SFraser's Training Schedules for FM 2010

Despite writing at great lengths about the topic of how players work and how training works I have never released any Training Schedules to the wider public. This is partly because I do not believe that "one-shoe-fits-all" schedules exist, partly because I had never taken the time to develop a broad range of general schedules that could be used by other people, and partly because I did not know enough detail about certain key aspects of Training and player mechanics to produce what I would consider accurate schedules.

While the first remains true the latter two have changed and I am now confident of releasing a comprehensive set of powerful and accurate schedules for community use. More than that however I would like to encourage and engage the community to assist me in developing these schedules further, in greater depth and detail, and in fine tuning the basic underlying principles.

Should you download these schedules you will be a guinea pig, but do not be alarmed for I have already received very positive feedback and observed some very impressive results already from these schedules. However I do not simply wish to release a bunch of schedules for your use, I wish to get your help to further explain the details of training, further improve and develop superior schedules, but also help users to construct their own ideal individual player schedules based on what is understood about training and player mechanics, and based on the underlying premise of these schedules.

The following screenshots are the kind of results you can expect after a year, under ideal conditions, and with a well balanced schedule. However I will be the first to admit that not all the schedules are well balanced and this is where I need your help. I need your help to design and test better balanced versions of these schedules, indeed to design and test whatever schedules you can think of for players. To do this you will need to understand the rules I am following when designing these schedules, understand the key factors to pay attention to, understand the ratios I am working from, and hopefully you will also pop up with some new and more accurate information of your own.


The now 32 year old Jamie Carragher has improved in almost everything except his Physical Attributes and his Physical Attributes have not gone down. Atleast that is how it looks on the surface. Underneath all this his Physical Attributes have gone down but not by enough to register a change. The schedule predicts this and trains him intensively in Physical Attributes so as to slow down the rate of change while at the same time favouring Tactics and Defending slightly more than Ball Control, Attacking and Shooting to receive the lost CA. The schedule also anticipates that his Ball Control Attributes and Shooting Attributes will require less CA to go up than Tactics and Defending, and so we have a near perfect spread of small increases in his Technical and Mental attributes while his Physical attributes barely change.

Looking at this screenshot perhaps I should have reduced his Ball Control and favoured his Tactics or Attacking more but then this is where I need your help to test the balance of these schedules on different players and make suggestions for improvements to the balance, or even design your own superior schedules based on the information I will give you.

Now lets take a look at the 25 year old DM/CM Mascherano. This 25 year old powerhouse midfield destroyer has improved his Stamina, Strength, Teamwork, Decisions and Concentration. How is that for some Central Midfielder training? A 25 year old clearly improving his physical attributes is not something you see very often, and to improve the key physical attributes at the same rate as his other vital positional attributes are improving is something I am sure everyone wants to see in their own players. Why is his Composure bouncing around? Because there has to be concessions made and for this schedule the concessions are unfortunately in his Defending, Attacking, Shooting and Set Pieces. No free lunch I am afraid. Do you want to change this balance? I will tell you how to do so.

The Schedules


Before I give you the link to download these schedules it is important to explain how they work, how to tell if they are working for you, and to tell you how to change them as you see fit.

As we can see from the screenshot above, these do not in any way follow the "Number Line Theory" of Training you can read about in certain training threads or in other forums. This "Number Line Theory" suggests that if you place one slider at precisely a certain notch, 7 I think, then those attributes will not change. Likewise if you place the slider at notch 18 or 19 or something then those attributes will increase. Well that's rubbish.

Take a look at Vidic, Ferdinand and Brown. They are all fit, at 100% match experience and they are all on the same schedule with huge variations between sliders. Yet for some reason they are not all behaving exactly the same, and for some other reason that shoots the "Number Line Theory" out of the sky, all of them are powering through Shooting Training which is at notch 9 while barely making a dent in Tactics that is at notch 20. The only guy improving his Tactics is Vidic.

So what is going on in this screen? Well a number of things are going, you just can't see all the individual details so it makes it hard to figure out what the arrows mean.

Wes Brown and Ferdinand are both at 100% Match Experience and have been at that level for a while and they are both at or close to their PA. Ferdinand cannot gain any more CA so his attributes cannot go up unless CA is removed from other attributes. Ferdinand is also a Centreback and this means that certain attributes go up faster or slower for the same amount of CA. For Ferdinand his Age, CA/PA, Match Experience and his particular Attribute CA needs means that this schedule is almost perfectly balanced to do nothing. The amount of CA being shared by this schedule between his Strength, Aerobic, Tactics, Ball Control, Defending and Attacking is exactly enough to prevent any change while he is at 100% Match Experience. However we are not training his set peices and his Shooting Attributes dont need much CA to improve because he is a Centreback. This means that while his other attributes stay the same, his Shooting Attributes are improving.

