One thing to note, some attributes cost a lot of CA points. So maybe getting that 0,3 acceleration (barely noticable on such a sample) is equivalent to a full point in anticipation. What I mean is certain focuses might look better simply because they increase lower valued attributes.
I thought of that. Acc / Pac / Dec / Agi are some of the attributes that typically have a high CA weighting. But the tables presented in the video show that even these attributes can show significant growth with Additional Focus. eg. Quickness training boosted Acc by 0.1 for 15yr olds, 0.27 for 24yr olds. I believe that the growth of attributes that 'cost' a lot of CA points was reflected in the tables I presented in the video.
Hey Max! First of all congratulations for the great content - you're putting up an amazing job for the community and I am absolutely grateful for that! According to your conclusions, specially the fact that growth achieved by using additional focus training may cause less growth in other attributes it totally goes hands in hands with what I noticed also. I've been using FM genie scout + game editor in order to test some ideas. What I figured out was that players having a potential ability determined means that their attributes are somehow fixed at the moment their profiles are generated by the game. Moreover, it seems whenever additional focus is used to increase specific attributes of players we, as managers, are changing those fixed attributes. However, considering players have a potential ability which cannot be modified other attributes must take a penalty in order to keep the same potential ability value - this might be a little complicated for testing as it involves different weights for attributes and multiple variables but it would definitely be something really interesting to confirm (at least for me). Hopefully my small contribute can help you in future analysis. Keep up with the good work 💪👍
Hey bud, appreciate the input. I believe you are right in saying that with real players, their attributes / PA ratings are fixed, so changing their attributes through additional training etc. may cause them to take a penalty in other attributes. The relationship between PA ratings and attributes is full of mysteries, further research is definitely required.
Thank You VERY much for all the work you put into your research. Btw. I'm learning a lot about 'research' while learning about FM23 Stuff presented by you. Love
analysing your spreadsheet, in the 28yr table it results pretty clearly that many focuses cause a significative loss of flair(free kick,crossing,strength,endurance,shooting, aerial) or bravery(Penalty,quickness,passing, crossing)
Hey, thanks for the video! Great as always. I would, however, like to contest one point in the video. According to my own observations tweaking with additional focuses, I have found out that they do actually increase the overall intensity of training. (I still play FM21, so this might have changed since then, but I doubt it) This is not a major increase, so this alone will not increase intensity from medium to heavy. However, if your training schedule is right at the edge of becoming heavy, adding an individual focus will push it up to the next threshold. For me this becomes obvious with my pre-season training schedule that I have tweaked to be right at the edge of becoming heavy. The same is true for adding trait training, it will also increase the intensity by a small increment. Training seems to have a hidden intensity range that is at least several increments. My guess would be 1-10, or 1-20, something like that. Haven't done research on this, so it is just my gut feeling. If this assumption is true, adding additional focuses would increase the intensity rating of training by 1 or 2 increments, and if the intensity is 18-19 already, it will be pushed up to the next threshold. This is just my guess of how it might work, and we do need more detailed research on how intensity actually works behind the scenes.
It is certainly possible that in my tests, adding Additional Focus by itself wasn't enough to change the training intensity level. I guess what my video proves is that Additional Focus does not by itself impose a heavy enough training load that will change the level of 'Individual Training Workload' / 'Overall risk of injury'.
These tests were all performed with attributes at 10. That's fair enough, because everything is directly comparable across all positions and attributes. But it would be interesting to know if focus training has a different effect at other starting points, for example with lower attribute numbers (ex 5) or higher ones (ex 15). That should be able to answer the question, whether focus training is a good idea to bring up the weakest attributes of a player or if it should be continued once the stats aren't a weakness anymore. Both of these scenarios are things in-game assistant managers/scouts actually suggest to the player, so I believe it to be worth checking out.
Hey mate, yup all starting attributes were 10. It is certainly possible that Additional Focus works differently when the starting attributes are lower/higher. I did have to limit the amount of work required so didn't get a chance to vary the starting attributes 😅
thanks for your video. to resume what I will do now following your test. Players age >27 yo : balance & agility focus only. no need to waste time to focus on different attributes. Players age
Yes. For 28 and above, Agility and Balance seems to be the only effective AF. For 27 and below, look at the excel table, find the attributes you wish to develop and assign it to the player.
Thanks for the video. Any chance of doing a similar experience with fm24? I have tried focus training strength and pace/acceleration and it definetly seems to be working, at least in younger players.
There might be two additional variables to take into account: 1) Focus may work best with extremely low values, strength training in particular. Maybe from 1 to 9 the strength training works wonders and then stops working at 10, or maybe it starts working after reaching 12. 2) As Agility training seems to be working well after 27y/o, maybe some focuses work well when players are even older.
1) It is certainly possible that attributes grow at different speeds at different starting points. Going from 2 to 3 may be faster than going from 17 to 18. Although I don't see any reason why growth may suddenly slow down at 10. 2) This is true. Agility and Balance seems to be the only Additional Focus that works well for outfield players into the late 20s.
@@ebfm 1) I would've said the same thing but I don't see the logic behind Agility's behaviour either so maybe strength straining is, for some reason, effective only when the attribute is extremely low... Maybe because it's kinda OP? (according to Zealand tests). Total speculation though and probably not worth experimenting around. In my experience strength focus wasn't doing anything on anyone but I think I've seen good results with player with extremely low values. But it might just be natural growth. Now that I think about it, I think it's the only focus that coaches tell you to turn off since it's not doing anything.
@@afasia2341 In the Part 2 video I found that CA grows faster when the gap between CA and PA is wider. A younger player with low CA & low attribute will grow faster than a player who's almost reached his PA, giving you the impression that lower attributes grow faster than higher attributes. Still, it is within the realm of possibility that attributes (not considering CA) at different starting points will grow at different rates. Can't say for sure without doing a test dedicated to it though.
@@afasia2341 I regularly have strength focus on young players with low attribute. And it did pretty much nothing. Could not distinguish it from just regular growth. And even that is worse I think if a player already starts with low strength. I've never been able to train up strength from say 5 or 6 to anything decent.
