Why you need experience in your squad on FM 2016

Experience in your squad is key on FM 2016

When playing Football Manager 2016, one of the most important areas you need to manage is your squad and the players you decide to have in your team. Some parts of this are quite obvious, like needing to try and have sufficient cover for all areas on the pitch, trying to develop players from your own academy or having players within a squad that are professional.

Although I do focus alot on developing younger players in my team, I do know that having experienced players in your team is also vital for a few reasons. I will provide an explanation to this below.

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Experience can take many forms, it does not just need to come with age, experience can be gained through the number of matches a player has played in. If you have a player who is 25 years old and they have played in many Premier League and Champions League games, then you could consider them to be experienced. When I am speaking about experience, I am not just speaking about the age of a player.

Benifits of have experienced players in your squad

Having more experienced players in your team, especially ones with good personalities such as professional or spirited, will be able to tutor the younger players in your team. This will of course help your younger players to develop quicker if they have a better personality, but will will also help your younger players to potentially pick up some preferred moves on the way.

Lets pretend you have a player in your team who is 26, has a professional personality and have a PPM of takes long shots, if we say that player has a long shots attribute of 19, his PPM is very well suited to his attributes. If we now pretend we have an 18 year old with a balanced personality, no PPMs and 15 for the long shots attribute. What you can do is get the more experienced player to tutor the younger player. You will also be hoping he picks up the players "takes long shots" PPM.

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Experienced players can offer more consistent performances, with some players you know exactly how they will preform and you can rely on them. A player like James Milner for example, every manager who has managed him has said he is a joy to work with, firstly for his attitude, but also for his constant performances. This is exactly what you are looking for as a manager and players with experience can offer this to you.

A mixture of youth and experience on the field of play is also a good thing. You would have noticed that Kurt Zouma, when picked to play for Chelsea is always picked next to a very experienced player in John Terry or Gary Cahill, this is for two reasons. One being that Zouma will be able to learn from these players and secondly, these players will be able to guide him on the pitch to make sure he is where he should be. They will be able to keep Zouma organised and they will be able to make sure he keeps the team tactics and the team shape. Its a good idea, for example, if you have a young midfielder who is good, try and get a more experienced player next to him in midfield, not only will the more experienced player have better mental attributes than the younger player but they will also influence the way the younger player performs by guiding them.

Experience is key to building a balanced football team

It can be tempting to have a very young squad on football manager when building a team, but you do always need experience. The good thing about if you do have younger players in your team, as they play more games for you they will gain more experience, very soon they will be the experienced player their self. If you do have players who are "one club players" this is a perfect position to be in.