Is there a reason why players are suddenly doing hilariously bad plays?

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

This is going to take some explaining so I hope you'll be patient. I recently started an RB Leipzig save because I thought it would be fun to manage a relatively high stature club without much history. Things were fine, the players were decent and I had some nice transfers. We played terrible in friendlies, losing to even Celtic 3-0 of all clubs. But I reasoned that they were just warming up, and anyway I was tweaking the tactics a little. I was letting my ass man handle it but usually I would get draws and narrow wins, but the important thing was up until the season started I never really saw the problem with the team in actual match mode.

In the first Bundesliga game against Union, I was absolutely horrified. The players didn't know what they were doing! Corners instantly float out. Defenders suddenly stumble and don't actually get possession of the ball. Strikers suddenly losing the ball. Headers and passes going straight into opposing players, like they are colourblind. In one goal-scoring moment, and I am sad I didn't get a replay capture this happened:

Winger runs the ball to Union box. Stumbles at the edge and loses the ball. The ball hangs near the line for 2 seconds, and then a defender collects it. Winger jogs back. Wing Back snatches the ball from the defender as he tries to run up the pitch, and then bumps into Winger (like full on "where did you come from!" slam into him). Ball bounces out of possession. Defender gets the ball, crosses it up, striker collects it and scores for Union.

I was bewildered. Another time, my captain Orban makes a simple pass straight to the striker and he lobs the ball in. Goal. Another good one: my defender runs at a striker, bumps into the man, stumbles, and then the striker (completely unfazed) steps forward for a simple pass. Pass connects, kick, goal.

These glaring errors happen again and again and I've never seen such sheer hilarity before, even when I was managing teams like SPAL or Cheltenham or even Portugese League 2 sides. And I will also add that Timo Werner, in my ten game experiment, never scored a single goal outside of a couple of penalties.

Before you start hammering away "TaCtIcS", I sincerely doubt that is the problem. Because, like I said, it's not like we are in the wrong place or we are not getting the ball or anything. These are all simple footballing skills from passing, tackling, and ball retention, not positioning or movement. We get plenty of chances and shots, but one silly mistake and we draw or lose the match.

Have any of you ever witnessed such dumbfounding displays of incompetence?

[cris182]

It does seem to me in the last week or so my players every time i load the game look like they have forgotten how to play football. Haven't actually checked yet but has there been an update which has changed anything? They have gone from league winners to being unable to play football and concede goals like amateurs

[Grifty]

I've not seen anything like that, bar the odd mistake by a player, but that happens in real life so I accept that.

As you've said we can't question your tactics, it must be the game. I'd request a refund if I were you.

[ExeChris]

My team seem to be worse over the last couple of days.  Finished 3rd in Bundesliga last season so a decent team but we haven't scored a goal in our last 5 away league games and not even against the top teams.  We seem to go through spells of being unable to play any kind of football.  A couple of games ago my keeper made a save, then waited a few seconds and rolled it out to my CB on the edge of the box.  He waited 5 seconds until he was closed down a little bit and just turned around and smashed the ball into the stand for a corner!  Couldn't believe it.

[zyfon5]

ME is working fine for me though except for a few odd animations like players unnecessarily slowing down when chasing the ball. in fact i start to see better football being played compared to the initial version of ME. from your description i can't really brain out what is happening either. maybe show your saved match file in the bugs forum and let SI deal with it instead of trying to find out what is wrong here?

[sporadicsmiles]

If you are not winning friendlies against lower teams with anyone, then it is almost exclusively a tactical issue. Indeed when I am trying out something tactically being unable to win friendlies against weak sides comfortably is an absolute red flag. That is true pretty much no matter who you play as. Just to note as well, tactics are not only about having players in the right place. You also have to consider what you are actually asking them to do in that role. Are they able to do it? Do they have the support around them they require? It is impossible to comment on this here, but this would be my first thing to check. Just saying your tactic is sound does not mean it is.

Other than that, what is tactical familiarity like? If it is super low, this can affect their play. Did you sign a lot of players, which can have a similar effect. 

