How to be reasonably successful without being too perfectionist? In particular regarding youth development.

[danej]

I have been asking lots if questions in this forum over the past few months. Thanks for a lot of great feedback.

 

I am thinking that most of my questions have something in common. They touch on an important, more fundamental topic.

 

Basically I am trying to find the way of playing that I subjectively enjoy the most. Getting feedback here has been incredibly valuable for me so far - a great supplement to just play season after season and only learning from my own experience. And a great supplement to reading and watching content of often unknown quality and often not detailed enough for my liking.

 

Overall I think I have come a long way to finding my style. Basically I don't want to be perfectionist. I don't want to micromanage very much. I delegate most stuff to the staff, including most almost all aspects of vital aspects such as scouting, training and hiring/firing staff. This is of course a poor strategy but I like how this makes the saves more difficult, I want to stick with this overall way of playing. I don't want to be so successful that eventual success is pretty much a foregone conclusion. I want there to be a real risk of getting sacked.

 

At the moment I can think of only one aspect of the game where I haven't found my style: Developing players. Overall I fell like my young players develop quite poorly. I probably want to step that up a bit. But as mentioned I don't want to be too successful either, I want to keep it at a realistic level.

 

So, my question: Any input regarding how I could improve my youth development a bit? Not improving a lot, just a bit. Without being perfectionist, without significant micromanaging. Just a few tips for minor, easy, not very time consuming tweaks in this aspect of the game.

[herne79]

1 hour ago, danej said:

I have been asking lots if questions in this forum over the past few months. Thanks for a lot of great feedback.

 

I am thinking that most of my questions have something in common. They touch on an important, more fundamental topic.

 

Basically I am trying to find the way of playing that I subjectively enjoy the most. Getting feedback here has been incredibly valuable for me so far - a great supplement to just play season after season and only learning from my own experience. And a great supplement to reading and watching content of often unknown quality and often not detailed enough for my liking.

 

Overall I think I have come a long way to finding my style. Basically I don't want to be perfectionist. I don't want to micromanage very much. I delegate most stuff to the staff, including most almost all aspects of vital aspects such as scouting, training and hiring/firing staff. This is of course a poor strategy but I like how this makes the saves more difficult, I want to stick with this overall way of playing. I don't want to be so successful that eventual success is pretty much a foregone conclusion. I want there to be a real risk of getting sacked.

 

At the moment I can think of only one aspect of the game where I haven't found my style: Developing players. Overall I fell like my young players develop quite poorly. I probably want to step that up a bit. But as mentioned I don't want to be too successful either, I want to keep it at a realistic level.

 

So, my question: Any input regarding how I could improve my youth development a bit? Not improving a lot, just a bit. Without being perfectionist, without significant micromanaging. Just a few tips for minor, easy, not very time consuming tweaks in this aspect of the game.

I think this is great 😊.  As I said elsewhere, there is no right and wrong way to play, there is only how you enjoy it.

Developing young players can be a minefield.  And it can be as detailed or as hands off as you want.  There are pretty detailed guides pinned above if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of it all and at least a core understanding of it can help.

Personally (and I’m by no means saying this is what you should do) these are my basic tips:

1) Delegate all General Training to your assistant or youth team managers.  They’re actually pretty good at setting up general training for you.  Once you have more experience you may want to take control, but for now at least consider this delegation.

2) Take control of individual training, at least for your brightest prospects.  Whilst general training can help them broadly develop, individual training can help them focus on what you may more specifically want from them in the future - and no assistant or youth team manager will know that.

Note - this can take a little time to set up after each annual youth intake (not too onerous though), but it’s a one time deal only and you just take a watching brief after that.

3) With individual training, if you assign a player a role to train you’re not actually training that role.  You’re actually just asking them to focus on a core set of attributes to develop, so don’t be afraid to ask a player to train a different “role” if you think a different set of attributes listed under a different “role” might be better suited.

4) Review their progress after 6 months.  If they’re progressing well leave well alone.  If they seem to have stalled try to figure out why.  Change things if you think there’s a need.

5) Don’t loan out players below the age of 18.  You already know why 😀.

