Training Days - ideas

The training side of the game is very redundant in my opinion. All you get really is a half written report by the coach or ass man. It doesn't really tell you anything. At the moment I literally just go from Match to Match - I barely read anything that comes up in the News Feed. The only thing I look for is a transfer here or there that I might be interested in. I currently browse over the training reports as I feel they are absolutely meaningless.

The main issue really is, that if your shouts aren't working, your players are being booked too much, your team is conceding in the last 15 minutes and plenty of other issues with Tactics. Currently the only way to deal with things is to Tweak the Tactics. But the problem with this is that you don't actually know if they worked until the Match Day - which is far too late.

I'd like to be able to setup 5 a-side games or full games for training, you get the option at the start of the game to have an intra-squad friendly, but I'd prefer more options here. I'd like to see some of the training, just in quick games. Not full games where you have to sit there and watch things unfold - but you would be able to setup certain scenarios.

There's a lot that could be done with it. You could work on just putting together a bunch of Shouts, and the familiarity with the players and that could - I know that the Tactics currently have a "Familiarity" but I'd like the same thing for "Shouts".

It would be great for testing out Shouts too. And if your team is down a goal what reaction you will get from Shouts, which one's work best in different situations. It would be handy too as your players might be able to get used to particular Shouts. Where if in a game some Shouts would be more effective, because they've been practicing them in training, but if you used a Shout you didn't usually use your players might not be as solid in getting that job done. That week I might not have practiced "Hit Early Crosses" - so when I shout that out, the players are not as fluent at it as they could be. But if I was practicing "Shoot on Sight" then they would be a bit more adept at this for that week.

For example, I might conceding a lot of goals towards the end of a game. Well I'd like to setup the Training Match to be 2-1, and there's 15 minutes to go. I can then figure out what's going wrong, who's out of position, what shouts to use, people to sub etc.

Another advantage here would be if you're conceding a lot of Yellow cards or Red cards - but you don't know why. Currently the only way to figure this out is to tweak the Tactics and you only find out if it's working on the actual match day. Where that's too late, you should be able to work on that in Training Days.

If I had a player who was good at long shots. And he missed an awful lot of them in the last game. I could go to a training day and work on his long shots, - that would then give me a Form for his long shots in training. If training that week went terrible for Long Shots then I'd turn off that switch in the Tactics for that position and for him - because I know he's having a bit of trouble with shooting from range - his form has dipped here.

I could then work with certain players on tackling, their crossing, their shooting, finishing and see it first hand - rather than finding out that on the actual match day it didn't work.

This way the players will develop a Form in training, and I can go in and see what their Form in training was like. Some player might have a had a storming week in training, but you normally wouldn't pick him. But because your regular starter had a bit of a bad week - say a Winger wasn't crossing well, or a defender wasn't tackling great - you wouldn't pick those in for the match. You'd go - Joe Soap had a good training week - I'll play them. And that would be reflected in their performance. If you picked a player who had a bad training week, that would be reflected too in a negative performance, but depending on the players mentality, they pick themselves up for the game, or they might get even worse...

None of this means that you would be able to go in and perfect your Tactics in training days. It basically to work on certain aspects. So you wouldn't be able to sit there and just perfect Hitting Early crosses all day long.

The players condition would drop and eventually, depending on how good your staff are - the Fitness Coach and Physio would let you know when the training is enough for the day and the lads need to rest. This then might mean that you've overshot in training and the players condition has dropped for the next game. Ouch!

But you might do just enough and this would keep the players fitter etc. And if you didn't do enough then during the match the players would tire faster.

I think there's a lot of scope for something like this.

These are just my thoughts - something I would like to see - if anyone has any other ideas or comments, likes or dislikes on this idea?