Welcome to the ultimate pre-season training guide for Football Manager. Here we’ll touch upon how to approach the most important period of the footballing season – the preseason. Together with FMNatics, who have done a considerable research on how to set up pre-season training on Football Manager, we’ll be sharing our tips and tricks on how to approach pre-season on Football Manager by providing you with the most proven methods to ensure player’s match sharpness, morale and team cohesion is at its best.
Along with sharing FMNatics methodology on setting up pre-season training you will get a better insight to the importance of pre-season, what you need to think about when planning and setting up training schedules for the pre-season as well other helpful tips to make sure your squad gets off to a great start as the new season begins.
Get a better understanding on how to set up pre-season training on Football Manager the best way possible as we will guide you through the step by step process and methodology we use to get our players match fit and ready for the season by balancing training intensity and match load without increasing the risk of injuries and poor morale.
Table of Contents
Watch FMNatics video on how to revolutionize pre-season on Football Manager with his specific training method designed to maximize player fitness and improve performances below, or continue reading to learn more about how to get a more successful pre-season on Football Manager.
The Step by Step Guide to a Successful Pre-Season on Football Manager
Have you ever wondered how to approach the pre-season on Football Manager? Today we’ll take a closer look at one of the most important periods of the footballing season – the pre-season, and how you should prepare your players for the upcoming season.
In our pre-season training guide, we will cover:
- what’s deemed as a successful pre-season? what’s the purpose and benefits of setting up a pre-season training regime?
- what are the fundamental aspects to focus on in the pre-season and how you should plan and execute training for a more successful pre-season on Football Manager
- proven strategies to improve player’s fitness and performance
- complete six weeks training guide feat. training schedules to use
How I approach the pre-season on Football Manager can be a time consuming affair.
I can’t hide the fact that I normally spend around a week and tenths of hours in real time focusing totally on this period of the save. I personally think it’s highly important to lay down a plan to make it as effective as possible and I’m very pedantic in my ways. Everything must be done right and in the right order, in order for me to feel the squad is fully prepared for the season.
Follow along as we reveal our methodology for pre-season training on Football Manager. Aided by the tremendous research FMNatics has done by applying different pre-season training methods to see what works best, we will share our step by step guide for a more successful pre-season on Football Manager.
The Importance of Pre-Season Training?
Once the players return to training after a long but necessary holiday, it will be a busy time for everyone within the club. Whilst the recruitment team will look at new potential signings, the manager and coaching staff will turn their attention from preparing the players for the upcoming match to get the team to improve their fitness and physical condition for the new season ahead.
Rather than maintaining the players form and having to focus on injury prevention and maintaining the player’s form or forced to put most of his attention to analyzing the next opposistion and prepare the team for the upcoming match, the pre-season gives the manager the opportunity to prepare the squad for the upcoming season by laying most of the foundation for future success on the training ground.
It’s here the importance of planning and executing an appropriate pre-season training regime comes in.
As the players return to the training ground, often in poor shape and physical condition, comes the need to get the players back to match fitness, and by doing so lay the foundation for a successul season.
One of the greatest tasks for the manager before the pre-season period begins is to set up a strategically plan on how to prepare the squad for the next season. We need to planning the period thoroughly and put attention to the correct priorities by actually consider the most important tasks for this important period of the footballing season.
Although some of you may want to rush through the pre-season to play competitive matches and continue your pursuit of trophies, we recommend that you take the pre-season seriously. In fact, if you don’t, it could be the fast track to disaster, as you’ll probably start the new season off in the worst possible way!
Rather than leaving all your pre-season tasks in the hands of your assistant manager, or coaching staff, it’s better to take an all hands-on approach both in the planning of your club’s pre-season training and the execution of it.
What is the objective by pre-season training?
When planning your pre-season, everything should revolve around the main objectives with the pre-season period. In my opinion, there are four different areas you need to focus on as you consider how to plan and execute pre-season training on Football Manager.
Here I’ll quickly list some of the most important purposes of pre-season training.
- Improve the tactical familiarity of your tactics both for the team and for the individual players
- Enhance the team cohesion and gelling the squad together.
- Increase the match sharpness and player condition in order to decrease the player’s limit of getting jaded easily or withstand typical injuries relating to stress and tolerance.
- Improve the players morale by playing friendly fixtures
Other Objectives with the pre-season period, (which will not be covered in this guide) are;
- Analyze the last season – complete a squad analysis looking at strength and weaknesses
- Get an overall picture of the Squad – Complete Squad Planning for the coming season and the next (e.g. transfer and recruitment policy relating to playing pathways). Here you can use the Squad Planner or the Experience Matrix to see areas of improvements
- Sketch out new tactical plans and perhaps even test them out in practice!
