FM13 - The Basic Guide to Training and Match Preparation

[llama3]

On Football Manager 2013 we have a new training system. This system is a more "real life" way of carrying out training. The team generally trains as a large group with individual training time. So I think it is time for a basic introduction on how to use the new training system.

General Training

The bulk of your player's training is simply general training. You have a slider to allow you to decide how much time is spent on general training, and how much on match training. The general training is what will help your players develop attributes, and decide the spread of these attributes. You can choose a specific focus for your squad training and the intensity of this focus too. The focuses your team can train are:

• Balanced
  
• Fitness
  
• Tactics
  
• Ball Control
  
• Defending
  
• Attacking
  
• Team Cohesion
  

These are fairly self-explanatory. You can improve your team's tactical attributes with a tactics focus, or you can improve your team's general understanding and help them gel with a team cohesion focus instead. This should link in with your team's tactic style; an organised and defensive team will use a defensive focus to improve defensive attributes in the whole team, whereas a possession based team will tend to use a tactics or team cohesion focus. These focuses do not affect match training, they only focus on the development of attributes.

The intensity with which your team can train at is a simple step-up from:

• Very Low
  
• Low
  
• Average
  
• High
  
• Very High
  

You can alter the focus and intensity for any given week on the calendar view as well. You may decide in general you want a tactics focus on average intensity, but for the next 3 weeks you want a team cohesion focus on high intensity after a poor run of results.

Match Training

Your match training is much the same as your match preparation from FM12, but is incorporated into training, rather than tactics. You can select general match preparation on the black bar at the top of your training view, as well as selecting a specific form of preparation for certain opposition. For instance you may wish to focus on defending set pieces for an away game against Stoke, instead of your usual focus on attacking movement. The focuses for match preparation are much the same as on FM12 too. Here they are:

• Tactics Only
  
• Teamwork
  
• Defensive Positioning
  
• Attacking Movement
  
• Defending Set Pieces
  
• Attacking Set Pieces
  

Focusing on tactics only will simply improve familiarity with the tactic. You can improve general teamwork and understanding within your side by adding Teamwork as a focus. Otherwise these are all very self-explanatory. The final aspect of match training is how much rest to allow. You can allow your team to rest both before and after a game if you wish, or you can choose either or neither. The more rest time you allow, the more it eats in to general training time, and the less you allow, the more tired your players become; through playing too many games and/or too much heavy training - so try and balance carefully how much rest you need. Later on in the season you may need to allow more rest than early on, as your players start to become jaded and the games come thick and fast.

Coaches

Your coaches are still assigned in the same way as on FM12. They still train individual aspects, with a simple 5* scoring system. The coaches workload is decided by your general training and individual training. If your team is training a ball control focus and your players are being trained in individual roles/preferred moves which are heavily based in ball control then the coach(es) assigned to ball control will have an increased workload. The more areas a coach is assigned to, the greater his workload, and the less the quality of the training he is able to give to your team.

Individual Training

Individual Training is the area where you can specifically alter certain things on a player's schedule without having to affect the rest of the team to achieve it. You have 4 areas you can individually alter on a player's individual schedule:

• Focus - Either an Individual Role (i.e. Ball Playing Defender) or a Specific Attribute (i.e. Passing) or you can choose "None" if you do not wish to utilise this aspect of training on your players.
  
• Focus Intensity - simply how high the intensity is on the above Role or Attribute.
  
• New Position
  
• New Preferred Move
  

You can train a Focus, Position and Preferred Move if you wish to, but they will eat into each other's time, rather than into general training like they previously used to. To confirm - individual training does NOT come out of general training - it is added together to create an overall workload.On a player's training-overview screen, there is feedback on how much the player likes his schedule, and his overall workload. This screen also shows the spread of his individual training time, with how much he is spending on each aspect. You can choose to individually rest a player if you go onto his profile, select training from the actions buttons on the left hand side under his name, choose rest, and then however long you wish to individually rest a player for. You can also ask your coaches to provide an individual training report on the player, by selecting "Request Training Report" from the training button under your player's name.

