Common Football Manager Fallacies

[RENO24]

haha, can you post a screenie of his profile?

[RENO24]

Any update as to how you're doing ZdlR?

[ham_aka_stam]

I've got Laurito! If this lad slips a disc, I'm never playing this game again

I love Laurito, does rubbish in big games for me, but very consistent in the league

[JD nawrat]

Damn, this conversation has been very good.

There's a lot to take in. I'm only half-way down this page, so I'm not fully sure of how the conversation develops. But I just thought I'd post to say thank you.

I believe that I have been rather ignorant with my approach to Football Manager. Well, at least outside of England. My tactic suit England, but when Spain, Portugal or Italy, I struggle. I've come to the realisation that weather, pitch condition and temperature have a bigger effect than I once realised.

Take, for example, my online game. I manage(d) Benfica. My friends were Porto and Sporting Lisbon. Now, my Benfica side - they had a terrible first game. I was beaten 2-1 to the newly promoted team, with media prediction 15th. My excuse? I was missing 4 key players.

I'm not sure which was worse - the fact that I came up with a crap excuse, or the fact that I knew I was talking crap.

Nonetheless, I persisted with the tactic. I noticed that I was in different weather conditions. Instead of the sweltering hot conditions, I was playing in rain, with strong winds and cold conditions - similar to England. I won.

The next match was similar. I picked up a win.

My fourth match, again Porto(my friend), would prove to be tough. It was hot conditions etc., the same as the first match. But what was there to worry me? My team were playing great.

I got off to a flier. I scored instantly. I maintained my lead until the 43rd minute, and went into HT at 1-1.

Now, surely, if I had any sense, I would've been playing tactics to suit the weather conditions - something which I now realise I should've done, and something which my friend WAS doing. Either that or he has a perfect tactic for every weather condition(Ha.).

I was trumped, and beaten 3-1.

Now, whilst playing through this game, watching highlights only(it takes too long to watch a full match in online matches. The rest don't want to take too long), it was immediately noticeable that my instructions were all wrong. They were passing the ball away without looking(Time Wasting Settings?), the Striker was constantly at least 15 yards from my midfield(Disjointed - high Attacking mentality, opposed to a low mentality from midfield), my midfielders weren't closing down.

My possession was a pathetic 40%, my passing at 55%, my crossing at 6%(I was shocked. I scored from a Cross). I had a total of 4 shots. My friend had a total of 22.

Now, whilst I did take a lot of stick from it all, and have been laughed at many times today, I believe that after reading this, if I take things into account properly, I may well rise to the top of the league.

My Sporting Friend reckons that I'm well out of contention into the league so soon, but I feel that he is getting ahead of himself. He has struggled to win his matches, all against smaller teams(relegation candidates).

Originally, I was keeping the same tactics throughout, and not changing anything before matches. Small, and I mean SMALL, tweaks were made in-game. But they weren't significant, and proved to be pointless. If not, they would only help me conceed, in the end.

So I just thought I'd post, thanking anybody who has contributed to this thread. It's definitely looking set to help me. From now on, I'm going to check the weather conditions, and make tweaks before and during the match. Let's just hope I don't get it all wrong, and play poorly.

[ZdlR]

I was doing great, got off to a good start and sat around 4th going into New Year - I'd aimed for a uefa spot so on target for sure. I started dropping really annoying points - last second defeat at Sevilla from a corner, Valladolid coming back from 2 down to drew 2v2 - at my place

Anyway, I got Leo Franco for pittance and an unsettled Pablo Ledesma in January for face value. Still kept dropping silly points, was 1v1 away to Depor (who I'd humiliated early on 5v0) and they scored another late winner as I pushed up and got greedy.

Nevertheless, going in to the last 10 games of the season I was 8th in a 4-way battle with Vilarreal, Sevilla and Espanyol to get two uefa spots. I started FM this morning to check my scout report for Getafe away and ponder my tactics whilst at work:

"Save game could not be loaded"

F--k.

[JD nawrat]

Unlucky, ZdlR. Do you not have a back-up? You know how it makes auto-back ups?

Anyway, like I was saying about taking weather into account etc.

My friends and I decided to start in Italy.

Inter(me), Roma(former Sporting guy) and Milan(Former Porto guy).

The Italian Super Cup - Dry 33 Degrees Celsius.

Inter Vs. Roma

I took everything into account, look at his formation, players etc.

And fielded a 4-1-4-1, with a few youngsters and debutants.

I was leading 1-0 at HT.

And then in the Second Half, my Defensive midfielder and MCa were making brilliant link-ups.

My MCa scored, and then assisted my MCd.

The final score was 3-0 to me.

