Introduction
This article will go through the training module in Football Manager 2011, how it works, what all the sliders do and how to utilise them properly. All info presented in this article is factual, confirmed by the developers either through personal messages or through the official SI forum. Any speculative information will be noted as such.
The original article can be found here; http://bit.ly/cIsq01
Training Categories
There are 9 different training categories. Two of them are fitness related, two of them are goalkeeping related, and the other 5 are general training. All categories affect visible player attributes only, and you can read more about what player attributes do and how they interact with each other in the Player Attributes Explained article.
The first important thing to know, is that all affected attributes in a training category have an equal chance of increasing. As an example; the strength training category affects natural fitness, stamina, strength and work rate – but none of the attributes have higher priority than the others, they all have an equal chance of increasing if you’re training the strength category.
Lets go through the training categories one by one:
Strength (physio training)
This category affects 4 different attributes; Natural Fitness, Stamina, Strength and Work Rate. Especially useful category if your players lose condition quickly in matches, and is a good category for pre-season training (see the Pre-Season section for more info).
Aerobic (physio training)
This category affects 5 different attributes; Acceleration, Agility, Balance, Jumping and Pace. Mainly for improving the athleticism of your player, it will make him faster, more agile and steadier on his feet. Often used in conjunction with the Strength category to increase a players overall physical presence.
GK – Shot Stopping (goalkeeper training)
This category affects 4 different attributes (2 of them goalkeeper specific); Reflexes, One on Ones, Composure and Concentration. This category trains the goalkeepers mental abilities, useful if your keeper makes poor judgements and buckle under pressure.
GK – Handling (goalkeeper training)
This category affects 4 different attributes (all of them goalkeeper specific); Aerial Ability, Kicking, Handling and Throwing. This category trains the goalkeepers physical and technical attributes, useful if your keeper has accuracy issues. Aerial Ability is the goalkeeper equivalent of Jumping, deciding how high the goalkeeper can reach.
Tactics (general and goalkeeper training)
This category affects the most amount of attributes ( 8 ), as it also trains goalkeeper attributes if applied to one; Anticipation, Decisions, Positioning, Off The Ball, Teamwork, Command of Area (GK), Communication (GK) and Rushing Out (GK). Being the category that affects the most amount of prime attributes (2), it’s the most important one, especially for younger players. It teaches them to read the game, how to move and how to make good decisions. If a goalkeeper is training this category, it’s an extension of his mental goalkeeping training, making him interact better with his team and make better goalkeeping decisions.
Ball Control (general training)
This category affects 5 different attributes; Dribbling, First Touch, Technique, Flair and Heading. All are technical or accuracy attributes except for Flair, which is an attribute that controls the unpredictability of a player. This category is useful if you feel your players repertoire is limited, and/or if you feel the player needs to control the ball better, as indicated by the category name.
Defending (general training)
This category affects 3 different attributes; Tackling, Marking and Concentration. A fairly straightforward category, useful for all defensive minded players to increase their defensive precision.
Attacking (general training)
This category affects 3 different attributes; Passing, Creativity and Crossing. Not as simple as the previous category though, as this one contains the prime attribute Creativity, which essentially controls how many options a player has to choose between, together with Technique and Flair. Useful for all players on the pitch, but obviously most useful for attack-minded players.
Shooting
Lastly, this category affects 3 attributes; Finishing, Long Shots and Composure. Pretty self-explanatory, this category is useful for all players expected to provide end product, and will increase both a player’s accuracy in front of goal and how well he will make a decision under pressure.
As previously mentioned, ALL attributes in a category have an equal chance of being increased, and this is true regardless of how many attributes are in a category.
Training Score (Advanced)
So now that we know what the categories do, it’s time to understand how this is all calculated to result in an increase for one or more attributes. Simply explained; a training score is calculated in every training category, and then that score is used to decide whether or not attributes are increased or not.
This training score is calculated from three different factors;
• Category Workload – how high the slider for the category is set.
• Coach Workload – light, average, heavy or none.
• Coach Ratings – the amount of quality (stars) the coaches have for the category.
