danielgear
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Posts posted by danielgear
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Just caught up Ben, great final season in Turkey, and the move feels like a realistic step up.
Great in-depth posts since explaining the state of play since the move and your thought process behind your plans and decisions so far.0 -
On 20/01/2023 at 20:50, _Ben_ said:
My football content consumption over the past couple of days has been around Roberto de Zerbi, with this video being really interesting to me. I obviously favour counter attacking football and that thought of the 'De Zerbi-ism' of baiting the press seems really interesting to me and one that I don't think I've ever really considered. Of course, if we can commit players towards the ball and have players comfortable enough to evade that press, we'll have wide open space to attack. The formative ideas centred around defenders with two particular traits: Stops Play and Tries Long Range Passes.
Watched the same video and have tried to recreate it, the baiting the press is a really good idea and I seem to have got it working nicely playing a range of wall passes around the opposition press to create gaps in their shape before switching the ball forward and breaking away. Not quite there yet but I'm having fun with it.
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1 hour ago, tyler16 said:
Have to admit I prefer this outcome for the narrative of the save even if it's bittersweet for you.
Totally agree with Tyler, It's still a great season for you Ben and it would be great to see the same top 2 next year but in reverse
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On 08/01/2023 at 20:43, _Ben_ said:
My intention is to make this as realistic as I can by proposing a list, sorted in order of preference, to my DoF, who will the conduct the transfer and contract negotiations. I may not get my man, but I'll get one of a few that I've identified and I can easily see that, if we're down to negotiating with fourth of fifth choice, then the parameters need to change.
This is how I play and have for a few years and adds to the realism.
And wow what an ending to the season, you couldn't write it. Two (well 3) cup finals in a row. I have faith
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On 04/01/2023 at 18:28, _Ben_ said:
But I do need to sort out the longer term future of the club and, using another wonderful tip from @FMStag (seriously, just follow his Twitter and blog), have set up some ongoing scouting focuses, which you can see here:
The biggest issue is that I currently am allowed three scouts at the club, so these will fill slowly but they should fill with the players that I want to be
LOVE this for recruitment focuses (best new feature this year)
On 05/01/2023 at 21:23, _Ben_ said:I must say that I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether this was a Ravel Morrison kind of thing or he just wanted first team football
Was just a wanted first team football thing, was fed up of being promised a chance and not getting one.
Save's going well Ben and some nice recruitment in January. Will be interesting to see what you do with the DM slot over the summer. I should have refreshed, I'm a whole page behind
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1 minute ago, vikeologist said:
Just not enough, and not enough of the serious ones.
It depends if what you consider serious is the same as SI.
12 minutes ago, vikeologist said:You're misrepresenting me. Over the years I've raised lots of bug reports, but at the start of FM22 I realised that I'd been raising less in the last couple of years than I had before. I did encourage others to raise bug reports when they complained about them on the thread I oversee, I hadn't done so much of that myself, so I made a conscious decision to actually make sure I was putting in the effort to be part of the solution. Basically I agree with the notion behind your reply that one has to actually walk the walk when it comes to reporting bugs.
Maybe you misrepresented yourself but yes that’s what I meant. I understand the frustration when bugs aren’t fixed trust me but I also understand there must be reasons why. SI want it to be just as bug free as we do.
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30 minutes ago, DarJ said:
do agree with you that seeing bugs carry over from previous games is annoying because it gives the feeling that they don't just care
This isn’t an SI issue though, numerous games that are yearly have the same issue, even bigger titles like FIFA and madden. Like you said they probably prioritise between impact and what can be fixed in a short time some bugs there might be reasons why they can’t fix them or within the time between editions.
The amount of bugs fixed between release and December was probably more than we realised due to the size of the patch update. For every bug you see they haven’t fixed how many bugs don’t we see that get fixed?
2 hours ago, vikeologist said:So anyway, last year (FM22) I raised lots of bug reports to try and become part of the Alpha team
You say you have played for 20 years and finally on the FM22 edition you say you were really active in the hopes of getting on the alpha but now because you didn’t get on the enthusiasm has gone. If you can’t see the issue with that then maybe it’s best you don’t get on it
I’m pretty sure the people who must get added are the ones offering consistently good quality bug reports over a period of time not just one edition when they want to try a bit harder to get on it.
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1 hour ago, Neil Brock said:For me personally, it's interesting to see comments from people that almost seem to insinuate we do certain things related to the game 'badly' on purpose.
