Adapting Roles of older players

[jeru]

Has anyone had any success in changing the roles of older players? I relise that younger players can be retrained in different positions and learn PPM fairly easyly through training schedules or by learning from another established player. But what about older players (I'm thinking like 30+) can the roles be adapted in FM09? The reason behind this post is I have been thinking bout how players change and adapt their games in real life to still be affective in later years and is this posible in FM09.

The most obvious example of a change of role in real life is the central midfielder who may start off as a youngster being attacking and basing his game on getting into the box and finishing chances, but later on through experience of playing matches 'picks and chooses his runs' before maybe finaly becoming a holding midfielder whoose role is now to create chances rather than get into the box to take the - Paul Scholes is a good example of this type of player.

Another type is the winger who converts to become a central midfielder or plays behind a Forward - Ryan Giggs or John Barnes (If like me you old enough to remember him!! )

I have been experimenting with this in FM09 with to be honest little success, by trying to remove PPMs from players that I want to change the roles of - things like stop getting forward so often, and runs with ball down left/right - generally with players who for example may be accomplished or natural as a AMC or MC but just competent as a DMC. I want them to now play as a DMC holding the ball rather than getting into the box and still be an influence (and get good match ratings).

If you stop to think about it the amount of players IRL that can successfully adapt their game to remain in a top level team well into their 30's is very small most just drop down the leagues to compensate for being unable to play their same game at the top levels.

I'd be interested to see if anyone else Has tryed similar and their results?