How much of training worthwhile?

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Training players has been one of the most little explored subjects in Football Manager. Many will be familiar with the now famous Tugs Training schedules which have dominated the training market. But just like tactics do you really need to download tactics, or could knowing how to train create a better Football Manager experience?

1. Leave training well alone and concentrate on your team

I was actually surprised to discover the response to my poll ‘How do you train your players?‘ 25% didn’t bother to move away much from the general schedules laid down by out of the box Football Manager. 75% of you therefore do use the training schedules, does this really reflect the FM Pundit gamer though? I do expect that you guys reading my blog are a little more advanced users.

But can you get by on the general training schedule? Well yes, pretty easily. For players that are good in the transfer market, have plenty of money each season to improve a squad why bother training. You will probably pick up players that are at the peak of their game, play them for a few years and replace them with another player at their peak.

General training will maintain attributes of your players, but won’t improve them much. Meaning that you would be relying much more of attributes such as natural fitness, work rate and determination. As well as the hidden professionalism attribute to dictate how much a player will improve under this schedule.

2. Training per players position

You want defenders to be able to defend, your strikers will need to shoot. So it would be common sense that different roles within the team will demand different training schedules.  Each of the elements of the training will focus on certain attributes as follows:

Strength: Natural Fitness, Stamina, Strength, Work Rate,
Aerobic: Acceleration, Agility, Balance, Jumping, Pace, Reflexes
Goalkeeping: Aerial Ability, Handling, Kicking, Throwing, One on Ones
Tactics: Anticipation, Decisions, Positioning, Teamwork, Command of Area
Ball Control: Dribbling, First Touch, Technique, Flair, Heading
Defending: Tackling, Marking, Concentration
Attacking: Passing, Vision, creativity
Shooting: Finishing, Long Shots, Composure
Set Pieces: Crossing, Corners, Free Kicks, Penalties, Long Throws

From looking at these different elements of training, we will know that we will want a full back to train harder in defending, as we will want them to stay back. Pick up wingers and to be working hard on tactics in order to keep players intelligent in their position, something that can be important in all defenders. But if you were going to train a wingback for your tactics instead, you would want to see attacking, maybe set pieces and ball control with much more importance. Therefore these players are going to take different roles which will be general to how you want to fit them in your tactics.

Training your players in key roles may give your tactics that added bit of an advantage of your opposition, without having to search out and sign new players. You may want to play a particular way, but you will need the players in your side to reflect this. Want to play with a playmaker? You will want a player to be concentrating much more on attacking and shooting. Play quick football? Strength and aerobic training will be important for all that is involved in the squad.

3. Training each player individually

Each player has their own needs, each player will already be skilled in one area and not so much in another. Why would you be looking to improve a player who has 15-20 for finishing, long shots and composure even though these are needed for his position? Instead you would want to maintain all these aspects and transfer the workload to something such as ball control, aerobic or tactics.

But another player could be completely different. Therefore I believe that having a bespoke schedule for each player, for each squad even is a must. But taking the time out at the start of the game to build up at the start of the season could have long term benefits for your players. You could extend the career of your favourite players, or quickly develop that young striker you want to get into the side. But each of these will be different.

This sort of micromanagement will be tools in the bigger macromanagemnt that can really be an advantage for teams that don’t have the money to be spending on new players all of the time

But training needs improvement

Basically creating a training schedule is a pain in the ass…istants behind. It takes so much time to build up and maintain the training that it really doesn’t have the return on investment of time. Does anyone really bother too much with training through the season, or is it just set and left? Do you really see much of a difference in your tactics and performance to justify concentration on training of players?

The model of buying in players at their peak and selling them is just too easy in the game. You wouldn’t expect any side not to concentrate on training at the same time as the transfer policy and have success.

But just a few things that could probably improve training:

• Create an easier way to change individual training schedules, maybe by allowing the minor changes to sliders in the individual players profiles
• Give coaches more of a say on training, even allowing them to learn different schedules as they progress through the game or coming to a side bringing with him different techniques that could affect fitness, shooting ability and much more.
• Turn training into a less slider based affair and instead an activity based. Creating a timetable of training which would manipulate the sliders in the backgorund.

How would you improve training for Football Manager 2011?

Please let me know what you think of training in the comments section below, I would be interested to hear what you think really makes a difference.

Tagged as: Game Improvements, Liverpool FC, Training