Cannot get this player to perform.

I signed this guy on a free after he was released from Barcelona a few years ago. He has never been outstanding for me, despite his huge potential and impressive statistics, but I put this down to his young age. However, he is now 24 and needs to be performing; trouble is, I just can't get him playing well. For a striker with his attributes, his goalscoring record is very poor and he misses some unbelievable one-on-ones. He is worth £22m and Real Madrid have been sniffing, but I'd like to get him performing. I'm losing patience however. He has an average rating of above 7 for the past few seasons, but I can't fathom how as to my mind he really hasn't played well.

Some of you may say this is an okay return for a striker, but my club consistently challenges on all fronts and ten league goals a season simply isn't good enough. Bear in mind he scored at least one hattrick I can remember last season too, that means he scored in a maximum of 8 games out of 29 last season - really not good enough:

I'd like to think I've been pretty good at getting the best out of players over the years on FM, but this guy has me stumped.

I signed this guy on a free after he was released from Barcelona a few years ago. He has never been outstanding for me, despite his huge potential and impressive statistics, but I put this down to his young age. However, he is now 24 and needs to be performing; trouble is, I just can't get him playing well. For a striker with his attributes, his goalscoring record is very poor and he misses some unbelievable one-on-ones. He is worth £22m and Real Madrid have been sniffing, but I'd like to get him performing. I'm losing patience however. He has an average rating of above 7 for the past few seasons, but I can't fathom how as to my mind he really hasn't played well.

Some of you may say this is an okay return for a striker, but my club consistently challenges on all fronts and ten league goals a season simply isn't good enough. Bear in mind he scored at least one hattrick I can remember last season too, that means he scored in a maximum of 8 games out of 29 last season - really not good enough:

I'd like to think I've been pretty good at getting the best out of players over the years on FM, but this guy has me stumped.

What formation do you play him in? What team instructiosn etc etc need a bit more info to try and help.

Although I do agree he is a very veyr good player, Id like to see a screenshot of your other striker who is rated better. He must be a machine

I've tried to use him as an Advanced Forward, because my other good striker Kruchin, is a beast when playing as a poacher and I am reluctant to play two poachers. I am contemplating using Kruchin as a Complete Forward and Valle as the Poacher, though I'd still rather keep Kruchin as a poacher

I've faffed about with my tactic a bit this season, and right now I'm playing like this:

The 451 with two wingers (set them as inside forwards) and stick him up front on his own as a poacher.

The 451 with two wingers (set them as inside forwards) and stick him up front on his own as a poacher.

I never play with wingers on FM, I don't have any in my entire squad.

Retrain your strikers, that's what I tend to do

The 451 with two wingers (set them as inside forwards) and stick him up front on his own as a poacher.

This would be the best way to play him. Your strikers however seem similar to mine. I would set the taller one as a target man and the little one as a poacher. Your "higher rated" striker wont score as many goals as before but he will rack up alot of assists aiding your new smaller faster poacher.

Nevermind just double checked your strikers stats. I would retrain the smaller one as a winger or a CAM. Your other striker doesnt have the passing I would be looking for to play them both together.

i would actually try playing him as an AMC (Inside Forward - Attack) since you do not use wingers.

Thanks for the feedback.

Is there no way Valle could perform consistently well as a striker (alongside Kruchin)? Again I am reluctant to retrain him to an AMC (my first-choice AMC is only 20 and has 20 for Pace and Dribbling - can play as an AM or an IF), and the backup for AMC is very good too, so I think I'll sell Valle if he has no future as a striker...

Does he do better when you play him in Kruchins position? Try sitting Kruchin out as I think he's stealing all your blokes goals.

Well he is a striker, problem is in my opinion that you are playing two very similar players at the same time. Both on attack duty. Both will be instructed to play on the shoulder of defenders on go on similar runs.

Maybe they just are to similar to work together the way you want them to.

If you don't want to push Valle back as a AMC then I would probably try using Valle as a complete forward on support and have Kruchin as the poacher.

Although some of Valles stats are a bit weak in some areas he is not really poor at anything so I'm sure that he would be able to play the complete forward role quite well.

When I play two really good strikers up front with different roles, I set them to swap during the match. There's always one position which scores the most, so this evens it out.

You basically have two of the same player. It'd be like Man Utd playing two Hernandezes up front; two players who want to make runs off the last defender and poach goals.

Valle has some great mentals and is a good passer for a striker. I'd be playing him as a deep lying forward and getting him to feed his strike partner, while acting as a second outlet for goals. Unfortunately you also have an AMC to do this so chances are he's just getting lost in attacking moves.

I think the problem is what some have implied, with no wing players it's hard to make 2 striker equally good, one will always be more dominant than the other. Your ball distribution will come mostly from the center and I'm guessing a lot of your goals come from center pass-through with 2 strikers and probably your AMC too trying to get to it and pass-through ball is just that, get to the ball smash it into the net, the chance of you passing into a team-mate without being offside is slim also you're playing both strikers in similar position, Advance forward and Poacher has basically the same duties the only difference is AF are allowed to create some play while poacher's objective is only to convert goals. Imo two strikers with basically the same duties up front with one focused way of getting the ball to them means one of them simply not going to perform as well as you'd like him to be

On a side note if you're happy with your tactic and it's performing well, and you think Angel Valle underperforming and can be replaced with another prospect and you can make some good money off him then do it imo