- Sketch out a Player Development Plan (for the Individual & the Team)
As we discover, the pre-season period requires attention to both the individual players and the team, and requires strategic thinking and a methodical approach where you aim to get the best possible results so you are off to a good start for the new season ahead.
What is considered a successful pre-season?
A successful pre-season on Football Manager could be summarized and grouped into two different focusing areas. In reality, we could look at pre-season preparation from a team level and from an individual player perspective.
1. Team Training
In your planning and execution of team training, your squad should work towards gaining better tactical familiarity of your preferred tactics and tactical style. You should work towards ensuring your players gains a better understanding of their position/role/duty, tactical instructions and style you’re opting for – meaning the partnership of the players and positioning of the players in relationship to eachother is starting to pick up and improve according to the matter of team cohesion.
Improving the tactical familiarity levels is one of the most important tasks within the pre-season. The aim is to get those bars as high as possible, the fast as possible. The quicker the team and the players become fluid within an area of the game the better they play.
Actually, it’s one of the factors which improves the squad’s overall performance.
Apart from applying appropriate training sessions, matches are essential to improving the familiarity levels (both for the team and for the individual players). Players who is featured in matches will gain familiarity and understanding of your tactics quicker than someone who is continuously left out of the match squad.
The players needs to play in the position and role in an actual game, with the primary trained tactics, in order to gain familiarity of it. Playing a player in one role the first half and another role for the second half will limit the effect and will increase the time they become fully fluid with your tactics.
At the end of pre-season, the team and its players should be at least accomplished, or fully fluid, in the different aspects of tactical familiarity before the first match is closing in.
If you want to learn more about how to maximize tactical familiarity on Football Manager we have created a more in-depth guide which looks closer at this aspect of Football Manager.
2. Players Fitness
As the objectives reveals, the pre-season period should work on improving the player’s natural fitness so they can better withstand injuries and regain the player’s fitness so they can tolerate the heavy fixture list and the intensity of the tactical system that’s about to come.
By prioritizing improving the players physical condition and match sharpness you look to make them better prepared to withstand the heavy fixture lists and match load a long and rocky season can include, as well as increasing the chance of better future performances.
How you set up training for the pre-season should therefore revolve around the players are returning to fitness before the season kicks off. He should be both match fit (in excellent condition) or fully fit (in peak condition), be match sharp or gaining sharpness, and have a low risk of injuries, in order to deem the executed pre-season training method successful.
A player who is match fit takes less time to get tired during the game, is less prone to get injured, and will recover faster between each match!
FMNatics’ guide on pre-season training
In order to achieve all that you need to balance your team training with appropriate training schedules that both limits the number of injuries via a good pre-season training regime, as well as improving their physical conditions.
11 Tasks to Do When Starting a New Save
What you need to do before hitting the continue button on Football Manager!
Determining the Length of Pre-Season Training
Before being able to provide you with our actionable steps on how to approach the pre-season on Football Manager comes the necessity to talk about how long the pre-season should last.
When starting and setting up a new save in Football Manager you’ll be able to decide on the game start date along with selecting the playable nations and active leagues.
You’ll get the chance to select from Early, Late, Start of Season, First Matches in Champions League or Europa League. Every nation has a different Early and Late game start date according to when the season ended and the new season begins. It will vary according to the nations you’ve selected as playable and can vary from June to December, depending on when the league kicks off.
Setting the game start to the start of season or for the first matches in CL / EL means you’ll skip the pre-season period entirely. An early game start will mean you’ll have a longer time frame to conduct all your necessary businesses before the new season kicks off.
This means that you’ll be able to decide how short or how long you’d like to put your influence over the team and its preparations ahead of the upcoming season.
In Football Manager you have the opportunity to set another game start than the default for the nation. This means that you’ll be able to manage in England but set the start date of France or Germany, if you have added them as playable nations. This gives you the opportunity to extend the pre-season period and give you an extended time to take care of all the most important pre-season tasks.
Selecting an earlier start date than the recommended default for the nation might mean the players are away on holiday, but gives you time to plan and analyze the squad, find the best coaches or scouts, or set out scouting assignments and find useful transfer targets quicker.
Apart from that, you’ll be able to set up the training scheme for the immediate first week of pre-season, making sure the players got purposeful training from day one, rather than it being set up by your coaching staff, and you need to modify already existing training schedules in the middle of the week.
