Originally, I started writing this post at the end of January 2023. It took me only five months and a couple of days to finish it. I had an idea to share some of my training schedules because I enjoy creating new ones quite often and I like how my players are developing and their training rating is high overall. That means created schedules and the training strategy is not that bad.

It doesn’t matter it took me so long to finish the post because I kept the same strategy for the whole save so far and it was the same in the first season when I started writing about it as in the seventh season I’m in now.

As the official game manual suggests, the training can be handled in as much or as little depth as you want…

• It can be handled entirely by your Backroom Staff, using a selection of pre-set schedules and sessions.

• You can pick from those same pre-set schedules and devise your own training calendar.

• Finally, you can be fully hands-on, tailoring each Unit, Session, and Schedule to your full requirements.

… I can’t say I’m doing everything by myself because of the squad’s policy I’m using. I have three teams within VVV-Venlo - the main one, the reserves and the youth team. I’m doing both team and individual training for the main & youth teams manually and completely on my own. The reserves training regime belongs to their manager.

MAIN SQUAD

My training approach for the main (and also youth squad no matter if their schedules are the same or different) can be divided into three groups or three parts. You probably guess one of them is a pre-season part. And you’re right :) Historically (read as my whole life), I have pre-season connected to summer and January + February. But that’s based mainly because I live in a country where the football season usually has at least two month’s break. That means I have to adapt my real-life experiences to the nation/league where I play the Football Manager in.

• Pre-season: At least 1 month before the opening competitive match, it depends on when the game allows me to start the pre-season. It’s usually about 5 weeks in FM23 save in the Netherlands.

  • This part of the training schedule is the hardest and most demanding. I usually run these schedules until the end of August despite the league having already begun.

  • These demanding schedules are also used in the opening two weeks of the winter 1-month long break.

• During the season: These schedules are created and divided to make it available when the match is on Friday (mainly in the 1st season of the save as the Netherlands’ 2nd tier has the match day set to Friday), Saturday and Sunday.

• The end of the season: These schedules contain some same sessions I’m using during the season but there are significant changes to make the training easier and less demanding. It includes a lot of tactical things, more set-piece sessions and more recovery sessions. I used it usually for the last 3-5 weeks of the season.

I’m playing football for almost entire of my life. The older I’m the more I think about the training schedules and sessions. In real life of course. Especially as I became a playing coach in my local town team and I need to prepare training sessions for 15 players. Most of them are youngsters between 18-22 years old.

I know from my own experience, the training sessions have to include also some fun. Not only drills. And that’s, for example, the perfect example of the schedule I create for the last part of the season when the sessions contain goalkeeping sessions like one-on-one and more. But it’s more in my head because the game doesn’t include something like that. We have some sessions like team bonding or community outreach but that’s not what I would like to see within sessions.

I, for example, like to dedicate at least two or three training sessions during the month to just have fun. I know it sounds stupid maybe but I like to use smaller balls (the standard size is 5, so we are using the size 3) for some technical sessions like keep-ups etc.

But the Technical part of the training contains things like chance creation/conversion and so on. These things are very specific to some parts of the playing style or specific things like transition or playing from the back. And there is no technical training session within the General tab.

The already mentioned team bonding and community outreach sessions are dedicated to connecting within the local community and making some social contacts. Maybe we could have some technical/fun/competitive sessions within this Extra-Curricular tab. But it’s just my thoughts.

A couple of training schedule examples can be seen in the screenshots below.

RESERVE SQUAD

As I already wrote above, the training regime of the reserves squad is in the hands of the manager of this team. It’s not because I would be lazy or I would ignore the development of players in this squad but the reason is very simple. The reserves squad contains 3-5 players and I decided it’s not worth investing time to create schedules for them.

There are only players who are not good enough for the first team + they are too old to be in the youth team + they were not wanted even for a loan in some lower league and their contracts will expire at the end of the season.

The best young players who are too old to be in the youth team and they have high potential are already in the first team so they have the same training regime as other first-team players and they are allowed to play for the reserves squad. The rest of the reserves squad is players who are on loan - all green-highlighted players - currently, 18 when I wrote this and that means only 9 players are in training.

As the save progressed, the number of players in the reserve squad was reduced even more as the young players were on loan mainly to our affiliate clubs.

You can see the main difference is that all these players have also an additional focus in comparison with the other two squads. Every manager/coach has his own strategy.

YOUTH SQUAD

As the quote above suggests, the youth players are more likely to benefit from the additional time spent learning and developing. The training schedules for the youth team have no free day and no free sessions. The young players are able to last more and a quality training regime is more important until they will reach the age of 18 years old.

TRAINING INTENSITY & TRAINING INTENSITY SCHEDULING

This is something that’s connected a lot to all teams mentioned above. I decided to try something new within FM23 and like how it works. My usual strategy in the previous versions was that all players under the age of 18 had double training intensity. I usually set the double training intensity for all players until they were 24. But I decided to try and use the training intensity scheduling option within the game for FM23.

1. Firstly, the strategy with the double training intensity remains the same for the U18s team and young players.

2. Secondly, all the players in the first team are set to use the automatic training intensity.

You can find the Training Intensity Scheduling screen within the Training screen and there’s a “Rest” tab in the menu. It “Automatically set training intensity and rest based on player condition.” This description says all about it.

I have it like this:

• Very poor & Poor condition = No pitch or gym work.

• Fair & Good condition = Normal intensity.

• Excellent condition = Double intensity.

The only exception to this set-up are players above their thirties, and they all have their training intensity set to normal. I don’t if this is only a coincidence or if it works as I wanted, but this set-up really helped me during the two latest seasons of the save when I played in three competitions, and there were a lot of matches in combination with the Champions League.

When some players are really tired, I’m using the good old manual rest for 1 or more days.

My favourite developments

There are a lot of players who developed very well during the previous seven seasons. But if I would have to select someone, it would be (probably) newgens named Astrij Markaj and Rick Schotanus. I had him for four seasons in the squad after purchasing him for €4M from Club Brugge in 2025 when he was 17 years old. The 2028/2029 season was his fourth and the last in our club as he will join Brighton for up to €13.5M in summer 2029.

The secondly mentioned player is Rick Schotanus. It’s a player I signed for free from De Graafschap as a 16-year-old defender in January 2026. He spent some time in the youth team, he was also one season on loan in Belgium with Mechelen and he was a WBL backup in the 2027/28 season. I really liked how he performed in the second part of the 2028/29 season and he even replaced my first choice. His development is really good and I need to give him a new contract.

I’m not sharing this as something you have to/should follow. It’s just my thoughts and what I’m doing in FM23. I’m not the one whose main priority is to develop all youngsters into wonderkids. The older I am, the more important criterium for positive training/development is the feedback from players in terms of their training rating/performance.

Also, don’t forget one important thing - it’s still only a game. Let’s play it, improvise and try new things continuously. I’m currently at the end of the 7th season of the save. I didn’t produce wonderkids and sold them for €100M. But I sold around 35 players who are in Netherlands’ and Belgium’s top and second tiers. It was not always for millions but the bank balance of my club is now around €100M thanks to Champions League prize money and these transfers. That’s what I like.

Thanks for reading.

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