EvensenFM
Training has not changed in FM26.  The tricks that work well in FM24 (such as all rest training, quickness individual training for all players, and double intensity for the top two heart ratings and rest for everything else) still work in FM26.
Even after whatever match engine changes they've made, the same 4231 Knap Gegenpress tactic still dominates.  It's also the same both in and out of possession.

In other words - nothing about the meta has changed.  And I'm guessing that nothing will change, either.
Steelwood said: Think FM24 will have a cult following, kinda like the old Championship Manager games

There are still people playing CM 00/01, which will never cease to amaze me.

That's the last Championship Manager before the 2D match engine...
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: I actually posted a comment on your youtube recently, that was it.

You do pretty good videos, enjoying watching them alongside doing things, even though I wouldn't have thought football history would be my thing.


Aha! Yeah, it must have been you. Apologies - I have a hard time keeping track...
Thanks for this!  I think I read somewhere else recently (probably Reddit) that Youth Facilities don't impact the PA of newly generated players at all.  This is really good to know.
cadoni said: Not sure how many of you searching deep in folders and files. Here the training.fmf from the root. You will need the Resource Archiver and uncompress the file. Opening the files (after uncompress), the content inside is encoded - crypted with a method unknown to me. You will find answers more quickly from spending time and energy to find things. Good luck!

I know this is an old post - but we've messed with this over at FM Match Lab.

Also - there's even better stuff if you check out the media.fmf file...
jflavus said: Hey man,

I am new to the game, I am trying to understand the game. But when it is all just very small scale screenshots I cant seem to understand.
Is there any video that shares what you say ?
I am literally trying to understand but nothing seems to help with my understanding.


I'm working on another video about this - look for one in a few weeks.  I'm trying this schedule at the moment.
My guess is that it's probably not tactical fit, since both players seem to be playing the same position for the same team.

I also doubt it's really personality focused, although Dzeko has a much more desirable personality.

Honestly, it could just be the random number generator at work.
This is with the vanilla match engine, correct?  I'm curious to know whether the new FM Match Lab means "meta" tactics are no longer so important.
detroitrex said: this would be true if they actually did that. My experience in france is that they aren't consistent about it.

Yep - this is what I've run into in every single country in the game.

The best thing to do for your U18, U23, II, B, and other squads is to manually schedule 2 friendlies per week if there are no other matches.  It doesn't matter what the reputation of the other team is - but, of course, you don't want to schedule friendlies that lose you money.

It's annoying, but you can do it for B teams that have no games at all.  Heck, if you really want, you can have them play against the U18 team for every single friendly if you want.  You still get the friendly match boost.
The tests I’ve seen show that the effects of consistency aren’t very large anyway if players have high morale.

Sorry for showing up late - but could you link to any of those tests?

FM Arena has attribute testing that is easy to find.  Those attribute tests indicate that neither morale nor consistency is really all that meaningful over the long term.  The attributes to focus on are pace and acceleration - and it's been that way for years.

Also — that old FMM Vibe post is not rooted in reality and really needs to stop being brought up in these discussions.  It's a wild rumor written by some guy 13 years ago that has never shown up in testing and contradicts things we know about the match engine.  It's amazing how a "trust me bro" post like that has stuck with people through all these years.
Sorry for coming in a bit late.

I've played with these attributeless skins before.  It's a lot of fun, actually - it forces you to really get to know your players.

It's actually not necessarily "moneyball," since you're not going to be able to see the really fine differences between players.  Remember that the difference between having a Pace rating of 19 and 16 is huge — but with the skins that just show you a general color to indicate the attribute level, both of those numbers would be green.

I recommend giving it a try.  When I finally move up to FM24, I'm planning on going back to the attributeless "hardcore" mode.  It's too easy to take advantage of the power of Pace and Acceleration otherwise.
I recommend the Evidence Based Football Manager schedule.  You might want to take away one Defending session and replace it with Physical, and turn the Aerial Defense session into a Quickness session.
This has been my suspicion after playing FM for a number of years.

I'm hoping to see some testing done to different levels of consistency.

As it stands, I stay away from any players who have any level of inconsistency, especially since this attribute is so difficult to raise in game.

The same goes for players 22 and over who dislike big matches, which is pretty much just inconsistency under a different name.

I also stay away from any players who are injury prone, since this can have an adverse long term impact on their ability to develop.

Anyway, I'd love to see studies on this.  If somebody shows that there is a certain level of inconsistency that is acceptable, I'll start signing those really fast young players who are extremely inconsistent.
Just saw your post on Reddit, OP.  I stuck this response up a few minutes ago:

Regarding your first question — yes, this is what the tests showed. Note also that they're looking at a huge sample size of games to eliminate the impact of RNG. Passing doesn't mean anything, and the same is true for other attributes.

The problem with spamming quickness and physical training is that things like heading ability will deteriorate. You also don't want to create too many training sessions for your players, or they will be injured much more quickly. I recommend reviewing Evidence Based Football Manager's studies on these topics.

A player with a PA of 170 who has higher pace and acceleration than another player who also has a PA of 170 will generally perform better in the match engine over the long run. There are still a lot of short term fluctuations due to how strong the RNG is in the game engine.

Long story short: the correct way to min/max Football Manager is to pay close attention to pace and acceleration.

If you go back and read old posts, you'll learn that experienced players have known about this going back to the Championship Manager days. It's been contentious for a long time as well, by the way.

Note as well that the best way to advance quickly through the lower leagues is to get as many fast players as you can, whether it's through loans or whatever. Things like inconsistency and injury proneness won't matter as much at that level, since you're really only using the players for the time being to get from point A to point B.

Hope that helps! Apologies that there was no real discussion around your question. I think this is a very relevant topic that unfortunately seems to attract quite a deal of controversy.
Just wanted to thank you for taking the lead with this research.

I'll start using your schedule in my save and will let you know how things develop.

I'm playing in DarthFurion's World Super League, so there are two matches per week.  I'll adjust accordingly.

Chances are that it's not going to be too far off EBFM's schedule in the end, though.  I agree that game time is king — and I think Max (EBFM) said that in one of his videos.
I get the feeling that there might be a better way to weigh training sessions than what Max has set up in the EBFM schedule.  I think he set it up to try to increase all attributes equally.  However, now that we know for sure that not all attributes are created equal, we should be able to play the min and max game to get the ultimate results.
I'm really interested in this, and might start playing around a little bit myself with Max's findings and calculations.

At the moment, I'm really only interested in trying to max out Pace and Acceleration for as many players as possible.

There's got to be an even better way to min/max this.

Lol, sometimes I think the metagame behind the game is more interesting than the game itself...