danej

Here FM Treq says to mostly avoid the general training sessions (the royal blue coloured ones), except for Goalkeeping and Physical. The idea beingthat you want more focused training suited to your tactics and with more focus on developing the attributes of young players. He discusses it here: (Rashidi edit: I had to remove the video as posting it here is against the forum rules. Do that under the Fansites Section, thanks) What do you think of this idea? To me it makes sense. On the one hand I don't like the implied idea of micromanaging traning. But on the other hand I am beginning to think that it could be a little fun experimenting with it. Besides, my limited experience is that if you delegate training it is generally awful, barely develops the young players.

What do you think of the idea to make minor changes to the ass mans traning schedules every week, so that you have a day each week with the mentioned three sessions? The idea is to make sure that players spend a considerable amount of time training their individual attributes (individual traning roles). When ass man does the team training, little to no time seems to be spent on individual traning. The idea is from FM Treq who discusses it here: For me as a lazy, inexperienced and not perfectionist manager it makes sense. I don't want to squeeze every drop out of the game, I don't want to micromanage unless necessary, I don't want so much success that eventual domination is a foregone conclusion. So for me that idea might be suitable. Leaving team traning to the ass man instead of using OP plugin traning schedules. But doing the mentioned minor tweaks. I have no idea whether this is actually a good idea though. Just sound like it might suit me at first glance. But input from you experienced, knowledgeable managers here would be great.

From what I read many choose to occasionally rest a few particularly tired players. Perhaps just for a single day, but still a rest. I wonder: If you want to rest a player, when should you do it? Logically it seems counterproductive to rest a player immediately after a match. The rest of the day plus the next day is typically only rest and recovery anyway, or perhaps some other sort of unintensive training. What's the point in resting players from that. So I am thinking - let's say the match finished Saturday 16.45. Then you perhaps want to wait untill Sunday evening or so before activating the rest? So that the player gets rested during actually demanding training which would be the Monday schedule in this example.

What are the good sources out there? So far I have the impression that these are possibly good sources (random order): 1. This forum, not least the pinned educational posts. 2. FM Scout (YouTube) 3. Zealand (YouTube) 4. Omega Luke (YouTube) 5. FM Treq (YouTube) 6. RDF Tactics (YouTube) 7. Passion4FM (website) However, I suspect that one or more of these sources are not very good, or at least have inconsistent quality. The sources sometimes contradict each other, have very different opinions on the same matter at times. I wish I could find a single source that had all the info I am looking for. But to my knowledge that isn't possible. All the mentioned sources are at time a bit sparse and not detailed enough regarding their educational content. So I need to shop around if I want to learn about the game. Not least this regards training. The aspect of the game where I currently do most of my research. A vastly complex field, I still have so many questions and so few answers regarding training. That is also part if what I like about the game. It is complex enough to be mentally challenging. And on the other hand, once I learn a lot about the game, I feel like it is possible to play the saves rather quickly, barely having to micro manage in order to get decent results. The game seems to have a good balance regarding simplicity and complexity. At least if you put in the effort to learn about the game mechanics.

What are your default automatic settings? Do you use the same settings all the time, e.g. both during pre-season and regular season?

Sounds like Balotelli 🙂 Or Zlatan if it wasn't an Italian.

When loaning out a player, should you strive to loan him out to the tier that he currently operates at? Or the higher tier the better (provided he gets a lot of playing time of course)? Example: I want to loan out a 22 year old. He currently operates at Vanarama National level. For some reason, a League Two side wants to take him on loan as a regular starter. Should I opt for the League Two side or a Vanarama side?

From what I read you are absolutely right. Similar advice is in one or more of the pinned posts IIRC, and I believe herne has expressed the same view at several occasions.

Yeah, the guy in my example is not a regen

Suggestions regarding good rest settings (training intensity)? I mean the automatic setting at the training panel, the one with dive hearts, two red one to the left, yellow in the middle, two green one towards the right. I assume that good settings could vary throughout the season. Perhaps tougher settings during pre-season than during the regular season. Perhaps easier settings during times with congestured fixtures. I done a lot of research on this but it is difficult to find trustworthy specific suggestions.

