Morale

So my team are doing very well in the league and cups, but morale is strangly low. Why is this and how do I increase it?

Many thanks

Depends on your press conferences and team talks etc. Granted that the most important impact on morale is results but you have to remember that players have various personalities and will react differently to things you say and do. That's why you need to tailor team talks on an individual basis in some cases. If you are on a players favoured personnel list you can normally kick his butt and he will respond favourably but do that to somebody else and they will be well hacked off. It's all about trial and error and learning about how to motivate different personalities. The other possibility is that you have a spread of many different personalities in the team so they are not gelling as well together

I largely ignore it & never get any adverse results as a consequence.

Just praise for MOM after every game & try to rotate players when convenient.

Morale is the single most messed up/in need of an overhaul part of the game. It's just stupid. One bad result can ruin your entire season. It's just not realistic.

How can one result screw your whole season? Its just one game.

If you tell your players "Relax and let the result come" and at half time "Remind the players the pressure is off" and afterwards maybe don't say anything, except criticize the professional players who played poorly, then even if you lose it should be a very minor hit to morale.

I recruit players that are highly determined and professional specifically for this reason, so that I can tell them my honest opinion, and they will generally handle it very well! After a press conference where we stunk it up I will tell the press morale is down, but after praising the performers and criticizing the poorest individuals most players are back at 'very good' or superb.

Of course coaching staff comes into it, as well. I tend to look for coaches who can both man manage and motivate, but often you have to get one that only motivates (and coaches at a high level) and so then I bring in a man manager as a natural compliment. The way I have had it described is that motivators get the best out of your players, for training or games, but man managers keep the spirits up and morale high.

Morale is the single most messed up/in need of an overhaul part of the game. It's just stupid. One bad result can ruin your entire season. It's just not realistic.

I consider morale as a resource pool.

Wins and support/praise adds red lifeblood to the health pool. Losses and criticism/high expectations removes red lifeblood from the health pool.

When you support/praise, you also add green complacency to the complacency pool. When you criticise/expect a lot you add blue nervousness to the nervousness pool. I would even say that when blue is taken out, green is added and vice versa.

So basically, the "morale mini-game" is all about keeping a balance between these three. High red is good but high red over time equals high green, which is bad. You must balance those two with blue, but high blue is also bad.

In other words, your job is not to praise wins and criticise losses

When it comes to the direct question in the OP: is this your first season? Have you developed rapport with your players, do the admire you? If not, this may explain why the morale is low even though you do well. You need to earn that trust, even with International starting experience.

How can one result screw your whole season? Its just one game.

EXACTLY! This SHOULD be the way it works! I think they have things the wrong way around. It should be 4 or 5 losses in a row = low morale, not 1 loss = low morale for 4 or 5 games in a row. It's the most unrealistic and annoying part of the game for me. They have it completely wrong and it needs sorting. Morale is too fragile, and drops too dramatically way too easily.

People having abysmal morale should be a very rare exception that happens when things are exceptionally bad.

We lost 5-0 to Sheffield United (who we were expected to lose to and were running away with the league). At the time, we were comfortably in the play-offs (about 9 points clear of outside) and after this one loss, everybody just wanted to kill themselves. My strikers stopped scoring (up to then we were the highest scorers in the league - we finished about 5th highest) and everybody was just miserable for the remaining 7 games of the season. We ended up missing out on the play-offs. I honestly believe this was down to the morale side, which is utterly, utterly ridiculous.

I do feel morale has waaaayyy too much effect on a team's performance.

You have to start thinking about morale in a basis that there are 3 levels:

low,medium,high(and around these 3 levels several morale status).

In a working enviroment(as in a football team), the reasons that result a better morale to the employees(the players in a team) ,or not, are:

low:bad team setup and heavy defeats or loses in a row

(solution:do not play with random transfers and tactics)

medium:good team setup

(continue this way and improve your interactions in the team)

high:good team setup and good relations

(continue this way and just avoid complacency)

You have to start thinking about morale in a basis that there are 3 levels:

low,medium,high(and around these 3 levels several morale status).

In a working enviroment(as in a football team), the reasons that result a better morale to the employees(the players in a team) ,or not, are:

low:bad team setup and heavy defeats or loses in a row

(solution:do not play with random transfers and tactics)

medium:good team setup

(continue this way and improve your interactions in the team)

high:good team setup and good relations

(continue this way and just avoid complacency)

Tbh. i'd rather they just sorted it...

