Physios in football manager are responsible for treating injuries other than those major injuries which are handled by a specialist or a doctor.
The quality of your physios will determine the accuracy of their estimation for which period a player will be out with an injury, as well as the actual recovery time of the said injury.
Therefore, if you have an excellent physio, he or she will more accurately estimate that a certain player will be out for 28 days with a hamstring injury while a poorer physio might think the player will be out for 20 days or 40 days.
The exact period the player will be out for will not be exactly 28 days, but the better physio will be closer to correctly predicting the period.
Furthermore, the better physio will also influence the amount of time that the player takes in his recovery.
For the same type of injury, and assuming the club only has a single physio. The better physio might only need 14 days to treat a twisted ankle, while the lower-rated physio will need a few extra days to achieve the same result.
The main difference in football manager between a physio and a sports scientist is that the sports scientists work to prevent certain injuries from occurring, while the physios are responsible for treating the players who are injured.
In some cases, especially in small clubs in the lower leagues, that do not have a large budget to hire a big medical team, you might find yourself with no sports scientists.
The physios will then take up the sports scientist job and work to prevent your players from getting injured, in addition to providing the necessary reports including players’ condition and injury susceptibility that sports scientists are usually responsible for.
In this case, the physio will not use his physiotherapy rating in doing the sports scientist’s work. But rather, the quality of the reports will be determined by the sports science attribute rating of the physio.
To quickly get a report on your injured players, head over to a physios profile, then choose “Get Update On Injured Players”
The selected physio will then present you with a list of all injured players in the club, as well as the estimated period for which they will be out.
Having a large squad with only a few physios will ultimately lead to the physios getting overworked and the quality of their services dropping.
Therefore, always aim to have the maximum number of physios allowed by your club’s board. Once you have filled the allowed quota, you can then make a request to the board to increase the number of physios in the club or the salary allocation for the physios.
Increasing the number of physios will ensure each player is being given the best possible care and recovery time from injuries will also reduce.
Increasing the salary allocation on the other hand enables you to go after more highly rated physios that were initially out of your wage budget.
If at the start of the FM save you could only afford to offer employment to 2-star rated physios, increasing the wage budget might make it possible for you to go after 4-star rated ones who will be better at treating players.
With this in mind, regularly change your staff, replacing them with better-rated ones as soon as you can afford the change.
Waiting for their contracts to run out and then failing to renew them is more economical as opposed to buying them out of their contracts, which might prove expensive, especially if you do not have money to burn.
Just like goalkeeping coaches, physios work with both the senior and youth teams. Therefore, if you are working on a shoestring budget in the lower leagues. It is possible to only have senior team physios who will also work with the youth teams and save the money you could have used in getting youth team physios.
However, the main advantage of getting physios for the youth teams is that you can go after those with a good attribute rating in “working with youngsters”
The “working with youngsters” attribute in football manager increases the effectiveness of a member of the staff working with young players.
Attributes Required For Physios In Football Manager
Physiotherapy is obviously the main attribute to consider before hiring a physio. The higher the rating, the better he will be at his job.
However, not all physios with a 20 rating in physiotherapy have five stars in their rating. This rating is different from the world rating one which considers the reputation of the physio rather than their ability. Check the image below.
The default football manager skin does not have the star ratings for ability visible, but you can add it by navigating to “Rating” in the customizations and the game will add a column to the staff view or staff search page that allows you to sort staff ability by star rating.
Therefore, which other attributes influence the ability of a physiotherapist? This is a matter of great debate in the FM community, but I will outline the ones I personally consider before hiring a physio.
The second attribute I consider is sports science. With the physio picking up the sports scientist duties in the event the sports scientist is not at the club, it makes sense to hire physios who have a decent rating in sports science just in case they are expected to fill in for a sports scientist at some point in the save.
Third, determination. Having a high rating in determination is always a positive thing in FM, especially for players.
Higher Determination ratings push players to give their all in games in situations such as trying to overturn a deficit or hanging on to a lead in the dying moments of the game. Having the same drive in the club’s staff can only be a good thing.
Fourth, adaptability. A high rating in adaptability makes it easier for a player or staff to quickly get used to living in a new country with a different culture and language than he is used to. A physio from a different country will get up to speed more quickly if he has high adaptability.
Fifth, man management. I only pay attention to this when searching for a head physio. In theory, the head physio will use his good man management skills to properly lead other physios.
Sixth, Working with youngsters. I only pay attention to this attribute when looking for physios for my youth teams. A good rating here should in theory make the physios more effective in treating the potential wonderkids.
However, keep in mind that the extra attributes I have listed above can not truly be proven to matter unless the developers make it clear that they do matter.
But still, for immersion purposes, I am inclined to believe they play a part in how a physio goes about his job in football manager.