Personally, I recommend to ensure the players gets at least 6 weeks of pre-season training. This means that if you should manage in one of the top 5 nations, who has the earliest start date of July 3rd, you could select Belgium as a playable nation and go by their earliest start date, June 26th. This will give you an extra week to plan the pre-season before the players comes back from holiday.
A pre-season preparation email will be delivered to you by your assistant manager or whoever in charge of providing coaching advices. This email will give you worthy information about any planned training camps, how the training schedules for the first week of pre-season looks like and the duration of pre-season.
5 Steps for a more successful pre-season on Football Manager
Over the next chapters we will take a closer look at how to improve the success of your pre-season training in Football Manager and what you need to do to get your squad ready for the new season. From battling with players lacking match sharpness to setting up pre-season friendlies we give you our step by step guide on how to revolutionize pre-season on Football Manager.
Step 1: Setting up Friendly Fixtures
After you have set up your tactics and gone through the process of evaluating your players, one of the first steps when planning your pre-season is to schedule friendly fixtures. Apart from the opportunity to ask your team to play a full 11-a-side practice match, friendlies are the most effective way at this time of the year to improve both match sharpness, tactical familiarity and team cohesion.
Arranging Friendlies
In Football Manager, you’re able to select from Tours, Cups, Leagues, Single or Multiple Friendly Matches.
The tour gives you the ability to travel to another region or country, and play friendlies against teams within that nation, or nearby clubs who are on a similar training camp in that area. It’s typical used to enhance the reputation of your club in that country or region but might not be the most important thing for smaller clubs.
You can decide to play anything from 1 friendly on the tour to multiple ones.
A tour can be a great way to gel the players together as they will live with each other for a longer period of time. A travel cost will be deducted when going on tours.
Cups and Leagues let you select four opponents who will face each other in a minor tournament. It can be a great way to get some extra income and gate receipts by looking for opponents of higher reputation, and test yourself against better or equal opponents. These cups or leagues will mean you’ll play two consecutive matches, meaning there are no time to rest between them.
Normal friendly matches can be scheduled home or away at a more regular time frame (e.g once a week, twice a week or any second day) depending on the intensity you prefer.
How many friendlies to arrange?
One of the first tasks at day one is to take a closer look at the Calendar and Fixture list to determine how many friendlies to arrange and what will be most appropriate for the club within the pre-season. I might cancel friendlies which doesn’t fit my preferences and arrange some new ones.
When setting up the fixture list for the pre-season my preferred method is;
- try to arrange 6 to 8 friendlies to ensure the tactical familiarity is accomplished by the time of league start. The amount of friendlies I arrange is determined primarily by how large the squad is and how much time I have before the season starts.
- I will not schedule any fixtures the first week of pre-season, nor the last week before the first competitive match of the season. The first friendly is applied Saturday in the second week – meaning the players should have gone through around 12 days of physical training before the first friendly match.
– Whether you want to schedule a pre-season match three days before the season kicks off is up to you, but I personally wish to prioritize my focus on match preprations and tactics used so close to the season.
– Whether the players are in form by the first season is not that important to me as I consider the first month as an extention of the pre-season training as the entire season won’t be totally ruined. - Friendlies are scheduled Wednesdays and Saturdays replicating how a normal season is.
- Wednesday friendlies are often played against opponents with smaller reputation (perhaps from divisions below me or at a similar level as me). The idea is to play a match against an opponent where you got a strong chance of a win and can test the players abilities in the attacking third; their attacking movements and being in possession of the ball. The team will work on the mental side of attacking and entering the final third. Facing a team with smaller reputation as you is a great way to increase the players morale with a win. Typical pre-match team talks are; Have fun or there is no pressure.
- Saturday friendlies is used to play against better opponents, either foreign teams or teams with similar or larger reputation who plays at a higher level of football. Playing against better opponents will not only increase the development of the players but also test the players capabilities relating to defensive positioning and defensive transition.
- Generally I tend to schedule at least 1 matches against better opponents IF I got time for it.
Why playing friendly fixtures against weaker opponents?
The whole idea behind arranging friendly fixtures against both clubs of smaller, equal and better opponents are five-folded:
You want to play friendlies to;
- improve player’s morale by winning matches – meaning playing against weaker teams is highly beneficial
- improve finances – especially important for minor clubs
- get to assess players performances by playing against teams of equal standard and thereby being in a position to better judge on your created tactics.
