HINT SHEET #9
Non-Playing Members
Five backroom roles. One squad. The difference between a good club and a great one.
⭐ Non-Playing Members – Your Backroom Staff
Your playing squad gets all the attention – but behind every well-run club is a backroom team quietly doing the work. Non-Playing Members, or NPMs, are the five support roles you can recruit to complement your 25-player squad. They don’t appear on a teamsheet, they don’t get transferred, and they don’t earn ratings in a match – but ignore them and you’ll feel the difference. Each NPM fills a specific function. Some improve your players over time. One keeps them on the pitch. One goes out and finds you new young talent. And one keeps an eye on your rivals. You can hold up to five NPMs at any one time – one of each type – and managing them well is one of the less glamorous but genuinely important edges you can build as a manager.🧑💼 1. The Five NPM Roles
There are five distinct NPM types, each with its own job. You won’t always have all five – slots need to be filled, and that takes deal slots and money – but knowing what each one does helps you decide who to prioritise.| NPM | Abbreviation | Primary Function |
|---|---|---|
| 🧒 Youth Scout | YOU | Seeks out and recruits young players from lower leagues |
| 💪 Fitness Coach | FIT | Supports fitness-based training sessions |
| 🎯 Skills Coach | SKI | Supports skills-based training sessions |
| 🩹 Physiotherapist | PHY | Reduces injury impact and accelerates recovery |
| 🕵️ Personal Spy | SPY | Gathers intelligence on rival clubs |
📊 2. Ratings and Hidden Potential
Just like your players, every NPM has a Rating and a Hidden Potential. These are important attributes – and worth paying attention to from the moment you recruit them. An NPM’s Rating reflects how effective they currently are at their job. A higher-rated Skills Coach contributes more to your training sessions than a lower-rated one. A better Physiotherapist handles injuries more effectively. The Rating matters, and it can grow. Hidden Potential tells you how much room they have to develop. Discovering it early is valuable – it tells you whether the NPM you’ve just recruited is a long-term asset worth investing in, or one you might look to replace as better options become available. The sooner you know, the better your planning.🔍 Hidden Potential works the same way for NPMs as it does for players. See Hint Sheet 2 (Hidden Potential & Learning Ability) for more on how that discovery process works.
🏕️ 3. Training Camps
Four of your five NPMs – the Youth Scout, Fitness Coach, Skills Coach, and Physiotherapist – can be sent to a training camp in the hope of increasing their Rating. The Personal Spy cannot. A few things to understand about how this works:- A Rating increase is not guaranteed. The camp gives your NPM the opportunity to improve – it doesn’t promise it.
- While an NPM is away at camp, they are not supporting your club. A Skills Coach on camp isn’t helping your training sessions. A Physio on camp isn’t managing your injured players. The benefit you’re chasing has to be weighed against what you’re giving up in the meantime.
- The longer the camp, the longer that support is absent.
⚠️ Don’t send your Physio to camp in the middle of an injury crisis. Timing matters. When things are running smoothly and your squad is healthy, that’s the window to consider sending an NPM away.
🧒 4. Youth Scout
The Youth Scout’s job is straightforward but valuable: he goes out and finds young players from lower leagues and brings them to your club. If you want to grow your squad without spending heavily on transfer fees, this is the route – and the Youth Scout is the one who makes it possible. The players he finds will typically be young and unproven, but that’s the point. Raw talent with high hidden potential, recruited at low cost, developed through your training programme. It’s a slower burn than buying established players, but it’s a legitimate path to building a quality squad on a budget.💡 If transfer fees are stretching your finances and you want to grow your squad quickly without breaking the bank, a Youth Scout is worth considering early – even in your first season.
