*sigh*.. I can only fool myself for so long...

There has to be some major bugs in the game causing unfairness towards the human player. I am on my 3rd team on the 9.3 patch, and each team I played with, I was always a big club and played for at least four seasons. But I cannot fool myself anymore and tell myself that "there is something wrong with my tactics."

Here is the problem: I am SO tired and annoyed that I can have 30 total shots with 4-5 clear shots yet score 0 goals while an inferior team has only 5 shots on goal and score 2 goals in that respective game. It literally ruins the game.

Also, regardless of tactics, having 15-16 shots on goal with a handful of clear-cut chances certainly means you are doing something right. And with worldclass strikers, if I still live through this polarized nonsense, there are major problems with the game.

How often is is happening? Is it just the odd game every now and again or is it pretty much every game? What sort of league positions do you get?

Its going to sound horrid, and its said far too much on these forums IMO, but it happens in real life im afraid. Its something that happens to me aswell, although not often enough to question it TBH. What are your strikers doing? I mean are they missing the chances? Or is the keeper playing a blinder against you at times?

Motivation, Consistency, Important Matches, Pressure. This is what makes the game tough even when your team is perfect. It's not a bug.

Im sorry but F.Torres, Tevez, and Oscar Cardozo(4-3-3) with a worldclass goalie(miranda sp?) should not almost regularly lose against 15th-20th place teams in situations I discussed in my original post. Also, my mildfield and defense is stacked with all superb moral. And this has happened ever since I dled the patch months ago. ITs like there is an invisible wall on the goalline.

How well you motivate them can play a big part. You can check motivation using the widget or my click on a drop down on one of the screens.

and goalies with horrible attributes who are worth less than 1 million Euros play like Buffon a lot of times!!! FAKE(not tough because if it was tough, I would not be dominating the stat sheet every game I play.)!! You cannot force toughness without ruining the game.

The opponents goalies always end up being MoTM. O man, its ridiculous now... All of what you guys are saying is what I used to say to myself to motivate and calm myself for months but this is just too much now.

If its not your tactics, if it is not motivation, if it is not hidden attributes then you must have a bugged or corrupted version of the game. I have seen nothing like what you claim in my saves.

What are your tactics like? There are some tactics which are known to artificially inflate the relevant stats.

4-3-3, short passing and slow tempo, normal minded attack, and defensive line also normal.

Certainly saw this a bit in other patches, but not in 9.3

Scored the most goals in the league in my previous season.

demand a win in your teamtalks before the match, home or away only change if your up against a rival/better team.

If there was a bug everyone would have the problem. Just because you believe your tactics are great doesn't make it so. On paper Newcastle shouldn't have gone down, Man City should at least be in Europe.

How often are you changing or not changing your tactics? I personally end up changing my tactics. This is mostly just tweaking a few sliders. I only play 2 formations (4-1-3-2 and 4-4-2) but 3 set tactics for both of these. I have a few times forgot to change my tactics and find myself sceaming because I'm 3-0 down at half time and forget why.

Only tip i have is DO NOT TALK TO YOUR PLAYERS AT ALL ON MATCHDAY

Seriously mate thats all that can be done in my eyes

Another tip is DO NOT SAY ANYTHING TO THE MANAGER YOU PLAY AGAINST

My tip is.

DON'T SPEAK. I KNOW JUST WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. SO PLEASE STOP EXPLAINING. DON'T TELL ME CAUSE IT HURTS.

What a load of rubbish! You think the game is biased toward the com? I have just gained promotion from the statistically most difficult league (36 down 4 up) with a team tipped to fall at the first hurdle. Iiiiits yooour taaaactics.

If its my tactics, how do I dominate possession and have at least 20 shots every game I play?

Please, there is something wrong because you cannot force artificial difficulty, it will not work in these types of games; this isn't Mario Kart.

My tip is.

