Football Manager Guide to Pre-season Training; Improving Match Fitness, Team Cohesion and Tactical Familiarity

Welcome to the ultimate guide to Pre-Season Training in Football Manager and how to access that period of the season. Here I’ll talk you through the purpose of pre-season and its importance in addition to the key elements that must be considered when planning for it. I’ll show you how I approach it in terms of setting up pre-season training schedules, fixtures and all the planning I do by showcasing how it’s done within my FM20 Cruyffian Way save story.

Pre-Season – the most important part of the football season.

For managers, it’s the time to lay down new tactical plans, analyze the squad to reveal its true strength and weaknesses and make sure any weaknesses are strengthened either through transfers, training and/or tactical systems.

For the players, it’s the time to get back into fitness and shape, focusing only on their development rather than the upcoming match and its opponent.

For the squad in general, it’s the time to get ready for the new season, either it’s to improve the tactical familiarity of a specific system, test out new players and youngsters in different positions, improve the team cohesion, get some income through friendlies and international friendly tournaments, which further increase the reputation of the club in a country, plus test yourself against better opponents.

While it’s a welcomed fresh breeze for everyone at the club, it’s a long wait for the fans as they eagerly anticipate the next season to kick off.

Continue reading as I look closer at the preseason in Football Manager and what to do to get ready for the next season.

Pre-Season; What It Is & Why It’s Important?

The pre-season is the term to describe the period occurring immediately after the end of the football season and which begins after the players have returned from their summer holidays. It can also happen in the middle of the season, if the football association gives the clubs a fixture break of 1 to 4 weeks (e.g winter holiday break). The pre-season I’ll talk about here is the one happening after the football season has come to an end.

A normal pre-season period can last between 5 to 8 weeks – all depending on how early the national league start is and how much vacation the players have been given.

In the modern football world, the pre-season period has become more and more important in recent years. Now it’s not uncommon a team or an individual will play up to 50 matches in a season, with cups, tournaments, friendlies and the league taken into account. Include international matches for the national team and the total load on the players is extremely huge and can range up to 70 matches per year.

This load increases the injury risk and the potential of jadedness and fatigue.

In leagues with periods of two matches per week, the amount of training will be limited. Most of the training in high density fixture lists must focus on active recovery and maintaining the form, rather than progressing and developing.

The pre-season period is very important since it looks to work on players natural fitness to withstand injuries and regain the player’s fitness so they can tolerate the heavy fixture list and the intensity of the tactical system. It gives them the chance to work more on aspects of their playing style which aims to make them a better player (e.g. individual training).

You can say it let the manager put more focus on the development part, setting the intensity higher, rather than maintaining the players form and put most of his attention to the upcoming match.

Below we’ll look closer at the main purposes of why pre-season training is important and the benefits it has for the club and the manager.

The Purpose of Pre-Season Training & Its Benefits

The pre-season is one of the busiest periods for the club, the manager and the players. With the transfer window finally open after months closed, the recruitment team along with the manager, looks at suitable prospects who can strengthen the team and its depth. The manager’s main task is to prepare the squad for the next season, meaning he has to put attention to his tactical systems and innovations, and guide the club through it.

In fact, whatever is being done in training or squad management within this time frame sets the foundation for the season. By planning the period thoroughly and putting attention to the correct priorities and actually consider the important tasks for a successful pre-season, lays the foundation for a successful season and its achievements.

There are several reasons why you should plan the pre-season training and the tasks you need to do. In order to understand what you need to plan and the assignments you need to do, it’s important to understand its main purposes and its objectives.

The main purposes of pre-season training in Football Manager;

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 matches

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) Sketch out new tactical plans and perhaps even test them out in practice! Sketch out a Player Development Plan (for the Individual & the Team) (Guide is coming soon…)

Then apart from that comes the transfer activity, backroom staff recruitment, the demands from the board in terms of the financial side (income and exposure) plus the stress from the silly season put on your players from the media and the fans as transfer rumors and agent offers blossoms.

Deciding on the length of Pre-Season Training

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 period than if you select late. 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 the case with England, the earliest game start is 24th of June for FM20, which means you’ll have around 7 weeks of preparing your squad for the next season, while a late start (July 8th) means you’ll only have around 4 weeks.

My Tip

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.

The game start of France is; Early June 10th or Late July the 1st, while Germany has June 17th as the earliest start date.

My recommendation is to set an earlier game start than you’d normally would – perhaps increasing it with one to two weeks, meaning you’ll get more time to plan for the upcoming season and give you some advantages.