💪 5. Fitness Coach
The Fitness Coach amplifies the effect of fitness-focused training sessions. When you allocate training hours to sessions that work on physical conditioning, having a Fitness Coach in your backroom means those sessions deliver more. Fitness is one of the most important factors in keeping your squad performing consistently across a 30-week season. Tired players make mistakes, pick up injuries, and underperform. The Fitness Coach helps you maintain the physical edge – particularly across heavy fixture schedules or if you’re running a thin squad.⚠️ The Fitness Coach and Skills Coach work specifically within their training session types. They don’t provide a general boost – they enhance what you’re already putting hours into. Your training plan and your NPM roster should work together.
🎯 6. Skills Coach
Where the Fitness Coach backs up physical conditioning, the Skills Coach enhances your skills-focused training sessions. Player ratings are built on skills, and skills improve through training – so a Skills Coach is directly connected to the development path of your squad. If you’re working on raising the ceiling of your squad – particularly through developing existing players rather than buying in established ones – the Skills Coach is a key part of that plan. The effect compounds over a season: marginally better skills training each week adds up.🔍 See Hint Sheet 10 (Training) for detail on how training session types work and where each coach has the most impact.
🩹 7. Physiotherapist
The Physiotherapist is the most immediately visible NPM in terms of impact. Injuries happen – it’s part of the game. What your physio does is limit how bad they get and help your players get back on the pitch faster. Without a physio, injured players sit out longer and their injury factor can creep higher before triggering a lay-off. With one in place, recovery is quicker and the risk of a minor knock becoming a longer absence is reduced. If you’re running a squad with limited cover in certain positions, the physio is cheap insurance.💡 You don’t notice the Physio much when things are going well. You notice very quickly when three of your first-choice midfielders go down in two weeks and none of them are coming back for a month.
🕵️ 8. Personal Spy
The Personal Spy is different from the other four NPMs. He doesn’t help your players at all – his job is to gather information on other clubs. Each week, you can direct your spy to investigate a specific opponent, and the intelligence that comes back goes into your Manager’s Report. What kind of intelligence? That’s part of what makes the spy interesting – and part of what you’ll discover through using him. The information can cover squad details, tactics, or things you wouldn’t otherwise know about a rival club. How useful that is depends on how you use it. Note that the Personal Spy cannot be sent to a training camp – his Rating development works differently from the other four NPMs.🔍 Used consistently, the Personal Spy gives you an edge that doesn’t show up anywhere on the standings. Most managers underestimate him until they start using him regularly.
📋 9. Recruiting and Managing NPMs
NPMs are recruited through your deal slots – the same mechanism you use for player transfers. Each recruitment uses one deal slot for that week’s turnsheet, so in busy periods you’ll be weighing up whether to spend a slot on a player or a backroom member.- You can hold a maximum of one of each type – no doubling up.
- NPMs have their own weekly wage costs, reflected in your wage bill.
- Your Manager’s Report shows the current status of each NPM in your backroom each week.
- NPM orders are submitted on the turnsheet alongside your other executive and ground orders.
⚠️ Recruiting an NPM uses a deal slot. In the early seasons when you only have three deal slots, every slot counts. Plan around it.
🧠 10. How Smart Managers Use Their NPMs
Don’t wait until your squad is full and your finances are comfortable before thinking about your backroom. Getting one or two NPMs in place early – ideally within your first season – pays dividends from day one. The benefits are ongoing and they compound week after week. The Skills Coach and Physiotherapist are generally considered the bare minimum to have in place early on. The Skills Coach is directly supporting player development from the start; the Physio is protecting your investment in the squad you’ve already got. If your budget and deal slots allow for a third early on, consider what your squad most needs:- Want to grow your squad quickly without spending big on transfers? Add a Youth Scout.
- Running a physically intensive training programme? Add the Fitness Coach.
- In a competitive division where knowing your opponents matters? The Personal Spy starts paying off quickly.
Final Tip Your NPMs work every single week without taking up a squad spot or needing a teamsheet position. The Skills Coach and Physio alone can make a measurable difference to your season – which is why the best-run clubs have at least those two in place from the start, and build the rest of the backroom from there.