Football Manager 2019 Feature Blogs: Training Overhaul

[Neil Brock]

In Football Manager 2019 training undergoes its biggest overhaul in the history of the series.

Over the years we’ve been lucky to enjoy extensive access to training sessions at a host of clubs. More recently, we’ve expanded the studio’s knowledge through a series of internal ‘FootTalks’, where people working within football, including managers (both club and international), directors of football and others have imparted their knowledge to help us improve the game.

This knowledge sharing – adding to the fact that we already have a group of qualified coaches working at the studio – has helped us to create a revamped training module that is a realistic representation of how real clubs develop younger players and prepare established players for both a full season and individual fixtures.

Training is now split into three sessions per day that allow you to customise your programme to suit your team’s needs across the season. When you click on a session you are presented with a pop-out window that lists the 10 different training areas that you can choose to focus on. Within those 10 areas you have a variety of training sessions to choose from that emphasise different areas of your team’s development from attacking play right down to team bonding and community outreach sessions.

Previously, you were only able to choose from sessions that trained your team in one general aspect of football – attacking or defending, for example. Those options are still available to you under the General option, but with the increased depth available to training in FM19 you’re able to fine-tune your approach to get the best out of your squad.

For example, instead of giving your players a general defensive session you may want to choose a session such as Aerial Defence which can be a good area to focus on if your upcoming opponent likes to launch long balls into the box. When you select a session you’re also given an overview of the impact of each session on your squad in terms of their attributes, sharpness, injury risk and overall condition.

The different sessions across the weeks and months of the season make up your training schedule. You can adjust the preset schedules or even create your own bespoke programme from scratch via the Schedules tab. You’ll see that there are several preset schedules for pre-season as well as in-season training and there are even schedules that allow you to work on your tactical style of play with your players.

The variety of preset schedules lets you cater for your team’s needs across the season such as when you need to prepare for a big match or when you have a period of fixture congestion. Even travelling to and from away matches is factored into your team’s routine. You can combine these week-long schedules to fit around your team’s fixtures for the weeks ahead or work on something more long-term, such as ingraining your footballing philosophy into the minds of your players.

Pre-season is now a distinct part of your training calendar. With the increased detail and depth to training in FM19 there are more opportunities to maximise your pre-season training to give you the best chance of success in the upcoming season. A properly organised pre-season can not only get your players into shape for the start of the season but can also help to keep them fitter for longer.

Another change for FM19 is the way that tutoring works under the new Mentoring system. You can now form mentoring groups of at least three players where senior players will work closely with younger players. Mentoring affects the younger players’ personality and player traits so it’s worth pairing those younger players with senior players that have the type of personality you want to grow throughout the squad.

Your squad now trains in units that are determined by playing position. Clicking on the Units tab not only shows you your team’s current units, but also allows you to drag and drop players between units. You can ask any of your players to train in a new position and role from this screen and bring reserve or youth team players into first-team training by using the dropdown menu in the top-right corner of the screen.

Each training session has a different impact on each unit. For example, selecting a Chance Creation session sees your Offensive Unit attempt to create chances against your Defensive Unit, who in turn  are trying to prevent them from doing so. The effect of the session on each unit’s attributes, condition, injury risk and sharpness will also be different.

Players can’t train all the time though or they won’t have any energy left for playing matches – so you’ll also need to use the rest tab. Here you can automatically set training intensity and rest periods based on player condition. You can do this for the whole team using the dropdown menus for each condition level at the top of the screen or set it for individuals on the main panel in the centre of the screen. Included on this screen are recommendations from your physio as to which players should be training at certain intensities and your upcoming fixtures so you can account for when you might want your squad rest and when you might want them up their training intensity.

The Training Overview screen offers lots of insightful information. For example, you can now see the Training Performance panel that highlights which players have performed well in recent training sessions as well as those that have been underwhelming, alongside their respective training ratings – which make their debut to the series and prove a very useful tool for changing players individual training where you can train them towards positions or roles and set the intensity of this accordingly per player.

