A little simplistic help on attribute redistribution for my young centreback

[pauliowigs]

I like to think of myself as an apt Football Manager, but unfortunately I am far from a training Guru! I'd be grateful for any help/advice with creating a training schedule for my player in question.

I enjoy searching for young talented players but I regulaly fail to develop them to there full potential.

Occasionally I get one to the stage whereby I start to believe they could develop into something handy for the first team.

This is the chap I am currently concerned about

I am using him more this year than ever before. At the age of 19 I deem it crucial to his development that he gets some game time, and I think over time he will improve. You can see that he has played in all my European games thus far as well as a number of my premiership matches (and i'm using him more and more).

The general consensus from my rather talented array of coaches is that he is currently a good championship player, and that he has the potential to be a leading star/good prem player. Thats quite a few jumps up baring in mind he is 19 allready.

I understand from these forums that having him play in my team, and play well is a crucial factor in bringing his CA closer to his PA. However I find attribute redistribution via training a little tricky and I have some concerns about this player.

My main concern with him is his jumping! It is quite below par and i really don't like centrebacks with low jumping, for the Premiership I really need his jumping to grow to 15. I realise if i am able to unlock his potential he is likely to gain a point or so in many of his attributes, but i need to look at creating a training schedule to increase the chances of growth being distributed to this area.

This is not to say that I want to sacrifice other areas that he needs, or stop growth in other areas. In an ideal world the stats I would most like him to achieve would be Jumping + 2/3 Strength + 2 Marking + 2 Tackling + 1/2. I realise that beggars can't be choosers and that i can't choose precisely what stats will increase, but if he is to get better i guess its likely he'll get a natural increase of 1 attribute point in a lot of these attributes if left in general training.

So i'm wanting to make him his own training schedule, and these are not something i've done at all in FM10 and not something i've been MEGA succesfull with in older editions.

Anoyingly although his jumping is poor (and i want to try and work with this) he has other great physical attributes like Accel and Pace, and I believe these are grouped into the same category as jumping (Aerobic).

I really don't want to ruin his development my making a training schedule that is worse for him than the general default one!

Here is the training Schedule I have created and am thinking of putting him on:

I'm going to hold back on putting him on this untill I have some feedback on here from someone wiser than myself!

Let me explain my thinking behind what I've done. The workload is the same as the general default schedule, so there should be no greater risk of injury. Ball Control is currently set at the setting where all the default sliders used to be set so you can use this as a reference point to see what i have raised and lowered. I kept ball control relatively high becasue i'm happy for it to steadily improve at his usual rate of progression, i don't really want it to drop.

Set pieces are gone, he's far from a set piece specialist and I don't imagine he'll get many opportunities to cross the ball so if these stats are sapped in order for gains elsewhere then thats fine I guess...?

Strength and Aerobic have been raised the most. This is with the aim of influencing his improvement to be made in these areas first and foremost, to try and achieve the rise in jumping and strength that I am after. Does this seem correct?

Tactics and Defending have been raised by one notch, I'm fairly happy with his tactical stats but obviously as a defender improvements in these areas would be more handy than other areas. Defending he is slightly weak at but I don't suppose its anything that can't come with natural progression, i mentioned previously that i wouldnt mind a small raise in tackling and marking and these both come under defending, i guess my one notch raise might give this a small helping hand?

Attacking I lowered from the default but still kept a respectable amount present. The thinking behind this was that i do not want it to drop especially (its responsible for passing and things) and if he gets a LOT better maybe it will improve slightly whereas if he only gets slightly better the attributes in this category should stay the same?

Shooting I lowered severly but still kept a presence in the schedule. Some people have argued that composure is still handy in defenders (which alex craig is naturally blessed with) - i don't know - but i gather this is the category responcible for that. Also, who knows he may get a chance fall to him from a corner *shrugs*. I guess on this setting i'm expecting him to only drop slightly at these attributes if he gets slightly better or if he gets a LOT better then maybe keep a constant.

I know there are a lot of very very in depth threads on training schedule and one day i'll do the research to improve my knowledge, but i was finding it difficult to locate some quick advice on an issue like this, so apologies if that seems lazy.

Also I have no interest in downloading pre-designed training schedules, i enjoy trying to learn to make my own.

So now for the help!

Am I likely to get my expected outcomes from this schedule? is it any better than the default schedule? Should i completly remove shooting in favour of another boost for aerobic/strength? Is there hope for my centre back to become the impressive player that my staff are predicting?

[SFraser]

I will try and help you out here. You have written a very detailed post on your problem and these are by far the easiest to deal with.

First things first, it is unlikely you will get his Jumping up to Premier League standards for a Ball Winning Centreback but there are other types of Centrebacks and assuming a high PA then your player strikes me as being very much in the Cannavaro mould. If however he does not have such a high PA then I would advise you to retrain him as a Fullback or a Defensive Midfielder.

Assuming that he has a rather large PA of 160 to 200 then it would be wise to look at the shape of his attributes rather than attempting to design a schedule to turn him into a preconceived notion of a Centreback. His jumping is very low for his age, is unlikely to increase by any more than 3 points and it certainly wont increase quickly no matter what you do. Ontop of that you will be using a lot of CA to increase the attribute to a level that is still deficient while at the same time boosting acceleration to a level that is a bit superfluous. On the other hand your player is extremely quick and I must say remarkeably intelligent for his age. These are the strengths you should look to mould your player around, in my opinion.

