Boosting Morale and Improving fitness

Hey guys and gals,

I'm in need of some tips on how to improve my fitness and morale for my team. Ive tried everythnig to give my players back some good condition yet they are always tired regardless.

There morale is so low that we have now gone from 6th to 14th, I can't win for love nor money and I think its the morale effecting the players as I can win in the cup. Infact im in the semis of the league cup as ive beaten every prem team I faced, including Man City of whom I was 2 goals down to.

HELP

thanks

If your fixture list is not too heavy, you should arrange some friendly matches between league games. Arrange them against your u-18 team or against the weakest team you can find. Beating these little teams will improve your teams morale. Remember to let all the lads you can have a run in these matches, it will increase the morale for the entire team. Also try interacting with them more, for example if their latest match rating is 6.3 or below, tell them they need to play better. 99% of the time players react well to this for me and they get 1 or 2 morale levels worth of boost. The same applies to good performances and praise ( 7.5 rating or better). Try interacting with them about their training too, but be careful, in my experience you need to more watch your words here as they might get upset more easily. Trial and error!

As for match fitness, what's your training schedule like? If it's a heavy one, your players will be more tired, so lower it a bit. Do your players have low natural fitness? If so, try giving them a 1 day rest after matches, they will recover better. Make sure you substitute players out before their stamina gets below 70 during matches, this way they won't be totally exhausted afterwards. Rotating your team also helps, for example giving certain players a rest every 3-4 games, but of course this requires decent players on the bench.

Hope these advices help!

That's a bit of an essay question, difficult to answer without knowing what you mean by "tried everything."

As for your sudden loss of form, that was originally caused by overconfidence. Overconfidence = careless play = losing = poor confidence = worse play = losing = etc. Once you hit that spiral it's pretty much "goodbye season."

To stop it happening in the first place: morale needs to be balanced (but high) NOT MAXED OUT. Superb morale is a warning sign. Base post-match team talks on performance not result, don't give positive team talks for OK performances.

That's a bit of an essay question, difficult to answer without knowing what you mean by "tried everything."

As for your sudden loss of form, that was originally caused by overconfidence. Overconfidence = careless play = losing = poor confidence = worse play = losing = etc. Once you hit that spiral it's pretty much "goodbye season."

To stop it happening in the first place: morale needs to be balanced (but high) NOT MAXED OUT. Superb morale is a warning sign. Base post-match team talks on performance not result, don't give positive team talks for OK performances.

Hmm - maybe a warning sign, but I wouldn't go as far as say that morale shouldn't be maxed out. The really exceptional performances, for mine and AI players both, usually happens when players have superb morale. When morale is very high I usually try to counter overconfidence in the press conference.