Disclaimer! You should not fully judge your tactics based on pre-season match performances but it might give you a few hints of the players capabilities - improve players physical condition and match sharpness by getting an appropriate amount of game time
- improve players tactical familiarity and understanding of their positioning along with increasing team cohesion
I would avoid simply arranging friendlies against better opponents or teams of equal levels as you might come in the situation where the morale drops to a below fairly okay level which will limit the future performances and achievements.
NB! I never schedule friendlies the last week before the league start!
How to earn money from playing friendlies?
Apart from the objective of building up the players match fitness through training and to recover the players fitness level after a long summer break, this period gives the club the opportunity to improve its reputation and promote the club to a new fan base. This is mainly done through tours and international tournaments.
Promoting your club to new foreign countries can increase the finances over time, by selling more merchandises and season tickets, or get purposeful sponsorship deals in the future.
While it’s not one of the main purposes within the pre-season period, it let you improve your finances in the short term by playing friendly matches against clubs with an higher reputation. These friendlies has another benefit outside selling your club to new fans and media, but to also enhance the finances by getting an extra income.
Remember that you’ll have to pay a fee to play a friendly to the opponent. Playing away, the income might break even with the fee. This means that the only way to gain money from friendlies are by playing at home!
Step 2: Set up Primary Trained Tactic
Before we are able to play any of the friendly matches, it’s important to create or set up your tactics. If you’re a brand new manager to Football Manager your assistant manager will give you some recommendations of tactical styles that could fit your current squad when going through the Tactics Creator.
You can either choose to go along with his suggestions, highlighted with a thumbs up icon, or create a brand new one by picking your preferred tactical style, formation and choice of player positioning, role and duty.
Once you’re tactics is selected, it will also become your primary trained tactic – as seen within the Training Overview screen.
To increase the tacticval familiarity levels in the most effective way possible, we recommend to only have one tactic being trained. This means that you have not applied, any other tactics.
This ensures that the full focus at team training goes to maximizing the different tactical aspects of the tactical familiarity levels.
In terms of tactical instructions, the more team instruction you choose, the more complex the tactics will become – resulting it takes a longer time to increase the tactical familiarty to high-end Accomplished or Fluid.
Keeping your team instructions simple with minimal team instructions applied, the faster the tactical familiarity levels will increase with less matches played.
You can change player role and duties on the different positions without making an impact on the tactical familiarity levels. However, if you suddenly change from a 4-2-3-1 with two DM’s to a 4-3-3 the tactical familiarity of Position/Role/duty will immediately drop. Same goes for changing the match mentality either within or before matches.
It’s worth to know that getting fully fluid tactical familiarity levels of ‘Position/Role/Duty’ is the area that tends to take the longest time, so don’t get worried if your first match is approaching and it’s “only” Accomplished. The reason is that it takes into account all your players individual familiarity of their positioning, player role and duty – something that might be difficult as every squad may have players who will have difficult to fit into the current tactics and gain familiarity of the tactical style.
Step 3: Manage Team Selections
Let us assume you have gone through the process of analyzing your squad. You know your most likely first team line-up, who will most likely make an impact from substitutions and who are the emerging talents within your squad.
Once you have started to get a grips of your potential first team selection, I like to manage my team selections by grouping my players into a First Team XI and a Back-up Team. This is especially handy if you swap between two different formations or shapes for home or away, like I tend to do, or you have a large squad of 20 plus players who could all play a role as a potential first team starter.
Ideally, you would have a back up player for every position within your squad – meaning you should have 22 players that needs to improve their condition before the season starts.
Once you have chosen the players for each position of your tactics, you can save that team selection.
In FM24, you can easily create different team selections by clicking on the;
Click Quick Pick > Select Manage > Save Team Selection
Give it an appropriate name and it will be stored for all future within that save.
Pick a B-Team or second team and go through the process again.
Step 4: Match Minutes
Now, you might wonder why we wish to create multiple team selections? Isn’t it as easy as drag and drop and thereby change your starting line-up once a player is tired or has picked up an injury.
For the pre-season period, our mission is to get all of our players match fit and ready for the season. Or, at least that as many players as possible has regained their fitness and could be used for 90 minutes if called up.
By arranging 6 to 10 friendlies I make sure a broad selection of my players (both first team players and reserves) gets match experience, through squad rotation.
The idea by playing similar or weaker opponents on Wednesday and better opponents Saturday gives me the opportunity to both rotate the squad and give everyone a chance to play, as well as improve player’s morale!
At Saturdays, my preferred starting XI will play at least 60 minutes, if not the full match whilst on Wednesday I will rotate the squad more and let players challenging for a spot in the starting line up start the match together with emerging talents and those potential first team candidates.
