Pre-season training and general fitness over the season

[Sarmatian]

I have a couple of questions about pre season training:

1. How to organize it? - I didn't get FM14, so I might have missed something. I've tried setting very strong focus on fitness during two preseasons and both times I've got an injury crisis on my hand (5-10 players, with injuries ranging from a few weeks to several months). I couldn't find the slider that controls how time is divided between training and match preparations that was there in FM13 so I assumed it was taken out and that it was done automatically.

I'm managing a Serbian side, Vojvodina, not the best in the world definitely, and there aren't many players with good stamina and natural fitness (15s are very rare), so maybe that has something to do with it? I somehow think it shouldn't have, but maybe there is... So, how to set it up properly, should I start the second the players get from vacation and how long to keep at it, before switching back to normal training?

2. Number of friendly matches - How much time should I allow my players to train after vacation before allowing them to play friendlies? How many games should they play? Should I lower the training intensity when I start friendlies?

3. General fitness over the entire season - Serbian league only has 16 teams in top division, which means 30 games a season. I got knocked out of Europe and Serbian cup before winter break, so I've only played onlu one match a week for the entire second half of the season. Most players had only average training intensity overall, only a few were training slightly harder. Again, from past experience (FM13 and before) I assumed that would be enough to keep them at 100% fitness, especially as I've fielded basically same 11 players every week, but, most of them were between 95% and 99% fitness during the entire spell. Is that normal in this year's version, or am I doing something wrong? I've just used to having most of the team a 100% fit in those cases.

I've kept fitness focus, because a lot of my players have rather low physical attributes, but kept the intensity on average. I don't know if that contribute to that.

Thanks for the help!!!

[Cleon]

Preseason

Pre-season is one of the most important times at the club because if you get this right you can start the season in the right frame of mind and hit the ground running. The majority of my success on FM is down to how I approach pre-season as I believe I set up the best I possibly can for me and my club and the style I play. So why is it important? Well let me show you how I approach it and then you can see why

I break preseason down to;

• Morale
  
• Fitness
  
• Tactic Familarity
  
• Team Cohesion
  

The above is what I class as really important and are all the things that will make the biggest difference over the season especially at the beginning.

Morale

Having players with high morale is always a bonus and its a really good idea to get it as high as possible straight away. To achieve this as soon as possible what I do is make sure any friendlies I play are against extremely weaker opposition. The reasons behind this is I want the team to score a lot of goals. I don’t see the point in playing hard friendlies and risking affecting a players morale. So setting up the correct friendlies is vital for me to allow me to build on morale. the more goals you score in pre-season the better imo.

Fitness

Every player at the club must be match fit before the season starts. If not then you’ll find they tire more quickly and increase the risk of picking up injuries or little niggles from games. I can do without this so I ensure everyone is fit all the time. By getting everyone match fit it means you can throw them into the first team should you suffer injuries/suspensions early on in the season and don’t have to worry that they aren’t fit. It also becomes easier to maintain throughout the season

Tactic Familiarity

Probably the most important thing to concentrate on for me. The sooner everything is fluid the better because it means your tactic will play better and the players are used to every aspect of it. You can get tactic familiarity fluid before the start of the first game of the season if you play properly. It takes around 12 friendlies to do this and while this might seem like an excessive amount of games to play, it isn’t really. Remember that I am picking very weak opponents to play so this means it doesn’t matter if I have to play my youths or not. No matter what side I put out I should win. I tie this in with getting everyone at the club match fit. So I tend to play a game every 3 days to get both fitness and tactic familiarity up.I’ve seen people post saying they set general training focus to tactics to get familiarity levels up however that doesn’t actually work despite the misleading name. What you have to do is set the match training focus to tactics. This is what gets tactic familiarity up.

If you are one of the lucky clubs who gets to go to training camps then while these are on you gain tactic familiairty/fitness a lot quicker.

To build tactics familiarity the best you can you need to ensure you have;

• Set up around 12 friendlies. (It's about 10 on FM15)
  
• Do not allow rest before or after a game.
  
• Make sure you have someone taking control of the 'tactics' catergory in training.
  
• Signing new players will reduce tactic familiarity, so the more signings you make the longer time you need to become fluid in all areas.
  
• You must set the scheduling bar in the training section all the way to the left so its set on 50%. The end of the bar is 50% and not the middle like some assume.
  
