Something I don’t get – the media do not understand football?.

This is something which confuses me.....My recommended line up from Backroom Ass is 442, 4231 or 4411. I have chosen 442 as default. The pre match advice sometimes tells me that the opposition do best against 442 and the match odds do not make me favourite so I have an option for 4132 with the MCd dropped to DMC – a relatively minor change from 442?. Although this has worked reasonably well I suddenly got hammered 4-1 (to a favoured team in my League to be fair) and the Post match stuff went on about how I tinkered and that my tinkering had fallen apart & lead to this result. This seems harsh. Sour Alex regularly switches between 442 / 4411 (even 460 has been used to describe such variation), he never gets called a “tinker man”, neither should he based on such slight changes. For years FM has been the sort of game where you need to make slight tactical and indeed formational changes to be successful but this relatively minor “tinkering” (!) of mine seems rather harshly treated by the game.

I had this last night on my FM09 save(not the odds bit) but i decided to change from 4-3-3(preffered formation in my personal section) to 4-5-1 (practically the same thing!?) And i got accused of tinkering but on that occasion i was successful so they praised me... the wrong thing was where, suddenly, in the next game i switched back to my 4-3-3 but lost and again i was accused of tinkering (even though this is my preffered formation?!), but this time blasted that my tinkering had finally come undone :confused: and blamed me for playing an unfarmiliar formation?

(just to add 4-3-3 is my home formation and i even use a 4-1-3-2 at most away games and never got anything like this in the first half of the season - now in Feb/Mar not sure)

If you change your formation from what you normally use, and then go on to lose, it always blames you for changing things. But that's the media - they'll leap on anything.

If you change your formation from what you normally use, and then go on to lose, it always blames you for changing things. But that's the media - they'll leap on anything.

Yes, that is quite true, mate! The media is always looking for faults!