[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

Hi, sorry if this has been asked/discussed elsewhere, but I didn't have any luck searching for it.

Firstly let me state that I'm still running FM2014 so things may be a bit different in more recent versions.

In my current save, I'd like to delegate the Team, Individual and Match Training Schedules to my staff (via Staff Responsibilities menu). I have a good AssMan, decent coaches and HOYD, DOF etc. Now I know the attributes that impact training (Determination, Discipline, Motivating plus coaching area), but which attributes should help me decide which of my staff is the best person to manage the actual training schedules for the 1st, Reserve and Youth Teams? Who would know best which Team, Individual and Match training should be scheduled?

There are lots of guides that tell you how to get your coaches up to 5 stars etc, but i can't seem to find anything to help me decide whether my AssMan would be the best choice, or one of my Coaches who you would perhaps expect to have more knowledge in training matters.

I know most people like to do training manually (i do normally as well) but in this save, I wan't to involve the staff more and do less micromanagement.

I'm guessing a big factor will be Man Management - but is that all there is to it?

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Another question: Why does players found there schedules too heavy?

It could be they aren't very determined players, not very ambitious or low Work Rate etc. I'm not sure what all the factors are that influence this level of training but if you leave them on a schedule that is too hard for them for too long it can effect their morale and the rate at which they recover their fitness between matches. In some cases it may not matter too much, but you'll have to experiment. I usually put players like this on an individual schedule and reduce the workload for them if they are first team players. For youth or reserve players, try to have them tutored to up their determination, ambition etc - they should be happy working harder then.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Thanks

And what do you prefer for amateur training schedules?

I've never managed an Amateur team to be honest (I often pinch players from them though ) - but I think they are also considered as Part Time players? I'd treat them the same as PT players (unless they are actually on FT contracts??? how would they afford to eat??)

You'll be able to tell when you try to assign a player to an existing scedule it will say (part-time) or not as the case may be.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Only fulltime & youth for the moment, but you can use it as a guideline for Part Time players.

Roughly speaking use half the amount of focus points for each category then tweek it a bit (usually down) so that 1) the proportions of training effort are similar to that of the Full Time schedule and 2) the player is training at a level he is comfortable with. It's only a guideline remember, you will need to adjust it to for the allowable hours and player needs, but it's a good place to start. For example a FT Developing CB schedule might require 5 focus on Strength training (or 15 notches on the slider) you should scale this down to about 2.5 focus (about 7 notches) and then after you have done the same for the other training categories look at how heavy the workload is, you may need to reduce some a little more, or up them a bit depending on the player.

In lower league / Semi Pro teams quite often some players will really struggle with Heavy training schedules (at least that's my experience) so I drop them down to the upper part of Medium intensity. When I say 'struggle' I mean they take too long to get back to match fitness, their morale suffers and they frequently get injured. Players with higher Determination, Natural Fitness, Work Rate and Ambition seem to be ok with heavier schedules.

I've found this to be technique useful even with very lowly Semi Pro teams.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Try out the spreadsheet (back on page 6 of this thread you'll find a link). It makes things a lot quicker when you start creating all the schedules for the first time. After a while you'll remember how many 'notches' you need per category.

Is that spreadsheet link in the OP for this thread too? If not, it should be.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

I've read through the whole of this thread and have to say I'm extremely impressed with the detail in the theories explained. It feels like training has finally clicked with me. The 1 notch per attribute revelation was a definite eureka moment, as was working out the balances involved in player progression based on age. I have to say well done to everyone and thank you for the enlightenment. Also kudos for the patience shown when people come in to ask questions that have already been answered. It has really kept this thread respectful and is certainly great for the community.

I play mainly as lower league clubs with poor facilities, terrible, overworked coaches, and only part-time schedules to work with so it will be interesting to see if I can implement this theory into my game. I notice a post on page 6 from another lower league manager which stated that with players on part time schedules you cannot simply reduced the workload (notches) by say 50%. I was wondering if this was true and if not why. I can't seem to get my head around that.