• When you've set up the friendlies check on the training calendar to make sure you have a training day before each game. If not cancel the game because its pointless.
  

If all this criteria is met and you've done it correctly then you should have almost full tactical familiarity. In the first season though it can be hard to achieve in some leagues due to the dates of when the game starts. It's much easier to achieve from the 2nd season onward.

Team Cohesion

If I’ve promoted players from my youth/reserves team into the first team or bought any new players then I focus on this heavily as the general focus once my players are fit. It helps them settle into the team quickly and get an understanding. This is vital because it helps with language barriers if you have foreign players who might not understand the language of the country you play in and his team mates.

Friendlies

I like to set up very easy friendlies against very weak sides. This means my team should win them easily and winning builds morale, so if I can beat a non league or amateur side 10-0 then this is what I'll do. I want to ease the players into the new season while building confidence. I don't see the point of playing against sides who I might lose against and lose morale, so rather I'd focus on building this up during preseason.

On FM15 rotation is much more important than on previous versions as players don't recover fitness as fast. On previous versions the effect was far to greater than it should have been meaning you could basically play players 3 times in a week without much rotation.

[Sarmatian]

This a very nice write up, but I haven't managed to discern definitive answers on my 1st and 3rd question.

1) Should I set very hard fitness training from day 1?

2) Should I expect my players to be 100% fit if they play one match a week consistently, like it was on FM13, or is 95%, 96% 97%... now considered normal?

I had additional problems in my 2nd pre season - my team returned from holiday somewhere near the end of June, and I was supposed to play in the first qualifying round of Champions League in mid-July. About 3 weeks pre season before my first competitive match. What's the best solution in those situations? Should I keep playing friendlies in between and keep highly intensive physical training, or should I switch to normal training and no friendlies as soon as competitive matches start?

[spaced33]

What do you do with General Training and what level of intensity do you use?

[Cleon]

1 - Its upto you.

2 - It makes no real difference if someone is 100% or 97%. But no, you shouldn't expect players to be 100%.

I had additional problems in my 2nd pre season - my team returned from holiday somewhere near the end of June, and I was supposed to play in the first qualifying round of Champions League in mid-July. About 3 weeks pre season before my first competitive match. What's the best solution in those situations? Should I keep playing friendlies in between and keep highly intensive physical training, or should I switch to normal training and no friendlies as soon as competitive matches start?

Again it all depends how you want to do it, there is no real right or wrong answer it just depends what you feel works best for you. If tactic familiarity is still not fluid and players are unfit then you might be best keeping it on for an extra week or two. But again, it all comes down to how you want to play.

[Sarmatian]

What do you do with General Training and what level of intensity do you use?

General training fitness, very high. Didn't touch match preparation.

1 - Its upto you.

2 - It makes no real difference if someone is 100% or 97%. But no, you shouldn't expect players to be 100%.

Again it all depends how you want to do it, there is no real right or wrong answer it just depends what you feel works best for you. If tactic familiarity is still not fluid and players are unfit then you might be best keeping it on for an extra week or two. But again, it all comes down to how you want to play.

Okay, thanks. I'm more concerned about fitness level than tactical familiarity. I've generally used they system you described on earlier versions of FM, (very high fitness, lots of weak friendlies), but I was unpleasantly surprised with the number of injuries I got.

[Cleon]

If you are getting lots of injuries try high rather than very high and if it still the same then try average and so on. Normally very high is okay though if you are keeping an eye on their condition during a friendly and sub/rotate them if its getting low.

[swansongs]

I never do fitness training, high or otherwise. I'm playing more than enough games to get 22+ players match fit just to raise tactical familiarity & get everyone used to playing together. Balanced - Low team training on the few days the team isn't working on match prep.

I've never had a preseason injury crisis. If I'm unlucky I might have one player out by the first game.

[Inners]

I'm having the exact same problem as Sarmatian, lots of injuries during preseason and lots of complaints from the players about the training. I'm following the same tips as from Cleon that worked on FM14, but injury crisis looming, will try lowering and seeing what happens. I am managing Luton and not Arsenal so i guess that has an impact on how hard i can push the players.

[Ukchris]

Pre-season I generally use...

