Bottom of the table blues

I'm playing as Stafford Rangers. We won the conference at a canter and we're top of the league in my second season in league 2. Whenever we come up against rivals we play really well - worthy draws away, good wins at home. However, if we come up against a team that is in the bottom three we struggle. So far I've managed to lose away to the bottom two and have a ridiculous 3-3 home draw with one of them, when I was 3-0 up. I use the team talk and press to make sure that the team don't take the opponents for granted but it seems the team always underperform against lesser opponents. I know that IRL some teams treat the game like a cup game and really go for it; but for every one of those there is several 4-0 shut outs. They're at the bottom of the table for a reason, so why do they have to defy against me all the time! Anyone have similar trouble against the cannon fodder?

Perhaps your tactics are geared to match your more illustrious counterparts, but come unstuck against more gritty opposition. It's like saying "why can Arsenal beat Spurs , but have such a bad run of results against the likes of Bolton?" and the answer is that, their style of football may work well against similar teams who will also attack, but maybe Bolton don't let them play like that and Arsenal can't handle their long ball game.

Perhaps your defence can deal with the passing side of the game no problem and mop that up all day, but when they come up agaisnt 100 long balls in 90 minutes they just can't handle it.

I have to say that I very rarely change tactics, except through necessity in a game. I have a home tactic and an away tactic. It's not as if they stifle the talent in my team. The problem is how my team seem to be overrun by them. They don't fluke it in the 70th minute after shutting me out, they go out and get themselves two up after 10 minutes. It's very annoying.

Especially if you pretty much never change your tactics, this seems to be the reason then.

Bottom table teams will play very defensively against you, especially while you are one of the top teams of the league and apparently your tactic is not well suited against that style of play.

In the TT&F thread in the tactics forum by wwfan you will find very good advice on how to adjust your tactics a bit for these games. It's a little annoying having to change something all the time in FM08 but it works wonders if done properly