Development, Match Experience And Everything In Between

Cleon · January 13, 2015

Taken from my blog www.sisportscentre.com

Player development is a big part of the game for me, in fact it’s the only reason why I still play the game as I don’t really care for the tactical side of the game and much prefer writing development stuff. With that in mind I thought I’d write more development stuff for the blog as people seem to enjoy these and not many people actually write about this side of the game but every man and his dog writes about tactics! So this will be the first of many articles on training, player development that will concentrate on specific aspects of the training module. This particular article will focus on game time and have a look at just how much players play during the season.

As this is the start of the season, in fact the very start of the game I am expected to win promotion to the Championship. So blooding youths could cost me point, it might not but it could and this is what people always worry about. Myself I always make sure that I have a little squad so I can always find game time for the youths at the club. If you find you can’t give players enough game time during the season then I’d have to question why, maybe your squad is too big? Anyway, I’m going to be trying to incorporate six players into the first team throughout the year so this means ensuring they get as much game time as I can afford. The more game time they’ll get the more they should develop if I ensure they have the correct personality type. I’ll not go over the personality types again as I covered that in the Ajax stuff I wrote last year and the year before.

As some of these players are really under development it means I will look to give them as much game time as possible but this also means I might be playing them in other positions, I’ll explain a bit more further down. But before we do I must stress that these players tend to be weak all round even though they have good potential for the level I am at. So don’t expect to see dramatic changes in the first 18 months because the attributes across the board are extremely poor. So it will take around 2 years before we see the player start to take shape.

These are the players that I accommodated into the side in the first season.

I’m playing a 4-1-2-2-1 formation at the minute so I use attacking midfielder right and left which makes playing Diego easier and gives me more options for what I can use him as. Ideally I see him long term as my main striker and think he’ll be a good F9 or Treq. So to give him game time during the season he will be used either as a starter or sub for the following positions;

Striker
Attacking Midfield Right
Attacking Midfield left

This gives me more options which means it should increase the amount he plays because of his versatility. It’s much easier to give someone time if they can cover various positions for the system you use.

Obviously there isn’t much I can do with a goalkeeper but I’ll play him as and when depending on the results and how difficult I think the game will be. It comes down to how brave you want to be really and how frequent you’ve got the bottle to use him. I have the bottle but I’ll avoid playing him in any game were I think aerial challenges will be an issue due to how weak he is in the air.

He’s not ready for the first team nowhere near but I have faith in him and see him as a long term project and playing in the Premiership should I get promoted twice. As I play a 4-1-2-2-1 he can play in any of these positions;

Central Midfield Left Centre
Central Midfield Right Centre
Defensive Midfield

Long term I see him as some kind of playmaker so he would be holding down one of the more central positions rather than the defensive midfield spot due to how I play. But where he plays doesn’t really matter at the minute until he’s more developed and has a position to call his own.

Dominic I’m not sure what I see him as long term as I can see him playing many positions which is good but can be a bit of a nightmare when deciding where he’ll play eventually. I think I could see him as a F9 or some kind of creative midfielder. I’m not sure how well he is going to develop though but I will train him like I do every player with the intention of playing him. So the position he is likely to cover during the first season ar

Striker
Attacking Midfielder left
Attacking Midfielder Right
Central Midfield (possibly)

I’m already well stocked for central midfielders but during the season I’m bound to pick up injuries/suspensions and just fatigue in general so he could be used there. But I won’t be using him unless its a must due to having two other youths who will be playing those positions already.

This is another player whose natural position isn’t one that I use in the current set up but that isn’t really an issue. Long term I see him as some kind of inside forward. The positions he will be playing are;

Attacking Midfielder Right
Central Midfield (possibly)

I can only really offer him games at attacking midfield right side at the minute due to having quite a few players already who can play those positions due to the amount of players I’m trying to bring into the team in one go. Although saying that I’ll approach it like the player above and if a opportunity arises to play him elsewhere then I will do but he is a back up to the youths and will only be used there if they can’t for whatever reason.

I see him as my long term defensive midfielder and want to see how far I can push on with him, Diego and Louis Reed. Even if my rep grows and the team becomes bigger than it currently is and competing for titles and in Europe, I don’t plan on selling them ever regardless of how good they’ve become. For me and how I play I need attachment to the players and set myself goals to achieve to keep me interested and this is it for this save. It will serve as a reminder for where we came from and I can show them a bit of loyalty. The positions he will be playing in the first season are;

Defensive Midfield
Central Midfield

He will be covering both those positions to get the first team exposure he needs.

As you can see the initial base I have to work from was very low for all of the players so this means it will take longer especially for the ones who are 18 already. The younger the player the easier it would be due to having extra time with them but once they get to 18 it means they will still be developing into their 20’s and it’ll be around the early 20’s that we actually to see the player become the player you hope they will. Not that it matters much, I just prefer to develop players earlier if possible as tutoring them can take quite a while especially if they have crap personality types of begin with.

Game time is the single most important factor for gaining current ability, the more they play the more they should develop if he has the correct personality type (any that has a high combo of professionalism and ambition). Now if I were to tell you that some of these players had played 20 times or more you’d believe that was a lot of game time wouldn’t you?! But its not actually as much as you think (well it wasn’t me I was quite shocked). Being involved in 20 games is just short of half the league games so you’d expect a lot of minutes on the pitch. But if we look a bit closer at the actual figures you might be surprised. Here are the stats for the six players listed above for League One games and their minutes played this season;

Diego

I actually thought Diego had played a lot more minutes than that in the league and assumed he’d be around the 70% mark but how wrong was I. It’s impossible to have anyone play every single minute unless its a goalkeeper due to that being the least demanding role as a rule. He was involved in 27 League One games out of 46.

Willis

Keepers are probably the hardest players to give game time to if they are weak because they lack attributes. I tried to give him as much time as I could but its not as much as I’d have liked He was involved in 14 game in total.

Reed

This young player I have really high hopes and he got far more game time than I thought he would due to him playing in midfield which is the strongest part of my squad with lots of depth. In total he was involved in 22 games.

Calvert-Lewin

He actually got a lot more games that I expected he would, he was involved in 28 games. This is down to me only having one attacking midfielder left though so it allows me to give him more time. He ended up being the only real back up for Jamie Murphy which worked well.

Khan

I had to use him as a central midfielder at times due to injuries and condition issues as the season wore on. He was involved in 22 games though which again is more than I was expecting as I thought majority of his games would come from the right but playing him central when I had the issues I had proved a bit help in the end.

Dimaio

I’m slightly disappointed I didn’t use him more but he did pick up a few niggling injuries missing two weeks here and there so it become harder to involve him more. he was involved in 19 games in total.