Here's one for all you actual real life managers.

So you are 5-0 up at half time in your first game of the season which is it at home against mid-table opposition, you are a top 7 team by the way.

What would you say to your players? Would you tell them you are extactic, pleased or would you say absolutely nothing.

I guarantee you would be saying one of the first two, you certainly wouldnt say nothing.

This is where my problem lies, this very thing just happened to me(on the game by the way)

5-0 up at half time and absolutely hammering my opposition all over the pitch, they muster up 4 shots in the first half, I say pleased at half time and in the second half I have one shot to their 14 which included 2 goals and a penalty miss.

Now im not saying the second half should have been the same as the first half as the opposition will always come out fighting after the hair dryer treatment from their manager, but they dont come out and play like Barcelona.

I know I still won the game but it had a tinge of disappointment about it at the end as I was totally dominated in the second half just because I said I was "pleased"

erm, dont get careless

I wouldn't say 'pleased'. To me that sounds like you're not that impressed by their performance despite how good it is, and thus it could possibly demotivate your players, or anger them because you aren't acknowledging their achievements as much as they'd like, or expect.

I'd thus either say I was 'delighted' (or words to similar effect) to let the team know that I acknowledged how good their performance was, and maybe leave them in high spirits and full of confidence for the second half; or I'd say nothing, as if to suggest I was satisfied, but I wasn't going to comment until the job was done, and to allude at 'keep going then'. Or perhaps I'd say not to let their performance drop, of course, if I felt saying nothing was chancing it.

Obviously all players will react differently, and in FM there probably isn't the freedom of expression a real-life manager would have, but even so I certainly wouldn't say 'pleased'.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=136819

Read this to understand team-talks in an FM context.

So you are 5-0 up at half time in your first game of the season which is it at home against mid-table opposition, you are a top 7 team by the way.

What would you say to your players? Would you tell them you are extactic, pleased or would you say absolutely nothing.

I guarantee you would be saying one of the first two, you certainly wouldnt say nothing.

This is where my problem lies, this very thing just happened to me(on the game by the way)

5-0 up at half time and absolutely hammering my opposition all over the pitch, they muster up 4 shots in the first half, I say pleased at half time and in the second half I have one shot to their 14 which included 2 goals and a penalty miss.

Now im not saying the second half should have been the same as the first half as the opposition will always come out fighting after the hair dryer treatment from their manager, but they dont come out and play like Barcelona.

I know I still won the game but it had a tinge of disappointment about it at the end as I was totally dominated in the second half just because I said I was "pleased"

The only time I use team talks are at half time if they are losing or drawing (but playing badly).

Normally unless we are a rival team, underdogs, or cup games I usually leave team talks to None:D

Obviously all players will react differently, and in FM there probably isn't the freedom of expression a real-life manager would have, but even so I certainly wouldn't say 'pleased'.

That is the problem I guess. The fact you don't have the freedom to say what you want in the game but still I can't believe any team would come out and capitulate like mine did after being told their performance was pleasing.

I always let my Assistant take care of team-talks so maybe I need to think about changing that. I shouldn't have to mind you, he has 20 for motivating.

The game isnt won at half time. Nothing is the way forward

Why was the option "pleased" included for half-time teamtalks? It NEVER works, simply never, there isn't a circumstance in which you could use it at half-time.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=136819

Read this to understand team-talks in an FM context.

Will read that, looks like something I need to read.

You would never guess I am a Life Coach would you, I think motivating is pretty key in my job.

IRL, although I'm not a manager, it would be "Keep it tight, slow the pace, don't take any silly chances."

In the game, it would be "don't get careless", or more likely "none" and my tactics would probably be slow short passing, normal mentality, with counter-attacking ticked.

You can just imagine Fergie walking into the dressing room

"Nothing" is always the way forward at half time if you're leading by more than 1 goal.

Why was the option "pleased" included for half-time teamtalks? It NEVER works, simply never, there isn't a circumstance in which you could use it at half-time.

I am not looking to dismiss other's experiences with this, as from the sheer amount of posters who state this to be a problem, then clearly for many people, it must be.