You’ll be regularly updated on your team’s training, receiving information about your squad’s performance in training via the inbox. You’ll also receive information about the other squads at the club too if you’re set to look after those.

Of course, if you prefer to take a hands-off approach to training then you still have the option to delegate some or all of the training elements to a member of your backroom team via the Responsibilities screen. They’ll keep you in touch with what’s going on around your first team so that you can still make changes occasionally should you want to.

Training is an area of the game which a number of FM fans have been asking us to look at for some time. We wanted to make sure that when we did deliver a revamp it would be in-depth, engaging and fun. We’re confident that the new training module in FM19 delivers all three.

[DP]

Looking really good. I hope there’s something there that helps younger players develop faster if there are top players training at the club. Players should be able to develop by playing with better players in training. 

[Guest]

Like the concepts here & from what I can make out the idea of match prep training being a seperate function that focuses on a single scenario no longer exists & it's now all part of the overall training package, am I correct?

[MrPompey]

training needs to go hand in hand with playing time for the optimum improvements

[XaW]

I'm liking the new tutoring system. Going to be good to see how it works in my youth saves!

[saihtam]

Uhh can already see me overtraining my guys without rests...

Hope AI can manage this thing good

[ferrarinseb]

Looks good, Wonder how the training performance rating is calculated. 

[kandersson]

This was a much needed overhaul, looks quite interesting.

[Lucas]

Bring back Pig in the Middle  

Very exciting, training could be interesting for me to use again.

[SlobaFMB]

I'm very impresed. Well done!

[mightypvfc]

Great work. Pre-season has always felt like a drag to me but with this training revamp, it's actually going to be pretty fun. 

[Rikulec]

Same as with tactics, a big step towards realism. Nice.

[Dorin]

Finally!! This is what I've been waiting for all these years... glad it is finally happening and I can see that you were taking some of the feature requests in consideration since some of the ideas have been passed around for a while :) Well done, can't wait for the release!

[enigmatic]

1 hour ago, Lucas said:

Bring back Pig in the Middle  

Very exciting, training could be interesting for me to use again.

Haha, my first thought was "not all that tedious Pig in the Middle setting again"! But semi automated player training intensity management sounds very useful (fewer fitness problems and less whining) and the "mentoring" groups sound a lot more plausible and less overpowered than the tutoring

[frank_olaf]

Will we be able to train players for a specific position, role and duty (attack, support, defend)? The option of training for the specific duty was in the game a few years ago but has been missing recently.

This is especially helpful to train a central midfielder on defend duty.

Thanks.

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Barside said:

Like the concepts here & from what I can make out the idea of match prep training being a seperate function that focuses on a single scenario no longer exists & it's now all part of the overall training package, am I correct?

Was wondering about this. If you have a match coming up against a team that scores a lot of headers you may want to train your team in jumping and heading immediately prior. But how do you know the outcome in terms of just working towards very slowly increasing your players' attributes in those areas vs actual specific and short-term match prep in some form? I'm kind of confused by this.

[Weston]

2 hours ago, Neil Brock said:

Players can’t train all the time though or they won’t have any energy left for playing matches – so you’ll also need to use the rest tab. Here you can automatically set training intensity and rest periods based on player condition. You can do this for the whole team using the dropdown menus for each condition level at the top of the screen or set it for individuals on the main panel in the centre of the screen. Included on this screen are recommendations from your physio as to which players should be training at certain intensities and your upcoming fixtures so you can account for when you might want your squad rest and when you might want them up their training intensity.

 

This bit is a nice touch and will allow you to put players that never get injured on higher intensity levels while fatigued than others and vice versa - say you put half intensity for the squad at < 60% but perhaps you have a specific player who is very injury prone, you can set him at half intensity < 70%.

[phnompenhandy]

Looks very complicated and immersive.  As a lower league manager, I'd like to know in what ways training is reduced for part-time squads, amateur squads and youth squads. Would they have fewer options or just less of the same?

[Seb Wassell]

29 minutes ago, frank_olaf said:

Will we be able to train players for a specific position, role and duty (attack, support, defend)? The option of training for the specific duty was in the game a few years ago but has been missing recently.