Yes you read that correct. His Strength, Aerobic, Tactics, Ball Control, Defending and Attacking Categories are all perfectly balanced for his Age and his Position.

Vidic is not only younger which changes the balance for him, but he has also just reached 100% Match Experience after being injured. He will have lost a small amount of CA when he was injured and will now be gaining all that CA now he is at 100% Match Experience. So ontop of his zero Set Piece Training freeing up CA for his Shooting Attributes to improve, he is also gaining CA which means all of his other attributes instead of being perfectly balanced to do nothing, are perfectly balanced to increase at the same rate.

This 1st Choice CB Schedule is designed to "Maintain" Centrebacks that are near to their peak Ability level while favouring only minor increases in key attributes. Composure in this case because in my first attempt at a CB schedule I forgot to consider Composure and Concentration in my schedule (thank you for the omission SI) and lo and behold down went Ferdinands Composure after a months training. The above schedule for a Centreback that is close to their PA and not yet suffering from heavy Age penalties is very close to a perfect "Maintain" schedule. It wont prevent CA from going up or down or shifting around during a season, but it wont speed up or slow down these naturally occuring changes.

The Developing CB and Veteran CB schedules above and below this one are completely different. For each position their is an U-17 Schedule, a Developing Schedule, a 1st Choice Schedule and a Veteran Schedule. The U-17 Schedule emphasises key attributes for the position at the expense of any nonesense young players do not need to learn. The Developing Schedules are for players between 17 and 24 or those than need a crash course in the Senior Basics. They are Physically Intensive and they focus again on vital areas of the game for that position. The 1st Choice is generally a more rounded, more "Maintain" Schedule aimed also at reducing intensity and maintaining condition and Morale. The Veteran Schedule is aimed purely at players who are starting to decline Physically. It attempts to halt the destructive drop of Stamina while channeling Aerobic CA into Mental and Technical attributes in order to build a Maldini or Giggs.

The exact shape of the schedules for each position is my own view on what the position should look like and how best to deal with different ages. They may be far from your own liking and may also be poorly balanced in certain respects.

The exact design of each schedule is based on two fundamental ideas. Designing Category intensities based on numbers of attributes contained within each Category and designing Relative Category Intensities based on ratios.

Let me try and explain for you clearly.

Strength has 4 attributes in the Category, Aerobic has 6 attributes in the Category. Therefore to train Strength and Aerobic equally I place Strength at notch 4 and Aerobic at notch 6. Attacking has only two attributes so to train attacking equally with Strength and Aerobic I place Attacking at notch 2. If I want Attacking to receive twice as much Training as Strength I place Attacking at notch 4, the same as Strength. Strength has 4 attributes while Attacking has 2 attributes, so now each Attacking attribute should receive twice the CA as each Strength attribute.

The complicated part comes from the fact that certain attributes require more CA to improve than others, based on Age, Position etc. There are some rough and ready rules but no exact figures so there can be no exact science to training.

The Strength and Tactics Categories for a Centreback will require more CA to increase than the Ball Control Category. If he is young then his Strength Category naturally receives more CA anyway, if he is old his Strength Category naturally tries to shed CA. This means that you will always have to consider Strength Training much higher than others to achieve the same rate of increase, but this is not true when a player is very young nor very old.

I have developed a Test Schedule containing the basic ratios of a balanced schedule independant of Position and Age.

This Test Schedule (ignore Vidic here as he has been on it 5 minutes) is the basis on which all my schedules are designed and you will find the Test, GK Test and U-17 Test schedules in my schedule pack.

To avoid overcomplication all schedules have been kept precisely to these ratios. There are no half Strength increases, only an increase or decrease by 4 every time I wish to increase Strength training by "a balanced notch".

A Centreback Schedule may for example increase Strength by 4 "notches" to position 16, Aerobic to 24, Tactics to 20, Ball Control to 10, Defending by 4 to 12, Attacking to 4, Shooting to 6. Once this achieved, a rough pattern for the shape of a Centreback's Training of important attributes 2x less important attributes, you will then have to take Attribute Weights and Age into account, so perhaps Increase Strength by another 4, Tactics by another 5 and Defending by another 3.

These schedules seem to work and seem to work well, although there are plenty of rough edges and areas that could be much better balanced.

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