Quiet chats ruining player/manager relations

In my Backroom advice my coach tells me that Aaron Lennon's game would improve by trying overhead kicks. Stupid I know, but as the game is new so I thought I'd give it a go, Quiet chat to Lennon, he says he doesn't think it will benefit his game. So I nicely ask him again to give it a go and he refuses. I look in his personal file and now he has a poor opinion of me. Now how stupid is that. A player going well, high morale, enjoying life at the club, now thinks I'm a ****** because I pass on a thought from a coach. I think this interaction thing needs a bit of looking at

Don't listen to the coach unless you think it makes sense.

Yeah these are way too effective. Sometimes I've nipped in to have a we chat and the player has asked to leave the club. Or, i accidentally move a guy into the reserves, he's now moaning. I tell him it wont happen again, doesn't believe me. Transfer listed. IT's a good feature, but needs a shed load of work. Should maybe have been left until fm12.

Why on earth there isn't a "Actually i can understand your point, carry on as you were" option to say to a player after they have said "no its not going to benefit me" i dont know. The only option is to press on and **** the player off!

I just leave the chat hanging and continue the game when it is about to go sour. Haven't had any problems after I started doing that... At least that I know of...

Yeah, I just say "Okay, this meeting has run it's course" or whatever, rather than try to push the issue. No problems at all.

Guy didn't have a problem with you passing on a suggestion from a coach. He took issue with you not taking his objections to heart...

It messes with the development of youth players too. I try to home grow a lot of my players, buying in young talent and bringing them up through the U18s and Reserves, but so far any player I've bought for the purpose of developing through my other teams they complain thinking they should be in the first team (contract would be Hot Prospect or Youngster). On the off chance I convince them to stay in Reserves/Youth, 2 months later they want to transfer, ruining a big part of the game for me.

Haha

"No, Aaron, it's really important you perfect overhead kicks. Imagine it. You're dribbling the ball down the wing and BAM, you get tackled, the ball goes into the air. Now, this is where you have to use your overhead kick skills, that you've just perfected, to score from near the corner flag. I won't take 'no' for an answer!"

I am actually quite amazed EVERYONE does not like this idea. I can understand how relationships can deteriorate when a private chat goes sour, but look on the bright side: now you have a way to talk to the player when he is unhappy and actually make him happy now. Also, from what I have noticed, IF the chat is going sour, just back give in to the player's position and all will be fine. Again, this is from my experience.

To be specific, I told Ruud V. Nistelroy that I wasn't very happy with his recent performances. He retaliates that he actually feels he has been playing fairly well. So instead of pushing the button, I caved in and said something in the lines of "that's fair enough". He was pretty pleased after that chat.

I truly think this is one of the best features in the game and my Championship Manager-playing brother is actually considering switching because of this feature and the way I sold it to him. This will be the first time he plays FM.

I am actually quite amazed EVERYONE does not like this idea. I can understand how relationships can deteriorate when a private chat goes sour, but look on the bright side: now you have a way to talk to the player when he is unhappy and actually make him happy now. Also, from what I have noticed, IF the chat is going sour, just back give in to the player's position and all will be fine. Again, this is from my experience.

To be specific, I told Ruud V. Nistelroy that I wasn't very happy with his recent performances. He retaliates that he actually feels he has been playing fairly well. So instead of pushing the button, I caved in and said something in the lines of "that's fair enough". He was pretty pleased after that chat.

I truly think this is one of the best features in the game and my Championship Manager-playing brother is actually considering switching because of this feature and the way I sold it to him. This will be the first time he plays FM.

I love the feature, i just think it needed fleshing out a bit more. if a player disagrees with me then fine but dont make it so that my only options are to continue on my original course or just say "this chat is over".

eg:

Hi steve, i think you could benefit from doing some speed training

I think i'm fast enough as it is thanks

Ok, is there anything you think you need to work on?

well i could use more practise with my weaker foot

ok then, work on that in training instead of speed

At the moment its almost like the only options after a "no" are a) i love you lots and lots and only have your best interests at heart which annoys the player, b) don' you be disrespectin' me yeah? which annoys the player c) walk out shaking your head because the player wont listen.

I love the feature, i just think it needed fleshing out a bit more. if a player disagrees with me then fine but dont make it so that my only options are to continue on my original course or just say "this chat is over".

eg:

Hi steve, i think you could benefit from doing some speed training

I think i'm fast enough as it is thanks

Ok, is there anything you think you need to work on?

well i could use more practise with my weaker foot

ok then, work on that in training instead of speed

At the moment its almost like the only options after a "no" are a) i love you lots and lots and only have your best interests at heart which annoys the player, b) don' you be disrespectin' me yeah? which annoys the player c) walk out shaking your head because the player wont listen.

