It's all falling apart!

HELP!!

OK I'm an utter noob at FM. Not to footie games but FM. I am in my first season as Ipswich Town manager and *without cheating* by christmas we were top of the league.

I have employed the old Kevin Keagan technique of going at them and leaking at the back if need be, and it don't matter so long as you win by the 1 goal! We have, according to the stats scored an astonishing 60 goals by Christmas conceeded 41 :0)

Nice squad rotation going, so 2 injuries to my AML and to DC made little difference and my 2 signings have been awesome, and are listed as particularly pleasing to the fans and board in game.

Suddenly, despite following all the in game advice and changing plans accordingly we can't win for toffee. We ain't losing and are on a 7 drawn run with the papers now reporting our fall from grace.

I have attended every press conference, with the indication of the team being bouyed by my words.

We now lie 6th and its the end of Feb.

What am I doing wrong? I dont want to have to replay the whole season. I am playing extended highlights to see whats going on. THE PLAYERS DON'T FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS!! MARK YOUR MAN!!

I even had to walk away from a match today. I couldn't watch!

Advice for a noob please.

Cheers.

Sometimes it can just be that key players have gone off the boil, and as one improves another drops off. If things worked before and it's your first season I'd say stick with it, cos tinkering with things that might not actually be broken can just makes things worse and leave you more confused about what's gone wrong.

Most likely to be a dip in form, it happpens!. I posted somethig earlier this week after I had noticed a 'trend' in my teams form season after season. Start was poor, leading upto Xmas excellent, Xmas was poor, late Jan to early Feb started to pick up again and a strong finish. If it was working before, don't change it! A few good results ad your team should start fireig again!

Thanks for these! I cetainly have been wary of tinkering.

Is there an in game way to see graphically how/whos form has dropped?

Not that I'm aware of. Trust me, after a few years of playing FM you'll soon develop a stupidly, brilliant memory in relation to the game. I would suggest jotting things down on a notepad for reference. Tinkering can be a downfall, as its best to let your players settle into a rythm. But you should have at least 3 basic formation/tactics; attacking - normal - defensive. just for certain situations.... i would try to offer more advice but i have some t!t laid next to me trying to give me a wet willy :|

Go to your tactics screen and go to views - condition. There will then be a list labelled last 5 games, this is form. Anything over 7 is good but under 6.7 is not very good. That should show you who is/isn't performing. Hope this helps mate.

I say keep up the good work, keep the Binners falling down the league to where they belong, propping up the football pryamid

Just gone down 3-8 at home to Bristol. Papers now talking about me being sacked. Oh ye god's of football aid me.

Played no-one under 7.0. What the hell is going on. Considering bottling it and getting the Ass man to pick the team.

And as for Geronimo. How's that League 1?

Might need to drop another one to make room for us next year hey

Cheers

Ok - this was true for FM09, 08, 07 and previous games - I dont know for CERTAIN its true for FM10.

Teams choose their tactics based on their 'expected chance of winning' - basically look at the ingame odds - the computer has those odds as well.

If you start a season and for most games you are expected to lose or draw (as I would expect with Ipswich) then having a certain tactic works well (not sure what that tactic is - but im pretty certain what ever tactic you were using is it!)

Now- at christmas time teams have 'learnt' what you are all about, and, because you go in first (or top 5 or 6) in January, then the odds will start to change - other teams will re-assess how good you are.

So- now instead of other teams expecting to beat you, they now expect to lose. In the first half of the season when they expected to beat you, they will have come in with an attacking line up, taking risk and your tactic allowed you (unintentionally in this case) to exploit that and turn teams over.

Now however, teams are comming to you with a defensive or countering tactic expecting hard game. The problem is, your tactics havent changed - you are still using the same or similar tactic to what you did at the begining of the season - the difference is now, the other teams are playing it safer against you and rather than beating them you are just managing to draw instead.

I hope you can understand that - and I assure you I dont mean this in the usual 'sarci' way that other posters use it - but - in this case - its your tactics.

Cheers Maidel Im sure it IS my tactics. :o

OK so I got the Ass Man to pick the team. Then, with a 2 week break I moved the training to slightly heavy. Then I went and slated some players in the press. Then I told all of them I expected a performance pre match.

We just beat Blackpool 0-2 away. We are 5th.

What will happen next?

My advice - tune down your attacking options, change a few players from attack to support (central mid or wingers and DEFINATELY fullbacks)

Seems counter intuative - if you arent scoring enough you think you need to go more attacking, but you dont.

OK. SO I sacked my Ass Man and things have improved hugely. But I cannot promote my very well stat laden 1st team coach to Ass Man and I dont have any money left to pay more than £800 pw to hire one.

Eeeek

Help.

Well you're doing a better job than Keano that's for sure.