When this score has been calculated, it’s put up against player happiness, hidden mental attributes and the current attribute levels, and then decides if the training has been a success, and if so, at what rate. Higher value attributes are harder to train, and player morale affects the training performance. The final result is simply that one or more attributes are increased, or not.
The higher the training score is, the bigger the chance that one or more attributes will be increased.
The Category Workload Sliders
There has been much speculation about the mystery of the sliders since they were introduced in Football Manager. Several theories exist, but there really is no mystery to them: there aren’t any trigger limits, the increase is purely linear, forcing you to find the sweet spot on your own. The labelling (medium, high, intensive, etc) is only there for visual feedback.
Every notch increases the final training score (the chance of a player improving an attribute). In order to have a realistic chance of one or more attributes to increase, a minimum level of ‘medium’ is recommended for the slider connected to the category in which the attributes are tied to. Even though a player could still increase an attribute at the lowest possible slider setting, the training score is so low at that level that the chance is almost non-existant.
Keep in mind though, that the sliders are only one part of the equation that forms the training score. Coach workload and quality (stars) are almost, if not equally, as important.
Also keep in mind that the higher the overall workload, the bigger risk of injury and player unhappiness.
Coaches & Workload
When it comes to coaches, it’s simple really; the more stars, the better.
The coach workload decides the speed of the attribute increases. ‘Light’ will get you results faster, ‘medium’ slower, ‘heavy’ slowest and ‘-’ none at all. It doesn’t affect the level of increase (how much), just the rate (speed).
If you have a 5-star coach and a 1-star coach training the same category, the training won’t be affected by the low level coach. The rating is all that matters, it’s the overall indicator of how well the category is being trained. Therefor, it’s safe to sign high level coaches for all 9 categories, and then use low level (cheap) coaches to fill out the category workloads to ‘light’.
With that in mind, the best long term plan is to prioritise star rating over workload.
Coach Attributes
Similar to player attributes, coach attributes consists of background, prime and secondary attributes, but they have a different meaning when dealing with coaches.
Background Attributes
There are two types of background attributes. The first type (coaching) influences the training score for individual players. They are Man Management and Working With Youngsters. They are the equivalent of each other, so the former is preferred for first team or regular coaches, while the latter is preferred for youth coaches.
The second type of background attribute (mental) controls things like how well the coach settles at the club and his tactical knowledge. This also includes his judging abilities, so the mental background attributes are most important when choosing an assistant manager.
None of the background attributes have an influence on the star rating of the coach.
Prime Attributes
Prime attributes are used for every training category when calculating quality level (stars). They are Determination, Level of Discipline and Motivating. If these three attributes are high enough, the coach is generally good at most of the training categories, regardless of his secondary attributes. Prime attributes can make up at least 50% of the maximum star rating for all categories.
Secondary Attributes
Secondary attributes only affects specific training categories. Here’s how secondary coach attributes affect specific training categories, and how much:
• Attacking – 43% attacking and 24% shooting
• Defending – 43% defending
• Fitness – 62% strength and 62% aerobic
• Goalkeepers – 43% GK (shot stopping) and 43% GK (handling)
• Mental – 24% ball control
• Tactical – 43% tactics, 19% defending and 24% attacking
• Technical – 43% ball control and 43% shooting
With all this information we can now make some pretty good assumptions on how to select and appoint coaches. High background (coaching) attributes will increase the training score, and high background (mental) attributes are best for assistant managers. High prime attributes are preferred in all cases, and then the secondary attributes are used for specific categories.
Custom Schedules
The training has been overhauled in FM2011, and there are now more default schedules instead of just General and Goalkeepers. These default schedules are only there to make training easier for those who don’t wish to travel deeper into the training module, but in order to maximise your players potential you need to create custom schedules.
There are different approaches here. Some create broad schedules, similar to the default ones, but with altered category sliders. Some make schedules for every position, and some even make schedules for every individual player.
Making schedules for every single player isn’t really necessary in FM2011, as we now have individual focus on top of the general training. More about that in the next section.
