Almost everyone who starts playing with a Championship manger editor seems to be thinking that the abilities described in page 1 are the most important to consider. After spending endless nights searching for my team's next 16-year old Saviola, it has become obvious to me that by far more important are the role ratings.

What is a role rating? Well there are several positions a player is rated for: goalkeeper, defender, defensive midfielder, midfielder, att. midfielder, striker, wing-back and winger. For each of these positions a player gets a rating out of 100, depending on his attributes. Taking into consideration that the algorithms used to produce the role ratings are mostly similar to the algorithms the game engine uses, it becomes easily understood that the role ratings are the most important hidden attributes!

Generally top players have good role ratings in other positions than their normal one. Take Shevchenko: He is a top striker, but also has one of the highest role ratings for Defender, as he has high heading, jumping and marking-tackling attributes.

This discussion becomes far more interested when it comes to judging minor players. There is a fine exemple in the last greek league update for Championship Manager 2001/2002. It is for Anastastios Skalidis, an18-year old striker.

Skalidis starts with a potential ability of 120, and a current of around 70. Pretty low for a top club, hah? Afte a couple of years, having reached a really low current ability of 105 (when my teams' usual average is over 170) , he is by far my best striker (and one of the best in the game) because ha scores 20 in acceleraion, anticipation, dribbling, finishing, jumping, flair, long shots, positioning, off the ball, strength, set peices and work rate, a 19 in stamina, and 18 in heading and technique!

And so what? So he scored for me 78 goals in one season, with 27(!) man of the match appearences, an average rating of 8,96(!) after 49 games! The important point to consider is that Skalidis has extremely low scores in attributes that do not influence his performance -and thus his role-rating-as a striker (e.g. 3 in creativity and 4 in teamwork. So his current ability of 105 is attributed to a role rating of 86,7/100, one of the highest in the game!

I hope i have made clear why the most important players attributes are the hidden role ratings. What is also important is that they are not totally hidden You can get an idea of them having two players compared one against the other. Then the game will show the result of the comparison of the best role ratings, pointing with 1-5 stars who is better in each position!