Football Manager 2019

Football Manager 2019

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Training - A Brief Guide by Seb Wassell from SI
By how-hiGh
It is possible to take as big or as small a role in training as you wish. The Assistant Manager is fully qualified to run training in your absence, he will base his decisions on your tactics, the time of season and his own attributes and preferences.

Taking control yourself allows you to set training from our extensive list of templates on the Training > Calendar page or delve into each and switch one session for another, creating bespoke schedules for the situation at hand. The Assistant always sets training up ahead of time for you, so if you wish to have him mostly run it but dip in and tweak here and there you absolutely can. The easiest way of doing this is directly from the weekly training preview news item that you will receive each Sunday evening. You can even create your own schedules from scratch on the Training > Schedules page and apply them to the Calendar months in advance.
The more specific you wish to be with training the more specialised of a squad you can craft. Training has both short term - the upcoming match - and longer term - player development and attribute growth - influences.

The best piece of advice is to take your time, learn the system and try to get inside the head of a real manager!
   
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Basics
Training is run weekly via Schedules.
Each schedule is made up of Sessions.
There are 3 sessions per day, Session 1, Session 2 and Extra.
Each session is available for training in a wide variety of exercises, from general team Outfield work to specific Chance Conversion work and even Team Bonding.
Units
The team is split up into training Units.
These are Goalkeeping, Defensive and Attacking.
By default players are placed into the most suitable unit for them; strikers into Attacking, centre backs into Defensive, etc.
It is possible to move a player from one unit to another. It is also possible to promote a youngster from the youth or reserve team into a senior unit, where he will train on the senior schedule.
The unit a player is in defines what part he takes in each training session.
Sessions
Sessions are training exercises run on general or specific ares of the game.
Sessions are either performed as a whole team or in units.
Each session has Impacts. These are how the sessions will affect the players.
Impacts
Each session has various impacts, including the attributes it influences, any tactical familiarity gained, the risk of injury during said session and so on.
Each session can have up to three focuses, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary.
Each focus will receive a different amount of attention, and as such the impacts will both differ in type and weighting.
When training in units, each unit receives a different focus. As such, some units may receive 60% of the coaches' attention whilst another may only receive 20%.
Whilst team sessions are performed as a whole group, there can still be different focuses.

  • For example, 'General > Attacking' sees all Outfield players (that is the Attacking and Defensive units) train together, switching places during the session to allow both attack and defence. As such, all players receive 60% focus on attacking attributes, such as Crossing, Dribbling, etc., and 20% focus on defensive attributes, such as Marking, Tackling, etc. The Goalkeeping unit receives 20% of the focus on their specific GK impacts.


Training that is split into positional units has one unit work against the other to complete the exercise, with a certain unit being the main focus of the session.

  • For example, 'Attacking > Attacking Wings' sees the Attacking unit as the main focus of the session, receiving 60% of the attention, meaning a 60% focus on the attributes and impacts listed, such as Anticipation, Finishing, etc. and the associated impacts, such as a slightly increased injury risk. The Defensive and Goalkeeping units work to defend against the Attacking unit and whilst they are not the main focus of the session, they still receive 20% of the attention each, meaning a 20% focus on their relative attributes and other impacts.

Intensity
Each session has various impacts, as discussed above. Some of these impacts are things like Injury Risk and Condition.
Intensity is Injury Risk + Condition.
Each day in the schedule has an Intensity associated with it, the combination of Injury Risk + Condition for all three sessions that day.
This is measured against the %age of an average match.
Only match days would be expected to hit 100%. Only the most intense training would exceed this, with most training days falling comfortably below 100%.
Intensity can be measured for each individual unit or the team as a whole.
Mentoring
Mentoring is how more influential players in the squad pass on their experience to younger players.
Mentoring allows the manager to group players together for the purpose of sharing Player Traits (PPMs) and passing on desirable (or undesirable) personality traits.
Players must be in the same squad to mentor one another and each group must consist of at least 3 players.
A good starting point is one experienced professional that is a social leader grouped with several younger up-and-coming players that play in a similar position.
It is also possible to set up a short period of one-on-one mentoring via the 'Welcome to club' interaction on signing a new player. This will invite a current player to mentor the new signing off the pitch for a short period of time and ease his transition into his new group of teammates. This affects personality and settling at the club only, no Player Traits (PPMs) are passed.
Best Practice
Pre-Season

It is advisable to run a proper pre-season, whether this be from our list of pre-season templates or your creating your own. If left to the Assistant, he will run pre-season according to his preferences.

During pre-season players will most likely be at their minimum level of fatigue, the exception being those returning from summer international duty. When fatigue is low a player that works hard physically (sessions that increase fatigue) will improve his long term fitness, meaning he can stave off jadedness longer into the season. However, when a player is already becoming fatigued, sessions that are overly physical (increase fatigue) will tire the player further, meaning he will eventually become jaded.
As such, if you run a proper pre-season the players will remain fitter and last longer into the season proper. Under-working the players in pre-season or over-working the players during the season itself will lead to fatigue.
Of course, too much physical work at any time raises the risk of injury, but this can be an acceptable trade-off if you wish to work the players hard.
Pre-season is also a great time to work on those physical attributes that simply cannot be worked on in any great amount during the season itself due to the fixture schedule.

Matches

It is important to have a Match Preview session before each match, this contains the Pre-match Briefing.
It is also important to run a recovery session after a match and/or allow the players some rest. This is important for regaining condition and staving off injury and fatigue, especially during busy periods.


Sessions

Other than during pre-season or periods of deliberately working the players hard, say a week with no match, it is not advisable to run more than 2 sessions per day, leaving the Extra sessions as rest.
9 Comments
SRK 14 Jan, 2020 @ 11:54am 
A handful of information - thanks a lot, I see great progress for my players :steamhappy:
Blackfyre 15 Jan, 2019 @ 9:59pm 
It should have said "Some are more inclined to..."

Grammar geek. Sad.
Blackfyre 15 Jan, 2019 @ 9:57pm 
@ Jonny ...The recovery to rest swap is most likely due to having no physio for that particular squad.

It would be great if you could also explain a little bit about retraining positions, and individual training, which I'm sure i still a bit of a mystery to some players. I fiddle and try and find things that work for certain players. Others are more inclined to only "enjoy" certain positions or roles, where as other players thrive on being retrained or repositioned. Do you have a logical explaination for this? Is it to do with his hidden stats like versatility or adaptability?
Nubi 20 Dec, 2018 @ 8:14am 
why my player always whining about strength training, although i do not add many strength training.. wtf
Unsaid 14 Dec, 2018 @ 2:06pm 
so essentially mentoring isnt that important
grogu 4 Dec, 2018 @ 6:05am 
Hi, I am having a problem. In mentoring session, it seems "ask assistant to assign" button doesnot work for my game. Could you please help me how can can I fix this problem ?
how-hiGh  [author] 27 Oct, 2018 @ 6:01am 
I suggest clarifying such things on SI forums
Skibidi Johnny 26 Oct, 2018 @ 2:16pm 
Are there hidden requirements for some types of training session?
Skibidi Johnny 25 Oct, 2018 @ 8:27am 
Why can't I use some training sessions? For example when I set a unit of "Recovery" pre-season it gets replaced with "Rest."