Thanks for the input. It makes me think - perhaps I should only mentor when the mentor is at least as good as the mentee in every single relevant department.

By how much does a mentor need to be better than his potential mentee for mentoring to be a good choice? Example: I consider pairing a mentee with balanced personality and determination 13 with a mentor who has a fairly professional personality and determination 8. I don't know their media handling styles, don't have access to my save these days. In any case, I understand that the relevant aspects for mentoring are these: Personality, media handling style and determination. Ideally you want the mentor the be better than the mentee in all regards. Besides, in most if not all cases you want the potential mentee to be in the first team squad on merits already, for me that is a given. Is it still a good I idea to mentor in certain less clear cut cases? If yes, where's the line, when is a specific mentoring pairing a good or bad idea?

This is some great input, thanks. I was actually already thinking along the same lines - focusing on individual training. Since it probably helps and takes little time, to a large extent a one time micro management thing. So far I have done nothing regarding individual training, have just clicked on the let ass man decide button that is somewhere in the training menu. IIRC the ass man usually only puts very few players on any sort of individual training. Which I guess implies that the ass man does a poor job in this regard. What is training groups? Do you mean the training units, those that also constitutes the players eligible for mentoring groups? That, and what you write about mentoring, reminds me - I am also uncertain of which youngsters to move to train with the first team I order to get them mentored (those who aren't good enough to be in the first team squad on merits). Any further input on this? I might make a separate thread with thus question in the future, also something that has puzzled me for a while. There seems to be some major disadvantages by having youngsters train with the first team. They miss a lot of training because the teams play matches on different dates. And the first team coaches often have a worse working with youngsters attribute. So far I lean towards only mentoring youngsters if at least the first two if not all three of the following is true: - The youngster has a worse personality than the mentor. - Worse media handling style. - Worse determination. Perhaps I would also only consider mentoring youngsters with at least 3.5-4 star PA (perhaps an even higher threshold) in order to not move too many youngsters to train with the first team. In order to not increase the workload of the first team coaches. In order to not weaken the overall quality of training. The topic of training groups/units also reminds me: I wonder where to put the central midfielders, in the defensive or attacking unit? I play the preset 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress. Ball Winning and Box to box being the two roles. The AI tends to mostly put the central midfielders in the defensive unit, especially those with decent ball winning midfielder attributes.

I have been asking lots if questions in this forum over the past few months. Thanks for a lot of great feedback. I am thinking that most of my questions have something in common. They touch on an important, more fundamental topic. Basically I am trying to find the way of playing that I subjectively enjoy the most. Getting feedback here has been incredibly valuable for me so far - a great supplement to just play season after season and only learning from my own experience. And a great supplement to reading and watching content of often unknown quality and often not detailed enough for my liking. Overall I think I have come a long way to finding my style. Basically I don't want to be perfectionist. I don't want to micromanage very much. I delegate most stuff to the staff, including most almost all aspects of vital aspects such as scouting, training and hiring/firing staff. This is of course a poor strategy but I like how this makes the saves more difficult, I want to stick with this overall way of playing. I don't want to be so successful that eventual success is pretty much a foregone conclusion. I want there to be a real risk of getting sacked. At the moment I can think of only one aspect of the game where I haven't found my style: Developing players. Overall I fell like my young players develop quite poorly. I probably want to step that up a bit. But as mentioned I don't want to be too successful either, I want to keep it at a realistic level. So, my question: Any input regarding how I could improve my youth development a bit? Not improving a lot, just a bit. Without being perfectionist, without significant micromanaging. Just a few tips for minor, easy, not very time consuming tweaks in this aspect of the game.

