Blasting freekicks into the wall

I'm currently managing Accrington Stanley and am having some trouble with direct freekicks- I have a striker, Peter Weatherson, who has 16 Freekick, 11 Technique, and 8 long shots. I also have Carlo Monti, who has 14 Freekick, 9 technique, and 11 long shot. When either of these players try to take a direct freekick from anywhere close, they usually blast it straight at the wall. Weatherson has the "hits freekicks with power" PPM, but Monti does not.

1. Is there any way to get these players better at not smashing it at the wall?

2. If not, is there a way to make them take a cross rather than a shot from most freekicks?

3. I've noticed that lots of times there is a freekick involving a wall, I get all my players milling around the wall, instead of clustered off to the side. This makes taking the shots more difficult, and makes it harder to score from indirect freekicks, as everyone is spread out around the box instead of concentrated where the ball is sent. Is there any way to address this?

thanks

It is a problem. If you look at the league records, you'll see that you'll be lucky to get a dozen goals from direct free kicks in the whole division in a season.

I'll be lucky if I get one direct free kick in a season, literally.

I'll be lucky if I get one direct free kick in a season, literally.

That's what I mean - a whole league of 24 teams might score 10 or 12 between the lot of them. I have a stunning dead-ball specialist (Free kicks, penalties 20, technique 14, composure 18). He's already scored his one direct free kick of the season.

ive looked into this before and the actual real life stats are similar to FM. Not that many DFK's are actually scored in real life. Remember a DFK is freekick where the shot is taken straight away, there cant be a lay off and then a hit. In the Premier league this season so far there has only been about 6-7 DFK's scored in the league so its about right on FM.

Its been that way for some time. I did seem to find something that works relatively well though.

If you have a lefty take free kicks from the left and a righty take them from the right in my experience they score more goals than if it was the opposite.

ive looked into this before and the actual real life stats are similar to FM. Not that many DFK's are actually scored in real life.

I can't find any recent Premier League stats (can anyone find the number of direct free kicks scored last season, or a site that shows the number scored so far this season?), but I found this list for last season's La Liga, and it's nowhere near as bad as the situation in this year's game. Last season in La Liga, according to that list, there were 36 goals scored from direct free kicks. I also found this article, and that seems to suggest that by the half-way point of the 2007-08 season, there had been 21 goals scored direct from free kicks. Obviously it's not exactly recent (I couldn't find anything recent and relating to the Premier League), but it still suggests, to me at least, that they're more common in real life than in this year's game.

There's also the issue (alluded to in the thread title) where in real life, most (many?) missed free kicks aren't goals because they aren't on target. In this game, it's rare for a free kick to even get past the wall.

Managing Real Madrid I had Cristiano Ronaldo score about 8 DFK's in the first season, most of them from thirty yards out. He is such a beast with free-kicks.

In the Czech league, I had a full season where there were FOUR direct free kick goals in the entire league.

Free kicks need to be improved completely, these stats show just how awful free kicks on FM are.

(This is a full season)

I've scored more from DFKs as AFC Wimbledon than I have as Man City. Dire.