2nd season woes

Hello,

I am in the October of my second season with Brighton in the English n1 league. Last season we finished 4th.

This season is going a lot worse. We are on 12th place currently. Many matches havn't even been close. Questions:

1) Could it be that the AI adjusts to your performance in the last season to keep the game challenging?

I am watching most of the games in full, analyzing very closely how the tactics work, off-ball behaviour of players etc. What I noticed is that in the games since the start of the new season all opposing teams played an excellent passing/control game. They often made 12-14 quick and excellent passes working the ball closer to my goal. In the last season the opposing teams seemed to miss pases a lot more often. Also they were less successfull with long range efforts.

Added Info: I have played with the demo the first 6month, with version 1.3 since winter 2010/2011. So if the change was due to changing to 1.3version it should have showed in the second half of the last season already, right? Or maybe the transfer AI got so much better? Help! I would really like to understand.

2) Could it be that my team is simply playing worse?

I dont think so. There were a lot of things I didnt understand at the start of the first season (I am new to the game).

- I didnt understand the power of loaning players for free from premier league teams. So now in fact this season I have a stronger team.

- I also changed the training plans and made them more effective. I just double-checked the results. Almost all players got stronger over the last 12 months

- My team has a better fitness coming up to the matches than last season (mainly due to getting kicked out of all cups early)

- Everyone is always match fit, I checked that

- It cant be that I dont adjust enough to the opposition, because I didnt do that at all in the first season and it worked well.

- It isnt the morale, morale was good in 1-2 of the games that went wrong

What am I missing? I understand that there is a certain luck-factor involved in a single game ,but the luck factor should even out over the course of 1 season versus another season.

Thanks for any ideas to the above.

1) No. But in a minute lots of people will tell you yes.

You have Second Season Syndrome, which is very common especially if you over achieve. Between seasons your reputation goes up (the game decides almost everything on reputation) and clubs who thought you were easy meat in season one are now more cautious. You have to adjust your tactics to compensate.

(I'm making a lot of assumtions here, because you've not given all that much info)

It's entirely possible that the AI managers have learnt what your preferred tactics are, and are therefore setting themselves out to counter that strategy.

Experiment with some tactical surprises and see if that helps - doesn't have to be major, something as simple as asking your fullbacks to sit deep instead of bombing forward can have a huge impact on how the game plays out against an opponent who is expecting them to be pushed up the park.

1) No. But in a minute lots of people will tell you yes.

You have Second Season Syndrome, which is very common especially if you over achieve. Between seasons your reputation goes up (the game decides almost everything on reputation) and clubs who thought you were easy meat in season one are now more cautious. You have to adjust your tactics to compensate.

As rob has put above you are suffering from "second season syndrome" which seems to be fairly common amongst forum users.

In your first season the opposition didn't see you as a major threat and basically underestimated you. Your team were allowed time & space and punished sides that slacked off or were complacent against you.

In the second season teams evaluated the others in the league and after finishing fourth the previous season you were seen as promotion candidates ie a bigger threat.

The opposition now take you more seriously, close down the space more, mark tighter, keep more men behind the ball and generally play a more defensive game against you. The tactics you used in the first season were probably high tempo, high mentality attacking ones. These type of tactics can be countered fairly easily by a team keeping men behind the ball and stopping you getting easy balls into the final third which is the style you are coming up against.

You now need to recognise that the opposition have altered their approach and don't have the same weaknesses that they did before. You need to refine your tactics to exploit the new weaknesses, these generally involve working possession more, dragging the defence out of shape, stretching the back line and then exploiting the gaps when they appear.

1) Could it be that the AI adjusts to your performance in the last season to keep the game challenging?

1) No. But in a minute lots of people will tell you yes.

You have Second Season Syndrome, which is very common especially if you over achieve. Between seasons your reputation goes up (the game decides almost everything on reputation) and clubs who thought you were easy meat in season one are now more cautious. You have to adjust your tactics to compensate.

These are pretty much the same thing, surely