The individual focuses you can train your players in are:

• Corners
  
• Crossing
  
• Dribbling
  
• Finishing
  
• First Touch
  
• Free Kicks
  
• Heading
  
• Long Shots
  
• Long Throws
  
• Marking
  
• Passing
  
• Penalties
  
• Tackling
  
• Technique
  
• Composure
  
• Off the Ball
  
• Positioning
  
• Agility
  
• Balance
  
• Jumping
  
• Quickness
  
• Stamina
  
• Strength
  

Pre-Season

This is the time when your players will be lacking match fitness, and will require most work to get them physically ready for the new season. This is the best time to try a high intensity fitness regime, as well as play a reasonable number of matches, but with enough time for recovery between games. Try not to give rest days to players, as this often reduces their match fitness, something you are specifically trying to increase.

You could elect to leave the focus for training and intensity on your preferred standard, and select the focus and intensity for each week individually, meaning you do not need to remember to switch intensity and focus in a few weeks time. Your team will also need to re-familiarise tactically with each other, and with the system. So ensure there is enough match preparation time, and enough focus on team cohesion to build this up, so your team is ready for the new season.

Finally you will be given the option at the end of the season, to select the date to begin the new pre-season. You can elect to make it between 4 and 7 weeks long. The longer you have for pre-season the fitter you can make your side, and you can stave off the end of season drop in attributes that little bit earlier. Beware that beginning pre-season too early, without letting your players have a proper rest (especially those on international duty) can make your players tired earlier in the season, meaning you may have a fatigued star in December that you need to carefully manager.

Goalkeepers

Goalkeepers do not have a specific area of general training. They will simply be taken by your Goalkeeping coaches in that time for training. You can still give them individual training, but cannot teach them a new position, and their list of preferred moves available to teach is obviously smaller, so you are likely to spend a lot more time training specific attributes or roles instead.

[Cleon]

A nice thread that will help lots of people. Good work

[llama3]

sticky perhaps?

[Sweed]

Great thread, simple and straight forward. Thanks for taking the time to post.

[velvetsky]

Thank you very much for taking the time to create this very informative

[oetjhill]

Very helpful. Thanks

[Tiger666]

I'm still lost to how time is divided.

If I set match prep to 10%, that leaves 90% for general and individual. If I set general to very low and individual to very low, does that mean the team are literally doing less training? For example, if a team did 10 hours of training a week, setting match prep to 10%, general to very low and individual to very low, would this mean the team are doing 3 hours of training a week?

What if I set general and individual to it's maximum? Would they be doing 30 hours a week?

If a team does a set amount of training, it seems the intensity for general and intensity for individual are in conflict with each other.

[llama3]

sort of yes - if you ask the team to do less training then they will do yes - there isn't a fixed amount of hours training to do, it is variable depending on how much you want them to do. The individual training time is tallied separately, so I would imagine (unless anyone would like to correct me) that it is separate, so the intensities have no relation to each other.

[Tiger666]

Well, this is the thing. In FM2012 we could see exactly how the training was divided. I wish there was something similar here.

[lam]

What happens to a players indiviual training if you do NOT train a certain skill OR a role?

[llama3]

this is not something I know - here is where I hope Cleon comes in with an answer like he normally does

[yonko]

So what is an appropriate training combination during pre-season? General training = fitness, Match training = tactics only, both on very high intensity? Does determination, level of discipline and motivation still play a role in determining the star rating for coaches?

[NakS]

Thanks Llama3, it confirms a few things regarding the new FM13 training. I was toying around with the beta last week-end and I have to say I am disappointed with the level of control I have when it comes to develop players. I was a huge fan of individual training, huge loss of depth, anyway....

Do you guys are planning to rotate training category? Like

Preseason (3 weeks) : Fitness / workload

Before last friendly and start of season (1 week): Team cohesion / workload (what does mean team cohesion btw?)