This is especially helpful to train a central midfielder on defend duty.

Thanks.

Yes.

[Siven]

Looks interesting.

Really like the look of the new tutoring system.

[ferrarinseb]

6 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

Yes.

Wonderful. 

[Seb Wassell]

24 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

Looks very complicated and immersive.  As a lower league manager, I'd like to know in what ways training is reduced for part-time squads, amateur squads and youth squads. Would they have fewer options or just less of the same?

Semi-pro and Amateur teams have a reduced schedule to reflect the fact that they have considerably less time for training than professional teams. Youth have their own bespoke schedules but can be trained in the same way as any professional senior team if desired.

[podunkboy]

this...I'm liking quite a bit. Might end up delegating everything to the assman after I get hopelessly lost in it, but I've always felt training and tutoring seems somehow remote. This might be the one feature that makes the game a must-buy out of the gate (although the interface color scheme...meh, but that can be fixed with the proper skin.)

 

[Coulthard's Jaw]

Been wanting better training for a good while, I like it !

[kingking]

Does Training Rating affect Match Performance?

[akm.91]

Has International Management training finally been dealt with? Been the same for years. Going through tournaments with most of your squad at 50% fitness is silly. 

[jayahr]

This looks sooo Anstoß 3 (Off the Ball 3) from back in the 90ies....

Seems like we can do a lot of micro-management in the next game, which makes me hope that the assistants don't mess up things too much, cause I really don't like micro-managing.

[GerdMuller]

Love Anstoss 3 , hate micromanaging, want all the options and leave it to the ass. man then and hope he does good. Its the crazyness of football management in a nutshell.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, jayahr said:

This looks sooo Anstoß 3 (Off the Ball 3) from back in the 90ies....

Seems like we can do a lot of micro-management in the next game, which makes me hope that the assistants don't mess up things too much, cause I really don't like micro-managing.

I think the an assistant should be able to mess things up & very badly if they are ill-equipped for the task they have been assigned, it should be part of the risk when choosing to delegate a task to a subordinate but I concede that it's a tricky one for SI to get right as I imagine some FM'ers will view this choice as selecting a gaming assist function rather than a delegation of their managerial responsibility.

[jayahr]

vor 5 Minuten schrieb Barside:

I think the an assistant should be able to mess things up & very badly if they are ill-equipped for the task they have been assigned, it should be part of the risk when choosing to delegate a task to a subordinate but I concede that it's a tricky one for SI to get right as I imagine some FM'ers will view this choice as selecting a gaming assist function rather than a delegation of their managerial responsibility.

Agreed.

I just don't want to be forced into the hassle of dealing with this as a requirement to win. Obviously that would be realistic, but reduce the fun for me.
An assistant should (if sufficiently qualified) do well overall if assigned with the job, imho. Otherwise that would not be a real option for a player who wants to win things. Of course, the last 5-10% should be down to human effort, if such effort is made, as in every aspect of the game.

Is it cool that this new feature resembles something that was there already 20 years ago so much? Not sure.

[Seb Wassell]

The assistant is perfectly capable of running training on his own and will do so according to his own preferences/attributes. Taking control yourself can give you an edge and allow you to tailor the players to your precise philosophy.

[Lord Rowell]

I do like this! My social life may be on hold for a while though...

[Beerschot]

Makes training interesting again. Thx for listening SI 

[ChelseaSince86]

Impressive. Really looking forward to trying that out

[ForzaCarpi]

I see in the video coloured dots in the gym, in the medical center, in the pitch during training day and so on....but are we really see this????

[westy8chimp]

Looks good. Im quite lazy when it comes to training, but may give this a bit more thought. 

If i stick to delegating to ass. Man though... I hope they are capable of logical training plans. Or have a relevant attribute which dictates how good they are at setting training. 

Or even more lazy... Can people export training regimes? If we use out the box tactical philosophy in a similar way itd be handy! New subforum for training downloads

 

[jayahr]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Seb Wassell:

The assistant is perfectly capable of running training on his own and will do so according to his own preferences/attributes. Taking control yourself can give you an edge and allow you to tailor the players to your precise philosophy.

