Team cohesion

[zsolt86]

So after an intense season in Championship with Brentford, which started great and ended highly disappointing, I had to conclude, that something is not going right. I noticed that the cohesion of my team was Average (marked red) and it didn't move all year, no matter what training plan I applied. I went through the team, and I spotted, that during the season I bought a bunch of players with good attributes but none of them fit into the core team. 

Fair enough, issue detected, but here is just one problem. I keep scouting players , but none of them fit into my core team. To give you an example, I just got the report of 20 players scouted. From 20 players was only one who was likely to be fitting into my team, but that's a midfielder who is 26 and according to the scout report would rank on the 6th place among my existing midfielders. That won't improve too much.

So my question is; how can one improve his team this way?

I feel this mental/personality factors are overpowered and they just ruin joy of the game.

You might have a squad with different personalities, that doesn't mean they necessarily have to play like a bunch of kids for a full season. They tried to make it "real", but in real life a team cohesion is not calculated by 6 attributes of each player. Even when a person does not fit in a team (and not just in football), he can still contribute to the success by attributes like compromise or humbleness (or a bunch of other factors).

For a person like me, who just wants to spend a few hours per week with this game, it's a real waste of time to scout 40 players, from which 38 won't fit in my team anyway, and the remaining 2 are average, so they won't give any boost to the quality. Personally I disagree with the logic of the team cohesion within the game engine. No idea how to improve anything this way.

[Mars_Blackmon]

31 minutes ago, zsolt86 said:

So after an intense season in Championship with Brentford, which started great and ended highly disappointing, I had to conclude, that something is not going right. I noticed that the cohesion of my team was Average (marked red) and it didn't move all year, no matter what training plan I applied. I went through the team, and I spotted, that during the season I bought a bunch of players with good attributes but none of them fit into the core team. 

Fair enough, issue detected, but here is just one problem. I keep scouting players , but none of them fit into my core team. To give you an example, I just got the report of 20 players scouted. From 20 players was only one who was likely to be fitting into my team, but that's a midfielder who is 26 and according to the scout report would rank on the 6th place among my existing midfielders. That won't improve too much.

So my question is; how can one improve his team this way?

I feel this mental/personality factors are overpowered and they just ruin joy of the game.

You might have a squad with different personalities, that doesn't mean they necessarily have to play like a bunch of kids for a full season. They tried to make it "real", but in real life a team cohesion is not calculated by 6 attributes of each player. Even when a person does not fit in a team (and not just in football), he can still contribute to the success by attributes like compromise or humbleness (or a bunch of other factors).

For a person like me, who just wants to spend a few hours per week with this game, it's a real waste of time to scout 40 players, from which 38 won't fit in my team anyway, and the remaining 2 are average, so they won't give any boost to the quality. Personally I disagree with the logic of the team cohesion within the game engine. No idea how to improve anything this way.

Give it more than 1 year?

[waddlemagic]

On team cohesion, one thing to help is to make sure each player's individual training reflects their position and role within your tactics.

This will make sure each player eventually reaches full role familiarity.

[Dereka]

There's a number of training sessions that impact team cohesion. When you click a training option you should see this highlighted. One of them is Team Bonding, and I think Teamwork as well. I recommend scheduling those frequently to improve Team Cohesion.

[phnompenhandy]

I have found that it makes a heck of a difference - more so than in previous iterations. You might have hit on a brilliant tactic for your squad, but you won't know until they hit cohesion, which does take a long time.

[SC00P0NE]

1 hour ago, Dereka said:

There's a number of training sessions that impact team cohesion. When you click a training option you should see this highlighted. One of them is Team Bonding, and I think Teamwork as well. I recommend scheduling those frequently to improve Team Cohesion.

yes, teamwork + match practice will greatly increase TC. As long as you train these two religiously, I don't find building TC that hard at all.. I also never bought players based on if their personalities fit into the team, and yet, I always managed to fill my TC bar over time notwithstanding through appropriate training sessions..

Edited November 14, 2022 by SC00P0NE

[gunnerfan]

I had a similar cohesion problem when I began my Celta Vigo save. In addition to the training sessions mentioned above, I find mentoring can help, especially with new players coming into the team.

[zindrinho]

20 hours ago, zsolt86 said:

 I noticed that the cohesion of my team was Average (marked red) and it didn't move all year, no matter what training plan I applied.

I went through the team, and I spotted, that during the season I bought a bunch of players with good attributes but none of them fit into the core team. 

this is why. Your cohesion takes a hit when a new guy comes in, they need time to gel as described in-game.

Training General - Tactic and all the Match Prep trainings builds team cohesion IIRC.

[zsolt86]

14 hours ago, Dereka said:

There's a number of training sessions that impact team cohesion. When you click a training option you should see this highlighted. One of them is Team Bonding, and I think Teamwork as well. I recommend scheduling those frequently to improve Team Cohesion.

I do that every week, + Teamwork and trying to add as much general training as possible. Doesn't make any difference. 

[zsolt86]

6 hours ago, zindrinho said:

this is why. Your cohesion takes a hit when a new guy comes in, they need time to gel as described in-game.

Training General - Tactic and all the Match Prep trainings builds team cohesion IIRC.

Yeah the problem is due to not being promoted, players keep wanting to leave. Another ridiculous aspect of the game. I had to buy 6-7 players in the end of the season, because players just don't want to stay. And all the players I try to sign come with more ridiculous demands.

[zsolt86]

8 hours ago, gunnerfan said:

I had a similar cohesion problem when I began my Celta Vigo save. In addition to the training sessions mentioned above, I find mentoring can help, especially with new players coming into the team.

I do keep an eye on mentoring, no result with that.

