Media handling help

[Zebedee101]

Hi, I've been having trouble with my media handling percentage but don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm doing an LLM save on FM16 and am about 6 years in. Making good progress in most aspects apart from media handling! It's down at 18% and from what I can see is continuing to drop. I always answer myself, I don't storm out, I mostly answer calmly. What am I missing? I have recently tried using assertive or passionate more but that hasn't made a difference. Any ideas? 

[borivoje213]

Am I right in thinking this is the bar that shows you how successful in general you are with media handling?

What are your attributes and reputation?  If you start the game with an auto-selected experience level then your reputation, man management attribute and (I think) level of discipline are all going to have an influence.  Man management is your ability to influence others and level of discipline is how others perceive your likelihood to take sh** off others so it affects how they might respond to you.

So right there you've got 3 things that 'potentially' could hinder you straight off the bat.  I can't imagine many LLM being media gods anyway, since there's some top level managers who are pants at dealing with them so it stands to reason that you'd have to take a hit on that one in your position.

As far as I'm aware, being assertive or passionate sounds like it's extreme but in my experience depends on who it is that you're expecting to influence by asking the question.  It's basically a mini-game to influence the behaviour or morale of 1 or more people/groups in the topic of the question.  For instance some cases a passionate compliment can be seen as OTT and completely negate/weaken its effect where calm might do fine.  Same with assertive if it's a young vulnerable player. 

You could save the game when you come to media questions and try all the different combinations to see what happens.  Not to cheat of course but just to understand why they might have a certain effect.

I've been thinking of doing the same with team talks.

[eriktous]

If it's not how you're saying it, then it must be what you say?

It's all about portraying a positive image of the club, and to a lesser extent yourself. Be optimistic about your chances, protect your players, say you have constructive discussions with the chairman, be respectful with regard to other managers and players, don't give opportunities to be portrayed like a fool, don't get provoked to say things you really don't want or need to. Don't be afraid to use the no comment button if there's really no answer that suits you. When they repeat the question and ask for a proper answer, just repeat the answer you gave the first time.

I always answer calm myself. Partly because I can't be bothered to pick another stance, but mostly because that's how I'd like to envisage myself in that alternate reality where I'm managing a professional football club, and I never understand why some real managers get so worked up with the press.

[Zebedee101]

Thanks for the replies guys. Perhaps it is what I'm saying, but in general I try not to act like an idiot and try to answer positively. I'd understand if my percentage was average but it seems quite extreme being as low as 18% when I'm at least trying to do the right things.

I started on the lowest reputation possible so perhaps this plays a part? I have a low reputation so maybe it doesn't matter what I say, the level will drop over time because nobody cares?