Welcome to my first ‘Boldklub Extra’ post, which will intertwine with the regular posts, but each will focus on a single topic. This time, we’re discussing mentoring groups.
When I first had the idea to do this save, about halfway through FM18’s life cycle, I had some very clear ideas on what I wanted to do with the club and the save. Possibly the biggest one was producing a youth development system that would become the envy of clubs around the world, and a big part of my doing that would be making sure every promising player was being tutored to ensure they became the very best they could be. This was flipped on its head with the announcement of FM19, and the introduction of mentoring groups to replace the one on one tutoring system.
Of course, this change is a big development to the game and ties in with the amazing new training module and it doesn’t in any way limit my ability to develop youngsters, it will, in fact, heighten those abilities I’m sure, but it does mean that I now have no base of knowledge to start from. So with a bit of thinking out loud and a few screenshots, I’m going to go through my first attempt at setting up some mentoring groups for my first team squad.
DISCLAIMER: As if it wasn’t obvious from the above, this is in no way a How-To guide, this is merely my setup, and I have played no significant game time to know if it will work or not. Any thoughts or discussion are welcomed in the comments to this post.
Looking for ‘Figureheads’
The first step in my mind when looking to introduce mentoring groups is to look for the players that will offer the most advice and impact to those that need development. I’ll be calling these players the ‘Figurehead’ for each group, and to pick them out from our squad, I’ll be looking at the following:
Hierarchy
Determination
Personality
Our squad hierarchy comes into play as the Team Leaders and Highly Influential Players at the club are the most likely to be effective Figureheads, as they’ll generally be more experienced players with stronger mental attributes and personalities. Of course this isn’t a steadfast rule, but it’s a good starting place.
The Determination attribute is possibly the most important for the development of young players, as players who excel here are more likely to strive for the very top of their game, and will train harder than anyone else to become the best. Determination can be infectious and can be improved by spending time shadowing a more determined peer, so it’s essential that my Figureheads set the right example.
Personality is another trait that can be changed by spending time around others, and although it’s very rare to have a club full of the most desirable personalities, especially at a lower level, just being able to avoid the worst of them should be enough to see our youngsters develop, at least for now.
Looking at our Squad Hierarchy, we have three Team Leaders and three Highly Influential Players, all playing fairly regularly, and all happy at the club. If we take a look in a bit more depth, we can determine who of the 6 might be the most useful Figureheads.
So as we can see, Jesper Christjansen and Oliver Lund are the most determined players from the top end of our Hierarchy, and the Personalities are all okay but not brilliant, there are at least no negative traits in there. We do however have an ace up our sleeve.
As Nicklas Mouritsen only joined the club at the start of the season, he is only about halfway up the chain when it comes to the Squad Hierarchy, but he has more determination and a more effective personality than any of the 6 above. He is only 24, meaning his impact may not be quite as significant as an older player’s, but I still think he’s a valuable asset.
So here we have 7 potential Figureheads for our Mentoring Groups, but now we need to find the players that they’ll be mentoring.
Choosing who needs Mentoring
The range of players that can be mentored is far more broad than choosing the most suitable tutors for them, so this section really comes down to picking out the players most likely to make it and the ones who need the most work. There are a couple of stipulations though.
Players can only be added to the same Mentoring Group if they’re in the same squad, so for example my First Team captain can’t mentor my most promising Under 19 talent unless he’s training with the first team. To avoid having a huge first team squad, only players who are close to first team level are in the squad and therefore able to be mentored.
The other is that not every player will be mentored, as to some it will be a detriment not a help. An example of this is Ben Hinchcliffe, a young striker we signed towards the start of the season. Ben is 21 years old and has bags of potential, but with 16 for Determination and a Resolute personality, he would be held back by being in a mentoring group where the Figurehead is less determined than he is, it could in fact cause his determination to drop which is the opposite to what we’re looking for.
So with this in mind, and looking at the rest of the players in the First Team squad, these are the players most in need of mentoring.
Tobias Bjørneybye is easily in need of the most work, 4 for determination is awful and needs fixing immediately if he’s going to fulfil his potential. Similarly with Oliver Funch, he’s one of our highest potential players, but won’t reach that level with only 9 determination. The others aren’t such a desperate case, but can still be developed and improved.
Assigning Groups
So we have a selection of Figureheads, and we have the players that we want to be mentored, all we have to do now is figure out who goes with who.
Mentoring Groups have to have a minimum of 3 people per group, so immediately we know that with only 6 people that we want to mentor right now, we don’t need all 7 Figureheads. We could go with one big group or 2 groups of four, but for now, I think I want 3 people per group while we have more than enough Figureheads, as it spreads their time across the players being mentored less thinly, giving more time for each.
Three people per group with one Figurehead in each leaves us to create three groups, so we need to decide who we want to ‘head’ each group from our list. I’ve decided to go with Mouritsen, Lund and Christjensen as they have the highest determination, and none of the others have a personality desirable enough to be worth the couple of point drop in determination that they offer.
For the first time, I’m going to mention Player Position. I don’t consider it essential for players to be mentored by players in the same position. Training will teach them to excel in their role, right now I just want them as mentally strong as possible. I will, however, group players by position if it doesn’t leave anybody in a group that may not benefit them. So right now I have two groups being led by defenders and one by a midfielder, and from the players to be mentored I have a goalkeeper, two defenders, two midfielders and a striker. This means I can have a group of three defenders, a group of three midfielders, and then a third group to look after the others.
So this is what I’ve ended up with, and for a first try at getting this sorted, I’m pleased. Everyone who I want to be mentored fits into a group fairly well, and I’m confident this will yield results. Mouritsen’s impact is only average rather than significant, as I expected, but I was surprised to see that Lund is only expected to have an average impact too, which I assume is down to them not being team leaders. Of course, this can be tweaked, if players aren’t getting along then they can be moved around and as more youngsters get close to first-team level they can be promoted to provide backup roles and be mentored themselves.
For a quick comparison, before I put my Mentoring Groups in to the game, I asked my assistant to assign some groups, and he came up with the following.
My Assistant’s Mentoring Groups
The first thing to note is that more players are included, but as stated earlier I have left some players out intentionally, for example Frederik Winther is about to go out on loan, and Adam Sørensen is committed to leaving the club, so they aren’t worth putting into groups. The use of all three Team Leaders does mean that each group has a player who will have a significant impact which is something my groups do lack, but this can be monitored and changed if necessary, what I’m looking for right now is an increase in Determination above anything else.
So that’s my approach to creating Mentoring Groups, it’s still very early days in the FM19 life cycle and I’m far from an expert so this could all be changed over the coming seasons, but that’s all part of the journey!
Thanks for reading.
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