I'd like to see how injury risk looks when you take into account the training intensity from the last video, position/role/duty training, and additional focus. In previous FM's I've always made sure every player is training a specific role, with an additional focus, on a higher training intensity when they are in good or excellent condition but noticeably was always near the top of the league for injuries, though never being the top, every year. This years FM I've been abandoning additional focus but the intensity and role training are still there. I've had less injuries but I'm not sure if the pro of healthy players outweighs the con of not training to the full extent with additional focus on. Would love to see how players grow with those 3 methods filled/high intensity compared to those 3 empty/normal, while obviously including staff and facilities into account. Regardless this is excellent work and I've enjoyed watching through these videos. I apologize if what I mentioned above has already been covered as I have been watching in chronological order from older videos to newer. I'm sure if it has been covered I'll stumble across it soon.
Hey mate, individual training is an area I've been relatively neglecting, since I'm focused on constructing a training schedule. Whether assigning individual training raises injury risk for a player - I haven't done any tests on it so can't say for sure. My guess is that individual training WILL raise injury risk which may outweigh the pros of extra development. I guess what you can do is to assess the player's injury risk (check past injury history or the scout report), and assign individual training only if the player has a clean injury history.
Fantastic video! Very informative & much appriciated. I also, I'm sorry that my comment is 4months after video release... I'm courious to know if the "standard" traning schedule that you've utilized counters the additional focus, for instance: - If the deployed traning schedule has enough physical traning, maybe the additional focus of "strength" reaches some sort of cap? Hence, the worse/deviating result? It would be interesting to see a similar experiment, where the influence of game time and training (schedule) is removed completely. I think this could provide more reliable results, at the cost of your comparison of the control group.
Great video, hats off to you for spending all this time & effort. I will try adjusting my Additional Focus`. btw most players` moan about Strength anyway!.
Thanks for the great job! I would like it and it would be fantastic if you provided the Excel link of the other videos with the other analyses. Because there are only the FMF files👍
Hey mate, the link included in the description is for the Excel file containing the data used in this video. You'll see 3 pages, 1 page for 15yr old, 1 for 24yr old, 1 for 28yr old. Different videos have links to different files that are relevant to that specific video.
@@ebfm Thanks again. I wanted to refer to the excel files of the respective videos. It would be nice to be able to "play" with that data. Congrats anyway
Thanks for the good work. As you mentioned, the additional focus may reduce the increase of other attributes. Can we have an idea on the net overall change? So we can know is it still overall benficial or a zero sum game.
I thought of a test you could run - all attributes equal only personally type changes eg. Model Citizen vs Unprofessional etc - I suspect personally has a much bigger impact on in game performance than people realise?
He has already done a video on hidden attributes, which determine a player's personality. Ambition, determination and professionalism do indeed increase the pace of growth. A model citizen, for example, has at least 15 in all of these.
Hey bud, player personalities are a reflection of their hidden attributes, so it is better to test the effects of those hidden attributes separately, which I've done in the Part 3 video (ua-cam.com/video/RwTSamdwi_E/v-deo.html).
So apart from strength not seemed to do much and agi/balance doing a lot when older.. Was there any correlation between technical/mental/physical attributes increase and age? For example would younger players benefit more from technical and older more from physical?
Hey mate, this will be shown in the next video but out of Technical / Mental / Physical, the Mental Attributes seem to grow for the longest timeframe. But most attributes stop growing from 27yrs of age.
Regarding the first part of the video, about the squad's impact. In the episode named "Understanding Youth Development in FM23" (30 Nov 2022), Andrew James, QA Lead at Sports Interactive, mentioned, starting at the 11''07 mark, that around 19 years of age, player development benefits the most from playing, with "match reputation" being a big factor. Before that age, training was the most impactful. I assume "professional games". I think that goes along with your "actual playing time" theory". What do you think about testing that out? Eg. a group would not play at all before 18, just train. That would be compared against your group where the players start playing pro games, in the senior squad, from the very start and the one that doesn't play at all.
Hey bud, thanks for letting me know. I didn't think about match reputation being a factor. Definitely worth testing in the future. In one of my previous videos I found that friendly matches caused less growth compared to official matches. Match reputation being a factor in growth would explain that. I believe I've already done the test you've suggested, in the Part 1 video. I found that training is the most important factor for growth up to 19. After that, a combination of training + match exposure.
Have you tested the relationship between Position/Role/Duty training and Additional Focus training? Another UA-camr recommended doing one or the other, but not both (specifically in FM24). Is this accurate?
From these results I would say that Strength additional focus is just broken currently (or nerfed enough over the years to be considered basically not worth it)
If you don't already have it planned, I would like to suggest doing a test on types of training that claim to affect individual role attributes. I've been using your EBTS 22.1 on FM23 and it seems to work well, but I've had issues with players failing to become better at a specific role. I'll have someone train from 16-18 at Roaming Playmaker, but it never seems to become their preferred role or even move up the list of roles they excel at. I added Attacking Movement & Defensive Shape to your EBTS 22.1 (they state it increases Attributes - Individual Roles) to see if it works, but since I'm not testing like you it will be a while before I can tell if it's doing anything. I'm assuming it specifically targets the attributes that make someone good at a specific role, but I think you've shown us some things don't work as intended or implied.
Hey mate, happy to hear you're trying your own tweaks on the EBTS. Yes, some training sessions say they affect 'individual roles' but it is not entirely clear what this means. Does the training session boost the attributes that are considered the player's best role? If the player's best role is Pressing Forward (Def), will the training session boost all attributes related to strikers or just the ones that are important for PF(D)? I'm becoming more and more skeptical of the conventional model that 'if you want to boost attributes XYZ, use training sessions that boost XYZ'. As I found in the FM22 videos, training sessions in FM don't always boost the attributes that they claim to boost. I'm gathering more and more evidence that as long as the players are doing adequate amount of training & getting match exposure, their attributes will grow across the board according to their playing position. Of course, it is possible for the gamer to intervene and encourage certain attributes to grow more than others. Additional Focus is one of those ways. In the next few vids I will be examining the growths of attributes more closely. It's still largely unchartered territory for me and there are lots of unknowns. Hang in there I'll get the answers for you!