Team Training = Balanced - High

Team Match Training = 50% for Match Tactics or Team Cohesion

That keeps most players on Average workload, or High with an individual training area assigned on top. I don't give them a rest before or after.

During the season when tactic familiarity is maxed out I use...

Team Training = Balanced - Average

Team Match Training = 20% (Def. Set Pieces most weeks)

The match training in-season I would normally leave on attacking movement but in FM15 I've felt it necessary to use defending set pieces most weeks, as I've found that AI teams are strong with attacking corners this year. When the season has started I allow players to rest the day after a match. As before, this gives older players an Average workload if they've reached full potential and I'm not sticking with individual training on top to adjust attributes. Anyone with an individual area on top (ie. younger players or anyone at full potential I still want to adjust a bit) will be at Heavy.

I quite like having older players I'm happy with sit at medium training workload as I feel it reduces their risk of training injuries. For a similar reason I try to limit the highest workloads to heavy, as in FM13/FM14 I felt anyone on very heavy had an increased risk of injury.

Similar to Cleon I try to arrange plenty of friendlies (usually 10 or so) against easy opponents to keep player morale high from easy wins and get as many players as possible to high match fitness before the season starts. I then use a mix of first team rotation and having reserve players eligible for U21 games to keep match fitness up through the squad during the season itself.

I was a little surprised at first not having players at 100% condition but it makes sense, and I'm fine with most being 96% - 97%. The main thing for me is the description of fitness, I try to avoid playing anyone who says 'Tired' or 'Tired after last match'. If a key player is 92% but saying match fit they're good to go, unless I have a big game a few days later I want to rest them for. Just a balancing act with the schedule and available squad.

[Katana]

If all this criteria is met and you've done it correctly then you should have almost full tactical familiarity. In the first season though it can be hard to achieve in some leagues due to the dates of when the game starts. It's much easier to achieve from the 2nd season onward.

I would definetely say it's hard to acheive in the first season. My team started their pre-season in march with the first league match one month later. So, I set up friendly matches about every three days, which amounted to nine total. Now I'm in May and since then I've gone through an additional 7 matches (league and cup) and my match training has been set at maximium (50%) and "Match tactics" since the get-go.

My point; all parts of my Tactics Familiarity Levels are at 100, except Formation. That is still at 40/100 for all three tactics (actually 39/100 for the two least used). How long will it take the team to become fluid in a new formation, when they play it every game and Match Training is set to Tactics and maximum? In two months they've managed 40%. So a full five months, with everything maxed for tactics, to get fluid?

Maybe I'm the only one who finds that excessive, since nobody else seem to have commented on it...

[Miravlix]

I think combining Very High Fitness + have lots of individual training = Injury crisis.

Fitness training while doing matches = injury crisis.

If you can do 7 week pre-season. (Players complain and Internationals is big problems for it) Then use the first two weeks for High Fitness, perhaps very high in the second week, but since clearing and setting everyones individual training can be a big job with 40+ players, I'm not sure I would go for that. So One Week Average Fitness then one week High.

[Peter5000]

Preseason

Tactic Familiarity ...

[*]When you've set up the friendlies check on the training calendar to make sure you have a training day before each game. If not cancel the game because its pointless.

When you say "training day" - Is this for General training og match prep?

I am playing 10-11 matches, and the familiarity is aonly a little higher than competent...? Playing with Arsenal.

[Quinby]

Peter to get familiarity you need Match Prep set to Match Tactics and have it all they way to the left so you have more match prep. Trust me, followed this and by season starts almost full.

[Peter5000]

Peter to get familiarity you need Match Prep set to Match Tactics and have it all they way to the left so you have more match prep. Trust me, followed this and by season starts almost full.

Match prep is on tactics, and macth prep is 50% (all the way left) - May try again :-/

[migas8982]

I also noticed on a new save that also to increase the tactical familiarity faster, you should also set the general training to tactical. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but on 2 different saves, with the same coaches and me coaching as 4.5 stars tactical coach the tactics, the speed of familiarity was way slower on one save compared to the other

[Cleon]

I also noticed on a new save that also to increase the tactical familiarity faster, you should also set the general training to tactical. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but on 2 different saves, with the same coaches and me coaching as 4.5 stars tactical coach the tactics, the speed of familiarity was way slower on one save compared to the other

This is false, it does not increase tactical familiarity. Only match training does that not general.