Speaking of Strength, if you cannot have effective aerial power then the other important physical attribute for a Centreback is Strength. An increase of 3 in Strength is not unreasonable to imagine, and an increase of 3 in Strength will put your defender above Ferdinand and into the Wayne Rooney or John O'Shea domain of power. Strength allows you to simply ease opponents off the ball and while Patrice Evra can keep up with many wingers and get to loose balls first, I find John O'Shea to be a much more effective tackler because Wingers cannot get around him nor prevent him getting his body between them and the ball.

Combine this defensive power of Strength to ease players off the ball with your Centrebacks impressive Acceleration and you are really looking at a player that is a sweeper. Someone that will eliminate threats by getting to danger areas quickly and using his body Strength to win challenges. This all ties in with his impressive mental attributes which can rise dramatically especially as he ages. Anticipation, Composure, Concentration, Decisions, Positioning are all relatively high for his age. You might expect a defender to be high in some or a few but you will rarely find any defender high in all these key attributes at age 19. Your player is essentially a mental defender rather than a physical defender, with Acceleration and a good solid foundation for high Strength. Your player is the archetypal sweeper, the intelligent Central Defender.

Training

I put a header here to keep this long-ish post neat and tidy and break up the wall of the text.

Actually devising a Training schedule for this player is a bit time consuming rather than complicated, although it requires attention to detail and some problem solving. The first issue is to plan the rough shape of the player you wish to develop. Once you know what you want to do you can then plan how exactly to do it. I understand that you wish to achieve 15+ Jumping but for reasons that will soon become apparent this is unlikely to be achievable. I will describe what I would do with the player, and hope that you don't mind my own opinion and can follow my thought process.

My own personal desire based on my opinion of what is likely to be achievable would be to see a rise of 2 points across Aerobic Attributes, 3 points across Strength, 4 points across Tactics and 4 points across Defending. Ball Control and Shooting I would like to see rise but are far less relevant. If this is achieved we would have a fast, strong, capable defender that is an absolute genius at the mental aspects of the game. So intelligent a defender that it would be worthwhile keeping him as a Centreback rather than a Fullback, in the Cannavaro mould.

To achieve this in a Training Schedule we have to work out what exactly it is we need to do, rather than simply guess and assume. We need a working practical knowledge of how attributes function which can be found in this thread and we need a basic working knowledge of what Training does which can be found in this thread.

Using this information we know that Physical Attributes are going to be increasingly harder to improve with age so must be dealt with early. We know that Mental Attributes will be increasingly easier to improve with age so can be sacrificed early for Physical Attributes. We also know that Technical Attributes are likely to plot a steady course of improvement throughout a players career. Because Physical Attributes are the overwhelming priority for this 19 year old because of his Age we will start with plotting his Physical Attributes Training relative to each other and to his other attributes.

We have decided to aim for 2 attribute increases in Aerobic attributes and 3 attribute increases in Strength attributes. His Aerobic and Strength both require similar amounts of CA to increase each attribute, give or take a few minor variations. You would imagine therefore that his Strength bar should be about 1/3rd higher than his Aerobic, however this is not true.

His Aerobic Category contains 5 attributes that can be trained. His Strength Category contains 3 attributes that can be trained. If each attribute requires the same amount of CA to improve then his Aerobic needs 5xCA and his Strength needs 3xCA to go up by the same amount. To increase each Aerobic by 2 points we need 10xCA and to increase each Strength by 3 we need 9xCA. In actual fact his Strength should be slightly lower than his Aerobic to obtain a greater rate of increase per Attribute. There is still slightly less CA going into Strength, but it has almost half the attributes while we want each attribute to go up 33% more.

The first Schedule shows the 3 Strength and 5 Aerobic attributes each receiving the same small quantity of CA from Training. However much CA 1 notch gives a category, each attribute is receiving 1 notch worth of CA in each category. Each attribute also requires a very similar quantity of CA so to the best of our ability we are training each attribute as equally as possible.

The second Schedule shows our 2x CA for each Aerobic and 3x CA for each Strength compared to zero for everything else. Although Aerobic is higher than Strength each Aerobic attribute only receives 2 notches worth of CA while each Strength receives 3 notches worth of CA, meaning our Strength attributes are being trained 33% more than Aerobic, and 3 notches to 0 notches more than all our other categories.

If we now look at the Tactics Category, we decided to aim for 4 attribute point increases in this category. There are also 5 attributes in this Category. You would automatically consider that putting Tactics at notch 20 compared to Strength and Aerobic would achieve this balance of 4 points per attribute versus 3 points per attribute versus 2 points per attributes. You would correct in thinking this if not for the fact that Tactics attributes require less CA to increase compared to Physical Attributes. Combine this to the fact that we are attempting to boost Physical Attributes earlier and make allowances for Mental Development as the player ages.

In other words for the purposes of our current Schedule for this player, we do not wish the 4 attribute increases in Tactics right away, as this will not only take a while but will slow down the improvement of our Physical Attributes as they will not get so much of the "Free CA" a player achieves when playing regularly and improving. We would rather see plenty of this "Free CA" go into his physical attributes with a small quantity going into Tactics, and then as the players ages and loses physical ability that CA will migrate to his Tactics. Physical Development is a short term necessity, mental development is a long term fact.

The first Schedule shows the 5 Tactics attributes receiving 4x CA, while 5 Aerobic receives 2x CA and 3 Strength receives 3x CA. This would immediately produce the precise desired balance of attribute increases right away, but the problem here is that as the player Ages so his Physical Attributes naturally receive less CA while his Tactics receives more CA. After a year or two this balance would be destroyed, his Tactics would accelerate away and his Physical attributes would be suffering from the dual problem of reduced improvement combined to reduced quantities of "Free CA" from his early development. The first Schedule might be balanced to do what is required right now, but over the long term it would fail and leave you in a position where you cannot reduce overly high attributes to improve the overly low attributes.