@@ebfm I'm probably splitting hairs here on this stuff. I use a tactic with a Roaming Playmaker which seems to be an extremely difficult position to fill, and training someone from 16-18 at RPM he ended up a 4.5 star in a number of DM roles and a 4 at RPM, empty complaints but it would be nice if it ended up his preferred position after two years of excellent growth (thanks to your training setup). Again, great stuff coming out of your studies / tests.
It's just the training schedules that are there when you load a new save in FM23. A rotation of the Tactical Style training schedules that are provided by the game.
It's possible there's a limited window where strength training is effective, somewhere around 18-24? Anecdotally I see players get stronger in their late teens/early 20s, which would line up with information SI have provided in the past, and with typical growth patterns for real people. I notice it did have a net positive effect on your age 24 test, though smaller than other training types. Also interesting to see aerial training has a strong effect on bravery as that's an attribute that typically doesn't improve otherwise.
Hey, it's possible. I've only tested with 3 age groups, 15, 24 and 28. So it's possible that certain Additional Focuses are only effective during 16-23yrs window.
I agree, if there was a test at 20 years old I think it would show some interesting results. The gain in physical attributes tends to not kick in until around 18-21. I'm also not surprised that jumping reach behaves strangely, it always seems to be gained in seemingly random integer size steps rather than smooth progress like other attributes.
This has been a great series thank you. Is there any chance of a video/series that looks at set-pieces, especially attacking corners regarding distribution and player positioning?
Hey mate, that will be a difficult test to set up because it's difficult to define what 'best' means. Also, many attributes work in conjunction with each other so it's hard to isolate the effects of individual attributes. Maybe one day when I'm doing with my training analyses.
What I want to understand is if there is some attribute or something that leads to players learning traits quicker? Is it down to coaching staff? And if it is down to age potentially? (Can't teach an old dog new tricks?) So take Dane Scarlett the striker as my example that made me think about this, I bought him as Man Utd and he seems to learn traits at a quicker rate than others that I have focused on. For comparison when I signed Emre Tezgel he did not seen to learn traits as quick, but that was just my feel and/or because he got injured more.
As the other commenter said I suspect it may be related to some hidden attributes - probably versatility and professionalism which I think influences training performance. Also, the ingame advice regarding traits could be accurate - that is to say. trying to make a player learn a trait they are considered 'unsuitable' for would be ineffective. There's probably an age effect on the efficacy of trait learning as well. Regarding injuries; the player not training due to being injured would logically slow down the rate of trait learning - yet another reason to avoid injury prone players.
Hey mate, traits is an unchartered territory for me but I didn't test them in this video. An interesting area to research for sure. Hopefully one day in the future!
On the senior vs youth/reserve teams training I’d be curious to see how the results changed if the senior team had better coaches than the youth team. You may cover this in a video I haven’t gotten to yet haha great work though, I love it
Hey bud, the attributes of the coaching staff were identical for both senior / youth teams in that experiment. I haven't tried changing the coach attributes in this particular experiment, but in the Part 3 video I found that coach attributes do affect the rate of growth, so I assume that if the senior team had better attributes than the youth team, then players who trained in the senior team will grow faster than in the youth team.
I disagree with you at 12:30. If you allocate position training in the pre-season and additionally select a focus, the training intensity changes to high, which can lead to more injuries.
Oh right, I didn't realise that. In my video all I did was adding an Additional Focus which didn't change anything so I thought AF didn't affect injury risk. But clearly it does to a minor degree.
I think you need a lot more data to make some of these conclusions. It's one thing to conclude that individual training focus does indeed improve a player's stats when some of the values are overwhelmingly in the deep green, but it's another to assume that a difference of 0.3 here and there would mean anything outside of statistical variance. Plus, wouldn't the uncertainty from analyzing non-decimal values (10 vs 11) be huge?
Hey mate, you've made 2 pertinent observations. 1. The choice of 0.3 as the cutoff for 'statistically significant' is purely arbitrary. It does however arise from my general observation of all the spreadsheets. Any value less than 0.3 would include too many false positives, and any value more than 0.3 would include too many false negatives. So 0.3 did seem like an appropriate cut-off point. 2. Yes, it's either 10 or 11 so a lot of precision would be lost. But there is no alternative. I did not want to elongate the duration of each trials to more than 1 season because different variables will start coming into the picture which will mess with the results even more.
@@ebfm So off the top of my head, I'm assuming that in these experiments, age is the primary factor that would change throughout subsequent seasons. I don't know how a player's experience plays into development, but if we're solely talking about age, would it not be possible to advance the birth date of a player at the end of every season by a year, thereby keeping them consistently the same age over the experiment? I don't know if this is possible because I don't have the editor, but rewinding the date at the end of the season back to the start of the season should theoretically have the same effect. What do you think?
@@hao2000ki Hey bud, age of player is definitely one of the main factors in development. In my Test League the players' birthdays are set as the start date of the season (1 Jul I think it was) so their age remains unchanged throughout the experiment.
I've been waiting for this one 😀 Surprisingly good results compared to some other tests. Things seem to be working more or less as described. The strength additional focus is baffling to me. I've noticed myself that it doesn't do very much ingame. I've put multiple players on a couple of years of strength training for barely any effect. Jumping reach itself seems more tied to height growth anyway. But the fact that spending extra hours in the gym is producing zero gains makes no sense. If there is one attribute that logically you should be able to train in isolation without even needing game time it would probably be strength.
I've seen the opposite for younger players especially center backs(I don't do additional physical training for players over 18). They usually go up in strength and jumping reach. Keep in mind that in his testing he didn't give specific roles to train and they is why he mentioned that the intensity doesn't increase, if you give them actual roles to train and add an additional focus the training intensity goes up
@@Jur1_00 I think the young players gain those attributes almost entirely because of growth, the actual physical growth in cm and kg. And it doesn't matter if you put them on additional focus or not. That's my experience or hypothesis at least.
Coaches always seem to put players on strength training even when not ap priority in my experience. So I always assumed it was like others have mentioned that it was the default highest growth as going to the gym should garner some measurable and more meaningful accelerated growth unlike other attributes.
