Football Manager 26 is a game of many systems, all tied together into one game about leading a group of footballers to the absolute top of the footballing world. Unfortunately, not all these systems are always the easiest to understand and get the most out of, particularly for newer players. If you find yourself struggling with your club training, these tips will help you more effectively manage your work and maximize your player growth.

Delegation Is Your Friend

An important thing for any new FM player to understand is that you are fully in control of how much, or how little, you are responsible for when playing Football Manager. This means you have control over just how much responsibility you take over training, and this can be an excellent way to get your feet wet without sabotaging your team or its development.

There are two excellent ways to lower your training stress while getting familiar with the system. Your first option is to simply delegate it to another staff member. This ensures your training is being managed until you’re comfortable taking over. Alternatively, you can turn to resources like FM Scout or FM Arena, where other players upload their training schedules for you to plug and play in for your side.

Improve Your Infrastructure

Although not a part of setting your schedule itself, your infrastructure at the club is an important part of how effective your planned training schedule is. Both the facilities that your players are practicing at and the coaching staff you have impact how well or not the players progress from their Current Ability to their Potential Ability, and the corresponding change in attributes that brings.

By investing in your facilities, you raise the ceiling on your players’ benefits from your training, and increasing coaching quality likewise means they will get more out of the plans you make. Making improvements in these areas a priority will also improve your training performance.

Prioritize Pace

Football may be the beautiful game because of the wondrous things players do with the ball, bending and shaping it to their will, but none of that matters if you can’t get within five yards of the opposition when you don’t have it or make space when you do. Through the years, testers have done many experiments into the mechanics of the game, and while it’s early in this new engine’s life, physical tools remain critical to players.

To that end, individually training your players to be faster and with better acceleration is one of the easiest ways to improve the performance of your players and club. If you have players still in their early 20s or younger who are developing well, and they don’t have elite Pace or Acceleration for their position, then throw on a Quickness individual training to prioritize boosting these key attributes.

Assess Your Needs And Adjust

The amount of overall growth or decline a player experienced in FM training is decided not by the type of training they’re doing. Instead, what you have control over is how that growth and decline impact the key attributes of your player. While factors like age, Current Ability, and Potential Ability will determine how much your players’ overall attributes move up or down, the training they’re on determines which attributes actually move and in what direction.

To this end, your training is an opportunity to work on areas where your team struggles or where improvement would most benefit you. Consider both your overall team needs as well as the individual player areas that would provide the most benefit from individual training after you’ve improved physical tools to an acceptable level.

Don’t Run Them Into The Ground

Remember the purpose of all this training you’re having your team do: winning football matches. Making your players better is all about making them perform better on match days, and they can’t do that if they’re dog tired every time they step foot on the pitch. This is particularly important at clubs at either end of the size spectrum, with big sides playing congested schedules which routinely feature two games every week and smaller sides lacking the squad size or fitness for overly intensive work all week long.

Rest and Recovery sessions are critical on the day before and after matches, respectively. Using these training schedule entries wisely allows your players to benefit from training while not expending everything they have, so that your opponents are running circles around you between the whistles.

Training is important for making your team reach its height, but there’s no reason to be stressed micromanaging it. Apply these tips, tweak as you and you’ll have your team developing to plan in no time.