The second Schedule does the opposite. It reduces the Tactical improvement to one quarter what is desired knowing full well that as the player Ages his Physical attributes will begin to decline while his Mental attributes accelerate and improve at the expense of his physical attributes. This schedule will achieve the desired levels of Physical attributes or higher, and once these are achieved the Schedule can be reworked to achieve the desired level of Mental attributes. The previous schedule although accurate initially was not capable of producing the player we wanted over the longterm.

Next up we have the players Defending Attributes. There are 3 attributes in that Category, Tackling, Marking and Concentration. We wish them to go up by four points each. The issue here is that while Defending attributes require a lot of CA for a player, they tend not to accelerate or decline like Mental and Physical attributes. While the players Physical attributes will slowly refuse to increase while his Mental attributes will slowly start to accelerate their increases, his Defending attributes will plot a steady course throughout his career. Rather than stick his Defending Category at notch 12, 3 attributes x 4CA, we should instead reduce it to either 3 or 6, depending on whether you want them to keep an early pace with Tactics and allow more "Free CA" to go into the players Physical Attributes or start improving early.

Because they will neither accelerate nor decline rapidly and you can tweak the schedule as the players ages, combined to the fact that Physical Attribute increases are so vital to achieve ASAP and cannot be improved easilly with Age, I would err on the side of caution and go for notch position 3.

Here we see Strength and Aerobic both receiving the desired amount of Training relative to each other, but Tactics and Defending receiving 1/4 the desired 4x increase. As you can no doubt work out, that means that in the early stages of this schedule we should see rises of 2x Aerobic and 3x Strength for every 1x rise in Tactics and Defending attributes. This should easilly allow us to produce the physical attributes we require for our player and do it before his Physical Attributes start becoming hostile to CA gains.

This is a great Basic Template schedule for your particular player in terms of his key defensive attributes. However there are several deficiencies. First of all it will not improve his Ball Control, Attacking or Shooting attributes through training. These will only go up when a huge influx of CA is achieved and when little CA is being gained through match practice these attributes will decline rapidly to provide CA for the attributes being Trained. This is bad, not least of all because your player will be poor on the ball despite being intelligent and quick and regularly winning it, but he will not train Composure which means he will make rash decisions under pressure. This is very bad for a defender.

The second deficiency is that while Training does very little for CA gain, it does do something. A young player can gain as much as 4 to 5 CA a season through Training alone, the exact amount decided by the Overall Workload. The higher the Workload, the more CA a player receives through Training. To maximise this players development we need a more intensive Training Regime.

The problem here is that the players Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting attributes require a lot less CA to improve than all the rest. Every notch worth of CA in these categories increase that attribute more than the rest. If we simply train each attribute in these categories by 1 notch each and keep the rest the same we will completely destroy the balance of the schedule.

The first Schedule adds Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting at one notch per attribute. This trains Strength at 3xCA, Aerobic at 2xCA, Ball Control at 1xCA, Tactics at 1xCA, Defending at 1xCA, Attacking at 1xCA and Shooting at 1xCA. It keeps the ratio between Strength, Aerobic, Tactics and Defending but it completely destroys the balance of the schedule by putting Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting at the same level as Tactics and Defending, despite those 3 Categories requiring far less CA to improve. Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting will now improve dramatically while Tactics, Defending, Aerobic and Strength battle along slowly. Those 3 categories will pull up the same quantity of CA as Tactics and Defending, half what Aerobic is getting and 1/3rd what Strength is getting. All this despite the fact that they require much less CA improve. Our schedule is now butchered.

The second Schedule shows our key Categories of Strength, Aerobic, Tactics and Defending now doubled. Strength gets 6xCA, Aerobic gets 4xCA, Tactics gets 2xCA and Defending gets 2xCA. Our initial balance between Strength and Aerobic is conserved, our secondary balance of 1/4 desired increase for Tactics and Defending compared to full desired increase of Aerobic and Strength is conserved, but our tertiary balance of minor Ball Control, Attacking, Shooting still does not exist. Defending and Tactics are now only keeping pace with Ball Control, Attacking, Shooting.

The final schedule is the pièce de résistance. By increasing Tactics and Defending by another 1xCA we have pushed those categories above Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting in terms of CA gain. We have increased the 1/4 desired gain to 1/3 desired gain and we have conserved the gain balance of Strength and Aerobic.

Compared to our inital ideal Basic Template we have now added in the Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting Categories while ignored Set Pieces. This means that whenever CA is not gained, CA will be removed from Set Pieces and added to the rest rather than being removed from Ball Control, Attacking, Shooting and Set Pieces. At the same time we have increased the relative gain of Tactics and Defending. It is no longer at 1/4 what we want but at 1/3rd, which is still low enough to balance the Physical attributes but not so low as to not see rapid improvements.

Overall we see our attributes increasing thus:

Each Strength is increasing at 6x CA.

Each Aerobic is increasing at 4x CA.

Each Tactics is increasing at 3x CA.

Each Defending is increasing at 3x CA.

Each Ball Control is increasing at 1x CA.

Each Attacking is increasing at 1x CA.

Each Shooting is increasing at 1x CA.

Each Set Pieces is declining.

We could increase Aerobic by another 5 notches or 1x CA and each Strength by another 3 notches or 1x CA as there is still room in the workload. This would extend our Physical attribute bias even further while maintaining the same ratio in the other attributes, but it is your call whether you want to run the risk of injury or not. Doing so would produce a schedule I cannot post as I have run out of image allowances.

That is your call. As is following this conception of how the player should be moulded.

