How to read a Scout Report

The generator is deliberately simple, and knowing the algorithm is what lets you read its output critically. It walks your chosen formation slot by slot, in formation order, and drops in the highest–Sensei Score player who is still unused, can play that exact position, and clears every constraint you set.

There is no randomness anywhere in it. The same pool, formation and constraints always produce the same XI — so if the report changes, it is because your inputs or the underlying data changed, not because it rolled differently.

Because slots are filled in order, an earlier slot can claim a player a later slot needed more. A versatile attacker who can play LW and ST might be taken by the wing, leaving the striker slot to be filled by someone weaker — or left empty.

This is a known v1 trade-off: greedy filling is predictable and easy to reason about, but it is not a globally optimal squad. When a report looks lopsided — a superb front three and a thin midfield — suspect this before you conclude the pool is shallow.

Any slot no eligible player could fill is reported explicitly rather than quietly left blank. That list is the single most useful output on the page, because it tells you exactly where your constraints and the pool disagree.

An empty slot has only three possible causes:

• Your budget is too tight for that position. Loosen the value cap and re-run; if the slot fills immediately, you have priced yourself out of a scarce role.
• Your age or nationality filter is too narrow. A single-nation XI will run out of specialists long before it runs out of attackers.
• The pool genuinely has nobody there. Wing-backs and keepers thin out fastest — see position archetypes.

Change one constraint at a time and re-run. The constraint that fills the slot is the one that was actually binding.

When you set a maximum value, players whose transfer value is unknown are excluded, not included. An unpriced player cannot be proven affordable, and quietly slipping them into a budget XI would make the constraint meaningless.

The practical consequence: a tight budget filter can hide good players for a reason that has nothing to do with their quality. If a report under a cap looks strangely empty, try it once with no cap to see what the data is actually holding.

The report averages three things across the players it managed to place: Sensei Score, age, and potential. Two of those move together and one fights the others.

A lower average age with the same average potential is straightforwardly better — you are buying the same ceiling with more time to reach it. But watch for an average dragged around by a partly-filled XI: averages are computed over filled slots only, so a report with four empty positions can show a flattering Sensei average precisely because it only counted the easy picks.

Each selection carries a one-line rationale naming the player's age, their Sensei ceiling, and how much growth headroom is left. It is templated, not written fresh per player — the value is that you can scan eleven of them in a few seconds and spot the one that reads differently.

A pick whose rationale says "already at a ceiling" in a squad of players with double-digit headroom is worth a second look: it is usually the algorithm telling you that position had no better option inside the wonderkid floors of 21 and under with 85+ potential.