And then, I want a "team focus" on tactic and ball control

Week 1 : Tactic / heavy

Week 2 : Attack / average

Week 3 : Ball control / heavy

Week 4 : Defending / average

Week 5 : Fitness / average

Does it makes sense?

[phoenix81]

My tactic familiarity still taking ages to go up what is quickest way ??

[Os]

What is puzzling me is on the team training screen if you have 2 matches (sat,wed) and you wish the match team to rest day before and after these games you end up with no general training days because a further 2 days are taken up with match prep.

Discuss

[llama3]

So what is an appropriate training combination during pre-season? General training = fitness, Match training = tactics only, both on very high intensity? Does determination, level of discipline and motivation still play a role in determining the star rating for coaches?

not a bad idea - high physical training, and decent level match training for tactics only is a good idea

yes determination, level of discipline and motivation are key aspects for star ratings

Thanks Llama3, it confirms a few things regarding the new FM13 training. I was toying around with the beta last week-end and I have to say I am disappointed with the level of control I have when it comes to develop players. I was a huge fan of individual training, huge loss of depth, anyway....

Do you guys are planning to rotate training category? Like

Preseason (3 weeks) : Fitness / workload

Before last friendly and start of season (1 week): Team cohesion / workload (what does mean team cohesion btw?)

And then, I want a "team focus" on tactic and ball control

Week 1 : Tactic / heavy

Week 2 : Attack / average

Week 3 : Ball control / heavy

Week 4 : Defending / average

Week 5 : Fitness / average

Does it makes sense?

makes sense, but surely you would just use balanced in that case?

My tactic familiarity still taking ages to go up what is quickest way ??

play matches, and have match training on tactics only

What is puzzling me is on the team training screen if you have 2 matches (sat,wed) and you wish the match team to rest day before and after these games you end up with no general training days because a further 2 days are taken up with match prep.

Discuss

that is up to you to figure out as a manager what you want to prioritise - players do not always need 2 days of rest. they will still get some general training, just less.

[suikoden]

In players focus for training, if you choose a role, such as deep lying forward does it use the support or attack variant? Because they highlight different stats and I would like to know how this part of training actually works.

Thanks

[yonko]

not a bad idea - high physical training, and decent level match training for tactics only is a good idea

yes determination, level of discipline and motivation are key aspects for star ratings

I've actually done that in my current beta save. I put my team during pre-season camp through 4 weeks of very high intensity of Fitness training + very high intensity of Match Training for Tactics only. I kept the split 50-50. I didn't use specific focus on any individual players, except for my GKs, who I assigned to Sweeper Keeper average focus.

Now my plan is to switch my General Training to Team Cohesion and Match Training to Att. Movement.

What do you think about all that?

In players focus for training, if you choose a role, such as deep lying forward does it use the support or attack variant? Because they highlight different stats and I would like to know how this part of training actually works.

Thanks

You can check which attributes each individual role focuses on in terms of training if you go into player's profile and then click the training tab. There is a drop down menu from you which you can select appropriate roles for the selected player. It's kind of like before in FM12 where you could see what attributes are affected by Strength, Aerobic, Tactics, Ball Control, Defending, Attacking and Shooting training.

[suikoden]

I've actually done that in my current beta save. I put my team during pre-season camp through 4 weeks of very high intensity of Fitness training + very high intensity of Match Training for Tactics only. I kept the split 50-50. I didn't use specific focus on any individual players, except for my GKs, who I assigned to Sweeper Keeper average focus.

Now my plan is to switch my General Training to Team Cohesion and Match Training to Att. Movement.

What do you think about all that?

You can check which attributes each individual role focuses on in terms of training if you go into player's profile and then click the training tab. There is a drop down menu from you which you can select appropriate roles for the selected player. It's kind of like before in FM12 where you could see what attributes are affected by Strength, Aerobic, Tactics, Ball Control, Defending, Attacking and Shooting training.

