danielgear

Great to see that you’re getting recommendations, patch might just be a coincidence, had a few people say to me on socials they weren’t getting any but we found out it’s because they weren’t waiting enough for results. Had one saying they’d not had no results after 3 days but they waiting and they came after a few weeks. Getting the chief scout to set assignments seems to be the way forward.

Blushes A great idea for a save mate hope you enjoy it. Will follow along

There is always the risk with injuries but preseason is the time you’re going to train them the hardest therefore the risk increases anyway. In the preseason above I got through it with only a few players getting knocks less than a week.

For me preseason is about setting up a strong base fitness wise, regardless of how you approach preseason fatigue will need to be managed through the season with rotation and training plans.

I evaluate my preseason to be successful if my squad not just my starting XI get to the first league game of the season in top condition, sharpness and morale. With a high tactical familiarity in the squad. Recovery and match review “charge” your players still as they’re still doing training however light. You could try that approach and see but I wanted one full day off for the players.

I wrote this piece for View from the touchline and I was asked to share it in the forum for everyone to see. So hopefully you find it useful. How to approach Preseason training on FM23 A few years ago I wrote about how I planned out preseason and the post went down well. https://www.viewfromthetouchline.com/2019/11/19/perfecting-pre-season/ But I still see people now asking questions about preseason, What is the best thing to do, How many games to play What teams should I play How many days between games What about training How much should I rotate Are all typical questions I see, now I’m not saying my way is the best way and the way I used to do it in the link above is still a decent way. But over the last few months the way I approach pre season has evolved and changed. So I thought I’d take the time to write about it and how my fresh approach works and the thought process behind it. Preseason Matches and Training The old way I used to play had a simple thought process which many probably use Minutes played + easy wins = great fitness condition and good morale This always seemed to work and work well. But after having time to think about it a bit more over the years I’ve realised the downside of this is it doesn’t take advantage of training and this is where we work on our tactical ideas and improve attributes. Previously I’d play games Saturday and Wednesday with rest days after both. So we were getting 3 days training on Monday, Tuesday and Friday and the Friday one felt a bit pointless because it was the day after the rest day and the day before a match so you felt limited as to what you could actually do. Also the schedule felt broken. Two days training Match day Rest day One day training Match day Rest day So I dived into how I could improve this and what I came up with was a 6+1 plan. 6 days of preseason followed by 1 day of rest per week. How this works The thought process is we want maximum time on the training pitch in preseason but we also need games to increase match sharpness and tactical familiarity, So what I do is separate the squad into two starting XI’s Then I arrange fixtures over a 4 week period I play double games on weekends. Saturdays the strongest XI play, Sunday the weakest 11 play. (you set this up by arranging preseason cups over 4 weekends as friendlies as the game doesn’t allow you to set up back to back friendlies) This then gives us a new schedule of Four days training Two match days Rest day This might seem like I’m just overworking the players and taking away their rest days but their second rest day comes in when the alternative XI play their game. Previously I’d name a squad of 22/23 and make 11 changes at halftime for the first few games then on the hour mark for the later games. When actually all this does is decrease the amount of minutes players play and mainly focus on the starting XI fitness as a priority. Whereas the new way everyone gets maximum playing time. Planning the fixtures The plan is to start with three morale boosting games increasing in difficulty each week before a final test against a similar ability team. As you can see I’ve chosen my opposition each team playing in a higher division that the last Game 1 v Really weak non league side Game 2 v Weaker Side Game 3 v Slightly weaker side Game 4 v Same standard as myself Travelling As you can see all games were at home. The reason for this is Football Manager takes into account travelling. So with the amount of games I don’t want extra fatigue taken out of the players travelling all over the world for games. The only issue is here for big clubs they all want money spinning tours to the USA and Asia. But this doesn’t have to be a problem. We can just adjust the plan slightly and try to play local sides in these countries all it takes is a bit of research. Travel will occur if the match is away from home and the distance between the stadiums is more than 15 miles. There are two types of travel, Short and Long. Short means travel during S1 and ES either side of the match on match day. Long means travel during S2 the day before the match and S1 the day after the match Rest day I mentioned above that the idea behind it was a plan for 6+1. The 1 being a rest day. So every Monday after 4 days of training and two matches we have a full day of rest. No match reviews, no team bonding. One full day off with all 3 slots as rest. Training My plan operates training over a 6 week schedule Week 1 – Fitness Week 2 – Fitness Week 3 – Fitness and Attacking and defending Week 4 – Fitness and Technical Week 5 – fitness and Match preparation Week 6 – tactics As you can see here. Monday would be the rest day, Then 4 days of training before 2 match days. Currently I’m at a part time club so we only have 2 days training but the process for a full time day would be to fill all 3 slots each of the training days. Here is an example for a full time team of how it work work over two week period As you can see Monday is the rest day post a double game weekend then we have 4 solid days of training followed by another double game weekend. Match Squad During preseason you will get injuries or players will get knocks so I plan it like this. I have my first and second XIs and then subs. Depending on the club I am I might not take any of the XI I’m not using and fill the bench with youth players as subs and only use subs if needed as the plan is to give players the full 90. Preseason Results Our 8th friendly got cancelled due to the cup match being arranged so we only ended up playing 7 not 8 but results were great. Minutes played chart Had the 8th game not got cancelled due to the cup match the second XI would have had another 90 minutes under the belt. Current squad fitness As we are about to start our first game of the season, everyone’s condition is great and sharpness is great apart from two players. Yndeheim who was the third choice keeper and only played 90 minutes in pre-season and Rasmus Kristiansen who was a late signing so he wasn’t here all pre season to get his condition and sharpness up. So overall the plan I set out to do was achieved. The whole squad is in perfect condition ahead of the start of the season. We had time on the training pitch to work on player attributes and tactics. I’m not saying this is the perfect way to approach preseason but I’ve been approaching it like this and have found that it works really well for me. If you give it a go let me know how you get on. Thanks for reading Dan Any questions or comments feel free to ask.