Tbh. i'd rather they just sorted it...

well, if someone does not use teamtalks,interactions,team meetings etc can safely say: sort it out SI!! But this is fm and everything is in for a reason

Morale isn't broken, every interactions with your players needs to be logical & more importantly consistent, as with real life if you do not pay attention to what you've said in the past or say the wrong thing to the wrong player at the wrong time then things can get out of control pretty quickly & imo that is how it should be.

In all the seasons I've played on FM12 there has only been one that was ruined by a lack of confidence/low morale & at that time my oldest senior player was 21 which meant my team lacked the mental strength needed to get out of their slump.

This is correct morale is not broken, in the case of a young squad it is more important than ever to have a positive interaction with the members of the team because when athletes are filled with the desire to have fun, they are likely to:

• Strive with all their heart for excellence.

• Dedicate themselves to consistent hard training.

• Show the self-confidence to make the tough decisions and sacrifices it takes to train and compete at their best.

• Be anxious to show their ability in competition, free of fear or self-doubt.

• Gain personal strength from respecting, helping and caring about their teammates.

This is when young players feel important and they see that they are a prospect for the club

Morale is not "broken" it's just completely untrue to life, done wrong, and completely unrealistic.

If you consider the factor that none manager,coach or player is perfect, then it seems like a balanced system(the morale system) that binds well in the simulation with the rest of its features.

Morale is not "broken" it's just completely untrue to life, done wrong, and completely unrealistic.

Would you care to detail precisely what is unrealistic in the system & how you think it should work?

Ranting that something is broken is easy but is all too often ignored, offering constructive input gets you noticed.

Would you care to detail precisely what is unrealistic in the system & how you think it should work?

Ranting that something is broken is easy but is all too often ignored, offering constructive input gets you noticed.

Sure... Read my posts.

Sure... Read my posts.

Morale is the single most messed up/in need of an overhaul part of the game. It's just stupid. One bad result can ruin your entire season. It's just not realistic.

EXACTLY! This SHOULD be the way it works! I think they have things the wrong way around. It should be 4 or 5 losses in a row = low morale, not 1 loss = low morale for 4 or 5 games in a row. It's the most unrealistic and annoying part of the game for me. They have it completely wrong and it needs sorting. Morale is too fragile, and drops too dramatically way too easily.

People having abysmal morale should be a very rare exception that happens when things are exceptionally bad.

We lost 5-0 to Sheffield United (who we were expected to lose to and were running away with the league). At the time, we were comfortably in the play-offs (about 9 points clear of outside) and after this one loss, everybody just wanted to kill themselves. My strikers stopped scoring (up to then we were the highest scorers in the league - we finished about 5th highest) and everybody was just miserable for the remaining 7 games of the season. We ended up missing out on the play-offs. I honestly believe this was down to the morale side, which is utterly, utterly ridiculous.

So you suffered a slump in form after taking a battering, not exactly conclusive proof that the system is flawed given that it could simply indicate that your players lost belief in their own ability or you got your pre-match expectations & post-match responses wrong.

Sorry but one game should not make such a massive and long lasting difference. Particularly since we were 5th with a handfull of games to go, and the media expected us to finish 23rd. It's ridiculous. It needs scaling back. Picking option 1 instead of option 3 shouldn't result in things like this either. Then you may as well stop calling the game "Football Manager" and change it to "Russian Roulette". That's what it feels like at times. That too is ridiculous, but that's a completely different issue.

The plot thickens.

The effects were hardly long lasting as you're looking at a little over a months worth of matches at a time in the season when the pressure is really on & when it mattered your players were found wanting.

Have you considered that given you were predicted to be in a relegation dogfight that your 5th place was a slightly false position & had been gained due to momentum that was stopped dead in its tracks by a 5-0 humping?

What expectations did you place on the players before the match?

How did you react at full-time?

Did you call a team meeting after the loss & what approach did you take?

Were any of your following matches against fellow promotion/play-off contenders?

No I don't think we were in a false position. There were like seven games to go. We'd been in the play-off spots consistantly all season. I brought in an entirely new first team apart from three players, so we were really an unknown quantity. I fully expect us to be around there again this season. Indeed, with much the same side, the media now reckon we'll finish 13th, and the board want a top half finish. We'd previously beaten Sheffield United 4-2 in the season. It was a tough run-in, but i'm talking about MORALE here. People went from being fine to abysmal. For the rest of the seaon. That's just silly.

I think morale works well and is quite accurate, even if it is annoying!

It seems every season you have at least one manager get it pubicly wrong, wether it be Keegans "I'll love it" rant, giving to much pressure to over performing players, or Phil Brown slamming an already struggling Hull on the pitch.

Get it wrong bad enough and some people never recover, Hull never did. They even made it a goal celebration the season after!