In my opinion, the best approach is to make custom schedules for every base position + team specific + pre-season. So in my case, first I make schedules for goalkeepers, central defenders, full/wing backs, defensive midfielders, attacking midfielders, wingers/wide forwards and strikers. I then create a ‘prime’ schedule, a team-specific schedule in which the main focus of my team is trained. Maybe my team has an attacking personality, so the focus would be on that. Lastly I have a pre-season schedule for increasing player fitness levels when they come back from their season break.
Individual Focus & Set Pieces
New for FM2011 is that you can set individual training focus for all players. This is helpful if you want to be more specific than the training categories allow you to be.
It allows you to focus and spot train one of 7 physical (all except natural fitness), 3 mental or 13 technical (all except tackling for some reason) attributes – the most powerful ones being the prime attribute Technique and the important Composure attribute that controls how well a player performs under pressure.
The other important aspect here is that in earlier FM versions, you had a specific Set Pieces training category. With that being replaced by a goalkeeping category, you have to use individual focus to train set piece attributes that aren’t affected by regular training categories; Free Kick Taking, Penalty Taking, Long Throws and Corners.
Match Preparation
Also new for FM2011 is the match preparation panel, giving you a visual indicator as to how comfortable your team feels with your tactic. It also has a temporary effect on specific matches, depending on the special focus area you’ve chosen.
First important thing to understand is that the tactic/workload slider and the special focus areas do NOT impact one another directly, other than special focus areas taking time from all other training activities (including familiarity rate). A higher workload will NOT increase the effects of the special focus areas, and none of the special focus areas will have an effect on the tactic familiarity levels.
Workload Slider
Having this slider at the highest setting (Very High) will not make your players unhappy with the level of training. It will just take away more time from normal training schedules. It’s safe to push this up all the way when learning new tactics, as a short-term solution.
As soon as the familiarity levels reach fluid for all tactics trained, lower the workload slider to Low or Very Low to just maintain the levels, shifting more power to your regular training schedules in the process. The match preparation workload slider cuts into regular training time, so if you leave the slider on Average/High/Very High, training scores will be affected.
Familiarity Levels
As these increase, your players will perform the tactical instructions better.
Always aim to have all bars on fluid. Whenever you alter your tactics, even the smallest of changes will make the game re-calculate the familiarity levels of your team. This is also true in a match – using touchline shouts or altering tactics mid-game could have a negative effect on the team, as they’re not as familiar with the “new” tactic.
Special Focus Areas
These selections are made to gain temporary benefits on a match-to-match basis. They will not stack up (except Team Blend), and should be viewed only as a boost for the next match. If you have a tough game coming up, you might want to focus on defensive positioning, and so on.
Worth noting is that if you have one of the special focuses selected, the familiarity levels of the tactic(s) will have a slower increase. So if you want your team to learn the tactic(s) as fast as possible, have no special focus selected.
The way these focus areas translate into the match engine, is to give temporary boosts to related attributes. The boost is only given if the player is familiar enough with the tactic used, so that’s how familiarity levels and special focus areas tie in together.
Team Blend
This is the only focus that stacks up, and the only focus that is not active during a match. Instead, it’s active in between matches. Having Team Blend set as the default special focus, and then focusing on a specific area one day before a match will give you double the benefits. What Team Blend does is to increase player relationships, gelling them together, which increases morale and performances.
Tutoring & Player Preferred Moves (PPM’s)
When you go to a Player Profile – Positions, you’ll see a list called Preferred Moves. There are two ways to have a player learn a PPM. First one is to have a private chat with him, telling him specifically what PPM you think he should learn. The second one is to have a senior player (that has the PPM you want your player to learn) tutor him, hoping that the player picks up the specific PPM.
In order to tutor the player he needs to be young, and age plays a big part in PPM’s. The older the player is, the more reluctant he will be to learn new tricks.
Overall Workload
In the Player Profile – Training panel, you will see overall workload percentages. These will tell you how much the player is focusing on the different aspects of training.
Every time you add a purpose-built training like PPM’s, new position or individual training focus, it takes a piece out of the Scheduled Training. The match preparation also cuts into this share. The ideal situation is to have at least 70% dedicated to scheduled training, and the rest dedicated to individual focus and match preparation.