Hey mate, yes it's strange that Strength AF isn't working as described. As chigo000 suggested it could be due to the lack of assigning a role to train, although I do believe AF should be effective regardless of whether you assign positional training or not. Some people have suggested the possibility that Strength AF works outside the age groups that I've tested. In my tests the players were set as 15, 24, 28. So it's possible that Strength AF is effective somewhere between 15-24yrs of age.
I think its normal when u use aditional focus to bost specific atributes the game will cut the grow in the others cause of the PA, example, if a ofensive midfielder have 150 PA and he already hit the maximum 150 CA, in normal growth scenario the player have 15 on pass, 15 on technic and 15 on vision, when u bost these 3 atributes with aditional focus on pass and and the get 16 or 17 on each one, the game need cut in others attributes for match the 150 CA. And probably isn´t a small cut cause we bost always important attributes that have a high weights for CA 😂 Miss u Max
Hey Max I did some very basic tests about match recovery and jadedness and I got some curious results. I dont know if you ever test it so I want share my results and you might get curious enough to do some proper testing. I ran a pre-season friendly and I subbed my entire first team at half-time. Then I compared players jadedness and condition running the day after the match with 1 recovery session, 1 match review and 1 rest to 2 recovery sessions and 1 match review. Right after the match players gained 10-20 jadedness and their condition was reduced by 15-21. Recovery session description says fatigue reduced and condition increased but players condition was exactly the same with 1 or 2 recovery sessions (they recovered 3-5% compared to what they had right after the match). Having 2 recovery sessions didn't increase condition compared to 1 session which it's weird. Players gained 10-20 jadedness after 45 minutes playing and running 1 recovery, 1 match review and 1 rest reduced 6-9 jadedness. Adding a second recovery session instead of rest reduced jadedness only 0-2 points further (yes for 1 player it didn't change at all, I assume it's due rounding). It's very curious the minimal effect of having a second recovery session vs rest and it's weird that condition didn't change at all. edit: 2 rest and match review gives almost the same results than 2 recovery and match review. Condition it's the same, so recovery doesnt affect condition directly (maybe helps to increase it faster the days after it, idk) and jadedness difference was 0-2 points higher between all three different post match training days. I guess recovery barely do anything!
Great job for doing these experiments! Did you turn on the in-game editor to record the stats for these players? IIRC there are 3 parameters related to recovery - Overall Physical Condition, Match Sharpness and Fatigue. When you say the players gained jadedness, are you referring to the Fatigue parameter? I wouldn't be surprised if 1 and 2 Recovery sessions did not produce any difference. I remember doing a similar experiment myself with Recovery sessions and found that they actually did not affect the speed of recovery. You should also compare the amount of recovery when you use 0 Recovery session. See if there's a difference between 0 and 1 Recovery session.
@@ebfm Thanks! I dont have the in-game editor for FM23, I used FM Genie Scout (comparing Genie Scout to in-game editor from pevious FMs the data does match). Yes, it's fatigue in-game. I did test 0 recovery too, fatigue it's slightly better with rest than 1 recovery session and slightly worse than 2 recovery sessions but the margins are very small between all 3 and condition does not change. I did a post r/footballmanagergames explaining what I did and the results if you want to check. I dont want paste the link here or it will go to your spam messages the title is FM23 - apparently recovery sessions barely do anything
I got more interesting things related to fatigue. I ran a pre-season week with endurance, resistance and quickness training and although their description in game says increase fatigue, players fatigue actually got reduced. It's hard to make sense of the data because some players got a small reduction and some got a larger one (like -15 and -60). I'm just bothering you with that because if we do a schedule considering only attribute growth but players get really high fatigue that forces us to rest them during the season (or even worse they get injured). If we rest them every now and then they'll miss training so it's really hard to balance training x fatigue x matches to actually get the "best" schedule. I'm sorry if I'm being annoying by the way.
@@sarsante No need to be sorry mate, I always welcome people who do tests like these. Yes, the in-game descriptions on the training sessions are seldom accurate, which makes it hard for anyone to make the 'best' training schedule. I'm also planning to make an episode regarding rest/recovery sessions myself. Let's see if I get the same results that you did.
Not bad, but you need to take the next step if you are serious about statistical analysis. Consider investing in software such as SPSS and reading a few books which are easily available, as all you have is raw data which can paint a false picture. Good luck.
I will usually agree with this but there is no need as the formulas are fixed and common issues you will find such as heteroskedasticity are non existant. There is also no need for regressions. This method is enough for what he wants.
Hey mate, I come from a field completely unrelated to statistics / data analysis so it's an area that's a bit daunting for me. But this SPSS program sounds very helpful, I'll see if I can watch some tutorials on youtube and learn it.
You know you're hooked on FM23 when you look at excel sheets for fun.
The world cannot run without excel sheets
Best training vids for ever. You done the hard work to actually get to what works. Great work mate, very informative. Thank you.
I've used speed focus a lot, guess it's time to change the training. Thanks, awesome stuff as usual
Amazing job! Can't wait to put my hands on the best training schedules for FM23 😁
One thing to note, some attributes cost a lot of CA points. So maybe getting that 0,3 acceleration (barely noticable on such a sample) is equivalent to a full point in anticipation. What I mean is certain focuses might look better simply because they increase lower valued attributes.
I thought of that. Acc / Pac / Dec / Agi are some of the attributes that typically have a high CA weighting. But the tables presented in the video show that even these attributes can show significant growth with Additional Focus.
eg. Quickness training boosted Acc by 0.1 for 15yr olds, 0.27 for 24yr olds.
I believe that the growth of attributes that 'cost' a lot of CA points was reflected in the tables I presented in the video.
best fm channel on youtube!!! keep going! big shout from brazil
watching videos like this and you start to think this world has a reason to survive!
but then I go wathcin more cat videos =)
Hey Max! First of all congratulations for the great content - you're putting up an amazing job for the community and I am absolutely grateful for that!
According to your conclusions, specially the fact that growth achieved by using additional focus training may cause less growth in other attributes it totally goes hands in hands with what I noticed also.