For example, now that we know what is a balanced schedule (baseline), and can apply focus, why can't I just proportion the workload from a full time schedule to a part time one. For example reducing focuses by say 2 for each category? My only 'guess' is that the balances for part time schedules are not the same as they are for full time ones so the baseline would be out, and therefore not balanced. Is this true?

I read previously that SFraser wasn't planning on doing research on part-time schedules until he had an extensive library on full time ones, and then I think youth schedules came next so I guess it may be a while before I can get an answer. I may have to try and find this out myself but I have to say that I don't really have the scientific, inquisitive mind of some of the posters on this thread but this theory has definitely given me food for thought.

Once again thank you for your hard work.

I believe you are refering to something I posted a few pages back, I'll try to explain the problem I had re Part Time Schedules.

If you have a full time schedule for a CB that you'd like to 'downsize' for a player on a part time contract you have to decide what proportion of the training must be given up to get down to the available training time. For a youth or developing CB player we know that most of the time must go into his Strength and Aerobic training with the remainder into his defending, ball control, tactics etc.

If we start with the BaseLine schedule, with 1 'Focus' on each training area (e.g. 4 notches on Strength, 5 Aerobic, 3 Defence etc) as soon as we increase the Strength and Aerobic to say Focus 3 we have effectively used up all our available time for training. If we lower the Focus for Strength and Aerobic we have enough time to train Defence, Ball Control etc but we wont really be training enough in the physical attributes. Part Time players only seem to have about 1/3 of the amount of time for training (that's just an estimate dont quote me on it).

With my LL Team most of my young players desperately need more stamina and/or strength so I opt for the Strength/Aerobic focus at the expense of only 1 focus on other areas (Defence, Ball Control, Tactics etc) nothing at all on Set Pieces. They have made some gains in strength, stamina and Pace but not much else. They occasionally have a 'growth spurt' (as I call it) when they will suddenly gain 1 point in about 15 attributes across the board. I wish I knew what triggered these as they dont seem to be connected with my training schdules!

At 17 years old any youth player with potential gets a Part Time contract and switches to the Developing schedules which have less strength / aerobic and more technical. And so on until they are 24 and 30 which I use for First Team and Veteran schedules.

At Lower League standards, few players will have much potential to improve. Very few youth team players will make it to First Team regulars. But if you are lucky enough to get a good young player with some potential it would be better to offer him a full time contract as soon as you can. That way he will be able to train full time and as there isn't much distinction between Youth and First Team at this level, he'll get a fair amount of suitable match experience and not be a handicap to the first team. The only problem with this is that they cost over 10 times in salary so when they get close to their potential I'd drop them back down to Part Time.

Lastly, no matter how good your training schedules are, you will not get wonderous results if you have only 2 or 3 training staff.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

CElliott just use same way for creating PT schedules. Ofcourse focus will be lower on certain things but still it will work.

Well I've been using modified versions of SFraser's original schedules for some weeks now for my Semi-Pro team. I originally just allowed a few less clicks per category but it doesnt translate very well given the different hours available for part time training. For example reducing a full time CB schedule to part time leaves you will rather lot of Strength & Aerobic training and almost nothing on Defending. The balance isn't just 50% of FT, at least I dont think it works well. But I think the idea of this thread is to encourage the players to contribute schedules that work well and have been widely tested, this spreadsheet is a good step in that direction - I still think PT schedules need to be included in the plan.

Any comments on my other ideas or am I howling in the wilderness?

regards,

Chris

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

I'd like to say a BIG thankyou for putting that spreadsheet together, it's very useful guys. I know this is still a project in development so if I may add a little feedback I think it could be even better....

Could you add the necessary options to include part-time schedules, us lower league managers can experiment with this tool and maybe post some good PT schedules.

Would it be possible to allow users to enter a new position name in the left-hand dropdownbox so that people can possibly save their own custom types without changing the original set. For example someone may want something a little different for Playmakers/Target Men/Defencive Forwards etc and if they can save them and reuse them it would be excellent.

