Away games are way too hard or Home games too easy - wether it's for the player or the AI.

[Fatkidscantjump]

I'm not quite sure when this trend started to happen, personally i have noticed it already on FM20 but i'm pretty sure it has been going on for more years. This is especially true for top teams that use attacking / high-pressure systems, wether its the player or AI.

For example on this year season I've just ended playing.

Home games

Away games

As you can see the discrepancy is nowhere near IRL levels. IRL Serie A 2018/19 for example https://www.flashscore.com/football/italy/serie-a-2018-2019/standings/ . We see clearly teams are scoring more and conceding less in Home games, but it's really not at those levels. There is outliers (Juventus this season for example, which won them the title), but if you look at Inter, Lazio, Milan performance home and away, it's really not realistic. Before losing this season, Juventus in my save had a 90 game run unbeaten at home. Quite ludicrous. If you focus on Goals scored and Goals conceded, the difference between home and away is HUGE.

It becomes even more apparent (and frustrating) when you play in Champions League games. In a League, you can accept a few losses away, knowing the other teams will have trouble away too, and hopefully they will struggle more than you. But in Champions league, it becomes a matter of exploiting home advantage enough to score more than the opponent.

I also feel like Home advantage is applied evenly wether i'm playing at Anfield or in Venezia. IRL I understand that 80k people screaming at you at Camp Nou will impact your performance. But the crowd from a small stadium recently promoted, not so much.

My main gripe about this, it's that Away games feels like a chore and vs big teams, a coinflip. If i'm lucky i'll get a draw or even win, but my team will play bad, miss easy passes or shots, and it would just feel like a chore. I'm okay with losing, i'm not okay with my team playing like Pep's Barca at home and next week they play like Burnley. Kinda ruins immersion and the fun of it after a while.

Anyways, not too sure of the point of this post, guess i'm curious about what others think about this.
 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Fatkidscantjump

[Freakiie]

The discrepancy between home and away matches is pretty absurd in the latest versions of FM. The home side looks like a world class side, regardless of what team it is and the away team looks like they have no clue what they're doing on the field, even if they're a world class team. There should be some difference between home and away, but the current state where the away team just seems to play with seemingly 0 decisions and pressure equal to playing a CL final is definitely not the way to go.

I think home teams should generally play with a bit more risk, as they have their home support behind them and most fans don't want to see their team park the bus at home. That would still result in the occasional shock result as the favorites get surprised by a smaller team being more aggressive as expected, would help with the far too passive AI that just goes full park the bus whenever a bigger team comes along and then you could look at how big of an effect playing in front of a hostile crowd should really have. We have supporter profiles that should help there, but I have no idea if they're relevant at all in FM currently, as your team seems unable to handle the away pressure regardless if you're playing in front of a massive 20 passion crowd or playing in a basically empty stadium.

[Speedyol]

Can you try and combine those stats in the screenshot into numbers? Would be interesting to compare it to real life football and see how far off it is. I found this in a article:

-The table below shows the percentage of games won by the home team, away team and drawn in the last 21 years of the top four divisions of English football. Home win, away win and draw percentage of games played in England’s top four divisions since the 1996/97 season and to the time the article was written.
Link to the full article: http://eightyfivepoints.blogspot.com/2016/08/home-advantage-home-advantage-is-much.html

EDIT:

I did the quick math myself, Seems like you have less draws than normal and a bit more home wins, but its only a single season so its not that crazy for it to be a bit off the "average".

Home wins: 179 - 47.1%
Away Wins: 126 - 33.2%
Draws: 75 - 19.7%
Total Games: 380

Edited March 31, 2021 by Speedyol

[Fatkidscantjump]

Il y a 10 heures, Speedyol a dit :

Can you try and combine those stats in the screenshot into numbers? Would be interesting to compare it to real life football and see how far off it is. I found this in a article:

-The table below shows the percentage of games won by the home team, away team and drawn in the last 21 years of the top four divisions of English football. Home win, away win and draw percentage of games played in England’s top four divisions since the 1996/97 season and to the time the article was written.
Link to the full article: http://eightyfivepoints.blogspot.com/2016/08/home-advantage-home-advantage-is-much.html

EDIT:

I did the quick math myself, Seems like you have less draws than normal and a bit more home wins, but its only a single season so its not that crazy for it to be a bit off the "average".

Home wins: 179 - 47.1%
Away Wins: 126 - 33.2%
Draws: 75 - 19.7%
Total Games: 380

I don't dispute that there is an Home game advantage IRL too. My specific issue is how it is represented in FM. For example when you look at goals scored and conceded ; Inter scored 55 goals at home and only 30 away. They would win 5-0, 6-0 at Home, and then draw 0-0 or 1-1 vs the same team Away. Lazio scored 45 goals Home and 25 away. Also for goals conceded ; Milan conceded 9 goals Home and 28 away ! Myself having the best defense at home with only 7 goals conceded, I still conceded 19 goals away, which is almost 3 times more.

If you look at IRL numbers it's nowhere near close, for example irl 2018/19, champions Juventus scored 39 Home and 31 Away. Conceded 13 Home and 17 Away. Second place Napoli they scored 41 Home and 33 Away. Conceded 16 Home and 20 Away. As you can see there is a difference, but it's a small, consistent one. It seems to indicate they play the same football Home and Away, just slightly worse / less agressive. If you look at the numbers on my FM save though, you can feel like Inter is Guardiola barca at Home and a mid-table team Away. This is my main gripe with this. It makes wins vs big teams at Home not rewarding, and games away frustrating cause you feel like you are just "scripted" to lose / draw.