The FM curse

How strange haha. Glad you have worked it out though

@_Ben_ my preseason training post is live that I mentioned above. https://www.viewfromthetouchline.com/2022/11/30/how-to-approach-preseason-training-on-fm23/

Honestly, I don’t know as I’ve not had that issue. My only guess would be that you don’t have any previous focuses? But you said it’s across a few saves so assume that you must have. Otherwise it seems like a bug. Can you post a screenshot of it?

I was 6 in ‘92 so a bit too soon for me. But yeah it must be hard to cater to both, Touch was probably a decent halfway house for starters. I think that’s back now isn’t it?

God yeah playing since 97 has helped

Have you assigned scouts like I did in the guide above when setting the focus?

Cheers bud, I actually wonder if a new player would find it easier than us, as we are very used to the old way and it’s a feature that hasn’t really been touched. For a new player they just click create recruitment focus and select what they want.

Have you got the scouting assignments delegated and you’re raising this as just a recruitment focus or do you have full control? A few people have said when they have full control they get nothing back, when they set priority on top and standard too.

I've seen a lot of people talking on socials and forums about the changes to scouting and what to do with recruitment focuses on FM23 so I thought I'd share this This is taken from the website View From The Touchline Scouting on FM23 Football Manager 2023 has seen the biggest change to scouting in years with the introduction of a recruitment focus and there hasn’t been much information released about it. In this post, I’m going to talk about the changes and also explain how to scout on FM23 and use recruitment focus to guide your transfer strategies. The main way to approach scouting on FM23 has changed the idea now is to use the recruitment focuses to streamline your scouting teams searches for players. You can now leave the scouting assignments to your chief scout (you can take control of this and it still works like Pre FM23) and the chief scout will set assignments for the scouting team and search for players within the scouting range. Now you shouldn’t see 100+ scouting cards returned to you in your inbox. The thought process seems to be more aligned with real life in that you have a group of scouts constantly scouting and building up a database of players so that when the manager (you) wants to find a player they already have a database to pick from and then can narrow any further search depending on your criteria. For this post, I’ve taken over Manchester City as they have a great scouting setup to show how this works. Tactic I’ve set this 433 and City doesn’t really have any Left backs, Having to play Cancelo there. Recruitment focus Here is where you come in, you’ve decided you want a new left-back, so you set a recruitment focus of that position and role and select the criteria that you want the scouting team to search for, So for the purpose of this post, I’m going to set up two focuses. The first will be a top priority in which we want to find a long-term player to play Left back and the second which will be a standard priority in which we want to find an immediate option. So first of all we need to help with the scouting screen and select the Recruitment Focus. From here we will select to create a recruitment focus Here we then set up the focus I’ve named this LB Long Term so I can easily identify the assignment later on. First of all i select the box to choose our tactic (pink arrow) I’ve selected the 433 above, I then select D(L) for the position. Next up I select the role and how well he can play the role (green arrow) So I’m looking for a player who can play Full back to a good proficiency. I’ve set it as transfer only then the minimum current ability as we’re looking for a young player who hopefully potentially will develop to a 4 star player (red box) we have selected the ages for the search between 15 and 23 (blue box) I’ve also selected the areas I want us to scout. I’ve asked them to focus on South America and Europe, you can search right down to a certain division should you wish. As I mentioned above I’ve set this as a top priority (yellow arrow) And I’ve assigned the scouts myself and asked them to include any players already found by scouts, this is where the Chief scout setting assignments comes into play as they will quickly add players they have already found that fit the criteria. (orange arrow) Here I’ve chosen which scouts I want to focus on in this search. The ones selected cover the areas in the search. Once confirmed it then gets added Next up I wanted to focus on a more immediate option. Same as above we have selected the tactic, position and role. A current ability of two stars and a potential of 3 as we have to remember we are Manchester City so the stars are relevant against the quality of my squad a two star is still going to be a really good player. We’ve set the age of the search between 24-50 and for them to search South America and Europe. We have set the priority to be standard but 9 scouts are to join this search. But due to our tactic, I want a player who gets forward when possible so I have selected further details From here you have a whole range of criteria you can use in the search right down to defensive stats to really help refine your searches. But for this search, I’m just looking for the trait So now I’ve confirmed this focus. As you can see it’s been added to the screen. In the list, we now have all the assignments set. As I mentioned earlier I have left the scouting assignments to the Chief Scout and here is the full list of his searches, you can see he is building up a database of all positions and ages across our scouting ranges. They are colour coded as well. Yellow – Top Priority (Top priority will get you faster results, I recommend using this for during transfer