[zsolt86]

12 hours ago, SC00P0NE said:

yes, teamwork + match practice will greatly increase TC. As long as you train these two religiously, I don't find building TC that hard at all.. I also never bought players based on if their personalities fit into the team, and yet, I always managed to fill my TC bar over time notwithstanding through appropriate training sessions..

I do a lot of match preparation training.

[zsolt86]

So the next season my team cohesion went from average to poor. As mentioned in one of the replies, some of the players left in the end of the season, I replaced them with more quality, spending almost £50m . We hammered teams like Lille in the pre-season friendlies, and then the start of the season was complete collapse. The problem is obvious , my attacking midfielders unable to link 4 consecutive passes together. Loosing patience with it, I did enjoy the game, but this save is just all about screwing me. It's like the game engine expects you to follow the exact required patterns with all your decision, otherwise you are punished every step. Don't make something realistic, make it enjoyable for everybody. But maybe it's me.

[zindrinho]

18 hours ago, zsolt86 said:

Yeah the problem is due to not being promoted, players keep wanting to leave. Another ridiculous aspect of the game. I had to buy 6-7 players in the end of the season, because players just don't want to stay. And all the players I try to sign come with more ridiculous demands.

You dont HAVE to do as the players want. You can keep them, they usually get over themselves after a while.

You should get the new players in as early as possible, then train a lot of categories with Team Cohesion as described effect in the pre-season, then keep at it during the early stages of the new season until cohesion and tactical knowledge is at acceptable levels.

[zsolt86]

On 15/11/2022 at 19:41, zindrinho said:

You dont HAVE to do as the players want. You can keep them, they usually get over themselves after a while.

You should get the new players in as early as possible, then train a lot of categories with Team Cohesion as described effect in the pre-season, then keep at it during the early stages of the new season until cohesion and tactical knowledge is at acceptable levels.

I did try to keep the players in these situations. Half of the squad agreed with them and they turned against me,  which then destroyed the atmosphere as well.  I think there is something with my game, or my current profile, no idea. All the things people mention here used to work for me as well , now  it feels like the game engine handles all my decisions like a mistake.  Honestly, every day I'm getting at least one frustrating email, something always go wrong.  I do accept that I'm not a very good player. I know basics, but I'm not that enthusiastic like others around here, But still, let's say I'm this bad with the game, it still doesn't explain why things in my early saves worked and with patience i was always able to turn losing streaks or any other issue around, while now my patience ends up with punching my keyboard because of running out of nerves. I started a test save now with Reading. I want to see how many games I'm going to loose in a row. Pre-season is over, we didn't score one single goal. I had a game where my defender was sent out in the 2nd minute (show me an example to that in professional football). and then my key midfielder got a serious injury. I have no budget and no defence, I found a guy who looked ok out of contract, he got hernia after 2 weeks. Then I lost a penalty battle in the first round of Quarabao cup against a lower team, now I'm playing my first game in my championship, of course the struggle is deeply there. And yeah, probably my tactics are rubbish, we could possibly find a reason for all the things I mentioned, but why now all happens in the same time, but never any good stuff comes to me, while before I had good and bad  "coincidences" happening to me together.  Not sure, if my point is clear here. People compare this game to real life, because they like to look at it as a simulation. In real life not only bad things happen to you.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

go hard in match preparation and team bonding in training. like max it out if you have 1 game just fill every slot with match prep until you use them all up. after a month of that you will be good. if you notice in custom schedule it will max out fatigue reduction, max cohesion, happiness and familiarity while no effect on condition or injury. so underrated.

i find it extremely useful for building a nation saves with the new champions league rules. the league phase can even be more deadly at its completely random. you might be up against 8 worldbeaters and your team still doesnt like losing even though they are suppose to. i drop this training on after champ games before league games to max them out morale wise.

match prep for your main squad is so underrated i feel in the fm community. its probably the best kind of training for you main squad if they are all over say 21 years of age. everyone is so concerned of squeezing' like 5 points out of training some wonderkid. if they dont develop it aint cause of your training. sell and move onto the next kid.

 

 

[dannyfc]

On 14/11/2022 at 11:47, SC00P0NE said:

yes, teamwork + match practice will greatly increase TC. As long as you train these two religiously, I don't find building TC that hard at all.. I also never bought players based on if their personalities fit into the team, and yet, I always managed to fill my TC bar over time notwithstanding through appropriate training sessions..

Yeah honestly I've always found it too easy if anything. Never paid attention to personalities or bringing in players who were the 'right fit', but by using the Team Bonding schedule it's relatively easy to accumulate good cohesion very quickly. 

It's one of the features in recent years which I think is a great addition to incentivise realistic squad building rather than an XI of wonderkids - but it's perhaps a bit too forgiving imo. 

I would quite like to see influential players have more of an impact, for instance maybe you should only be able to attain the higher levels if you have enough players with high leadership or good personality mixes.  I tend to disregard the scout reports that mention players potentially being a peripheral figure, so would good to see more consequences from ignoring that.

 

[zsolt86]

I started a new save,  and it seems  that I figured out what the issue was.  In that previous save I was a tracksuit manager (something I tried for the first time), while on my new save I changed it to suit.  In my new save none of the previous problems are encountered, or at least not that intense. Cohesion is strong in any team I join, it stays that way, and players do not ***** about every small "unhappiness", not to mention tactical unfamiliarity and other never ending issues I had . It seems, that tracksuit managers have lighter impact on players,  are less respected and earning reputation is much harder. Not sure, how "realistic" is that, this is like Klopp would be considered a **** manager compared to Zidane because of his baseball cap  . 

But I assume there is a deep philosophical explanation behind.

Thank you guys anyway.