Perfect, thanks for clarifying.

 

[FlairRA]

Very nice, this will be pretty awesome when training up young players!

[larnson]

Hopefully these change will be accompanied by increased feedback, so that you can see why a player has improved in a particular stat.

[Scrench]

I'm curious how the training tab looks like on the player profile with all these changes, as far as i know we havn't seen it yet

[Lanko]

Can we please know if this will be available for international squads? 

After half a decade away from FM, I got FM18 purely because of the World Cup this year, and what a disappointment international management is. No training, no real way to get tactical familiarity, player bonds, etc. Not to mention the absurd fitness problems.

And since the fitness problems with international squads seems to be affected by the lack of a training option, is this at least being looked?

[..Valhalla..]

I pre-ordered the game based on this information alone. I NEVER pre-order games, but that changed today.

[HUNT3R]

Training looks interesting this year, so it looks like I might be a lot more involved in it than I have been in previous years.

[Federico]

Crying of happiness, thanks! Thanks! 

[chocolatecoatedballs]

If there was just this update and nothing else, I would be happy, I'm excited to see how it works!

I have pre-ordered for the first time and I didn't buy the last two iterations.

[Scoham]

Are there explanations of what each session does? e.g. chance conversion improves finishing, composure and long shots?

[phnompenhandy]

The new training system looks excellent but it does need to be deeply integrated with something I posted in the tactics thread - I'll re-post it here:

 

There is one key aspect unmentioned so far that I'm concerned about. We will now have geggenpressing and various iterations of pressing tactics. Will this be adequately reflected in stamina and match condition levels? Until now its been inadequate - low-stamina players could press all match, drop to 50% condition and keep going all season. For me, pressing strategies must affect not just the condition %age but the actual energy of players within the match and especially over the season. It should require the need for more rotation and serious attention in pre-season training as well as in-season training. We need to see, for example, players who return from a world cup and have a short pre-season in a geggenpressing team, drop in energy levels and increase in injury proneness, and give more fouls away due to fatigue.

[ferrarinseb]

2 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

The new training system looks excellent but it does need to be deeply integrated with something I posted in the tactics thread - I'll re-post it here:

 

There is one key aspect unmentioned so far that I'm concerned about. We will now have geggenpressing and various iterations of pressing tactics. Will this be adequately reflected in stamina and match condition levels? Until now its been inadequate - low-stamina players could press all match, drop to 50% condition and keep going all season. For me, pressing strategies must affect not just the condition %age but the actual energy of players within the match and especially over the season. It should require the need for more rotation and serious attention in pre-season training as well as in-season training. We need to see, for example, players who return from a world cup and have a short pre-season in a geggenpressing team, drop in energy levels and increase in injury proneness, and give more fouls away due to fatigue.

I think we need to wait until the release to see the effects. Given this is 1st time they are implementing , Might require balancing at first. 

But hopefully we get the Balance, It will feel wrong to see players having the extreme stressful tactic week in week out with out any Issues with Energy levels and Injury levels

[phnompenhandy]

1 minute ago, ferrarinseb said:

I think we need to wait until the release to see the effects. Given this is 1st time they are implementing , Might require balancing at first. 

But hopefully we get the Balance, It will feel wrong to see players having the extreme stressful tactic week in week out with out any Issues with Energy levels and Injury levels

My point is, it's not been effective for years. I manage part-time teams who can close down and press all match all year. Shouldn't be possible.

[ferrarinseb]

1 minute ago, phnompenhandy said:

My point is, it's not been effective for years. I manage part-time teams who can close down and press all match all year. Shouldn't be possible.

I agree with you. All i just want to say we have to see how its implemented in game, Given they are changing training Could change the way of how it effects on pitch.Till now we have only fitness training in Global along with Physical aspects for individual training. With more options i feel we have to wait how they all group into bigger effect.  I really hope to see that changes to desired effect.