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 a purposeful training from day one, rather than it being set up by your coaching staff.

How To Set Up The Pre-Season Training

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 as possible. Now is the time to look closer at the purpose of pre-season training and how you can improve tactical familiarity, team cohesion and players morale, natural fitness and match sharpness in Football Manager.

Here I’ll use my latest FM20 save, which I’ve briefly introduced you to before, ‘The Cruyffian Way – Continuing a Legacy‘ as an example of how I approach pre-season in Football Manager.

I can’t hide the face that I normally spends 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.

1. How To Improve Tactical Familiarity?

The Basics

In order to talk about how to improve tactical familiarity, it’s important to understand what it is. Tactical Familiarity refers to the player’s knowledge and understanding of the requirements relating to the overall playing style and tactical system you’re using.

The tactical familiarity levels aims to describe how familiar the squad is with your tactics and tactical instructions regarding a number of factors relating to your playing style.

The levels of the tactical familiarity ranges from Awkward to Fluid and is set for each individual player and the team.

For the team, the tactical familiarity levels can vary according to the team instructions, match mentality, formation and shape, whilst the tactical familiarity of the players will vary according to their natural positional abilities relating to the formation, their suited role and duty compared to the tactics, as well as their general familiarity with the overall playing style and tactical instructions.

This means that selecting specific player instructions or traits will have no impact on the familiarity levels. As you’ll notice below, some team instructions will also have no effect on the tactical familiarity.

Complete List of Tactical Familiarity Categories Mentality

Passing Style

Creative Freedom

Pressing Intensity

Marking

Tempo

Width

Position/Role/Duty

The more fluid the team or a player is with the tactical instructions the more effective will he be. I like to say that you can’t see the true potential of your tactics until the tactical familiarity levels are fluid as they have a major effect on how the players will move, position and play within the match engine.

In fact, it reveals how well the players will play within the system or in a certain role.

The current level of tactical familiarity for the squad can be found at either;

A. Tactics - Overview

B. Training - Overview which gives a complete overview of the familiarity of both primary and secondary tactics

The understanding and knowledge of the teams tactical style for every player is indicated at;

Player > Development > Training

Changing your tactics frequently and not making sure the players get accustomed to a certain way of playing will be the first step into disaster. Signing a Pressing Forward who are strong, determined and aggressive will have a hard time adopting into the False 9 role and becoming familiar with the movements, passing style and creative freedom in it, meaning it will take longer time, if at all, to get him accustomed to and playing well in a role he’s practically unsuited for.

This can also be translated to your team and their overall knowledge of certain playing styles. Trying to play a possession game at Stoke will take longer time to get the team to get accustomed to the new way of playing – aka the familiarity levels of passing and tempo might be lower than for example at Barcelona, a club with the tradition and culture to play that way.

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 becomes fluid within an area of the game the better they play. It’s one of the factors which improves the squads overall performance.

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 which is set according to it and a width which is set to default, the tactical familiarity will take shorter time to get accustomed to. But 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.

Improving the tactical familiarity is one issue, the other is the types of players required to play that way.

Then another issue is, if you add secondary tactics (either switching through them and employing specific systems at certain situations and times or just learning another tactics which is quite different to the default), the improvement ratio of the tactical familiarity levels for all two or three systems will get slower.

If all bars are fluid and movements, passing, player positioning and pressing is poor then you better look at the system and the quality of the players, as it will give you some clues about whether your tactic is good or not.

In order to understand how to improve the tactical familiarity levels it’s important to understand what they are influenced by. Following is a brief overview of the different tactical familiarity levels, what they are affected by and training sessions which focuses on that specific area. In order for the players to become familiar with a tactic they needs to develop understanding of the following aspects;

i) Mentality

The familiarity of mentality is affected by the type of match mentality selected. The match mentalities ranges from Very Defensive to Very Attacking (with Cautious, Balanced and Positive in the middle). Using a Positive mentality and switching to Balanced will see a minor change in tactical familiarity towards Mentality compared to switching from Cautious to Very Attacking. This is something worth noticing when you’re going all out attack in the final minutes of the match. The real effect might be minimal as the players aren’t used to playing that way.

Switching the mentality will also affect the familiarity of creative freedom and tempo.

Training Sessions which affects the familiarity of Mentality are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Tactical

Overall, Outfield, Tactical Match Preparations: All

All Tactical: Defensive Shadow Play, Attacking Shadow Play

ii) Passing Style

The familiarity of passing style is affected by the type of Passing Directness and Tempo selected within Team Instructions. The passing directness ranges from Much shorter to Much More Direct, while the ‘Tempo’ ranges from ‘Much Lower’ to ‘Extremely High’. As you see, these to work in combination of each other, something to think about when creating your tactics.