6) Know that no 2 players will ever develop in the same manner.  The training module is very complex, much more than most give it credit for.  Sometimes players will seemingly stall in their development for no reason we can see; others will take off; some will see peaks and dips.  All we can do as managers is provide the best environment we can at our clubs, it’s up to the players whether they take advantage of that or not.  If they don’t, get rid.

7) Put players into training groups.  That helps when it comes to which aspect of your delegated General Training modules they will be involved in.

There is (much!) more you can do but these tips shouldn’t be too time consuming.

One thing I will add relates to Mentoring.  Mentoring is designed to help change a player’s personality.  Generally speaking, players with good personalities train better and contribute more in matches than players with a bad attitude.  This is why you’ll tend to see pretty much everyone wanting players to change their personality for the better via Mentoring.

You can create Mentoring groups in your youth teams, however the impact of those never seem to be very much (something to experiment with).  Mentoring only really comes into it’s own when young players are paired with senior players, which you can only do when those players are in the same squad.  That’s not to say you should put all your young players into your senior squad to get them Mentored, but try to target your brightest prospects who you think would actually benefit from some Mentoring.  Before you do, always check their personality - not all young players need Mentoring because they already exhibit a good personality.  Check their coach reports for such phrases as a player being professional, ambitious, determined that kind of thing 👍.

[danej]

52 minutes ago, herne79 said:

I think this is great 😊.  As I said elsewhere, there is no right and wrong way to play, there is only how you enjoy it.

Developing young players can be a minefield.  And it can be as detailed or as hands off as you want.  There are pretty detailed guides pinned above if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of it all and at least a core understanding of it can help.

Personally (and I’m by no means saying this is what you should do) these are my basic tips:

1) Delegate all General Training to your assistant or youth team managers.  They’re actually pretty good at setting up general training for you.  Once you have more experience you may want to take control, but for now at least consider this delegation.

2) Take control of individual training, at least for your brightest prospects.  Whilst general training can help them broadly develop, individual training can help them focus on what you may more specifically want from them in the future - and no assistant or youth team manager will know that.

Note - this can take a little time to set up after each annual youth intake (not too onerous though), but it’s a one time deal only and you just take a watching brief after that.

3) With individual training, if you assign a player a role to train you’re not actually training that role.  You’re actually just asking them to focus on a core set of attributes to develop, so don’t be afraid to ask a player to train a different “role” if you think a different set of attributes listed under a different “role” might be better suited.

4) Review their progress after 6 months.  If they’re progressing well leave well alone.  If they seem to have stalled try to figure out why.  Change things if you think there’s a need.

5) Don’t loan out players below the age of 18.  You already know why 😀.

6) Know that no 2 players will ever develop in the same manner.  The training module is very complex, much more than most give it credit for.  Sometimes players will seemingly stall in their development for no reason we can see; others will take off; some will see peaks and dips.  All we can do as managers is provide the best environment we can at our clubs, it’s up to the players whether they take advantage of that or not.  If they don’t, get rid.

7) Put players into training groups.  That helps when it comes to which aspect of your delegated General Training modules they will be involved in.

There is (much!) more you can do but these tips shouldn’t be too time consuming.

One thing I will add relates to Mentoring.  Mentoring is designed to help change a player’s personality.  Generally speaking, players with good personalities train better and contribute more in matches than players with a bad attitude.  This is why you’ll tend to see pretty much everyone wanting players to change their personality for the better via Mentoring.

You can create Mentoring groups in your youth teams, however the impact of those never seem to be very much (something to experiment with).  Mentoring only really comes into it’s own when young players are paired with senior players, which you can only do when those players are in the same squad.  That’s not to say you should put all your young players into your senior squad to get them Mentored, but try to target your brightest prospects who you think would actually benefit from some Mentoring.  Before you do, always check their personality - not all young players need Mentoring because they already exhibit a good personality.  Check their coach reports for such phrases as a player being professional, ambitious, determined that kind of thing 👍.

This is some great input, thanks. I was actually already thinking along the same lines - focusing on individual training. Since it probably helps and takes little time, to a large extent a one time micro management thing.

