Something wrong with FM10

I've only just bought FM10 because I don't bother until it's all patched up. It's a great game, but for me there's something wrong in the match engine. It's all too reliant on team talks, proof of this is that with a lot of teams I have managed there are hardly any draws. You either say the right thing and you win or you so say the wrong thing and you lose. It doesn't become about which team has the better players, but which manager gave the best team talk.

I was on a 14 game winning streak and I played at home to the bottom club Barnet. Just because I said "I expect a win" in the teamtalk I lost. I wouldn't even have minded if we had 50 chances and they won by a fluke, but instead the game just gave Barnet an early goal and whizzed through the entire 90 minutes ignoring everything I said and did. Sadly, it was inevitable from the first 5 minutes that I would not win the game no matter what I did - or even draw, the result was pre-determined. This is unrealistic, my team had far, far superior players, confidence was ultra-high, there's was ultra-low, and at the very least we would have dominated the game and created chances even if we'd lost. This happens too often, theres's no such thing as a close match. Either team dominates either the first or second half depending on the team talk, hence the lack of draws only winners and losers.

The biggest problem is, how do you know what to say to players in a team talk, say one thing and they respond, say the same thing the next time and they don't respond. There's no consistency so it's impossible to ever be sure you are saying the right thing, but say nothing and that's detrimental. This makes the game somewhat a lottery. Even more so when you consider that no clubs, other than the top ones, seem to have any money, so all your players are immediately under pressure which leads to more pressure and having to make hazardous team talks of which the outcome is impossible to predict.

Considering the amount of time FM expects you to put into playing the game to achieve results, I find it ultimately disappointing - the fun factor has disappeared, it's all about trying to make calculations in the dark, based on mostly unknown player temperaments linked to personalities that have no real meaning.

There are several helpful threads in the Tactics forum to help withn team talks.

Read them. They were what alerted me to the special importance of team talks on FM10 in the first place. I've played 42 games with Leeds this season, and drawn 2. No matter what happens, FM10 declares there almost always has to be a winner depending on who gives the best team talk.