Any schedule you develop will have to be tweaked every few years to make sure you account for the changing rates of attribute growth.

I hope this post was of some help to you.

[pauliowigs]

Wow! You sir, are an absolute genius.

I cannot thankyou enough for your efforts. I have read through this post and your post "a closer look at training" and am trying my best to get to grips with this (particulaly the section on training levels and overall workload). I've played FM/CM religously since the 98/99 but i have never got fully to grips with the training.

I can't profess to say that everthing has sunk in, but I am doing my best to gain a better understanding so that i can make more effective training regimes in future and not just copy your picture of a suggested training schedule (which i will also be doing!).

One Daft question in my quest of understanding.....

When you are talking about multiples of CA as you do throughout this post..... e.g

"Each Strength is increasing at 6x CA.

Each Aerobic is increasing at 4x CA.

Each Tactics is increasing at 3x CA."

IS CA still standing for Current Ability? If not, then I couldnt work out exactly what was meant but i could still understand what was being said as I understood it all to work as a ratio and th numbers added up!

One thing that I had never considered befored is how different areas of training are responsible for a different amount of attributes, and that the ammount of attributes is important to consider when setting the levels for each training area. Thats the single clearest point i've taken from your responce. I guess before i assumed that if the sliders for strength and aerobic were set at the same level there would be equal emphasis given (and thus equal chance of a stat increase) for each of the attributes ecompassed within this section.

I have another promising player who is out on loan... I shall attempt to create him a better training schedule than I did for Alex Craig using your advice when he returns. I imagine this may take a while because i am quite a slow gamer! I would greatly appreciate it if you can have a little look at this schedule when i get round to it to see if I display even a slighter greater understanding for training schedules than I did this time.

When i do get round to it (basically when his loan finishes) I'll post an image in this thread. Once again.....thankyou for taking time to try and explain to me how the schedules work.

[SFraser]

No problem.

The initial post in the thread "A Closer Look at Training" is badly out of date and nowhere near as accurate as I would like, however the entire thread does explain a huge amount about Training and has taught me alot.

To answer your question about CA, yes it does mean Current Ability in my reply. 6x CA does not mean 6x Attribute increase but 6x Training CA increase which may or may not produce 6x attribute increases depending on how much CA is required to increase the attributes. This is why for example 1x CA for Ball Control might produce the same attribute increases as 2x CA for Tactics in a Central Defender. The same CA is going in, but one set of attributes needs more CA to improve.

You need to account for this when developing schedules for your players. It is easier to train a Centreback to improve his Shooting than improve his Positioning.

I hope everything is clear for you. I find it a lot easier to understand than to explain. If you have any questions or wish to post about your other player then post here and I will try and respond to you.

[pauliowigs]

I will certainly post the other player with a suggested schedule eventually. I'm currently designing a schedule for yet another player in my squad (a 17 year old midfielder in fact!)

Following your theory as best as I could something struck me. I managed to create a tactic with the desired yXCA's in each area. that is to say that the ratio beteen each training category seemed correct, but the overall workload bar was not sufficently high (mainly because in this particular case i wasn't after much physical improvement i.e aerobic and strength).

If i move the overall workload slider along does it keep the same ratio's as to what I have worked out and up them acordingly or does it just increase everything at a fairly even level, thus watering down the ration and murdering the schedule?

[Mel32]

This is an excellent thread!!!

Way to go SFraser!!! I read some time ago the "A closer look at training thread" and as you say, it kinda confused me since there are a lot of posts and was too much information to take at once. But now I understand a whole lot more.

Thanks pauliowigs for posting this thread!!! I'll try to implement the new knowledge

[ron.e]

Sfraser i love you thoughts and topics when it comes to training and it makes sense(well most of it anyway)

Can you do me a favour? in terms of the player that you were commenting on in this post, could you please break it down in simple-terms for me? for example, you say one training category needs more CA points than others and that when making training schedules. Depending on the player and what you want to improve, some training areas need to be higher than others. Is that just because there are more attributes being trained in that category? and why does setpiece training require less CA points than defending?

The second Schedule shows our 2x CA for each Aerobic and 3x CA for each Strength compared to zero for everything else. Although Aerobic is higher than Strength each Aerobic attribute only receives 2 notches worth of CA while each Strength receives 3 notches worth of CA, meaning our Strength attributes are being trained 33% more than Aerobic, and 3 notches to 0 notches more than all our other categories.

Can you please clarify something for me. In the above quote are you saying, that 2x CA for aerobic, will take a players aerobic stats from 12 to 14 for example? obviously not over-night but in the future

You need to account for this when developing schedules for your players. It is easier to train a Centreback to improve his Shooting than improve his Positioning.

Now, why is this? surely it should be easier to train a centrebacks positioning rather than shooting because positioning is vital for a centreback.

[pauliowigs]

Sfraser i love you thoughts and topics when it comes to training and it makes sense(well most of it anyway)

Now, why is this? surely it should be easier to train a centrebacks positioning rather than shooting because positioning is vital for a centreback.

This is a guess, but I imagine it is becasue of the way that Current Ability works and is position specific. For example if you have a player with 5 positioning, 5 tackling, 5 marking 20 finishing, 20 off the ball and 20 longshots that player is likely to have a higher Current Ability if he is a natural striker than if he is a natural Centreback. (if you had two players with these identicle stats and all that differed was the position they played the Striker would be a "better" player and thus have a higher CA, due to his attributes being more suited to his position.

