[The Art of Possession Football]

On the face of it your central midfield seems to lack a defensive presence, perhaps changing the regista to a DM(d) might help sure up the defence. In doing so it may open up the possibility of your full backs being able to go forward.

On your right wing you seem to lack penetration. Make either your fullback more attacking allowing him to over lap the cutting in WPM or select a more attacking role for mata. That's all I've got at the moment

I had considered changing the Right back to attack, but I only want Darmian to push forward when relatively risk free which he is doing. The way I view my play is Mata can be penetrative from the right in a deeper position but via diagonal or sideway balls and this is happening....I'm wondering if my prob

In regards to the regista, I had considered changing Carrick to a HB to help the defence, but teams aren't creating much chances against me...and my full backs are getting forward, perhaps I will try this and this will help my team not being so deep.

I think the key to solving my problem is by tweaking / finding the balance from Carrick (RGA), Mata (WPMS) or Rooney (DFD). Problem is, I'm happy with the way each of them are playing in the purpose I want. Mata is linking up players from a narrow wide position, Rooney is putting pressure on defenders whilst ot of possession and Carrick is doing his best to play the possession play I want. I will try your suggestions and perhaps try Mata with a more attacking mentality.

[The Art of Possession Football]

Hi Cleon, been a big fan of your work for a number of years. First time I've ever felt obliged to post in one of your threads however.

This year I'm struggling with trying to build a possession tactic, I have certain elements of it working the way I want, but certain other elements are just not clicking. Here's how I currently line up with Man Utd.

-----------------------------------De Gea (GK-D)----------------------------------

Darmian (FB-S)-----Smalling (CB-D)------Blind (BPD-D)---------Shaw (WB-A)

---------------------------------------Carrick (RGA-S)-----------------------------

Mata (WPM-S)---------Schneiderlen (B2B-S)-------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------Herrera (APM-S)-------Depay (IF-S)

---------------------------------------Rooney (DF-D)------------------------------

Team is set up: Structured, Control

TI's are as follows: Normal Defensive Line, Narrow play, Low Tempo, Mixed Passing, Look for Overlap, Close Down More, Prevent Short GK Distribution and Play out of Defence.

My only player instructions are for my Two wide defenders to stay wider, Luke Shaw is also encouraged to run at players more.

What I want to do is keep the tempo low, and control the game but I don't want my players to be too restricted in passing, I want to build out from the back I want my wide attackers to bring the play inside, whilst encouraging overlapping runs from my full backs.

In defence I want my team to be compact which will make us harder to break down and want to ensure the other team doesn't build from the back also. Having a defensive forward in this method helps.

I'm struggling to control possession, and in certain games I'm struggling to even create penetrative football.

Things that are working well.

Shaw / Depay are working well together on the left flank, Shaw getting forward on the overlap and putting crosses in, unfortunately his crosses are hit/miss but that's down to the player rather than tactics IMO, I'll work with him on that.

Rooney is coming deep as I want him to be and is putting pressure on the defence when out of possession, in possession, he's holding the ball up and more often than not he's linking with Mata / Depay on the flanks which stretches the play and creates opportunities with either full back getting forward or else Schneiderlin & Herrera offering support in middle.

Carrick is also playing well, he's the key to my system and his passing is top notch.

Mata is roaming around and finding space and to me is playing how I want him to play, not stuck out wide and attempting to beat players but floating inside and picking off passes.

I'm struggling to control possession, and I believe it's because my team is too deep.

Herrera / Schneiderlin aren't doing what I want, I believe Schneiderlin should be moving up and down with play, but he often seems to be running around like a headless chicken. Herrera is getting on the ball, but his passing has been shocking, perhaps because there's no movement from him, but my complaint with him is that he isn't getting into goal scoring chances.

Previous years, I've often struggled to play penetrative / possession football, but this year I'm struggling to play either or.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

FM11 training !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finish this agony !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you read the last page at last you would see some people are tryng too

Or at least offering short term fixes which may offer some limited success

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

remember that match preparation is used only for first and reserve team. youth team's players have 100% on personal trainings (still need to check what happens if you move U18 players between first and youth team)! I couldn't play in latest days but I (personal intuition) can assume that individual training focus (let's call it ITF ;p) will lead in higher bar in selected category, where there are graphs of player page->training tab.