Yep, that's a conversation.

At the moment it's just demand, threat, tantrum. "do this", "do it or else" "get out of my sight."

I don't use this feature as much as I want to.

but look on the bright side: now you have a way to talk to the player when he is unhappy and actually make him happy now

I do like the feature, but it needs some tweaking.

Last time I had a player go mad on me, he just refused to talk to me for over 3 years.

He was playing week in week out in the first team, and every two or three months I tried to talk to him, but in the end I had to sell him.

DO you now what we fell out over, me praising his form when he thought he was not playing well.

It messes with the development of youth players too. I try to home grow a lot of my players, buying in young talent and bringing them up through the U18s and Reserves, but so far any player I've bought for the purpose of developing through my other teams they complain thinking they should be in the first team (contract would be Hot Prospect or Youngster). On the off chance I convince them to stay in Reserves/Youth, 2 months later they want to transfer, ruining a big part of the game for me.

Same issue for me as well, always big on youth in my games, and i think this effects it slightly.

Players dislike you too easily. Asking Lennon to practice overhead kicks won't annoy him - Lennon might half-heartedly try if he's not really interested, although a more professional player might diligently plug away. However, asking Lennon to practice it again and again and again will annoy him and at that point he might start to dislike you.

In addition, the hatred never dissipates over time. Over time Lennon will forget that that silly overhead kick incident (especially if rewarded with a brand new contract with a lot of zeroes on it, and the club is winning things), and won't dislike you any more. On the other hand, Lennon might forget the happy times, too.

I am actually quite amazed EVERYONE does not like this idea.

???

(Player X has signed a contract with another team and is joining on July 1st, in 2 months time)

Player Y: I don't get on with player X and it's affecting my game

Me: (only relevant option) I'm aware of the problems and will probably be selling Player X sooner rather than later

Player Y: I don't believe you'll keep your word

??? Player X has already signed for another team - what exactly am I meant to do here? Where's the 'In case you haven't noticed, I've already set up a transfer for Player Y which will go through in a bit less than 2 months time, and in the meantime I'm doing my best not to play him in the first team or put him on the bench, so calm the **** down and get out of my office!' option ?

Even worse Player Y then goes out to the media ... 'has revealed that the central defender finds (player X) difficult to work with and feels he is damaging morale within the club'

Ok, I like "the idea" of this sort of interaction, but I dislike the implementation in the current FM :-(

I'll add my voice to those that like the feature, but just feel that the range of options available after a player disagrees with your suggestion (especially for preferred moves) are too extreme and limited. Instead of just saying, 'okies, no worries- it was just an idea is all' you either have to force the issue or lose respect by apologizing. The 'Okay, this meeting has run it's course' option doesn't seem to always be available when you want to just drop the matter, so backing out of the screen and hitting continue is the only kludgy option to get out of the conversation without causing further damage.

what's also missing is the Harry Redknapp arm on the players shoulder which over the years has done wonders for some people irl

I agree there is more chance of upsetting a player than otherwise at the moment given the options. As stated select the lets walk away option

I've had Danny Wilson want to up and leave the club because he wanted first team football. I actually gave him first team football too and then he says I broke my promise because I didn't play him in one E.L fixture.

If he didn't have brilliant potential I'd just let him leave.

I'll add my vote to those who like the feature but still think it needs improvement. However knowing SI, this is one of those features that you know will get developed and will get much better with future releases.

I recently had a discussion with a foreign player I just signed because he wasn't settling in to the country and I asked him if he wanted to take some leave. He agreed and came back 2 weeks later all smiles. I do love that aspect a lot.

Just more options are needed when players start throwing their rattles out of the pram.

Perhaps a system whereby the more you use player interactions the more responses you unlock would be good? Obviously IRL a manager will get better at handling issues over time as he gets more experience. Unlocking new responses would be a good way to mirror that. Especially if you start the game as an inexperienced manager.

I can't believe someone at SI actually thinks that, on a training ground at any club in the world, there are players manfully flinging themselves in the air attempting overhead kicks in order to improve that particular skill.

Obviously there is mammoth room for improvement, but every time I read one of these threads I can't help but feel people are also making poor conversation choices with the wrong players at the wrong times.

