Suggestion: Training Schedules evolve into Training Plans?

I don't consider myself an 'expert' on training, as I'm still getting into it in more depth as my experience FM2009 increases, and I delve further and further into its tactical and training systems.

However, it strikes me that perhaps what a lot of people are trying to achieve with their Tactical Schedules (certainly what I'm starting to try to achieve at any rate), is to essentially end up with a training regime tailored to each member of your squad.

Why the current interface doesn't quite fit the need

However, I find that the current tactical interface, i.e. Training Schedules alone, do not really give you a tool to automate this, and thus to easily get the best out of your players and maximise their improvement (and also cut down the time spent monitoring and changes a players' Schedule).

The reason for this is that I don't think there is any 'killer' Training Schedule for any 1 player - training Schedules are always are trade-off of groups of attributes (slider-settings) over others. So what you need to do is rotate their time spent on, say a Skills Schedule, and a Fitness Schedule, and a Positional Schedule, such that they get the best mixture of time spent on and distribution of the various aspects relevant to their training.

Nothing controversial there, I'd imagine.

What I'd like to be able to do...

What I would like to do is set up a Training Plan for each of my players. This Training Plan would consist of 1 or more Training Schedules, and would indicate the number of weeks (or maybe days?) that each Schedule is assigned to the player. From my point of view, I think I'd be happy for this to be a number of weeks, and anyway I think the Training is processed on a weekly basis?

So I could assign my Left Back / Left Midfield player to my 'High Attacking Midfield' schedule for 3 weeks, to my 'High Wide Defender' schedule for 1 week, and to 'High Fitness' for 1 week, assuming that he is already pretty fast, and that I play him mosty as a winger, but sometimes as cover at left-back.

What this feature would achieve - less reliance on slider tweaking and potential full automation of Training = the same depth of training system, but more time spent on the football...

So, now that I'm able to create a Training Plan for each player, I can have a really concise set of Training Schedules that just look after the main setting groups required for each type of position (e.g. Centre Backs, Wide Defenders, Centre Mids, Strikers, etc.), and then a small group of Fitness Schedules (which might be High, Medium, etc.. or you might be able to get away with 1 with the Plans feature), and maybe 1 global, or a small set of slightly-tailored Ball Skills programmes.

Now all I do is pick from my clear and concise set of Schedules, and drop them into a Training Plan tailored for that player in order to address his weaknesses as a player, relevant to how I use him in my squad.

What I'm not doing, is creating potentially dozens upon dozens of individual or experimental Training Schedules, and potentially then not getting the best out of the system, as I confuse myself with infinite combinations of slider settings and infinite variations of positional and individual Training Schedules.

And, once I am happy with my Training Schedule Set (which I will only ever now have to make very minor tweaks to), and once I have created my individual Training Plans for each player, with my choice of the Schedules and their time spent on each, that's it.

I just leave my coaches to coach. Only time I might change it is when a player gets injured, I put him on a generic Fitness Training Plan. In fact, all you would want to do in this case, is pick one Fitness Schedule to put him on when he is injured, so this could be an in-built feature of Training Plans - select what schedule to default to in the event that the player is injured.

My view is that this would be a more logical structure to creating tailored training for each player in your squad, and further to that, once you're happy with a) your now much more easily-managed and logical set of Schedules and b) the Plans that you have set for each player, you now have exactly what you want in place for each player and it is fully-automated from that point on.... even taking into account injuries!

It also takes us away from relying on sliders 100% of the time - it's still reliant on them in the background, but to tweak a players' Training Plan, if you have a good, concise set of attribute-group-optimised Schedules, should only require tweaking of his Plan - i.e. how often he spends on each Schedule that makes up that Plan.

Hope that makes sense and thanks for sticking with it!

I think training schedule like CM03-04 with daily training is better. I see it much more interesting and closer to the real training schedule.

I'd also like universal changes to be possible. I like to give my players high fitness training in pre-season but I find it tedious moving them 1 by 1 to the schedule then back to their reguar It could maybe be an option of fitness schedule for (a number of choices like 1, 2, 3 months) and then when the time is up they go back to their assigned schedule.

I agree that the training system needs an overhaul, especially to make it easier to create individual training regimes. However, I don't see how your system is any different from the current system. Your system is still using the same sliders, except that the user doesn't see them. The same goes for the daily training schedule. Ultimately, what you are doing is setting sliders, because your combination of daily schedules will, over a week produce a certain ratio between different training components (strength, aerobic, tactics, etc). And that is what determines a player's progression. Hiding the sliders won't make a difference to training, it'll just make it more difficult to obtain exactly what you want.

nni is right. The only thing anyone can really ask to change about training is maybe separating attributes. I would like a defender to work on composure without him having to train on shooting. Maybe give a winger a high crossing schedule without having to work on free kicks and pens.

Although the newer training system is simpler, having played with it for a couple of years now I don't really see it as fit for purpose. I'd rather they scrapped it and came up with something new.

They either need a total redesign or go back to the original daily schedules which just to me seemed more realistic and intuitive.