Also, are the players suitable for the roles you have put them in? Not every player can do every thing. If players are making bad mistakes they just might be crap for that particular role. I assume this not to be the case, but I am throwing out as many things as I can think of. 

[Etebaer]

How many Season have you played - is this still the first Season?

There is a Chance you screw up after your winterbreak or when Teams start to see you as threat and change their tactics to less open play.

If you are bad from the start it is either your Tactic or you chose the wrong Player(s) for the Task.

In the first Season there is also no tactical familiartiy so the friendlies should be chosen in a way that step by step you increase the challenge and start with freindlies against Team of lower leagues and work up to Teams of similar Quality.

[Russiandude]

It's painfully obvious that the player is at fault when you see them you see them stumbling, dozing off with the ball, or don't seem to notice when an opponent is right in front of them.

I've seen these happen often and most of the times the offending players have bad body language like nervous or anxious. This sort of things happen when a player is unhappy, overconfident, or is feeling too much pressures from in or outside the match (like from playing in important matches or having many clubs interested in them). Sometimes you can see signs of this during pre-match warm ups (but if 1 player gets overconfident expect more players to follow).

I think being marked can add to the pressure too but I'm not too sure.

 

Edited May 2, 2020 by Russiandude

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

15 hours ago, Grifty said:

I've not seen anything like that, bar the odd mistake by a player, but that happens in real life so I accept that.

As you've said we can't question your tactics, it must be the game. I'd request a refund if I were you.

How do you blame tactics when they consistently hit corners out or make terrible passes when they clearly have better options?

13 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

If you are not winning friendlies against lower teams with anyone, then it is almost exclusively a tactical issue. Indeed when I am trying out something tactically being unable to win friendlies against weak sides comfortably is an absolute red flag. That is true pretty much no matter who you play as. Just to note as well, tactics are not only about having players in the right place. You also have to consider what you are actually asking them to do in that role. Are they able to do it? Do they have the support around them they require? It is impossible to comment on this here, but this would be my first thing to check. Just saying your tactic is sound does not mean it is.

Other than that, what is tactical familiarity like? If it is super low, this can affect their play. Did you sign a lot of players, which can have a similar effect. 

Also, are the players suitable for the roles you have put them in? Not every player can do every thing. If players are making bad mistakes they just might be crap for that particular role. I assume this not to be the case, but I am throwing out as many things as I can think of. 

I think those friendlies were lost because the players were making the same mistakes. I don't think it's pinned down to any tactics because I was changing them from friendly to friendly and even as the real matches started. Besides, like I mentioned, some of the stuff isn't really tactical issues, like corners being whipped out or consistently poor passes when there are better options around.

I think role familiarity is interesting because everyone keeps saying the circles don't really matter and from my experience that does seem to be the case, but I don't know if that has a hand here or not. Familiarity is at around 90%, and I hadn't signed a lot of players. Since I played about ten matches and results are consistently the same, I doubt it's a new player thing.

 

 

[sporadicsmiles]

3 hours ago, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

I don't think it's pinned down to any tactics because I was changing them from friendly to friendly and even as the real matches started.

If you are constantly changing your tactics how to you expect your players to learn and execute those tactics? Or become familiar with what you want them to do? 

[achortagus]

Well, i would suggest you look at this from a different agnle. The ME is just a "bad" representation of what happens on the pitch. Don't dwell on the specifics, on the stupid movements and animations. Often these animations are confusing and misrepresent what actually happened. Especially animations regarding mistakes that lead to a goal. 

I.e. a common one is: the wing back makes a pass to the dc, the dc controls the ball and stands still for 2-3 seconds, the attacker steals the ball and scores. You would assume that it is the dc's fault in this situation if you just watch the highlight. But in reality, the wing back is the one that gets the "mistake led to goal" stat! So the game tried to show you a highlight in which the wing back made a bad and risky pass to the dc, and you conceeded as result. But the representation is bad and misleading.

So, don't believe everything you see in the ME, and try to understand what the game want's to tell you.