Training Tips & Tricks
Using all the information we’ve reviewed in this article, here are some suggestions on how to use training efficiently. Just to be clear, this entire section is speculative and just my personal opinion based on the facts presented earlier in the article.
Pre-Season
Use a specific training schedule, focusing mostly on tactics, strength and aerobics to have players work up their fitness and key mental attributes after the summer break. Have your main tactic loaded as the only tactic in the match preparation screen, and have the workload slider set to High. Have the Team Blend special focus selected all the way through pre-season.
As soon as the fitness information (Player Profile – Attributes) says a player is either match fit or in superb condition, he does not need pre-season training anymore, but I usually keep all players on pre-season training until 2 weeks before the season starts, just to get the benefit of the mental attribute increases.
Set Pieces
Assign individual training focus Free Kicks, Penalties, Long Throws and Corners for your corresponding set piece takers. There is no set piece training category in FM2011, so all set piece attributes has to be increased through individual focus.
Short-Term Training
If you want to quickly raise a specific player attribute, first find the training category in which the attribute is learned. Then check to see if the attribute can be learned through individual focus. Here is the list of what attributes are trained by what category/focus;
So in order to increase a specific attribute as quickly as possible, create a custom training schedule with the corresponding category on Intensive (all the way up), then have the player set on individual focus for the intended attribute. Remove all positional and preferred moves training, and keep the match preparation training as low as possible. Make sure your coach(es) have an ok star rating in the category you’re training, that the category workload is ‘light’ (workload is more important that star rating in short term training), and that the player is happy (high morale). These factors will give you the highest possible training score, and therefor the highest chance that an attribute will be raised.
Long-Term Training
The long-term training is used for creating a team personality and instill a recognisable character to your team. Do you want to be known as a possession-based team? Masters of the defence? With long-term training you will build a specific set of attributes to shape the behaviour of the team.
Using the above list for attribute/training category/individual focus, we can build a custom training schedule that I like to call a ‘prime’ schedule. It should be balanced enough that almost all outfield players should be able to take part in it, to be shaped into your team’s personality and philosophy. But also specifically focused on 1-3 training categories.
Here are some prime schedule examples;
Attacking/Possession (Arsenal, Barcelona, etc) – Tactics and Attacking
Defensive/Counter (Real Madrid, Inter, etc) – Tactics, Defending and Shooting
Muscle/Control (Chelsea, etc) – Strength, Ball Control and Tactics
And so on. The prime schedule should be used mainly for newcomers to the club, so that they blend in well with the rest of the squad, giving them similar attributes. Make sure that your main tactic(s) reflect the training focus as well, it’s pointless having an attacking prime schedule if your main tactic is a defensive one.
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This article will go through the training module in Football Manager 2011, how it works, what all the sliders do and how to utilise them properly. All info presented in this article is factual, confirmed by the developers either through personal messages or through the official SI forum. Any speculative information will be noted as such.
The original article can be found here; http://bit.ly/cIsq01
Training Categories
There are 9 different training categories. Two of them are fitness related, two of them are goalkeeping related, and the other 5 are general training. All categories affect visible player attributes only, and you can read more about what player attributes do and how they interact with each other in the Player Attributes Explained article.
The first important thing to know, is that all affected attributes in a training category have an equal chance of increasing. As an example; the strength training category affects natural fitness, stamina, strength and work rate – but none of the attributes have higher priority than the others, they all have an equal chance of increasing if you’re training the strength category.
Lets go through the training categories one by one:
Strength (physio training)
This category affects 4 different attributes; Natural Fitness, Stamina, Strength and Work Rate. Especially useful category if your players lose condition quickly in matches, and is a good category for pre-season training (see the Pre-Season section for more info).
Aerobic (physio training)
This category affects 5 different attributes; Acceleration, Agility, Balance, Jumping and Pace. Mainly for improving the athleticism of your player, it will make him faster, more agile and steadier on his feet. Often used in conjunction with the Strength category to increase a players overall physical presence.
GK – Shot Stopping (goalkeeper training)
This category affects 4 different attributes (2 of them goalkeeper specific); Reflexes, One on Ones, Composure and Concentration. This category trains the goalkeepers mental abilities, useful if your keeper makes poor judgements and buckle under pressure.