So a lot of YouTube videos have poor quality, even from the more popular content creators such as Zealand? Good to know. Yeah so far I have been doing pretty much exactly as what you outline herne. The Zealand video just made me insecure. I wonder why he only loans out players if he gets offers from clubs with great training facilities or better. Perhaps I should just ignore his stance on that matter, even if he generally appears to know a lot about the game.

I wonder what level of training facilities should be the minimum demand when you loan out players? I think I know enough about other aspects regarding loaning out players. Videos with Zealand and Omega Luke among others have been useful. But I am still uncertain regarding the training facilities. I assume that it is relative. That it depends on your own club. Training facilities at the receiving club probably shouldn’t be too much worse than at your own club. I see that Zealand is very demanding regarding this and he is probably one of the better managers out there. In his current save with some Austrian club he never sends anyone out on loan unless the club has at least great training facilities. I believe that is the third highest possible level below state of the art and superb. Perhaps this implies that one should never loan out players unless the potential receiving club has training facilities within two levels of your own? If this is wrong, what is a smarter rule of thumb? Specific example: In my current save with Sunderland I have superb training facilities. Does that mean that I shouldn’t loan out anyone to clubs that have below excellent training facilities (or whatever it is called two levels below superb)? Up until now I have loaned out players as long as the receiving club had at least below average facilities. I was thinking that game time was more important than relatively bad training facilities. But perhaps I have been wrong. Perhaps the reality is more balanced. Perhaps there is a reason that Zealand is so demanding with training facilities, even regarding players 18 and older.

I often rest players for 2 days if the next match takes place 3-4 days after last one. Is there any reason to not do this? When might another approach be better? In particular I wonder what is better for the development of young players, especially those aged 17 and younger. All else being equal, not training is bad for development. But on the other hand, game time at a high level is good for development, especially for players aged 18 and older I understand.

Should one start players with "high" injury risk? I am not very at experienced at FM. So far my rule of thumb is to only start players with "increased” injury risk or better. Partially to lower injury risk in the given match. Partially in order to prevent players getting jaded. But I wonder whether I am too careful. My approach means heavy rotating, at least whenever the schedule contains more than one match per week. With my approach, players seem to almost always show with "high" injury risk if they took part in more than two matches over the last 14 days, at least if their recent game time included 1-2 starts. Thus my approach during a packed schedule with two matches per week for several weeks in a row typically means that I can't start my best players much more than 50% of the time. My approach works rather well by the way, probably because I usually have good strength in depth. But still. It is slightly annoying to rest my best players as much as I do. I wonder whether it is necessary. I wonder whether my heavy rotation regime is the best way to get through a season without too much injury risk and jadedness. I play Gegenpress by the way. And usually play in leagues with many matches during a season, Championship or League One. So quite a bit of rotation and squad depth is obviously needed no matter what. But I still wonder whether I am too cautious and rotate much more than I need to. In case I should rotate less, how little rotation can I get away with? I know from experience that too little rotation works quite poorly, at least long term. The players get jaded. Possibly more injuries as well, but I don't know regarding the latter. I any case I don't want to end up in the opposite ditch like I did in my first few FM saves. I don't want to rotate too little with the effect that I have problems with jaded players further into the season. Edit: I never start players whose fitness it excellent/tired or worse. For me, that is too much in the opposite ditch. But I wonder whether I should loosen up a bit and start players with allegedly "high" injury risk if they otherwise seem in good shape, fitness excellent/match fit or better.

I would be thinking of selling in any case. I get annoyed when a young player develops poorly and his transfer value drops over time. I wonder whether I could have spotted that development early and sold him while his value was higher. Yeah perhaps I have used the wrong words in earlier posts. Perhaps a more correct way of putting is that for some youngsters, current ability doesn't develop much, and nowhere near what it could have done according to their original potential.

Very interesting. Sounds like I shouldn’t sell anyone with good potential on paper until they are at least 21. But whether to sell the underachievers when they are 21, 22 or older? From my limited experience their star PA drops a lot at each birthday from 21 and onwards, not much before then.

