Lack of direct free kicks and goals scored from DF

I've played 12 games into the first season with Arsenal, and I have yet to discover a direct free kick going in. That said, I have only had 1 or 2 direct free kicks outside the box. This is kinda weird. I looked into the team stats and discovered that there were only scored 6 goals from direct free kicks all season. Is it only me? The other leagues I run (Spain and Italy), where almost the same.

This hasn't been the case in previous versions of FM. I feel that you don't get any advantages by having players that are good from set pieces, as they never get the chance to score from direct free kicks.

Anyone?

It clearly can't be my tactics!

sorry mate RVP banged one in against the spurs for me, it was from the right hand side so he could bend it in with his left foot. Also zarate who i signed scored from a freekick from the left side using his right foot to bend it in however it took a deflection.

i dont think ive scored from a corner - where im very dissapointed with the new set piece creator - i thought we were gonna be able to place wherever we want the players to start and then tell them where to run to!!! very dissapointing.

You are only 12 games in. Far too soon to make judgments.

I havent yet scored one....using arsenal too....

At least in FM11 you can't tell in advance if the free kick will be scored or not. In FM10 you could tell with a 90% accuracy if there'll be a goal just by looking at the position of the free kick and the placement of the wall (if you watched only key highlights that is).

In my game with Liverpool there have been very few goals from DFK. Only 16 over an entire season for the Premier League. No teams has scored more than two, I have scored only one. Seems a bit low if you ask me.

Edit:

The championship seems to be more realistic with 46 goals scored from DFK.

League One has 29 goals while League Two has 20, perhaps a bit too few? I don't know the real life stats.

Long shots and free kicks are very odd in FM11.

Indirect free kicks are killing me though... my best kicker always does the little tap to a random player who blasts it away as opposed to my two 2 kickers being involved. I even set the pair to 'stand next to taker' for set piece instructions.

Two and a half seasons, haven't scored or conceded from a direct free kick. Lots of goals from corners, though.

Scoring 30+ yard long shots? No problemo, no skill needed for that! Scoring a FK from just outside the box? Ooh damn, sorry only real world class players can do that...

During the demo when I played with Real, Ronaldo scored a few DFK's (I was top of the league with those, and quite a few teams also had 0 goals), and with my current save I'm yet to see a 'proper' goal from a DFK. I scored a couple flukes where a FK meant to be a cross sailed in and one DFK where the wall was positioned so horrible the far corner was wide open but that's it. Considering I'm in 2014 now, that's pretty bad. And while the Bulgarian League doesn't have a very high standard my freekick takers aren't THAT horrible.

I just checked the league stats and there are 7 goals from DFK's halfway during the season. Funny thing is one team has scored 3 times with a DFK, with some crappy player who has a rating of 12 for free kicks and 13 for longshots.

In last weekend's record high-scoring EPL, a third of the goals were from set pieces, mainly direct free kicks. I find that at all levels of the game the number of goals from FKs in FM is too low. I also find that if you don't use the nasty corner exploit, you rarely score from corners.

Good to see that I'm not the only one experiencing this. I don't know if it is considered a bug, but I hope it's tweaked in the next patch.

I'm in November of 1st season, and here are 2 out of many examples of FK conversion

why make a thread when u just admitted u have only played a few games =/

it's a problem. anyone who says otherwise is a fool. I've run multiple seasons at all levels and I have yet to see more than a handful of freekicks for ANY side in the world.

Halfway through first season in Serie A and six goals have been scored from DFK. No teams have scored more than one...

Just noticed...2nd season in the MLS, 10 games in and the league as a totally of 3 DKF goals. There were almost none in the entire first season as well but don't know exactly.

I think it's pretty obvious, I expect they'll do some balancing in the next patch, hope it gets better and they don't just score every single one.

Not enough dfk or ifk goals in the game

This is broken. Simple as.

People can post all the youtubes or "I've scored x amount" all they like.

