FM has increasingly become a lonely game. Tactics, buying, selling, motivation, morale, all things that you are left to do on your own. And things get tougher over time, the AI gets cleverer, tactics get much harder to 'crack', players are more human in their reactions (excluding the ludicrously bad private chat feature) and FM becomes a wholly different beast

Staff, over the years, have been spectators to your management. For version after version, they have done nothing than train and give often vague reports on players but that time has passed. The recent addition of backroom advice has brought new realism to the concept of a staff team. The long period of pointlessness has meant that many FM players are unsure as to how to deploy their staff.

Arguably one of the very best managers of all time, Sir Alex Ferguson, has long admitted that his backroom staff own a lot of power when it comes to match tactics, selection and transfers. Fergie is by no means a master tactician and with Valter Di Salvo, Steve McClaren (don't laugh!) and Rene Meulensteen having passed through the club's coaching staff over the past decade, it is a fair assumption to make that SAF uses backroom influence to his advantage. Trust between coach and manager is fundamental to success, and this is achieved by hiring good coaches and not upsetting the natural development of staff fresh from a playing career.

Developing staff?!

Staff, like players, have a CA and PA. An obvious line of thinking is that similar attributes encourage their CA gain - determination, professionalism and ambition being massively important I would expect. Keeping staff members busy is also really effective at helping them develop in my experience- sending that scout on a world recruitment trip gains a whole new meaning. At Dinamo I signed a regen scout called Tim Humphreys based mostly on his adaptability and determination, but also on his fairly decent JPA and JPP (14, 16). After six months of searching Western Africa for the next Didier Drogba or Asamoah Gyan, I noticed his JPP slowly rising, about 1 point every couple of months and after two years his JPP hit 20.

I think this logic applies to all type of staff members- coaches gain CA most quickly from managing a reserve or youth team, but I would take a stab in the dark and guess that they can also benefit from having their suggestions in the backroom advice screen taken on board. They suggest a prospect? Scout him. They suggest a sensible individual training focus? Use it. This is a staff members version of the development triangle.

Practice x Personality is a logical link to make to CA gain, but slightly more speculatively, could the quality of players worked with have an effect? A coach working with Lionel Messi will surely improve quicker than fat Steve Simpson on a Sunday morning. There are all sorts of things that could be thrown into the mix; facilities, workload etc. I'm digressing and speculating, all that should be said is that staff can gain AND lose CA, and all managers should consider this and have a revolving door of young coaches coming in and ageing ones going out. There's no reason why you shouldn't recruit young coaches a few years away from their pomp and then use the jobs at your club to improve them efficiently and rapidly for the gain of you and your players.

Recruitment

Most of your staff team should be hired on the premise that they are a good coach according to the star ratings on the training screen. This is the primary function of the majority of my staff team, and you should never substitute a good coach for motivator or tactician. Wherever possible, sign 9 coaches and fill the training categories with at least 4 stars at the highest level and then get as high a coach allowance as possible from your board. Determination, level of discipline, motivating (DDM) and the relevant section attribute are essential for high rating coaches.

Mr Motivator: this coach should have high figures in man management, working with youngsters and motivating. His job is to help keep morale high and give advice on any concerns players may have.

Tactician: an obvious role. He'll need good tactical coaching and tactical knowledge in order to give you analysis on opponents and patterns from match to match.

Suggester: now, I don't know if that's a word, but that's what I call it, alright? Generally knowledgeable about the regions around you with good judgement of player ability and potential.

Always look to sign promising young coaches with a good personality. Players fresh from retirement from your club are brilliant choices as they are likely to be friends with many of your players, improving staff-player relations and altogether helping morale stay high, meaning the "recommend possible future staff role" option much more power. Boca tend to supply me with a number of good coaches between the ages of 35 and 45, be sure to check them out and keep your staff team fresh with staff that are close to that period of rapid attribute growth.

Advice

The backroom advice screen is the place where staff have their glory. This is the room that contains everything you could possibly want to know about your team. This place is to a football manager what the Hall of Prophecy is to Harry Potter. IT'S THAT GOOD! Analysis about goals, reputation and tactics are useful but not often things you can act upon, although you can see that you're conceding mostly in the last 15 minutes and therefore set yourselves up to be more focused in the dying embers of matches.

The most powerful aspects to the backroom advice screen in my opinion though, are the pre-match and pre-season meetings.

Pre-match meeting

In this meeting, take note of the person giving you the advice. You don't want Mr Motivator telling you to push high up and get in their face do you? The knowledge panel on the right hand side is your friend. The box at the top tells you who is telling you to do such and such and how much they know about each section of the meeting, and the second box shows the second opinion and how his knowledge about this specific subject compares to the initial adviser. This panel is everything you need to know about a staff and you should be aiming to have a coach with 90%+ in each and every category, so you can be certain that you have one person who knows as much as you can about every category to test the truthfulness of advice.



The advantage/disadvantage advice is what I mainly use from this screen. You will be told that your team is worse at dribbling, or better at passing and this kind of thing can win you games, it really can. In the situation I just made up, it's a fairly clear conclusion to make that you should try and reduce your defenders' and defensive midfielders' run with ball instruction, paired with the retain possession shout to use your squad's passing talent to your advantage. Your team is stronger and more aggressive? Press them, they're poor passers so they won't be able to put the ball on a sixpence behind your defence. Sensible, informed decisions can win games, and they sure do win me games.

Pre-season meeting

The pre-season meeting with my staff is what decides my tactics, signings and sales. This rather simple list detailing your team's strengths and weaknesses compared to the other teams in your league can make or break your season, and your success is based on how well you use this knowledge, whether you do it through real-life knowledge or by paying attention to this meeting.

It is becoming a bit of a cliche to say "your tactics need to suit your team" but I'm going to say it. Your tactics need to suit your team. This is absolutely, crazily, ridiculously important and I'll take a guess that about half of all tactics problems are as a result of players not fitting their role in the team. The game basically hands to you on a plate your best three formations- use them! Try and remedy any blindingly bad weaknesses in your squad in the transfer market, and on the other side of the coin, use your strengths to pick your tactical instructions and pitch size. Logic once more prevails in this situation- give a fast team as much space as possible, an aggressive one as little as possible, and so on and so forth.


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