Other point to consider is, wether it affects every team the same or not. I'd imagine a newly promoted team with a small stadium would have way less home advantage than Liverpool at Anfield. It feels like in FM it's the same for every team. And while I do have less troubles with "weaker" teams Away, I feel like it's from player quality, not because they have less Home advantage.

But since we don't really know how this Home/Away thing is implemented in the game, this is all assumptions of course. And yes I agree this is a small sample size, however it's more or less consistent with what i'm seeing since FM20, with hundreds of hours in both games.

[busngabb]

2 hours ago, Fatkidscantjump said:

This is my main gripe with this. It makes wins vs big teams at Home not rewarding, and games away frustrating cause you feel like you are just "scripted" to lose / draw.

Another topic as old as the franchise itself, but I'm still convinced certain elements of the game are completely scripted (Or heavily biased), because of the things you say in interviews.

Those home games where you get 6 questions about complacency before the game and despite trying to say what will motivate your players you end up saying the wrong thing. You then start the game and after 20 minutes at home to the bottom team who haven't won a game all season and have a -48 goal difference after 15 games and your EG is 0.00. The game skips through minute after minute as you frantically verbally abuse your players and try everything you've read on the forums and it just ends 0-0 no matter what you do. I restarted a game at home to Brentford about 15 times to try various things and never won once.

Then you play certain teams away and they're just destined to beat you. Arsenal it is for me. Ridiculously overrated in the game anyway, but they just demolish me away no matter what I do. Bellerin, terrible in real life and not a threat to anyone anymore (2 assists in 2 years), is like prime Cafu.

You're definitely right about home games, but I think it's limited to big teams. It feels like the better teams don't press enough away, they just seem so passive. My win % is no doubt far higher in the CL than against the bottom 6 in the Prem. I think SI have nailed the frustration of playing at home to minnows and them employing soul destroying anti-football.

[Sharkn20]

22 hours ago, Speedyol said:

Can you try and combine those stats in the screenshot into numbers? Would be interesting to compare it to real life football and see how far off it is. I found this in a article:

-The table below shows the percentage of games won by the home team, away team and drawn in the last 21 years of the top four divisions of English football. Home win, away win and draw percentage of games played in England’s top four divisions since the 1996/97 season and to the time the article was written.
Link to the full article: http://eightyfivepoints.blogspot.com/2016/08/home-advantage-home-advantage-is-much.html

EDIT:

I did the quick math myself, Seems like you have less draws than normal and a bit more home wins, but its only a single season so its not that crazy for it to be a bit off the "average".

Home wins: 179 - 47.1%
Away Wins: 126 - 33.2%
Draws: 75 - 19.7%
Total Games: 380

I 2nd this.

21 years of history in 5 divisions is a lot more valuable data than one season in one division. I disagree with OP, the numbers in FM21 show normal tendencies of RL.

Home field advantage is a thing.

Is funny how the human brain looks to blame something else but not himself isn't it?

[Fatkidscantjump]

il y a 53 minutes, Sharkn20 a dit :

I 2nd this.

21 years of history in 5 divisions is a lot more valuable data than one season in one division. I disagree with OP, the numbers in FM21 show normal tendencies of RL.

Home field advantage is a thing.

Is funny how the human brain looks to blame something else but not himself isn't it?

The problem here is unless you have significant data for FM too, you can't really make a statement like that. Also my point wasn't that there shouldn't be an "Home field advantage", it was the way it was represented in FM is frustrating and slightly unrealistic. You can fire up a save yourself and holidays for 10 years. It has been a constant for me in all my saves since I've started noticing it in FM20.

"Home field advantage is a thing," who said it isnt exactly ?

And i'm not sure what I should blame myself for ? If you look at the screenshots my performance Away is better than my performance at Home, because my tactic is not a gegenpress super attacking one, but rather a Regroup / Counter one, which suits away games better. The problem that me, and many others perceive, is the way the team plays and the enjoyment of the game. Wins feels undeserved and losses unfair. It's not about the results.

[Speedyol]

I have multiple save games thats 15-20 years long, but It would take ages to go through them and collect the data. If you want to sit a few hours with google sheets and figure it out ill give you them. its moslty FM19 and FM20. 

[Fatkidscantjump]

il y a 7 minutes, Speedyol a dit :

I have multiple save games thats 15-20 years long, but It would take ages to go through them and collect the data. If you want to sit a few hours with google sheets and figure it out ill give you them. its moslty FM19 and FM20. 

That honestly sounds like a nightmare haha, also for it to be completely thorough we would have to compare not only points but goals conceded / goals scored, and maybe even team reputation / style of play. I'm sure SI must have some kind of data though, would be curious to see it. But I don't have the time or motivation to do it. I made this thread mostly to see if others had the same feeling.

[bastoshaq]

In any league I cannot say that I have seen a lot of discrepancies to be fair. But when I look at cup competitions...

I remember on of my Benfica saves, FM16 if I recall rightly, I won 6-0 or something. Lost 9-0 in the second leg a week later.

Then in another games, if I beat any team in great fashion in the first leg, I know that I'm in for a treat in the second leg. Not always for sure. But it was almost as if I would feel saver winning 2-0 instead of 4 or 5.

Even yesterday, FMT20, with again Benfica, I won the first leg against Villareal in the EURO Cup at home by 6-0. Second leg lost 5-0.

I'm not saying that this happens every time - in the same season, I won 5-0 against Lyon to then loose 2-1 away in the second leg.

[HUNT3R]

It's not related to 'home advantage'. IMO, AI teams are probably too passive away from home. They may be right from the start or they're not confident enough to chase when away from home. Haven't had massive issues away from home myself. 

[Fmhnunter]

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