As the manager, you are the most important member of your club’s staff. You perform all of the responsibilities that are not performed by directors or assigned by you to other staff members, while you can also join your coaches on the training ground to take part in training your players.
When starting a new game you are able to set your own manager attributes. You are given an allocation of points that you can distribute between coaching attributes and an allocation of points that you can distribute between mental attributes. These allocations are determined by the coaching badges and past playing experience that you set for yourself.
The level of your coaching badge mainly determines your points allocation for coaching attributes, with a smaller effect on your points allocation for mental attributes. The level of your past playing experience mainly determines your points allocation for mental attributes with a smaller effect on your points allocation for coaching attributes.
You can also use the Style Focus slider to make your managerial style more like that of a tracksuit manager or more like that of a tactical manager. Being more of a tracksuit manager gives you a greater points allocation for coaching attributes, while being more of a tactical manager gives you a greater points allocation for mental attributes.
Attributes That Affect Training
- Coaching – Attacking, Defending, Fitness, Goalkeepers, Tactical, Technical, Mental and Working With Youngsters.
- Mental – Determination, Level of Discipline, Man Management and Motivating.
These attributes determine how effective you are at training your players. Their effects on training are explained in the Coaches guide.
The coaching attributes, with the exception of Working With Youngsters, affect your ability to train particular training categories. Therefore, having high ratings in some or all of these attributes is very useful if you manage lower reputation clubs where it is harder to employ good coaches, but less important at higher reputation clubs. However, a good rating in Working With Youngsters can be useful at all clubs to help to improve the quality of training for your young players.
The mental attributes, with the exception of Man Management, have a general effect on your ability to train all training categories. Therefore, again, having high ratings in these attributes is very useful if you manage lower reputation clubs, while Man Management can be useful at all clubs to help improve the quality of training for your senior players. However, all of these mental attributes also have additional effects that you should consider when setting your attribute ratings, as explained below.
Young players are considered to be those aged 23 and under while senior players are considered to be those aged 24 and over.
Mental Attributes
- Adaptability – The higher this is, the more likely you are to be offered a job at a foreign club.
- Determination – The higher this is, the more likely you are to have your requests to your club’s board accepted.
- Player Knowledge – The higher this is, the higher your club’s scouting knowledge levels for individual senior players are (player knowledge levels for players aged 24 and over). This is only relevant if you have attribute masking enabled.
- Youngster Knowledge – The higher this is, the higher your club’s scouting knowledge levels for individual young players are (player knowledge levels for players aged 23 and under). Again, this is only relevant if you have attribute masking enabled.
Player knowledge levels and attribute masking are explained in the Scouting Knowledge guide.
- Level of Discipline – The higher this is, the less likely your players are to approach you about any concerns that they have. Therefore, you can generally give your players heavier training workloads before they complain to you.
- Man Management – The higher this is, the more likely you are to get good reactions from your players when talking to them individually.
- Motivating – The higher this is, the more likely you are to get good reactions from your players in team talks and team meetings.
How to Choose Your Attribute Ratings
You should distribute your points according to how important you believe each attribute is to you based on their effects, detailed above, and how you intend to manage. You can remove points from attributes that you consider to be unimportant or less important in order to add them to attributes that you consider to be more important.
For example, you might consider the following attributes to be less important:
- Attacking, Defending, Fitness, Goalkeepers, Tactical, Technical and Mental – If you intend to manage a higher reputation club where you can more easily employ good coaches to achieve high quality training. You may also want to focus on just one or two of these attributes so that you can allocate yourself one particular training category.
- Adaptability – If you intend to manage in only one nation.
- Determination – If you intend to manage a higher reputation club where it is less necessary to make board requests and you can more easily employ good coaches.
- Player Knowledge and Youngster Knowledge – If you do not use attribute masking or if you intend to manage a higher reputation club where you can more easily use a large scouting team to gain knowledge of players.
- Motivating – If you do not intend to give team talks yourself or to give team meetings, and if you intend to manage a higher reputation club where you can more easily employ good coaches.
Attribute Development
Like a coach, you can improve your attributes with experience, and your coaching attributes in particular by going on coaching courses. However, you will only be able to go on courses for those badges of a higher level than the badge you initially give yourself.
Therefore, you may not want to set attributes to be slightly lower with a view to improving them, so that you can distribute more points to other attributes. For example, you might want to set Level of Discipline to 16 rather than 20 so that you can distribute four extra points elsewhere and hopefully improve your Level of Discipline naturally over time.
You can ask permission from the board to go on a coaching course by selecting Start a Coaching Course from the My Profile drop-down on the Home screen. However, when on a coaching course you will not be able to train your players as effectively. Therefore, if your contribution to training is important then you may want to make your request to go on a course at the end of a season, just before your players go on holiday. You may need to assign another coach to your training category or categories first in order for the board to agree to your request.