DON'T SPEAK. I KNOW JUST WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. SO PLEASE STOP EXPLAINING. DON'T TELL ME CAUSE IT HURTS.

Now there's a song which takes me back to my university days...

----

we6boss - where are you having the shots from? What kind of possession are you having? What kind of clear-cut chances are you making? It's very, very possible to have 60% possession and lose 4-0 - turn up your pressing to full, set your passing to short, make a hash of setting up your defence and bob's your uncle. The game isn't rigged against you, SFraser's advice is a good place to start, and if that isn't helping then start analysing just what is going on in your games. It could well be that you are using an exploit (totally unintentionally of course) which is giving you the impression that your team should be doing far better than it is but the reality is being rammed home by you conceding almost every time the AI team gets hold of the ball.

we6boss, based on your description, then I think you gave a high mentality to your players.

If my assumption is correct, then i face this problem before. When the players play offensively, the opponents tend to play defensively to keep hold of the scoreline which they want. Their fast closing down usually give your players pressure and the players may miss easy shots.

So i suggest that

1) you lower your players mentalities but at the same time the difference is not too far apart. The most is 4 notches apart (between defence line and midfield line and so on.)

2) Choose the way you want you players to score. The two major ways that we usually see is crosses into the box from byline and shoot from the centre (far or close to the goal post).

-- If you to focus more on wingers assisting the strikers, then you may change to "to both flanks" and ask your fullbacks to support them.

-- If you want your team to score more from the centre, you need to find a good combination of MCs which can shoot from distance or even provide killer ball to your strikers.

3) Limit your opponents chances. I am sigh of the way the opponents score especially long range shots. Therefore I want my players to defend as a unit when the opponents are seeking opportunities. Long shots normally come from the centre so, I have my two MCs with almost the same mentality so that they work together for the defending duties, unlike the others who use a MCd and a MCa.

What I actually realised is the opponents become more cautious whenever our players play offensively, so check how many percent of passing your players completed, as you may have high ball possesion, but good passing will just kill the opponents off before creating chances to score.

I hope that this help. Cheers!

Usually this happens when you play a top team in the league against the bottom. The pre-match odds will indicate how the opponent will play against you. If you watch the match engine, these teams play defensive mentalities that sit much much further back, with their midfield close to their backline.

Because of this, despite breaking the last line of defence, your world class striker isn't going to have as much time and space as he would like. The deep defensive line played will narrow the space in which a striker can shoot, and more importantly lower the areas which the GK has to cover. I'm guessing because the opposition plays so deep, your team will dominate possession and play many long shots. 90% of players in the world will have a hard time getting it in from that distance despite getting it on target. However I do sympathize with you in that I also would think that Liverpool's captain will get most long shots in if allowed the space and time.

Since your team is pushing so high up due to possession dominance, you will eventually get hit on the counter a few times (which isn't that many in 90 minutes). This time, despite the opposition strikers being of poorer quality, they have huge amounts of room and space to take a shot. Your GK doesn't know whether to rush out or stand his ground. Let's not forget you are playing against Premiership quality strikers either.

Sometimes opposition keepers even save against what looked like an easy tap in. He flies from one end of the goal to the other. Could happen many times a game, but this is something I cannot explain. These points are what I've analyzed from watching the match engine though I'm no tactical mastermind so it's better if you head off to the tactics thread. You can try playing wider, slower to drag out the opposition defence away from forming a human wall in front of their goal. Find midfielders who like to switch play from one side to the other.

It happens my friend. Look at Liverpool this season they drew a lot of games they dominated at Anfield and they had a decent amount of chances. Sometimes no matter what you do in football the ball just doesn't want to hit the back of the net.

The only solution is to watch the match in full to look at why your team is doing wrong. If you really want to test out tactics and you have big enough squad where two players are good enough to play every position setup matches in preseason with your reserve squad. Allow the first team to attack and get the reserves to defend like the computer. You'll come up with good tactics in no time. You can even set it up so you have your best attackers in the first team and the best defenders in the reserve squad if your team isn't big enough.