Thanks for that. It is kind of rough that those specific training roles don't increase your physical attributes. I'm guessing general training does that. The new system is fun but I would dearly like a further enhancement where you can have 'project' players to work with where you get a bit more freedom. They could limit it to 1-3 players, perhaps depending on the staff you have or the attributes of your head of youth development. Players like Messi do not come out of nowhere. The backroom staff at Barcelona poured a lot of time and resource into him.

[llama3]

You still can put time into a player, regular adjustments to a player's schedule, lots of game time, adding tutoring and PPM's, changing focuses etc all come into that.

[suikoden]

Yeah but it is mostly just a juggling act right now. Mostly balancing and sacrificing depending on what you want out of the player all the while using a fixed % bar. I am talking about adding more to the players training. Think of Beckham practicing with the youngsters after the senior players have left, honing what he is best at. Think of Henry learning how to be a striker having been thrown in the deep end in competitive matches, while staying back running towards the goal 'shadow' shooting. Obviously there are also examples where players fail even after the club has given them special attention due to their lacking in professionalism or work ethic. At the moment you can't really manufacture players to suit your system.

I read in a thread Cleon did where he made Ganso his striker and with the new training system he can put Ganso on a attacking training role but then his finishing will progress far too slowly. If he puts him on finishing focus than his off ball and anticipation will suffer. Obviously I don't know the answer to this but I do know that the training system still has plenty of scope for improvement and I like the direction it has been taken.

In the current system I just can't see how you can train a player to another position and have him be world class. In previous FM's it was too easy to almost rewrite a player and I don't want that but now even if you have a attacking midfielder who you feel can be converted to a deep lying playmaker (ala Pirlo), you can't do it because there will be 1 or 2 key attributes (such as composure or concentration or others) that you can't progress at a decent enough rate considering you can't have a role AND an attribute to focus on. Perhaps to balance it out the attribute to focus on must be one that is defined/highlighted in the role.

Anyways, sorry for going off topic. It is a great guide to the new system. Really looking forward to seeing this new training system grow bit by bit over the next few years.

[llama3]

but players are not machines, and this system is a bit more "real life" than the previous system - it doesn't happen everyday re-training a player and shaping attributes too - often a retraining is because he already has the attributes for a different role.

[suikoden]

I know which is why they are projects. Players can either succeed or they can fail. Players are not arbitrarily put in groups and then do training for their positions. Coaches and managers work with players. There will always be special work done on the most promising players which is something that is not represented in the game. Mentor programs aside there isn't anyway to work with a player hoping he has enough versatility and enough potential ability banked up to fulfill your vision of him in fm13.

I also understand this isn't a common thing which is why there should be a limit to it and I think a fair limit would be based on your staff. You can only do so much specialist work before you start neglecting the team as a whole. As for retraining, not all the attributes are there to justify the player playing in a new position. Pirlo didn't have the concentration or discipline to play as the deepest midfielder from the outset. Henry was woefully bad, by his own admission, when running onto keepers and shooting. So not only did he spend time training as a forward but also worked extra hard on his finishing. I am advocating that you can train a player in a role you prefer, such as advanced forward, while being able to focus 1 attribute within the parameters of advanced forward such as finishing. There are plenty of fullbacks also who are converted from wingers and I doubt they simply trained as a fullback to accomplish that. That would not be good enough for competitive football in a decent league.

All I am saying is that you cannot give special attention to players within the current training system. Your assertion that I am viewing players ingames as machines is wrong. Attributes such as versatility and adapting are there to ensure failure if you take on the wrong type of player as a project. To cite examples from Arsenal, Kolo Toure and Song are where they are because Wenger took them on and polished them.

As I've said, I prefer this training system over old but it would be nice to be able to let a player know what you think their future is and trusting/judging they have the hidden attributes to keep up.

[llama3]

if your player already knows the position - then his individual training can be based solely on the role or the attribute - and if for example it is an advanced forward role, finishing will already be taken care of in there - if the attribute you want to improve already belongs to the role you are training, then it is already getting extra training. You can increase intensity to help with this. If they need to learn the position too, then they can still learn the position as well as a role and/or attribute - i'll be honest, I cannot see how it genuinely restricts anyone negatively.