In the last 3 editions of FM, I have always found this... start off poor...but by Xmas my teams are a lot better.... but with some teams I find I start the season well then after Xmas I have a month of just poor results. I'm not saying its the game fault or anything...but I do sit at my desk playing the game and thinking after my first few months of the season and playing well and thinking...."Uh oh..unbeaten in first 12 games...I'm bound to have a rubbish month after Xmas"...and normally do. If I have a poor 2-3 months at the start of the season... I stick with it as I know by Xmas things will be better...and most of the time I am right..

So basically i have an idea how the team will be doing around Xmas time of the season depending on my start to the season..LOL... As i say...its not the game... its me... just wish I knew how to keep it consistent for most of the season rather than the drastic change in fortune either way (good or bad) half way through the season! (Dont we all....)

Replacing the Ass Man has been a revelation! Instead of getting opposition instructions for just 1 or 2 players, he gives me full details for 7 or 8!

5 games to go, we lie 4th...

I was going to make a thread about this. I started of with four straight wins, and just 2 defeats in the first 11, and I've since only won one game or something in the last 5. Is there anything I can do to even stop the slide? I was second in the league five games ago, now down to fifth and struggling to win games, even the ones we are dominating. We had over 60% possession against Hearts and lost. They had 2 shots on target.

I'm getting frustrated. I know it happens in real life, but in FM it's horrible because you can just see it coming, and when you try to prevent it nothing happens. For example, I've gone 2-0 down in a couple of games, and then scored one, followed by a red card. it's like the CPU is stopping my comeback lol.

Should I try to play with more freedom, change the formation, or what?

Should I try to play with more freedom, change the formation, or what?

I wouldn't. Like someone said above, if you tweak too much you will confuse things further.

I did the following to negotiate my bad run

1)Stuck with the same 17 or so players.

2)Stuck with my previously succesful game plan and changed it when the advice from the Ass Man and opposition scouting report indicated me of their likely plans.

3)Changed my Ass Man for one with much high stats resulting in far better intelligence.

4)Made sure I had Team Motivation and Assistants Comments on during the matches. This meant I could swap out those having a bad game or looking complacent and adjust Tactics accordingly.

5) In some matches when you are a couple of goals up sometimes "JUST DO NOTHING!!!"

6) Attend all prematch press conferences to manipulate the effect to positive on your players.

7)Occasionally when 2-1 up, all subs used, 75 mins left on clock, use CONTAIN and PLAY EVEN SAFER with DROP DEEPER shouts.

8)Or Visa-versa OVERLOAD, TAKE MORE RISKS and PUSH HIGHER UP

9) Sometimes just accept you are losing. But listen to your assistant, pause the game and use the target opposition player instructions from your Ass Man then resume play.

I used the same, Balanced, More Direct, More expressive, Man Marking, Less roaming settings from the very first day of pre-season to ensure we never used a different mindset. Only change formation and width, tempo and depth when the incoming scouting intelligence advises so.

Cheers

Sometimes around Christmas the AI adjust it´s tactic to yours. If you´re doing well they might try a more defensive approach and hit you on the counter. Some say it´s like they "cracked" your tactics. You might want to play less attacking from the start (especially if you´re conceding early goals). Check out the match odds. If you´re not favour to win, try a more patient approach.

Hope it helps.

Sometimes around Christmas the AI adjust it´s tactic to yours. If you´re doing well they might try a more defensive approach and hit you on the counter. Some say it´s like they "cracked" your tactics. You might want to play less attacking from the start (especially if you´re conceding early goals). Check out the match odds. If you´re not favour to win, try a more patient approach.

Hope it helps.

Yep deffo agree with this. If they like to sit back and hit you on the counter. Well, if you have a better equipped squad, why not fight fire with fire and employ the same tactic, using PLAY WIDER and LOOK for Overlap

Cheerss

Can we leave matches???

I don't think so, but I have on occasion when there is nothing left to do, walked away, gone made a cuppa and come back to see the final score and be ready for the most horrendous team talk when I am highly disgusted with the performance

Followed of course by selective slatings of my slackers to my freinds in the media.

It's not your tactics.

If you have a draw or a loss against a poor side, you players morale will drop.

When morale drops, you are in for a tough time.

Sometimes around Christmas the AI adjust it´s tactic to yours. If you´re doing well they might try a more defensive approach and hit you on the counter. Some say it´s like they "cracked" your tactics. You might want to play less attacking from the start (especially if you´re conceding early goals). Check out the match odds. If you´re not favour to win, try a more patient approach.

Hope it helps.

Yep agree with this... see my post above where I thought this was the case...

i wish all threads were as informative as this.

With the "Cracked at Christmas" theory this even happened in RL in the Prem League just last season, look what Hull did through the first half and then look how they dropped off come the turn around. The teams they had beaten earlier in the season then learnt what they had been doing wrong and could then beat them.

