As promised in my approach toward training thread I'm going deep into the mystery of Football Manager training. Bear in mind that these experiments take time so it may be 4-5 days until a new experiment is up (especially if it requires personal attention and monitoring).
Introduction:
Training in Football Manager is a slow methodical way of interconnecting with the attributes system of players. There are predominantly three basic training functions in Football Manager: developing players to their peak, maintaining a status quo for already peaked players, or stopping drastic decline for veteran players. It is a general consensus that Football Manager doesn’t include direct tactics-training relationship, i.e. if all players train on set-pieces category it would not improve tactically their set-pieces, merely the attributes in the category. This will indirectly improve team set-pieces play by directly improving the taker technique to strike the ball accurately in the right direction. Undoubtedly, the training system is not a stand-alone one. It has inner-factors that have to be taken into account as they vary for each player, team, coaching staff, facilities et cetera. While this is meant to be a rough guide of how training works, starting from a bird view on attributes distribution, schedules and controllable factors it will eventually move on into the micro level and experiments, which hopefully, would shed light how this all makes sense rather than vague theoretical assumptions.
Let’s dive in then, shall we?
This chart represents the current variables-constants assumed to have some sort of impact on player’s vital attributes in relation to his role, and therefore match performance.
* Red circles represent variables, or things that we as managers can have impact on in-game while black circles represent constants determined by destiny, database or the SI Gods.
All of these circles are connected in some degree in a chicken or the egg syndrome – it’s difficult to specify sometimes what leads to what. Let me elaborate on each of the constants, explaining the reason why I assumed it has any effect on training.
CONSTANTS
Age – Logic and tradition claim the younger the player the more potential he has. This can be argued to a certain degree but come into expression in game by Current Ability (CA) – Potential Ability (PA) difference. Young players tend to have more “spare” CA points than veterans. Occasionally a young player will reach his peak in early stage of his career, players like Aguero, Rooney, Messi and Fabregas have above 170+ CA and 180+ PA so principally the game wouldn’t allow them to improve any further no matter what.
Professionalism – hidden attribute that stands for the player’s approach to the game, including training. This requires further testing but since we as managers have no direct line to players’ personality (other than mentorship perhaps) – I’ll leave it for now.
Determination – player’s passion to the game, and one may suggests it has the most significance to all aspects of game (tactics, media, training and more). Like professionalism, there is a certain degree to which a manager has control on his players’ determination; therefore it is irrelevant for now.
Built-in peaking system – this system is built into the game by the developers. It suggests generally what positions peak in a certain age; for instance goalkeepers will reach their peak at the age of 32 while midfielders will peak by the age of 28 and so and so. This has effect on players’ decline after-peak and it is the reason why players start physical declining no matter what after a certain age (with the exception of model-professional veterans, with high stamina and natural fitness that play regularly, like Javier Zanetti). This is a very interesting notion that I’m looking forward to experiment on.
Injury Proneness – how susceptible a player is to injuries is something which we don’t have control on, however we do have control over player physical training intensity and general fitness. Discovering the general rules that have effect on the tolerance level of a player to physical intensity is one of the biggest secrets that I want to shed light on.
Training facilities – this is something that we can ask for improvement from the board, but often it’s declined or taking too much time. I’m looking forward to reveal whether it’s more beneficial to loan a player to a better training camp with plenty of first team appearances than specifically design a schedule in my team.
Natural Fitness – This attribute as the name may suggest is “natural”. The training system mistakenly suggests that it can improve it via physical training. However, I failed to see a player dramatically improve on this area if any.
Potential Ability – In conjunction with age the potential ability value of a player has to be high value in order to see any significant improvement over lengthy training regime. Low potential leaves no room to redistribute attributes or to add value; this is FM way to tell us the cold bitter truth: “Some of you will try, try hard, but would still fail”.
It's experiment time!
Experiment #1 – Work Rate
This is what I did:
I used the editor to create two players: High and Low.
Both are almost-identical, same age, same values, same person – with one difference. Low is a lazy, sits on his ass type of player with 1 Work Rate while High works like hell, with a 20 Work Rate.
I didn’t take over Chelsea; they’re both on their own with no further interference by me.
General Time-Line
9th July, 2009 – Start of experiment
High CA: 75
High PA: 200
Low CA: 75
Low PA: 200
9th July, 2010 – After a year
High CA: 87 (+12)
Low CA: 81 (+6)
9th July, 2011 – After 2 years
High CA: 98 (+11)
Low CA: 88 (+7)
Low was purchased by Aston Villa for $300K
8th July, 2012 – After 3 years
High CA: 111 (+13)
Low CA: 92 (+4)
8th July, 2013 – After 4 years
High CA: 126 (+15)
Low CA: 96 (+4)
8th July, 2014 – After 5 years
High CA: 140 (+14)
Low CA: 99 (+3)
8th July, 2015 – After 6 years
High CA: 148 (+8)
Low CA: 101 (+2)
7th February, 2017 – After 7.5 years
Low joined the previous season to Hamilton, Scotland for free. He is on his 2nd season there after 56 appearances and 20 goals total.
High CA: 158 (+10)
Low CA: 105 (+2)
7th February, 2018 – After 8.5 years
High CA: 162 (+4)
Low CA: 105 (+2)
7th February, 2019 – After 9.5 years
High CA: 161 (-1) – High is unhappy after Hull not letting him move to a bigger club.
Low CA: 105 (+2)
7th February, 2020 – After 10.5 years
High CA: 164 (+3)
Low CA: 105 (0)
6th February, 2020 – After 11.5 years
High CA: 168 (+4)
Low CA: 105 (0)
6th February, 2022 – After 13.5 years
High CA: 164 (-4)
Low CA: 101 (-5)
As you can see the conclusion is unequivocal – Work Rate is one of the most influential parts of a successful player improvement. Of course this brings another question that need to be answered:
If work rate is such a vital attribute wouldn’t it better to train all players to maximize their work rate levels via strength training – even those who according to their role – just don’t require work rate?
Experiment side effects:
The growth in CA is in relation to PA-CA (age, built-in peaking system) which brings up the question whether specific training after the age of 26-27 can actually make a difference?
Jumping and Natural Fitness haven’t improved at all;
Therefore:
- Natural Fitness cannot be improved via training.
- Jumping represents height, they’re not separated values and should be calculated as one – Jumping.
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Comments, arguments, questions, and things you always wanted to know that relates to this in some cosmic way. They're all welcomed.
Until next time…
One x_x
