Como funciona o treino de skills?:

O entrosamento (work ethic) quanto maior for, mais aumenta a skill a ser treinada em pontos percentuais.

Um jogador precisa atingir 100 pontos percentuais em cada skill para aumentar o valor desta. Assim que esse valor aumentar, esta volta aos 0 pontos percentuais novamente. Em cada ciclo de formação (uma vez por semana, 2as feiras), o jogador ganha 10+-2 pontos percentuais automaticamente.

Exemplo:
> O jogador tem 20 de entrosamento (work ethic), então, recebe mais 20 pontos percentuais por semana.

> O jogador está a treinar qualquer skill (por exemplo) de defesa (blocking ou marking), e o treinador tem nível 20 em treino defensivo, então o jogador recebe 2x20=40 pontos percentuais.

No total da semana, este jogador recebeu no mínimo 10+20+40=70 pontos percentuais. Na semana seguinte, se continuar com o mesmo treino e receber os 70 pontos percentuais, então, a skill vai aumentar de valor e, em termos percentuais, fica nos 40.

Match rating (or position rating, i prefer MR though) is completely different from player rating.

MR is simply a weighted average of 3-5 skills that are considered for that position. From my experience all various positions use weighted skills and all skills are evenly matched. So there's really no need to have 16-1-1 when you can perform just as good with 6-6-6. For goalkeepers it's no secret that technique/reflexes/one-on-one are the weighted averages. Thus a goalkeepers MR is ONLY based upon these skills. Some claim that agility + speed might be very important for GKs too, and maybe those skills are useful, however they do not affect MR so I'd say their effect is minimal compared to the skills that actually affect MR.

Either way MR does indeed say something about performance in a position. And a player with 1* higher MR (indicating he has +3 in skills) than his opposing defender will most likely have a quite large advantage in the man-man duels that are critical for success in this game. If an offensive player scores on >50% of all his attacks in a game he's played very well imo.

Since matchrating goes up to 10* it's quite easy to see a pattern between the skills and MR. Let's just say a player with 20 in all weighted skills would perform 10* MR in that position. So a player who performs 5* MR have something like 10+ in all skills for that position.

Also please note that shooting never ever improves MR. Shooting is treated as a seperate calculation for scoring. So high shooting does nothing good unless you first win the duel against your defender.

My suggestion for any team in lower divisions is to get skills up to 8 and try to even those out. Then all players would perform around 3,5* MR which is quite good. And keeping wages quite low. And once you know what skills that are important for a position, raise them. Setting a nice foundation without wages flipping out is a nice start. There's really no need whatsoever to go beyond 10 in any non physical skill if you play in div III or lower.