With this in mind i imagine if you had two players, a striker and a defender, both who had a CA of 150 and a PA of 160 you would be able to get more attribute rises for the amount of unfulfilled PA if the attribute rises were in inappropriate areas. The Striker might be able to get 3 better at finishing and off the ball before he met his PA, whereas he might be able to get 6 better at tackling and positioning (because these attributes do not make him THAT much of a better striker, they are contribute less towards his CA..... Conversely the same would be true for the defender who may be able to increase his tackling and positioning by 3 before reaching his PA cap but he could perhaps get 6 attribute rises in Finishing and off the ball.

Of course my ratios are completly out of whack, and i have nothing to back this up, but i that has been my understanding when its been said that it is easier for a striker to get defensive attribute gains than attacking ones.

[SFraser]

Sfraser i love you thoughts and topics when it comes to training and it makes sense(well most of it anyway)

Can you do me a favour? in terms of the player that you were commenting on in this post, could you please break it down in simple-terms for me? for example, you say one training category needs more CA points than others and that when making training schedules. Depending on the player and what you want to improve, some training areas need to be higher than others. Is that just because there are more attributes being trained in that category? and why does setpiece training require less CA points than defending?

Well first of all some Categories do have more/less attributes than others and some Attributes in those Categories do require more/less CA to improve. This means that if each notch on the Training sliders modifies the same amount of CA the actual amount each attribute rises by will be different according to number of attributes and the amount of CA each needs to improve.

That each slider notch adds or substracts the same amount of CA is an assumption, but it is a good assumption that would not only work more simply than any other method in terms of coding etc. but also seems to produce the expected end results from my time testing schedules. It is the same assumption most people playing FM also have, but alot of them fail to take into account the different numbers of attributes per Category and the different quantities of CA required to improve certain attributes. This leads to a lot of failed end results.

The reason why different attributes require different amounts of CA comes down to a players preferred position. Whatever position a player prefers to play, the key attributes for that position require more CA than the rest. This is to prevent players from making "uber defenders" or "uber strikers". There were some bugs and exploits in previous games using this system, but overall it has been tested well and is quite well balanced, if not perfect.

Can you please clarify something for me. In the above quote are you saying, that 2x CA for aerobic, will take a players aerobic stats from 12 to 14 for example? obviously not over-night but in the future

In the above example I was saying that 2x CA for Aerobic would increase the players Aerobic attributes roughly 2x faster than his Tactics. The player in question is young and is not at his PA so he can gain CA through playing experience. Our schedule above should increase his Aerobic 2x Faster than Tactics and so long as he has enough "Free CA" left to gain, that should eventually result in a +2 attribute gain.

It all depends on how much CA the player has left to get. If he doesn't have very much then although we might be putting most of it into his Aerobic attributes, they might never get from 12 to 14. If he has heaps to get then the attributes might go up by 3 points.

No matter how much the final result is though, Aerobic will always be going up 2x faster than Tactics so we don't have to worry about putting CA in the wrong places or messing up his Training. All we have to worry about is whether the player has enough potential to get our desired gains when we train Aerobic twice as fast as Tactics.

The whole reason we are training Aerobic twice as fast as Tactics even though we want Tactics to go up 4 and Aerobic up 2, is to try and make sure we get that +2 Aerobic before it is too late. We are Training Aerobic 4x harder than the initial plan suggests, because the player is young and we can swap excess Aerobic for Tactics later but we cannot swap excess Tactics for Aerobic later.

So while we had an initial plan of +2 Aerobic and +4 Tactics, we have used our knowledge of how attributes work with Age to make a schedule that ensures an early and dramatic rise in Aerobic. It might be over-compensating or under-compensating but atleast we are compensating and if it doesn't work we can take the lessons and improve our next schedule for our next young player.

The bottom line is that it is practically impossible to calculate precise rises in attributes. The best we can do is construct a schedule that has the same shape as our planned/hoped changes and then adapt that schedule according to the players Age, attributes and our initial wants and needs. In this case physical attributes are the early priority, and we will deal with tactics later once we see our desired physical attribute rises.

Now, why is this? surely it should be easier to train a centrebacks positioning rather than shooting because positioning is vital for a centreback.

You could interprate the mechanics to say that a player that is good in certain areas is harder to improve than in the areas he is bad at. It is easier to make a defender improve his rubbish shooting with some basic techniques but it is harder to improve a defender in Positioning unless you have advanced knowledge and take lots of time and effort in training.

That is an interpretation. The fact of the matter is that SI have decided to build the game that way and balance it that way. Lots of stuff rely upon these mechanics, not just training, and SI have decided this is the best to go for now.

[ron.e]

Thankyou for your response and it's cleared things up i think. There isn't an exactly number it's just about training in more areas than others depending on what you want from the player and his age and CA and PA. am i right here?

also, i have this player:-

I am histon and i'm in the blue square prem. Now as stats are not to bad. He has CA 66 PA 96. From what you're saying there is not much i can do with this player because he's only got 30 points left but i still want to design a schedule for him as he's still young. Here it is:-

So what do you think sfraser? I would really appreciate your thoughts on this as i really need to understand. Thanks

[ron.e]

His Aerobic Category contains 5 attributes that can be trained. His Strength Category contains 3 attributes that can be trained. If each attribute requires the same amount of CA to improve then his Aerobic needs 5xCA and his Strength needs 3xCA to go up by the same amount.

Sfraser, can you give me a run-down of what attributes can be trained and the ones that can't. Thanks

[DocSander]

SFraser,

Your work on composing the optimal training schedules for different types of players really intrigues me at the moment. Big thumps up for your post on this guy's question on how to develop his young centreback!

I found it very well explained in general, but still one questions rings in my mind and I hope you'd share your view on it.