I've been using FM genie scout + game editor in order to test some ideas. What I figured out was that players having a potential ability determined means that their attributes are somehow fixed at the moment their profiles are generated by the game. Moreover, it seems whenever additional focus is used to increase specific attributes of players we, as managers, are changing those fixed attributes. However, considering players have a potential ability which cannot be modified other attributes must take a penalty in order to keep the same potential ability value - this might be a little complicated for testing as it involves different weights for attributes and multiple variables but it would definitely be something really interesting to confirm (at least for me).
Hopefully my small contribute can help you in future analysis.
Keep up with the good work 💪👍
Hey bud, appreciate the input. I believe you are right in saying that with real players, their attributes / PA ratings are fixed, so changing their attributes through additional training etc. may cause them to take a penalty in other attributes.
The relationship between PA ratings and attributes is full of mysteries, further research is definitely required.
Thank You VERY much for all the work you put into your research. Btw. I'm learning a lot about 'research' while learning about FM23 Stuff presented by you. Love
analysing your spreadsheet, in the 28yr table it results pretty clearly that many focuses cause a significative loss of flair(free kick,crossing,strength,endurance,shooting, aerial) or bravery(Penalty,quickness,passing, crossing)
You made far more sense in this vid, than the last one.
I didn't do rocket science at school, dude.
Hey, thanks for the video! Great as always.
I would, however, like to contest one point in the video. According to my own observations tweaking with additional focuses, I have found out that they do actually increase the overall intensity of training. (I still play FM21, so this might have changed since then, but I doubt it)
This is not a major increase, so this alone will not increase intensity from medium to heavy. However, if your training schedule is right at the edge of becoming heavy, adding an individual focus will push it up to the next threshold. For me this becomes obvious with my pre-season training schedule that I have tweaked to be right at the edge of becoming heavy. The same is true for adding trait training, it will also increase the intensity by a small increment.
Training seems to have a hidden intensity range that is at least several increments. My guess would be 1-10, or 1-20, something like that. Haven't done research on this, so it is just my gut feeling. If this assumption is true, adding additional focuses would increase the intensity rating of training by 1 or 2 increments, and if the intensity is 18-19 already, it will be pushed up to the next threshold. This is just my guess of how it might work, and we do need more detailed research on how intensity actually works behind the scenes.
It is certainly possible that in my tests, adding Additional Focus by itself wasn't enough to change the training intensity level. I guess what my video proves is that Additional Focus does not by itself impose a heavy enough training load that will change the level of 'Individual Training Workload' / 'Overall risk of injury'.
These tests were all performed with attributes at 10. That's fair enough, because everything is directly comparable across all positions and attributes. But it would be interesting to know if focus training has a different effect at other starting points, for example with lower attribute numbers (ex 5) or higher ones (ex 15). That should be able to answer the question, whether focus training is a good idea to bring up the weakest attributes of a player or if it should be continued once the stats aren't a weakness anymore. Both of these scenarios are things in-game assistant managers/scouts actually suggest to the player, so I believe it to be worth checking out.
Hey mate, yup all starting attributes were 10. It is certainly possible that Additional Focus works differently when the starting attributes are lower/higher. I did have to limit the amount of work required so didn't get a chance to vary the starting attributes 😅
once again, incredible job broski. thanks and keep it up :D
thanks for your video. to resume what I will do now following your test.
Players age >27 yo : balance & agility focus only. no need to waste time to focus on different attributes.
Players age
Yes. For 28 and above, Agility and Balance seems to be the only effective AF.
For 27 and below, look at the excel table, find the attributes you wish to develop and assign it to the player.
Thanks for the video. Any chance of doing a similar experience with fm24? I have tried focus training strength and pace/acceleration and it definetly seems to be working, at least in younger players.
There might be two additional variables to take into account: 1) Focus may work best with extremely low values, strength training in particular. Maybe from 1 to 9 the strength training works wonders and then stops working at 10, or maybe it starts working after reaching 12. 2) As Agility training seems to be working well after 27y/o, maybe some focuses work well when players are even older.
1) It is certainly possible that attributes grow at different speeds at different starting points. Going from 2 to 3 may be faster than going from 17 to 18. Although I don't see any reason why growth may suddenly slow down at 10.
2) This is true. Agility and Balance seems to be the only Additional Focus that works well for outfield players into the late 20s.
@@ebfm 1) I would've said the same thing but I don't see the logic behind Agility's behaviour either so maybe strength straining is, for some reason, effective only when the attribute is extremely low... Maybe because it's kinda OP? (according to Zealand tests). Total speculation though and probably not worth experimenting around. In my experience strength focus wasn't doing anything on anyone but I think I've seen good results with player with extremely low values. But it might just be natural growth. Now that I think about it, I think it's the only focus that coaches tell you to turn off since it's not doing anything.
@@afasia2341 In the Part 2 video I found that CA grows faster when the gap between CA and PA is wider. A younger player with low CA & low attribute will grow faster than a player who's almost reached his PA, giving you the impression that lower attributes grow faster than higher attributes.
Still, it is within the realm of possibility that attributes (not considering CA) at different starting points will grow at different rates. Can't say for sure without doing a test dedicated to it though.
@@afasia2341 I regularly have strength focus on young players with low attribute. And it did pretty much nothing. Could not distinguish it from just regular growth. And even that is worse I think if a player already starts with low strength. I've never been able to train up strength from say 5 or 6 to anything decent.
@@Draddar Ok so it was just my personal impression I guess.
I'd like to see how injury risk looks when you take into account the training intensity from the last video, position/role/duty training, and additional focus. In previous FM's I've always made sure every player is training a specific role, with an additional focus, on a higher training intensity when they are in good or excellent condition but noticeably was always near the top of the league for injuries, though never being the top, every year. This years FM I've been abandoning additional focus but the intensity and role training are still there. I've had less injuries but I'm not sure if the pro of healthy players outweighs the con of not training to the full extent with additional focus on. Would love to see how players grow with those 3 methods filled/high intensity compared to those 3 empty/normal, while obviously including staff and facilities into account. Regardless this is excellent work and I've enjoyed watching through these videos. I apologize if what I mentioned above has already been covered as I have been watching in chronological order from older videos to newer. I'm sure if it has been covered I'll stumble across it soon.