Anyone who thinks this has to baiting, having the pleasure of speaking publicly and privately with numerous SI employees over the years, The main credit I can give them is every employee really cares about the game. Whilst I might disagree with the direction of the game regarding some of features etc added through the years, I know every feature is targeted to be delivered to the best they can and whilst what a consumer might expect might be different its certainly not because SI purposely did it badly.
1 hour ago, Neil Brock said:We've always said there's absolutely a place for constructive criticism, be it via these forums or from whatever other media form within the community.
Neil is totally right here too I've offered constructive criticism over the years and SI have always been open to receiving it and followed up with me about it in some situations.
1 hour ago, Ferocious289 said:just don't understand why criticism with a game that is riddled with issues is recieved with heavy opposition.
I disagree, as much as you have your opinion there may be issues it doesn't mean everyone has to have the same opinion and them opposing your opinion isn't a bad thing if it's done in a respectful way from both sides,
I think there is issues with the game, maybe not the same issues as you but maybe the same and there is room for discussion about those issues but the whole narrative of "I paid money for the game I'm allowed to shout as loud as I want about it" is wrong.
In SI's defence they have a whole testing forum accessible to you and have already released two patches in 2 months (Release day and December patches)
1 hour ago, anagain said:Whenever there is grumbling and dissent, criticism and boosting of critcism I have seen your name. Yet one post in any bug report, from what I can see in 5 pages of posts under your name, and not your bug report
Bang on, if you can't take the time to report bugs or issues then spend ages moaning about them you're more to blame than SI ever is with regards to the issues within the game53 minutes ago, Ferocious289 said:I'm not really tech savy on how to upload pkms and show hightlights of the game and such
Luckily for you @Neil Brockhas made a post on how too do this and its straight forward.
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16 minutes ago, Jtomsett11 said:
I've also been reading @_Ben_'s Age of Empires thread and saw a link to @danielgear's pre-season training article, so I've been inspired by both of them to have a go at my own pre-season and training for the season ahead. We'll see how it goes, but I'm borrowing heavily from their approaches.
Pre-season
I didn't have the 6 weeks advised, so had to fit my schedules into 4 weeks and my assistant arranged 3 friendlies that I couldn't cancel, meaning I couldn't quite have the friendly cup double headers. However, I was still pleased by the outcome, with nearly all 23 of my players match fit, very few injuries and no complaints in training.
Great to hear the process worked well for you.
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RE the survey its also a small % of the market. Ben has around 110.000 subscribers less than half of that follow him on twitter. FM22 sold between 1-2million copies (can't find the exact number) but a article 5 months ago said they sold over 1 million so even if we take the minimum at 1million copies and Bens high of 110,000 that's only 11% of the consumer base. his latest tweet suggested 13,000 replies which is 1.3%. which isn't a true representation of the consumer opinion just his small % of it. I know a lot of people that play the game that have never watched, read or listened to any FM content or visited the forum. Miles has said before in interviews the "community" is only a small part of the consumer. Whilst its great we as a community try to improve the game we have to also understand that SI don't just cater to us. The best way to improve the game is to feedback in the way SI asks via Beta testing threads and feature requests.
RE the game itself FM23 is the best in the series, there might be areas that haven't improved where you'd hoped but its better than last year and in fairness to SI improves year on year. The main outcry seems to be around graphics but again its a small area of the market. The graphics for me are spot on I don't need them to look any better than they are, my focus is more on the ME which has taken a massive step forward this year and Data which has improved and kept ahead of the market as the IRL game of football is becoming more data driven.
RE the skin, I agree its not the best but with so many great community efforts I'd rather SI focused more on improving the core game than a skin that I can easily download an better one and SI can spend more time improving Set Pieces
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Congratulations on the new job @_Ben_a natural step, Enough of a rebuild needed to make it an interesting role to take.
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11 minutes ago, _Ben_ said:
It has helped hugely. We are able to last much longer in the game, meaning I'm not having to make a raft of early changes for fitness reasons and I can see games out much better than I did previously. It's also interesting to see how it's impacted our injuries:
The (lack of) squad size has led to an increase of late but it's really positive to see how much healthier we were earlier in the season, almost certainly linked to match sharpness and fitness.
That’s great news. I’ve found it works really well for me. It’s just making sure we take the time to keep track of minutes played in preseason
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On 16/12/2022 at 19:26, _Ben_ said:
ollowing the excellent advice of @danielgear in regards to pre-season, I've been toying with how my pre-season is set up. Last year, we started the league under-prepared and not match fit, which cost us. Given that, this season, points could be harder to come by, I can't afford to throw opportunities away by not being ready. Here you can see that '6 day week' for the start of next month with them playing in up to two games and training in the other four, with one day of complete rest in between. I still need to fine tune what I want them to be doing on those days that they are at the training ground but it does appear, already, that fitness is growing pretty quickly. This is in contrast to the 'two-game week' that we did last time, which limited players to just 45 minute spells (hugely increasing complacency when the appeared) and at least two more days off the training pitch.