Obviously there is mammoth room for improvement, but every time I read one of these threads I can't help but feel people are also making poor conversation choices with the wrong players at the wrong times.

I can agree with that. Not sure I'd ever ask someone to work on his overhead kicks, no matter what my coach happened to say!

I can agree with that. Not sure I'd ever ask someone to work on his overhead kicks, no matter what my coach happened to say!

If I really thought a player might benefit from it, I would check to see if he had the attributes for that sort of thing (Flair, Finishing?), then check what his morale is (waiting until it was high to make suggestions). I'd also look at his mentality (is he a professional who will take on board my advice even if he doesn't think it's good idea, or is he an unambitious or argumentative type). Also, how happy is he with his existing training schedule (is he already working hard in training, on match preparation, and on learning a new position? Am I then asking him to do too much?). It would also help if he trusted me (listed me as Favoured Personnel). I'm not even sure all these things are relevant, but I help thinking about a player as an individual in total helps me make better decisions about when to talk to them, and why.

But yeah, for the most part even good coaches seem to make goofy suggestions about what your players should be doing.

the situations in this thread have made me burst out laughing several times reading them

i just can't get my head around how stupid they are and how anyone could've designed them to be implemented this badly? you literally just have to play the game for a hour to figure out the frustrations of it

I always save before I chat with a player, so that I don't risk him wanting to leave because of some stupid little thing.

If I really thought a player might benefit from it, I would check to see if he had the attributes for that sort of thing (Flair, Finishing?), then check what his morale is (waiting until it was high to make suggestions). I'd also look at his mentality (is he a professional who will take on board my advice even if he doesn't think it's good idea, or is he an unambitious or argumentative type). Also, how happy is he with his existing training schedule (is he already working hard in training, on match preparation, and on learning a new position? Am I then asking him to do too much?). It would also help if he trusted me (listed me as Favoured Personnel). I'm not even sure all these things are relevant, but I help thinking about a player as an individual in total helps me make better decisions about when to talk to them, and why.

But yeah, for the most part even good coaches seem to make goofy suggestions about what your players should be doing.

So judging from the posts. the problem seems to stem initially from the coaches' advice. e.g. both in FM2010 and FM 2011 coaches continually advise you ask a player to train on diving into tackles. Seems to me to be a recipe for lots of cards and broken legs so I've always ignored it. The point about my thread is that as the game is new then we try things, i.e Lennon and overhead kicks. It's the lack of choices for a suitable repsonse when a player says no that's the problem. It shouldn't end up with player having a poor opinion of, especially as all the indicators say the player is happy at the club. Whilst I appreciate the motives of the SI to make the game better, at times it verges on the nonsensical. While I'm on my soap box the lack of variety in team talks/half time talks is infuriating. It shouldn't take to much imagination to make that more realistic. Say you are playing a match where at half time you have a player(s) on a yellow card. There should be an option to tell them to go carefully as you can't afford to to go down to 10 men. I don't know what the programming issues are with more intuitive interaction but SI are very clever people. I hope they look at this and we get better interaction because there is no doubt that what SI are trying to do with these improvements is the way to go. I think it's a question of unintended consequences. Still, been at it since FM 97/98 and the game has come a very long way since then

Thought I'd give another gem

Player (captain) got a rating of 7.9 (he's a defender and didn't score any goals, so he must have done something right!) and has last 5 games average rating 7.32, so what harm can a little encouragement do?

Me: You impressed me in the last math, keep it up!

Player: I'm a bit confused to be honest as I thought I was rubbish last match (really? you're a defender and kept a clean sheet in a victory against a team ranked higher than us in the league?)

Me: I'm glad you think you can do better. I just wanted to let you know I was happy with your performance (I don't remember the other options, but this seemed the most reasonable.......)

Player: I feel you've treated me very unfairly and I'm not happy about it (WTF???)

Well my only 2 options as a response now are:

If you speak to me like that again I will be seriously considering your future at the club

and

I've had enough of your attitude and I am placing you on the transfer list

and I sure as hell ain't picking either of them

has this even been tested? how can sh*t like this get passed QA? might have to stay away from private chats altogether..

When he said he thought he was rubbish, you should have taken the last option, which was "Let's just drop it. This meeting is over." or something like that. It may not sound right, but if you had chosen that, nothing bad (or good) would have happened.

The conversational options may not be the most intuitive out there, but there seems (to me, at least) to be a way to salvage any situation.

