Motivational Issues

Im in my 4th season with Vauxhall Motors now and im having real difficulty getting promoted from the Blue Square North. Heres the problem - i can beat any team thats better than me but my team just flops against smaller teams. This is because for 3 seasons ive had by far the best team in the league, my players are clearly Blue Square Premier standard. Last season i won the FA Trophy in which i beat 3 teams in the Blue Square Premier. My team seems set on beating big teams but doesnt understand that in order to progress you need to beat the smaller teams as well.

Ive tried pretty much everything i can think of to make them perform better. Being nice to them, being horrible to them, changing tactics etc. Does anyone else have this problem or am i just aweful at this game?

A key screen which may help, if you haven't already found it is the 'motivation' screen. That's found by going to the Home or Away stats screens inmatch and then choosing the 'view' option and selecting 'motivation'. Knowing this screen is there should allow you to tailor team-talks more specifically for individual players in individual circumstances. (I can't thank SFraser enough for telling me about this screen in his excellent stickied post in the Tactics part of the forum on Motivation). After the match, you can get your assistant manager's feedback on the teamtalk (as a text description) which may help you further hone teamtalks to the individual players.

I've found tracking individual players' responses to my teamtalks helps a bit. For many players, it's a case of just applying stick and carrot only when needed. (So only praise a good performance, slate a bad one). For others, you need to work a bit harder and figure out how best to motivate them as an individual. I'm sure this may well relate to 'personality' types and hidden attributes but I don't use the editor (and have no intention of ever doing so) so I'm unlikely to ever test this out to definitively prove or disprove this theory.

Hope that's of some use in getting you started. Once you know where to found the 'results' of your teamtalks then things become much easier to judge.

Try asking your ass man's opinion on everything. Even if you don't agree with him, if he has a good motivational stat then 9 times out of 10 he'll get the team talks right so ask him pre match and at half time. They can really save your bacon even if, as i mentioned before, you don't really agree with him.

Also keep an eye on his match feedback during the game. He'll tell you if you're being caught in poor passing or if your wingers aren't getting enough of the ball. He'll tell you who's playing a dire game and is doing more harm than good. You'll also see info on players condition as well. If they're exhausted then it has a detrimental effect on your game.

Edit: If you don't use the Assistant for team talks then at least NEVER say "I expect a Win" because you won't get it lol. Say 'You can Win' or similar, it usually does the trick.

Edit: If you don't use the Assistant for team talks then at least NEVER say "I expect a Win" because you won't get it lol. Say 'You can Win' or similar, it usually does the trick.

Gah. True. Especially at this level. (I'm working on promotion from BSP, Vincewin.)

I've found that its much more effective to go with "You Can Win Today", and then tailor in a couple "Expect a Performance" individual talks.

I've found my best veteran players tend to react well to "Expect a Performance" when we're expected to win, its just that it doesn't work to "Expect a Win" from the team as a whole - I got upset 1-0 by a BSN side before I learned that lesson!

If you're strong favourites and/or on a good run, 'you can win today' seems to cause a bit of complacency in my experience. Obviously, as Amaroq suggests, you can add 'expect a performance' to a few players if you work out who's likely to get complacent and who'll respond best, but I'd be careful of using it at all.

Try 'for the fans' if you're favourites and don't want 'you can win today'. Wwfan suggested in another thread that it's along the lines of saying 'we should win this, but I expect a professional performance today'.

Its good to look at the form of the team you're playing too. If 'You can win today' does make them complacent then against an in-form team then they will punish your mistakes. I suffered from this a few times in my save. Fortune really does favor the ones who take the time to look into their next game but not everyone likes doing that or has time.