Go look at the Direct Free Kick stats for the league they are currently in.

Q.E.D.

All my direct free kicks hit the wall and go out for a corner, its great

SI whats the point of the new 'glorious' setpiece editor when it is impossible to score from an indirect free kick?

Funny..i noticed this last night when after a season in the championship i saw the list of clubs with most goals scored from DFK. The most successful club scored three goals in the whole season. Weird.

What is the problem? Bad free kick takers or supergoalies?

Most of them go straight into the wall. Handy for counter-attacks.

Funny..i noticed this last night when after a season in the championship i saw the list of clubs with most goals scored from DFK. The most successful club scored three goals in the whole season. Weird.

What is the problem? Bad free kick takers or supergoalies?

I don't know. It seems that it is caused by bad free kick takers, because my free kicks are both saved and going wide\over\in the wall.

I've never seen any problems, my team usually scores around 4-5 DFK's a season, and about the same level of IFK's. I also get around 6-7 goals from corners, so I think the set-pieces are working really well. John Terry averages around 6 goals a season for me, all from set pieces.

And yet again it goes over someone's head that this happens league-wide.

34 of 38 games played in my Premiership season (i.e. 90%):

3 teams have scored two (including Cardiff and Stoke), none have scored more.

6 have scored one.

Eleven have scored NONE in 34 games.

And yet again it goes over someone's head that this happens league-wide.

34 of 38 games played in my Premiership season (i.e. 90%):

3 teams have scored two (including Cardiff and Stoke), none have scored more.

6 have scored one.

Eleven have scored NONE in 34 games.

Exactly. Clearly something wrong here. It's not a supergoalie phenomenon - the ball is never on target - either hits the wall or goes wide, whatever the level of ability of the free-kick taker. At least the problem is the same for human and AI manager, but it is very annoying. Well, nearly the same. About half the goals I've conceded have been from corners, yet I haven't scored a from a single corner after half a season and 50 goals.

You know one the things that really irritated me in FM10 was having a world class free kick taker (with a free kick of 19) and he would not even hit the target but then you'd face a team and they would have a player score twice on you with free kick taking of like 13.

I wouldn't mind if goalies were making saves but why can't beckham hit the target?

Also how come players cant get the ball over the wall? Pretty much all the free kick scored are to the side of the keeper from what Ive seen.

I think we should report this in the bugs forum.

Most probably it's broken. Just checked last year's league stats (Indonesian 2nd tier, so rubbish players), and the most one team scored over the season was 2. I've scored 3 in 3 seasons.

Should be way more - if you go to lower league games, the number of direct free kicks scored is not really lower.

My best free kick taker ( Darren Ambrose at Crystal Palace ) didn't score a dfk in first 16 games of the season. I set his individual training to free kicks and he has now scored 3 in his last 6 games. May be a coincidence but does seem to have made a difference.

Guys, I've brought this up here in the Match Engine Feedback thread, in reply to it not appearing in the "latest fix" list from Paul C.

It appears it's not in SI's vision at this point. Maybe some of you can chip in there with your thougts/issues.

BTW can anyone dig up free kick goal stats (hopefully broken into Direct and Indirect goals) from ANY major league? I'm having no luck.

Getting sorta sick of the pointlessness of DFK's as I'm 3.5 seasons and counting with no DFK goals...

Guys, I've brought this up here in the Match Engine Feedback thread, in reply to it not appearing in the "latest fix" list from Paul C.

It appears it's not in SI's vision at this point. Maybe some of you can chip in there with your thougts/issues.

BTW can anyone dig up free kick goal stats (hopefully broken into Direct and Indirect goals) from ANY major league? I'm having no luck.

Getting sorta sick of the pointlessness of DFK's as I'm 3.5 seasons and counting with no DFK goals...

any chance you can link the "latest fix" list. will head into my game and dig up some stats

Throughout my second season RVP was slamming them in from all over the place. So much so I almost complained, thinking it was a perhaps a bug! Only get the odd one now though.

any chance you can link the "latest fix" list. will head into my game and dig up some stats

As for this issue this was Paul's response.