I still wonder how actively one should try and identify the underachievers as Zealand calls them. And try to sell them while they are young, have potential on paper and you might be able to sell them for a high price. And if you should have that approach at times, when and how more specifically.

Some young players just won't develop well, even if you handle everything perfectly as a manager. As Zealand explains here: Some players just have too bad hidden mental abilites etc. to the extent that you can't turn them around. So the question is: When to cash in? I assume that it so some extent depends on the situation, on the given player. But in any case I believe that there are cases where it is wiser to cash in on a young, poorly developoing player. While he is still young, still has high PA that suckers are willing to pay for. Zealand makes the same point somewhere in the video. However, I am unsure about the details. When specifically to cash in on such players. Always wait untill they are at least 19, have had a full season out on loan? Always untill they have at least turned 17 and are on professional contracts? Always wait untill they are at least 18 where you know more about their PA? Something else? Cash in when they have developed poorly for how long? 6 months? 12 months? Something else? Example: In my Sunderland save, one of the original players, Dan Neil, is on paper quite talented to begin with. 19 y/o at the start, Premier League PA. However, he always seem to develop poorly. In a previous save I eventually sold him for 1.7m when he was 23. I imagine he is the kind of player where I ought to have monitored his progress early on. And probably sold him while he was younger to cash in on his higher PA at the time.

As the title implies - as a rather inexperienced Football Manager I feel like I have still so many questions and so few answers. Which youngsters to keep, to sell, to mentor? I would greatly appreciate any input from you experienced and knowledgeable managers out there. My ideas so far (I might abort some of these ideas in the future when proven wrong): Keep anyone who is good enough to be in your first team squad (your best 20-22 players depending on how many matches you play in a season). A no-brainer really. Keep anyone with Premier League potential. Probably also the ones with Championship potential because they can also often be sold for a decent fee if/when they will obviously never become first team players. Probably keep anyone where the PA in the coach report says: "Can improve a lot", no matter how poor their PA star rating. Because those players are a bit like lottery tickets, sometimes they develop tremendously and the PA star rating can improve over time. This probably also mean: Keep anyone at age 16 or 17 since their PA is often or always very uncertain at that age, they could come good. Sell anyone with PA 2.5* or lower (however this partially conflicts with point no. 3, I am uncertain which is better) Keep any youth intake player that the ass man suggest that you keep because you just never know, any one of them could come good (like no. 3). Keep anyone with a good personality, anything better than balanced. At least untill they are older and have League One coach report PA or lower. Like point 3 + 5. Keep anyone where the coach report says that they are consistent and/or like big matches. Like no. 6. Regarding youngster with sell on value: Keep them untill they have had at least one season out on loan. To see if they develop well. To judge whether or not you can grow their value sufficiently by subsequent loans in the following seasons. Regarding mentoring: Whom to mentor? Anyone your keep around, arguing that it might grow their CA, PA or sell on value? Only the best ones? Perhaps it is a more complex decision, it also depends how many decent mentoring older players you have available? I guess it is important to ensure that the best youngster get good mentoring, if necessary then sacrifice mentoring for second rate youngsters.

I wonder: Do I risk running into longer term problems if I max out my wage budget? In other words, if I slide the transfer budget vs. wage budget slider towards to the left, towards wage budget - and I eventually sign players and spend that wage budget - what happens longer term? Do I risk getting financially squeezed 1-2-3 seasons down the road? Do I risk that the board later gives me a much lower wage budget so that I need to offload players on the cheap etc.? I ask this because I am rather new to the game. It would be great to hear from experienced manager out there rather than having to spend time stumbling through seasons making random choices in order to exploring this from scratch myself. I would of course prefer to maximize my wage budget to the extent that it is long term sustainable. And on the other hand I probably prefer to lower the wage budget to the extent neede to minimize the risk of the mentioned long term economical squeeze that might in theory occur if I ramp up wage spendings too fast and aggressively. Just my initial thoughts as a rookie FM player.