You've explained the build up of your training schedule in several simple steps:

1 - determine how much increase you desire for all different training categories

2 - multiply by the amount of attributes within this category

3 - apply an 'age correction factor' (as physical atts go well when younger etc.)

4 - increase general levels until you reach your desired workload

My questions are on step 2.

You mentioned on several occasions that you use the number of trainable attributes in each training category, f.e. 5 in aerobic. I assume that you leave reflexes out since this bears no CA weight for field players. However, for the ball control category you seem to use 5, while flair has no CA weight. Shouldn't the ball control bar be set at 4?

Second, and more important question I guess...

You also mention somewhere that certain categories require less CA to improve. Does that mean that you'd rather use the sum of the 'CA weight' of the attributes in a certain training category? And with 'CA weight' I mean the number presented in this table on the relation between CA distribution and attribute rise.

Regards,

DocSander

[SFraser]

You've explained the build up of your training schedule in several simple steps:

1 - determine how much increase you desire for all different training categories

2 - multiply by the amount of attributes within this category

3 - apply an 'age correction factor' (as physical atts go well when younger etc.)

4 - increase general levels until you reach your desired workload

Exactly DocSander. My posts would not have to be nearly so long if I had your flair for stating issues in simplicity. That is precisely what I mean and intended to explain.

My questions are on step 2.

You mentioned on several occasions that you use the number of trainable attributes in each training category, f.e. 5 in aerobic. I assume that you leave reflexes out since this bears no CA weight for field players. However, for the ball control category you seem to use 5, while flair has no CA weight. Shouldn't the ball control bar be set at 4?

You are correct. There are several issues of inaccuracy in my Schedules. I have started designing new schedules based on these factors, on the factors of injuries, and on a better understanding of the weights of attributes, but it is rather hard for one man to satisfy all required and desired conditions in a thread like this.

Several Categories have been miscounted, certainly Strength and I believe Ball Control and Aerobic which contain Natural Fitness, Reflexes and Flair. This accounts for the excess Strength improvement in Goalkeepers and the excess Ball Control improvement in Defenders in my current schedules, and could also be modified to reduce the intensity of Aerobic which seems to produce the greatest quantity of Training injuries.

While I asked for this assistence, very little has been forthcoming. I am not sure whether this is because of viewer/reader apathy or my own lack of clarity. Either way these are issues to be addressed that will help not only my own schedules but any future downloader of my released schedules and any future participant in the construction of better schedules.

Second, and more important question I guess...

You also mention somewhere that certain categories require less CA to improve. Does that mean that you'd rather use the sum of the 'CA weight' of the attributes in a certain training category? And with 'CA weight' I mean the number presented in this table on the relation between CA distribution and attribute rise.

Regards,

DocSander

That is the devil in the details. It is this precise area that makes a perfect schedule so difficult to design.

The sum of CA weight will only benefit the unnecessary at the expense of the vital, yet at the same time we have the function of Age modifying the CA gain of attributes, and an as yet unknown function modifying the position gain of attributes. Combine this to the fact that a single Training Category may contain attributes from two-three different Profile Categories.

There is little use in attempting to design schedules based on the "sum of CA weight". Far better it is to design schedules based on attribute numbers per category, and then factor in the unknown quantities of Age and Position relevant attribute differences in a general way.

For example in a young defender his Physical Attributes increase quickly, his position relevant attributes require more CA, and we have the knowledge that Tactical will accelerate while physical declines with increasing age. So bias Physical and key Defending attributes to begin with, then reduce Tactics and Defending for increase in Physical.

The less mathematical, logical, detailed and investigate/calculative issue that over-rides so many "theoretical" issues is the very fact that there is not alot of slider notches per each Aerobic attribute and there is not an unlimited Overall Workload. This fact turns the theoretical issues into completely practical issues. The maximum you can work within is 5 CA-Heavy Aerobic increases for each CA-Light Attacking increase for a Centreback.

Irrespective of Age and Position, the greatest ratio you can design is 5:1. This simplicity renders issues of pure mathematical accuracy quite irrelevant. The game does not account for all possible mathematical permutations. It allows you to develop Heavy attributes 5x light attributes or light attributes 5x heavy ones. This means ironicly that it is easier to build a bad schedule than a good one through chance.

The only meaningful advice I can give once the basic principles are understood is to err on the side of caution. You can swap Physical Attributes for Mental Attributes in an older player but you cannot swap Mental for Physical. Forget trying to figure out the precise details of attribute changes and simply Train youngsters in physical and Older players in mental.

[Zico10]

Hi SFraser, your work on this is just awesome!! For years I've been trying to understand the principles behind the training schedules, and one of the theories that came up, is where you are now regarding the one notch=1 attribute, Strength group=3 notches, etc.

But one thing that always kept bothering me, is the 64$ million dollar question; is this ONE NOTCH, ONE ATTRIBUTE AN EXACT SCIENCE, or just an assumption?

Because, if this " 1 notch,1 attribute" is true, why SI would have a slider with 25 notches total, instead of the exact number of notches for each training group? ie. Strength=24,27 or 30, Aerobic=25 or 30, Ball Control=28 or 32 etc.

And if we increase Strength by 8x, to 24, so there's 1 left. If we increase the last 1 notch, which one of the 3 attributes, would be positively affected?

The other theory is; maybe the 4 training load (Light, Medium, High, and Intensive) work upon their basic principle: regardless the number of notches per attributes, but rather the overall training load.

More higher within Medium settings, the attributes gain speed up faster than in a lower Medium setting, with no correlation whatsoever with number of notches.

I've tested both theories for 1 season and half: one based upon your training test principle and other with the Training Load settings; some players increased with both of them, some quicker, some slower, so I'm out to finalize the test and to see which one works best for the squad.

