Position training enables a player to become more familiar with any playing position that is not natural to him, thus improving his performances when playing in that position. The positions a player can play in along with his familiarity with each are shown on the Information section of his Overview tab. Position familiarity is discussed in the Assessing Your Team guide.
By default a player will train the position he is currently being played in. This does not affect his individual workload or individual training time.
Uses of Position Training
Possible uses of position training include:
- Giving your team additional cover at no extra financial expense by training a player in a position that his attributes are suitable for. For example, you could train a wide player to play on the opposite side or a defensive midfielder to play in central defence.
- Enabling a player to play more effectively in your chosen formation if it does not utilise his natural position by training him in a similar position that is utilised. For example, if you play a flat 4-4-2 formation but have a player whose only natural position is central attacking midfield then training him as a striker or a central midfielder will enable him to play at his full ability without you changing your formation to accommodate him.
- Enabling you to instruct pairs of attacking players to swap positions so as to give your attack more variety and make your team more difficult for the opposition to defend against. You can do this by training pairs of players in each others’ positions, but if they play on opposite flanks then it would be useful if each player is reasonably strong on his weaker foot.
- Making better use of a player by training him in a position that is more suitable for his attributes and possibly his traits. For example, a defensive midfielder may have attributes and traits that would make him more effective in an attacking position.
However, if a player already has accomplished familiarity in a position then training him to become natural in the position will not make a significant difference to his performances in that position. Therefore, you may prefer not to train him in the position so as not to add to his individual workload or take individual training time away from other individual training.
Time Taken to Learn a Position
The time it takes a player to learn a position will depend on various factors, including the following:
- The percentage of his individual training time spent on position training – you may wish to reduce or remove all other individual training while training a position so as to reduce the amount of time the player takes to gain familiarity.
- How often he plays in the position – it is advisable to play the player in the position while he is learning it.
- How familiar he is with the position to start with.
- How young he is.
- His hidden Versatility attribute.
Even if a player is played regularly in his trained position it may take several years for him to learn the position to a high level in some cases.
A player may lose familiarity with a trained position if the training is stopped, especially if he is not played in the position regularly.
Training Workload
To accommodate position training for a player you may need to remove other individual training or reduce the focus intensity of any additional focus so as not to overwork him.
Managing individual training workloads is discussed more in the Training Reports guide.