Similarly with you, I am on my 8th or 9th season with Hansa. Have a really good team capable of challenging for the title. Started the new season with bad results and conceeded a lot of stupid goals because of mistakes. Goalkeeper passing to opponent, dc going for a 5 second nap while having the ball etc. So i investigated a bit and found out that all these teams were pressing me high with their 4-2-3-1 tactic and not really giving me space to build form behind. My dc's are good, but not really BPD's, so not the best passers. And the cherry on top was that i had "play out of defense" instruction. 

Well, as soon as i removed this instruction, all these mistakes went away.

[yolixeya]

39 minutes ago, achortagus said:

Well, i would suggest you look at this from a different agnle. The ME is just a "bad" representation of what happens on the pitch. Don't dwell on the specifics, on the stupid movements and animations. Often these animations are confusing and misrepresent what actually happened. Especially animations regarding mistakes that lead to a goal. 

I agree. ME isn't that perfect that you can look at singe incidents and figure out what is going wrong. You have to look at trends that happen consistently and focus on basics of what you are trying to do with your team instrucions. Like with that example where you tried to play out form defence but they are pressing you high and it's not working. Or if you for example want to defend deep and hit them on the counter and you watch on compehensive highlights and there isn't a single highlight that shows a decent attempt of a counter attack. It's clearly not working then at least against that specific team.

[Zemahh]

On 03/05/2020 at 07:16, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

How do you blame tactics when they consistently hit corners out or make terrible passes when they clearly have better options?

I wouldn't get too caught up on the specifics. Sure, every now and then you concede a set piece unluckily, but if you notice a consistent trend, whether that's conceding from corners or players making silly mistakes, there's most likely a problem with your tactic.

It's easy to judge every highlight for what it is, but unless you're watching matches in full, you most likely miss things that, for example, led to a set piece, or action just before that, when your midfielder lost the ball carelessly, missed a tackle or dribbled himself out of possession, which led to a counter-attack and subsequently a corner from which you ended up conceding. And even then, sadly the graphical representation of the match engine is not on a high enough level where you could take each and every highlight for granted and recognize the issue immediately. As pointed out above, you could, for example, see a defender standing still before losing the ball and it would make perfect sense for you to think he was at fault, but the match engine instead interpreted the whole thing as a poor pass, despite it not really being obvious at first glance and you had to dive deep into analysis to find that out.

Personally, I tend to look at things in a more broad view. If I'm conceding a lot of set pieces, I'm probably set up too offensively, since my team clearly commits a lot of fouls that lead to those set pieces or have to constantly clear the ball out of play. Or on the other hand, I'm probably doing something right if I'm scoring a lot of them, since my team is clearly getting in dangerous positions leading to set pieces.

At least that's how I personally interpret the match engine. Hopefully, one day the graphics will be good enough that I will no longer have to ask myself "what is the game actually trying to tell me" after every highlight. 

[zsolt86]

After promoting my team to the first Hungarian division I invested expansive long hours to scout and find players free to sign in order to survive. First 8/9 games of the season was incredible; I had 1 game lost, 2 draws, and around 6 wins, I even managed to smash some top teams. And then I got a draw, after which I got into a loosing streak. So I patiently tried to get out of it. But even after I managed to put a different new tactics together and fix the players morale, something wasn't the same anymore. All I had was draws and a few very tide 1-0 wins. So I decided to watch a full game. Ohhh man ... It was like watching a bunch of kids; midfielders hesitating with the ball, even they have team mates next to them. Goal keeper distributing the ball very flat straight to the opponent. No man marking, my defenders just jogging and sometimes being all around the place. Strikers missing 4 out of 5 one-to-ones. Defenders and midfielders keep sending long balls completely blindly. I could write a whole book about all I noticed. An not just time to time, at every touch to the ball they did some mistake. It was like they were playing against me. And no matter what changes I made, same went on. The game engine turned them into a group of ******** guys and I had no control over it. This is not a graphics issue, this feels like a decision of the game engine to put my team onto this path. Sad, but almost impossible to enjoy this game. I wasted a lot of time with trying to avoid relegation, but in the end of the season I'm pushed down there anyway. I wish there was any other good similar game, but less difficult (or at least with different difficulty levels), because I would like to keep playing, but this way it's a just a constant agony, and it feels like a waste of time and nerves.

Edited September 4, 2022 by zsolt86