Approaching Pre-Season - My take On It

[Corner]

Hi Cleon, I contacted you a while back on Twitter to ask if you still had the images from the opening posts of this thread, don't know if you remember.

I wanted to ask about how you set up the training for pre-season. From what I can gather you set the general training to Fitness and the match training to Tactics Only for the first while until a few weeks before the end of pre-season and then changed to Team Cohesion. So my questions (I'll try to be as direct as possible to make it easier):

- Is all of this correct?

- Did you set the scheduling bar all the way to the left?

- If so, for how long/how many games?

- What did you do with all of these settings when pre-season is over? Or does it vary from save to save?

- I think I remember you saying you don't allow rest before or after a match during pre-season, what do you do during the season?

- What was the default intensity of the general training?

- Also, this is a bit unrelated and probably more suited to the Youth Development thread, but when signing tutors at the start of a save, do you give them the squad status of Key Player?

[herne79]

@Corner

The idea for pre-season is to get players match fit, a cohesive squad and tactical familiarity sorted.

Setting general training to Fitness will only train a player's Physical related attributes (Stamina, Pace etc) and so will not affect their match fitness. You also need to leave general training set to whatever you define (such as Fitness) for 3 months at least for it to have any kind of impact on relevant player attributes. Leave pre-season general training on Fitness if you wish to affect everyone's Physical attributes, or change the focus to what you desire.

The exception to this is Team Cohesion. Use this setting during pre-season if you have new players come into your first team squad (including promoted youngsters) until such time as everyone is bonded. You can check how this is going in your Assistant Manager's feedback report. Change up the Intensity Level if you feel the need.

To get players match fit and to get your players familiar with your tactic(s), you need to schedule Friendlies. Schedule one every 3 or 4 days. Slide the Scheduling bar all the way to the left for More Match Training, and don't allow any rest before or after matches. Set Match Preparation to Match Tactics.

This will focus your overall training schedule towards match preparation, thus allowing the maximum amount of time possible for your players to train your match tactics and to become match fit. Personally I make 11 substitutions at half time in every match so as not to over stretch unfit players at first and to allow everyone playing time. Once your tactic(s) are fully fluid, you can reduce this to allow additional focus on general training again.

NOTE - I don't play LLM, but if you do you may need to adjust the intensity and/or frequency of friendlies as lower quality players may not be able to cope with such an intensive schedule. You might be ok, so just keep an eye on your players.

Once pre-season is over, it's up to you how much time you want to dedicate between general training and match preparation. There's no right or wrong, but if you want to maximise the amount of attribute training you do then set the Scheduling bar all the way to the right. It does no harm to allow players a rest after each match, especially if you think some are becoming fatigued.

Remember - if you are fully managing your club you will need to do this for your Youth team as well, so make sure you change the staff responsibilities accordingly. Depending on which league you are playing in, your reserve team will share facilities with either the senior squad or the youth squad, so you don't usually need to bother doing all this for the reserve team. If you are managing in a country that has "B" teams (such as Spain or Germany) you can ignore that as you have no control over them.

As far as Tutors go, they don't need to have a Key Player status, just so long as their squad status is higher than the youngster they are going to tutor. There are other factors involved as well for tutoring, but that's it for squad status.

I recommend you look up Rashidi's blog, there is much more detail there.

[BamBamBam]

Hi Cleon....does all this still apply to FM17?

[Cleon]

Yeah it does but you also need to understand the new changes to training introduced in 2017;

 

 

[BamBamBam]

And also, do you still have the photos that are missing from the first post?

[Cleon]

2 hours ago, BamBamBam said:

And also, do you still have the photos that are missing from the first post?

From a thread almost 4 years old? No  You don't need the pictures though they offer nothing. You just need the text from this article off my blog;

 

http://sisportscentre.com/preseason/

[BamBamBam]

On 05/03/2013 at 09:25, Andy 23 said:

General Training - Fitness - Very High

Scheduling - More Match Training

Match Training Default Focus - Tactics Only

No rest before or after matches

 

So is this the training for the whole pre season?

And what do you set it as once the season starts?

[James9]

30 minutes ago, Cleon said:

From a thread almost 4 years old? No  You don't need the pictures though they offer nothing. You just need the text from this article off my blog;

 

http://sisportscentre.com/preseason/

Cleon can i ask what you do in full season with regards to training or can you  point me to guide

 

[Cleon]

Just now, James9 said:

Cleon can i ask what you do in full season with regards to training or can you  point me to guide

 

The Ajax stuff I wrote on training is how I approach it. In short its balanced general training and low match training. 

[James9]

1 hour ago, Cleon said:

The Ajax stuff I wrote on training is how I approach it. In short its balanced general training and low match training. 

could you forward me the link to the Ajax stuff

[Cleon]

8 hours ago, James9 said:

could you forward me the link to the Ajax stuff

It's linked in the stickies at the top of the forum or it has its own section on my blog.

[phnompenhandy]

Cleon, have you tried managing an amateur or part-time club? I find the players just don't get enough time to get tactical familiarity high until well into the new year. 

 

Also, if your squad's average age is very young, would you see any benefit in focusing on fitness training for a year or so before settling on balanced?

[Colorado]

On 20/05/2016 at 23:10, herne79 said:

@Corner

The idea for pre-season is to get players match fit, a cohesive squad and tactical familiarity sorted.

Setting general training to Fitness will only train a player's Physical related attributes (Stamina, Pace etc) and so will not affect their match fitness. You also need to leave general training set to whatever you define (such as Fitness) for 3 months at least for it to have any kind of impact on relevant player attributes. Leave pre-season general training on Fitness if you wish to affect everyone's Physical attributes, or change the focus to what you desire.

 

So, setting general training to Fitness for a few weeks in pre-season has no effect??

I'm not an expert in FM but unless I've misunderstood, that can't be right.