So, I guess I have this thread to thank. =)

[ZdlR]

I started a new game as Newcastle and I'm almost finished in my second season. I'll detail a few things that I have learnt that I hope will be useful to others.

Motivation

I think motivation in 09 is more important than having a perfect tactic. You can have a 'good enough' tactic - one that makes sense and is not internally contradictory - and win games given your players have the right motivation. The motivation descriptions during the match start after 4 minutes. I hope to have at least 2 players on 'looking motivated'. The rest should be 'playing ok'. If anyone 'looks complacent', I should have been more demanding of them. Currently, this happens to a couple of my players if I say 'we can win this', even if the opposition are mild favourites and we're away. I'm loathe to 'expect a win' in these situations as we're not quite ready for that, but these specific players will get an 'expect a performance' in future. If a player is 'playing nervously', I've put too much pressure on them. This happens most often with players who I have 'expected a performance' of or told I generally expect a win and they don't have the personality to cope with that. Long-term, these players have no future at my club. The ideal player is one that thrives on pressure and has an iron will to win. I would sacrifice a bit of ability for a 'driven' player, because they will put the effort in. It is useless having a player with 20 dribbling and 20 flair if he has no confidence whatsoever, he simply won't perform. I much prefer to look for 14->16 in key attributes and a personality to match. I'm not Graeme Souness, though - workmanlike displays are not enough for me. Amrabat, Fleck, Schneiderlin, Nolan, Duff and Jonas are my midfielders and wingers, so I'm after flair and heart in equal measure...

Motivation is entirely relevant in-match, whereas morale has a longer-term context. You effectively 'invest' some morale in a match via team-talks. For example, if you expect a win of a team with superb morale and you end up losing, this will have a fairly detrimental affect on the subsequent morale. Conversely, if you wish a team luck that has poor morale but you snatch a victory, morale will generally increase.

SFraser has rightly pointed out that half-time team talks are an opportunity for you to go absolutely mental at your squad in order to elicit the desired response. It is not a time to be half-hearted and pretend that the job is done. Even when I have been leading, if much of my squad isn't playing with confidence or looking motivated, I'll not hesitate to tell them I'm disappointed, possibly even show them that I'm angry. Even the most driven or professional of players can become complacent or look disinterested, they just need a reminder of who is boss.

Tactics

My tactics aren't perfect, far from it, but I've managed to design a tactic that fits my players and plays how I want - attacking, cavalier football that sees me currently in 5th after 30 games having scored 55 goals - most in the league. I concede a fair few, but that's usually away to the likes of Man Utd and Arsenal. However, an early away win 5v2 at Liverpool and then beating them twice more in the season at home, once in the FA Cup, makes me fairly assured that I'm (finally) doing something right and my assumptions are somewhat correct. I only have two tactics, one for at home and one for away. The latter merely keeps my fullbacks back at all times and ensures my MCd supports the defence. There's fewer through-balls from defence and they are generally there to defend and play a simple forward ball. At home, my fullbacks are required to push forward and support the attackers, while one of my defenders moves up to recycle half-clearances and my MCd (the ultra-creative Schneiderlin) is allowed to join in attacks but hangs out around the box to move defenders out of position. Almost all defensive problems I have come from closing down: in some situations I do it too much and we get skinned, other times we back off too much and let them play. There's one slider which I almost never change: tempo. I still haven't seen a definitive consequence of changing it, preferring to alter Timewasting to get the desired affect. At home I know the opposition are going to try to close my game down so I keep it at the first notch of mixed, whereas away we need that little extra time to pick out a pass so I leave it in the middle. If I set it to 'rarely', passes are rushed and moves break down too easily, and 'often' is reserved only for a 2-goal lead.

I mentioned earlier about having a logically consistent tactic. I used to spend ages and ages trying to find the 'perfect' settings for all my players. While I'm sure this is possible, I'm not sure that it is desirable as there has to be some concession paid to playing to a tactical system. For example, my left-back is very good going forward, has plenty of creativity and an eye for goal. His tackling is only 12 though. I used to think that setting him to rarely run forward, with a defensive mentality and low creative freedom would be foolish because it isn't playing to his obvious strengths. While this is true, and he plays much better in a supportive/attacking role regularly finishing with a 7.2+ rating compared to 6.8/6.9 when defensive, I can't sacrifice the stability of the defence just so this fella can go gallivanting up the wing. Although I don't play a role-theory mentality system, I set up my players with their roles in mind. As such, I only have a single attacking player - my finisher/striker.

Bringing the discussion back to the OP and fallacies. I've found that my scout's report of the next opposition can't always be trusted. Sometimes looking at the opposition's formation will confirm that he's got it wrong and sometimes, albeit rarely, both are completely wrong and the opposition set up to attack instead of defend or vice-versa.