Tackling the injury problem
How to keep your squad healthy

Many players are suffering from the injury plague. While there is obviously a nasty link between over- and even under-performance of clubs and the amount of injuries they get, there are a vast array of options you can employ for keeping those injury stampedes at bay.

We are including several tested methods from staff appointment to squad rotation and workload adjustments; all of them can be applied at the same time. You may, however, find an individual mixture that suits your team and level best.

Training, environment and staff

Staff and facilities:

• Increase your physio level, try to hire additional physios and release bad physios
• Try to hire the best fitness coaches available
• Try to invest in training facilities as soon as there is money available
• Keep your squad size under control if you cannot hire enough physios

Most clubs are able to hire at least one physio above the board limit. You should do this, if possible. If you have reached the limit, try to replace the existing physios with the best available. Note: some AI controlled clubs have many more physios than allowed to the human players. If you take over one of these clubs and find you have a glut of physiotherapists, it’s usually best not to touch them and keep the existing system in place. In most cases, if you fire one of them, you won’t be allowed to replace them.

Make sure your fitness coaches are on a “light” workload first of all.

Training planning:

• Apply pre-season fitness training for at least 60 days
• Apply fitness training for injury recovery
• Reduce the pre-season training level slightly for very injury prone players
• Design special training schedules for very injury prone players
• Rest key players after very hard matches in training
• Don’t put new signings on the most intensive training schedules
• Keep a moderate amount of fitness training during the season

If you are using pre-season fitness schedules, you should optimise them by setting the sliders two notches above high and add light training for other areas but keep the total workload below the normal level. If you want to maximise the physical training even further, you should take injured players out and use a lower level.

The physical stats will drop after pre-season slightly depending on your schedules, but e.g. pace can partially be sustained if you are using schedule who support this, e.g. for wingers, fullbacks and fast strikers, as well as strength if you are training this for defensive midfielders, defenders or strong strikers.

Injury prone players profit from schedules one or two notches below the highest “medium” workload, combined with medium strength about 2 or 3 notches above mixed. This keeps their natural fitness at a good level without maximising the workload.

If you keep a moderate amount of fitness training throughout the season – at least mixed – you can sustain the natural fitness of your players and hence reduce the injury risk

Pre-season planning:

• Don’t play your stars against lower league teams with lousy technical skills
• Don’t keep your important players on the pitch for longer then 45 minutes
• Use easy tackling for pre-season and also dead-wood matches

If you are using hard tackling, you should save your main tactics as special version and use them for pre-season and dead-wood matches.

Rotation and squad management

• Relegate injured players to reserves until match fit again
• If you know key players are injury prone, look for a good backup
• Rest injury prone players in dead wood games
• Set a mark for required fitness, e.g. don’t start a player below 90%
• Sub players who drop below 75% to 70% fitness in a game

Try to give injured players at least a couple of matches if at all possible at the lower level. Bringing a player back too soon causes problems and most likely he will be out of form as well. Coming back from an serious injury can take three months, exactly the time as starting the game. Of course, it’s not always possible to leave your Ronaldinho out for a crucial game, but in the long run it may be worth it.

You don’t always need your best XI on the pitch to achieve success. If you have injury prone key players, try to find utility players who can cover a number of positions effectively (and preferably ones that are not injury prone as well).

Rotation is a good opportunity as well to keep your rotation players happy and build up youngsters. If you have players in your squad and definitely don’t want to play them, you should think about selling them anyway. A backup with match exercise certainly is more effective than without.

Workload adjustment

• Use a higher amount of training in pre-season
• Drop to normal workload at season start
• Reduce training to the lowest point around Christmas
• Slightly increase to the normal level when approaching the end of the season

The heavy workload should be turned off as soon as the last pre-season friendly has been played to prevent a high amount of injuries.

Specifically for British leagues where games come thick and fast during mid-winter and players get fatigued due to playing a lot of games in heavy conditions. Drop the main slider until the sliders all drop (circa 10 clicks). Keep the main slider at the setting before the next significant specific slider drop so the players are receiving the lightest possible training load with the best possible benefits. Best employed between December 1st and January 31st.

For continental teams these settings are either not needed or can be used if fixtures begin to build up.

When the fixtures and weather become lighter again revert to the early season settings. Increase the main slider until the specific sliders finish their jumps and position it at the lowest post-jump setting.

Helpful Links
A very good introduction to training sliders by Kittipol
Physical training schedules supporting the injury prevention by TND
The workload adjustment presented by wwfan
Asmodeus’ Training Discussion thread

With special thanks to Kittipol, Asmodeus and Nightshade.

Tactical Bible Credits
Millie, Crazy Gra, wwfan, The Next Diaby. Editor: Millie

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About the Author // Matt vom Brocke

Matt’s contribution to FM-B as a whole and the tactical area in particular cannot be over-estimated and the respect he is given by fellow staff members reflects this. The writer of the very well-recieved Communication and Psychological Warfare and Creativo set of tactics, Matt is a key member of the Tactical Think Tank and part of SI’s beta testing Dream Team.