Ridiculous shots to goal ratio.

I have'nt had the game all that long (around 2 weeks) but I'm finding it extremely frustrating to understand how exactly I convert my shots into goals.

My first game saw me in charge of Anderlecht, a pretty decent team in a very average league, so I could give myself a chance to get to learn the game without getting hammered every week. I started a little bumpy with lots of draws and the odd win but it was pretty clear I was not scoring enough goals which was annoying as I was creating tens of chances a game. My formation was fairly attacking and my strategy was too so its not as if I was hoping to nick wins on the counter attack, but my shots were either smashed wide, hit directly at the keeper or headers which flew all over the place.

I bought new strikers with better finishing attributes, hired better coaches, instructed my entire team to not shoot from range, played one up front, played two up front, introduced young squad strikers, changed how and where my crosses were coming in and still these steps made no difference to my scoring.

After 18 games of my first season I had scored only 16 goals and won 2 games with 14 draws! But what REALLY annoyed me was that when I looked back at the stats up to that point my team had had 124 shots, 52 of which were on target and obviously resulting in 16 goals. While on the other hand the opposition had made, in the same number of games, 58 attempts, 23 on target and scored 19!!! Now I've heard of teams having bad luck but that was just outrageous.

I was eventually sacked after 22 games and decided to begin a new game thinking I'd just had a bad start but exactly the same process happened with the next 3 teams I took charge of, loads of shots for my team, hardly any goals while the opposition just lamped shots in from 30 yards whenever they felt like it.

In the end I took charge of a big team (Roma) with loads of quality strikers with good finishing, heading and composure attributes and guess what?? Same story. Please tell me this is not how everyone of my games is going to be.

Welcome to FM mate, this happens alot and you need to be very lucky as the game is pretty damn random and so hard to score yet your opponent scores against you willy nilly. I have played games where I've had like 5 clear cut chances, hit the woodwork twice, has 20+ shots with half on target and scored 1 goal, they've had about 3 shots total, 1 on target and scored. Then I loaded that same match back up, exact same team with the exact same pre-match talk and I then win something like 5-0. From a rough estimate I'd say 90% if not more of my headers get blazed miles over yet in football alot of goals come from this, in FM this just isn't the case and I have the same problem with my players pretty much passing the ball to the keeper yet some unknown striker who can't score to save himself manages to score from the most amazing angles.

People will say this is football and it is, but it isn't football as much as it is on FM, how often do Chelsea rip a team to shreds creating half a dozen clear cut chances and fail to score in real life? not often, yet on this game that happens often, you can't do much about it because even with the best tactic and the best players the game goes random on you, you could be on fire and win 5-0, with the exact same team you play bad and can't score for **** the next match, try a different tactic or just accept you have bad luck, because this is the problem with FM for years now and I wonder when headers on the game will get fixed.

Best way to score on this game is to unleash a 30 yard screamer, because the closer you are to the goal the harder it is to score, hence why alot of the goals you concede are 25-30 yarders. You can also tell your players to rarely do long shots but even that doesn't work because they still do them, you can tell them to work the ball into the box but then watch them go for 30 yarder after 30 yarder, FM is quite honestly a poor game that takes the **** but still the best management game so you can just accept the game sucks ass and you have bad luck because it isn't going to change.

Welcome to FM mate, this happens alot and you need to be very lucky as the game is pretty damn random and so hard to score yet your opponent scores against you willy nilly. I have played games where I've had like 5 clear cut chances, hit the woodwork twice, has 20+ shots with half on target and scored 1 goal, they've had about 3 shots total, 1 on target and scored. Then I loaded that same match back up, exact same team with the exact same pre-match talk and I then win something like 5-0. From a rough estimate I'd say 90% if not more of my headers get blazed miles over yet in football alot of goals come from this, in FM this just isn't the case and I have the same problem with my players pretty much passing the ball to the keeper yet some unknown striker who can't score to save himself manages to score from the most amazing angles.

People will say this is football and it is, but it isn't football as much as it is on FM, how often do Chelsea rip a team to shreds creating half a dozen clear cut chances and fail to score in real life? not often, yet on this game that happens often, you can't do much about it because even with the best tactic and the best players the game goes random on you, you could be on fire and win 5-0, with the exact same team you play bad and can't score for **** the next match, try a different tactic or just accept you have bad luck, because this is the problem with FM for years now and I wonder when headers on the game will get fixed.

Best way to score on this game is to unleash a 30 yard screamer, because the closer you are to the goal the harder it is to score, hence why alot of the goals you concede are 25-30 yarders. You can also tell your players to rarely do long shots but even that doesn't work because they still do them, you can tell them to work the ball into the box but then watch them go for 30 yarder after 30 yarder, FM is quite honestly a poor game that takes the **** but still the best management game so you can just accept the game sucks ass and you have bad luck because it isn't going to change.

a VERY good statement !! about the Chelsea thing... they were all over birmingham the other day, only Foster the Fabulous stopped them !!

I've been playing FM for years and have always quite liked the randomness of it all but this year it just seems to be extreme. Kind of totally ruins the enjoyment of it all, I know its just a game but surely you should at least be aware in any game when you've done something right and be rewarded subsequently yet there is absolutely no logic to why I'm not scoring goals. Also I've noticed that if you 'Go on Holiday' when you have a fixture and ask your Assistant to use the same tactics and selection you will inevitably have a stormer and win 4-0 or something.

Games are for fun and I do not expect to win 90% of games but I'm not wasting my free time to play something which almost seems scripted and severely unbalanced.

If you are not yet familiar with the tactical side of the game, you might want to drop by the tactical forum, check their tactics and logics behind them and apply them to your own tactic. Or if it is too complex for your liking, you might want to download them and do your own little tweaks once you get more familiar.

You'll soon find that amount of shots on goal is not the most important thing to achieve in matches.

Ridiculous game.

I get the same problem. Its consistent over mulitple retries as well. SI just need to sort it out. And people need to stop pretending its not a problem.

Instead of making twaddle like FM live they should concentrate on making their core game work properly

Thats the thing that I love about some people on the forums, they'll suggest to look into your tactics in some way. But in most cases tactics wouldn't have any effect. When you have a start striker with an open goal infront of him you expect him to score. When that same striker repeatedly breaks through the defence and is one on one you expect him to score atleast one. When you're delivering in superb crosses to the head of your target man you expect some of the headers to atleast be on target. In these cases law of averages come into effect, and they are heavily balanced against the human player.

The problem is you are playing a computer, every person you play is the computer. I think it's why the game 'learns' your tactics so quickly - if you played the same person over and over again, you would work out how to hammer them wouldnt you?