Making The Most Of Squad Harmony

Not sure if this the right place to put this.

Squad Harmony and Morale have more of an impact in FM than ever before. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you, but gone are the days of leaving your players to their own devices and knowing that a decent tactic is enough to guarantee a decent result.

It might not seem like Squad Harmony is a big deal, but it really does. The team that work well together, understand each other and gel perfectly can be the match for the team of Glacticos. You can achieve success with lesser players who work well together, and there is no need to focus on buying the best. On 09 my team finished 5th, the following season I brought in only one player, squad harmony improved and I finished 3rd, the following season I brought in only a single player again, squad harmony was excellent and I won Serie A with players, who only two seasons earlier had been of the standard for 5th place. I’m convinced that the squad harmony, understanding and morale shown by my players was the reason behind that success.

Below are a few pointers on how to make the most of squad harmony and hopefully get the most out of players who enjoy playing for you and your club.

Results

Winning matches isn’t as essential as some people like to make out, of course it helps, but teams can experience a bad run of form and suffer a drop in morale, maintaining excellent squad harmony at the same time. IMO the other issues listed in this guide, have a far stronger influence on squad harmony.

That said, winning matches does influence player morale, which in turn influences player happiness and we all know what happens when players become unhappy. Domino effect kicks in, and before you know it, morale and squad harmony have hit rock bottom, which can adversely affect results.

Tactical/Instruction Consistency

Your players like to know what is being asked of them and get confused if what’s being asked is constantly changing. Tactical and instruction consistency avoids confusion and encourages understanding. Understanding not only of what’s being asked or expected of them, but understanding of what is being asked or expected of their team mates as well.

They will come to know their partners game, forge a solid partnership and work well with each other. Two seasons of consistent tactical instruction might be just what is needed for your front pair or defensive duo to know each others game inside out, think Ferdinand and Vidic or Yorke and Cole.

Such understanding and partnerships can do wonders for squad unity and harmony.

Maintaining Relationships

I’ve explained how relationships can be improved by tactical consistency, but what about personnel consistency, or team/player loyalty?

Signing that world class CB to replace the weaker of your defensive pair who have been together for the last four seasons, might seem like a good idea because he’s word class, but what if he doesn’t gel quick enough? Results could suffer because of the lack of understanding, the lack of squad harmony.

This might seem like waffle, after all the new signing is world class; he’s bound to fit in. However, I have first hand experience of this working and the benefits you can have when you maintain a partnership, even if the players aren’t world beaters. Having played together in my team for 4 seasons, Coda and Bonera forged a defensive partnership comparable to the best in Europe. They might not have been the most gifted, but consistency, understanding and harmony meant that two average centre backs became the strongest defensive duo in Serie A. The following season I replaced Bonera with a world class CB, and despite producing the best team performance that season, the defensive form dropped and we went from least conceded to 7th least conceded.

The same goes for making excessive signings. Replacing your entire first team, or a majority of it every season is managerial suicide. They need time to gel, and making serious changes every season means you’re never maximising harmony and never getting the benefits that come with it.

Dealing With Unhappy Players

It all depends on what’s making them unhappy.

If it’s lack of games, you really need to ask yourself if loss of squad harmony or morale is worth having that extra back up player you don’t even play.

They want a new contract, again it’s best to decide sooner rather than later if they are going to get that contract or not. If you put it off for too long their dissatisfaction could spread, the domino effect again, and team morale/harmony would be dropping rapidly.

Perhaps the most difficult to judge is player disagreements. In this instance you have two choices, a) let them bicker, but get on with it they’ll srt out their differences eventually, this might see squad harmony and morale decrease a little, but if they are both essential players it might be worth it, b) get rid of one of them asap, maintain your morale, harmony and hopefully form and don’t let a player rock the boat.

Interaction

Praise them when they deserve it, tell the press you're disappointed when they deserve it, sympathise with them, discipline them, defend them, but most importantly treat them all the same.

All of the above will invoke respect for you from your players, you’ll race up their favoured personnel list, they’ll enjoy playing for you and when they are happy playing for you, they are happy playing for the team. Harmony increases, morale increases, results improve.

what is your method to resolve a dispute between 2 players, on my chelsea game Lamps and Wilshere fell out after mentoring and they've both been unhappy ever since!

what is your method to resolve a dispute between 2 players, on my chelsea game Lamps and Wilshere fell out after mentoring and they've both been unhappy ever since!

Give it time, or failing that, sell the one that is off less use to you!