No I don't think we were in a false position. There were like seven games to go. We'd been in the play-off spots consistantly all season. I brought in an entirely new first team apart from three players, so we were really an unknown quantity. I fully expect us to be around there again this season. Indeed, with much the same side, the media now reckon we'll finish 13th, and the board want a top half finish. We'd previously beaten Sheffield United 4-2 in the season. It was a tough run-in, but i'm talking about MORALE here. People went from being fine to abysmal. For the rest of the seaon. That's just silly.

I can agree that the nervousness and complacency that sets in the 10 last league matches of the season is a bit over the top. The threshold is also a very abrupt. 27th match everything is entirely alright. 28th match you do things exactly as well as you have the previous 27 but all 11 players are either nervous, complacent or uninterested (or all of them simultaneously), and some are even "playing without confidence" with Abysmal morale for no reason.

The fact that the first season, before you have managed to win anything for obvious reasons, very few of your players will listen to a single word you're saying, also contributes to a situation where morale drops terribly and there's nothing you can do about it. I resent the decision to use starting reputation as a "difficulty slider", not because the game shouldn't be more difficult but because the first couple of seasons you are almost a passenger in your own game until you have won something with them. I guess this is alright for those few who play FM in "career mode" and requires a realistic simulation of a managing career starting at the bottom of the ladder. For everyone else it is a tragedy!

I think the usage of morale is justifiable and accurate, but its effects are a little too extreme. Players will feel awful after losing, but they also won't become nearly useless for the next match. Talent and effort should really rule the day, not whether or not you won your previous match.

Team meetings are broken, or at least need serious work on them.

My Dortmund team have been drawing too many games and were sitting 3rd in the table after the winter break. Our first game back was a medium difficulty away game, where I opted to play a bit safe and we came out of it with a 0-0 draw. My assistant said we played badly and I should tell the players so, but I disagreed and told them we were unlucky (we missed the only CCC of the game in the 92nd minute).

Afterwards called a team meeting though, I wanted to let the players know that although we were unlucky, we now need to push on now if we want to win the league. The initial reaction was minimal but positive, my captain backed me up, then I asked the room and a young, rotation RB (who had played in the previous game) piped up and said he disagreed with my captain. I'd never seen this reaction before so I asked my captain to reply and he says assertively to the the RB "Have you got a problem with me?". Then I tell them to stop arguing, and remarkably the overall reaction has been very positive for most of the squad, despite taking a hit on these two who have argued.

I decide to cut my losses and end the meeting, but what do I say?

"That's exactly the reaction I was looking for" - not really because I didn't want to start a fight in my first team squad. "I have to say I'm disappointed with that reaction" - not really because the overall impact was (somehow) very good. So, backed into a corner by those options, I went down the middle, and cautiously say "I guess I misjudged the situation", which instantly destroys all the positive impact my meeting had had up to that point.

End result was that 15 players reacted badly and 1 reacted well (marginally), morale has gone from mostly very good or better, to mostly fairly good, plus I have two players who now don't like each other.

Moral of the story, I think, is save before even attempting a team meeting.

My side crashed out of the Champions League at the semi final stage, in very painful circumstances, we were winning 1-0 in the first leg, at home, they tied it around halftime, but were still under a lot of pressure. They won in the 90th+3 after a goalline clearance by my LB went against the crossbar and a opposition defender nodded home (my LB was a little guy, fast with good dribbling, the CB was a world class CB). The team was very upset. We lost the 2nd leg in Turin, 3-0 I think, the World Footballer of the Year dribbled it almost from kickoff, and finished from 20-22 yards out. Again, the team was upset. We wanted the final as a minimum, but Sevilla is the 2nd best team in the world, and Juventus is tops.

I prepared my team for the loss, so perhaps I had a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that my players didn't win because I told them I didn't think they would win (wished them good luck, I believe) but at the same time we went on to win La Liga and the Spanish Cup, so its not like they became useless or anything after the loss.

Pay attention to the personality of your players, pay attention to past team talks, criticize professional players when they deserve it, and don't always put the pressure ON your team. Sometimes put it on, some times surprise them and take it off.

Team meetings are broken, or at least need serious work on them.

...

Moral of the story, I think, is save before even attempting a team meeting.

Indeed, they're only really half baked right now. They should be avoided unless you're desperate for the time being, and need some serious work for FM13.

The morale system in general is probably the hardest part of the game to master, because it needs you to think about the players you sign and maybe pass up on a "better" player in favour of one with the right personality on occasion, and then understand expectation management, maintaining motivation and that a green reaction isn't necessarily good.