AI scoring massive amounts of goals

In my first season I noticed the AI was scoring most of their goals on dead ball situations. The three main culprits are free kicks, corners and pk's.

So in my second season I took down every goal scored against me and just over 70% were from those situations. I gave up 106 goals (I have a pretty crappy team at Bury in L1...no money and spent 7 months under a transfer ban...but I digress) and 77 of those goals were from a dead ball situation.

I felt this is beyond ordinary and I am wondering if others are finding this is the same for them. It seems to me the AI rarely can score against me in open play and must rely on dead ball's to score and it is skewing the numbers.

Defend set-pieces match prep?

I've had that as my match prep for the entire second season and it didn't make a bit of difference.

i have a bury save myself, try dipping into the loan markets some nice defenders available. thats the problem with league 1, the stronger teams have strong players (rhodes) preston had ranger on loan from newcastle -_-

try diferant formations with your team also

Full backs: Mark small player

Centrebacks: Mark tall player

Central (DM) Midfielders: Man Mark

Wingers: Mark near and far posts

Striker 1: Go back (tallest one)

Striker 2: Edge of area (fastest one)

This should fix the problem. I barely concede from set pieces at all. The key is to have only one or two players as Go Back and as many players marking tall players as possible. If you have tall full backs and/or central midfielders, the Mark tall player instruction is preferable above both Man mark and Mark small player. Full backs are normally better at defending than wingers, and are therefore wasted standing by the posts. If one tall player is set to Go Back, he will often stand in the middle of the crowd and be the first to the ball unless it is crossed to far or near posts. More than one or two at Go back and their centrebacks will often have plenty of space at rear and far posts while all your players are uselessly standing in the middle. It is also pointless to keep players up front on defending corners because if a situation arises that you can go on the counter, 5-6 players are running forwards full pace anyways - and then you counter, often with the Edge of Area guy in the lead. There is no attacking penalty for drawing everyone back as far as I can tell. I would even say it is an attacking advantage in addition to being an obvious defensive advantage.

Just don't set your players to 'man mark', as they don't.

It's a shambolic aspect of the 3D but as pointed out above, if you fiddle around with the settings you'll eventually find a combination that works.

Use zone marking. also don't use the default instructions for defending set pieces because they are really bad. go with BiggusD configuration. having a tall DM/MC also helps a lot

I use a setting very similar to BiggusD's and conceded 4 corner goals last season despite having a very leaky defence.

The default settings put your full backs on the posts, which is a waste, and leaves your attacking players wandering around randomly.