Have Teamtalks Changed?

Since starting a new save with Liverpool on 12.2.2, I've been having a terrible time with teamtalks and, as a consequence, morale. Out of around 12 matches, I've had very few positive reactions and an absolute motherload of negative reactions ("looked to switch off", "lost motivation", "stressed" and "seemed to lose focus") despite doing the same things I did on my previous, and highly successful, Manchester United save.

It's got to a point where, even though we were top of the Premier League in October and unbeaten, each and every single player's morale was "abysmal", and despite being top, I'd had enough because I honestly didn't know what I was doing anymore. It forced me to guess instead of going with my intuition which had previously been 99% correct. Now nothing works, and I've deleted the save.

One thing I did notice that it was usually that youth players that I'd promoted to the first team that reacted positively in teamtalks.

So what is it? Is is a problem with the latest patch? Is it because it's Liverpool and the real-life slump has been coded into the player's mentalities? Was it player personalities i.e. ambitious vs determined? Or is it because my manager character is in his first job with a "Professional" reputation, and as such, is looked down upon by the more senior players?

I'm guessing it's actually the last one and it's been tweaked in the latest patch (as I said, I never had this with my United save, which was started with 12.0.0), but I still don't see how every single player (and eventually the more positive youth players) ended up "abysmal" when they were unbeaten and top of the league.

It's probably the starting reputation that it's really important for the motivation now, i always start with lower league clubs so i don't know what reputation would be necessary to get their respect for Liverpool, i'm guessing international footballer.

Next time you can just check on the ass.man feedback if they are not motivated to play for you because of your low reputation.

Yeah. Actually, I've just realised that it's not a million miles away from the situation at Chelsea when Andre Villas-Boas was manager.

Mostly reputation I started unemployed and got Norwich job with semi-pro reputation and they never listened to my team talks. I pretty much always use calm for the whole team then assertive I have faith one for each position and nine times out of ten it results in positives.

Unfortunately, there is a manager reputation bug in this year’s edition: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/293822-Manager-reputation-not-functioning-properly-anymore.

You need to go to reports and then select the tab match performance and there you will find out, that the majority of your squad is not motivated to play for you because your reputation is too low. Even though you reputation bar is high enough.

It’s just because you didn’t picked a high enough starting manager rep in the beginning. There is not much what you can do, to change this. Outperforming for 2.5 season (including winning manager of the year was not enough in my save game. I didn’t even picked Liverpool, but the lowest 3rd division club in Belgium.

I guess, that SI has made artificial difficulty levels based on your starting reputation. Instead of improving the oppositions AI, they have broken everybody's game without any warning or choice.

FM 12: "It's not your tactics, it's your starting reputation".

Fabioke, did you not try playing on beyond those initial two and a half seasons? Maybe with more sustained success over a longer period of time that issue might go away?

It only goes away once you win a trophy as it stupid it may sound.

If you happen to get promoted without winning any of the lower divisions.. it can be annoying for a while.

I've had experience with it in my save. I started out with Sunday League rep in Italy managing Giacomense and then Mezzocorona at the lowest level in the league system.

I've since gained a promotion and increased my reputation with some overachieving. At first, it bugged me that the players at Mezzocorona didn't respect me or had trouble motivating themselves to play for me (whatever the text says). It didn't stop me getting promotion with them though.

I've since moved on to manage Perugia where I am getting the same lack of respect/motivation issues. I do, however, have an old save with Mezzocorona that I am just loading up to check. I'm wondering if I did get rid of the message by the end of my time there. To be honest, I stopped checking after a while and just didn't take any notice of it.

And the verdict is..... well, yes, I've checked that old save and even at the end of my time there where I had promoted and consolidated the team, I was still having the same kind of message. 'Some members of the squad - particularly [my two best players] - are having trouble motivating themselves when you are their manager'.

