Louis Saha
So there we have Louis Saha, who has finally seemed to escape his injury problems, and is finally showing us all what a terrific player he is, and what he is capable of. This update also raises two points about original stats assigned by Konami. First of all, that Konami can get aspects of a player right:shocking: , and secondly that if they dont know a certain value to assign to a player they just give a random one, either judging by the position they play in or by the team they play for:no: . So here are several aspects which I feel need saying.
Athleticism - Louis is a fast player, and with his big long legs has a great top speed of 89. Konami recognised well the ratio between his top speed and acceleration, but they placed it slightly to high. So in this update he has 89 top speed and 85 acceleration. One thing to also recognise about Louis is that he is just as fast on the ball as he is off it, so he has an 89 for dribble speed as well. Another of his great athletic qualities is his tremendous leap. 90 shows just how high he can get with his springy legs, and he gets up ingame just like he does in real life with this value. I didnt have to change his 83 for stamina as that was spot on already:shocking:, but one thing I DEFINITELY needed to change was his mentality. This is an example of what I mentioned earlier about Konami making up a random figure as they dont really know the right one to use:angry:. In the default data, Louis had a mentality of 66! It may not be his greatest quality but it still requires a figure noticabley higher than that, and I raised it by a whole 10 points to 76. Now ingame, Louis the right correlation between his stamina and mentality and you notice it in the latter stages of the game now. Finally he is has great agility with a value of 88, so he can move his feet just as quick as he can in real life and wriggle through defence.
Shooting - Accuracy and composure of his shot are two great attributes for Louis. An 82 is just right for Louis, as he is not one of those lethal finishers like Crespo, Henry, Schevchenko, but is still great at it and can tuck his shots away well. Shot power is another example of a stat Konami didnt really know for Louis so they made up a random one, probably based on the fact that they use the stereotype 'all strikers must have a really hard shot:angry: . An 88 was what they gave them in the default data:laugh:, which is simply inacurrate. A much more suitable figure is 79 which is what I gave him in this update. It reflects him well, as he can still generate power when he needs to, but he cant blast a ball to the standard of someone worthy of 88 shot power! His technique is fantastic. He is gifted in so much that he has the ability to produce great shots under pressure, even when it looks like he cant. 90 perfectly represents this as ingame he can get great shots off even when the defender is closing down quickly, or about to slide tackle. Dont want to rant guys, but curling was another example of stupidly assigned stat. So instead of me going on about this and hackind some people off, lets just say I raised it all the way to 75 which is much more appropriate:happy:
General Technique - A strong point here for Louis. He has a great first touch, and 86 is just right for his technique rating. Some may say it should be higher, as he has performed some wonderful first touches, but lets not forget he has performed equally as many bad touches, and two or three moments to not change a stat value, so 86 is perfect
. Another plus for him is he is good with his weaker foot aswell. Konami got his accuracy spot on with a 6, but didnt represent his frequency as well, which needed to be lowered two points down to 5. I will just briefly touch on his passing by saying that Konami did good job generally on it, and I only needed to adjust few of the values by couple of points. Nothing notable or out of the ordinary to mention about his passing:happy:
Team play - The final thing I want to raise about Louis is his team playing qualities. Its something which has definitely improved since his earlier days at Fulham, and something konami haven't recognised. His positioning has got better and the fluency of his passes has got better as well. In short we could some him as having improved in playing for the TEAM, not just being able to run around very fast and knock a few goals in! I raised this value from a default of 73 up to a much more suitable value of 80 which shows his positioning, runs, and passing fluency alot better than the original.