So far I have done nothing regarding individual training, have just clicked on the let ass man decide button that is somewhere in the training menu. IIRC the ass man usually only puts very few players on any sort of individual training. Which I guess implies that the ass man does a poor job in this regard.

What is training groups? Do you mean the training units, those that also constitutes the players eligible for mentoring groups?

That, and what you write about mentoring, reminds me - I am also uncertain of which youngsters to move to train with the first team I order to get them mentored (those who aren't good enough to be in the first team squad on merits). Any further input on this? I might make a separate thread with thus question in the future, also something that has puzzled me for a while.

There seems to be some major disadvantages by having youngsters train with the first team. They miss a lot of training because the teams play matches on different dates. And the first team coaches often have a worse working with youngsters attribute.

So far I lean towards only mentoring youngsters if at least the first two if not all three of the following is true:
- The youngster has a worse personality than the mentor.
- Worse media handling style.
- Worse determination.
Perhaps I would also only consider mentoring youngsters with at least 3.5-4 star PA (perhaps an even higher threshold) in order to not move too many youngsters to train with the first team. In order to not increase the workload of the first team coaches. In order to not weaken the overall quality of training.

The topic of training groups/units also reminds me: I wonder where to put the central midfielders, in the defensive or attacking unit? I play the preset 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress. Ball Winning and Box to box being the two roles. The AI tends to mostly put the central midfielders in the defensive unit, especially those with decent ball winning midfielder attributes.

Edited July 15, 2022 by danej

[herne79]

34 minutes ago, danej said:

What is training groups? Do you mean the training units

Yup .

34 minutes ago, danej said:

That, and what you write about mentoring, reminds me - I am also uncertain of which youngsters to move to train with the first team I order to get them mentored (those who aren't good enough to be in the first team squad on merits). Any further input on this?

You've pretty much answered your own question:

34 minutes ago, danej said:

There seems to be some major disadvantages by having youngsters train with the first team. They miss a lot of training because the teams play matches on different dates. And the first team coaches often have a worse working with youngsters attribute.

and here:

34 minutes ago, danej said:

in order to not move too many youngsters to train with the first team. In order to not increase the workload of the first team coaches. In order to not weaken the overall quality of training

Personally (others might do it differently) I'll only move a young player into the senior squad if he's ready to have at least some first team football - perhaps the odd sub appearance or a start in an easy cup match for example.  That will depend on his attributes though, not his star rating.  One should be linked to the other of course, but always worth checking first.  I'll still make him available for youth matches when not playing in the first team.  And I'll move him to the senior squad regardless of his personality.  If he needs mentoring he'll have that as well but as said above, only if he needs it.

Again, there's no right or wrong - just different ways of doing things.  However I like to keep things fairly natural - a natural progression kind of thing - rather than really trying to squeeze every last drop out of the game.  It's perfectly possible to put many or even every single player into your first team and there can be benefits to doing that, but I don't see that as being very realistic and isn't where I get enjoyment.  Others do enjoy it though and I'm not knocking it at all.

34 minutes ago, danej said:

I wonder where to put the central midfielders, in the defensive or attacking unit? I play the preset 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress. Ball Winning and Box to box being the two roles

I'll put a more defensive minded or attack minded midfielder into whichever unit I think he'll get the most benefit from or where I think he needs a little boost.   Example - I play West Ham a lot and Declan Rice is my main man.  He has great defensive skills already so I tend to put him into my attacking unit to help with his more offensive skills (unless I want him to purely focus on defending which I think would be a waste).

[mikcheck]

@herne79regarding training, I have a youngster fullback that already has good defensive attributes, and since he will be a kind of IWB I want him to mostly develop attacking attributes now, so I don't want to waste defensive training on him. He already has good positioning and tackling.

So is it ok to play him at a fullback position but put him in a individual training for a advanced playmaker or something similar (because all the fullback positions train defensive aspects) ?

[danej]

42 minutes ago, mikcheck said:

@herne79regarding training, I have a youngster fullback that already has good defensive attributes, and since he will be a kind of IWB I want him to mostly develop attacking attributes now, so I don't want to waste defensive training on him. He already has good positioning and tackling.

