Early season

Hi all,

I've got a question and I hope to get interesting answers.

Every game I play - no matter which team I join - I suffer bad losses during the first few games of the season.

My qusetion is, whether I can do something against that. Actually I play about 4-5 friendlies, and I try not to overload my players during pre-season (no special training schedule, they all remain in a schedule designed for their position).

I hope someone has suggestions how I can overcome this misery.

Try setting your preseason training to high fittness and strength and low every thing else.

Do you sign a lot of new players? If so, the squad takes some time -- often until Nov/Dec -- to gel, and won't play up to its potential early in the season.

Aye, squad cohesion seems to have much more import in FM09 than earlier versions. I've created squads in the Blue Square Premier that are, on paper, good enough to achieve a respectable position in the Championship (I cheated, obviously) and it's close to Christmas before they start playing like they should. Till then I'm getting the occassional crushing victory but form is extremely inconsistent and there are plenty of embarassing draws and defeats.

Generally for pre-season I leave my players on their standard training (I like to set my training up then just leave it; can't be doing with mucking about with it all season ) and arrange friendlies every three days, then leave a 7-10 day break between the last friendly and the first game of the season proper. My players tend to pick up lots of minor knocks and sprains for the first few games but are fighting fit by the kick-off of the season and have the advantage against teams who've had a less extensive pre-season campaign.

OK, thanks a lot for the answers.

Maybe I should work out a pre-season training schedule, it can't be a problem with too much new players as I only signed 2 new ones for this season (and they are both doing better than the rest of the squad).

How hard can I set the pre-season training schedule? I once started a game with leeds and set the intensity to high (lowest end of the scale) and I had about 10 injured players after about 2 weeks.

I set all my training to the highest it can be and still be "Medium" (keep clicking till it hits "high", then click back one) and just leave it there all season. Almost nobody complains about too much training (the few who do are the sort of players who also complain about their contracts, getting substituted, that I fined them for getting a red card, or that the grass on the pitch is too green and doesn't match their hair band) and their stats seem to go up quite nicely. I do get more injuries than I like but not so many that it's a problem and, tbh, more of them come from matches than training.

lol i had a suspicion that if i did well in freindlies then i'd have a shocking first month however if i did bad in freindlies i had good start to season lol i did belive for a time