Training Sessions which affects the familiarity of Passing Style are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Possession

Overall, Outfield, Possession Attacking: Attacking Wings, Attacking Patient, Attacking Direct, Attacking Overlap

iii) Creative Freedom

The familiarity of Creative Freedom is affected by the type of match mentality selected and the instructions given relating to Creative Freedom; whether they shall ‘Be More Expressive’ or ‘Be More Disciplined’.

Training Sessions which affects it are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Attacking

Overall, Outfield, Attacking Match Preparations: All

All Attacking: Attacking Wings, Attacking Patient, Attacking Direct, Attacking Overlap

Attacking Wings, Attacking Patient, Attacking Direct, Attacking Overlap + sessions affecting mentality

iv) Pressing Intensity

The familiarity of Pressing Intensity is affected by the line of Engagement within the Team Instruction.

Training Sessions which affects it are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Defending

Overall, Outfield, Defending Defending: Defending Engaged, Defending Disengaged, Defending Wide, Defending from the front

v) Marking

The familiarity of Marking is affected by Tackling and Marking Team Instruction (e.g. ‘Get Stuck In’/’Stay on Feet’ ticked/unticked and/or ‘Use Tighter Marking’). I have not found any evident that specific player instructions relating to man marking and tackling affects the levels, nor the use of opposition instructions.

Training Sessions which affects it are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Defending

Overall, Outfield, Defending Match Preparations: All

All Defending: Defending Engaged, Defending Disengaged, Defending Wide, Defending from the front

vi) Tempo

The familiarity of Tempo is affected by the Team Instruction Tempo setting and match mentality.

Training Sessions which affects it are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Possession

vii) Width

The familiarity of Width is affected by the Attacking Width setting within the Team Instruction. I have not found any evidence that it is affected by the Defensive Width Setting visually.

Training Sessions which affects it are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Tactical

Overall, Outfield, Tactical Tactical: Defensive Shadow Play, Attacking Shadow Play

viii) Position/Role/Duty

The Position / Role / Duty is affected first and foremost of your selected formation and shape. Secondary the familiarity levels may increase or decrease depending on whether you play a player out of position or if he’s playing in his natural position.

Selecting a fullback to play as an inverted wingback will NOT see any impact, but selecting a central midfielder who is not natural as striker in the forward position will see the familiarity levels of Position/Role/Duty decrease.

Training Sessions which affects it are;

General: Overall, Outfield, Tactical

Overall, Outfield, Tactical Tactical: Defensive Shadow Play, Attacking Shadow Play

The Conclusion

Tactical familiarity levels can be improved by training, employing the training sessions highlighted above in a coordinated manner.

Apart from training, 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 with it. Playing a player in one role the first half and another role in second 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.

P.S. Remember that Goalkeeper training sessions will help to improve the tactical familiarity of your goalkeepers.

My Approach & Tips To Trained Tactics

Personally, I favor to select my main tactic as the primary trained tactic and have a slight moderated version of it trained as tactic number 2, and that’s it!

The secondary tactic may be a version which has a slight moderated mentality Balanced instead of Positive, a slightly different formation 4-1-4-1 / 4-1-2-3DM with wingbacks in FB-strata in stead of wing backs in the DM-strata (2-3-2-3). This 4-1-4-1 / 4-1-2-3DM formation will be used against better opponents.

But, in the case with the Cruyffian Way where I manage Leeds, the third tactics I want my players to learn is the one they will be using for the second season – once I’ve managed to develop the players and get the right players for the system.

This means that the familiarity will take longer to rise, but this doesn’t bother me too much as I know the season will be long and the league is not won or lost in the first month.

2. 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

and 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 changes to the squad quite often.

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 in percentage, is linked to his natural fitness, the overall training and match load on the player. It’s viewable within the squad overview, a players profile or in the Medical Centre.

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 intensity training 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 or half) 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.

The intensity training scheduling is located in; Training > Rest

The screenshot above reveals my general approach to it. I’ll talk more about it in the next article looking at training in general and youth development in particular.

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

; Match Practice Matches; Friendlies, Cup and League Matches

Creating Pre-Season Training Schedules

So let’s delve into the main objective with this article, the pre-season training; how to plan and set it up. Here I’ll reveal the pre-season training schedules I regularly use and how I’ve thought when setting them up.

