Anyone who's played the Football Manager games will know the importance of getting the best out of their players. Whether that’s tinkering with tactics, managing morale, or developing team dynamics, there are so many ways to maximize a squad’s performance and gain an edge over the opposition. A great way to create a top-rate team that’s greater than the sum of its parts is by building partnerships.
From Ferdinand and Vidic to Messi, Suarez, and Neymar, real football has seen some incredible partnerships, with players bouncing off each other and developing a telepathic understanding on the field. Football Manager 2022 is no different, and in-game, players can improve these partnerships in a number of ways.
5 Start Combinations Together
It may sound obvious, but the most important factor in building partnerships in Football Manager 2022 is to start players together often. In order for players to develop an understanding and begin to forge an effective partnership, they need to start a run of games alongside each other and build familiarity over time. The time taken for this can vary and may take longer if results or team cohesion are poor.
But after around 10-15 games in the starting eleven, players will usually begin to develop partnerships, and the tactics screen will start to show those all-important green links between different members of the squad. One thing to note here is that substitute appearances do not appear to count towards building player partnerships, so in order to forge that deadly strike duo, they need to be on the field together right from kick-off.
4 Use Mentoring Groups
There is one way to speed up this process, however. By grouping players together in mentoring groups, which can be accessed via the training tab, it’s possible to boost the speed at which players gain familiarity. Simply create a mentoring group for each area of the team which is able to build partnerships, such as center-backs, central midfielders, and strikers, and add the relevant players into each group. It can also be effective to group fullbacks with wingers, as the link-up play down either flank is crucial in many tactics as players look to create overlaps and exploit the wider channels.
Mentoring groups help to improve player partnerships because each group trains together, and spends more time together both on and off the field. Naturally, this gives players a closer understanding of the groups and can be a great way to build partnerships even faster. This advice does come with a warning, though. Be careful of mixing personality traits, especially with younger players, as more senior players can impart their own personality traits to the junior squad members. While this can be a bonus if a senior squad member can impart some wisdom to the youngsters, there’s a risk that a senior player with poor professionalism could influence others with some less than desirable traits.
3 Winning Breeds Success
As with the real footballing world, it’s a results-driven business in Football Manager 2022, and this affects player partnerships significantly. While time together and mentoring can speed up the process of developing partnerships, if those players are turning in poor performances and results, it may not be a good thing.
Partnerships can develop with any rating from “fairly poor” to “strong”, and this is heavily influenced by how well those combinations play from game to game. If a center-back pairing is leaking goals for fun and churning out woeful match ratings, they will quickly develop a “poor” partnership. Conversely, a “strong” partnership will be formed if the same players are performing defensive miracles and keeping clean sheets week after week. Keep a careful eye on the match rating of players when trying to build partnerships, but it may be worth sticking with a “fairly poor” partnership in order to improve it over time, and hopefully turn both form and results around.
2 Teamwork Focused Training
Another aspect of building player partnerships in Football Manager 2022 is training. Using a schedule that focuses on team cohesion, tactical familiarity and teamwork can increase the speed at which player partnerships develop. Key sessions to build into any weekly routine are the “teamwork” and “team bonding” sessions, which heavily boost those aspects.
Adding those sessions into a weekly plan also boosts players’ teamwork attribute, which determines how well individual players follow tactical instructions, as well as their awareness of teammates' movements. Players with higher teamwork perform better within tactical units and are naturally more inclined to build strong partnerships.
1 Patience Is A Virtue
Despite all of the above, patience is still key to improving player partnerships in FM 22. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and nor were the world’s best footballing partnerships. It may be tempting to throw struggling combinations out the window or revert to the drawing board when things aren’t working, but some things just take time. It can be far more damaging to chop and change tactics and personnel every game than to simply ride out the storm and give partnerships time to grow.
While there may be some short-term pain as poor partnerships struggle to win matches, the long-term pay-off from persevering is often worth it. Combine all of these tips and keep a little faith in the process, and those player partnerships should flourish into some deadly combinations, able to strike fear into any opposition every time a side takes to the field.