At this point, my reputation is regional. The club's reputation is local. So yes, there definitely seems to be a problem here, because I honestly would have thought that the squad would respect me after my time there. I finished mid-table first season, finished 2nd in my second season, then consolidated in mid-table and got the overachievers award in my third season. I was untouchable with the board and also headhunted by Perugia, a much bigger club. Seems weird to me that my players would have found it difficult to motivate themselves for me after the success we had experienced together.

Coentrao, does it definitely go away when you win a trophy then? Have you got any evidence of that?

Weird thing is, I just loaded up my Perugia save, and I went to play a new game.... when I go to get my assistant's feedback, I don't have that message! So obviously it does go away eventually! I'm a Sunday League Manager at Perugia.

Although above I said I was getting issues with Perugia, it appears that I no longer am. Perhaps I was just getting that message initally on joining the club. I don't know.

One of the players who wasn't motivated to play for me at Mezzocorona now plays for me at Perugia. It seems that he doesn't have motivation problems with me at Perugia.

Coentrao, does it definitely go away when you win a trophy then? Have you got any evidence of that?

I no longer have my Fortuna Sittard save available but after a few seasons finishing 5th place it finally went away when i won the league, even got to the dutch cup final before and the quarter-final of the Europa League but it wasn't enough to make it go away.

Once i won the league it never showed up again.

I have always played as a Sunday League player. Got promoted with West Ham and went 5th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 4th in the Premier League and my reputation was still low. Never won a competition but got to a Final. All very irritating.

It makes me laugh really because a lot of people go on about making the game as realistic as possible but when you choose ex International footballer as your starting rep all realism goes out of the window!!

I'm just really fed up now. No matter how hard I try, the entire team's morale becomes "abysmal", and I can't see how I'm going to be able to win anything and make the problem go away with a team in that state.

So fed up in fact, that I ended up airing my frustrations in a bug report for a seperate, and equally annoying issue here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/304649-12.2.2-Lower-League-Squad-Status-Issue-Still-Not-Fixed-A-Plea-About-Patches

All I wish is for SI to somehow give us back the ability to use whichever patch we want, because 12.0.4 was the game I paid for, not this. I feel like I can't play it in it's current condition, it's gone backwards.

I'd also asked about joining the beta testing team a few months back as I'd done it before on FM2009, and was told that I couldn't, even though on that version I'd spent many hours putting myself out to help with UI issues and was thanked for my contributions. I KNOW that if I was on the team, I would've spotted this immediately (how it wasn't spotted I don't know), had it reported and hopefully it would've been fixed before the patch had been released. I'm just so, so frustrated knowing that I could've helped.

I got my assistant to do my team talks and left it at that. Only way out I could find.

Even though I have experienced being ignored by all my players, I kept winning anyways so that their morale stayed reasonably high.

What is your team talk strategy?

I have always played as a Sunday League player. Got promoted with West Ham and went 5th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 4th in the Premier League and my reputation was still low. Never won a competition but got to a Final. All very irritating.

I remember commenting on this example in other thread. I could walk into a Championship team now having never played the game above park with mates, but if we were promoted I'd have an unshakable bond with the players.

I remember commenting on this example in other thread. I could walk into a Championship team now having never played the game above park with mates, but if we were promoted I'd have an unshakable bond with the players.

Thats very true.

Also, i had an issue with reputation aswell. I started as Leicester, got them up to runners up to the prem a few years later, won the euro cup, league cup, went to Real Madrid where i won countless La ligas and Spanish cup doubles and even CL, managed the number one ranked national team in the world France at the time, but still was only continental reputation :/ very buggy to me...

I got my assistant to do my team talks and left it at that. Only way out I could find.

This seems useful as a workaround until SI get the rep balance right, I was having a terrible time in my first season as Celtic manager until I started letting Mjallby do my team talks and we managed to win the Scottish cup in the end, so hopefully the players will start to respect me enough to be able to take back control of team talks from this season.