Training suggestions

This post is primarily a suggestion to SI as a way to overhaul the training module...

As someone who's bought pretty much every CM/FM since CM2 but rather drifted away in the last few years, I have to say after playing the demo for FM2010 I'm really looking forward to the new game. The main reason for this is the new tactics creator; it actually feels like I'm a human being setting up a team to play football now, rather than a pattern seeking robot endlessly notching sliders back and forth. A great and necessary improvement, however the one area of the game that still needs real improvement is the whole philosophy behind training.

Currently training seems to be focused on improving each of your player's individual attributes, whilst in reality this is actually a pretty minor part of a training program. The main aims of training are to prepare your players for the upcoming match, and to practice the tactics you plan to employ. The managers are instructing their team about the weaknesses they need to exploit in their next opponents and how best to counter their strengths. Currently these functions are incorporated entirely into the tactics engine; what I would like to see is much greater integration of the tactics and training modules...when you think about it they are really two halves of the same thing!

For example, when setting your team tactics for corners, this should not simply be a case of picking 'man to man'/zonal and the player positioning on match day. The tactics for corners should largely be part of the training (deciding things such as will there be a man on each post, how will you cover the short corners etc) with only minor tweaks on match days. The effectiveness of your corner strategy should be a combination of the strategy you employ, how many weeks you have practised this strategy in training, how many matches you've employed the strategy for and of course the attributes of your players.

This was just one simple example. If you look at the larger picture, what a manager uses training for is to instil his footballing philosophy into his players. If a team is playing Arsenal next week and the manager decides to play an extra centre-back as a means to counter their attacking threat, then he will be working on this in training all week with his players. This then throws open the possibility of said extra centre-back getting injured in the lead up to the game and necessitating the manager to adapt. Does he scrap the formation he's prepared his players with or does he bring in an inferior centre-back and keep the prepared formation? These are the real adaptive choices managers make.

In my opinion, the training module should be totally overhauled and it's primary goal should be in setting your club's strategy to football and preparing for matches. I would suggest a similar design and screen flow to the new tactics creator to set the general aspects of training, with it split into the following sections:

*Club philosophy - The first thing to decide should be how you want your team to approach football on a high level. For example, Arsene Wenger may select 'quick pass and move attacking football' and Gary Megson may select 'physical and high intensity football'. What this should dictate is which areas of training get prioritised, and hence which player attributes are most likely to improve (or get worse). Also, the selected philosophy should impact on the ease with which a manager can employ a tactic. For example, if Megson then sets his match day tactics to replicate a quick and intricate passing style, then it will be less effective than if he had implemented a club philosophy like Wenger. If you change your club's philosophy, then it should take a while (several months) before the change is fully effective and the players get used to your new ideas.

*Preferred formations - As a manager you should practice playing a primary formation, and two secondary formations in training. Obviously this impacts on match tactics, and your team will play to their best when playing a formation that they have practised for the longest amount of time, and most recently.

*Set pieces - I firmly believe that the decisions about set pieces should be split between the training and tactics module. Your corner strategy should be set primarily in training, with only minor tweaks (such as who will mark which opposition player) to be set in the tactics module.

*Pre-season and fitness - In my opinion this should be set on quite a high level, simply deciding how long pre-season training will last, and how strenuous it will be (obviously a trade off between improving stamina and fitness versus increased injuries and tiredness). Lets face it, no one wants to spend much time micro managing the fitness training. The user should also be asked to set a strategy for players returning from injury (how fit should they be before they return to full training? 60%? 70%? 80%? How quickly should they ramp up their training?).

*Coaches - You should not have to assign your coaches to individual facets of training, this is an artificial process and quickly becomes tedious. Coaches work as part of a team! Instead the screen should simply show you how proficient each of your coaches is in each aspect of training and how your coaching team is rated in each aspect overall. Maybe include recommendations from your assistant manager of areas of weakness in your overall coaching attributes and what specialists you should look to bring in.

Separate to this 'training creator' should be the option to set one or two specific aspects for each player to focus on. It shouldn't be a case of balancing sliders for a player between different training sections, but more a case of just saying to a player 'focus on your finishing and close control' for instance. It's implied that they won't be concentrating as much on other aspects of their game. This could link in to player preferred moves.

There should also be a separate section for 'strategy for next fixture'. This should involve highlighting the formation you plan to use, and match strategy. The coaches will then prepare the players with this in mind, and should you implement a different tactic on match day it will not be as effective as if they had prepared it all week. In the tactics module it would need to remind the user what formation and strategy the team had been training with so they know the implications of deviating from this. Of course preparation is not the be-all-and-end-all of tactics and should not be overly influential in determining the effectiveness of a particular tactic.