GK – Handling (goalkeeper training)
This category affects 4 different attributes (all of them goalkeeper specific); Aerial Ability, Kicking, Handling and Throwing. This category trains the goalkeepers physical and technical attributes, useful if your keeper has accuracy issues. Aerial Ability is the goalkeeper equivalent of Jumping, deciding how high the goalkeeper can reach.
Tactics (general and goalkeeper training)
This category affects the most amount of attributes ( 8 ), as it also trains goalkeeper attributes if applied to one; Anticipation, Decisions, Positioning, Off The Ball, Teamwork, Command of Area (GK), Communication (GK) and Rushing Out (GK). Being the category that affects the most amount of prime attributes (2), it’s the most important one, especially for younger players. It teaches them to read the game, how to move and how to make good decisions. If a goalkeeper is training this category, it’s an extension of his mental goalkeeping training, making him interact better with his team and make better goalkeeping decisions.
Ball Control (general training)
This category affects 5 different attributes; Dribbling, First Touch, Technique, Flair and Heading. All are technical or accuracy attributes except for Flair, which is an attribute that controls the unpredictability of a player. This category is useful if you feel your players repertoire is limited, and/or if you feel the player needs to control the ball better, as indicated by the category name.
Defending (general training)
This category affects 3 different attributes; Tackling, Marking and Concentration. A fairly straightforward category, useful for all defensive minded players to increase their defensive precision.
Attacking (general training)
This category affects 3 different attributes; Passing, Creativity and Crossing. Not as simple as the previous category though, as this one contains the prime attribute Creativity, which essentially controls how many options a player has to choose between, together with Technique and Flair. Useful for all players on the pitch, but obviously most useful for attack-minded players.
Shooting
Lastly, this category affects 3 attributes; Finishing, Long Shots and Composure. Pretty self-explanatory, this category is useful for all players expected to provide end product, and will increase both a player’s accuracy in front of goal and how well he will make a decision under pressure.
As previously mentioned, ALL attributes in a category have an equal chance of being increased, and this is true regardless of how many attributes are in a category.
Training Score (Advanced)
So now that we know what the categories do, it’s time to understand how this is all calculated to result in an increase for one or more attributes. Simply explained; a training score is calculated in every training category, and then that score is used to decide whether or not attributes are increased or not.
This training score is calculated from three different factors;
• Category Workload – how high the slider for the category is set.
• Coach Workload – light, average, heavy or none.
• Coach Ratings – the amount of quality (stars) the coaches have for the category.
When this score has been calculated, it’s put up against player happiness, hidden mental attributes and the current attribute levels, and then decides if the training has been a success, and if so, at what rate. Higher value attributes are harder to train, and player morale affects the training performance. The final result is simply that one or more attributes are increased, or not.
The higher the training score is, the bigger the chance that one or more attributes will be increased.
The Category Workload Sliders
There has been much speculation about the mystery of the sliders since they were introduced in Football Manager. Several theories exist, but there really is no mystery to them: there aren’t any trigger limits, the increase is purely linear, forcing you to find the sweet spot on your own. The labelling (medium, high, intensive, etc) is only there for visual feedback.
Every notch increases the final training score (the chance of a player improving an attribute). In order to have a realistic chance of one or more attributes to increase, a minimum level of ‘medium’ is recommended for the slider connected to the category in which the attributes are tied to. Even though a player could still increase an attribute at the lowest possible slider setting, the training score is so low at that level that the chance is almost non-existant.
Keep in mind though, that the sliders are only one part of the equation that forms the training score. Coach workload and quality (stars) are almost, if not equally, as important.
Also keep in mind that the higher the overall workload, the bigger risk of injury and player unhappiness.
Coaches & Workload
When it comes to coaches, it’s simple really; the more stars, the better.
The coach workload decides the speed of the attribute increases. ‘Light’ will get you results faster, ‘medium’ slower, ‘heavy’ slowest and ‘-’ none at all. It doesn’t affect the level of increase (how much), just the rate (speed).