I'll look at here if I was in you.

Playing more than 1 year with preparation match low, with a not strong Serie B team, I got important improvement on U23 players, especially the ones that played regularly.

Where they playing first team or reserve or u18 games?

My main problem is I rely on training and games at these levels to develop my players. I can't pick a 17 year old with 7 for passing to play any part in my league. Not when I have a player who is at 21 and still has room to develop but is currently able to hold his own in a first team game

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Hi all.

Has anyone had any kind of result from the new Individual Training Focus? Does it have some sort of conclusion like with the PPM, ie, player/coach telling you they've trained enough or is it something that needs constant monitoring and changing? I'm only mid August 2010 with Liverpool at the moment and I'm using the ingame training schedules with some small improvements (no number increases, but some green arrows) to about 25% of the whole squad. I'm a bit of a slow worker so it takes me a while to go through a whole season, so if anyone who uses holidays to test their training has some info for this I'd be 'obliged'...

Hey

Thus far, I havnt really experimented with training focus as it would interfere with my current experiments.

I'm pretty sure it's somethng that constantly requires monitoring. It also might be useful to know a few things about attribute development. After all a player at 31 isn't going to improve his stamina or natural fitness much now is he? So pretty much a waste of time asking him to focus on this? Although it may well be that if he focuses on this, it might slow down the decay for older players!

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

What level of match preparation are people using? I bet if you decrease that then you will see better training results.

Could someone please post thier best guess at training schedules based on SFraser's logic? We don't want perfect we want something!! I have done the youth ones but I would prefer not to have to do the rest.

What as the success like with the youth?

At Man Utd, I had no enjoyment with the schedules.

I had considered doing my testing with 0% Match Prep but that's not going to be a realistic way of playing the game. I'll probably keep it at 20% (the testing has been done at 20%) during an actual game. I will obviously adjust it depending on the situation, big/must win game or if my team suffers a loss of form, match prep will be much more important!!

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

It sounds like neither of us have done any real testing. You may be right, but I think it's too early to say one way or the other. It would be odd to couple a complete under-the-hood revamp of training schedules with only superficial changes to the interface. It also seems that a complete revamp of training schedules would have been mentioned in an announcement or press release. But only time will tell. If I was playing the game instead of disagreeing with you, I might have some evidence already

When I compare the training workload for one of SFraser's original schedules in FM10 to the workload for the same schedule adapted to FM11, they seem very close. I am guessing that the training workload was adjusted to compensate for the removal of 4 attributes for outfield players (everything in Set Pieces except Crossing) and the change to Goalkeeping. Might be wrong, but Occam agreed with me during his morning shave.

I have done about 16 months and there's been no solid improvment using the spreadsheet tactics. I then retweaked them and done another 16 months and whilst the improvement was better, it wasn't at the level that FM10 enjoyed.

That's the reason, I'm testing my own techniques. I'm getting mixed reviews using the guidelines that SFraser took, but not so much with the schedules.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

From what I've seen players unhappy with training will not train as well. If you have a chat with them, tell them that thier training level is unacceptable, they will begin to train much better and thier concern changes to happy.

Seems, man management is now a key factor in training.

Ham,

I see what you are saying, and I would agree with you on priciniple.

From what I can see, FM dosn't work like that. I've experimented with that thoery before and never recieved success, these schedules which I used in FM10 have given me the most success I can recall from FM.

I might actually experiment with this notion during my training methods, perhaps FM11 may have taken a more real life approach to training I think I last tried the real life approach to training in FM08

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Using that spreadsheet is not offering any long term development, I used it straight away on the demo (using the CB developing, 1st team and Veteran schedules) to test, it offers a few green arrows at the first 2 months (in the training progress, no real visual improvement to atts)

The template that was drawn up is a useful guide, and shows you what was being done in FM10 but it isn't going to work on a long term basis.

