Training Sessions For Albion Rovers (Or Any Semi Pro/Awful/Lower League Team)

[FMunderachiever]

Hello Everyone

 

Alongside my Arsenal save, i have my long term save that ive just started at Albion Rovers in Scotland. Weve made a promising start with a very basic 442 formation.

 

Because we have so little staff and because we are semi pro, it means we only have 2 days worth of training per week, and thats in 4 sessions.

 

How would you arrange these to get the maximum benefit from what are pretty poor players?

 

Im trying to make sure all the coaching staff are well rounded coaches with what they can coach, and are also good at working with youngsters.

 

But currently, all we do is run 1 fitness session, 1 match preparation/teamwork session, and i use the other 2 sessions to work on attacking corners.

 

I figure the two sessions on attacking corners are very beneficial. we have some good corner routines, some decent headers in the area, and its provided us with a good source of goals in matches so i see the benefit to this.

 

Ive not been doing any sessions based on technical play or possession etc, because it seems like a waste at that level?

 

Given that the formation is a simple 442, is it a waste using the teamwork session, and should this be used for something else? possibly more fitness work?

 

This is something at bigger clubs i leave to the staff, so interested how you approach this aspect of the game

 

Thank you

[Giantplaything]

Good question. I'm curious about this as well as I'm only just experimenting with this. 

Generally, I still leave it to the AssMan but make the occasional change prior to upcoming games. I do think the standard sessions are a little too generic and, whilst it stops overall stat drop, it doesn't target those important attributes at those low levels. not a dig; just room for marginal gains.

The other problem I have at that level is it takes an age to get team cohesion up to even a moderate level. Poor players playing poorly together: Nightmare fuel.

I've not planned this out extensively but overall it goes something like Pre-season (mostly leave to AssMan) > Match prep/squad cohesion work > Key attribute focus. 

During early phase 2 I will have two match-prep style sessions (Tues = Overall + Match Practice) (Thursday = Outfield + Teamwork). Tuesday is a heavy day so that I gradually will start changing Match Practice to maybe the attack or defend match prep variants.

Once I'm happy the team is playing sufficiently as a unit or at least until its not a negative then its onto player key attribute focus. I break a month's 8 training days (counting 1 game/week) up to focus on Attack, Defend, Tactical and a Goalie/set-piece sessions. I try to make sure a training unit gets 1 session focus per day. I used to do these as 1 week all-attack etc. but found that the neglected units didn't train well that week and would flag up on training reports.

Not even looked at youth training but i'd probably leave out the match prep and crack on with attributes.

That's just my take on it. I hope it's at least logical. I'm looking forward to hear others take on it.