Bad Form - FRUSTRATION!!!!

[peter-27]

Hi all!

I've been playing Football Manager since the 2005 version, so am fairly experienced at this game. That being said, there is one thing that happens to me every. single. season. that I can not seem to prevent .. and that's a run of bad form. Surely there's a way to "do an Arsenal" and go a season unbeaten? Maybe there is, but to be honest, I would just settle for not throwing away the competitions nearly every year due to poor form.

So the version I'm currently playing is FM15 (would happily buy the newer versions, but too attached to my current team/squad; Newcastle United by the way). I'm currently in 2035 (ish) and the same pattern appears to be happening with every passing season. All goes well at the start, an occasional loss or draw, but winning most of my games and comfortably top of the league. Midway through the season though, I'll notice performances suddenly dropping off, but I'll still be grinding out victories. This usually happens for 2/3 games and then my team just goes to pieces completely. Poor form hits and I'll go on a run where I seriously struggle for points and wins. Usually this lasts 10-15 games, but sometimes it's shorter, say 5/6 games, and those are the seasons where I will actually win some silverware.

I've literally tried everything I can think of to halt poor form, but nothing seems to work. It feels like you just have to ride it out until the game decides you've had enough anguish. I'm at the end of my tether with this, someone please offer some advice/perspective/suggestions. Happy to answer any questions about my current save if it'll help.

[FrazT]

Open a thread in the Tactics forum and give as much detail as you can about your team, formation, team instructions and mentality and player roles and you can get some feedback there.

[sporadicsmiles]

Sure, it is possible to go unbeaten in a season, but it is really really difficult. A single error in any one of your 38 (or however many in whatever league) games can cost you that unbeaten season.

If you are having bad runs of form, it is important to try to understand where they are coming from. Since you are far into a game with a single team, I think we can rule out the AI treating you different because you are overperforming. Therefore we have to search for a different reason for this. 

You notice that this happens midway through the season. How much do you rotate your squad? The Premier league is pretty game intensive around the midway point, if your players are not in top shape, this can affect your performance. 

Do you tend to start the season really well and win a lot of games? This can lead to complacency where your players assume they can just turn up and win. This is usually pretty easy to spot, because your players start to look like they are not putting in effort when you watch matches. If this is the case, you need to keep your players motivated and avoid complacency using the media and team talks. 

The middle of the season coincides with the transfer window. Do you tend to buy many players in January? This can affect how well your team plays because it takes time to integrate a new player into a squad. You also may have injuries which means you are playing a tactic based around your main players that is just not as suitable when you play backups (players are not plug and play in FM). Do you find you have injuries, or do injuries coincide with a dip in form?

That is just a couple of ideas of things to look for, I am sure there are more things that can be thought of. 

[ermant]

On 08.07.2017 at 00:13, peter-27 said:

I've literally tried everything I can think of to halt poor form, but nothing seems to work. It feels like you just have to ride it out until the game decides you've had enough anguish. I'm at the end of my tether with this, someone please offer some advice/perspective/suggestions. Happy to answer any questions about my current save if it'll help.

I exactly know what you mean and it is even more frustrating when people say "head to the tactics forum" but this is a game and it has its own dynamics. I also started a similar topic about this. https://community.sigames.com/topic/403024-annoying-performance-drops/

Even you dominate the game, try making little adjustments on your tactics and see what happens. For example, I was dominating every game, oppositions were parking the bus and i was struggling to win, loosing lots of undeserved points. Then i disabled "work into box" and enabled "dribble less". It worked better as team started playing a little more direct when we have the ball. I don't mean playing direct football, I still play short passing game but i could find more space doing this.

You will still face performance drops whatever you do but maybe you can still win. Quality wonderkids will struggle to perform consistently and sometimes players may not be as good as we think. They may have quality but may still need time to develop. Opposition teams will adapt tactics and try to frustrate you somehow. What i see is, going wide and crossing from the flanks work even better in this version but it is also hard when opposition park the bus.

Maybe these are all irrelevant to your situation. I just wanted to share my experience.

 

[lemeuresnew]

1 hour ago, ermant said:

exactly know what you mean and it is even more frustrating when people say "head to the tactics forum" but this is a game and it has its own dynamics. I also started a similar topic about this. https://community.sigames.com/topic/403024-annoying-performance-drops/

why is that frustrating? if you want people to help with this they need to know what tactics etc you are using, how else can they help?

people on here spend a lot of time trying to help others, and get nothing for it. it can often feel like pulling teeth to go through the same old problems with people and ask the same old questions. @FrazT has nearly 40,000 posts, and its only half joking to say 1,000 of them are probably telling people to open a thread with there tactics shown

[ermant]

3 minutes ago, lemeuresnew said:

why is that frustrating? if you want people to help with this they need to know what tactics etc you are using, how else can they help?

