Football Manager for Dummies - Guide

Training - Developing your players

Developing your players

Pre-season: Focus on improving players' ability to withstand fatigue with heavy Physical sessions

Mid-season: While Assistant Manager can do a decent job in pre-season, I recommend you take charge of your training as soon as the season begins. You don't want him scheduling demanding Physical sessions during busy periods, not focusing on attributes you wish to improve or not scheduling any Match Preparation sessions before difficult matches. Staff members have preferences of their own and those may not always align with yours.

Creating your own schedules isn't nearly as daunting as it may look and can be very rewarding; you don't need a different schedule every week, a single balanced one that ticks all the boxes will do just well!

Creating Training Schedules

There may be plenty of different options for you to select, but all different sessions do is put different amounts of focus on different attributes. As long as you maintain a balanced approach and stick to General sessions, you can do no wrong. For now, our goal should be to create two variations of one balanced schedule—one for 1-match weeks and another for 2-match weeks.

Personally, I like to make sure every 1-match week includes at least:

• One session that works on Physical attributes (Physical, Overall)
  
• One session that works on all Outfield attributes (Outfield)
  
• At least one session that increases Happiness of all players (Match Practice, Attacking, Defending)
  
• One Attacking Movement and one Defensive Movement Match Preparation session, to increase Tactical Familiarity, Team Cohesion and get Upcoming Match effects
  
• Match Preview and Match Review before and after matches, to increase Tactical Familiarity and Team Cohesion
  

Since that covers all the basics, we can fill the rest with whichever sessions we want, as long as we keep an eye on our Intensity bar.

This schedule can now get copy-pasted throughout the whole season, as we've covered all the basics — holistic focus on attributes, enough sessions that increase Happiness and plenty of sessions working on Tactical Familiarity, Team Cohesion and Upcoming Match effects.

Individual Training

• Playing Position: work on all attributes required for Position (e.g. central defence)
  
• Specific Role: work on all attributes required for Role (e.g. Ball-Playing Defender)
  
• Additional Focus: put additional focus on specific area (e.g. Shooting)
  

Example Individual Training strategies:

• Focus on biggest weakness surgically: Playing Position + Additional Focus; put all increased focus on two or three specific attributes
  
• Focus on more weaknesses at once, but at slower rate: Specific Role; put increased focus on more attributes at once
  
• Focus on all required attributes at once, but at slowest rate: Playing Position; focus on developing all attributes required for position