Choosing Your Bench Staff

Would I be right in saying that in real-life a manager has to decide which of his many staff he will have in the dugout on match-day? I got thinking about it after watching Mourinho coyly excuse the fact that Eva Carneiro was no longer on his bench - "Limited spaces, so many staff"

If so, wouldn't that be quite a good addition to the game?

I'm not proposing anything too dramatic, but perhaps your choice of bench-staff would affect the team in some way? Something like the system that already exists in the game - for example, when a young player develops better under a manager with high 'Working with youngsters' attribute.

In this case, your team, or individual players, would get a small morale boost from certain coaches/physios on the bench, dependent on their particular attributes and personality. And the obvious thing would be to tie that into 'Favoured Personnel' too.

As I turn off the assistant manager advice I guess I have technically banned all staff from the dugout.

If the advice given during matches was improved to reflect your tactical style & varied between staff then I think your idea could have merit.

I hear you. Although I think this could be implemented fairly easily. It would be very basic - something akin to the Influence/Leadership player attribute, where the very presence of certain attributes affects the players.

Easy is a word that is used very lightly, it could be trickier than you might imagine.

I cringe anytime anyone says that something will be easy to add.

I'm not proposing anything too dramatic, but perhaps your choice of bench-staff would affect the team in some way?

Does this happen IRL? Does it affect players at all? IMO, no, it doesn't.

At best, it'd influence the advice you get on a match day. This is covered by the assistant manager at the moment.

Hmm, fair points.

I said it was easy because I was suggesting it be done using a mechanism that is already present in the game.

I like the idea of having more people on the bench

Would be good to get a variety of advice.

Ass Man: We're dominating Possession

Attack Coach: We need to try and get the ball into the box more

Defence Coach: We need to close down Joe Striker - he's causing us issues

Physio: Dave Winger is looking tired - we should think about subbing him/Steve Left-Back just rolled his ankle - he'll be out for 3 weeks if we don't sub him now.

As for the morale thing, I don't know how much legs that's got I'm afraid.

Other staff members are often seen IRL shouting to players - could be an opportunity for interference, maybe someone whose philosophy differs significantly from yours could be shouting things to your players that actually you wouldn't want them to. Could open up a whole new chapter in staff recruitment and relationships...

Other staff members are often seen IRL shouting to players - could be an opportunity for interference, maybe someone whose philosophy differs significantly from yours could be shouting things to your players that actually you wouldn't want them to. Could open up a whole new chapter in staff recruitment and relationships...

As long as you also have the opportunity to speak to your staff, to chew them out for giving terrible advice. Or, in rare cases, praise them for seeing something you'd missed.

Given that you have multiple coaches and physios at some clubs, it would be great to choose which ones are present on match day.

When a player gets yellow injured, it can differ massively when I am told they can run it off or to sub them immediately (3 mins to 40 mins in some cases!!!). I had one player get yellow injured in the 15th and then only in the 50-odd minute did they say he was okay to carry on. Even Eva would have come back quicker than that!

I honestly don't see how this would be beneficial to us enjoying the game more.

I honestly don't see how this would be beneficial to us enjoying the game more.

I think it provides more immersion

rather than just an AM (and I presume the head physio) shouting instructions at you, you could get a different idea from the tactical coach

plus it would give the staff a better personality (like upset to have been dropped from the match day team) rather than the robots that they appear to be

The match feedback system is still very much in its infancy, but once it develops further it could be worthwhile to have more contributory voices.

At the moment though it needs refining not to be at a level where your assistant manager basically provides the perfect guide to countering and beating each team, but providing a bit more in depth and nuanced feedback along the lines of what a user could see if they were watching the game in full. For example, you may be getting overrun in the middle of the park because player X who is covering in the role of a deep laying playmaker isn't well suited to that role and is turning over a lot of possession. I think its going to be incredibly difficult to ever get to that point mind, but I think it will be the long term aim given that the only way you can truly compensate for it in the game is to watch matches with full highlights.