Take care

[ron.e]

So let me get this straight -

strenght category - 3 attributes can be trained but Natural fitness can't

Aerobic category - 5 attributes can be trained but reflexes can't be trained for outfield players

Tactics category - All 5 attributes can be trained

Ball control category - All 5 attributes can be trained

Defending category - All 3 attributes can be trained

Attacking category - All 3 attributes can be trained

Shooting category - All 3 attributes can be trained

Set-pieces category - All 5 attributes can be trained

Now, in terms of making schedules it's not only about maxing out in certain areas but just make sure that the areas that you would like to improve are being trained on more than others. Also, physical attributes rise quickly in 17-21, mental attributes mainly improve with age and maybe tutoring but tactical training rises quickly. And technical training runs a steady course throughout a players.

Have i got this right?

Ps. Can someone tell me what's the best thing to do with players whether young or old, have reched their PA. for example, CA 110 PA 100?

[mitjabarbic]

i have a player who looks great even at an age of 21...he is regularly playing for england and for my team. The thing is, his best atributes are mental. He looks very good there. I may be a bit late with this but i want to make him a brilliant DC. I know he would probably be better playing as DM but i just want to make him a legendary DC...

i checked with genie scout and noticed he still has lots of room to improve...his PA is 193....

so after reading this i made this schedule.

(the training levels and progress are from previous tactic..)

now i dont know for sure...whether to reduce his aerobic and strength training due to him being older, or make it higher

do aeronic and strength have to be closer?

and i am sorry for stealing Pauliowigs thread..

[mike-rs]

sorry to be a complete nooby but how do you check how much pa he has left

[Zico10]

check with genie scout

[mike-rs]

????? i dont no what that is

[mitjabarbic]

http://www.fmscout.com/a-fm_genie_scout_10.html

[mitjabarbic]

SFraser can you help me with my player?

[Zico10]

So let me get this straight -

strenght category - 3 attributes can be trained but Natural fitness can't

Aerobic category - 5 attributes can be trained but reflexes can't be trained for outfield players

Tactics category - All 5 attributes can be trained

Ball control category - All 5 attributes can be trained

Defending category - All 3 attributes can be trained

Attacking category - All 3 attributes can be trained

Shooting category - All 3 attributes can be trained

Set-pieces category - All 5 attributes can be trained

Hi Ron.e, the reflexes attribute can be trained for outfield players, the problem is we don't know his "real value" in players performance.

[ron.e]

Hi Ron.e, the reflexes attribute can be trained for outfield players, the problem is we don't know his "real value" in players performance.

Thankyou for your reply. So apart from the reflex attribute, everything i've said is pretty accurate? Thanks

[SFraser]

I don't think the reflex attribute can be trained for outfield players.

It might show up in the Aerobic Category for outfield players but then so does Natural Fitness which cannot be trained.

Reflexes is a Goalkeeper only skill, and should be ignored for outfield players in my opinion. I could be wrong but that is how I see it.

[Zico10]

I don't think the reflex attribute can be trained for outfield players.

It might show up in the Aerobic Category for outfield players but then so does Natural Fitness which cannot be trained.

Reflexes is a Goalkeeper only skill, and should be ignored for outfield players in my opinion. I could be wrong but that is how I see it.

Sorry SFraser, but reflexes can be trained. Check this pic of one of my players.

Have you read my other post above at n#14, please?

[SFraser]

The fact it goes up doesn't mean it can be trained. Influence, Aggression, Bravery, Determination etc. can all go up regularly and dramatically, but none of them are CA relevant and none of them improve through Training.

Take a look at the screenshot you posted and ask yourself why none of the other Aerobic attributes increased by 1 point in an entire year, yet reflexes did.

Reflexes went up, but it is obviously the odd one out in that screenshot.

[Zico10]

The fact it goes up doesn't mean it can be trained. Influence, Aggression, Bravery, Determination etc. can all go up regularly and dramatically, but none of them are CA relevant and none of them improve through Training.

Take a look at the screenshot you posted and ask yourself why none of the other Aerobic attributes increased by 1 point in an entire year, yet reflexes did.

Reflexes went up, but it is obviously the odd one out in that screenshot.

Oh ok, it's not CA relevant. But I was surprised to see it go up, as he was on this Z-test training schedule. I'm just trying to understand, how with only 1 single notch for each group, sometimes more than 1 or 2 attributes went up. In his case, 4 of his Ball Control attributes went up by 1.

Another player on this same schedule, but this time instead of reflexes, Balance went up by 1.

Same schedule; 1 single notch, Strength and Stamina up by 1.

[Alessandro133]

I have some question about trainings.

All this training-tuning is good and clear (e.g. defenders don't need to train shoots etc).

But why the hell, when I use this type schedules (special for every position) my players just start to... lose attributes! :-(((

Ok, I can understand when defender will lose finishing and gain tackling, but he doesn't gain anything or even loose some prolific attributes.

And when I change schedules to default all my players starting to grow etc.

May be it's the reason of the existing of opinion that default schedules are best?

[SFraser]

Oh ok, it's not CA relevant. But I was surprised to see it go up, as he was on this Z-test training schedule. I'm just trying to understand, how with only 1 single notch for each group, sometimes more than 1 or 2 attributes went up. In his case, 4 of his Ball Control attributes went up by 1.

You are mixing up Match Experience CA gain with Training CA redistribution.

All that Training does is shift CA around between attributes. Any actual overall gain/loss of CA comes from high/low Match Experience, modified by Age, modified again by hidden Personality Attributes and modified again by Club Reputation.

