Poor second half performance

Playing as Man utd in my second season, my 1st season went well, managed to win the premiership title and the FA cup.

This season however has been pretty bad, just played an away match against west ham and had of 3-0 lead at half time. Second half comes, I tell my players not to get complacent, I sub my attacking midfielder for a defensive midfielder. At the end of the match the score is 3-3.

This last game pretty much sums up my entire season, especially my away form. My team always plays great in the first half and manages to get a good lead, but then out of nowhere in the second half my team just seems to collapse, either that or the opposition gets a surge of heart. These multitude of away draws (even against much weaker teams) has put my team 5th on the table with only a couple of games left in the season. Not great for Man Utd standards.

Anyway is there anyway to counter this? Ive tried subbing more defensively minded players on, Ive tried setting the team to play more defensively, Ive tried doing nothing at all. But it seems if I get a first half lead the other team always seems to play really well in the second half. Sometimes I end up hoping that we dont score in the first half.

This may well be a 'team talk' problem. The AI is getting the better of you in the half-time team talk. There's a first class thread on team talks by Wolfsong - I think it's in the tactics forum. Check it out.

I find that the old 'Don't get complacent' phrase shouldn't be applied to anyone with a rating of 8 or higher. I'm guessing that, up 3-0, you had a handful of 8s or 9s. They tend to get demoralized as they think your being under-appreciative.

With a good team, you can easily be up 2-0 and still have mostly (or even all) 7s. This is the ideal 'Don't get complacent' situation, I think. Mostly 7s, but up only 1-0, 'Encouragement' is the way to go. But in your cited instance, it's probable that you should be slightly more positive. 'Pleased' should keep them happy enough without letting them get too complacent.

Hmmm interesting, I havent used the "pleased" option for a long long time as it used to make my players mess up alot (back in the days of FM 06).

Maybe things have changed since then

A long if invaluable discussion on this is in Wolfsong's Guide to team talks in the tActics forum.