It's a feature that's been reworked from the ground up, I quite like being able to fall out with certain players. It'll need balancing and such but overall I like it.

Not every manager can keep every player happy no matter how important the player is, we've all seen some of the young players decide they're good enough for the first team and not shut up about it. As much as we'd want morale to be 100% good all the time it's just not realistic.

Some examples:

Houllier / Carew

Ferguson / Tevez

Ferguson / Beckham

Ferguson / Stam

As a player or manager you'd never dream of upsetting the other but it happens, no matter how key they are to your team.

It'll be balanced over time, SI won't let a feature ruin our games for long. For now we just need to find out what makes players like us and hate us, then learn from those mistakes.

the exaples you speak of don't quite correlate with what happens in the game though does it?

When he said he thought he was rubbish, you should have taken the last option, which was "Let's just drop it. This meeting is over." or something like that. It may not sound right, but if you had chosen that, nothing bad (or good) would have happened.

The conversational options may not be the most intuitive out there, but there seems (to me, at least) to be a way to salvage any situation.

This.

The feature COULD be very good, with a lot of work. But for the moment we'll need to make the most of a bad job - and if a conversation looks like going pear shaped just bail out.

When he said he thought he was rubbish, you should have taken the last option

Cheers, so at the first sign of any unhappyness I'll quit while I'm ahead and go for the last option (y)

Cheers, so at the first sign of any unhappyness I'll quit while I'm ahead and go for the last option (y)

s'wat I do...

I wonder if some of this has to do with the manager not having a good relationship with the player to begin with; most of us are trying these out right away (in the first six months or so) of our time at the club, and it's not effective. I wonder if - as our reputations and relationships with the club and player grow - these conversations are more effective.

For example, if you're just some new manager telling a centerback he did well, he's not going to listen. If you're well-regarded, though, and are one of his favorite people to deal with, maybe he does.

I hope this gets improved in future versions of the game. Otherwise, it will end up being a tedious exercises just like press-conferences, where, once again, it is too easy to unbalance the morale of your team to the extreme.

Just had to pop in and give this a bump with my problem...

There was another thread I'm not finding that said in the title the chats are too negative... they most certainly are.

I had a player, my team captain no less, get unhappy when I gave a 'disappointed' team talk. Now I'm trying to smooth it over and relax him, but I can't, I simple don't have the option at all.

There are 4 options, one is basically 'this convo is going no where, it's over'... the other 3 are -ALL- various levels of 'you are being unprofessional, I'm the manager, sit down and shut up'. It's obvious he's just going to react worse to that so what the hell does SI expect us to do if we can't even smooth things over at all.

I mean I have my team captain and team icon to the fans (not to mention key veteran DM) unhappy over a tiny little team talk, he's unhappy and unsettled because of it and being hunted by other teams because of it now, and the only option available to me is to tell this veteran pro he's being unprofessional?! REALLY?! I mean it is silly to whine about one team talk, but that's just another flaw of the AI. Regardless we need some type of settling statement to be available. I can't even talk to him about ANYTHING else until this gets cleared up and I can't clear it up without being forced to **** him off more.

To put it simple it's freaking moronic... the chats are a good idea, but SI needs to figure better AI's and not force only negative options, why even give me 3 options if they are all negative.

COMMON SENSE

It's always lacking in these areas, figure it out guys.

So after the new patch/hotfix was released yesterday decided to starta Barca.

With me only needing a striker i decided to spend 20 odd million on one. I managed to get Luis Suarez for 18m and after 15 games he has been pathetic to say the least (average rating of 5.20), so decided to call him in for a private chat.

I tell him his form hasn't been up to standards and now he wants to leave club after 3 months!!!!!

This for me needs looking at.

i agree with everything being said here. chats go two ways: you either make a good comment (that seems to have no point at all) or you upset the player and it has bad consequences.

my example:

just bought a 18 year old goalkeeper, on a hot prospect contract with £1000 a week wages and with 2 older more experienced goalkeepers in the first team put him into my reserves. he was unhappy with this (this is a different problem that seems to have arrisen, FM10 i could pop a player into reserves no problem, this time round seems i have to keep players on the first team page with available to play for reserves on them all).

go into a private chat and no options to explain why hes in the reserves, etc etc only options are negative and inflammatory.

ok i know you generally have to warn a player theyre going into the reserves but a player like that shouldnt expect to get straight into the first team.

good potential feature but causes way too many problems to be useful. its only feature at the moment is to create bad vibes, it has no positive outcomes so far as i can tell.