Over the course of the pre-season, my ambition is to give all my players almost an identical amount of game time. Whether they play full 90 minutes in each of the first two matches or some play 60 minutes and some play 30 minutes hasn’t been of my concerns.
However, FMNatics has created a table displayed how many match minutes you should give your players for each of the eight friendly fixtures arranged for the pre-season which will be of high value as he has done more testing on what’s most beneficial than me.
If you want to get FMNatics’ golden rule about how much game time you should give to your players in order to make them match fit and ready for the season, please watch jhis video on how to revolutionize pre-season training on Football Manager.
To help you, I have created a specific custom view that helps you with the assessment of players condition in the pre-season. You can get my Pre-Season Assessment Custom View by downloading our Custom Views Megapack.
One of the goals before the season starts is to limit the number of injuries to a bare minimum. It’s important to avoid any injuries. However, this will depend on the player’s physical attributes and overall injury susceptibility. Some players, might have an higher risk of picking up injuries – meaning you need to take into account their match load and physical condition when considering the amount of match minutes to provide to each individual within the squad.
Step 5: How To Set Up Pre-Season Training on Football Manager
Finally, we have the very pinnacle of our guide to pre-season training, and that’s how to setup it up. As promised, we will deliver our six weeks training guide looking closer at how we set up training schedules for the first weeks of pre-season as well as giving you a better understanding of the reason why we opt for these training sessions.
The objective when creating pre-season training schedules is to balance the focus between physical training, improving team cohesion, tactical familiarity and match sharpness in additional to the key attributes for the playing style (its tactical DNA). You’ll have to consider the injury risk and probability of increasing the player’s fatigue. Apart from that comes the necessity to improve the player’s morale and happiness so they can perform to their best.
Training must be coordinates and planned, focused around the purposes described above.
To make it as effective as possible, it’s important to lay down a plan. A plan for the pre-season training and a plan to get the players and your squad in the best state possible.
When setting up your training, you should consider multiple things, which the purpose of your applied pre-season training should revolve around.
- 1) how you can improve tactical familiarity
- 2) how to balance training load with match load and the risk of players picking up injuries
- 3) how to improve players morale and team cohesion
- 4) how to ensure the player’s are gaining fitness and match sharpness
When creating any training schedules, you need to ensure the fitness levels can be maintained throughout the season, meaning you can’t just put the players on a heavy training schedule week in and week out, as that will tire them out and eventually make them unhappy. Too little intensity and training, and the players will not perform to their best, perhaps due to the lack of fitness when playing on soft surfaces and in difficult weather conditions.
As you might know, Football Manager comes with a range of default training schedules created for specific scenarios, tactical styles and training styles. Their types of pre-season training schedules is perfectly fine and could be used as you see fit. Below is an example of a typical heavy pre-season schedule which is perfect for the early weeks of pre-season.
However, in order to make training as effective as possible, I have worked out a specific pre-season preparation plan I always use.
For me, a typical pre-season training plan can look like this:
Week 1 of Pre-Season
In week 1 the main focus will be on working on player’s physical condition and improve their strength, stamina, overall natural fitness as well as starting to get familiar with the team tactics by improving their team cohesion and tactical familiarity levels.
Out of the 7 days in the first week training regime, player’s will prioritize most of the time on physical training sessions that aims to improve their tolerance for fatigue.
In my pre-season training schedule for week 1, I have five days where I focus on either Endurance, Resistance or Quickness with a Recovery session applied right after, in order to reduce the injury risk from such an intensive training schedule.
To improve team cohesion, I have a mix of general training sessions which will also improve their tactical familiarity as well as their understanding and positioning of their position/role/duty. My preference is to schedule a Tactical General Training session along with either a Defensive or Attacking session, as well as at least one Outfield training session per week.
To ensure player’s happiness and team cohesion is increased, I try to cramp in one extra-curricular on one of the days within the weekend. I prefer to use Team Bonding as it both decreased fatigue as well increasing Team Cohesion slightly more than Community Outreach.
Since this is the first week of pre-season I have set up the training schedule in a way that the intensity slightly increases as each day passes by, with Thursday the most intensive training day. Then, the next two days the intensity will be lower to help the players to recover from the intensive training and thereby reduce the overall injury risk before another week of intensive physical training.
The pre-season week 1 training schedule will look like this:
Week 2 of Pre-Season
In week 2 of pre-season, training becomes more specialized with a little more focus on tactical familiarity, as well as increasing the number of intensive training days.
