Some of my gripes with the match engine + annoyances with morale.

Hello people,

I just wanted to point out in a few quick items that I am really finding annoying with Football Manager 2010.

Firstly, the match engine.

The match engine is fantastic when things are going well and morale is high on both sides, fantastic to watch. Poor when morale is low on either side and things get comical. More about this later.

A few things are already being addressed, but a few other things I have not seen Paul C or anyone from SI make a mention if it is being fixed or not.

1. Lack of physical play/tackling/closing down. (I know it is being addressed - thanks)

2. Back passes! Christ! Every game there are about 2-5 poor back passes, resulting in corners.

3. Rain! Surely there are way too many games being played out in the rain. It affects the football being played and is detrimental to the match engine.

4. Lots of waiting while watching full match/extended highlights. My main gripe here is when someone is carded and both the referee and the player take an eternity to converge. Lets make the referee actually RUN to the player and issue a card.

5. When a player is carded, you cannot see the card colour in the 3D engine.

6. When morale is low for players, and they play without confidence their performance becomes extreemly amaturish. I believe certain players should be more resillient. I just notice that when morale is low, players tend to face the wrong direction, run into balls, or just play idiotic football.

Morale.

This is a real game breaker at the moment.

This was the reason why I stopped playing FM09 and this is probably why I will stop playing FM2010 later down the track.

It is too easy to go on a fantastic run, but also very easy for it to crumble.

It is virtually impossible to keep a squad of happy players.

It is far too easy for a player to become completely disillusioned at a club over a single team talk.

I am managing Newcastle, and we were first in the League and things were great! We were 16 games unbeaten, scoring a tonne of goals.

I got to the semi final of the Carling cup and played Man City.

My team should have been proud of reaching this cup semi.

I lost 4-0 on aggregate, and the morale of every player slumped down into verypoor/poor with some still in okay/good.

I went on to lose the next two matches in the league after I lost to Man City in the cup.

I then won 4-0 vs a small club in a friendly (desperately trying to boost morale) and in the team talk I accidentaly selected "why cant you play like this every game".

This led to a load of players saying I am too harsh on the team and should praise them more often.

I have now gone on a 8 match losing streak, and it's not my tactics, ITS MORALE.

I have no way to bump this morale back up and it's destroying my season in a very unrealistic manner.

Players need to be more professional and if you get eliminated to a top side like Man City in a Cup Semi, morale should not plummet, they should be proud of their achievement and morale should be stable.

I am now 7th with Newcastle, I was 1st at one point, but 8 games lost on the trot has me close to getting the sack.

Great game, but morale needs to be more stable, tactics need to have a greater effect and captains need to help pick up the team more.

Also shouldn't there be an option to hold a team meeting to boost morale?

In real life, when things go bad, you can put a hold to all media. (called silencio stampa in Italy) or you can send your team on a training camp/morale boosting camp.

I have no way to tell my players I am sorry for my mistakes/what I said and to put our heads together and go for promotion.

This game is absolutely brilliant, and these are my only major annoyances at the moment.

If something were done to address these issues with patches for this version, I will probably play this game all day.

1. Lack of physical play/tackling/closing down...

As you said - being addressed.

2. Back passes!...

Agreed!

3. Rain!...

The game is made by English people after all...

4. Lots of waiting...

Completely agree!

5. When a player is carded, you cannot see the card colour in the 3D engine...

Doesn't really bother me. The tweak I WOULD like to see is to stop the player's name (providing you have player names enabled on the 3d match engine) turning yellow or red BEFORE it get's mentioned in the text commentary that he has a red or yellow card. It ruins the suspense!

6. morale

Not found this to be honest.

One thing I would add to this list is deflections. Too many balls are being deflected for corners when your attacking team is trying to whip a cross in.

Other than that, it really is a great match engine

Yes, morale is definitely a big issue. Those lucky enough to have an almost perfect tactic won't experience this as their team will win most games but if you lose two on the bounce your season is almost over as there's no way to arrest the subsequent slump. At least I cannot find it. My team, favourites for promotion, won 4-1 on the opening day then they were terribly unlucky to lose 2-0 in the next round. I said "good effort". Then came a home win then a disappointing home draw after which I dared saying "not good enough" which it wasn't.

Since then we can't win to save our lives, morale is very poor, squad harmony is at the lowest ebb and we are in mid-table.