Serious concern re: some Match Engine processing

So, overall, I'm really, really, really pleased with how FM2010 has finished up. But I do have some concerns.

I'm basing this on some lower tier England stuff, so perhaps that's just how it is...

I've had my GK just walk right by a back pass. Because he walked right by it, it went into the net. For an own goal. For no reason. There was no one around, the back pass was flat and moderately paced... no reason for him to miss it at all. It came from near midfield. I mean, that just doesn't happen very often at all, even by freak happenstance.

Furthermore, my defenders are ********. They frequently ignore attacking phases. Now, I guess that could be tactics, but I've tried a ton of stuff, and they just seem to run alongside whoever has the ball, and leave others fairly open, even if I've always got "always" set for closing down and some man marking going.

Thirdly, I've noticed an issue where (again, BSP) players act more like they're running based on formula than actually emulating football. A pass to the middle, and despite this one guy being closer, he backs off to let another guy from twice as far away grab the ball. In the meantime, the opposition obviously moved in to take it from me. This has happened quite often. Same thing happens when a player is running with the ball... my defender will suddenly just run off to mark someone else instead of grabbing the dude he's standing right next to. Now, ok, maybe he's told to man mark someone else or something, but even then that seems incredibly unrealistic. I mean, if he's standing that close he's not just going to run away and let the opposition run towards his goal :/

I'm also seeing defenders hoofing the ball straight back at their own goal for a corner from about midfield for no reason whatsoever. We're talking huge blasts into the air, in the direction of their own keeper, Instead of backpassing to another defender who's open. I've seen this in the Serie A with AC Milan as well, so that's not strictly terrible players doing it. I don't think you'd be seeing Alessandro Nesta doing that

Aside from this, I'm -loving- FM2010. Fabulous effort, fabulous support on issues with the demo... just all around great, great stuff. Couldn't be much happier.

Your defensive problems might be caused by too much closing down. Try lowering it to have your team keep its shape a bit more.

I'm also seeing defenders hoofing the ball straight back at their own goal for a corner from about midfield for no reason whatsoever. We're talking huge blasts into the air, in the direction of their own keeper, Instead of backpassing to another defender who's open. I've seen this in the Serie A with AC Milan as well, so that's not strictly terrible players doing it. I don't think you'd be seeing Alessandro Nesta doing that

In my experience, that's a tactical problem which results from having the defenders' Mentality set to a very Defensive setting.

Whilst understandable, its important to remember that the position guarantees that a central defender will have a "defense first" mentality already; you don't need to set his Mentality all the way to the left to get him to play basic defense.

If you have him too defensive, he will play it out for a throw or a corner whilst not under any pressure, etc - its a setting I'd reserve for second-half stoppage time, if ever.

A more moderate setting (say, 6-12 on the Mentality scale) will give you much better defense.

As noted above, "Closing Down" is also something which does well in the central ranges; "Closing Down" of 20 (maximum) encourages the player to hare off all over the field to the guy with the ball, abandoning his usual responsibilities.

Finally, I noticed my defenders doing the same "backing away from a loose ball" bit when I had their Forward Runs (in '09 - "Runs from Deep" in FM'10) set to Rarely. When I increased that to Mixed, I got a much much better performance from them, being willing to, for example, come a few yards into the opposition half to pick up a loose ball.

It actually happened to me when my player had very low closing down but still left their player free to rush towards the guy with the ball; needless to say, the guy played the ball to the man who was now free and he put it past my keeper with ease. Hasn't happened too much but I assume that they are isolated incidents that would have made more sense if I could read the match engine like the matrix.

Maybe he is using the tactics creator and isn't messing about with mentality sliders? I dont know what else to say... But your advise may not be relevant to him

Ya, I'm using the tactics creator. Even if I wasn't, your sliders shouldn't overrule common sense. You don't just run away from a ball that's 5 steps away, no matter what your position is :/

Yeah, fair enough!

I haven't seen those issues myself using the tactics creator.

If you have some clear-cut examples, you might head over to the FM 2010 Bugs Forum - Match Engine and report it.

What SI will need is:

1. A good description of the problem, as you have done here.

2. A .PKM of a match which shows the problem.

3. The exact match time of the problem, e.g., "At 72:53, you can see central defender Joe Moron backing away from a ball which he was clearly the closest one to."

The Bugs Forum has more information on how to upload the .PKM to the FTP server.

The running away from the ball is something I've seen with players set to man marking, even more so when they're man marking a specific player - they tend to go off and find that player when they assume possession has changed hands.

I posted about it in the bugs forum, here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=144043

Excellent, RT--, thanks.

Your observations about "when they assume" and it being man-marking related will likely be key to SI solving the problem when an engineer gets to looking at it.

Anybody else with specific .PKM's showing the problem can upload them and post in that thread.

I should point out that my thread was posted 2 months ago, with relation to FM09!

I haven't watched enough full matches to know if it remains a problem in this version, but it sounded like a familiar problem.