Your players will train every day, with the occasional day off. This is, of course, absolutely necessary for them to attain match fitness and be absolutely prepared ahead of each game. By default it is assumed that your Assistant Manager is in charge of your Training – if you’ve made no changes or simply tweak the default settings, this is the case, but should you wish to become more hands-on in your approach, then it’s fully down to you to keep track of and control.

9.3.1.      The Training Screen

The Training screen is split into three panels.

The top left panel lists all schedules currently available for use and the number of players currently training under that plan. Schedules do not necessarily mean that a physical group of players are assigned to them; they are merely guidelines given to your coaching staff about how each player should be trained and the targets they should be working towards. To this end, it is entirely appropriate to have individually tailored training ‘schedules’ for each player should you so wish, as they will effectively be training as a group but with different personal development aims.

The top right panel is the workload panel – a summary of what you’ve set up for your squad. The bottom panel lists all of your players, their current training schedule, and any attribute changes they’ve undergone since beginning their training schedule.

There are nine areas of training which affect the overall workload, all of which are slider-controlled, and accessible from the ‘Schedules’ tab.

It may be useful to create schedules either for each individual player (if you’re ambitious and pay a close attention to detail) or position, in order to focus intently on the areas important to those players, whilst leaving the less important ones alone, thus balancing their overall workload. To create a new schedule, select the ‘Schedules’ dropdown, then ‘New’ -> ‘Full Time Schedule’.

You may manage these schedules from the ‘Manage Schedules’ button. In here, all existing training schedules are held, and by clicking on one you enable the options found at the bottom of the screen. You can Import/Export training schedules, delete them, or rename them. When Importing/Exporting, you will need to give the schedules an overall name, and then select the individual schedules to load/export.

Individual Players

Things can be tailored even more specifically to a player from the ‘Training’ tab on their profile screen. From the ‘Training Report’ panel you can assign him to a different schedule, set up a new Individual Training Focus, begin training them in a New Position, adjust their own workload Intensity and receive advice and updates from your coaching staff on all of this.

The ‘Individual Training Focus’ aspect of development allows you to target a specific area of a player’s attribute profile and focus extra work on it. For example, you may have a talented defender who is lacking a bit in the heading department. In order to try and address this, you can select ‘Heading’ as an individual focus, and the player’s ‘Workload’ panel  (towards the bottom left of the main screen area) will update with the adjusted numbers.

You can keep track of the effect this is having, if at all, in the adjacent panel marked ‘Attribute Development’. Select a ‘Training Category’ from the drop-down menu to label the appropriate attributes for that area in different colours, which area also plotted on the graph at the bottom to show month-by-month progress.

Coaches

The ‘Coaches’ tab, available from the tabs in the bottom panel, controls how your coaching staff handles training. Each coach is, by default, assigned to work in every aspect of training, unless they are of a specific type (i.e. goalkeeping or fitness), in which case they are restricted to that area only.

Each member of your backroom staff is likely to be particularly proficient in a particular aspect of training. If this is the case, it is worthwhile to assign them to this/these area(s) only. Proficiency in an aspect of training is graded on a star rating, one star being poor whilst five stars are excellent. A higher number of stars will increase the effectiveness of the training schedules on your players. A coach with high attributes in key areas who is only assigned to coach categories he is strong in will result in a much better training schedule.

In order for your coaches to be as useful as possible to you in your training schedules, you should endeavour to find the correct attributes required for more stars in their area of training.

• Strength: Coaches should have a high Fitness rating.
• Aerobic: Coaches should have a high Fitness rating.
• Goalkeeping: Coaches should have a high Coaching Goalkeepers rating.
• Tactics: Coaches should have a high Tactical rating.
• Defending: Coaches should have high ratings in Coaching Defending and Tactical.
• Ball Control: Coaches should have high ratings in coaching Technical and Mental.
• Attacking: Coaches should have high ratings in coaching Attacking and Tactical.
• Shooting: Coaches should have high ratings in coaching Attacking and Technical.

The ‘Summary’ panel at the top right of the screen provides a brief overview of the quality and intensity of your training schedules. Each category has a bar displaying the number of players currently training under that area as well as how intensely they are training.

Youth

Everything in this section applies to Youth Training. Your youth team players will train together, but bear in mind that as younger players who are still physically developing, intensities will behave differently and you may have to balance and fine-tune things a bit more accurately to get the best out of them. Your senior coaches may work with the youth team in addition to youth team coaches if you wish to give them the benefit of their strengths and experience, whilst youth players may be invited to train with the first team should you wish them to do so.

9.3.2.      Match Preparation

At the end of the day, you train in preparation for a match. This is where Match Preparation comes in. Whilst the Training tab deals with the technical and physical side of things, this will allow you to focus on your tactical approach for your next match. It can be found on the ‘Tactics’ tab under the ‘Overview’ sub-tab.

You will be able to select up to three tactics to prepare for use in the upcoming fixture, allowing your squad to gain greater familiarity with the system they’re about to use. This can be done by clicking on the ‘Add Tactic’ button within this panel.

There will also be the opportunity to focus on one particular area or style of play, designed to take advantage of your opponent’s flaws. For example, if they’re particularly prone to conceding from set pieces, you might want to focus heavily on Attacking Set Pieces. This will come at the expense of Team Cohesion and Attacking Movement, which will instead receive your usual levels of attention, but the extra time spent on Attacking Set Pieces may be the difference between winning and not winning.

You are able to use the specific focus even if you have no immediate fixture – which is perfect for honing an area of your squad and style. Spending a longer period of time working hard on executing a plan correctly will pay dividends.