The objective when creating pre-season training schedules are to balance 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.

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.

If we look at the bars on the top right corner, the weighting of injury risk, condition and fatigue compared to happiness, sharpness and team cohesion is great. With it, the players will improve their physical attributes and their overall attributes plus their tactical familiarity.

In difference to the default training schedules in Football Manager, mine are created and setup slightly difference. The attention to establishing a training philosophy at the club which runs through the overall training program is more apparent.

Closer Insight to the Passion4FM Pre-Season Training Schedules; (Tiki Taka)

1st Week of Pre-Season (Physic)

The first week of training is one I would regard fairly heavy. Along with improving players natural fitness, work rate, strength, quickness, pace, balance and stamina, the players will look to improve the tactical familiarity and important mental attributes relating to the playing style. I’ve taken advantage of the extra sessions to apply sessions which focus on team cohesion and where all players work together (in difference to unit training).

What you’ll notice for almost every training schedules I got, is that I use Technical and Tactical sessions as ‘active recovery’ sessions. This means that the overall training intensity and impact will be lower than a normal match, but which is vital for the development of key attributes of the playing style, whether you’d like to call it the tactical DNA or club DNA. No matter what you’ll call it, it’s the most important attributes for the tactical system to work which you like to incorporate at the club.

Week 2 of Pre-Season (Physic)

The second week continue the focus which we started on in week 1. Looking at both schedules together, the players should have gained familiarity with the mentality, width, position/role/duty, passing style, tempo, pressing intensity, marking and creative freedom. Both weeks, you’ll see a major focus on the team cohesion and basic requirements of the playing style, such as anticipation, vision, off the ball and decisions (to name a few).

The only difference is that while the first week has more focus on general sessions where all players works together as a team (in difference to unit sessions), the second week starts to introduce more sub-principles of the game model, such as ‘Attacking Patient’.

Training becomes more specialized!

It’s not until the second week I introduce the first friendly, which means the amount of physical sessions are reduced as the match load is high enough. For example, I have a tendency to refrain from selecting the Endurance physical training session, despite I’m fully aware of its importance (e.g. important attributes the match engine favors, such as natural fitness and stamina). Instead, I like to think the matches and overall amount of training sessions will affect their stamina, work rate and natural fitness.

I believe the players will find it more fun training with the ball at a higher intensity rather than go for long runs in the terrain. As a runner myself, I have nothing against it, but looking at it in the bigger picture I believe the players will run quite enough. If a player runs around 15km per day and around 10-13km per match, the players will record around 50 to 60 km per week depending on the type of training sessions and whether or not you’re playing one or two matches per week.

Week 3 (2 Matches Per Week)

Depending on the length of your pre-season, whether you go for 6-7 weeks or 8, the week 3 can either be a repetition of the second week (using the Pre-Season – 1 Match) or a step up the load and tolerate ladder.

From week 1 to week 3, the players have progressively stepped up their training load and intensity. The only thing that avoids jadedness and tiredness are the recovery sessions after extensive training, and one rest day per week.

For week 3 the players will experience playing two matches per week for the first time. Due to the overall load, the players will not be asked to hit the gym working on their strength or fitness. Instead more focus is put on specific principles of the playing style and getting even more familiar with specific instructions such as playing out from the back, player positioning in the attacking phase and ball distribution.

As we are approaching the league start I introduce the players to specific sessions relating to regaining possession and closing down the opponent for the first time. The ‘Defending from the front’ session and ‘Transition – Press’ are sessions where the chance of knocks and minor injuries can happen. The reason I introduce them ‘so late’ is due to their current physical condition and match sharpness level. By this time they should be at such a level the risk of injuries are less than the first week.

Notice the full focus on Team Cohesion and Match Sharpness. Notice as well, the active recovery sessions where I ask my team to use the ball to recover from the strain of yesterday match. Overall, the players will look to improve their anticipation, vision, decisions, dribbling and positioning, in additional to technical attributes relating to passing, marking and tackling.

This schedule can be applied for the next 2 weeks unless you’ve bought several players OR the players are getting a bit tired meaning you’ll have to reduce the amount of fixtures into one friendly a week, OR you simply want to focus on even more physic for another week, due to a more intensified tactical system than the Tiki Taka.

Week 5/6 (Teamwork)

The training schedules displayed above can be run for the 4th and 5th week as well. But I wanted to highlight a beneficial training schedule which I often employ the next to last week before the league start.