Also, slighty off topic but, this is what is wrong with the forums. A well written and thought out original post has had only 1, well 2 now, replies yet a thread containing absolute drivel will run to pages long, what a liberty!

Also, slighty off topic but, this is what is wrong with the forums. A well written and thought out original post has had only 1, well 2 now, replies yet a thread containing absolute drivel will run to pages long, what a liberty!

I dunno why I bothered tbh. Thanks anyway.

I dunno why I bothered tbh. Thanks anyway.

I for one am glad you did bother to make this very insightful and informative post, I've just taken the Man City job in my save and squad harmony is atrocious. Will be making use of the

advice in your post and hopefully turn round the team's awful form. Thanks in advance for quite possibly preventing me from getting the sack:thup:

Priceless, giving them a new contract gets rid of unhappyness as well sooner rather than letting them stew over it

Some good points aye, free bump.

Priceless, giving them a new contract gets rid of unhappyness as well sooner rather than letting them stew over it

Thanks for the constructive feedback, strange how you ignored everything else, I assume the 11 in your name is your age.

Give it time, or failing that, sell the one that is off less use to you!

Also, slighty off topic but, this is what is wrong with the forums. A well written and thought out original post has had only 1, well 2 now, replies yet a thread containing absolute drivel will run to pages long, what a liberty!

I've got a little experiment going in this respect, my backup centre-back (who dislikes the first-choice) has gone off on a season's loan, so hopefully when he comes back he'll have gotten over himself. I'll try and remember to report back.

The big problems are when you get players who think they are all that and a bag of chips and start crying about wanting to leave for a bigger club, despite having 3 or 4 or more years left on their contract. It's impossible to fix that any way than selling them.

Further to my previous post, the loaned guy has come back and no longer dislikes the first-choice.

Of course, the first-choice has just decided that playing for the second-highest rep club in England and the reigning double Premiership and triple FA Cup champions isn't enough of a challenge for him...

Good thread, some good advice here

I usually prioritise squad harmony with my teams, although recently I had a game in Brazil where I just couldn't do it. I was keeping quality players at the club against their will which caused chaos at the club, although on the pitch they were doing really well.

You can see my team here.

cheers for advice m8 , ive got some troubles and will try to use your work to fix it

Is there a way to get a more detailed description of your squad harmony? Only thing I can find is assistant manager's short comment on the team talk feedback -screen.

Is there a way to get a more detailed description of your squad harmony? Only thing I can find is assistant manager's short comment on the team talk feedback -screen.

Other than the team-talk feedback, there is the "Squad Harmony" indicator bar in the "Other" section of "Confidence."

Can you plase clarify what exactly is Tactical consistency in this game, I find that in FM09 you HAVE to keep changing your tactics to match the suggestion of the pre math scouting report before the match and the assistant manager feedback during match or else you are going to lose

In agreement with 'Ferthepoet', I know it sounds pedantic, but other pages on this forum tell us to change our tactics for every match, depending on the size of the pitch, and the team we're playing etc..

And yet your advising us to keep the same tactic for every match... how can you do both?

Can you plase clarify what exactly is Tactical consistency in this game, I find that in FM09 you HAVE to keep changing your tactics to match the suggestion of the pre math scouting report before the match and the assistant manager feedback during match or else you are going to lose

In agreement with 'Ferthepoet', I know it sounds pedantic, but other pages on this forum tell us to change our tactics for every match, depending on the size of the pitch, and the team we're playing etc..

And yet your advising us to keep the same tactic for every match... how can you do both?

I haven't changed or tweaked my tactic in 8 seasons, i've won the CL once, Serie A twice, made two further CL final appearances. The concept of tweaking as a necessity is a by product of this forum, if people subscribe to it, then more fool them, but afaic there is no need to tweak and the success i've had proves it tbh.

PS i'm not advocating using the same tactic for every match, but there is such a thing as over-tweaking and total lack of consistency.

Awesome post. Totally agree with alot of stuff especially world class players in your squad. Only once have I seen a new striker come in to my ukrainian side and start pumping out goals. All the brazilian wonder kids have a HORRID time in the first season while my home grown kids that are only good by ukrainian standards keep scoring. Squad harmony and geling is for real. The only problem is like someone posted above keeping the god damn players in your squad. They all want "a new challenge" and become unhappy. I have kept my best CB (who I built up from a pile of cr...p ino a 20 goal scoring CB) in the club for 4 years despite the fact he is unhappy about not being allowe4d to move. Unfortunately his contract runs out this summer... The biggest challenge is keeping them suckers motivated as for them grass is greener on the other side, even the "fairly loyal" ones.

