long Shots may come into consideration depending on the distance, and a good Technique may be required. High Composure and Concentration are often seen in the best dead-ball specialists, so try and piece these attributes together as best you can to find the ideal free-kick takers.

Throw-in takers should have a good Long Throws rating to make full use of the situation, but to pull it off well they’ll need to have good ratings in Strength and Balance, to get a really good throw away. Ideally a long throw will be towards a target in the penalty area.

When selecting Penalty takers, much of the above applies. Your regular penalty taker should have a high Penalty Taking attribute, may have good Finishing, and above most other attributes, needs high Composure, Concentration, and Decisions. Consider these attributes in greater scope when selecting takers for a penalty shootout. It may be that you’re forced to use players who aren’t natural penalty takers, so look at the next most important attributes – mentally strong, capable players who strike a ball well and make a good decision.

The above part was taken from the FML Manual. Personally, I've learned that Technique, Composure and Concentration count more than the Free Kicks attribute in FML - in terms of scoring direct free-kicks. Another thing I noticed, is that few of my best ever corner takers, were really poor at Crossing. Regarding Penalty takers, I remember not having decent ones at times, yet still scoring a very good percentage of them, just by setting one of the central defenders to take them - I guess being strong mentally helped me with this. Funny thing is, having players with high Penalty Taking, but lacking some mental attributes, will cost you more misses than you might expect.

Part of content was taken from FM/FML Manuals © Sports Interactive Ltd 2008