FIFA 13 | Lower League Gems – Centre backs

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Well here we are, back for another series of Lower League Gems articles! The idea behind these articles is providing quality players to teams limited funds. With that in mind, none of the players in these articles cost more than £1m.

As before, remember that player contracts have a huge impact. The fewer years left on the contract, the more likely you are to get a good deal. So if a player only has 1 year left on his contract you can get him for much less than his asking price. As such, I’ve added a column that says how many years are left on each player’s contract, and whether you can get him in the first transfer window. That’s the “Avai?” column (short for “available?”). To save space I’ve formatted it like this: Y/3 would mean yes, you can buy this player in the first window, and he has 3 years left on his contract. If it says something like “N/5? that means he has a 5 year contract and you can’t get him at first (the “N” is because he’s just joined the club), but you may be able to get them in the next window. The ones to look out for are Y/1 or Y/0, as some players only have months left on their contracts. Players who are on loan will have a “-” in this column because information on their contracts is not available.

As you can see from the length of the table below, this has been a great year for cheap players on FIFA. So much so in fact, that I’ve had to make the minimum potential 76 (last year it was 74) because there are just so many cheap, talented players out there! So the players on these lists will have a minimum potential of 76, will cost no more than £1m and will be aged no older than 25. Never let it be said that I don’t spoil you for choice!

So, here are my recommendations:

• Nathan Ake
• Aleksandr Putsko
• Menno Koch

Nathan Ake has been a popular choice with people since the game came out, and you can see why. Although you can’t get him in the first window, if you wait until January he should become available and will still be ridiculously cheap. However, a lot of people have noticed that he disappears from the game if you start a career with the latest squads (he must have been put back into Chelsea’s reserves or something). So to make sure you can get him, start with default squads (it also means that you know player potentials for sure, as EA occasionally tweaks potentials without announcing it).

My next recommendation is Aleksandr Putsko. I’ve chosen him because not only is he very cheap, but he only has a year left on his contract, so you can probably get him for around £300,000 – £400,000. He’s on a team loaded with talent so they won’t say he’s a valuable asset, making him a real bargain.

Menno Koch is my final recommendation. Like Putsko he only has a year left on his contract so can be bought extremely cheaply. As well as that he’s very young, giving you plenty of years of growth. Players can easily exceed their potential this year if you play them enough, so the younger a player is, the better chance you have of getting him over his potential. That’s why a player like Menno Koch can be such good value.

Players are ordered by potential, then cost, so it should be pretty simple to find someone who meets both your budget and ability/potential requirements.

Finally, if you’ve had any experiences of good players’ prices changing wildly (especially if their price drops), please post it in the comments!

Below is the complete list: