peleJunior Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Excellent, I will check that skin out, thanks Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 Season Update Sporting Lisbon’s season expectations didn’t include a title challenge, however, by January all our targets changed. We’re now challenging for the title. When someone says you should treat a tournament as a “learning experience” I usually get insulted, apparently, so did my players. Their performance in the European Champions League was unexpected, and before I do a full update. Lets see how we managed the season in terms of training. Midpoints at the start of any season are notoriously hard to assess. You need time for tactical familiarity, getting to know your players and identifying those that need your attention the most. Its important to set up a system of play that’s predictable and stable, and you can’t be chopping and changing your system too much. I’ve noticed a lot of strange threads on the forum. There have been people who’ve asked why a tactic’s performance fails with one/s team while being successful with another. This game requires you to spend a fair bit of time observing how your team plays and making adjustments in game to min/max your results. With good teams in average leagues you can ‘holiday’ your way to success, simply because you out attribute the rest, but your system still needs to be solid. We are Sporting have worked hard to strengthen our system. It plays very much like a 41221 but defends with 10 behind the ball. If we decide to be a bit more adventurous its usually 8 behind the ball. We don’t close down aggressively to hold our shape and we have a deadly attack thats seen both our inside forwards emerge as the strongest finishers in the league. Tactical success isn’t a science its just common sense. which leaves me only interested in training. Writing these post games is always challenging as I need to recall my thought processes. I tend to have priorities and this is what I do: SEASON 1 Its all about results and setting your base plate for what Jambo has been calling the DNA of your team, makes it easier doesn’t it. :-) I tend to focus on the best players in my team and make sure that by the midway point I have got secured my own future at the club. This means paying more attention to tactics and winning. At this stage of the game, assuming I have already secured my bootroom, I focus on: A. Identifying Players B. Setting up my tactical system C. Setting up training for U19 and Seniors D. Setting up all filters for training, match day selection, training performance assessment and match performance lists E. Setting scout assignments F. Milestone setting A. Identifying Players I have a DNA baseplate, this is the very basic thing I want in every player in my team, regardless of tactical system. - Determination - Natural Fitness - First Touch - Minimum 3 star potential Players are shortlisted and then I begin stage B. B. Setting up my Tactical System Deviant will be the system I used and this can interchange with Defiant for harder games, in fact a large part of me thinks that I am better off just going 4141, but I am too far gone into the season to make any changes. 4141 will be created at season’s end along with a 532 for the future, to give me more tactical options for harder ECL games, I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way. Deviant requires that the team be broken down into 3 distinct groups of players with unique attribute sets that they should have or need to be trained to have more of. Defenders: First Touch and anticipation will be important, these players need to be able to step up and intercept. Pace of 12 will be a minimum requirement, failing which they should have high concentration, anticipation. Other attributes will also be needed, but these are the vital ones. For the way we play those defenders need to make sure they step up since we are playing a control setup and my preferred style of play includes camping in an opponent’s half Midfielders Two DLPs need to be identified/trained. Vital position where decisions, passing, composure, concentration, tackling and determination are vital. This position will be my main pivot. B2BMCs, these guys are gonna be beasts. They will have to have solid teamwork, natural fitness, passing. They will get into positions to score so decent finishing and composure will be needed. Having tackling will help, Role training with specific focus should help, but players fitting a certain DNA baseplate will need to be identified. Strikeforce This is the group of players leading the front. I plan to play a Raumdeuter who is like a playmaker but he brings others into play and arrives late in a box, its an ideal position for strikerless formations and with my B2BMCs doing their thang, he should be able to garner a lot of assists and get some goals in the process. This player needs decisions, passing, off the ball, anticipation, finishing, crossing, composure. In fact chances are he needs to be trained, and this is one position that needs a lot of attention, as I expect this position and the inside forward on the right to be banging in the goals. The IF on the right should have blistering pace, acceleration, a good cross, finishing and composure. The TQ in the middle will need to be a good playmaker with the necessary attributes Once i know the quality of players I need I start identifying from my squad, It took me nearly 3 months before I settled on my first choice, but it was worth the wait. Once the players have been identified, they get slotted in and training begins. My goal by seasons end is to ensure that my “development players” get at least 25 games of football under their belt. They need to start games and also appear as substitutes in others. 6 months down the track and we’re already pumping out players with ppms, this seems to be a lot easier than older versions of FM. PPMs also appear to have a bigger impact in games to me at least. In some players cases, my football has become a bit disjointed.You need to be very careful that you don’t become too enthused with ppms. In order to make sure that happens, I need to remind myself on the ppms that players will need. This is where training comes in. C. Setting Up Training for U19 and Seniors I already covered what the team does in general, specific player training is also set up for those who need to be boosted. Furthermore by now ppm identification is done for the positions and assigned Defenders: Central Mark player tightly Play a simple passing game Fullbacks Get forward whenever possible Mark players tightly Stay up in a challenge DLP Tight marking Dictate Tempo Expansive Passing Play one two to set tempo B2BMC Play killer ball Run through channels Get forward one two passing Forwards (Attributes dependant on pace/acceleration, if acceleration is >12 then A,C,D, if less than 12 then A,B,D If potential to get acceleration up in training then ACD A. run through channels B. Get Forward whenever possible C. Break Offside trap D. Stay on feet My first 6 months is all about ppm training and thats where most of my time is focused as I spend time studying each player. Its an area which is easy to neglect and the problem usually rears its ugly head when you start looking for players to fill up replacements for your first team. D. Setting up Filters and Assessments Once the ppms are done it boils down to monitoring players and this is where my filters come in and I have them all set up to do a. Training Set Up for PPM and specific areas b. Match day selection Since I need my players to play a minimum number of games, I set the list up to include appearances and basic stats c. Match day assessment I need to assess these players as well, to monitor them as a group to see whether we are on track and I do these with another list E. Scouting Assignments are kinda obvious, so use the first six months to plan to cover your shortfalls in your squad. Mine are all set out for hot prospects, with a few scouts overlapping regional coverages F. Milestone Setting Once you’re off and running, you need to start paying attention to how your players are developing.PPMs will start kicking in 6 months into your season, and your tactical system could get disjointed if they are done wrong so this is the time your performances could get unhinged. So its vital to assess how they play with the new ppms. By January this should be evident, if by then your players are still not learning ppms something is wrong somewhere with your setup. For Sporting, we have several issues: a. lack of defensive cover - the side really only has 2 DCs who can play first time football. So i had to promote a promising U19 to the side. Incoming Transfer needed b. Upfront my left and right side of our trident is doing well, but in midfield we tend to fall over each other in possession, so passing 1-2s and dictate tempo are ppms that are needed in every match selection c. Rotation is becoming a challenge, we are leading the league but if I am to blood the young, matches are running out..so we need to stay in all competitions as long as possible End of season - clear out time for half the squad Time for an update of our performances then in line with my midseason milestones And we will sum it up with one video - our match against Barcelona [video=youtube_share;B2SMlR5zI0I] In my next post I will do something a bit more detailed Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleon Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Not enough people utilise custom views. There as important as the actual tactic for me, essential. Good post, I like the PPM's assigning too its something I always do Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 Yeah so true, we're like 21 games in..there was one game, my trident up front wasn't scoring and this was down more to the midfield behind them failing. I went in took a look and realised oddly that maybe it was the ppms. As it turned out, my tactic heavily favoured one of my B2BMCs to get forward and the other was set to killer ball passes, but they had been swapped, so since my system requires a unique set of things happening that wasn't happening..a quick change and we went from struggling to score to poppin in 4 goals after the break Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
peleJunior Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 For your base DNA you picked an attribute from each categories namely; First touch, Determination and Natural Fitness. Was it coincidence that there from each category or is it that you consider these fundamental basics of each. For instance to have great physical ability it would be advantageous to have a great base natural fitness or atleast it's seems logical. Similarly for technical side first touch opens up time and space and getting the head up although I guess technique could be argued as well, was it something you mulled over? Love the presentation intro of the video there Great read last post was. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 Personally for me first touch is the most important attribute, all other attributes are secondary. If you want to play top quality football, and become a side that's going to over perform consistently, then first touch is no 1. Determination and Nat Fitness form the other parts of my trident. Determination is the quality you need when you are a goal down and natural fitness just helps your side compete on all fronts furthermore with youth setups, I really don;t like getting youth who have less than 12 for nat fitness, unless its outfield Once I have these then i worry about the rest, including teamwork which for some positions its actually better to have a low number for. I don't really bother with technique, since my sides are young. That attribute develops quickly over time, and I am glad you liked the video...i wanted to do something different cos I was bored. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Double0Seven Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 The music made the video much more interesting. Have you considered playing more aggressive backs? To provide width and passing options up front. A CWB works great in my 4-1-4-1. He will run wide creating space for a IF to cut inside and score. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 I was holding my backs back a bit...depending on the match and the opposition, my backs go from (S) to (A). On the left flank my RD creates a lot of assists and when the fullbacks are set to (A) he also scores a lot of goals. In the Barca match I was actually playing defensively Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 24, 2015 Author Share Posted January 24, 2015 SPORTING END OF SEASON UPDATE To cut a long story short we did what I expected to do which was to clean up everything except for the Champions League, which we naturally fell to Bayern in the knock outs. They are just too strong on the day. An Invincible season, at my very first attempt yay. On to the more interesting stuff... as far as player development goes I did some things to see if certain results would emerge. 3 players were guinea pigs. One had no change to training the whole season long, another was made to change his focus in December, and another was giving a specific attribute to work on. The whole was on balanced training and we kept to the plan I laid out earlier. I am going to list out my conclusions first..and if you are interested you can read on. 1. NEVER TRAIN a player specifically for a position and leave him there the whole season long. You need to have a clear vision of how you want your side to play, the ppms that are needed and the attributes that you will want to see being translated into football. So for example, if you plan on playing a Raumdeuter in your side, don't give him specific training as a Raumdeuter... These are their attributes They aren't exhaustive and based on my style of football, just not enough, so I trained Gauld who plays as a Raumdeuter under the Attacking Midfielder focus, and this is how he developed at the end of the season. A players role on the pitch is governed by instructions handed through by the match engine, for e.g., a RD may be told to hold up ball and play direct and dribble with a mentality that is slightly lower than the players in front of him but higher than the ones below..(just saying)..his attributes will determine how well he does this. So you need to understand the role you want produced, and then look at the attributes of the various training programs and then choose the best one for the job. On the whole Gauld was the clear outstanding performer in the side, notching up a crazy amount of assists and he banged in more than his fair share of goals. To support him I had to develop a set of players who could play with him and it was especially important for me to get the fullback done right. Jon Silva was my focus He was the only fullback who was given a chance in focus halfway through the season, starting as a wingback and ending as a fullback. The interesting thing was that he was only one of 5 players who showed an improvement in first touch, in fact composure which is a required DNA for my team was also lacking, leading me to doubt the efficacy of having a balanced training schedule. I will be studying these numbers more over the weekend, cos its leading me back to attempt my customised training program which places emphasis on tactical as well as ball control training. While our side did play well against portuguese league sides, our lack of technical mastery would see us often lose the second ball, and this is something we need to address for next season. 2. The second thing i confirmed for myself at least...was the vital importance of playing someone in the right position, not necessarily the ROLE. For instance an AM can occupy the same space as a Raumdeuter, so they can be trained as an AM yet play the role as a RD, but you can't train someone as a DMC and play him as an MC, unless he already has MC as a position he can play. If you insist on doing this his training won't be min maxed. As far as my experiment with the 3 players went. Gauld was placed on strength the whole season long by december he had registered gains in 10 areas, by the end of the season he added 14 more making it a total of 24 gains out of a possible 36, which seems to suggest that you can leave someone on specialised training and forget about it. If you look at his numbers he had an improvement in 9 areas of his position. Strength showing a 3 point increase, in one season. He missed out on improving 3 areas for his position in terms of training and gained the rest in other areas. IN other words there are 36 possible attributes that could have gone up. Out of 36, 12 are for his position (Inside Forward) he gained 9, and 15 gains went to the rest. In fact this dodo did better than some others who stuck to one position throughout, i will be trying to figure out why one of my midfielders didn't gain an iota and another defender had negative growth even when he played all the matches. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jambo98 Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Interesting stuff as always rashidi. Great season on the field it looks with the invincible season. Porto down in 4th though Also a lot of what you say on training is good logical sense. I very rarely use the "positional specific" training for youngsters or developing players, for exactly the reason you mention - It might train what the AI thinks are important attibutes for the given role, but i disagree and have different visions of how each role in my team will actually be "played". Also some of the other findings are very similar to my experience in my Athletic club work. I have struggled to get my DNA attributes impacted on my youngsters, although i have focussed mainly on players who are below the level of the likes of Gauld and Silva in my squad (mainly 16/17yr olds). That said, i have also hit a similar issue where a midfielder with a nice personality, who was tutored twice by equally nice personalties, given a shed load of game time (over 20 starts) and varied training barely developed at all. It does seem that player development is a bit more varied and probably realistic in this years FM. Last few years, if you get the coaches right, gave lots of first team football and varied the training it was a done deal that you could develop 3 or 4 youths massively each year. Perhaps that was a tad unrealistic compared to real life, and the multitude of factors which can impact or stunt development in real. I have quite a few youths to focus on now in season 2 and might spread my analysis wider than just the attributes i have focused on. I also might consider moving to twice yearly analysis rather than quarterly, as really 3 months in football is maybe not enough time to expect to see results. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Change in plans I am getting a bit frustrated with Portuguese clubs, they don't seem to have the same latitude other clubs have. The most annoying rule is the fact that your squad can only register 30 players above the age of 19 for the league. Thats a pain, cos once your players start getting older, it limits the number of good staff you can play and a lot end up going on loan. So theoretically you can have only 30 to manage, while this does seem to be a lot, with the lower wage budget it can be a painful challenge. Gerrard's salary was more than the entire wage budget for my whole first team! This adventure may not last long simply because its annoying, but it does offer up a template. Last season I had issues with how balanced training seemed to hit everything but the attributes that i was after. This is a fairly confusing chart..let me break it down, the left arrow highlights what the GTraining areas should hit on. The attributes that are greyed out are the ones the individual training should be hitting. I will be changing out of balanced training and heading into customised training to see if I can generate a better snapshot of a player's training. Gauld is the best trained person at the moment and if he stays with the club...i may be able to see the outcome in 2 seasons. While its unfair to assume that BTraining doesn't hit as much after 1 season, i want to see how different it will be with more targeted GT. Last time around thats all I did for my team, and some of the player development was sensational. Balanced training is supposed to be hitting a mix of fitness, tactical, ball control, attacking and defensive, thats a lotta attributes..but Gauld was unique compared to the rest, there were a few who played more, got less injured had fine performances but were hopeless in training. So this time around we change July Fitness Aug-May 5 months BC 5 months Tactical Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gf_bay Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 In case your Portugese project does not last long, I would also love to see you give it whirl with your second option; VFB Stuttgart. There are a number of reasons why an adventure in Germany is definatly worth the while: This would give you a club from the midtable in one of the top 3 leagues (would be interesting to see how long it would take you to overtake the mighty FC Bayern). Stuttgart offers a great youth setup and recruitment. There are no restrictions regarding squad-size or domestic players in the German BL. You have full control over your B/reserve-team. There are no work-permit restrictions whatsoever - a nice feature, should you want to develop talents from overeseas. I am having great fun plaing with Dynamo Dresden from the third tier (at game start - now BL). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jambo98 Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 The one major downside in Germany for a youth challenge is that you cannot select players for the first team who are under 18 IIRC? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gf_bay Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 No. The age restriction is 17 years old. Meaning 15 and 16 year olds cannot play in the BL. They can play form the day the turn 17. I do not find it that restricting, in all honesty. There might be a gem every now and then that I would like to use before the age of 17 - but that is only in rare cases. In most cases my players are around 17 - 18 years old before they have their BL debut. EDIT: And if I am not mistaking, you can even register your 16 year olds - meaning you do not have to wait for the next registration window to play them after they turn 17. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleon Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Balanced training doesn't actually mean a mix of fitness, tactics, ball control and defensive as such. It means there is no focus being emphasised which is slightly different as it just means all attributes have the normal chance of improving. General training was designed for a simpler generic kind of training and doesn't really work well with individual training from every single experiment I've done, you end up sacrificing one or the other when trying to use both simultaneously. If you want all players to work on the attributes from general training for a set period of time then it would be worth while dropping individual training all together to see better results and vice versa. Even without an individual focus of any kind they still train the minimum attributes for their role so you don't lose training from not having one. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Balanced training doesn't actually mean a mix of fitness, tactics, ball control and defensive as such. It means there is no focus being emphasised which is slightly different as it just means all attributes have the normal chance of improving.General training was designed for a simpler generic kind of training and doesn't really work well with individual training from every single experiment I've done, you end up sacrificing one or the other when trying to use both simultaneously. If you want all players to work on the attributes from general training for a set period of time then it would be worth while dropping individual training all together to see better results and vice versa. Even without an individual focus of any kind they still train the minimum attributes for their role so you don't lose training from not having one. I have yet to find a post confirming anything on, from what I have gathered, BT affects all the attributes within the sub categories, all with a chance to improve. Now if you look at each category its not a lot, in fact defending only hits 3 attributes. So Balanced may have a chance on hitting anything in the sub categories, but in one way is this consistent among players and the amount by which it improves is not even consistent amongst players on the same program, training the same position and having the same personality. In older versions of FM I was really happy with focused GT which emphasised certain traits/attributes, and I may be leaning towards it again. Considering its only 20% of the training load assuming your GT is low then thats not going to have too drastic an effect. I rather whatever effect be more focused. It worked in the past for me if you remember with my Stafford saves of the past. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 whats bugging me is how poor these portuguese clubs are relative to the rest of continental europe Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
m83 Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Hi rashidi, First just wanted to say that´s a really good thread, so congrats! Also im portuguese and supporter of my beloved sporting, it was really nice to see what you deed whit them Im just wondering something, i also am inspired in creating what we see in this forum has DNA football club, and if so do you utilise the strategy assumptions? I have read in your blog that you advocat the existence of a counter and control strategy assumptions. For example do you always use the control strategy? or it´s a game to game basis? I had a save that i tried to always use the control strategy but in the champions league that got me mixed results, especially away from home. i got to the semi finals, but lost in the penaltis. Again, thanks for your contribution and sorry for my poor englisch writting. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted January 29, 2015 Author Share Posted January 29, 2015 You were reading the FM13 legacy sections of the blog. What you should take from that, is the need for having a strategy that gives you options. Back then a control mentality was fairly strong and having a counter attacking plan when you needed to defend was also good. So I tended to have both. In FM 15 you can have a counter attacking strategy as well as a control strategy. Personally I plan with an attacking mentality at the moment and being Sporting I rarely have ever needed to go counter in the primeria, the team is just that good. Even when we faced Barcelona we on an attacking strategy and I opted to use a combination of shouts and opposition instructions to shut them down. If you are one of the best teams in Europe then you can stick to one formation and just shut everyone up. But if you are still on your way there, then you should have a plan B, especially for the difficult away european games. You lost in the penalties though, and that seems to suggest that you don't need to do much, you may not even need a plan b. Have you read this? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
m83 Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Yes, that was the section i was reading on your blog. So, we can do well whit only one match strategy assumption? I favored control has i want to play the passing game whit some goal intent. Can you tell me what are your usual group of shouts for more agrresive and cautious? It´s a nem ME and new approach on the game this year for me, and i had a hard time figuring out the logicals steps of playing this game in his total approach, ege, training, recruitement, staff, etc..Sometimes i find myself "lost"... Anyway, thanks for the reply, much appreciated. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
m83 Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Just read your last post, mind bloowing and some how logical! I think im too leazy playing this game, one of the many reasons why i can´t have constitency. It´s a lurning curve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 *taken from my blog* My seasonal updates are getting shorter and shorter ...we won the league and cup again. And managed to get to the finals of the European Champions League, which was a gut wrenching final. 3-1 with 30 minutes to go, I make a change, we manage to turn the game and grab a goal. In stoppage time, we grab a penalty that Lucas Romero failed to convert. The 3-2 loss was depressing, the good news - we over achieved like never before, hammering Real Madrid 6-2 on aggregate and beating Chelsea 5-2 as well to get to the final. The side had done well, and I believe this was down to astute tactical changes I made to the side, favoring a 4132 formation with a halfback. It allowed me to soak up the pressure of a 4231 and launch attacks against better sides. Unfortunately for us, Barcelona was just a mountain too high. Player Development Model - the basics When you start getting requests for training advice perhaps my explanations weren't good enough. Then again, this gives me the perfect chance to lay out a model that I can easily replicate for any club that has the necessary facilities and coaches. To reiterate there is information in other blog posts where I deal with youth training. Here I explain what I do with them at their various ages and when they go on loan. The key point there is how I handle match preparation training and the loads. Player Preferred Moves is also an important facet of training. And here I talk about the knock on effects to Current Ability. Thats basically some of the background information. Theres information littered everywhere about my training schedules but this blog post will try and fit them all in here. A player will develop optimally given: the right facilities and coaching quality playing time focused training Facilities & Coaching You players will still develop if you have average coaches and facilities, but if you want them to develop optimally, you need those five star coaches and you need the facilities. The quicker you get them the better the chances of optimal player development. Thats just one piece of the puzzle. If you want to go down the road of player development, this has to be your first priority and its not cheap. Your club will spend 2.5m quid a season and will need the full complement of 18 coaches. Where you can get youth coaches, get them. You can use filters to great effect to find them, the best way is just to pinch em from other clubs. Quality Playing Time Many ask the question - how much time. To be honest as much as you can possibly provide, and to make things even harder..you need to win. You can't just toss in the players into matches you expect to lose, and hope they develop, cos that won't happen. Player performances have a knock on effect to player development. If a player does well in a match, he does better in training and then he carries that into game performance. Its all linked. Personally I use the rule of 25. Once a player can join the senior team, I expect him to play 25 games. I find thats the best number, whether I am right or wrong is subjective. Some players with the right mental attributes need fewer games and others need more. So I use 25 as a good guide. It makes it easier for me to track and so far I've found that this works. What I typically do is this: 15-17 Player is in the U-18s team, they learn all their ppms by the time they are 17. 17-19 Players start getting runs in the senior team and they are moved to the reserves. Good players are identified at 19 for promotion to senior sides 19> any player who can't slot into a senior team is put on loan. There need to be at least 5 players who are going to get a run in the senior team. These players end up playing as covers. By the time a player is in the reserves his training will focus on his role, because by then his ppms should be covered. A player can learn as many ppms as he needs to, I am not sure what the upper limit is. Don't get fixated by ppms, I find that for the key roles they usually need only 5 ppms, some defenders need only 3 like bog basic central defenders, anything more is usually unnecessary and a waste of time. Training ppms takes a player away from player development so he really needs to get back to role training asap. So when it comes to training youth, you need a clear plan. You must know what position they will play and you must get them to learn their ppms. Waste time and you waste development. Thats basically it when it comes to ppms and player training loads. Training Plans Essentially when you train players you need to manage things realistically. They have a fixed amount of time for training Ok time for me to put my training schedule up for both my senior team and my youth team. First up just some general information on the time a player has for training: If we look at total time a player has for training, this is affected by injuries, international commitments, personality, coaching and facilities. Now if I assume that he has 100% total time and when you consider that his general intensity is set to very low, low, average, high, very high and then you see match preparation slider set to 0-50% of his time its apparent that a players total time for training is split between General Training and Match Preparation. Now if a player doesn't do any specific training, then the coaching team trains him in his natural position, and the amount of time he spends training on that is between 50%-100% So if you were to set his match prep slider to 40% he only gets the temporary boost to his Current ability that "helps" him during a game. Sometimes this boost will kick into his training so that even that gets a short term boost. Training tends to be cyclical so good training performances, lead to good match performances, and good match performances lead to positive training results. One has to decide how much time they spend on match preparation. Since match preparation boosts are temporary, but necessary for good results, i set it to 40% for the first month to get my team off to a good start. During this time a side can struggle for cohesion especially if there are a lot of new players match preparation helps to smooth out the edges so to speak. So after the first three months I usually drop the match preparation intensity to 10%, that still leaves the team some time on match preparation, but the player now spends more of his time on either his natural position training or on whatever specialized training you want him to do. I call this lol "The Guardiola Focused Training Program"...i had to come up with a name ;-) [TABLE=class: mce-item-table] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]General Trg Intensity[/TD] [TD]Match Prep[/TD] [TD]Focus Intensity[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]JULY[/TD] [TD]Fitness[/TD] [TD]High[/TD] [TD]40%[/TD] [TD]Light[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]AUG[/TD] [TD]Ball Control[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]SEPT[/TD] [TD]Ball Control[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]OCT[/TD] [TD]Ball Control[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]NOV[/TD] [TD]Ball Control[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]DEC[/TD] [TD]Ball Control[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]JAN[/TD] [TD]Tactics[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]FEB[/TD] [TD]Tactics[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]MAR[/TD] [TD]Tactics[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]APR[/TD] [TD]Tactics[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]MAY[/TD] [TD]Tactics[/TD] [TD]Low[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]Heavy[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] [TABLE=class: mce-item-table, width: 569] [TR] [TD=width: 65]Fitness[/TD] [TD=width: 491, colspan: 6]All Physical Attributes and Workrate[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Tactical[/TD] [TD=colspan: 6]Anticipation, Composure, Decisions, Concentration, Teamwork[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Ball Control[/TD] [TD=colspan: 6]Dribbling, First Touch, Heading, Technique, Flair[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Defending[/TD] [TD=colspan: 6]Marking, Tackling, Positioning[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Attacking[/TD] [TD=colspan: 6]Crossing, Finishing, Long Shots, Passing, Off the Ball, Vision[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] So assuming a player has 100% training time in total. By Aug, he will only spend 10% of his time on match preparation, and 90% of that time on General Training. If you want a player to have focused development you can give him specific training. Then that time will then be divided like this: General Training can be set from 20% - 100. the blue area, so if you set it to low, then its 20%, leaving 80% of that time to be spent elsewhere. If he does nothing, he doesn't develop. So we have individual focus which now can be set from Light, Average and Heavy. Setting Heavy would ensure that he spends his max focus on his specific individual training. However if you set him to do PPM, then this reduces the amount of time he has for his role training, which is why its critical to do ppms before they hit 19. Get them out of the way FAST. My approach for youth teams is different, for my youth team I skew this heavily on ball control for the three years they are with me in the U-18 side and then once they hit the senior squad they join the senior program. Its only because I value first touch very highly in my team, Pep Guardiola when he was interviewed answered that the first attribute he looks for in any player is first touch. Even if the player was a great tackler, if his first touch was poor, he'd never play. I follow that school of thought when setting out training. Timelines For me the ages 15-21 are the most important years for player development. This is the time when I usually optimize their development, by the time they hit 21 their direction is fairly clear. I will know if that player is going to be a potentially important member of the team or someone who's on his way. My model is very simple. Between 15-17, they are on ball control and learn their ppms. By the time they are 18 the top 5 join the main team, the rest are in the reserves and chances are unless they do really well, they are usually on their way out. Only rarely have I seen a player emerge from the reserves make a strong challenge. The 5 become my focus for development. I repeat the cycle at the start of the next season and by then I should have 10 players to choose from 5 will go on sale and the rest start earning their colors. I usually never train players ppms once they hit 20. By then its full on player development via role specific training. If a player needs to improve specific attributes that are KEY to their position then they focus on those attributes. Ok onto more details. We covered the basics here. Its now time to focus. Training Plans Sports Interactive have been trying to humanize the game for years. What sorted out as a simple stick in the best attributes into the best shape to get the ultimate result has now changed. Today the game is all about managing the human condition, its strange that this is being done in a simulation, but its been the intention of SI to make this game as “realistic” as possible, so we need to approach the game in its purest way possible. Whilst I used to spend hours theorycrafting this game back in the 90s, today my approach is a lot simpler, I still have the spreadsheets from cm01/02, and I am shocked at the level of detail that was possible back then. Having said that we need to remember how different the game was back then. Today it requires a slightly “realistic” approach. When this approach fails, is when SI get interested in improving those aspects. Granted the approach I am taking is simplistic, its not meant to be complicated. If I truly want to create an accurate model then I will need to sit down and assign values to certain things in the game and assume that we can reach them, then test these with a team that I would consider baseline, a team like Bayern or Barcelona, and do it for like 15 seasons, but that would take too long. I will still be doing that, but in the background when I start a new save with Bayern or Barcelona once the new patch is out. For now though, we need to use an easier model that simplifies and assumes a host of factors. One of which is the training load which was covered in the earlier post of PDM. Will this approach work? It has worked for me in the past with non league sides and its done well with top level sides. Its an approach that works and has always helped me over achieve. The things you need to do to make it work for yourself is: Understand your players, know what roles you need and the personality of players you have Know what system you want to play and know how to play it Establish the right coaching system at your club Manage the rotation of your squad by giving all ample time to play and ensuring that you don't have too big a squad thus reducing your attention to detail Once you have these sorted out its time to move on to the nitty gritty, and this is where understanding potential is important. You absolutely need to get the best out of players for them to see positive gains. Good training leads to good results leads to good training and attribute gains. Its a cycle. Fail at getting results and you reduce the effectiveness of training, forget a player and maybe his potential is not fully realised, Send a player to the wrong team for a loan spell, and you could be seeing him play in a team that doesn't exploit his potential. Reaching a players potential – Current Ability and Perceived Potential Ability Training a player involves first understanding a player’s Current and Perceived Potential Ability (CA and PPA). In the game PPA is what we see as Potential Ability. The locked in Potential Ability of a player is a constant and that is a figure that’s under the hood; however, a players PPA can change. PPA ratings from scouts and coaches are all based on current ability and then with a host of other factors, such as mentality and other hidden attributes, a PPA figure will be displayed in the game. It’s his figure relative to the squad you have. What you see as 4.5 stars that is the perceived potential ability of a player and not the Potential Ability that’s under the hood. No-one will ever know a players true potential until they have reached it and its started to decline, and that’s when your coaches start giving you messages that a player can’t improve anymore. I have a played called Freddy Montero, he’s quite the beast and at the age of 27 any improvements to his attributes will stop being stellar, so the goal I have now is maintaining his current attributes. His growth had stagnated over the last 2 seasons when he was placed on an Inside Forward regime, this year he’s been moved to training position of a Complete Forward. The 3 rows show his attribute distribution since we started training. It starts with his base when we started managing the club and the last row are the latest attributes from June 1st 2016. Each row is aggregated to show the total attributes for the year. Whats clear is that our friend Fredy is getting old, and I will be using him and another player called Rami Rabbia to make my point. Before we begin, lets get those stars out of our eyes. Getting Starry-eyed Stars are an assessment of how your player is vis a vis your squad, there may be a hidden PA in the game, but I am not about to go under the hood to find out, but, one needs to know when they are close to or not hitting their potential. There is no exact magical number that one can see in the game to see if we are doing the right thing which is why there are at least three different ways to get this done, but one needs to use the stars in the way I believe they were meant to be used. I treat the stars as a guide, and treat the hidden PA value as inconsequential, because honestly the game does that to. It’s just a value that acts as an upper limit on what a player can achieve, if the right conditions exist. So chuck all references to PA and stop using those editors and start enjoying the game. When I refer to PA now, its going to refer to PPA screw the "under the hood mysterious ghost in the machine called PA". Assume you are in a conference team, and you have a 5 star player, and he moves to a premiership team his PPA will drop, because he is now surrounded by players who are better, so while he may have the potential to be a key player in his conference side, he may be surplus to requirements in a premiership side. This is a fundamental concept people need to understand, a player is only as good as the people around him. If you have a player who’s 17 years old, you’ve scouted him and he has 5 stars, he may not necessarily stay on 5 for his lifetime. As other players get better around him or if he joins an excellent team where he’s below average his stars could drop. This is the principle reason why I start rotating youngsters with great potential into the senior squad or match them with a team who are slightly better than him. The conditions then exist for him to improve. So are the stars important? Not really. What’s more important, is whether a player is playing to his potential; this is probably the best way to use the stars. If a player’s CA = PA, then he is playing to his potential, and there is always a strong chance his attributes will also improve, within his cap. So assuming a player is young, and plays well, he could potentially have 100 points in attributes that he can gain, then, he peaks, doesn’t gain as much anymore and finally starts to decline A player can’t become a god, and have 20 in all attributes; so making them learn multiple positions may not necessarily be a good idea. Instead of making him brilliant at one you could just make him good at several. Mastering two roles is usually the most I would go for. And, for players who have a lower PPA, I would stick with one role. Furthermore a player needs to constantly be playing in those positions for the attributes to stick and for him to show improvement. So if you plan on getting a player to mult-task, ensure he has the right personality and whether he has the potential for the role. To do that start identifying key attributes you need for that role and ascertain whether he has an acceptable baseline. You can't expect someone to be a playmaker if he's good at tackling and bad at passing. So coming back to Freddy Montero, he’s reached his peak, any positive gains he gets could be redistributed gains from his current attributes, he won’t be gaining 10-12 attributes a season like the others. His will slow down or degenerate over time, so keeping him on a “balanced routine” as a forward will be good. Something I know for sure will cover his attributes. The good thing about moving him to a complete forward’s training will be him hitting these attributes. Now its time to see if I can give him a bit more of a boost. I will be referring back to this chart a few times. The blue arrow refers to his attributes, and those that have been shaded blue are attributes directly affected by his positional training. The green arrow shows the attributes that are affected once he switches to Complete Forward training. Those that are boxed are the attributes that are affected by Mental and Tactical Training. What kind of training is the best? Basically there is General Training and Individual Training. Once a season is underway and as soon as you can, you need to get Individual training focus to 10%. This ensures that a player spends max amount of time on development. The key now is how to distribute that 20% of General training. In my first PDM post I explained this in a bit more detail, so I will skip the details. You can choose one of two methods: Balanced training for the whole season: this is a safe route to take, but it does one no favors in setting up a team flavor. You have absolutely no control over where the attributes may fall, and they will fall within any of the 5 sub categories of training Teamwork, Ball Control, Mental, Fitness, Attacking and Defending. That’s a total of 36 attribute areas. It’s still a great way to train. You can also opt to give your team a flavor: Focused Training There is ONLY ONE way of doing this. There are really only 8 months of training, even though one may argue they start the season in July and end in May, you have to allow one month for things like making up time for cohesion if the squad is filled with noobs. Since a player needs a minimum of 3 months for attributes to stick, you can only devote two sessions of Focused Training, and this allows you to set a theme. My theme has always been what I called the Rinus Michel school, where we tackle Ball Control and Tactics, allowing us to hone our First Touch, Composure, Decisions, Anticipation, Concentration, Dribbling, Flair, Teamwork, Heading and Technique. For me, these are the defining hall-marks of my systems. In neither system will a player ALWAYS gain attribute increases in all the targeted attribute areas. Balanced training will not result in someone having all the sub-categories show absolute improvement, and the same holds for Focused training. What is important to see is whether your training programs target the right attributes you want developed for the player to perform his roles well on the pitch. You can go in blind and just pick and choose..or you could look at the roles of the player become familiar with how you want your system to play and then assign a specific training program for each player. Two of my biggest positions in my team that need filling are always the Defensive Midfielder and the Box to Box midfielder, so I pick these two for quite a few of my players, and then I monitor them to see if the training program hits the areas that those roles are trying to develop. At Sporting in our first season we embarked on a General Balanced Training Program for our first season, and switched to a Focused Training Program for our second season.I tracked 17 players, and excluded those who were on loan, going on loan, surplus to requirements and those who wouldn’t have long term potential. Out of this group I further broke them down in Prime and Non Prime players. Those who were prime were the backbone of my development program. Out of the 17, 5 were prime and 3 more would be joining that group this season. One of these players was placed on a specific training program to target one attribute for two seasons. The results showed that 6 out of the 16 ( one excluded cos he was on strength) had improvements in key areas from Balanced Training, and 8 had improvements from Focused training. Two were neutral since they had the same amount of improvement in season one and season 2. This showed that the difference between Balanced and Focused was marginal, so even if Focused edged out, we had some outliers. We had 2 outliers, in one player's case he had an 11% improvement in attributes as a result of GT, and for another player he gained almost 10% from Focused training. If you removed these two outliers then the difference between General and Focused was marginal, but Focused did more improvements in my teams DNA, which had been identified as First Touch and Concentration. Focused training is a lot harder to pull off consistently, but the results are predictable, and if your side is already focusing on those attributes through positional training, then the effect can be cumulative. Quite a few of my players had improvements in Anticipation, Composure, Concentration and Decisions.For the player who was on specific strength training, over the course of 2 seasons he had an increase of 5 for strength., but overall he had +41 attribute increase in aggregate. This season he will be moved to B2BMC training. Coming back to Freddy Montero, knowing that the challenge is to maintain his attributes, but to ensure that it covers the best areas possible, we have stuck him on Complete Forward training that hits the attributes shaded out below. If I were to do general training, then at this dude’s age, it may go to areas that aren’t so important to my style of play. When you look at the attributes that CF covers you will notice they hit the mental attributes that are also covered under mental and tactical, which are those attributes that are boxed. Thats just work on one player, I have done these now for 17 of my players. This is how focused training can help. It allows you to focus in on specific areas that ensure that get a small boost. Its the best system for training imho for conference sides. When I was managing lower league sides I frequently set GT to Fitness and Ball Control, and this gave me a team physically stronger and faster than the rest which had good first touch, but when I first started with them I was doing Fitness and Tactics, so that my team had better concentration, anticipation and decision making than the rest. Time now to switch to another player. This was my extreme outlier for Focused training. This is only a 3 star player. When I first joined the squad, I wasn't entirely convinced he had what it took. I moved him from the B squad, stuck him in the seniors and gave him a focused training schedule for 2 seasons.8 In Season 1 we did Balanced Training and in Season 2 we moved Rami Rabia to Focused training, and the improvement was impressive. There is no chance I will be ignoring him anymore. Its reinforces the point that stars are irrelevant. As long as a player's CA = PA, then he is playing to his potential, that gives him room to grow. And this is where game time, age, mentality and your track record comes in. If you play him in different positions from his playing position, you run the risk of curtailing his development. Finally, my last example. Ryan Gauld. All he's been doing for the last two seasons has been strength training, which is the weakest part of his game. I needed him to be strong seeing that I was gonna be playing up front as a Raumdeuter, He showed remarkable improvement in that category gaining 5 in 2 seasons. Overall he seemed to favour the Balanced training of season 1 as opposed to season 2. However he also performed a lot better in season 1 when we were using the strikerless formation. In season 2 I moved to a 4411 and a 4132, and his contribution to the side slowly faded, as he was continually played out of position. You can give a player a specific attribute to train, but this needs to be done at a young age so that it doesn't gimp his overall development. He's now since been moved to B2BMC training. Specific attribute training works, but you can't do this for very long, I would go as far as saying that you should cap it at 2 seasons. Summary Granted this is a simplistic model, its meant to be. One could criticise it for not being detailed enough and I would agree. The best way to develop a model is to test it out for at least 10 seasons. Back in the day, when my super tactics worked, that was easily done on holiday mode. Today its a lot harder to do that, so one needs to make assumptions based on the years of experience you have had playing the game. I believe that there are essentially two ways you can train a team, and both are effective. They each have their own strengths. Focused training is more challenging and to me a lot more rewarding, Balanced training is fine as well, and could also reap great results. Ultimately it all boils down to the manager who's playing the game. Is he paying enough attention to the game? Can you win every game, do you have the financial resources in the game to get the best facilities and are you consistent with your squad rotation. These are all factors that will ultimately affect how your players develop. Balanced training Allows you to set up a simple regime that focuses attribute development across the various training sub categories and is directly affected by the position the player is trained for and the position he plays on the pitch. Focused Training Allows you to set up a DNA for the club and lets you micro manage the development of your players. They will still develop based on their role and the position they play in. You can fine tune this system for specific sides with specialised needs such as LLM football. Can you do the same with Balanced training? Yes you can, but here you need to focus a lot harder on their roles making sure they hit the attributes you value. phew..time now to go back to my cave and pop out when FM 16 is released Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
leggie1973 Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Hi, I have a question regarding the Overall Workload that is bugging me... My training programme is currently the same for Senior/Reserves & the U18's - Tactics on Low, Match Training @ 10% and Individual on Heavy However, the Overall Workload is listed as being as Medium for the Senior/Reserves and only Light for the U18's. What causes the programmes to come out with different workloads? I currently have a total of 23 people coaching the 25 x Senior/Reserves and 19 people coaching the 24 x U18's. Do I need to balance up the number of coaches? Many Thanks in advance. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 You need to look at the individual training loads for each player as well. Are they showing Heavy? And are your coaches workload "light"? When i use the same settings my overall workload is heavy for team, and heavy for individuals Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
leggie1973 Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Thanks so much for replying so quickly - much appreciated. Yes, all Individual Training is set to Heavy and the Coaches Workloads are all Light with a mix of 4 - 5 stars. I have, however, dug a little deeper and found that of my 19 people coaching the U18's, 8 of them have Balanced or Fairly Determined/Professional/Ambitious as a Personality trait - just over 42% of the staff available to coach my youngsters. Does Personality have a factor in this? Will substituting a Fairly Determined coach with a Determined one up the workload...Only one way to find out... EDIT Well, that was interesting and shows that you never stop learning with this game... I removed my Fairly Determined U18 Manager and Balanced U18 Asst Manager and replaced them both with Spirited personalities and the Overall Workload is now back up to Medium. Another lesson learnt...go for more definite personality types in future, avoid Balanced and Fairly where possible. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 Thanks so much for replying so quickly - much appreciated.Yes, all Individual Training is set to Heavy and the Coaches Workloads are all Light with a mix of 4 - 5 stars. I have, however, dug a little deeper and found that of my 19 people coaching the U18's, 8 of them have Balanced or Fairly Determined/Professional/Ambitious as a Personality trait - just over 42% of the staff available to coach my youngsters. Does Personality have a factor in this? Will substituting a Fairly Determined coach with a Determined one up the workload...Only one way to find out... EDIT Well, that was interesting and shows that you never stop learning with this game... I removed my Fairly Determined U18 Manager and Balanced U18 Asst Manager and replaced them both with Spirited personalities and the Overall Workload is now back up to Medium. Another lesson learnt...go for more definite personality types in future, avoid Balanced and Fairly where possible. Personality, facilites yeah they play a part...do you rest days as well? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
leggie1973 Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 I had completely forgotten to check the tick boxes for Rest Days as I leave Match Day Training to my Assistants, but it may well have been the case that both were ticked thus bringing the workload down to Light...doh... Anyway, excellent training analysis Rashidi - I did used to leave well alone and set it to Balanced Low, 10% and change the Individual Focus every three months, now will be rotating Ball Control and Tactical as a base... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 I had completely forgotten to check the tick boxes for Rest Days as I leave Match Day Training to my Assistants, but it may well have been the case that both were ticked thus bringing the workload down to Light...doh...Anyway, excellent training analysis Rashidi - I did used to leave well alone and set it to Balanced Low, 10% and change the Individual Focus every three months, now will be rotating Ball Control and Tactical as a base... Bear in mind, its just one of two approaches that can be taken. If you are comfortable with training then yeah go for the Focused one, but the General Balanced one works well too. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 I had a couple of requests for my custom views so I've decided to post them up. There's a link to a folder that contains these views amongst others You can find the download them from here Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Double0Seven Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Hey Rashidi are there any times that you find yourself with maybe too much talented youth players? For example my squad is currently pretty balanced and I have 2 good young players who are considered starters. They are already pretty good but still have potential to grow. I also have five youth players on the bench who are covering for my first team players. Most of them are 4 star potential. In my reserves I have 4 players who are 18-19 and all of them are talented, have most of the PPM's I want and I am tutoring them to get the right personality. I think its gonna be very hard to give them playing time next season. Would you just sell them or loan them? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Rashidi thanks for the custom views it's very appreciated, I am being thick here but how do you install em? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 Hey Rashidi are there any times that you find yourself with maybe too much talented youth players? For example my squad is currently pretty balanced and I have 2 good young players who are considered starters. They are already pretty good but still have potential to grow. I also have five youth players on the bench who are covering for my first team players. Most of them are 4 star potential. In my reserves I have 4 players who are 18-19 and all of them are talented, have most of the PPM's I want and I am tutoring them to get the right personality. I think its gonna be very hard to give them playing time next season. Would you just sell them or loan them? So true When I was with bigger clubs, I'd have like 5-6 talented youth, and all of them would be like potential wunderkids. At times like this you will struggle to see them realise their true potential, this is where you need to do several things, granted you will always be the youngest side, but if you manage it you pretty much down the whole flock with one shot: 1. You may have to change formations to accommodate them all. As this thread has shown I started with a strikerless formation because at that time I had more midfielders with talent than you could imagine. It was the most viable formation for me to prepare for the future. This season I started seeing some fullbacks emerging in my team and I started seeing some of my strikers waving their hands. I could no longer play a strikerless formation so I switched to a 4132. This gave me a chance to develop flying fullbacks and give a chance to those flag waving strikers. I started getting a glut of goals, every game i played was 3-0 4-0. they even sent Man City and Inter Milan packing. Porto and Benfica fell to their onslaught. The seniors in my side are now screaming at me for playing time. I literally have a domestic league team and a champions league team. 2. You gotta stay in all comps I've ended up using the "save selection" screen and I use my custom views to assess match performances. And my excel spreadsheet is suddenly insufficient for comparisons, as 5 new players have emerged. This has forced me into a system where I have to stay in all comps, and its working. In my first season we won everything sans ECL, in our second season, we lost out on one domestic cup and got to the final of the ECL - I sold off 4 players - and in our third season, we are on a 17 match winning start to the season, and have stormed into the next round of the ECL. Rotation will become your favourite friend. 3.You gotta be a brute I have senior squad players who try to start fires in the dressing room. If they are superstars I pay attention, I only have 1 superstar, and if anyone else starts to give me lip, I ship em off to an affiliate to rot, if I can't they get transfer listed and I sell em off cheap. My priority are my youth, sometimes I make a killing selling off troublemakers and i get fans asserting that its an aberration, I just ignore them. 4. 25 games a season? Yeah its hard very hard, but doable. Have a custom view that shows you their starts and appearances. Its gonna be important, cos it will tell you how good their return is per game. That way you know their potential in real terms, or as real as it can get in a simulation. @Crazy_Ivan Documents/Sports Interactive/Views Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Double0Seven Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Thanks a lot man. I already try to rotate a lot. Things just got easier for me though. My best midfielder injured for 8-9 months. Time to play his backup, a 4 star potential midfielder who is only 17. Do you find any issues when playing players that have 'fairly inconsistent player' in their report? I know that this can change but one of my players has already been playing for one and a half and he still has this in his report. Should I just sell him or hope it will change after another season? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 I have a fairly inconsistent, and another who is rated as a player who isn't a big game player...we carry them. Performances go up, and then i put them in the shop window. Cos money is good :-) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Hi Rashidi, downloaded and tried to import but they aren't working, others that I have downloaded are. Any thoughts? Apologies for this. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 Hi Rashidi, downloaded and tried to import but they aren't working, others that I have downloaded are. Any thoughts? Apologies for this. I'll take them down go fix it and upload it again tomorrow..sorry Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 This is the correct link, you need to import these views into the game, from whichever folder you downloaded them to. Download link for views Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 This is the correct link, you need to import these views into the game, from whichever folder you downloaded them to.Download link for views Working fine now, much appreciated for sorting and posting these bud. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 I will update them, one of the views is missing average rating I just realised it when i was looking through deciding who to offer contracts to Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 The boredom in the league is killing me. I may continue this thread as another save with another team. The portuguese league only really has 3 teams, the rest are cannon fodder, no disrespect intended to any portuguese out there, but its a wonder how some of the clubs survive. TV revenues are low. Each time i read the transfer news someone is going off for 15m here and there. And we, well we do the best we can. Its depressing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
GSTG Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Nice reading ! I have one question for you rashidi1, i notice you play one cover defender and one defend, how do find that working and do you have any PI set to your centre backs ? Thanks Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 Working like a treat, i have always used multiple lines of cover for my last line of defense back from the days of the 'swoosh' defense. I have one slow defender who has good anticipation and good concentration and I usually make him the (D) and the other one the ©. I don't use PI's on my last men. If i were to use any PI i'd use short passing and take less risks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 Should have used another image uploading site..dont have time to move all the images, but you can see it all on the blog. Here's another update As promised I am now going to take a look at how we've done over the season with 5 premier league games left, we've almost sewn up the title. We were on a 24 match winning streak which ended following a goalless draw. We're still in the Champions League and have booked a quarterfinal date with Manchester United. We started out with a strikerless system, but at the start of the season, I began to take notice of the emergence of our fullbacks. Ryan Gauld was going to take a back seat, I had to start playing a system which would allow me to play midfielders and fullbacks. So we opted to use a 4132 and a 433 formation. The goal: give the fullbacks a chance to fly down the flanks as wingbacks. They would be the ones we'd depend on for goals goals goals. It was fairly challenging having to juggle the 4 of them. When i was playing strikerless, Gauld was easily the best player on the pitch, assists and goals were rampant down the left. This time he was quiet as the fullbacks took centre stage. Ricardo Esgaio and Jon Silva showing how important their contributions were. Esgaio was particularly impressive, considering he's making a late run, having bagged 12 assists from 15 appearances. What was shocking for me was the number of interceptions Silva had achieved in 27 games:127! I have been playing a system which was based on a solid defensive foundation, its even more challenging when you want to do this alongside a desire of produced attractive wing-styled play supported by penetrative attack from the centre when needed. It wasn't hard to do once I had a clear vision in my head, getting a solid defensive framework set is covered here in the blog under a section which will be developed further as I go. The page covers the creation of tactics and is the first of a 3 parter. The winning run kind of left a bad aftertaste in my mouth, its nice having a great run, but it does make you feel shortchanged. The engine has some flaws and I plan on taking full advantage of the back line's inability at dealing from runs from deep effectively before the patch. However, I am also considering calling time on my adventure in Sporting. Financially Portuguese football has a long way to go before it can compete with the best in the world. And to have a solid long term plan developing youth, i get the feeling I need to be in a league that has better financial rewards. There are only 3 clubs I need to pay attention to in Portugal, no disrespect intended to all the Portuguese fans out there, but as some players say in the game.." I need a new challenge" Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 My league updates are getting shorter and shorted, I will do a full update on my tactics and some memorable performances. We won the league again, took the Portuguese, went to the final of the Champions League and after an exciting 90 mins, the game was won at the death by Sporting Lisbon. It was a match that forced me to change tactics at half time, the time came out stronger and the chances flowed in the second half. Sporting, champions of Europe, are now going to offload players. I wait for times like this to offload my players, its not something you can do each time, but when you win the league with a team that's relatively low on the reputation totem pole, you need to take these chances when you can, or you will be perennially stuck with a 800k transfer budget. Getting the club to a 7 digit bank balance has to be a priority when you are not managing one of the giants in the game, who can generate revenue at will. Our training program has been a success. This approach was something I introduced way back in FM12, I was messing about with a triple focus on training back then, this time, I've refined it to a dual pronged approach. You just get your team to focus on two main training areas, these should be closely tied to the way you want to play and how you want your players to develop. We wanted to play like Pep Guardiola's side. I have a lot of admiration for the catalans and their approach, the focus on ball control and first touch paramount to developing talent, which explains why it was so hard for players outside of Barcelona to integrate into Pep's style back when he was manager at Barca. I won't be going through each player but will focus on several and then highlight how I come to selling decisions, and what I do. Firstly I rarely put players in the shop window, and when I do I usually take a tough negotiating stance. When you win a prestigious tournament, your club's rep goes up and so does the value of the sale you can negotiate. And this is as good a time to see like any. The plan had been in place from the moment we started our third season, we literally had one side playing in Europe and one domestically, in the end, 2 different players topped the scoring charts. Slimani won the Portuguese forward award for banging in the most number of goals in the domestic league, but Rubio scored the most number of goals in all competitions. Fredy Montero ended up banging 11 goals in the ECL to be the top scorer there. We had 3 fullbacks and all 3 generated double digit assists in the league. The performances were extraordinary, I finally got my flying fullbacks going in the league, but something tells me I should enjoy it while it lasts, cos nothing stays the same when a patch hits. Amongst my fullbacks, Ricard Esgaio was never someone I reckoned to be a starter in my side, he was always the utility player and the one who would be playing domestically when I wanted to rest Cedric and Patric. He ended up getting like 20 odd games in the league and played a pivotal role in our dismantling of Manchester City in the ECL quarterfinals, sentiments aside, it was time to sell. And this is how I analyzed it. These are his attributes over the course of three seasons. Between the time we started he went from 371 total attributes to 396 and in the last season he only gained 6 attributes in his core skill areas as a fullback. (170-176). I have developed a spreadsheet which tracks their performances and allows me to make quick assessments on how my training has done and how the players have improved. In a nutshell, whilst he may be exceptionally fast and has some skill, he isn't very good defensively. He did top my assists in the domestic league, a telling cross was always an open invitation to score, and he was one of the first players teams enquired about when the season ended. The initial bid was 7 million, we managed to sell him for nearly 10. Its easier to sell if you tell sides that you will accept more monthly payments, plus we sneaked in a 30% resale clause. I sold him because from the U-19s we managed to dig up this little gem, he's only a 2 star like Esgaio and I plan to keep him as a rotation player and his development this season has been stellar A jump from 167-185 in his core areas as a fullback piqued my interest in the player, plus we'v already trained him to play with his right foot on the left side of the pitch, increasing his versatility. This has been done so that we can get ready to offload He has been egging me to play him in every match, but his attributes are showing stagnation as far as I am concerned with marginal gains. He has a 15m price tag, and I am eager to dump his ass. Amongst my midfielders I have been tracking Ryan Gauld for some time, he's a big crowd favourite, and he looks like slowing down as well. While he has shown big gains overall, his gains in his core areas aren't as impressive, and this is largely down to the fact, that he hasn't been played in his position all season long. Once we switched to a 4132, he found his favourite Raumdeuter role cast aside for an attacking MC role. Overall the development of the squad has been fantastic, they have developed the core team attributes of concentration, first touch. Some players have shown huge improvements in areas such as strength and passing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 Sold 6 players now, ripped apart the first team made like 60million for the club, and preparing to leave, guess the timings good. New patch coming out soon i reckon, guess its time for a new save, or lets see how rich sporting get. I dunno Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jambo98 Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Nice updates rashidi, your training approach really does work. One thing i have found in my Athletic DNA save, is that you do need to show patience. I have found a couple of players who looked like they were developing slowly at 17/18, despite being given first team games, tutoring, good personalities and focused training. When these same players hit 19, suddenly they really ramped up. One in particular went from 2 years of looking a boderline prospect, to suddenly being amongst my best players. Of course its not the same across the piece. I also have a 17yr old CB who is developing into a beast right away. So many factors can impact player development. And i really am not looking forward to a patch coming along Part of the reason that players arriving from deep are so difficult to handle is because actually, in real life, that is always hard to deal with. Think Lampard in his prime - How often would teams struggle to handle a late surge from a player from deep. Same with attacking fullbacks. Jordi Alba, Marcelo, David Alaba etc are incredibly hard to handle, even at "lower level" guys like Clyne, Alberto Moreno, Aaron Cresswell have shown that if you can start deep as a fullback/wingback and have the stamina to get up the field, teams will find that hard to defend against. A patch which negates that will just be annoying. hey ho, at least they might fix the things which are really wrong, like CB behaviour and keepers. I can see why you could get a bit bored in Portugal though. The TV money is pretty low as i recall, and the massive gulf between the big 3 and the rest is sort of unusual. I suppose one of the more traditional big leagues would be more of a long term challenge. Spain is certainly proving that for me, can see it taking 5 years to crack Real/Barca with focussing on youth! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 16, 2015 Author Share Posted February 16, 2015 Nice updates rashidi, your training approach really does work. One thing i have found in my Athletic DNA save, is that you do need to show patience. I have found a couple of players who looked like they were developing slowly at 17/18, despite being given first team games, tutoring, good personalities and focused training. When these same players hit 19, suddenly they really ramped up. One in particular went from 2 years of looking a boderline prospect, to suddenly being amongst my best players. Of course its not the same across the piece. I also have a 17yr old CB who is developing into a beast right away. So many factors can impact player development. And i really am not looking forward to a patch coming along Part of the reason that players arriving from deep are so difficult to handle is because actually, in real life, that is always hard to deal with. Think Lampard in his prime - How often would teams struggle to handle a late surge from a player from deep. Same with attacking fullbacks. Jordi Alba, Marcelo, David Alaba etc are incredibly hard to handle, even at "lower level" guys like Clyne, Alberto Moreno, Aaron Cresswell have shown that if you can start deep as a fullback/wingback and have the stamina to get up the field, teams will find that hard to defend against. A patch which negates that will just be annoying. hey ho, at least they might fix the things which are really wrong, like CB behaviour and keepers. I can see why you could get a bit bored in Portugal though. The TV money is pretty low as i recall, and the massive gulf between the big 3 and the rest is sort of unusual. I suppose one of the more traditional big leagues would be more of a long term challenge. Spain is certainly proving that for me, can see it taking 5 years to crack Real/Barca with focussing on youth! Yeah true, patience is needed, Rami Rabbia is a good example in my game. Whilst everyone's attention can be focused on their 4-5 star players, it would have been so easy for me to ignore him. His ratings exploded in the third season, now in my fourth he is still growing. In his first two though he hardly showed much progress. Every player is different, the approach you take has to be sound and if you pay attention to the basics which I've outlined, its actually pretty easy. Sporting isn't much of a challenge, every game is 4-0 or 5-1, I get the occasional grind, but these kind of performances do give me a chance to change things around. This season I have gone to a 4132 to give Gauld a platform to excel on. And, he's grabbed it, banging in 13 goals from 12 games. Yeah, I dunno..i am looking across the pond and seeing big money in TV, a more competitive league and I could be plying my trade in the premiership or bundesliga. I will keep this save going for a while at least..but it looks like I will be instant resulting it more often. I was doing that towards the close of last season as well. Chuck in a tactic, hit the button, collect the 3-0 scoreline, continue. ;-( Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaffekatten Posted February 18, 2015 Share Posted February 18, 2015 Which stats do you prefer for wingbacks and halfback? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rashidi Posted February 18, 2015 Author Share Posted February 18, 2015 Which stats do you prefer for wingbacks and halfback? For all my players I demand first touch and some composure at least 10, and you reevaluate based on where you are playing, in non league you could bring the requirements down a fair bit. Halfbacks are to me, just repurposed centre backs who can pass. So he needs all the right attributes as a central defender, plus passing, composure, concentration, jumping reach, marking would be good too, and add to those the centre back attributes.Wingbacks ...this really depends on your shape and how you like to play. A wingback is like a defensive winger, starts deep and ends high. They are really useful in systems that have 3 across the middle or 2 and when there is no AML/AMR. If that is the case, then I would go with crossing, passing, first touch, dribbling, pace and above all acceleration, If he has concentration, anticipation, tackling then you will have a top interceptor. Mine does an average of 150 a season. If you are playing with side midfielders (ML/MR) then pace isn't as important as acceleration, cos he will be doing overlapping play. When I look at wingback tbh, the things in priority i look at are first touch, acceleration, pace, tackling, marking, crossing..then the rest. Hope that helps. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Red Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Rashidi - do you use any tools to extract the data for your spreadsheets, or is it all manually cross-typed? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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