My AM can't make up his mind?

Here's a new one. In the advice from my AM during a match, one comment was, "It appears Scott Wootten is not used to closing down opponents as often as he is being asked to today." Immediately under it was, "It appears that Scott Wootten is used to closing down opponents more often than he is being asked to do today." I'm not sure which it was, but Wootten finished the match with two goals and was Man of the Match.

I guess a little schizophrenia is good for performance?

Do you have the players position set to a role like automatic? It changes more frequently then depending upon how the team are playing and other factors too. It may just be that your assistant manager is terrible at judging the situations as well, I like the idea of the assistant manager providing feedback but to date it hasn't felt like its substantial enough to help turn the tide of a game yet for me.

Ignore your Assman.

santy001 - No, it's a center back set to defend. I've had it happen again since my initial post. The only thing I can think of is that it happens when I'm using the "Hassle Opponents" shout, so maybe there's a conflict between that and the default setting in the tactic I'm using. Still, the whole purpose of the shout is to override the tactic.

PFMM - That's the conclusion I'm coming to. I've noticed that the AM's advice is triggered off of the stats generated in the game, so that if your team completes a few short passes in a row at the beginning of the match, the AM will say, "We should be playing a short passing game" even though you already are. When a player's condition % drops below a certain level (it varies by player, probably based on his natural fitness rating), he "looks exhausted and you should think about substituting him". Unfortunately, the condition % doesn't just drop steadily over the course of a match. If a player takes a knock, it can drop down low, but then rises again as the match goes on (and he "shakes it off"). But you still get the exhaustion memo. In other words, you have to make your decisions based on your knowledge of how the game works, which is what we did before the AM started giving advice. I've started posting the game stats instead of the AM's advice.