Rating
Match rating
After each match you will be able to see both teams' match ratings on the right side of the full commentary text. It may look something like this:
EXAMPLE TEAMNAME F.C.
Player rating and team formation (link to 'evil' stars)
Team Attitude: Normal
Tactic: Attack in the Middle
Tactic skill: solid
Midfield: weak (high)
Right Defence: passable (very low)
Central Defence: inadequate (low)
Left Defence: weak (high)
Right Attack: weak (low)
Central Attack: solid (very low)
Left Attack: wretched (very high)
This gives you an indication of how strong or weak any of the 7 areas of your team play were in the match. If your midfield was stronger (e.g passable compared to his weak)than your opponent's then you will have had more possession of the ball in the game and thus more chances to score (this is complicated slightly if he played counter-attacks LINK).
The defensive and attacking ratings can be compared according to logic, so his left attack strength was pitted against my right defensive strength and so on.
Do not think that defense and attack ratings are like for like. It is generally considered that you would need an attack rating around twice or just below twice the quoted strength of his opposing defense rating if you hope to make break-throughs in that particular area of the field. For example: If his central defense is around "weak" I may need a central attacking rating of more than "passable" to be fairly confident of a break-through there. Nothing is certain, though, because of our old friend Random.
Overall rating
Hattrick by default doesn't provide a way to easily express overall strength of a team, in order to compare two teams or assess the progress of a team. The most primitive measure would be a total number of stars players gained after playing a match. However, due to several reasons, this number showed rather inefficient and deceiving.
For that purpose, HatTrick users looked for other ways to express overall team rating. The most popular seem to be HatStat. Other include LoddarStats, VnukStats etc.