If you have a 5-star coach and a 1-star coach training the same category, the training won’t be affected by the low level coach. The rating is all that matters, it’s the overall indicator of how well the category is being trained. Therefor, it’s safe to sign high level coaches for all 9 categories, and then use low level (cheap) coaches to fill out the category workloads to ‘light’.
With that in mind, the best long term plan is to prioritise star rating over workload.
Coach Attributes
Similar to player attributes, coach attributes consists of background, prime and secondary attributes, but they have a different meaning when dealing with coaches.
Background Attributes
There are two types of background attributes. The first type (coaching) influences the training score for individual players. They are Man Management and Working With Youngsters. They are the equivalent of each other, so the former is preferred for first team or regular coaches, while the latter is preferred for youth coaches.
The second type of background attribute (mental) controls things like how well the coach settles at the club and his tactical knowledge. This also includes his judging abilities, so the mental background attributes are most important when choosing an assistant manager.
None of the background attributes have an influence on the star rating of the coach.
Prime Attributes
Prime attributes are used for every training category when calculating quality level (stars). They are Determination, Level of Discipline and Motivating. If these three attributes are high enough, the coach is generally good at most of the training categories, regardless of his secondary attributes. Prime attributes can make up at least 50% of the maximum star rating for all categories.
Secondary Attributes
Secondary attributes only affects specific training categories. Here’s how secondary coach attributes affect specific training categories, and how much:
• Attacking – 43% attacking and 24% shooting
• Defending – 43% defending
• Fitness – 62% strength and 62% aerobic
• Goalkeepers – 43% GK (shot stopping) and 43% GK (handling)
• Mental – 24% ball control
• Tactical – 43% tactics, 19% defending and 24% attacking
• Technical – 43% ball control and 43% shooting
With all this information we can now make some pretty good assumptions on how to select and appoint coaches. High background (coaching) attributes will increase the training score, and high background (mental) attributes are best for assistant managers. High prime attributes are preferred in all cases, and then the secondary attributes are used for specific categories.
Custom Schedules
The training has been overhauled in FM2011, and there are now more default schedules instead of just General and Goalkeepers. These default schedules are only there to make training easier for those who don’t wish to travel deeper into the training module, but in order to maximise your players potential you need to create custom schedules.
There are different approaches here. Some create broad schedules, similar to the default ones, but with altered category sliders. Some make schedules for every position, and some even make schedules for every individual player.
Making schedules for every single player isn’t really necessary in FM2011, as we now have individual focus on top of the general training. More about that in the next section.
In my opinion, the best approach is to make custom schedules for every base position + team specific + pre-season. So in my case, first I make schedules for goalkeepers, central defenders, full/wing backs, defensive midfielders, attacking midfielders, wingers/wide forwards and strikers. I then create a ‘prime’ schedule, a team-specific schedule in which the main focus of my team is trained. Maybe my team has an attacking personality, so the focus would be on that. Lastly I have a pre-season schedule for increasing player fitness levels when they come back from their season break.
Individual Focus & Set Pieces
New for FM2011 is that you can set individual training focus for all players. This is helpful if you want to be more specific than the training categories allow you to be.
It allows you to focus and spot train one of 7 physical (all except natural fitness), 3 mental or 13 technical (all except tackling for some reason) attributes – the most powerful ones being the prime attribute Technique and the important Composure attribute that controls how well a player performs under pressure.
The other important aspect here is that in earlier FM versions, you had a specific Set Pieces training category. With that being replaced by a goalkeeping category, you have to use individual focus to train set piece attributes that aren’t affected by regular training categories; Free Kick Taking, Penalty Taking, Long Throws and Corners.
Match Preparation
Also new for FM2011 is the match preparation panel, giving you a visual indicator as to how comfortable your team feels with your tactic. It also has a temporary effect on specific matches, depending on the special focus area you’ve chosen.
First important thing to understand is that the tactic/workload slider and the special focus areas do NOT impact one another directly, other than special focus areas taking time from all other training activities (including familiarity rate). A higher workload will NOT increase the effects of the special focus areas, and none of the special focus areas will have an effect on the tactic familiarity levels.
