Firstly, i want to state this is not a rant post. I love this game and i´m pretty aware of the logic behind the mid season slump. I think the following is common knowledge in the community: reaching january, the game reevaluates your reputation and teams reread you, and adapt to your new reputation.
I think the system is nearly perfect, because it has a solid logic behind. It´s not "scripting" as you can find in FiFA career mode or PES forgoten ML. It has to do with the pressure your players get by the increasing expectations, teams being more motivated to play against you, maybe a little bit of tiredness... So you don´t see the ball going through the chest of your cb, it´s more complex, it changes the whole matches and demand more of the players.I usually pick up mid table teams in big leagues, and in those contexts i adapt generally well, it´s a satisfying thinkering work on my tactics, when i watch my games to find tweaks to be made, and it uses to work well for me.
This time i decided to try a more complex challenge. I took over Racing Santander, in Segunda b (third spanish divsion). We were expected to reach the play off and we did it easily, reaching the promotion. The club was in a massive debt, literally 10M debt when our wage budget is, now after the promoton, 2,5M. A few months in, the club got a new owner, who payed part of the debt and reestructured the rest . I choose a lower reputation for my manager to make it a little bit harder, but despite the low squad support, we kept a regular shape all over the season with peaks of great football, it was a very interersting season because i felt the team neeeded that promotion to survive. (tactic below )
https://postimg.cc/qz5pztT0
Now we are in second division. I managed to bring in a couple of players (free loans, free transfers), but i had a very little budget to work with and reinforce the squad, so i knew we lacked in certain areas (lack of height, slow center backs, lack of talent in my attacking players). We were expected to get relegated and my expectations were to somehow overachieve and reach the middle of the table. So i tweaked my tactic to accomodate to a higher level. Not a significant change, it´s was the same tactic with tweaks to make it safer in transitions (mi cbs are slow, as i said).
The first half of the season was too easy, a few games in and i turned back to the same approach used for the promotion, only because we weren´t sufferring in defense. When a match started i used the first minutes to accomodate. If we were outplayed i just lowered the line of engagement to compress the space a little bit more, and turned on the counter instruction. The mezzala was often turned b2b, the WB often was given a supportt duty. However, it was a complete fiction. We won most of the games with sufficiency, even we trashed some teams. But then the save reached january, we were first of the league. The last game of december we trashed a middle table team 5-1, and the losing streak began just the game after, 4th january.
To summarize, not only the teams now play more defensive, but there´s a general improvement in their performance in every sense. They punish me on the counter, they score headers, long shots, set pieces, some of them -the better ones- disrupt my build up with ease, all things they weren´t able to do the first half of the season.
That´s all logical, cause as i mentioned before, we lacked height, we lacked speed in defense, we were not a highly talented team, but the problem i have with this aspect of the game is that it gives you a false impression on the quality of your players. Look, i knew the adjustement was going to be harsh, but i was expecting to suffer counter attack goals mainly, and i supposed i´d need to just make my team safer, play a more transitonal attacking play involving less players. The first half of the season gave me the false feeling of security rergarding my defense. As i said, we faced attacking teams before, we sometimes went cautious for the last minutes to maintain a short lead, and the team did very well. Of course we conceded some headers, but not a lot of them. Sometimes the other teams got a draw in those scenarios, and i accepted that as part of the inherent challenge a recently promoted team faces.
So, what kind of games we find right now? I adjusted my tactic to be safer. I´m just trying to not get trashed and keep a tight result, we mantain an aggresive mid block that aims to disrupt midfield play. We get 2-3 chances every games, similar to our opposition. It very often ends in a 1-0 loss. The goals range from the fancy ones out of nowhere (i remember three of them at the end of the match that were rutherly painful to watch), long balls to the striker, simple headers and set pieces, being the last the most recurring one. I even take the work of studying next opposition and the way they execute their set pieces to place my taller cb in the key area, but they just score over my taller center back regularly.
We felt off of the play offs spots reaching march.
https://postimg.cc/gallery/MpyWnc1
The situation is not catastrophical, now the next time i play i´m gonna start a complete tactic overhaul. The board supports me, the squad supports me. Morale is not too bad. We should be able to complete the ten remaining games with certain dignity and reach my initial expectation that is mid table, and obviously we are completely out of the relegation battle. But the feelings are honestly sad. Mid table is a great spot to be when you are a relegation candidate, but it feels awful, even humilliating, with such an asimetry, we were two entirely different teams. What makes me keep playing is the narrative i have in my head about portraying a manager trying to lead a modest group of players into making history, and the relative certainty i will eventually success.
As a conclussion, i want to say i don´t think this reevaluation system needs to be replaced by a totally different one. It´s a good system, and i understand the sheer complexity of making a game with that ridiculous amount of variables to be estable, and i realy admire the work made by the developers, but i think it needs some adjustements. Even if I know that maybe a game to game reevaluation is impossible, i´d like to see a more sensible one, like revaluation every five or ten games to make things more gradual. It would probably be more demanding for the players, forcing us to adapt regularly, but it would surely be more natural. We wouldn´t have reached the leading position that way, and i firmlly believe we shouldn´t have make it, because we weren´t the best team in the league, not even close.
Finally, i want to make a comment on the revaluation process itsellf. When we reached january we were first of the league, but we also were a recently promoted, relegation candidates. The game went straight from considering us relegation candidates to considering us candidates to promotion, and that´s too abrupt if you ask me. I find the problem is not only the lack of different "rereading instances", but it is the extrermism of the diagnose the game does. I´m sure there´s an intention on reflectiing how the media works, but i still think it needs an adjusment, like, to say something, have different media publlications with heavily different views and the resulting atmosphere should be more balanced, not only a monolitc narrative of an imbeatable team, nor a catastrophical one when there´s a bad streak of results.
Football manager offers us the posibility to live fantastic histories, to make a small team become a giant, and even when i have poblems finding the right save, the euphoria i feel after winning a UCL remained intact over the years. I just want it to be even bettter, but maybe if the system was not like it is the game wouldn´t work that well.
I encourage all the brave people that went through this confuse wall of text to share their opinions on this subject, thank you.