I didn't say it's frustrating or wrong getting help. Sure we all get help and try to help each other here. What is frustrating is when you feel there is something wrong about the dynamics of the game beyond tactics and people tell you to go "tactics forum" thinking you just can't play and moan about it. It is a long common problem that we all create lots of chances but fail to win in some part of the game. Maybe we shouldn't create that much chances. It's about the right balance. We love the game and expect it to get better and better. That's all.

[lemeuresnew]

5 minutes ago, ermant said:

I didn't say it's frustrating or wrong getting help. Sure we all get help and try to help each other here. What is frustrating is when you feel there is something wrong about the dynamics of the game beyond tactics and people tell you to go "tactics forum" thinking you just can't play and moan about it. It is a long common problem that we all create lots of chances but fail to win in some part of the game. Maybe we shouldn't create that much chances. It's about the right balance. We love the game and expect it to get better and better. That's all.

even if there is some thing wrong with the game, people cant usually tell you without knowing your tactics and why it is happening. they can only offer the most basic advice, that might as well be copy and pasted as a disclaimer on every post regarding form drop or bad runs

you dont really think it is a problem with the game, and not a part of football and the fact anything can happen do you? it happens to at least 1 top team every weekend. there is always gona be a team that consistently under performs ALL season.

and it MUST be something the original post is doing wrong in some way or a poor quality of squad, else no one would ever win the league. have you won the league? if so, you know he shouldnt always be throwing away competitions

 

[ermant]

1 minute ago, lemeuresnew said:

even if there is some thing wrong with the game, people cant usually tell you without knowing your tactics and why it is happening. they can only offer the most basic advice, that might as well be copy and pasted as a disclaimer on every post regarding form drop or bad runs

you dont really think it is a problem with the game, and not a part of football and the fact anything can happen do you? it happens to at least 1 top team every weekend. there is always gona be a team that consistently under performs ALL season.

and it MUST be something the original post is doing wrong in some way or a poor quality of squad, else no one would ever win the league. have you won the league? if so, you know he shouldnt always be throwing away competitions

I tried to help the OP with the experience i had if you have read my post. You chose to go on "frustrating" word. It is not wrong or frustrating people offering help, that's why we are here. it's frustrating for the posters, especially the experienced ones. Of course it's all about tactics in any situation that can be solved with help but things must also be realistic, reasonable and logical. Anyway, you are right.

[Svenc]

3 hours ago, ermant said:

It is a long common problem that we all create lots of chances but fail to win in some part of the game. Maybe we shouldn't create that much chances. It's about the right balance. We love the game and expect it to get better and better. That's all.

I personally think you have a point with this, which is why "I always dominate but drop points" posts with suge a huge grain of salt. Well one of the reasons [the other is that simply dominating stats isn't managing, and unless you've never dropped off yourself against an overexposing AI you don't know how much space you can create by doing this]. It's in my opinion too easy to amass low-percentage attempts. Shots that are an easy block outright, shots that barely stretch the keeper, and the main source of this I'm eyeing is set pieces, which in some form always inflate in such matches. Unfortunately it's tough to compare, as there are no stats for this, so would manually need to do this for thousands of matches, plus you'd need to compare this to football. There are studies listing how many corners, free kicks, throw-ins, etc. it takes in football on average to get a shot off, but I am not sure if they are taken into account. What FM and real-life football have in common though ever since the biggest set piece exploits have been dealt with: most of the set pieces don't result in a goal (the average irl for corners is 30+ give or take). Even if it's possible to create a corner basically every 2nd minute the ball is in play on FM, e.g. essentially almost every single attack resulting in a clearance for a set piece. Whilst the game produces odd dynamics of its own, that definitely is the player/tactic used following interesting football ideas himself.

None of this will go away unless the game can introduce could give a better indication of who was really more likely to win, such as this (last five, six paragraphs). The chance categories are a poor indication . Until that can be introduced, you need a subjective eye, a critical one, and may consider that if penalties are converted at about 80% ratios, nothing out of tap-ins touches those (the keeper is in the advantage to edge this every time, the term "sitter" is sensationalist  punditry slang broadcasted to millions). Consistently dropping points is due to consistently creating low-percentage attempts, which is tactical. You don't drop points because of always carving defenses wide open, bad luck doesn't endlessly repeat. Disabling "work ball into the box" can lead to challenging attempts for the keeper, as that reduces crosses, so needs better documented, but is logical. There should be a place where guys just can "vent", however the bits to monitor are where venting turns into bad myth as those don't help. Very often, there is simply a perception issue, also fueled by a lack of further stats you need to collect yourself (this plus the following posts, where somebody finally "snapped" and looked through all of his matches rather than only registering a biased selection).