So is it ok to play him at a fullback position but put him in a individual training for a advanced playmaker or something similar (because all the fullback positions train defensive aspects) ?

From what I read you are absolutely right. Similar advice is in one or more of the pinned posts IIRC, and I believe herne has expressed the same view at several occasions.

[herne79]

4 hours ago, mikcheck said:

@herne79regarding training, I have a youngster fullback that already has good defensive attributes, and since he will be a kind of IWB I want him to mostly develop attacking attributes now, so I don't want to waste defensive training on him. He already has good positioning and tackling.

So is it ok to play him at a fullback position but put him in a individual training for a advanced playmaker or something similar (because all the fullback positions train defensive aspects) ?

 

4 hours ago, danej said:

From what I read you are absolutely right. Similar advice is in one or more of the pinned posts IIRC, and I believe herne has expressed the same view at several occasions.

Yes you can do this, however role training is also linked to position training (it never used to be so pinned guides in that respect may be out of date now).  So to train a fullback as an advanced playmaker you'll also be training him as a central or attacking midfielder.

There's nothing wrong with doing that* just something to be aware of.

Alternatively (additionally?) you could just put him into the Attacking Unit.

* Some people will say "yeh but that eats into CA/PA" blahblahbah.  In reality it would hardly have any impact at all because any increase in positional familiarity with the CM or AM position would be marginal at best as you wouldn't be playing him in that position.  Plus the CA/PA calculations don't actually work as some people seem to think and should never be considered by us managers anyway - it's an under the hood metric for system purposes only. Regardless, players being able to play in multiple positions aren't exactly rare .

[Jack722]

On 16/07/2022 at 11:56, mikcheck said:

@herne79regarding training, I have a youngster fullback that already has good defensive attributes, and since he will be a kind of IWB I want him to mostly develop attacking attributes now, so I don't want to waste defensive training on him. He already has good positioning and tackling.

So is it ok to play him at a fullback position but put him in a individual training for a advanced playmaker or something similar (because all the fullback positions train defensive aspects) ?

I wouldn't do this.

Firstly, individual training affects tactical familiarity, so if your player is always playing in a vastly different role to that he is training, this will give him a lower tactical familiarity compared to if he trained in the role he was playing. This also bothers me from a realism point of view, imagine every training session, the team is set up with a CAM in match practice and tactical sessions, with match previews showing how the player should position himself and play in the CAM position.. only for on match day, he plays as a LB and the team doesn't even use a CAM. It will just throw off the player and the rest of the team from a tactical standpoint.

Secondly, the attributes highlighted on the individual training won't actually get trained that much more than any others if you're not doing everything else correctly. Not only does attribute progression largely come from playing matches, where he will be playing as a fullback and therefore improving the attributes he uses most a fullback, sessions are almost never targeted at individual role attributes. (Other than match practise, which is just a low intensity game, and therefore the attributes are trained similarly to how they are in matches, but at a lower rate). The way training works in FM (and in my experience playing competitive sport irl) is that the team is split into defence and attack. Then, for example if you pick a defensive session, the defenders will be given instructions, coaching and feedback from the manager and staff, while playing against an attack which is basically left to play how they want. Sometimes drills or scenarios will be repeated many times until the defenders complete it perfectly, even if the attackers are required to play a scenario that doesn't challenge them whatsoever.

The defenders being drilled, will be working thoroughly on a set of targeted attributes, with feedback, repition and encouragement. On the other hand, the attackers will be left to test the defence by playing their own way - their individual role. which is why the primary focus (60%) is always on the specific attributes of one unit, while the secondary and tertiary focuses are on the individual roles of the other units (20%). 

If you're serious about your fb developing his attacking attributes, I would do some or all of:

• Train and play him in an attacking fullback role.
• find an individual focus that works on attacking attributes
• place him in the attacking training unit.
• Keep him in the defensive unit, but schedule many "attacking overlap" sessions, which focuses on attacking attributes for defenders.

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Jack722

[Jack722]

On 15/07/2022 at 11:05, danej said:

I have been asking lots if questions in this forum over the past few months. Thanks for a lot of great feedback.