Also check out the form of the opposition just before a game as well, if they have gone onto a winning streak it is likely they will come at you even if they are a lesser team. And quite often a top team will be on a losing streak and turn it to a counter attack instead. There are just sooo many factors as well. Maybe even your own team getting over-confident with winning all the time.

SEASON UPDATE

After the most nerve shredding end to the season, we finished 4th to qualify for the Play_Offs.

*NOTE* I qualified for the Play Offs with 1 game to spare so I gave all my non-starters a game to protect my best 11 for the Semi's. Interestingly they won so I had an almost complete squad with great morale for the semi.

I have just had the scariest hour of my life in a long time as we just beat Leicester 4-2 over 2 legs to qualify for the final, having equalised in the last minute in the 1st leg having come from 2-0 down.

Obviously being a dyed in the wool Ipswich fan I didn't expect any play off success.

So I have saved my game instantly after we qualified for the final and it's not til the end of the month.

So. Advice time please. Should I arrange some friendlies and if so with who to keep the team loose and what about training, keep it medium and move it up in the last few days?

Can't type more. Nerves shattered! And all this is in my first ever rookie season playing FM with no replaying of lost matches. My god, what a game!

Cheers

SEASON UPDATE

After the most nerve shredding end to the season, we finished 4th to qualify for the Play_Offs.

*NOTE* I qualified for the Play Offs with 1 game to spare so I gave all my non-starters a game to protect my best 11 for the Semi's. Interestingly they won so I had an almost complete squad with great morale for the semi.

I have just had the scariest hour of my life in a long time as we just beat Leicester 4-2 over 2 legs to qualify for the final, having equalised in the last minute in the 1st leg having come from 2-0 down.

Obviously being a dyed in the wool Ipswich fan I didn't expect any play off success.

So I have saved my game instantly after we qualified for the final and it's not til the end of the month.

So. Advice time please. Should I arrange some friendlies and if so with who to keep the team loose and what about training, keep it medium and move it up in the last few days?

Can't type more. Nerves shattered! And all this is in my first ever rookie season playing FM with no replaying of lost matches. My god, what a game!

Cheers

haha - great post. Reminds me of CM1 Italia when I was in Serie B with some unkonwn team needing to win to stay up. 0-4 at half time. No team talks back then. All about the tactics. don't know what I said at half tiem, but it worked. A 5-4 Victory to stay up. Was pretty stoked.

Anyway; to your post. I would arrange a friendly with the youth squad. Get some goals in the strikers. take charge of the youth team too, play them all out attack so that you give your senior strikers the best chance and then get some goals into your seniors. Nothing Like putting the ball into the back of the net.

Perhaps lighten training a bit for your stars too. I don't think making training mor eintense will do much more now apart from increasing your injury risk.

What a brilliant thread. Glad to see we have a new addict who appears to be approaching the game with the right attitude. For what it's worth, I think the post-Christmas slump is more exagerrated in FM10 than it has been in previous versions (although I like the point made above about Hull last season - not to mention the Alan Curbishley effect at Charlton in the early 00s). I've had games with Ajax and Werder Bremen that have both spiralled in January/February (less so in Bremen's case, but more frustratingly as we were over-achieving a bit in challenging for the title having been predicted 7th). The big temptation is to change players, but you need to remember why you picked your first XI in the first place. If the reserves were better then you'd be playing them already. Obviously rotation has its place, but be careful you don't accidentally drop 7 or 8 players over the course of 2 games.

P.S. - If I wish you luck in your playoff final will you promise that Town will get relegated IRL?

Yep, Just about every December just about all my teams that I have managed have a bad spell around that time...doesn't matter which team or which league...I need to have racked up enough points.

This of course happens in real live too, Look at Hull City last season, up there at the top or near to it then crashed down towards the bottom, A one off?

Little tactical tweaks can help.. Counter attck, hold a few teams to draws, build up some confidence..etc.

"SAY WE ARE PREMIER LEAGUE!, SAY WE ARE PREMIER LEAGUE!"

Ipswich Town 2 (Counago 2) Cardiff City 1 (Who cares) AET

Wow!!!!! Phew! Exhausted! And am playing no more tonight!! Am so pleased. I set expectation as promotion right from the start (In truth just for extra transfer funds!) and boy did it pay off. Everyone, just everyone came through.

And that, Mr Keane, is how to do that!

Easy part is over, now you have the daunting task of getting a good enough squad together to survive in the Premier League.

To quote Han Solo.

"Easy? You call that easy?"

Yeah, seriously, I have a Full Back who has been fairly consistent about to leave as he was on loan and as yet no news of available funds for next season. Any ideas on how long must pass before the board decide and how much more they will likely give me?

Bear in mind my success cost them £1.8 in bonuses!

Cheers

Yep agree with this... see my post above where I thought this was the case...

Didn´t mean to play copycat, just didn´t read through all the replies