How do you prevent injuries in FM24? There’s nothing worse than gearing up for a pivotal match in your season – perhaps it’s a title decider or a cup final – and one of your star players gets injured in training. Sometimes it’ll be for quite a while and put them out for a significant chunk of the season, but even if it’s just a brief injury that only lasts for a few days, that can be enough to ruin your big match. So, how do you stop that from happening as often?
There’s no hack to eliminate injuries in Football Manager 24. Sometimes food poisoning is unavoidable, or you’re against Millwall and their center-half decides to chop one of your many FM24 wonderkids down from behind. Fortunately, you can employ measures to stop your players from getting injured quite as frequently in one of the best football games of all time.
Here are the best ways to avoid injuries in Football Manager 2024:
- Lower your training intensity and give players rest days
- Rotate your squad
- Fill your medical team
- Change your tactics
- Avoid signing injury-prone players
Lower your training intensity and give players rest days
One of the most common aspects of Football Manager that a lot of players delegate to their assistant is training. While that’s usually fine if you have an assistant with high enough attributes, once you learn how training works, it can be a game-changer when it comes to preparing for matches.
In terms of reducing the number of injuries you’re receiving, simply reduce the intensity of training sessions if you have multiple matches in the space of a week, and add in some additional rest periods if your players have a high injury risk. During pre-season, your team should be running at double intensity, but as the season progresses, adjust the training schedule as you go to ensure nobody is overworked.
Rotate your squad
This one is hard to do if you’ve got a fairly thin squad, but rotating players is crucial. Playing the same players in every match results in notifications from the footballers saying they’re feeling jaded and could do with a rest. When you’re fighting for something, whether it’s to survive relegation or for a title, you may feel like you need your strongest squad every time, but you need to find spots to rotate.
There are two main types of matches to rotate players: domestic cups and against considerably weaker teams in the league. The latter can be tough if you are one of the weaker teams in the league, but for the former, don’t put as much effort into the domestic cups if you’re trying to survive relegation. This gives you the chance to develop your younger players and give game time to your second-choice goalkeeper.
Fill your medical team
You have an allocation of staff members for each role and when it comes to your medical team, you’ll want to ensure you have the maximum number possible. These folks ease the number of injuries you receive, along with the severity of injuries when they do happen. Sports Scientists are the folks who prevent injuries in the first place – hire people with a high Sports Science attribute for this – while Physios deal with the injuries that do happen, and they require a high Physiotherapy attribute.
Change your tactics
When you think about it, if you have your players counter-pressing constantly with a very attacking mentality, they’re going to run themselves ragged. Meanwhile, if you have them sat back with no pressing urgency and instructions to slow down the tempo, they’re not going to be exerting anywhere near as much energy. Find the balance between the two tactics and ensure your players aren’t working at 110% for the full 90 minutes.
Avoid signing injury prone players
Finally, this one speaks for itself. If you navigate to a player’s medical report, you can view their injury susceptibility, which tells you how likely they are to get injured. You can also see their full injury history here, and their overall injury risk when combining all factors, including their match and training load. Simply put, avoid signing injury prone players where possible, and you’ll receive fewer injuries. Simple, eh?
Now you know all about how to prevent injuries in FM24, make sure you read up on our guides to the best Football Manager 2024 tactics and formations, along with the top Football Manager 2024 bargains you need to sign at the start of your career.