Why don't heading stats add up properly ?

A quick look at the headers won/lost for both teams in any given match shows that the won/lost ratio simpy doesn't add up properly when both teams headers won/lost are taken into consideration.

E.g you might only lose 5 or 6 headers from all of your players combined, but yet the opposition has 'won' way way more than 5 or 6 with all of their players combined.

So what the heck is taken into consideration when calculating whether a header for any particular player is won or lost ?

Does it depend upon which side has the ball in the first place, what type of situation it is e.g corner, or just general header/cross , or something else ?

It seems completely mystifying and I would love to know the answer.

Maybe if a player heads the ball without being challenged, then it still counts as a 'won header', even though nobody was there to 'lose' it?

Maybe if a player heads the ball without being challenged, then it still counts as a 'won header', even though nobody was there to 'lose' it?

Exactly. And there's an awful lot of headers in FM. It looks like a match of football tennis at times. I hope this gets sorted for FM11.

Exactly. And there's an awful lot of headers in FM. It looks like a match of football tennis at times. I hope this gets sorted for FM11.

CM/FM has always had a lot of head tennis, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

CM/FM has always had a lot of head tennis, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

It's not as bad as in the past - so it'll probably be "a little more fixed" in FM11, just not outright eradicated.

The problem is that players are incapable of shielding the ball. Rather than hold off the opposition and bring the ball down to gorund, they'll do a stupid header, even when there's no one to pass to, and they'll attempt to score with a header from ridiculous angles and distance even when there's not a marker in sight, and they could just bring the ball down and finish along the ground, or at least try a volley.

This inability to shield can also cause ridiculous amounts of set-pieces: rather than just shepherding the ball out of play, shielding it from the attacker, defenders will hoof it out, or play ridiculous back-passes.

It also makes the midfield battle for possession look ********, with players facing towards imminent tackles as if they were blind.

Shielding is one of the little things that I reckon would make a big impact on realism if they could get it right. See also: keeper's near-post positioning; logical cross selection; angled runs into the box (at the mo, your players just run forward in straight lines, never shaking their marker).