windows only) Blue – Standard Priority (Results normally within a month) White – Ongoing Priority When setting priorities you have to allocate more scouts or you can leave it to the Chief Scout to auto-assign. The minimum requirement is Top – 2 Standard – 1 With these focuses set, they will then go out and find players within those criteria and report back. But when reporting back they will also highlight “near matches” players who were close to making the cut but just missed out. They also show the progress of the players they are currently scouting. You can set the frequency of updates you want on your assignments between weekly or monthly. During transfer windows Weekly seems sensible and during the season monthly. Results The first team’s immediate focus has returned with 2 players they recommend that are first team ready. Two realistic options for Manchester City to sign that fit the criteria I set for them to search for. As you can see there is still one left in progress, you can select that menu and see who they are scouting. This is handy to keep an eye on who else they are scouting for the search. I’ve seen people mention that they’re not getting players to show up through the searches even though it shows as in progress before and then they disappear and here I’ll explain why. From the Long term LB search I checked up on it during the in progress. Here we have the in-progress results for 50 players but none of these will end up recommended as I set the criteria to be a 4-star potential. I did this on purpose to show why. A 4-star for Manchester City is a world-class player the best my scouts are finding are these two Who are 3-star potential with a chance of being 4. So they don’t fully meet the criteria. If this is happening I would recommend lowering the search parameters that you are searching for. If I had set it as 3 stars it would have recommended these two. I like the look of Lara so what I do here is add to shortlist Just so I don’t lose him from my searches but remember if you haven’t got much money a FM Tip (Trademarked by FMStag) is to untick the keep scout reports up to date (Green Arrow) just saves your scouts scouting the same player and costing money especially if its out of range. Database Now above I mentioned leaving the assignments to the Chief Scout and this builds a database of players for you. So I bet you’re now wondering “how do I access this database?” On the scouting screen select scouted players Here it shows all the players your scouts have found. So if we look for players under the same criteria as the youth search earlier It already returned some results based on the database formed. The same with the first team Left Back we were looking for The database already had options What If I was worried about a lack of Striker cover in case Haaland got injured. We’d look at the database Not happy with the results then we can select “create a recruitment focus based on these searches” at the top of the screen. And as you can see its automatically added to your assignments For me, the real benefit of this comes within the transfer window if you get a player poached you can search for immediate replacements if you need one. The scouting staff have a database ready for you to search and filter through. This feels more in line with real-life recruitment these days where the manager decides “We need a left back” and is presented with already scouted players. If they aren’t satisfied then the scouting team are set an assignment to narrow their search on one particular position/role then once completed they go back to improving and updating their database. Hopefully, this guide helps you understand scouting on FM23 better now. As I mentioned you don’t have to delegate assignments to staff and you can assume control and set them all yourself and it works the same way as building up a database of players that you wish to have. The benefit for me is the staff seem to generate a really good database of players for us to use. I hope this guide is helpful. Thanks for reading.

I don’t disagree with the others but CF-A for me. Similar reasoning about the support roles but he will play those players in more via holding up at times whilst also spearheading the attack. I don’t think a AF would be a bad choice either.

No problem hope it helps.

Cracking work Shrew, what tweaks have you made tactically now you’ve gone from one of the strongest teams in the league to one of if not the weakest?

I’m actually mid writing a post about that now. I used to be similar but I’ve changed in the last few months so am writing up on it. It probably won’t be out for another week or 2 as I’m on holiday but you’re welcome to read the draft if you don’t mind the lack of images and it being unfinished (got to add training schedules that’s it really) Link removed as now published https://www.viewfromthetouchline.com/2022/11/30/how-to-approach-preseason-training-on-fm23/

Job done Ben, summer to recruit and two years to get promoted before moving on. Going well so far

My suggestion would be a 2D graphic, like we get on tactical preset selection screen where you can just see movement.

The Defend duty might cause them to push on more with different roles, I only tested over 5 games. One to look at

Obviously other things come into play like TIs etc but when it was mentioned I did a test on beta and same tactic on FM22 and ran it for 5 games on both and noticed a difference but I wouldn’t say it’s massively different. A matter of 5 yards further up the pitch. what I’ve noticed if the DM is on support duty they will push up further than if they’re on defend duty. I ran it was a AP-S and CM-A Infront of a DM-D and it wasn’t noticeable enough at first until I went back to compare on FM22

On FM23, if you play with a DM this pushes MC’s more forward than FM22 so they will play as AM’s. If you get the roles right those 3 can effectively play as AMs. Therefore you can keep the 4141