Ideal Pre-Season - The First Step To Success

Probably everyone, who played FM at least once faced a problem of bad physical condition of their players early in the season, especially the first one - when the players are very tired after the game and often get injured. The reason of all misfortunes, as usual, lies on the surface - pre-season training was unsuccessful. Actually how to prepare your team for games during the summer (or winter) break, will be discussed in this article.

In order to understand written below, it is necessary to know all the key parametres that have an impact on player's physical form. These are: Match Exercise, Jadeness, Fitness and Conditions. Those who heard this words for the first time, should read article called "Condition and jadeness in FM09" (http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=77549) for a start. For the others, I'll briefly remind.

1. Match Exercise - is an indicator of player's match practice. Increases by 0.12% for each minute spent on football pitch. Remains unchanged for 8 days after the game and starts to fall when player doesn't play more then a week.

2. Jadeness - is an indicator of player's fatigue. Falls every day by 6 points, rises after played matches by 40-60 points on average (the lower the index itself is, the faster it grows).

3. Fitness - shows physical readiness of the player. Falls after matches, rises every day. The lower the index, the faster it grows. Also grows faster if player has high value of Match Exercise.

4. Condition - combined figure, equals to Fitness*86% + Match Exercise*14%. So it is a weighted average of physical readiness and match practice.

These indicators influence players as follows - when a certain level of Jadeness is achieved (about 300), level of player's game falls, and at extreme excess (about 500) in a profile of the player appears a message "Needs a rest". High value of Jadeness is a consequence of a big amount of matches played during the short period of time. This situation suggests to use rotation of the squad.

With other parametres everything is easier - the first and the third define the fourth, the only parameter visible to managers (players). I don't think, it is necessery to prove that the lower Condition is, the worse footballer plays. Besides, I have already written that Fitness recovers better when value of Match Exercise is higher. Similarly players, who have low value of Match Exercise, get tired faster in matches and are more likely to become injured. That's where we face problems mentioned in the beginning of article.

How to fight with this? It is necessary to plan your schedule correctly and calculate the number of friendly matches during the pre-season period. In ideal, before the first game value of Fitness and Match Exercise should be 100% and parameter Jadeness should be the lowest as possible. I do not even concern themes connected with training - there were written a lot about them and they seem to be useless in our ocassion.

To understand, how correctly to spend pre-season period, I have made experiment consisting of two parts. Firstly I have played the period to the first match as I usually play, then studied all the necessary figures. Then I played the same period only with the made schedule. I was satisfied with the result I got, but about it in the end of the article.

Part 1

I take under my control club called "Angers SCO" from the French Ligue 2. Game starts on July, 1st and the first official match - on August, 1st. So exactly one month we have. Running beforehand I will tell that at scheduling it is important to know two dates - a date when game starts in your country (in my case France) (important that in country you choose, as from these date two more are counted, about which further) and the date of first official game. That's why it is undesirable to choose at the beginning of new game date of start from other country, if it is after yours you will simply suffer from lack of time. If you wish to play in two countries at once, choose date to start which is earlier.

So it is the 1st of July. I have 28 players in first team. I do nothing with the players, and use only those who are. So we look at initial values of first three parametres (Condition I do not touch because we already know how to count it). Match Exercise on start depends on value of attribute Natural Fitness and it is equal (50+Natural Fitness) in percentage. So it can change from 51% to 70%. My players have Natural Fitness starting with 8 up to 16 as a maximal value in my team and it means that Match Exercise is from 58% to 66%. Everyone has Jadeness on zero, Fitness - 86 to 90 %.

Six friendly matches are arranged. I cancelled two of them, so four matches left - on 5th, 9th ,14th and 24th of July. I will not stop on results because they are not significant. I will only write about what I generally observed.

For a full match player gets a bit more than 10% of Match Exercise, so to get 100% he needs to play 3-4 matches. To be precise, exact amount of minutes can be calculated using formula: (50-NF)/0.12, where NF is Natural Fitness. For my players this number of minutes fluctuates between 283 and 350 minutes. If a footballer has played not a full match, Match Exercise starts to fall earlier than in a week.

http://fmfan.1gb.ua/tac/diag1.PNG

With Fitness everything is much more interesting. The first 6 days, until the 7th of July, it didn't rise at all, even fell. After it started to rise, but slowly, and in 7 days - on the 14th of July it started to rise rapidly. These are the two dates relating to the date of game start, I mentioned before - the 7th and the 14th day. So, on recovery of Fitness I have approximately two weeks, two and a half maximum. Speed of recovery is proportional to an indicator of match practice and depends on indicator Fitness itself. Does the skill Stamina affect the speed of this process? Figures say that it doesn't. With 100% of game practice and depending on own value Fitness grows as follows:

To 80% - 10% a day.