I have two questions for the OP, or anyone who knows:

1)what does squad harmony have to do with the tactical consistency? That is, if I prefer a rotation system, I won't have good squad harmony?

2)Is gelling related to squad harmony? That is, if I buy 2 world class players that their teamates think "they have a great future ahead etc.", it will surely take some time for them to adapt (maybe half of the season), but how can it affect the squad harmony? Cause so far I had the view that squad harmony had to do with the relations between players (likes/deslikes) and player general happiness.

I'm asking these questions as in my Histon save I did exactly the oposite: tried to sign the best players available ending up with 6 or 7 new signing evey year. Managed to cimb to league 1 in 3 years. As long as I kept winning, morale and squad harmony was high, while gelling average. For the following two seasons I tried to keep wages down (to save mony for a possible stadium expansion), signed just 2 players and kept most of the others, resulting in better gelling but losing many games, lower morale and squad harmony. How can you explain that?

Two short points:

You need to distinguish tactics from formation. Changing formation (e.g. 4-4-2 to 3-4-3) is a radical change and players will need time to learn where to go and pass to, so it will affect gelling, and possibly harmony if they dislike the formation (think Schteve McClown's change against Croatia). Tweaking tactics within a formation (e.g. more closing down or forward runs, lowering mentality) is less of a change and doesn't disturb gelling. you can do this hundreds of time within one match without upsetting the players.

Gelling means how well the players understand each other on the pitch - where to make runs and passes. Harmony is how well they get on off the pitch which affects morale. So elsgouro's point #2 is right - they will need time to gel but squad harmony will be high (I see this with Arshavin at the moment).

The Histon example is completely logical. Gelling is higher because the players understand each other better on the pitch with few changes. Harmony is down because they've got you promotion but don't see an increase in salaries, you aren't winning as many games (players don't enjoy losing!) and they might see you as lacking ambition by not improving the squad.

Thanks a lot for your explanation So it seems that gelling and squad harmony do not go hand in hand as the OP claims, and while his example is 100% logical IRL, I can't see how it's implemented in FM.

Thanks a lot for your explanation So it seems that gelling and squad harmony do not go hand in hand as the OP claims, and while his example is 100% logical IRL, I can't see how it's implemented in FM.

Whilst gelling and squad harmony do not go hand in hand, they do bounce off each other and compliment each other. In my experience a happy and contented player (which would affect squad harmony) is more likely to "work well" with another player (gelling). The opposite would happen if the player is unhappy at the club (adverse harmony).

Changing formation (e.g. 4-4-2 to 3-4-3) is a radical change and players will need time to learn where to go and pass to, so it will affect gelling, and possibly harmony if they dislike the formation (think Schteve McClown's change against Croatia).

Is there a way to see what's the optimum formation for your team? With optimum I mean the formation into which your players are most "gelled" in? If there really is something like "formation gelling", wouldn't it be obvious to show that information to you (the manager)? Something simple like a list of formations and a star rating next to it.

Miksu, there is if you want to cheat. The utility ScoutGenie shows the best formations for your squad.

I wonder how much of an effect your Assistants and coaches pref formation have on the way your team play. I never look at coaches pref formation just at their stats. Anyone got data on that?

Interaction

Praise them when they deserve it, tell the press you're disappointed when they deserve it, sympathise with them, discipline them, defend them, but most importantly treat them all the same.

In team talk page I usually give an encouragment to low morale players and the opportune team talk to the rest of the team.

Do you think that using the same option for all is better for squad harmony?

And another question for all

Where are they visible player ralationships? I mean: how can I know if player A hates player B? Anyway, if it is written in player profile I never had such problems.

I wonder how much of an effect your Assistants and coaches pref formation have on the way your team play. I never look at coaches pref formation just at their stats. Anyone got data on that?

I would assume that your own managerial decisions over ride these. They come into play when the AI is in control - e.g. touch-line ban, you holiday and leave tactics to your assman or you play a whole holiday game with no human manager.

It ought to be the case that your attacking, defending and tactical coaches' work on your players is affected by their preferences, but I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case. Does anyone have experiment-based data?

Oh my days keeping squad happy and everything ITS PRETTY HARD to be honest gosh

Priceless, giving them a new contract gets rid of unhappyness as well sooner rather than letting them stew over it

You should also be able to fine one of them when it is first mentioned. Also if one of the players is younger getting them tutored to change their personality can help.