Does anyone know how to artificially construct a Training Schedule file (is it xml or something?) - if so would it be possible to export the schedule from MS Excel directly into a new FM Training Schedule file? This would be a great way for us to upload our schedules and for other people to test them.

Lastly, I see you calculate the total training workload dynamically based on the number of ticks etc.... Now I'm thinking that there will be a direct relationship between this total and the formula used in the game to determine the maximum workload the player is comfortable with before he starts to complain and get unhappy. I'm pretty sure attributes such as Natural Fitness and Determination etc are used in it but is there a way to work out what this formula would be? If we could crack that, we could tailor the schedules to each player precisely without them getting unhappy and without them training below their potential. This may need to be made an optional extra if it requires knowing the players hidden stats.

Once again, many thanks for your efforts guys.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Retraining players for position

You can find the option for retraining a player for a specific position in the ‘training’ section of a player’s profile.

Players tend to be more likely to progress with position training if they are young than when they are old. Exceptions to this do exist, notably for hard-working players moving into more defensive positions as they get older, however these are fairly rare.

The likelihood of a player retraining for a position is dependant upon his preferences and abilities; a defender with a 1 finishing and no interest in attacking is thus unlikely to be particularly motivated to retrain as a striker whereas his brother a fellow defender with 8 finishing and 8 off the ball will probably be very interested in retraining in that position.

When retraining a player, if successful, you will find he moves through a series of stages towards being ‘Accomplished’ in this position. A player can never be trained into being a ‘Natural’ in a position, it’s something you’re either born to be or not.

The various stages of development for a position are listed below in order of rank (ie. First is the best possible):

Natural

Accomplished

Competent

Un-convincing

Awkward

Ineffectual

I thought this particular theory had been debunked some time ago, or am I mistaken?

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Do we know for certain that the 'experience' points gained from competitive matches are distributed evenly prior to training affecting the allocation? I have no idea, I'm just asking. Could it not be that a Fullback (for example) would have CA points distributed more heavily to the attributes he uses in match (tackling, dribbling, stamina etc) rather than attributes he is not using but is training in? So if I was training him like a striker (for some crazy reason) but was playing him as a Fullback in matches, would I still see most improvement in the typical 'Fullback' attributes and not much in Finishing etc?

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

I thought I should mention one observation I noticed in my last save (10.2) using these training scedules with a lower league team.

Roughly 2/3 my team were on P/T contracts and schedules (I created these based on the full time ones but scaled down for the available hours) but the problem I noticed affected the Full Time players too.

These demanding schedules meant that over half my team were 'unhappy with high workload' or 'unhappy with high level of fitness training'. Morale was not a problem as we had an excellent season and only lost about 5 games, finishing 1st in the BSN league.

We did have a fair few injuries but only a couple of long terms ones, this wasn't the problem.

After running these schedules for approx 6 months I noticed a pattern in some of the unhappy player's training performance stats. Discounting players who had been injured as they would obviously show less improvement, I noticed that players who were unhappy with there training schedules had a small but constant reduction in their training performance graph. These were first team players who maintained Good or higher morale through the teams successes but their 'performance' or 'output' or however else you would describe the graph on bottom left of the screen that shows results for each month, showed a slow but noticable decline, every month for approx 6 months.

So I think there is more to the 'unhappy with workload' than just morale. I think they become fed up with the effort required and start losing focus.

I've just started a new 10.3 save with another BSN team using slightly reduced training schedules - the workload maximum is High in most cases (top of Medium for some) but I'm still using SFraser's theory, just a few less 'clicks'. So far after the first month about 1/4 are moaning about the workload, mainly the youngsters.

I'll keep an eye on their monthly performance and see if the same thing occurs. I actually hope I'm wrong, because if I'm not it means going back to individual training schedules for every player and thats a real pain.