This week will be more or less a continue of the last but with two similar training days working on improving the player’s natural fitness, strength, work rate and stamina.
At the end of this week, the players should have gained a slightly better familiarity with the mentality, width, position/role/duty, passing style, tempo, pressing intensity, marking and creative freedom of your team tactics as you will have four days working on the tactical knowledge.
Same as last week, you will have one Team Bodning session to improve their cohesion.
For the first time within the pre-season, the players will start to develop their knowledge of the creativte freedom, tempo and passing style you prefer within your tactics, as the second week starts to introduce more sub-principles of the game model. In this instance ‘Attacking Patient’.
PS! Depending on the length of pre-season and how much time you got until the first match, week 2 can be replaced by a training schedule that I’ve named ‘Pre-Season – 1 Match’.
Week 3 of Pre-Season: 1 Friendly Match
For the first time in the pre-season, week 3 will start to introduce friendly fixtures. Until now, most of the attention has gone to improving player’s condition rather than tactical familiarity but at this time, you will have almost a 50-50 focus on improving players tactical understanding and continue the focus on getting the players match fit.
This week will be the last week of highly intensive training before the players will play more frequent friendly fixtures.
Notice how I have arranged a Match Review session the day after the friendly match. A Match Review session will have 100% focus on all the different tactical familiarity levels, as well as increasing team cohesion greatly.
Week 4 of Pre-Season: 2 Friendly Matches
For week 4, the players will experience playing two matches per week for the first time. Due to the overall load of playing matches, the players will not be asked to hit the gym to work on their strength or fitness but will instead focus their attention towards a better understanding of the tactics with the use of a mix of General training sessions and more specific training sessions relating to the sub principles of the tactical style – e.g ‘Ball Retention’ for possession-oriented systems, ‘Transition Press’ for gegen-pressing systems or Attacking Direct for counter-attacking systems.
The two training sessions on Thursday will thereby depend on your tactical style and instructions. If you want to keep it basic, you can simply select Tactical sessions (Defensive Shadow play or Attacking Shadow Play). Regardless of what you prefer, you want the training session to be focused around active recovery at a minimal intensity – below 35%.
To reduce the injury risk from the high training and match load, you should notice how I apply Recovery sessions the day after the friendly match and try to get their condition back to normal.
This training schedule can be used for several weeks until the week of the first competitive match. It’s often I tend to use this training schedule for week 5 and 6 too, if the pre-season lasts around 7 to 8 weeks.
Week 5 of Pre-Season: Team cohesion
The last week before the first competitive match, your entire focus should revolve around improving the players team cohesion and overall happiness.
By now, the player’s morale should have been increased by winning matches. However, normally you would sign players within the pre-season or the team cohesion hasn’t seen a major progress so far.
For week 5, I tend to apply the training schedule I’ve liked to called Teamwork. This schedule has two sessions in the week to improve player’s teamwork and team cohesion. In fact, most of the training sessions revolves around increasing the team cohesion as you will both have a ‘Match Practice’ and match preparation focus focusing on the ‘Match Tactics’.
This schedule can be used for an additional week, or at any occassions where you have made multiple signings that has reduced the Team Cohesion within the club.
Discover how FMNatics set up pre-season training in the video above as the training schedules he uses is slightly different. However, the overall intention and plan is somehow similar as players becomes match fit and has improved their physical condition ahead of the season.
What about Individual Training & Additional Focus?
In the case of FMNatics, he doesn’t apply any additional focus at individual training. At this point of time, the entire training focus should be at working on learning his position/role/duty rather than any other training focuses that will enhance each player’s individual workload.
Personally, I like to keep training intensity to Normal within the pre-season – at least for the first team starters. For the rest of the players you could use Double Intensity but be wary of his training workload and progress. His Determination and professionalism are things you can look at to decide whether he could tolerate and improve by double training intensity.
If you have a bunch of professional players with great Determination and Natural Fitness, I wouldn’t see any drawbacks by setting them to Double Intensity Training for the pre-season period.
Worthy Knowledge
1. How To Improve Tactical Familiarity?
Improving the tactical familiarity levels is one of the most important tasks within the pre-season. The aim is to get those bars as high as possible, the fast as possible. The quicker the team and the players become fluid within an area of the game the better they play.
Actually, it’s one of the factors which improves the squad’s overall performance.
Apart from applying appropriate training sessions, matches are essential to improving the familiarity levels (both for the team and for the individual players). Players who is featured in matches will gain familiarity and understanding of your tactics quicker than someone who is continuously left out of the match squad.