80-90% - 9,25% a day.

90-98% - 2% a day.

98-100% - 1% a day.

Thus for a week between games from 60 % it is possible to be restored on 97,7 %, from 75 % - to 99,6 %. But at only 70 % of game practice for a week from 60 % the player will be restored to 92,4 %, and from 75 % - to 94,8 %.

http://fmfan.1gb.ua/tac/diag2.PNG

It is needless to look at Jadeness separately - we won't be able to make any effect on its changes, as its growth and falling depend a little on other factors except himself and a number of minutes spent on a pitch, so we will consider a situation in aggregate.

To get your team fully fit to the first official game, it is necessary:

1. That each player has played necessary amount of time in friendly matches. I have written formula above, but to make it easier I will say following. If player's Natural Fitness equals to 7 - 4 full matches are needed, if NF=17 - 3 matches will be enough. The rest - on a proportion. Thus the break between matches should not exceed 8 days.

2. To play last friendly 8 days before the official one. Then it is enough that player's fitness on the match end was not below 69% and condition below 73%. If it is 7 days before a match, fitness will have to be 79% and condition - 82%.

As a result the best schedule of friendly matches will look like this - last match 8 days before first official and 3 more matches with an interval in 7-8 days. If you for some reasons, don't have enough time, arrange the matches so that the interval between the first matches was less (e.g. you begin on 10th of July, so arrange the matches in following order 11,14,17 and 24th of July) - then Jadeness will be gathered in smaller portions for a match (as will not have time to fall) and when reaching the date of official game it will normally fall. While during first three matches players will have to play all 90 minutes, during the fourth one you will get an opportunity to regulate the amount of time spent on pitch so that everyone had enough time to get enough match practice and the condition level wouldn't fall lower than critical (condition is much more essential). Where and with whom to play isn't important. If to reject desire adjusting your tactic to ideal or to get as much money as possible while playing with "big", playing with your own reserve team is the best option. You will save the time, will be able to minimise risk of getting your players injured, and the main advantage is that 22 players will be used so you'll have 2 starting elevens in superb condition.

It doesn't mean that only this schedule is correct and it is necessary to play only this way. The main idea is that only three factors matter - total amount of minutes played (and it needs to be allocated more or less during pre-season period), the date of last friendly match and the condition level at the end of it.

So here is my view of how pre-season's schedule must be built basing on this material.

Part 2

I load the game from July, 2nd. I cancel all the friendlies and arrange 4 matches with my reserve team on July, 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th. I choose 22 players from my first team. 11 stay in first team, the second half will play for reserves and the others i send in youth team so that they didn't disturb. I take reserve team under control. For each match I pick up 11 players for both sides. You can add some youth players in case someone gets injured, but in this occasion i don't need them. Moreover, I go on holiday for a day so match is played without substitutions. In last match I could have substituted someone, but my team was in good form, so I decided to play without replacements. So, if not to consider injuries, all the footballers played 4 matches.

In this table you can see the results. The higher part shows Match Exercise, lower - Fitness before and after each match. Julien Sola got injured in first match for 2 months, Martin Fall was taken away during the last friendly, Jean-Francois Riviere - received his injury in second match but he didn't manage to recover from. Six players reached condition from 98,7-99,9. These players had to be replaced during last match. And 13 players are in superb condition and have 100%.

http://fmfan.1gb.ua/tac/table1.PNG

Everything what has been discussed above, concerns not only the first season. The situation further only will become easier - level of your players' match practice won't get less than the number specified by Natural Fitness value, and time you have should be at least not less. The same concerns a winter pause. Month without games will cost you 20-25% of lost game practice. Well further you can count by yourself.

I hope, everyone will find this article useful. If there are questions, I'll answer them with pleasure. I will be very grateful, if you find possibility to develop discussion.

Very informative post

That's brilliant. I remember the last thread; this presents the information more simply. If someone can re-present the key points even more simply, the more casual players who complain about injuries and poor early-season form will have a goldmine on their hands.

So no need to schedule friendlies with 11 substitutions at half-time; just rig up games with the reserves and give your 22-man first team squad a good run-out. Terrific. Will implement in my next pre-season.

Nice to see another brilliant article. May be mod's can move this thread to tactics/trainings forum?

Excellent stuff

How did you find out these facts and figures? Genius man do you work for SI?

How did you find out these facts and figures? Genius man do you work for SI?

Experimentation and analysis. Loads of FM gurus do it - check out the tactics forum.

I've got values of ME, fitness and jadeness using Genie Scout. And then simply have analysed them.

Popped this into the Unofficial Tactics Bible.

Very useful post.

Brilliant.

Very good article.