Not Feeling the Love in Liverpool

[gunnerfan]

In my current game, I started at Shamrock Rovers, moved on to Hull City (got them to the Premiership) and have now moved on to Liverpool. And for the first time, I find I'm having a hard time with team morale. I mean, we went went 4-1-0 in pre-season friendlies (and the one draw was against Barcelona, away), then opened the season with a 1-0 win at Portsmouth and a 4-0 win home against Bolton. I say (I think) the right things at team talks, left the captain (Gerrard) and vice-captain (Carragher) in place. But even though most everyone is "superb" after the match, most of them slide back to "good" shortly after. My possible explanations are 1) premiership players are more skeptcal and less easily impressed than their lowe-division colleagues and will "wait and see" until the team runs up several EPL wins; 2) they know that I listed my favorite team as Arsenal and are deeply offended; or 3) there is something in the whole team morale thing that I'm not getting. The squad as a whole tends to be very determined.

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

[gunnerfan]

Well, after a hard-fought League Cup victory against Brighton and a ludicrous goal-less draw at home against newly promoted Burnley, the average of team morale was at "very good". So I supposed I was making progress. Then we had a two week break for internationals, and now everyone has slid back down to "good", even though we sit in second position in the EPL. Just for fun, I checked the squads of Blackburn Rovers (currently in 1st) and Man Utd (currently in 3rd), and almost everyone on both squads was "okay". So now I'm wondering if maybe at the premiership level, morale doesn't get that high unless the team is on the brink of winning the title or something.

Anyone else out there playing the EPL, how do you see your players' morale going? Anyone consistently at "superb"?