The removal of Set Pieces and also I think Training Workload is much more easiy to reach heavy from medium has altered the training system quite a bit, it may not be a drastic change, but it brings a lot of the training theories I've read require some tweaking and rethinking.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

interesting thread and i'm going to design some new schedules this evening!

i have a question - apologies if it has been answered already - if you have the slider all the way to the left so the training is set to 'none' - does this correspond to 1 click or 0 clicks for the purposes of this training? and i guess if it is all the way to the right on 'intensive' that is 25 clicks?

thanks

I believe that would correspond to 0 Clicks.

In terms of the GK workrate, I believe this could be something that increased outside of training with the players personality coming into effect.

In terms of workrate, does a high workrate necessarily come as a requirement for the Goalkeeper. I know alot of people believe that workrate is required for training increases, but I don't believe this to be the case.

I believe work rate is all about how much running and how much energy he exerts in a game, for example. A box to box MDF would require alot of work rate in order to constantly track back and make forwards runs. Roy Keane is a player who had a lot of workrate, same goes for Darren Fletcher now. Perhaps Workrate isn't a requirement that makes a goalkeeper shine.

You don't need to work hard, just keep the ball out of the net!

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

I'm experimenting with these thoeries using a few different methods to compensate for the changes in the training system

I'm no expert, but I do believe there has been a few changes to the training system this year, nothing too drastic but enough to require some rethinking.

I've been experimenting with a notion that players ages should determine the training schedule just as much as position. A player at 17 shouldn't be on the same development schedule as a player at 21.

At the moment I'm placing 17 year old players on proffesional contracts on a very very light schedule. Slightly higher than a a youth schedule. Once they hit 18 I will move thier training along.

At 17 I'm focusing more on developing physical skills because they are easier to mould when a player is young, but I must be careful not to overtrain. Strength is reciving more on focus as I want Natural Fitness (if this can be trained and Stamina to improve the most here) Technical skills are mildly important, at 17 the player has a good few years to fully develop these skills and once he has a good level of fitness he can train harder and play occasional games to increase these.

On these schedules I'm placing Tactics on 5 notches, which means each attribute is recieving only 1 focus of training, this is because at 17 a player will struggle to get these skills developed.

Hopefully be focusing on a players Physical skills, this will allow him to train harder once he hits 18-19 and this will then allow him to develop technical skills.

Another thing I'm doing with these young proffesional contracted players is going to sound stupid. I'm ignoring positional based training, meaning that any player is recieving an equal focus of training for defending, attacking or shooting regardless of his position. Once he hit's 18 he'll move into a positional specific training cateorgory.

So far, I'm seeing mixed results. I'm starting to get the hang of the schedules and I'm seeing encourgaing progress. Pogba at United has increased significantly with his physical skills and other skills are also adjusting. Thus far he has been the only success story with this player.

I'm thinking that at the age of 18-19 I'll still focus mainly on the physical side of things still but will be training harder which means that hopefully at this age group players will recieve significant increase to both physical stats and techical stats which means that at 19-21 he can push on even further with his development because hopefully then he can play more football and this will help him develop even more.

My main aim is to eventually develop either Pogba or Morrison to be key figures in the Premierleague by the time they are 23 (the point which techical skills will start to slow down and physcial skills will probably have stopped reciving increases)

I'll keep people updated with the results, although probably some of the people who have discovered these key principles which I'm only trying to wrap my head around now will develop something before hand.

Regardless, I will still continue with my test, FM10 with the player roles model and thorough reading of Tactical Theorums etc made me a tactician, now I want to master training in this FN

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Using these techniques so far in Fm11 hasn't yielded any success so far

Spent the last day or so reading through this schedule. Have placed a few players on a few different schedules for older, average age and developing players.

Thus far it's disapointing, the players who have developed the most seem to be the ones left on general.

Have tried tweaking several times and holidaying until end of December in order to get the results

Anybody else been having joy with these? Perhaps SI have changed the coding for training?

[[FM20] Regen which could be my son?? Danny Mohiddin named Man Utd Manager.]

I know this has been probably asked a hundred times in here. But how did you get the custom managers face with a suit in the style of a regen face? Looked about for a while by using the search and couldn't find anything. Any help would be much appreciated, hate having a normal picture in there!