[kingjericho]

Very helpful. Thanks

[yonko]

Thanks for that. It is kind of rough that those specific training roles don't increase your physical attributes. I'm guessing general training does that. The new system is fun but I would dearly like a further enhancement where you can have 'project' players to work with where you get a bit more freedom. They could limit it to 1-3 players, perhaps depending on the staff you have or the attributes of your head of youth development. Players like Messi do not come out of nowhere. The backroom staff at Barcelona poured a lot of time and resource into him.

Yes, but it also helped that Messi was (and still is) extremely talented.

[Marcelo]

In FM12, the workload of match preparation training affected how quickly your team learned the tactics, but had no effect on the bonuses given by the additional focus area. So, after the tactics were fluid, I just used to set the workload to "very low".

Is this the same for FM13? In other words, after the team is fully fluid with the tactics, can we safely decrease the scheduling slider to the minimum (less match training)?

[andycharlton84]

can someone please explain how you can choose which coach to do what training as when i choose clive allen for example to do attacking training it automatically reverts back to doing what it was doing previous when i click on continue and that leaves me with 1 star ratings all over the shop and its really annoying on the previous game i just chose which i want to do and it stayed like that?

[llama3]

can someone please explain how you can choose which coach to do what training as when i choose clive allen for example to do attacking training it automatically reverts back to doing what it was doing previous when i click on continue and that leaves me with 1 star ratings all over the shop and its really annoying on the previous game i just chose which i want to do and it stayed like that?

not sure why - see the screenshot on my opening post under "coaches" - untick the boxes, then re-tick the ones you want - if you have extras ticked you will increase the coaches workload, reducing star rating

[andycharlton84]

yeah ive done that numerous times and it still does it?

[Gee_Simpson]

In FM12, the workload of match preparation training affected how quickly your team learned the tactics, but had no effect on the bonuses given by the additional focus area. So, after the tactics were fluid, I just used to set the workload to "very low".

Is this the same for FM13? In other words, after the team is fully fluid with the tactics, can we safely decrease the scheduling slider to the minimum (less match training)?

Good question and I would like to know this also.

[furiousuk]

Wow, I go away for a week and we get our first FM13 sticky! Well deserved though, this will be so helpful to loads of people (myself included most likely!)

[Pantelas]

excellent thread, two quick questions guys:

Team cohesion: is this like team blending, that is, it is needed for new players to blend in with the current team? So i'm guessing that it should be a focus in preseason if there are new signings coming in?

Also, where can i see if the current team is blending well together?? I remember in FM 2012, i think it was in Team Report, that the assistant manager would comment on that. Anyone knows where I can find that?

[Marcelo]

In FM12, the workload of match preparation training affected how quickly your team learned the tactics, but had no effect on the bonuses given by the additional focus area. So, after the tactics were fluid, I just used to set the workload to "very low".

Is this the same for FM13? In other words, after the team is fully fluid with the tactics, can we safely decrease the scheduling slider to the minimum (less match training)?

Good question and I would like to know this also.

Cleon, can you answer this? Or if you are not sure, perhaps you can forward this question to someone at SI?

[Cleon]

That part still works the same.

I thought I best add this to the thread too;

Just in case this wasn't cleared up before, I'll clarify it once more: Regardless of what individual training focuses you set on players, each player will do the team based training drills with a generic focus on his playing position. So defenders will train differently than strikers even if no-one has any individual focuses set. The coaches at the club will setup the team training drills (ie. the old "schedules") so that they will benefit each player differently based on his position and the manager can then finetune the focus of the training for each player via the individual focus (role or a specific attribute) if he wants to.

[Marcelo]

That part still works the same.

Ok, thanks.

[lam]

Thus, a player that has no individual training will be training their own position? (why not then select it?) and will probably be focusing on it a lot.

I need to read this thread again as the thing I keep finding confusing is how to get a mid/(low)high level of training. All my players are on high and seem to be okay with it currently.......... no idea how long that will last.

