rsihn

I completely disagree. Youth team training should be used to iron out the weak spots in your young players rather than focusing on specialization. It is much more difficult to fix the weaknesses of a player after the player turns 18 and training starts to not be as effective. The player will have plenty of time to specialize once they've graduated to the U23 squad. This also follows the way SI have set up the 4 unique youth team training schedules that offer a broad range of development while the U23s use the more specialized training schedules that the senior team uses. That doesn't mean that you can't have an extra focus on certain areas for the youth squad but I think it is a very bad idea removing the General training sessions.

In my opinion, a Realist as captain is not a good choice as they have very poor sportsmanship and usually poor temperament with almost no other requirements to be labelled a Realist. Realists are hard players to deal with, which can be seen if you've ever tried criticizing them and I consider them to be a high maintenance personality that I try to avoid whenever possible so I wouldn't want that type of player being influential in my squad and definitely not as captain. Your staff will nearly always solely use a player's leadership stat to choose your captain but I find it essential that they have a great personality and I have no problems choosing a player with a lower leadership stat as captain if he has a great personality. This player is almost always going to take the highest spot in the squad hierarchy soon after gaining the captain's armband so, in addition to his normal captain duties, he is going to have a massive influence over the squad's overall personality which makes it imperative that he is a great role model for the rest of the squad. The same applies to the vice-captain also.

Changes to determination, and personalities in general, are influenced by a number of factors: squad's overall personality, mentoring group, rare off the field events, complacency, and the greeting when a player joins the club which acts as a one time mentoring session. Disciplining a player also gives a chance to increase his determination, along with work rate. The squad's overall personality is heavily influenced by the team leaders so if they have poor or average personalities, there is a high likelihood that they are going to drag the rest of your player's personalities down to their level, particularly younger players who are more susceptible to being influenced, for good or bad. Mentoring groups have the same effect but on a smaller scale and a more controlled fashion as you can pick and choose who influences who. Off the field events are something that you have no control over and can give your players big increased to their personality stats or they give big drops, basically ruining your player forever. Complacency is similar to off the field events but more common though you can take a few steps to lessen the chances of it happening (which I'm not going to get into here). The greeting, as mentioned above, is a one time mini-mentoring session which builds a rapport between the greeter and new player if you have chosen the right player to do it or they can instantly dislike each other if you pick a greeter who has too different of a personality from the new player. Lastly, there is discipline. You are able to have a special interaction with your players for approximately one week after a match if the player has received a 6.5 or lower match rating in a match. This includes reserve team and youth team matches. This interaction allows you to give them a warning or fine them. If you are successful in convincing the player that they need to improve, they will receive a point in determination, work rate, or both. This is an extremely powerful tool that will boost your player's stats very quickly.

I don't know how well you understand training but there are 3 training units: attacking, defending, and GK. Every training session focuses a varying percentage of that session's time towards one of those 3 training units. The dark blue "General" sessions mostly have a fairly even distribution of time devoted to all the units but when you get into the more specialized sessions, they will heavily focus the time on one unit at the expense of the others. Your players are simply telling you that your training is too focused on the other training units and you should include more sessions that give equal or better time to their unit. If I had to guess, they are in the defending unit as there are many more sessions that favor the attackers than focus on the defenders. Your manager may also have an average or low discipline stat which doesn't keep your players in line and will make it more likely that they will bring complaints to you.

It isn't required but it does seem to help. If you don't do this when creating the mentoring groups, your staff will usually send you an email suggesting that you move the players between groups which align with them being in the same training unit.

I suggest you look at your physio's recommendation under Training->Rest and set the Excellent condition automatic setting to what matches the recommendation that suits the majority of the squad for that week. This is always going to have outliers such as players who have just returned from injury who need to be manually assigned to Half intensity until they've fully recovered and players over 30 years old who generally have problems training at anything over Normal intensity but it will usually cover everyone else adequately. The Rest menu should be consulted at least once a week (preferably twice a week) to adjust the settings based on match load and congestion. It should not be used as a set once at the beginning of the season and forget about it until the next season.