Youth training should probably remain separate and focused on developing the individual players' attributes.

So basically I am suggesting:

*A 'training creator' which focuses on setting your club's overall approach to training, and football in general. This is the kind of thing that should only be looked at by the user occasionally.

*A simplified means of getting a player to focus on one aspect of their game in training.

*A means of preparing for the upcoming match and the impact this will have on match day tactics.

I realise this is a much more fundamental overhaul than the tactics creator (which is simply a new interface to what was already there), but I feel such reform of training is necessary.

Great post and I agree with all of your ideas!

Good post, some really interesting ideas in here

I with u ,mate

Good post, some really interesting ideas in here

u really want to change the training or this is words

I have no influence in what will or won't be improved in future versions, it is simply saying that I think Mike has some interesting ideas

u really want to change the training or this is words

I vevry much doubt he would say it if it wasn't something that SI wern't looking at in the longer term. SI always welcome new ideas through the forums..... some more than others i guess (driving the team bus anyone?)

Good post, some really interesting ideas in here

Thanks Rob. Any chance of passing it on to the dev team?

Thanks Rob. Any chance of passing it on to the dev team?

I'd say this would definately get put in the ideas database.

Excellent ideas.

Training for me along with scouting and youth set up are musts for FM11 in terms of improvements. Mike you make some very good suggestions. I have said how I thought training should be improved in some training threads in the past few weeks, as the currernt training lacks imagination and creativity and it does not feel like you cant get stuck into training unlike the current tactics creator in FM10 demo that has created a new dimension as so can really get the team to play like you want them to and there is so much more interaction which is needed in training. The training needs to be more 'hands on' but not so like you said becomes too micro mangement!

There have been many people wanting training to be improved to put it onto a par with other aspects of FM that are so more advanced than training. I hope this thread does get tagged as a FM suggestion. I hope people do talk about your ideas in both good and bad light to try and get a good debate in this thread!

This is a link to all the threads that have had a FM suggestion tag. It is a good read, and try and pick out the relevant training ones!!! http://www.community.sigames.com/tags.php?tag=fm-suggestion

Yes, I love this idea too to take the same philosophy of the tactic creator, but as nev147 said, I would like more micro-training exercices options to prepare a match, begining of season, first half season, full season etc... It means, a full database of exercices should be included in order for the manager to do really what he wants, how he wants and when he wants.

I've noticed already 200 exercices in the real life what should be appliable.

Thanks to listen to fans, SI !!

Too long-winded for a game packed with stuff already i think, it'd make the game even slower which is a bad thing

Too long-winded for a game packed with stuff already i think, it'd make the game even slower which is a bad thing

I appreciate what you are saying but I read that one person played the demo with 3 different saves over the weekend and completed each one! For me this is just too quick and just seems rushed for the sake of completing it (different strokes for different folks I gues!). I like to take my time by going into every little detail and very hands on.

Yes, I agree, it's a management game, so you should take your time, this is the only way to win for you, time : time for tactics, time for "TRAINING", time for communications, there is no other way to play this game, only to entire in detail in each of these sessions, unfortunately, for training, it needs complete refund like the tactic creator, more deeply ...

I appreciate what you are saying but I read that one person played the demo with 3 different saves over the weekend and completed each one! For me this is just too quick and just seems rushed for the sake of completing it (different strokes for different folks I gues!). I like to take my time by going into every little detail and very hands on.

Great post

Another addition to training should be incoporating diffrent traing for players who have just come back from injuries especially long-term injuries as players tend to do a lot of training with the physio's and club doctors. Or if you look at Owen Hargreaves who has spent a year in the states working with the doctor to get rehabiltated with a special training program.

So perhaps that added in would add a extra dimension to the game

This was my thread on adding to the injury aspect of the game

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=146600&highlight=injuries

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=146600&highlight=injuries

It would add a little to the game and could be implemented so yes would be good to have.

I think SI had the training right when you could do stuff like 5 a side in the morning then weights or something like that in afternoon, It seemed more like real football training that a team would do.

Shame they moved away from that.

Great post, much better than what other people have suggested for training improvements previously. I hated the training before, where you trained specific drills etc, because it wasn't flexible enough, even though it was intuitive. I tolerate the current one because it's flexible but not realistic enough and not intuitive enough.