Latest 11.2 beta code has around 1 direct free kick goal per 20 matches.

It may be a bit low but until we implement some improvements to ball physics ( future version ) we cant really improve much further on that.

Not too encouraging.

It works out as 19 per league per Season (of Premiership). That's almost what I was averaging.

Comparatively Indirect FK goals are coming out about 5 or 6 times higher.

I wish I had my hands on some real life stats, but that just doesn't sound that close to right for me.

Throughout my second season RVP was slamming them in from all over the place. So much so I almost complained, thinking it was a perhaps a bug! Only get the odd one now though.

I've had none in 3.5 seasons for Tottenham, and can only remember one against me, in all competitions. Pretty crazy.

It basically means DFK's are broken.

Off top of my head i can't remember exacts but being Barcelona = Xaxi Scored 11 in 2nd season and can remember 2 at least from DFK. Also Messi, Villa and Hulk.

Awesome FK by Kolarov. I actually scored 2 FKs this way. Oh, and this was on the demo.

11.1.1 patch, Kolarov scored only one free kick for me in Man City (in the span of 2 seasons)

In my last season in the prem, Liverpool scored 2 dfk's and about 5 other teams scored 1 each then the rest of the teams didnt even score one.

Awesome FK by Kolarov. I actually scored 2 FKs this way. Oh, and this was on the demo.

11.1.1 patch, Kolarov scored only one free kick for me in Man City (in the span of 2 seasons)

That explainshy wy rvp stopped bangin em in. I patched up after second season.

It only seems to get worse as time goes on.

Yep, I'm in 2014/2015 with one game to go and the EPL as a whole just had 5 goals from free kicks this year.

Hey! Finally saw a goal directly from a free kick after 3 seasons. It was in a friendly and came of the post and my GK but it went in.

I can't agree with the OP at all, cristiano ronaldo scores freekicks for fun whenever i face real madrid, Keisuke honda and daniele de rossi only scored freekicks for me at arsenal and honda finished with 8 in one season. i signed a regen with milan who has 17 freekicks and he got 2 on his debut and he's even scored direct from a corner!!! sneijder, van der vaart and salihovic seen to score them all as well

I had 7 DFK in one season at birmingham. Larsson taking all of them.

RVP scores a few for me at Arsenal.

I've been there about 9 months and he has scored at least 3 for me. The best one was the one that got me through to the UEFA cup final (They were already knocked out the CL when I took over).

Other than that though, I very very rarely see them go in on any of my other saves. RVP is the only person I've ever seen score more than one for one of my teams.

what's most annoying is seeing people still not getting it.

It's not the point if Ronaldo scores free kicks - he should be. This is about the fact that it seems UNLESS you are a world class football genius you just cannot score from DFKs. Over five seasons of DFKS I have scored none, conceded none. That's ridiculous. IT IS A BUG PEOPLE. I don't think we need to argue any more.

what's most annoying is seeing people still not getting it.

It's not the point if Ronaldo scores free kicks - he should be. This is about the fact that it seems UNLESS you are a world class football genius you just cannot score from DFKs. Over five seasons of DFKS I have scored none, conceded none. That's ridiculous. IT IS A BUG PEOPLE. I don't think we need to argue any more.

Whats even more annoying is when people just ignore post 34. PaulC (the guy who writes the ME) has answered and has said, it isn't going to change in FM11 (although the numbers he's quoting for 11.2 sound better than what we have) due to physics issues. Therefore its not worth bleating about. They know it needs to be sorted and will be in the future til then I guess they have other priorities.

Does this make it right? Maybe not, but it seems pointless wasting time and posts over an issue that isn't going to improve no matter how many threads are started.

FWIW Ronaldo is not even close to being a great free kick taker.