However, I find myself most perplexed at the volume of FM players who are experiencing this issue with the 'pleased' team talks, as my experience is almost the complete opposite.

I would say, in my experiences of playing the game over many years, for me, the 'pleased' team talk almost always works very well.

Typically, if I'm leading by one goal at the break, I will 'encourage'. Almost always, this results in us extending our lead by full time (taking into account occasional on field events sometimes beyond our control).

If I'm two goals or more up at half time, a 'pleased' will most usually result in us adding one or sometimes two more goals in the 2nd period.

Four of five goals up at the break (relatively rare, but does happen sometimes) a 'delighted' will (in my personal experience) usually result in us not often scoring more, but keeping the score line as it is. It seems to be like saying 'ok lads, excellent job, well done, enjoy the rest of the game, don't be too adventurous now and just keep things ticking over as it is'.

I rarely use the 'delighted' at half time, unless we're winning well against much better opponents. I just generally stick to 'pleased' to see us keep the momentum going, and maybe add another goal or two.

I in no way mean to detract from those whose experiences are frustratingly not the same as mine, I just find it difficult to understand how so many players of this game continually experience problems with this team talk, whilst I find that it is highly effective.

I can't be the only one that finds these team talks work fine, surely? :confused:

I also use the pleased half time team talk if leading by more than one goal, however I usually split my team talk by first selecting the default 'pleased', then changing the gk and back four to 'don't get careless' as saying pleased to your defensive unit at half time seems to lead to complacency. This strategy almost always works for me.

The only time I use pleased is when the game is a draw, but your side have been far better. Although you click on pleased, the comment comes up as "You're outplaying them everywhere!"

It seems to have a similar effect to "Encourage" when leading by one goal

I use team-talks all the time but 99% of the time they're useless with no noticeable improvement/unimprovement. Although when it does work as expected you feel like a managerial god.

@ sambos - Haha. It's true that you feel really good when you win the match and afterwards in the mail one of your star players credits you with turning things around etc etc.

sambos:

If that's really the case you should look at this thread. It's for FM08, but carries over into FM09 perfectly and you should pick up a few tips and notice an improvement in your team's performance

Why was the option "pleased" included for half-time teamtalks? It NEVER works, simply never, there isn't a circumstance in which you could use it at half-time.

you're wrong. every single time I have used it, I get half my players with the status "motivated, delighted, inspired to a better performance, happy, pleased" (yes, all of these at once)

of course I only use it very rarely. the last time I did, we were up 4-0 at halftime and won the game 7-0 (this was in the Blue Square South btw, so it's not just a big player thing). on the other hand if you say something like "don't get careless", it just gets all the players angry at you.

Key to figuring out the perfect team talk is to know your players. There is no perfect system that can be applied to every team because different teams consist of different personalities

Steps that should be taken:-

1 - Determine what the score should be not what you want it to be. You'll need to learn to translate the odds system found in game.

2 - Use that score line as a baseline for your team talks. If you're 2-0 up against a team you should be beating 2-0 then none is a perfectly valid option.

3 - After giving a team talk look at the player motivation window while the match is still going on in the match information section. This will help you gauge how each player reacted to the team talk in that specific situation. Anything better than "playing ok" is a good sign of a successful team talk.

4 - Use the new information gained from 3 to deliver next team talk.

Needless to say some will be able to predict before hand what should be said based on a couple of games, while others are going to learn through having to face the various situations.

I adopted this system because I used to start a new game with a different team once every few days. I noticed that what I did for my last team didn't apply to the new one. I figured it had to do with player personalities and so far it's been working well.

Never, ever say pleased

Some good ideas guys thanks

i'd say pleased is the team talk i use most often and i seem to have relatively good results from it. i would only use encourage if my players had low morale. pretty much whenever i am leading at half time i say pleased, since about FM07.

I would say something like , this is great lads , keep it up

Sadly, this game is being destroyed by these ridiculously over influencing team talks.

Has anybody read Rickooko's thread on team talks? dont get me wrong, its a great thread but it just makes me want to switch off the game, its ridiculous that, that much research has had to go into team talks!

I really hope that its sorted out for the next game.