Workload Slider
Having this slider at the highest setting (Very High) will not make your players unhappy with the level of training. It will just take away more time from normal training schedules. It’s safe to push this up all the way when learning new tactics, as a short-term solution.
As soon as the familiarity levels reach fluid for all tactics trained, lower the workload slider to Low or Very Low to just maintain the levels, shifting more power to your regular training schedules in the process. The match preparation workload slider cuts into regular training time, so if you leave the slider on Average/High/Very High, training scores will be affected.
Familiarity Levels
As these increase, your players will perform the tactical instructions better.
Always aim to have all bars on fluid. Whenever you alter your tactics, even the smallest of changes will make the game re-calculate the familiarity levels of your team. This is also true in a match – using touchline shouts or altering tactics mid-game could have a negative effect on the team, as they’re not as familiar with the “new” tactic.
Special Focus Areas
These selections are made to gain temporary benefits on a match-to-match basis. They will not stack up (except Team Blend), and should be viewed only as a boost for the next match. If you have a tough game coming up, you might want to focus on defensive positioning, and so on.
Worth noting is that if you have one of the special focuses selected, the familiarity levels of the tactic(s) will have a slower increase. So if you want your team to learn the tactic(s) as fast as possible, have no special focus selected.
The way these focus areas translate into the match engine, is to give temporary boosts to related attributes. The boost is only given if the player is familiar enough with the tactic used, so that’s how familiarity levels and special focus areas tie in together.
Team Blend
This is the only focus that stacks up, and the only focus that is not active during a match. Instead, it’s active in between matches. Having Team Blend set as the default special focus, and then focusing on a specific area one day before a match will give you double the benefits. What Team Blend does is to increase player relationships, gelling them together, which increases morale and performances.
Tutoring & Player Preferred Moves (PPM’s)
When you go to a Player Profile – Positions, you’ll see a list called Preferred Moves. There are two ways to have a player learn a PPM. First one is to have a private chat with him, telling him specifically what PPM you think he should learn. The second one is to have a senior player (that has the PPM you want your player to learn) tutor him, hoping that the player picks up the specific PPM.
In order to tutor the player he needs to be young, and age plays a big part in PPM’s. The older the player is, the more reluctant he will be to learn new tricks.
Overall Workload
In the Player Profile – Training panel, you will see overall workload percentages. These will tell you how much the player is focusing on the different aspects of training.
Every time you add a purpose-built training like PPM’s, new position or individual training focus, it takes a piece out of the Scheduled Training. The match preparation also cuts into this share. The ideal situation is to have at least 70% dedicated to scheduled training, and the rest dedicated to individual focus and match preparation.
Training Tips & Tricks
Using all the information we’ve reviewed in this article, here are some suggestions on how to use training efficiently. Just to be clear, this entire section is speculative and just my personal opinion based on the facts presented earlier in the article.
Pre-Season
Use a specific training schedule, focusing mostly on tactics, strength and aerobics to have players work up their fitness and key mental attributes after the summer break. Have your main tactic loaded as the only tactic in the match preparation screen, and have the workload slider set to High. Have the Team Blend special focus selected all the way through pre-season.
As soon as the fitness information (Player Profile – Attributes) says a player is either match fit or in superb condition, he does not need pre-season training anymore, but I usually keep all players on pre-season training until 2 weeks before the season starts, just to get the benefit of the mental attribute increases.
Set Pieces
Assign individual training focus Free Kicks, Penalties, Long Throws and Corners for your corresponding set piece takers. There is no set piece training category in FM2011, so all set piece attributes has to be increased through individual focus.
