Guide: Understanding the 2016 Training System

[Al Svanberg]

Hi guys!

I ran a new research session. This time I am trying to understand the importance of the highlighted ability and I trained two 18 y/o DC/DMC/MC players (5 stars) in 12 sessions with these drills:


A player with the roles DC, DMC and MC has FINISHING and CROSSING as grey/non-highlighted abilities, so with these drills those abilities constitutes app. 20.6% of the total session. A good impact should be seen on the result of those abilities.

Since I trained 2 players 12 times, the data is based on 24 sessions which is decent. But 2x12 gives a bigger margin for error than 1x24, so it wasn't optimal.

First when I looked at the numbers I thought my approach was flawed. I had not previously benched marked the kids to find out what their Training-Efficiency Factor (TEF) was while only training highlighted abilities, hence if the overall gain was less with this session than with a session with only highlighted abilities -- which I expected it to be! -- the negative deviation ratio for the grey abilities would be a bit off since they where based on a number of total gain instead of what the gain would be with only highlighted abilities. LOL, I am tired and I can imagine that how I put this sounds more complicated than it is. I hope you can follow me anyway!

BUT instead I think I made a somewhat interesting discovery. Here are the numbers:



What I noticed after a while of looking at the numbers was that while grey abilities were lower, the numbers that were up an abnorm amount -- was the other abilities trained in the same drill -- Fast Counter Attack -- IE, Passing and Creativity!

So it does not seem like the total effect of a drill that covers say 50% highlighted abilities and 50% grey abilities on one player is less than if the same drill was run on a player on which it covered 100% highlighted abilities, the gains will just be divided differently.

For example, lets say we run a large number of Fast Counter Attack drills (this drill improves Creativity, Crossing, Finishing and Passing) on a AMR (Creativity, Crossing, Finishing and Passing are all highlighted on a AMR), we could get the following result (plus minus only a few percent):
Creativity +50%
Crossing +50%
Finishing +50%
Passing +50%

But if we instead runs the same amount of drills on a MC (Only Creativity and Passing are highlighted while Crossing and Finnsihing are grey). we should roughly get the following result:
Creativity +75%
Crossing +25%
Finishing +25%
Passing +75%

What do you guys think about this? Does it make sense?

I will think about it until tomorrow and then update the guide accordingly unless a nights sleep and/or the input from you guys makes me think otherwise!

Lastly, notice how the previously spotted bigger gain in conditioning and lower gain in aggressiveness is -- not -- present. This is confusing me. It was so consistent in the large number of drills, with different mix of sessions etc, I ran before. Could be within the margin of error, but more testing certainly must be made. There can be a lot of different explanations to this...