Regards

LAM

[Raniel3]

I think the sticky need a little update: As far as I see it, the workload of the individual focus does not have an impact on general workload, it only changes the percentual time committed to focus training, new position learning and PPM learning. You can see that if your players learns a new position and has an indivual focus set, the percentual time changes as soon as you change the workload. So i assume for a player with no position training and no PPM learning and with an individual focus set the individual workload set has no effect. Can someone confirm this please?

[NakS]

+1 I am asking myself that exact same question. But if the workload for team focus, PPM, new position and individual focus (single attribute and role) does not come from general training, where does it come from? Should be a trade-off somehow?

[Silky]

How do I arrange a training camp?

[NakS]

If I recall correctly, you are not able to arrange a camp at the start of the first season. But you should be able during the second season.

I have made a feedback thread in GD not to pollute this thread which is for verified infos. http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/321850-FM13-New-Training-system-feedback-and-discussions

[Silky]

Cheers for the swift reply NakS

[llama3]

+1 I am asking myself that exact same question. But if the workload for team focus, PPM, new position and individual focus (single attribute and role) does not come from general training, where does it come from? Should be a trade-off somehow?

i have clarified this in the opening post - it is does not come out of general training - it adds up on top, adding to the overall workload

[tajj 7]

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/321850-FM13-New-Training-system-feedback-and-discussions

Got a good discussion going on about it here as well.

The key issue for me is 'General Training' and what it exactly involves:-

1. How much of general training is just general training and how much of it is spent on the 'default focus' ?

2. Does 'default intensity' change the whole intensity of General Training (i.e increase the time available for General Training) or how much 'default focus' is done within General training? (i.e the higher the 'default intensity' the less time is spent on general position related training)

3. Match Preparation has no intensity settings, however the scheduling slider can increase the amount of time spent on it, so surely this will impact on the 'default intensity'?

4. What is the core positional training the players do in general training? What attributes are they working on and how generalised is it?

5. Individual focus is extra training, does player role training train physical attributes for that role? Also does the intensity setting for Individual focus increase the total amount of time spent on individual training, meaning if you have player working on a PPM, new position and attribute that you want this to be as high as possible because he is working on 3 things?

Sorry for so many questions.

[mrolleman]

Why can't I send my team on a training camp during the winter break?

For what's it's worth, I read AC Milan went on a short 3-day boot camp a few weeks ago, after disappointing results. I think it would be great (and easy to implement) to be able to send my team on a camp whenever I want.

[Sheffield Sunday]

Why can't I send my team on a training camp during the winter break?

For what's it's worth, I read AC Milan went on a short 3-day boot camp a few weeks ago, after disappointing results. I think it would be great (and easy to implement) to be able to send my team on a camp whenever I want.

I asked the same question of the SI Guys. Apparently the board decides and arranges only - there is no player option to do this. Maybe next year...

[Sheffield Sunday]

Anyone had youth players potential increase yet? Seems more realistic to me. A youngster comes into the squad and you don't really know how good he'll become - after a few weeks training and matches the potential star rating increases over time to reflect the coaches new found point of view of the player. Much better I think!

[llama3]

Potential Ability is a set attribute as a ceiling to a player's ability - this is only reached with the right training, etc - a player does not automatically reach his peak ability.

[Sheffield Sunday]

Agreed and understand that, and many apologies for this off topic.

I wasn't probably clear enough in my post. Some youth in my team have had their potential star rating improve.

Now to my knowledge this can only come from one or two things:

1) The quality of players in the league diminishes - meaning my players are now better thought of.

2) The scouts, assistant manager and coaches get better at recognizing player potential.

If the second one (more likely in my opinion), then it's far more realistic.

[llama3]

Their actual Potential Ability will have remained unchanged, even if the star rating does change - their reputation and the Judging of Ability and Potential ratings in your staff can affect this too. So you are right with the 2nd option being possible, but player reputation plays a big part in that.