I should also stress that this may only be a symptom of LL clubs that have pitiful training facilities and absolute minimal staff.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

I've created some PT schedules that try to mimic SFraser's FT schedules, but the number of clicks per catagory didnt seem to pan out with the hours they have for training. So what I did was use the same proportion of effort in each catagory rather than the same number of clicks if that makes any sense? If you can picture the bar chart of training for one of SFrasers FT First Choice CB's (for example) and then scale it down to a Part Time schedule, it doesn't have 50% of the number of clicks, but the pattern of the bar chart looks the same. They are all still Heavy or Very Heavy in terms of intensity and most of the players are grumbling about it, but it seems to be slowing the decline of player attributes that my part-time players were suffering from previously. It doesnt help that my LL team have pitiful facilities and incompetent trainers for sure, but I think SFraser's theory is sound so I'm giving it a go with my whole team.

I dont know if this approach of mine is a good idea or not and not many LLM post on here about training so I thought I'd just experiment. A handful of my more promicing players have full time contracts and are using SFraser's FT schedules. That may turn out to be a useful comparison. But I've only switched my team from individual training schedules to this new 'regime' for a couple of months so it's way too early to tell.

In LLM, your trainers and assistant managers have such a low level of reliability in terms of assessing player potential, that it's very difficult to tell how much they could or should improve by. Nor do I understand how much having superior training facilities would increase the players improvement - or the trainers improvement for that matter. But I dont want to 'cheat' and look at their hidden stats so I'll have to figure it out the hard way.

Despite the problems with injuries, the way I see it is that the heavy training will toughen them up and if certain players cannot handle it over the long haul then I may put them on an individual lighter schedule or more likely transfer them.

[SFraser's Training Schedules for FM10]

Lots of useful info there, thanks SFraser.

I've been using individual training plans for each player so that I could avoid the 'unhappy with the high training workload' complaint (especially with the youth team) and also customize the intensity depending on what the player needs most urgently. This may sound like a lot of work but it's not really any worse than creating 3 or 4 versions of each playing position (as i used to do in FM2008 days). But I may give your approach a go as it makes a lot of sense and agrees with some changes I have observed with players that the 'maintain line' method didn't account for.

I play mainly as a LLM where training facilities are dire, coaches few and far between (my current club has 1 general coach, 1 fitness instructor and my Ass Man) and naturally no transfer budget either so it would be great if I could really make training work in the lower leagues, but it doesnt seem possible. With such facilities and training staff (2 stars max) and the vast majority of players on Part Time contracts, I mostly see attributes dropping across the board and rarely ever going up in the green. I cant afford to up all their contracts to full time (only the least rubbish players get this treatment!!! ).

Does your 1 notch per attribute/category weighting system still hold true for part time schedules? (these seem to be different from the youth schedules, never understood why).

Would you use different schedules for Center Midfielders with different duties? (ie CMa and CMd who play along the centreline but with different mentality, instructions etc).

Would you create more specilized versions for key types of players, e.g. Pacey Strikers, Long Shot strikers, Deep Laying Playmakers etc?

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

I have a few 'stupid' questions if someone could enlighten me....

1: Is it possible to assign my assistant manager to manage the team for a match and also view the match (see what tactics he uses, team talks, substitutions etc)? I always manage and watch the full match with my 1st team but let my assistant look after Reserve and U19 squads. It would be nice to see how he manages a match compared to my own preferences.

2: I'm pretty sure this is me being dense but, in the Job Centre screen how can I advertise a vacancy? For example I want a new coach or scout but abiding by the LLM guidelines I dont use the search function as it is somewhat unrealistic. I can only see existing vacancies from other clubs but cant see an option to Add Vacancy.

3: My first team uses several varients of the 442 formation that i will swap during a match (aggressive/defensive/counter etc). Under the assistant manager options there is an option for the Reserve and U19 squads to Use Match Tactics (or words to that effect). How does this work? Will the Assistance Manager use tweaks throughout the match? Will he only ever use the tactic currently selected for the 1st team for Reserve and U19 matches - no matter what happens during a match? I thought it would be good to have all three squads using the same tactics so players would be more familiar when moved up to the first team in the event of a senior player injury for example. But when I set this option on both the Reserve and U19 squads they got really hammered in the league while my 1st Team did quite well. Turning the option off again saw a dramatic improvement for the R/U19 teams. Was i using this feature incorrectly or was it just bad luck?