Hey mate, individual training is an area I've been relatively neglecting, since I'm focused on constructing a training schedule.
Whether assigning individual training raises injury risk for a player - I haven't done any tests on it so can't say for sure. My guess is that individual training WILL raise injury risk which may outweigh the pros of extra development.
I guess what you can do is to assess the player's injury risk (check past injury history or the scout report), and assign individual training only if the player has a clean injury history.
Wow, great stuff, really good insights.
Fantastic video! Very informative & much appriciated. I also, I'm sorry that my comment is 4months after video release...
I'm courious to know if the "standard" traning schedule that you've utilized counters the additional focus, for instance:
- If the deployed traning schedule has enough physical traning, maybe the additional focus of "strength" reaches some sort of cap? Hence, the worse/deviating result?
It would be interesting to see a similar experiment, where the influence of game time and training (schedule) is removed completely. I think this could provide more reliable results, at the cost of your comparison of the control group.
Great video, hats off to you for spending all this time & effort. I will try adjusting my Additional Focus`. btw most players` moan about Strength anyway!.
Thanks for the great job! I would like it and it would be fantastic if you provided the Excel link of the other videos with the other analyses. Because there are only the FMF files👍
Hey mate, the link included in the description is for the Excel file containing the data used in this video. You'll see 3 pages, 1 page for 15yr old, 1 for 24yr old, 1 for 28yr old.
Different videos have links to different files that are relevant to that specific video.
@@ebfm Thanks again. I wanted to refer to the excel files of the respective videos. It would be nice to be able to "play" with that data. Congrats anyway
Amazing work sir. Some professional teams should hire you as data analyst😊
Great stuff - I will amend my indiv schedules accordingly. Any insights into training intensity?
Hey mate, in the Part 3 video I found that training intensity does affect the rate of player growth.
ua-cam.com/video/RwTSamdwi_E/v-deo.html
@@ebfm Cheers. I did watch it, but forgot that detail.
I really want you to blow up so you can quit your normal job and do FM research full time.
Great content as always, thanks so much!
Thanks for the good work. As you mentioned, the additional focus may reduce the increase of other attributes. Can we have an idea on the net overall change? So we can know is it still overall benficial or a zero sum game.
what about intensity level? How relevant is it? Have you tested it?
I thought of a test you could run - all attributes equal only personally type changes eg. Model Citizen vs Unprofessional etc - I suspect personally has a much bigger impact on in game performance than people realise?
He has already done a video on hidden attributes, which determine a player's personality. Ambition, determination and professionalism do indeed increase the pace of growth.
A model citizen, for example, has at least 15 in all of these.
Hey bud, player personalities are a reflection of their hidden attributes, so it is better to test the effects of those hidden attributes separately, which I've done in the Part 3 video (ua-cam.com/video/RwTSamdwi_E/v-deo.html).
Thank you for all the work you share with us
So apart from strength not seemed to do much and agi/balance doing a lot when older.. Was there any correlation between technical/mental/physical attributes increase and age? For example would younger players benefit more from technical and older more from physical?
Hey mate, this will be shown in the next video but out of Technical / Mental / Physical, the Mental Attributes seem to grow for the longest timeframe. But most attributes stop growing from 27yrs of age.
Regarding the first part of the video, about the squad's impact. In the episode named "Understanding Youth Development in FM23" (30 Nov 2022), Andrew James, QA Lead at Sports Interactive, mentioned, starting at the 11''07 mark, that around 19 years of age, player development benefits the most from playing, with "match reputation" being a big factor.
Before that age, training was the most impactful. I assume "professional games". I think that goes along with your "actual playing time" theory".
What do you think about testing that out?
Eg. a group would not play at all before 18, just train. That would be compared against your group where the players start playing pro games, in the senior squad, from the very start and the one that doesn't play at all.
Hey bud, thanks for letting me know. I didn't think about match reputation being a factor. Definitely worth testing in the future.
In one of my previous videos I found that friendly matches caused less growth compared to official matches. Match reputation being a factor in growth would explain that.
I believe I've already done the test you've suggested, in the Part 1 video. I found that training is the most important factor for growth up to 19. After that, a combination of training + match exposure.
Have you tested the relationship between Position/Role/Duty training and Additional Focus training? Another UA-camr recommended doing one or the other, but not both (specifically in FM24). Is this accurate?
Hey bud, no I have not tested positional training yet. It's a frequently requested topic, so it is on my list.
From these results I would say that Strength additional focus is just broken currently (or nerfed enough over the years to be considered basically not worth it)
If you don't already have it planned, I would like to suggest doing a test on types of training that claim to affect individual role attributes. I've been using your EBTS 22.1 on FM23 and it seems to work well, but I've had issues with players failing to become better at a specific role. I'll have someone train from 16-18 at Roaming Playmaker, but it never seems to become their preferred role or even move up the list of roles they excel at. I added Attacking Movement & Defensive Shape to your EBTS 22.1 (they state it increases Attributes - Individual Roles) to see if it works, but since I'm not testing like you it will be a while before I can tell if it's doing anything. I'm assuming it specifically targets the attributes that make someone good at a specific role, but I think you've shown us some things don't work as intended or implied.
Hey mate, happy to hear you're trying your own tweaks on the EBTS. Yes, some training sessions say they affect 'individual roles' but it is not entirely clear what this means. Does the training session boost the attributes that are considered the player's best role? If the player's best role is Pressing Forward (Def), will the training session boost all attributes related to strikers or just the ones that are important for PF(D)?
I'm becoming more and more skeptical of the conventional model that 'if you want to boost attributes XYZ, use training sessions that boost XYZ'. As I found in the FM22 videos, training sessions in FM don't always boost the attributes that they claim to boost.
I'm gathering more and more evidence that as long as the players are doing adequate amount of training & getting match exposure, their attributes will grow across the board according to their playing position.
Of course, it is possible for the gamer to intervene and encourage certain attributes to grow more than others. Additional Focus is one of those ways.
In the next few vids I will be examining the growths of attributes more closely. It's still largely unchartered territory for me and there are lots of unknowns. Hang in there I'll get the answers for you!