The players needs to play in the position and role in an actual game, with the primary trained tactics, in order to gain familiarity of it. Playing a player in one role the first half and another role for the second half will limit the effect and will increase the time they become fully fluid with your tactics.
Massive changes to your tactics relating to mentality, formation and shape, passing and tempo, creative freedom, width, pressing intensity, tackling and marking in additional to width within a match will hurt the progress of the familiarity. Playing the same formation, but with minor and subtle changes means the progress of the familiarity will be affected minimal, meaning you might see the team only needs a few matches to gain familiarity compared to playing a completely new tactic (new formation, shape and different tactical instructions e.g 4-3-3 possession versus 5-2-1-2 gegenpress).
The time it takes to learn a new tactic and becoming familiar with it depends on a number of factors.
Quite briefly, it depends on the number of tactics, the types of training sessions selected, the amount of matches and how many minutes every player gets in the system. Due to the amount of players within a traditional squad, gaining full familiarity may take up to two months considering you’re asking the team to learn two or three different systems, but it can also take as short time as 4-6 weeks in the right circumstances (one tactic being trained, squad size of under 16 players and a club which is adept with the playing style.
It’s important to note that the more specialized system and the more advanced the playing style is, the longer it takes to improve the tactical familiarity. By using the default team instructions such as Balanced Match mentality, a passing and tempo style that is set according to it, and a width that is set to default, the tactical familiarity will take a shorter time to get accustomed to. As soon as you make in-game changes, the players will then need to get familiar with the new settings so you’re back to square one.
2. How to Increase Team Cohesion
Team Cohesion is affected by the amount of time the players have been playing and training together. Alongside the tactical familiarity it affects how the team comes together.
On the pitch, the level of team cohesion will affect the player’s positioning, their vision and anticipation and generally their ability to react on unfolding events as the squad is not gelled together.
Poor level of team cohesion will reduce the players understanding and the overall performance of your tactics. This appears in poor knowledge of team mates movements and positioning in all phases of play; how they shall move and be positioned in relationship to his team mates, both with and without the ball, when tracking back or when trying to regain possession by pressing the opposition.
They will be more likely to understand the duties of the players nearby them, what’s required of them if the partner close down and press the opponent, tracks a marker or moves forward, and which spaces he might need to move into to support and cover for his teammates.
Specific training sessions can improve the level of it to a greater degree.
This means that the amount of training sessions you select, which impacts team cohesion slightly, will together affect the level of team cohesion. as you’ll see there are some specific training sessions which increases the level of team cohesion far more than the others. They are often sessions which also improves the attribute Teamwork.
The team cohesion has a major effect on your players mental state. Quite simply we can say; the better the team cohesion, the more fluidly will the team play, and the better will your tactic perform.
Training Schedules which affects Team Cohesion at a greater level:
- Match Preparations: Teamwork and Match Practice
- Match Preparations: Match Tactics, Defensive Shape, Attacking Movement
- Extra-Curricular: Team Bonding
Sessions which increases it slightly;
- Extra-Curricular: Community Outreach
- General: Overall, Outfield, Attacking, Possession, Defending, Tactical
- Tactical: Defensive Shadow Play / Attacking Shadow Play
- Defending (Defending Engaged, Defending Disengaged, Defending Wide, Defending From the Front)
- Attacking (Attacking Wings, Attacking Patient, Attacking Direct, Attacking Overlap
Combining the sessions which increases the Team Cohesion at a greater level with those who improves it slightly will have a major effect of to how well the players blend together.
The team cohesion will naturally increase the longer time the player’s are playing together. With no transfer activity and few new youngsters promoted to the first team, you’ll increase the chance of the team cohesion bar to increase more than if you sign multiple players within a short period of time, and make drastic changes to the squad quite often.
3. Match Sharpness & Overall Physical Condition
A players overall physical condition and match sharpness is an indicator of a player’s level of fitness and how ready the player is for competitive matches. It describes a player’s injury risk and how likely the player is to endure full 90 minutes on the pitch.
A players physical condition level, described with a heart icon that ranges from green to red, is linked to his injury susceptibility, the overall training and match load for the player as well as overall injury risk based on his overall natural fitness.
It’s viewable within the squad overview, a players profile or in the Medical Centre.
A players’ match fitness influence the players condition in matches and predicts his ability to perform during a match and his probability to last through a full 90 minute match. A player needs to be selected in multiple matches to reach 100% match fitness. (As a rule of thumb a player will increase his match sharpness by 10-30 percent for each match played in preseason, when fit (90-100% condition)
The overall physical condition will naturally decrease throughout the match, meaning that the longer the player plays on the pitch, the higher tempo of the match, the more he has to run, the tougher pitch conditions and the lower physical attributes he got, the more will the number decrease. The state of the pitch and the weather are issues that will cause the condition to decrease at a faster rate, especially if the player in question has a low stamina and natural fitness rating.