Just caught up @_Ben_did you find the change in approach made a difference to the players conditioning for this season and helped with the great start you have made?
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It’s a brilliant skin Gaz. Thanks for the work
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3 hours ago, MattyLewis11 said:
Pre-season has been grand, we followed the recent approach as laid out by our friends over at 'View From The Touchline' which is basically four days training two match days (A and B squad) and one days rest.
If applied over a four week schedule the level of opposition should scale up from significantly weaker to strong. However, we only managed to fit in two weeks of games before playing Lyon in a testimonial before heading to England to play Leicester and Chelsea .
I must say this approach is bang on and ALL players have a good level of match sharpness heading into the new season.
Love it Matty, glad it worked for you and you saw the same benefits
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16 minutes ago, MartinJ said:
How are folks finding the scouting after the 23.2 update on Thursday?
I didn't see anything about scouting on the change list, but I seem to be getting actual recommendations through from scouts where I wasn't before, which is promising. (Entirely possible it's just me doing something different!)
I've had this recruitment focus running for about a month in the game. I specifically assigned the scout and the recruitment analyst. 3.5 stars is quite high, so it makes sense to be only getting a handful of A and B recommendations. They're also pulling through to the Scouting Centre as 'ongoing focus recommendations'. (See Ndidi below.)
Great to see that you’re getting recommendations, patch might just be a coincidence, had a few people say to me on socials they weren’t getting any but we found out it’s because they weren’t waiting enough for results. Had one saying they’d not had no results after 3 days but they waiting and they came after a few weeks. Getting the chief scout to set assignments seems to be the way forward.
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12 hours ago, lewis1792 said:
Inspired by @danielgear's Estonian save from FM22
Blushes
A great idea for a save mate hope you enjoy it. Will follow along
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48 minutes ago, pedromanuelpinto said:
Very interesting. The 3 load for day, and before the game, don’t put your team with to much injuries?
will try with the new save.
There is always the risk with injuries but preseason is the time you’re going to train them the hardest therefore the risk increases anyway. In the preseason above I got through it with only a few players getting knocks less than a week.
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1 minute ago, fries said:
Thanks for the answer!
Do you know how the preseason affects the fatigue later in the season? Can you minimize fatigue midseason by seting up the preseason? If yes, how have you considered this in your planning?
For me preseason is about setting up a strong base fitness wise, regardless of how you approach preseason fatigue will need to be managed through the season with rotation and training plans.
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49 minutes ago, fries said:
Interesting approach. I think I will try it out. But I have a few questions.
How do you evaluate the success of your preseason?
Why is the rest day preferred to a recovery and match review day?
I evaluate my preseason to be successful if my squad not just my starting XI get to the first league game of the season in top condition, sharpness and morale. With a high tactical familiarity in the squad.
Recovery and match review “charge” your players still as they’re still doing training however light. You could try that approach and see but I wanted one full day off for the players.
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I wrote this piece for View from the touchline and I was asked to share it in the forum for everyone to see. So hopefully you find it useful.
How to approach Preseason training on FM23
A few years ago I wrote about how I planned out preseason and the post went down well.
https://www.viewfromthetouchline.com/2019/11/19/perfecting-pre-season/
But I still see people now asking questions about preseason,
- What is the best thing to do,
- How many games to play
- What teams should I play
- How many days between games
- What about training
- How much should I rotate
Are all typical questions I see, now I’m not saying my way is the best way and the way I used to do it in the link above is still a decent way. But over the last few months the way I approach pre season has evolved and changed. So I thought I’d take the time to write about it and how my fresh approach works and the thought process behind it.
Preseason Matches and Training
The old way I used to play had a simple thought process which many probably use
Minutes played + easy wins = great fitness condition and good morale
This always seemed to work and work well. But after having time to think about it a bit more over the years I’ve realised the downside of this is it doesn’t take advantage of training and this is where we work on our tactical ideas and improve attributes. Previously I’d play games Saturday and Wednesday with rest days after both. So we were getting 3 days training on Monday, Tuesday and Friday and the Friday one felt a bit pointless because it was the day after the rest day and the day before a match so you felt limited as to what you could actually do. Also the schedule felt broken.
- Two days training
- Match day
- Rest day
- One day training
- Match day
- Rest day
So I dived into how I could improve this and what I came up with was a 6+1 plan.
6 days of preseason followed by 1 day of rest per week.
