Pre-season Fitness

Need some advice as this has never happened to me before - In pre-season I normally organise alot of friendlies to get match fit.

Im in the Russian League and finsihed my first season and getting ready to commence the 2nd, my players have returned and the majority are mostly match fit with conditioning around 70 -80per cent. I have played one friendly and now all my players are tired and don't seem to be recovering even if I set them to rest.

Its now gone 2 weeks and its still the same even though I cancelled all the friendlies in this period to make them recover and not be tired.

In the news feed it reported that alot of the players believe I scheduled pre-season too early as if they have not recovered from the previous season.

Can anyone advise how to rectify this as Ive made a mistake - Ive tied resting them, putting rest days in training, cancelling friendlies and putting fitness training to very low but after 2 weeks of this its still the same - am I to play mathches in this period if it is saying this - my guess is it would make the tiredness worse.

Send them on extended holiday/leave. You can right-click on a player and under Squad, you'll find the option. There's a recommended period there too, but if I can, I always do it for a week longer than recommended.