Whenever the transfer window is open, it’s normal to sign a couple of players. With multiple signings arriving to the team it affects the team cohesion. It will decrease and all the efforts you’ve done to improve the unity of the players goes a bit to waste.

That’s why I’ve created a specific teamwork / team cohesion schedule which can be used in these circumstances. It can also be applied if the team cohesion is low and you want to better the player positioning, vision and movements of the team.

The reason why I tend to apply this schedule the penultimate week of pre-season, is the increased focus on sub-principles of the game model in regard to the attacking phase, and shifting from focusing on the final third to moving into the defensive phase.

Apart from two sessions around Teamwork, it continues everything I’ve worked on from week 1; improving the tactical familiarity AND the playing style, working on key attributes for the tactical system.

Attributes that’s worked on are in general; Teamwork, anticipation, passing, vision, first touch, technique, positioning, tackling, decisions and dribbling.

Final Week of Pre-Season

For the final week before league start I apply my default Tiki Taka training schedule, which focus on the most important areas of the tactic, as well as preparing the squad for the upcoming match, with more and more in-depth training sessions.

This schedule can be used for longer periods of time with slight differences according to which opponent your up against.

In the final training session before the match, they will work on Attacking Movement which gives a boost to the attacking movement and passing for the upcoming match. The day before, they will work on key aspects of entering the final third such as chance creation and attacking patient. Wednesday is an important day as it looks to regain possession, continuing the focus from the last 3 weeks.

Monday and Tuesday works on the tactical knowledge, technical and mental side of playing with a possession tactic, improving the key attributes for the tactic.

Fixtures and Scheduling Friendlies

In order to improve the players tactical familiarity, player condition and match sharpness, the players needs to get minutes on the pitch.

Friendlies main benefit is the chance to improve the player’s morale and improve conditions and match sharpness.

While it can be useful to play some Match Practices to simulate a real match I would instead recommend to arrange friendlies.

The reason is, with match practice the tempo and the strength of the opponent won’t be as tough or strong since you will play 11vs11 on the training pitch featuring players from the Under-18s or the Reserves.

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. It’s typical used to enhance the reputation of your club in that country or region. 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 an better opponent. 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.

Personally I tend to look at the fixture list immediately after the save has finished loading. 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 10 friendlies to ensure the tactical familiarity is accomplished by the time of league start. 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 amount is determined primarily by how large the squad is.

to ensure the tactical familiarity is accomplished by the time of league start. 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 amount is determined primarily by how large the squad is. I will not schedule any fixtures the first week of pre-season. The first friendly is applied Saturday in the second week meaning the players will have 12 days of physical training first.

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 3 matches against better opponents IF I got time for it.

The idea by playing similar or weaker opponents on Wednesday and better opponents Saturday let me rotate the squad and give everyone a chance to play. At Saturdays, my preferred XI will play at least 75 minutes if not all. On Wednesday I will rotate the squad more and let player’s challenging for a spot in the starting line up start the match. The starting line up will feature a mix of the best players and challengers.

Here you can take advantage of the squad selection guidelines found under Quick Pick within the Tactics – Overview.

Personally, I tend to set up a selection of the best XI (my preferred starting line up) and a slight rotated selection. The pick Youth Prospects is a neat feature for friendlies against weaker opponents as it gives you the chance to give game time to your most promising Under-23 players.

By the time the pre-season have finished the basic idea is that every player within the squad who are not injured will be match fit. You don’t want to see any messages like ‘Needs Match Practice if he is to be ready for the new season’. You’d also don’t like to see players who are tired from the last match the last week before the season starts, which is why I never schedule friendlies the last week before the league start!

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)

Improving The Reputation and Finances by Friendlies

I’ve briefly talked about it earlier, but one objective with the pre-season is also the vision to improve the reputation and finances by 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, the period 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.

While I’ve shown you an example of playing against Man Utd or Chelsea, I decided to play Liverpool which gave Leeds €700K in gate receipts. With the Johan Cruyff Memorial Cup the next week playing against SC Heerenveen and Barcelona B the number increases to over €1.5Mill. I know it’s an extreme example, but it proves the value of playing teams of larger reputation at home.

Remember that you’ll have to pay a fee to play a friendly to the opponent. Playing away, the income will break even with the fee. This means that the only way to gain from friendlies are by playing at home!

That’s it for now! I hope you’ll been given some ideas and thoughts about how to plan and set up your pre-season training. If you should have any questions relating to it, please contact me at the official Discord server. Any questions relating to pre-season will be added here for your convenient.