Short-Term Training
If you want to quickly raise a specific player attribute, first find the training category in which the attribute is learned. Then check to see if the attribute can be learned through individual focus. Here is the list of what attributes are trained by what category/focus;
Corners – individual focus Corners
Crossing – training category Attacking
Dribbling – training category Ball Control / individual focus Dribbling
Finishing – training category Shooting / individual focus Finishing
First Touch – training category Ball Control / individual focus First Touch
Free Kick Taking – individual focus Free Kicks
Heading – training category Ball Control / individual focus Heading
Long Shots – training category Shooting / individual focus Long Shots
Long Throws – individual focus Long Throws
Marking – training category Defending / individual focus Marking
Passing – training category Attacking / individual focus Passing
Penalty Taking – individual focus Penalties
Tackling – training category Defending
Technique – training category Ball Control / individual focus Technique
Anticipation – training category Tactics
Composure – training category Shooting / individual focus Composure
Concentration – training category Defending
Decisions – training category Tactics
Flair – training category Ball Control
Off The Ball – training category Tactics / individual focus Off The Ball
Positioning – training category Tactics / individual focus Positioning
Teamwork – training category Tactics
Work Rate – training category Strength
Acceleration – training category Aerobic / individual focus Quickness
Agility – training category Aerobic / individual focus Agility
Balance – training category Aerobic / individual focus Balance
Jumping – training category Aerobic / individual focus Jumping
Natural Fitness – training category Strength
Pace – training category Aerobic / individual focus Quickness
Stamina – training category Strength / individual focus Stamina
Strength – training category Strength / individual focus Strength
The attributes that has both a training category and an individual focus assigned to them will have a higher rate and chance of increasing. The attributes that you can’t increase through training are Aggression, Bravery, Creativity, Determination and Influence – all mental attributes that are increased through other means (first team action, player growth, etc).Crossing – training category Attacking
Dribbling – training category Ball Control / individual focus Dribbling
Finishing – training category Shooting / individual focus Finishing
First Touch – training category Ball Control / individual focus First Touch
Free Kick Taking – individual focus Free Kicks
Heading – training category Ball Control / individual focus Heading
Long Shots – training category Shooting / individual focus Long Shots
Long Throws – individual focus Long Throws
Marking – training category Defending / individual focus Marking
Passing – training category Attacking / individual focus Passing
Penalty Taking – individual focus Penalties
Tackling – training category Defending
Technique – training category Ball Control / individual focus Technique
Anticipation – training category Tactics
Composure – training category Shooting / individual focus Composure
Concentration – training category Defending
Decisions – training category Tactics
Flair – training category Ball Control
Off The Ball – training category Tactics / individual focus Off The Ball
Positioning – training category Tactics / individual focus Positioning
Teamwork – training category Tactics
Work Rate – training category Strength
Acceleration – training category Aerobic / individual focus Quickness
Agility – training category Aerobic / individual focus Agility
Balance – training category Aerobic / individual focus Balance
Jumping – training category Aerobic / individual focus Jumping
Natural Fitness – training category Strength
Pace – training category Aerobic / individual focus Quickness
Stamina – training category Strength / individual focus Stamina
Strength – training category Strength / individual focus Strength
So in order to increase a specific attribute as quickly as possible, create a custom training schedule with the corresponding category on Intensive (all the way up), then have the player set on individual focus for the intended attribute. Remove all positional and preferred moves training, and keep the match preparation training as low as possible. Make sure your coach(es) have an ok star rating in the category you’re training, that the category workload is ‘light’ (workload is more important that star rating in short term training), and that the player is happy (high morale). These factors will give you the highest possible training score, and therefor the highest chance that an attribute will be raised.
Long-Term Training
The long-term training is used for creating a team personality and instill a recognisable character to your team. Do you want to be known as a possession-based team? Masters of the defence? With long-term training you will build a specific set of attributes to shape the behaviour of the team.
Using the above list for attribute/training category/individual focus, we can build a custom training schedule that I like to call a ‘prime’ schedule. It should be balanced enough that almost all outfield players should be able to take part in it, to be shaped into your team’s personality and philosophy. But also specifically focused on 1-3 training categories.
Here are some prime schedule examples;
Attacking/Possession (Arsenal, Barcelona, etc) – Tactics and Attacking
Defensive/Counter (Real Madrid, Inter, etc) – Tactics, Defending and Shooting
Muscle/Control (Chelsea, etc) – Strength, Ball Control and Tactics
And so on. The prime schedule should be used mainly for newcomers to the club, so that they blend in well with the rest of the squad, giving them similar attributes. Make sure that your main tactic(s) reflect the training focus as well, it’s pointless having an attacking prime schedule if your main tactic is a defensive one.
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