 

I am thinking that most of my questions have something in common. They touch on an important, more fundamental topic.

 

Basically I am trying to find the way of playing that I subjectively enjoy the most. Getting feedback here has been incredibly valuable for me so far - a great supplement to just play season after season and only learning from my own experience. And a great supplement to reading and watching content of often unknown quality and often not detailed enough for my liking.

 

Overall I think I have come a long way to finding my style. Basically I don't want to be perfectionist. I don't want to micromanage very much. I delegate most stuff to the staff, including most almost all aspects of vital aspects such as scouting, training and hiring/firing staff. This is of course a poor strategy but I like how this makes the saves more difficult, I want to stick with this overall way of playing. I don't want to be so successful that eventual success is pretty much a foregone conclusion. I want there to be a real risk of getting sacked.

 

At the moment I can think of only one aspect of the game where I haven't found my style: Developing players. Overall I fell like my young players develop quite poorly. I probably want to step that up a bit. But as mentioned I don't want to be too successful either, I want to keep it at a realistic level.

 

So, my question: Any input regarding how I could improve my youth development a bit? Not improving a lot, just a bit. Without being perfectionist, without significant micromanaging. Just a few tips for minor, easy, not very time consuming tweaks in this aspect of the game.

It's a bit tedious, but I think it's always worth having a look to see squad depth in each of your youth teams. Just sort by position and make sure you have at least 3CB's, 2GK's, 3FB's, 3CM's etc. (depending on formation). I've found many players being forced to play and train in positions which they would never play long term due to a squad imbalance. This obviously hinders team performance (and therefore ratings of each individual player, which leads to development issues) as well as individual performance and development. I remember one time I had a hot prospect inside forward, and half way through the season, I was surprised to see that he was suddenly accomplished as a centreback. I investigated to find out why and realised my youth team had 0 CB's, and my U23 manager had to improvise and play someone else there. But by then my winger had spent 6 months of prime development time being stunted by learning how to play as a CB.

Other than that, just make sure you have a look every so often at the 'needs attention' section of youth development. The players that go here are the players that have shown little development recently. Try to figure out why (could be: playing and training in a non-ideal position, playing at too high/low level, personality, bad luck... etc), and then you can be somewhat certain that everyone else is developing fairly well.

[Rashidi]

Wanted to add something but @herne79covered everything leaving me with nought to say! 

Maybe he said this already :-) 

When they are 18 and if they are good enough to play in the main team, gradually bring them through and manage their game time so they don’t get jaded. It’s really easy for them to develop bad hidden attributes if you overplay them in matches or they end up on the losing end too many times.

I normally play give most of them around 10-15 appearances as substitutes, in fact I am known to keep doing this till they are at least 20, that’s when I play the regularly in full games. Jadedness is your enemy.

 

Oh and I have stopped using attributes ie I play with them completely hidden so I focus on how these players do in games via statistics and improve them via targeted training. It’s fun and scary at the same time.

[mikcheck]

@Rashidiare you playing with stars instead of attributes?

[Rashidi]

6 hours ago, mikcheck said:

@Rashidiare you playing with stars instead of attributes?

I am playing the game like this, its exhilarating.  I almost had a heart attack on today's stream when my young upstart Palermo side came back from two goals down to defeat Arsenal in the Europa cup knockouts. I love playing off statistics and then scouting them via stats as well.

[mikcheck]

42 minutos atrás, Rashidi disse:

I am playing the game like this, its exhilarating.  I almost had a heart attack on today's stream when my young upstart Palermo side came back from two goals down to defeat Arsenal in the Europa cup knockouts. I love playing off statistics and then scouting them via stats as well.

That is even harder than I though! I also play with no attributes, but I have stars, and you have basically nothing there as a attribute guideline. That's a hard one. 

I don't know if you've already did one, but I'd really like to see a video where you explain how do you play the game in that way.

And btw, because statistics in FM21 might be a bit broken (?) and not very reliable, do you think you'd have enough player information to make you play that way in that previous version of the game? 

Edited July 20, 2022 by mikcheck