Speaking as someone who used to feel the same way til I actually tried different things by actually watching full games. This game isn't biased. In fact if anything it's too easy for the user at times.

Guys, thanks a lot for your comments, especially Nervin and velonce. I will try some more things out! I really appreciate your posts/concerns.

Kudos.

I've said this so many times and get flamed for it repeatedly - the match engine relies more than 50% on team talk motivation.

If you're 2-0 up at half-time and select "Pleased" as your team talk, expect to get beat 3-2.

Lots of niggling bugs but the advice with team talks is to say absolutely nothing at half time if you hold a lead, unless you still have the "For the Fans" option.

Firstly, people disagreeing with you is not flaming.

Secondly, it's not a bug unless you can repeat the problem across many, many games. Just because a few (and it IS a few) people find it impossible to imagine that their tactics are flawed doesn't mean the game is the problem. I agree that things like team talks have too big an impact, but if you are dominating possession and not scoring you are very close to winning a lot of games.

Try this: use your current tactics, BUT change your team match tempo to slow (about 25% on the slider) and play a half like this. If you have already tried this, adjust the tempo up, down, whatever, avery 45 mins you play - you might see a major difference.

Have you tried the tactics forum at all?

If still struggling , upload your latest game to something like rapidshare and post the link here. Perhaps a couple of us "It's your tactics" fanboys and cultists (or whatever the trendy nomenclature conspiracy theorists are using these days) can see what you are doing wrong.

*NB, not a flame, just trying to help a fellow gamer... in case anyone thinks I'm being harsh.*

i read something on tactics forum that helped st by raising creative freedom.

this will mean there more inventive with one on ones and will not just hit the ball straight at him.

edit : this post helped me

http://community.sigames.com/showpost.php?p=3378583&postcount=2

thanks a lot guys, including but not limited to backpack and seanydude.

thanks, adjusting creative freedom is seeming to work.

not talking at all during team talks is also helping.

So after all the initial post, it was your tactics

That's not meant as a dig at you, but proof that the tactics aren't intuitive.

But I still feel that a stacked Liverpool should not have to be so pedantic tactically for them to beat a significantly weaker team.

In footballing terms, you can't just put 11 talented footballers on a pitch and expect them to win games. Why do you think there's such a high turnover of managers. Tactics are what makes the difference.

In Football Manager terms, it's a simulation based on rules and numbers where they're trying to get the balance right between realism and fun, it's not perfect, but it's closer than anything else.

can a mod lock this thread now. thnks

again, thanks for all of the advice

no team talks + adjusting creative freedom = improvement

thanks seanydude plus everyone else

IMO a players ability to convert a chance should not be down to tactics what so ever. Tactics to me are about the creation of chances and preventing chances for the opposition. I do understand what you are saying as I have experienced it myself when your players seem to have the easiest of chances yet for the life of them cannot convert. Unfortunately I think it is down to tactics as I have changed to tactics which create less and poorer quality chances yet have a higher conversion rate. I experienced this in FM 08 as well.

again, thanks for all of the advice

On a side note, if your strikers have the preffered move of 'shoots with power', try and get them to unlearn it, or learn to 'place shots'.

In my experience, 'shoots with power' is responsible for a lot of misses that said striker should be burying.

Of course, only if they have that PPM.

But I still feel that a stacked Liverpool should not have to be so pedantic tactically for them to beat a significantly weaker team.

Why not? Liverpool (and Arsenal) had that exact same problem IRL this past season when playing teams that put 10 players behind the ball...

dont thank me thank i suck at fm

he helped me too with that post

In a season where I scored 105 goals (only not winning 5 times) the opposition keeper was MotM 10 times. This is FM, this has always been my experience with FM. Once I'm battering teams their keepers become super human. EVERY SINGLE VERSION.

edit: hell Ive won games 4-0 with the (opposition) keeper being MotM.....