A player with low levels of overall physical condition indicates that he’s fatigued or jaded which will increase the risk of injuries, whether it is through training or matches.
A player who have recently come back from an injury will have a lower level of condition and match sharpness compared to a fit player. The condition will also be lower than normal if the player has played lots of matches in a short time without giving a rest and/or has been put under high intensity training. A player with low levels of natural fitness will see his overall physical condition decrease faster in these situations.
How to Improve The Physical Condition?
One way to improve the player’s physical condition is to run the player through a pre-season training plan which focuses on his ability to withstand fatigue and generally improve his level of fitness. By improving the player’s fitness levels they build up the endurance and physical condition to play a higher number of consecutive matches without getting jaded or fatigued as quick as before.
The idea is to wear down the player in order to build him up, improving his stamina, strength and overall natural fitness to tolerate the overall load of the football season. A carefully planned Condition training which aims to improve the players physic and overall capabilities to withstand fatigue and injury risk has a number of advantages.
If the conditions are low, you’re able to regain the player’s fitness level after matches or intense physical training by recovery and rest, either by decreasing the training intensity and amount of training sessions a day or three or by giving him a day off.
The training intensity scheduling feature in Football Manager is excellent to use for the purpose of balancing the intensity in training compared to a player’s condition. Here can I apply the amount of intensity (double, normal, half, or no pitch or gym work) according to a players condition and monitor it individually. You can instruct a player to double his intensity and set up manual actions according to his level of fitness or let the game do it automatically by dropping the intensity if the condition drops under a certain level.
By setting the training intensity level to automatic (default), the intensity will be set according to the players individual condition level. That way, you can have players with a low match and training load working under a more intensive intensity while another get some rest.
The intensity training scheduling is located in; Training > Rest
The screenshot above reveals my general approach to it.
Since you can improve the players level of condition by training and matches, following are some of the most important training sessions which affects the condition. If you manage to carefully consider decreasing the condition and increase the likeliness of getting tired (read fatigue) and injured with recovery and tactical periodization where you carefully build up the load, then you’ll be able to improve the player’s overall fitness.
Useful Training Sessions for Condition;
- General: Overall and Physical
- Physical: Endurance, Resistance, Quickness
It’s important to note that every training session will decrease a player’s conditions while increasing the risk for injuries and fatigue if the load and intensity is high enough.
Too much physical training and intensity in training will impact the player’s ability to recover for the next match or next training session and will therefore suffer as a result. Perhaps even picking up minor injuries as the result.
The match sharpness represents, as said earlier, the player’s readiness for competitive matches. It’s an indicator of whether he will be able to cope with the tempo of the match and its overall requirements. It can be used as the indicator of whether the player is in form or not – being able to play at his full capabilities.
The match sharpness is gained by minutes on the pitch and subsequently lost by a lack of competitive football. This means that the match sharpness will decline the longer a player sits out matches, whether it is due to injuries or not being part of the match squad.
A player with low levels of match sharpness will have an higher risk of getting injured. It’s important to focus on improving the players match sharpness, both for your best players as well as for your subs.
Friendlies is a great opportunity to ensure your players regain match sharpness after their summer holiday break. Another is if the player has been out with a long term injury, meaning you’ll need to carefully get the player back in shape without risking new injuries or more severe injuries which can be career threatening. Your task will be to nurture him back with carefully planned gaming time, perhaps starting out with just a few minutes of game time at the last minutes of the match before adding the tally up to 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes.
How to Improve Match Sharpness?
While the conditions decrease throughout the match, the match sharpness will improve (most evident in the pre-season). It’s your job as the manager to build up the entire squads match sharpness by providing as many players minutes on the pitch as possible, ensuring you got a competitive squad who can endure the tempo of the match, their duties and the load of playing weekly matches.
You can improve the match sharpness by;
- Training; Match Practice
- Matches; Friendlies, Cup and League Matches
Here you have our tips on how to approach the pre-season on Football Manager!
I hope you’ll been given some ideas and thoughts about how to plan and set up your pre-season training on Football Manager and get a better undderstanding of why you should have a greater focus on your pre-season preparations by applying a methodical plan.
If you should have any questions relating to it, please get in touch or use the comments below. Any questions relating to pre-season will be added here for your convenient.