@@ebfm I'm probably splitting hairs here on this stuff. I use a tactic with a Roaming Playmaker which seems to be an extremely difficult position to fill, and training someone from 16-18 at RPM he ended up a 4.5 star in a number of DM roles and a 4 at RPM, empty complaints but it would be nice if it ended up his preferred position after two years of excellent growth (thanks to your training setup).
Again, great stuff coming out of your studies / tests.
The default training schedule you mentioned in the test set-up is the "Balanced - 1 match"?
It's just the training schedules that are there when you load a new save in FM23. A rotation of the Tactical Style training schedules that are provided by the game.
It's possible there's a limited window where strength training is effective, somewhere around 18-24? Anecdotally I see players get stronger in their late teens/early 20s, which would line up with information SI have provided in the past, and with typical growth patterns for real people. I notice it did have a net positive effect on your age 24 test, though smaller than other training types.
Also interesting to see aerial training has a strong effect on bravery as that's an attribute that typically doesn't improve otherwise.
Hey, it's possible. I've only tested with 3 age groups, 15, 24 and 28. So it's possible that certain Additional Focuses are only effective during 16-23yrs window.
I agree, if there was a test at 20 years old I think it would show some interesting results. The gain in physical attributes tends to not kick in until around 18-21. I'm also not surprised that jumping reach behaves strangely, it always seems to be gained in seemingly random integer size steps rather than smooth progress like other attributes.
This has been a great series thank you. Is there any chance of a video/series that looks at set-pieces, especially attacking corners regarding distribution and player positioning?
Hey mate, I am planning on doing an episode on the set piece training sessions and their effect on the set piece attributes. Stay tuned!
@Evidence Based Football Manager nice, I always do attacking corner training and wonder if its worth it, looking forward to it 👍
Could you do a video where u test what attribute is the best for each Position
Hey mate, that will be a difficult test to set up because it's difficult to define what 'best' means. Also, many attributes work in conjunction with each other so it's hard to isolate the effects of individual attributes. Maybe one day when I'm doing with my training analyses.
What I want to understand is if there is some attribute or something that leads to players learning traits quicker? Is it down to coaching staff? And if it is down to age potentially? (Can't teach an old dog new tricks?)
So take Dane Scarlett the striker as my example that made me think about this, I bought him as Man Utd and he seems to learn traits at a quicker rate than others that I have focused on. For comparison when I signed Emre Tezgel he did not seen to learn traits as quick, but that was just my feel and/or because he got injured more.
Is it down to their hidden attributes for Versatility & Adaptability for re-training in new position and traits.
As the other commenter said I suspect it may be related to some hidden attributes - probably versatility and professionalism which I think influences training performance. Also, the ingame advice regarding traits could be accurate - that is to say. trying to make a player learn a trait they are considered 'unsuitable' for would be ineffective. There's probably an age effect on the efficacy of trait learning as well. Regarding injuries; the player not training due to being injured would logically slow down the rate of trait learning - yet another reason to avoid injury prone players.
Hey mate, traits is an unchartered territory for me but I didn't test them in this video. An interesting area to research for sure. Hopefully one day in the future!
On the senior vs youth/reserve teams training I’d be curious to see how the results changed if the senior team had better coaches than the youth team. You may cover this in a video I haven’t gotten to yet haha great work though, I love it
Hey bud, the attributes of the coaching staff were identical for both senior / youth teams in that experiment. I haven't tried changing the coach attributes in this particular experiment, but in the Part 3 video I found that coach attributes do affect the rate of growth, so I assume that if the senior team had better attributes than the youth team, then players who trained in the senior team will grow faster than in the youth team.
Good explanations
I disagree with you at 12:30.
If you allocate position training in the pre-season and additionally select a focus, the training intensity changes to high, which can lead to more injuries.
Oh right, I didn't realise that. In my video all I did was adding an Additional Focus which didn't change anything so I thought AF didn't affect injury risk. But clearly it does to a minor degree.
I think you need a lot more data to make some of these conclusions. It's one thing to conclude that individual training focus does indeed improve a player's stats when some of the values are overwhelmingly in the deep green, but it's another to assume that a difference of 0.3 here and there would mean anything outside of statistical variance. Plus, wouldn't the uncertainty from analyzing non-decimal values (10 vs 11) be huge?
Hey mate, you've made 2 pertinent observations.
1. The choice of 0.3 as the cutoff for 'statistically significant' is purely arbitrary. It does however arise from my general observation of all the spreadsheets. Any value less than 0.3 would include too many false positives, and any value more than 0.3 would include too many false negatives. So 0.3 did seem like an appropriate cut-off point.
2. Yes, it's either 10 or 11 so a lot of precision would be lost. But there is no alternative. I did not want to elongate the duration of each trials to more than 1 season because different variables will start coming into the picture which will mess with the results even more.
@@ebfm So off the top of my head, I'm assuming that in these experiments, age is the primary factor that would change throughout subsequent seasons. I don't know how a player's experience plays into development, but if we're solely talking about age, would it not be possible to advance the birth date of a player at the end of every season by a year, thereby keeping them consistently the same age over the experiment?
I don't know if this is possible because I don't have the editor, but rewinding the date at the end of the season back to the start of the season should theoretically have the same effect.
What do you think?
@@hao2000ki Hey bud, age of player is definitely one of the main factors in development.
In my Test League the players' birthdays are set as the start date of the season (1 Jul I think it was) so their age remains unchanged throughout the experiment.
where can i download your schuedles? :)
The schedule for FM23 is not out yet. I'm working on it!
I've been waiting for this one 😀
Surprisingly good results compared to some other tests. Things seem to be working more or less as described.
The strength additional focus is baffling to me. I've noticed myself that it doesn't do very much ingame. I've put multiple players on a couple of years of strength training for barely any effect. Jumping reach itself seems more tied to height growth anyway. But the fact that spending extra hours in the gym is producing zero gains makes no sense. If there is one attribute that logically you should be able to train in isolation without even needing game time it would probably be strength.
I've seen the opposite for younger players especially center backs(I don't do additional physical training for players over 18). They usually go up in strength and jumping reach. Keep in mind that in his testing he didn't give specific roles to train and they is why he mentioned that the intensity doesn't increase, if you give them actual roles to train and add an additional focus the training intensity goes up
@@Jur1_00 I think the young players gain those attributes almost entirely because of growth, the actual physical growth in cm and kg. And it doesn't matter if you put them on additional focus or not. That's my experience or hypothesis at least.