How this works
The thought process is we want maximum time on the training pitch in preseason but we also need games to increase match sharpness and tactical familiarity, So what I do is separate the squad into two starting XI’s
Then I arrange fixtures over a 4 week period
I play double games on weekends. Saturdays the strongest XI play, Sunday the weakest 11 play. (you set this up by arranging preseason cups over 4 weekends as friendlies as the game doesn’t allow you to set up back to back friendlies)
This then gives us a new schedule of
- Four days training
- Two match days
- Rest day
This might seem like I’m just overworking the players and taking away their rest days but their second rest day comes in when the alternative XI play their game. Previously I’d name a squad of 22/23 and make 11 changes at halftime for the first few games then on the hour mark for the later games. When actually all this does is decrease the amount of minutes players play and mainly focus on the starting XI fitness as a priority. Whereas the new way everyone gets maximum playing time.
Planning the fixtures
The plan is to start with three morale boosting games increasing in difficulty each week before a final test against a similar ability team. As you can see I’ve chosen my opposition each team playing in a higher division that the last
- Game 1 v Really weak non league side
- Game 2 v Weaker Side
- Game 3 v Slightly weaker side
- Game 4 v Same standard as myself
Travelling
As you can see all games were at home. The reason for this is Football Manager takes into account travelling. So with the amount of games I don’t want extra fatigue taken out of the players travelling all over the world for games. The only issue is here for big clubs they all want money spinning tours to the USA and Asia. But this doesn’t have to be a problem. We can just adjust the plan slightly and try to play local sides in these countries all it takes is a bit of research.
- Travel will occur if the match is away from home and the distance between the stadiums is more than 15 miles.
- There are two types of travel, Short and Long.
- Short means travel during S1 and ES either side of the match on match day.
- Long means travel during S2 the day before the match and S1 the day after the match
Rest day
I mentioned above that the idea behind it was a plan for 6+1. The 1 being a rest day. So every Monday after 4 days of training and two matches we have a full day of rest. No match reviews, no team bonding. One full day off with all 3 slots as rest.
Training
My plan operates training over a 6 week schedule
- Week 1 – Fitness
- Week 2 – Fitness
- Week 3 – Fitness and Attacking and defending
- Week 4 – Fitness and Technical
- Week 5 – fitness and Match preparation
- Week 6 – tactics
As you can see here. Monday would be the rest day, Then 4 days of training before 2 match days. Currently I’m at a part time club so we only have 2 days training but the process for a full time day would be to fill all 3 slots each of the training days.
Here is an example for a full time team of how it work work over two week period
As you can see Monday is the rest day post a double game weekend then we have 4 solid days of training followed by another double game weekend.
Match Squad
During preseason you will get injuries or players will get knocks so I plan it like this.
I have my first and second XIs and then subs. Depending on the club I am I might not take any of the XI I’m not using and fill the bench with youth players as subs and only use subs if needed as the plan is to give players the full 90.Preseason Results
Our 8th friendly got cancelled due to the cup match being arranged so we only ended up playing 7 not 8 but results were great.Minutes played chart
Had the 8th game not got cancelled due to the cup match the second XI would have had another 90 minutes under the belt.
Current squad fitness
As we are about to start our first game of the season, everyone’s condition is great and sharpness is great apart from two players. Yndeheim who was the third choice keeper and only played 90 minutes in pre-season and Rasmus Kristiansen who was a late signing so he wasn’t here all pre season to get his condition and sharpness up. So overall the plan I set out to do was achieved. The whole squad is in perfect condition ahead of the start of the season. We had time on the training pitch to work on player attributes and tactics. I’m not saying this is the perfect way to approach preseason but I’ve been approaching it like this and have found that it works really well for me. If you give it a go let me know how you get on.
Thanks for reading
Dan
Any questions or comments feel free to ask.10 -
On 28/11/2022 at 21:32, Shrewnaldo said:
Absolute disaster. 21 goals in 27 starts (no pens). Disaster
The FM curse
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1 minute ago, Dani538 said:
I've found the issue... apparently SI is excluding certain features when switching in another language... I've created a new post about it. When I switched to the English language it is there, but reverting back to Dutch it is gone... Now I am curious what else i've been missing haha.
How strange haha. Glad you have worked it out though
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@_Ben_ my preseason training post is live that I mentioned above.
https://www.viewfromthetouchline.com/2022/11/30/how-to-approach-preseason-training-on-fm23/0
[FM23] Age of Empires
in FM Career Updates
Posted
Great informative updates as always Ben, and love the move. Like others have said it seems to be a club in line with your way of playing too.