Make your players versatile | Wednesday Wisdom

Today's Wednesday Wisdom comes courtesy of @FM_Grasshopper who is here to tell you how to make your players more versatile so you can get the best out of them across all areas of the pitch. 

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Whether you’re going through a current injury crisis, or managing a club with limited finances, having a versatile squad in Football Manager 2019 can help you survive and stretch your resources. Today’s Wednesday Wisdom, therefore, explores player re-positioning and how it can help your club be more resourceful and add a new aspect in how you manage player development in Football Manager.

How to judge versatility 

Initial position and role 

The very first thing I do when deciding if a player can be re-trained from his natural position is to consider how naturally versatile he is. Versatility dictates how good a player will perform in a different position, and how fast he'll become accustomed to a new position/role. 

A key indicator of this versatility is shown in the Player Profile screen, the more positions they play…the more versatile they will be:

Role-based attributes 

When visiting Overview/Attributes in the player screen, you are presented with an option to view the key and preferable attributes for any of the 40+ player roles found within Football Manager.  This is a really effective measure in seeing if your player has transferrable attributes to fulfil a new role in your team.

What to consider when re-positioning 

Is there an opening in the team? 

Can you dedicate minutes to this player in his new position?

These questions may sound straight-forward but one of the major factors in successful repositioning of your players is game time. You may find the player making questionable decisions until he learns the position more effectively, but in the long term, it will be worth it as his role competency increases. The more versatile the player the more worth he has not only to your team but in terms of transfer value too.

Player age 

It's also worth noting that player repositioning will take up some potential ability, so you really need to consider if a player has the potential to improve. One easy way to do this is to look at the star rating system in Football Manager. Has the player reached his potential ability? Or are there stars left to fill?

Personality and training rating 

Another little quote I often like to use: "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard". Repositioning and training as a whole are largely dependent on a player's mentality. This will help influence how hard they will train and how well they adapt to repositioning. So focus on those with good professionalism or perfectionist mentalities over unambitious players.

If you're still undecided about their application to training, FM19 makes it even easier to grasp how well a player trains via the new training ratings. It's probably worth viewing these scores from time-to-time in order to get a sense of how hard an individual is training.

How to re-train

After taking to account the above, how do we retrain players in Football Manager 2019? It's pretty simple, visit an individual's player training screen and select the position/role/duty. This will get them working on the attributes needed for that specific role when a session allows them to break away into their individual focuses.

You can then see their progress throughout the campaign via the player profile or training screens but remember: this can take several months and is all relative depending on the player.

One example in my save is taking a newgen and repositioning him into a right-back (from central midfield). After three months he was awkward, after six he was unconvincing but with time I’m confident he can become more than comfortable. It can be a fairly long process, but it’s certainly a rewarding one. It’s a great part of Football Manager, another aspect of the game which gives you total control. It can save you a bit of cash too…

Good luck,

FM Grasshopper.