@@Draddar yes but not like 5 or 6 attribute points
Coaches always seem to put players on strength training even when not ap priority in my experience. So I always assumed it was like others have mentioned that it was the default highest growth as going to the gym should garner some measurable and more meaningful accelerated growth unlike other attributes.
Hey mate, yes it's strange that Strength AF isn't working as described. As chigo000 suggested it could be due to the lack of assigning a role to train, although I do believe AF should be effective regardless of whether you assign positional training or not. Some people have suggested the possibility that Strength AF works outside the age groups that I've tested. In my tests the players were set as 15, 24, 28. So it's possible that Strength AF is effective somewhere between 15-24yrs of age.
Does this work on fm console?
I've never tried FM console so cant say.
I think its normal when u use aditional focus to bost specific atributes the game will cut the grow in the others cause of the PA, example, if a ofensive midfielder have 150 PA and he already hit the maximum 150 CA, in normal growth scenario the player have 15 on pass, 15 on technic and 15 on vision, when u bost these 3 atributes with aditional focus on pass and and the get 16 or 17 on each one, the game need cut in others attributes for match the 150 CA. And probably isn´t a small cut cause we bost always important attributes that have a high weights for CA 😂
Miss u Max
I just let my assistant to handle it so if the player need another focus it will automatically changed
All the FM sickos in here haha the OCD types. Takes one to know one 😂
Hey Max I did some very basic tests about match recovery and jadedness and I got some curious results. I dont know if you ever test it so I want share my results and you might get curious enough to do some proper testing.
I ran a pre-season friendly and I subbed my entire first team at half-time. Then I compared players jadedness and condition running the day after the match with 1 recovery session, 1 match review and 1 rest to 2 recovery sessions and 1 match review.
Right after the match players gained 10-20 jadedness and their condition was reduced by 15-21.
Recovery session description says fatigue reduced and condition increased but players condition was exactly the same with 1 or 2 recovery sessions (they recovered 3-5% compared to what they had right after the match). Having 2 recovery sessions didn't increase condition compared to 1 session which it's weird.
Players gained 10-20 jadedness after 45 minutes playing and running 1 recovery, 1 match review and 1 rest reduced 6-9 jadedness. Adding a second recovery session instead of rest reduced jadedness only 0-2 points further (yes for 1 player it didn't change at all, I assume it's due rounding).
It's very curious the minimal effect of having a second recovery session vs rest and it's weird that condition didn't change at all.
edit: 2 rest and match review gives almost the same results than 2 recovery and match review. Condition it's the same, so recovery doesnt affect condition directly (maybe helps to increase it faster the days after it, idk) and jadedness difference was 0-2 points higher between all three different post match training days. I guess recovery barely do anything!
Great job for doing these experiments! Did you turn on the in-game editor to record the stats for these players? IIRC there are 3 parameters related to recovery - Overall Physical Condition, Match Sharpness and Fatigue.
When you say the players gained jadedness, are you referring to the Fatigue parameter?
I wouldn't be surprised if 1 and 2 Recovery sessions did not produce any difference. I remember doing a similar experiment myself with Recovery sessions and found that they actually did not affect the speed of recovery.
You should also compare the amount of recovery when you use 0 Recovery session. See if there's a difference between 0 and 1 Recovery session.
@@ebfm Thanks!
I dont have the in-game editor for FM23, I used FM Genie Scout (comparing Genie Scout to in-game editor from pevious FMs the data does match). Yes, it's fatigue in-game.
I did test 0 recovery too, fatigue it's slightly better with rest than 1 recovery session and slightly worse than 2 recovery sessions but the margins are very small between all 3 and condition does not change. I did a post r/footballmanagergames explaining what I did and the results if you want to check. I dont want paste the link here or it will go to your spam messages the title is FM23 - apparently recovery sessions barely do anything
I got more interesting things related to fatigue. I ran a pre-season week with endurance, resistance and quickness training and although their description in game says increase fatigue, players fatigue actually got reduced. It's hard to make sense of the data because some players got a small reduction and some got a larger one (like -15 and -60).
I'm just bothering you with that because if we do a schedule considering only attribute growth but players get really high fatigue that forces us to rest them during the season (or even worse they get injured). If we rest them every now and then they'll miss training so it's really hard to balance training x fatigue x matches to actually get the "best" schedule. I'm sorry if I'm being annoying by the way.
@@sarsante No need to be sorry mate, I always welcome people who do tests like these.
Yes, the in-game descriptions on the training sessions are seldom accurate, which makes it hard for anyone to make the 'best' training schedule.
I'm also planning to make an episode regarding rest/recovery sessions myself. Let's see if I get the same results that you did.
@@ebfm Cool, I'm looking forward to it!I really enjoy understanding how games work and your videos are hands down the best!
u should look at how much PA a player will loose if they are trained on an unknown position
PA ratings are fixed. They never change.
@@ebfm but fm scouts says that if u train a weak foot, or a New position they Will go lower on the PA
@@dkstrip8162 By PA you're talking about Potential Ability rating yes?
PAs of players never change. You can test it yourself using FM23.
I'm Football Manager physical attributes grow faster followed by technical then mental attributes.
Do you play much normal football manager?
Type of guy to play lower league and no attributes.
No. I've clocked about 400 hours on FM23. About 390 of those hours is spent doing research and running tests 😅
@@ebfm you could do an evidence based let’s play…?
Not bad, but you need to take the next step if you are serious about statistical analysis. Consider investing in software such as SPSS and reading a few books which are easily available, as all you have is raw data which can paint a false picture. Good luck.
I will usually agree with this but there is no need as the formulas are fixed and common issues you will find such as heteroskedasticity are non existant. There is also no need for regressions. This method is enough for what he wants.
Hey mate, I come from a field completely unrelated to statistics / data analysis so it's an area that's a bit daunting for me. But this SPSS program sounds very helpful, I'll see if I can watch some tutorials on youtube and learn it.
You are missed.