You have there a very young player that is playing youth team and possibly some reserve team football for a Premier League club. I don't know what his Match Experience is, or what his Hidden Personality Attributes are but they are obviously at a high enough level for this player to gain CA when combined to Age and Club Reputation.

The schedule you have him on is hardly doing anything to this CA so the CA he gets is going into his attributes in an unmodified way. What you are seeing here is where the CA will naturally go in this player with minimal Training. If you beef up his schedule you can modify where this CA goes.

So for example you said that 5 of his Ball Control attributes went up by 1 point while only two of his Strength attributes went up by 1 point. Now as I understand it only 4 of the Ball Control attributes take up CA and Flair does not, so his Flair possibly increased through mentoring or performing some certain action on the pitch.

This leaves 4 Ball Control attributes increasing versus 2 of the 3 Strength attributes. The 4 Ball Control attributes that increased all come from the Technical Panel, the two Strength attributes that increased all came from the Physical Panel, the single Strength attribute that did not increases comes from the Mental Panel. All the Strength Attributes require the same amount of CA to increase, two of the Ball Control Attributes require the same amount of CA to increase as Strength Attributes and the other two Ball Control Attributes require less CA to increase.

What we have here is a situation where the same amount of CA put into each Category should produce roughly the same amount of increases to each attribute, with a couple going up a bit quicker. What we saw though was a Mental Attribute not going up at all while the rest did. This fits in perfectly with what we know, that Mental Attributes are harder to improve in younger players while Physical Attributes are easier in young players. All the Ball Control attributes are Technical attributes and enough CA went into the Category to produce an increase in them all. Two of the Strength attributes are Physical attributes and in this young player they received slightly more CA and went up accordingly. The other Strength attribute was a Mental attribute and due again to age it did not receive so much CA so it did not increase.

The important thing to realise is that we do not know what exact level each attribute started at, how close it was to going up to begin with. Depending on this information we could be undestimating or overestimating how much CA each attribute is taking up right now when this guy is Age 18. Although we know Age does have an increasing positive impact on Mental from a low starting point and an increasing negative impact of Physical from a high starting point, we can only guess as to the exact impact at any specific Age.

[Zico10]

SFraser where are you based? Australia?

This oratory seems familiar to me.

Are you my former Exercise and Physiology Uni teacher in disguise?

[SFraser]

I am based in Ireland. Born and bred in the Highlands of Scotland but I am now serving a tour of duty with my Irish girlfriend in the Emerald Isle.

It is a testament to the game if you think someone that understands player development sounds like a University level Exercise and Physiology teacher. I can't say I have ever studied exercise or physiology. I have done some Wikipedia learning on the biology of the brain which was fascinating, and some A Level biology, but that it the extent of my knowledge. Strategy games are my hobby and when the deepest strategy game on the planet happens to be a Football game then my fate is sealed.

[mitjabarbic]

sfraser is the training schedule i posted above good for my player?

[kingjericho]

i only read the OP and assuming you still use the training schedule that's there, i think you could reduce attacking to where shooting is, and that way increase a bit on tactics and defending. after all these are the cornerstones of a good defender (and strenght also).

[celebritykiller]

I have some question about trainings.

All this training-tuning is good and clear (e.g. defenders don't need to train shoots etc).

But why the hell, when I use this type schedules (special for every position) my players just start to... lose attributes! :-(((

Ok, I can understand when defender will lose finishing and gain tackling, but he doesn't gain anything or even loose some prolific attributes.

And when I change schedules to default all my players starting to grow etc.

May be it's the reason of the existing of opinion that default schedules are best?

Default schedules always look the best, because they generally improve the most attributes. The reason for this is you are improving attributes that carry very little attribute weight for the position (e.g. finishing for a defender), but you'll never see improvements on key attributes to the extent that you want.

SFraser, I'm curious as to why focus is required on aerobic at a yound age more so than say in the 24-27 range. If young players attribute growth are more inclined towards aerobic growth, does the training need to focus on it any more than normal (won't aerobic be naturally recieve more pants anyway than your average age player on the same scehdule).

Reason I'm asking is I've build a series of schedules based on theory similar to yours, however they are all very tactically intensive and I worry about the impact on younger players. This shouldn't affect CA should it (if training only distributes CA)

[phnompenhandy]

i only read the OP and assuming you still use the training schedule that's there, i think you could reduce attacking to where shooting is, and that way increase a bit on tactics and defending. after all these are the cornerstones of a good defender (and strenght also).

So you took absolutely zero interest in the discussion and yet you feel you have something to contribute.

[phnompenhandy]

I have some question about trainings.

All this training-tuning is good and clear (e.g. defenders don't need to train shoots etc).

But why the hell, when I use this type schedules (special for every position) my players just start to... lose attributes! :-(((

Ok, I can understand when defender will lose finishing and gain tackling, but he doesn't gain anything or even loose some prolific attributes.

And when I change schedules to default all my players starting to grow etc.

May be it's the reason of the existing of opinion that default schedules are best?

Do you mean in the first couple of weeks after switching to anew schedule? It takes them a while to adjust. Also, their training form fluctuates a lot from day to day, so if you're looking at the red/green arrows, they're pretty meaningless as they show changes during just one week. To get an accurate picture you need to monitor the monthly bars to see what changes are occurring.

[Alessandro133]

Do you mean in the first couple of weeks after switching to anew schedule? It takes them a while to adjust. Also, their training form fluctuates a lot from day to day, so if you're looking at the red/green arrows, they're pretty meaningless as they show changes during just one week. To get an accurate picture you need to monitor the monthly bars to see what changes are occurring.

I switched to special schedules for a year and got no results.

Then I switched back to default schedules and players start to grow.