I may do a sacrilege but I think that Fifa Manager's training system is better ! 3 training groups, possibility to work on skills and some tactical aspects (corners, offside, etc.)... It lacks the possibility to work on specific systems (4-4-2) but it's quite easy to use and complete (it looks like a training "wizard") ! The problem, as it is more complex as FM's one, is that the AI doesn't use it well !!! So it gives a big advantage to the "human player".

One thing I don't like in FM's training system is that I can't make a player work on special abilities (passing, marking, etc.) without having to make work on all the abilities of this group. Can't train a player to takle without training him to man mark, or to cross without working on his trow-ins !

Another aspect of training that is not in the game is that it should help us to know which players are in good condition ! IRL, the manager observes his players during the training week to know who seems to be in good form or not. Many managers say that a team plays how it trains ! Now, we have no possibility to know which player could be in better form...

Great post! I hope SI implements some of your ideas in future versions of the game!

SI should give us a plan soon of what they will improve for 2011, to be transparent and ambitious from now.

I love your idea.

But we should have a report corresponding to daily performance, detailed ( specifically if you prepare a match, you should know everyday what your player are doing in detail, which area they are improving, what are their motivations, who has been injured, with rates and stats of progress completely refunded ).

Great idea.

The main point of my post is that training needs to be about more than trying to improve your players individual attributes. Training for the senior team is largely about instilling your footballing philosophy and preparing for games.

Personally I wouldn't be keen on returning to having to set individual drills and coaching sessions...do you think Alex Ferguson does this? Of course not, his coaches design the sessions to Ferguson's broad specifications.

If anyone at SI is interested in the ideas in the original post, I am happy to flesh them out more and do some screen mock-ups to give more of an idea?

I think there are some great ideas here, and would make it more of a test for the more indepth player. For those who don't want this there could always be a "Assistant/coach handles training" option in your manager settings, and I would guess the more casual player would be less interested.

On a personal level though, I think it's fantastic and a great way to expand on the tactics creator.

Too long-winded for a game packed with stuff already i think, it'd make the game even slower which is a bad thing

If your ideas were implemented, maybe someone at SI or in fact the forum, could setup a number of pre-made custom schedules so that people who don't want to delve into training for hours and hours can click and go?

Your ideas sound fantastic, would add such potential to an already awesome game.

The option to save training schedules would also mean only having to worry about this once or twice and then once you have a style you could tweak this to your new club each time you move/start a new game?

Good suggestions Mike. And if it was accompanied by a drop-down option such as -

"Select one attribute that you want this player to do extra training in"

What would you folks think? That way, vital attributes could be levelled out a bit more in a good regen player for example. Such as crossing for an awesome full-back but who has a 7 for it at present. And because it's just one attribute it wouldn't be like cheating or editing.

In real life, if a manager saw that a good player was severely lacking in crossing, he would probably ask the player to do extra training on that anyway.

By making this extra training last one whole season, it would prevent managers from using it too often to create super players. At the end of it, instead of crossing rising by 1 point, it would rise by 2 for example.

Diaby of Arsenal was reported to have done extra training during pre-season on his strength for example.

Penalties is another area I can think of. You might have a weakness in your team in that area, but you don't want every forward or midfielder to do extra training in taking penalties. You just want to pick 2 or 3 players who already have the highest penalty taking attributes in the team (which are still too low) and increase them a bit.

Good suggestions Mike. And if it was accompanied by a drop-down option such as -

"Select one attribute that you want this player to do extra training in"

What would you folks think? That way, vital attributes could be levelled out a bit more in a good regen player for example. Such as crossing for an awesome full-back but who has a 7 for it at present. And because it's just one attribute it wouldn't be like cheating or editing.

In real life, if a manager saw that a good player was severely lacking in crossing, he would probably ask the player to do extra training on that anyway.

By making this extra training last one whole season, it would prevent managers from using it too often to create super players. At the end of it, instead of crossing rising by 1 point, it would rise by 2 for example.

Diaby of Arsenal was reported to have done extra training during pre-season on his strength for example.

Penalties is another area I can think of. You might have a weakness in your team in that area, but you don't want every forward or midfielder to do extra training in taking penalties. You just want to pick 2 or 3 players who already have the highest penalty taking attributes in the team (which are still too low) and increase them a bit.

I like this very much. It's what Beckham used to do with his free kicks. Perhaps you could have players with high work rate and determination coming to you asking if there is a specific thing you want them to work on after training.