The best add is a sporting question. The price is a different one.
This is the recruitment engine the sporting director operates: what the squad has, where its scheme leaves it exposed, and what a signing or a departure does to Team KR. It diagnoses the squad first, then re-ranks available targets by their impact on this squad in this scheme, not by raw individual KR, because the best player in the world can be the worst signing if he duplicates what you already have. It produces the sporting answer, the Team KR delta and the fit, and hands the price to the Value Engine, reporting both side by side and never collapsing them into one number. It consumes finalized player ratings and never re-evaluates a player.
Find where the scheme leaves you exposed, then go looking.
A signing is an answer, so the engine finds the question first. It runs the Team KR evaluation on the current squad, maps which scheme demands are filled and by whom, and surfaces the gaps and the fragilities, an uncovered A-tier demand is a critical gap, a load-bearing position whose only cover is far below the starter is one injury from a scheme-level drop.
This is diagnosis before optimisation, the same rule the whole engine runs on, applied to squad building: you do not sign the best available player, you find the position where the scheme is breaking or about to break and you fix that. A club that shops for names instead of needs stacks talent where it already has it and stays exposed where it does not. The squad tells you what to buy before the market does.
Illustrative engine read on the real squad diagnosis (the Coverage Map, Missing Demands with A-tier critical and B-tier priority gaps, Fragility Exposure, and Insurance Planning at load-bearing positions), ranked by Team KR impact. Composite squad, demonstration figures.
The best player for you is the biggest delta, not the biggest name.
Once the needs are known, the board re-ranks available targets by their Team KR delta in your scheme, running each onto a copy of the squad and re-evaluating. A higher individual rating does not win the ranking, fit does, so a lesser-rated player who fills the critical gap can outrank a bigger name who duplicates your starter or does not suit how you play.
The highest-rated player on the board, the 88 attacking mid, is an AVOID, because he makes the squad worse through redundancy, he takes minutes and a squad place from a role you already own while your build-out still has no deep progressor. The 84 who fills the gap is the TARGET. Every verdict, from TARGET down through STRONG ADD, DEPTH, DEVELOPMENT, PASS, and AVOID, is a sporting read on the delta, never the raw rating. Sign the delta, not the name.
Illustrative engine read on the real decision board (targets re-ranked by Team KR delta in the scheme, the verdict tiers from TARGET to AVOID, a redundant high-KR add scoring negative). Composite targets, demonstration figures.
The delta is the sporting answer. The price is a separate one, reported beside it.
The board never folds the money into the ranking. Squad Construction produces the sporting answer, the Team KR delta and the fit, and the Value Engine prices it, the fee, the wage, the FFP and PSR headroom, the cost per KR point. The two sit side by side, because the best sporting add and the right financial one are different questions, and collapsing them hides both.
A TARGET the Value Engine prices beyond the club's means is still the right sporting call and the wrong financial one, and the engine says exactly that rather than quietly downgrading the sporting read to fit the budget. It also separates a need that is urgent this window from one a young player or a returning loanee resolves on his own, so the club spends where the pressure is real. Rank the fit, price it apart, and buy where the need will not fix itself.
Illustrative engine read on the real sporting-financial separation (Squad Construction produces the Team KR delta and fit, the Value Engine prices it, reported together and never collapsed) and the Multi-Year temporal read (urgent-now versus self-resolving), read-only on the KR. Composite reads, demonstration figures.
Building a squad starts with a diagnosis, not a shopping list: the engine runs the current squad, maps which scheme demands are filled and by whom, and finds the critical gaps and the fragilities before it looks at a single target, because you fix where the scheme is breaking, not where a big name happens to be available. Then it ranks targets by what each does to this squad in this scheme, the Team KR delta, so the best player for you is the biggest delta and a redundant star can score negative and read as an avoid. And it keeps the two questions apart, the sporting call and the price, producing the delta and the fit itself and handing the fee, the wage, and the FFP and PSR headroom to the Value Engine, reporting both together and never folding one into the other, because a target priced beyond your means is still the right sporting call and the wrong financial one. It buys where the need will not resolve itself, never re-evaluates a player, and never mutates the squad. Diagnose the exposure, rank the fit, and price it apart.
Diagnose, rank the fit, price it apart.
Squad Construction diagnoses the squad's exposure, re-ranks targets by Team KR delta in the scheme, hands the price to the Value Engine without collapsing the two, separates urgent needs from self-resolving ones, and never re-rates a player.