FOOTBALL MANAGER 2024 TRAINING
Training in Football Manager refers to the process of improving your players’ attributes and skills, as well as enhancing your team’s overall performance.
Football Manager 2024 Training
Training in FM24 is organized into weekly schedules focused on specific tactics and tailored to the number of upcoming fixtures. Each week typically includes multiple sessions designed to account for player workload and intensity. You can choose your level of involvement in training:
- Delegate entirely to your Backroom Staff, using preset schedules and sessions.
- Customize training by selecting from preset schedules and creating your calendar.
- Take full control by tailoring units, sessions, and schedules to your exact requirements.
It’s important to consider player happiness and needs during training. Overloading players, improper individual training, positional unit neglect, or attribute emphasis can lead to player dissatisfaction.
Sessions
When you select a session on the weekly Calendar view, you’ll find a variety of session categories to choose from. These categories include General, Match Preparation, Attacking, Defending, Technical, Tactical, Goalkeeping, Set Pieces, Physical, and Extra-Curricular. Each category offers different tactical focuses, such as Attacking Patient, Attacking Direct, Attacking Overlap, or Defending from the Front.
Sessions typically benefit the entire first-team squad and are divided into Offensive, Defensive, and Goalkeeping Units. The unit with the Primary Focus receives 60% of the training focus, while the others have a Secondary Focus. For example, in an Attacking Session, the Offensive Unit works on chance creation and finishing as the Primary Focus, while the Defensive Unit focuses on their defensive strategy against it, and the Goalkeeping Unit strives to prevent goals.
Some Sessions involve the entire team working together, swapping roles, except for the Goalkeeping Unit, which remains dedicated to preventing goals in all practical sessions. Analysis sessions are conducted as a whole-team activity in a classroom setting.
Schedules
Weekly schedules are essential for planning your team’s training throughout the season. Keep a close eye on the Intensity indicators when adding or removing sessions to avoid overloading your team, which can lead to injuries and fatigue. You’ll also find indicators for the suitability of each day for the Goalkeeping, Defensive, and Offensive Units.
Extra Sessions can lead to player fatigue, especially for your main squad. Youth teams, on the other hand, can benefit from the extra learning and development time, but be cautious not to over-train young players and risk burnout.
The structure of your schedule depends on your available players and managerial philosophy. You can use the ‘Select Schedule’ button to start with a pre-made schedule tailored for different periods of the season. Pre-season may be more physically demanding, while mid-season and late-season schedules focus on recovery, analysis, and tactics. However, the choice is entirely yours.
Professional clubs have a full week for training, while semi-professional and amateur clubs have three days, including a match day, for their training regimen.
Units
Units are categorized into Attacking, Defensive, and Goalkeeping divisions, allowing you to assign players to each unit based on their roles during training sessions. It’s important to note that this assignment is consistent for all sessions; you can’t place players in different units for different sessions. Goalkeepers are naturally part of the Goalkeeping Unit, and you can easily move players between the Offensive and Defensive setups by dragging and dropping them.
Additionally, players from the Reserve or Youth Teams can be included in any unit, providing them with valuable exposure to higher-quality training, which ultimately enhances their potential development.
Mentoring
Mentoring, formerly known as Tutoring, enables younger players to learn from their more experienced teammates by participating in joint training sessions. To form a mentoring group, you need a minimum of three players.
The effectiveness of this learning process depends on various factors, such as the similarity between the players’ profiles, the senior player’s age, their importance within the squad, and the rapport among the group members.
The influence of the mentoring relationship is an ongoing process, and the longer they train together, the more successful it is likely to be. However, this influence is not infinite; there comes a point where the mentoring reaches its maximum benefit, and further involvement won’t be as helpful to the younger player.
Individual
Players can be assigned new Positions and Roles to train in, and this training occurs automatically within appropriate Units during Sessions. Additionally, players can focus on improving specific areas of their game or attributes that are crucial for their position and role. Individual training can include:
- Injury Rehabilitation: Focusing on Quickness, Agility and Balance, Strength, Endurance, and General Rehab (for players recovering from injuries).
- Set Pieces: Enhancing Free Kick Taking, Corners, Penalty Taking, and Long Throws.
- Attributes: Improving Quickness, Agility and Balance, Strength, Endurance, Defensive Positioning, Attacking Movement, Final Third, Shooting, Passing, Crossing, Ball Control, and Aerial.
- Goalkeeping: Developing Reactions, Tactical skills, Technique, Sweeping, and Distribution (Long and Short).
You also have the option to give players some time off from regular training, ranging from one day to two weeks. This can boost player morale, especially after important matches or as a reward for excellent performances, but it should be used thoughtfully and sparingly.
Coaches
The [Coaches] tab allows you to manage your coaching staff’s roles in training. Coaches can generally work in various aspects of training, unless they specialize in areas like goalkeeping or fitness, in which case they are limited to those specific categories. Reserve or Youth coaches are dedicated to working with players in those age groups.
Each member of your coaching staff excels in specific training areas. It’s beneficial to assign them to these areas where they specialize. Their proficiency is rated with stars, with a higher number of stars indicating better effectiveness in training. By assigning coaches to categories aligned with their strengths, you can create more effective training schedules for your players.
You can also assign yourself to training areas based on your managerial attributes chosen during profile creation, following the same principle of specialization.
For a successful season, it’s recommended to have a well-structured pre-season program to ensure players are in peak physical condition when the season kicks off. You can choose from predefined templates or create a custom approach, but a strong start during pre-season sets the tone for the entire campaign.
During pre-season, players have minimal fatigue (unless they’ve been on international duty in the offseason). When fatigue is low, physically demanding training sessions improve long-term fitness and help prevent player burnout. However, as fatigue levels rise, these same sessions can have negative effects more quickly.
Balancing the workload during matches is essential. Conduct a Match Preview session before each game for Pre-Match Briefing and benefits like opponent analysis. After a match, consider a recovery session the next day to allow players to rest and recuperate.
The ‘Extra’ slot should be used mainly when you have a week or more without a match, as rest is just as crucial as training activities.