"A Worrying Lack of Cohesion"

Strange. Going into the second half of my first season my squad was showing "Are Blending Well Together". But now that we've won promotion I'm getting poor results and the team-talk feedback says there's "A worrying lack of cohesion". I brought one player into the first team, but have otherwise changed nothing.

1st team: 18 players.

Rotation: Rotating Strikers, AMCs, MCs, DCs, but very slowly, giving each player 2-4 games in a row before resting for 2 games.

Team makeup: 1/2 are loanees, which doesn't help, but was necessary to gain promotion from the Argentine 2nd division in this, my first year.

I brought in one of my own strikers from the reserves to start blooding him for the next season. He doesn't appear to have any personal problems that would upset the team balance, yet my team are not performing well.

Any suggestions?

One other weird thing: The news items keep saying that "Team X finished the league in 8th place (or whatever), and face a difficult home game against league leaders, team Y. Team Y finished the league in 1st place". Yet its 2 months till the end? Is my save corrupted or something? But if it was, I wouldn't think its likely it would even load....

Not sure, perhaps its the fact that your team have won promotion so the new league is all new to them and it had an unsettling effect? I doubt just one player would cause your whole team to lose that gel tho :/

What does your training schedule looks like? Making your players train separately is VERY bad for your team morale. If the players for each position train separately your morale will go down the drain completely. At least that's what I've experienced.

"HoPeY" sounds right to me, and if u haven't changed your team around, maybe you should, some new talents from inside and outside the club. You may hav a player that could just keep your team together and settled. I may be thinking abit to far into it but could the fact of who you captain is change it? maybe a more influencial captain could make the team respond better

Never heard of that Schotsmannetje. Most people advocate separate training schedules, and I've always used them (since FM06).

Well, a new captain is certainly in order, but my team have all sorts of problems, despite winning the 2nd division (because of smart loans). We've been bleeding money all season because of a tiny stadium, and despite the fact that I've spent none of the initial 80k allocated for transfers, we're 120k in the hole. So getting a new captain is not likely. But a good idea though in general.

Never heard of that Schotsmannetje. Most people advocate separate training schedules, and I've always used them (since FM06).

There was a topic about that a few months ago I believe and there were people that seemed to be having the same problems with separate training schedules as me.

Anyhow it is true that many people use separate training schedules but they never seem to work for me though.

I use seperate training schedules i.e. a schedule for each position and I have never noticed it having any effect on moral or team "bonding"

After all, you want to have specific training schedules for each position.

Being in a small staduim I guess you don't earn much each home game, perhaps the fact your losing money is also having an affect on team morale? (Although I have no idea if that is possible in FM08)

After all, you want to have specific training schedules for each position.

I think he means one schedule for each player. I use one schedule for each position and never noticed any ill affects. My team are currently 'willing to die for each other'.

I'm scratching my head on this one. I've never seen a team lose cohesion in the team-talk feedback, unless something major had changed in the personnel. Usually 1/3 squad changed or more. I'm worried that there is something a little bugged in the save game.

Smac, try wandering through the "Personal" section of all of your players, and look at their relationships, slight concerns, etc - spend a bit of time with each player and start seeing if you spot a trend.

It may be that you have factionalism occurring, e.g., players A and B dislike each other, and half the team is backing A but half the team is backing B?

Does your captain has the Personal Interaction | Call Team Meeting action unlocked? In which case that might be worth a go.

Alternately, it may be that your captain has lost respect, so a new captain might be in order, even if its just instating a different one from within the current team. (You can do this, I think, from the Tactics | Captain menu, even mid-season, but its a pretty drastic action.)

Remember, Influence isn't the only thing to consider for Captain, in fact, since being captain increases Influence, its one of the last things I think about. I'm looking for a Captain with Determination, Team Work, Work Rate, and Composure .. who speaks the same language as the rest of the team, has been at the team 2+ years, and is one of the older players on the squad. I suspect that the hidden influence attributes Consistency and Big Matches are also pretty big for a captain. Influence I pretty much use just to break ties when the other factors are similar, though of course a pathetically low Influence is a deal-breaker.

Schots - I think that's urban myth. I've used position-dependant and individual training schedules since FM'05 and never experienced that problem. Typically the "entire team Morale is shot" problem is inconsistent young players without the resilience / experience to know how to pull out of a brief losing streak, so it snowballs nastily. You need a backbone of consistent veteran players, just like IRL.

Smac - let us know what you observe.

One other weird thing: The news items keep saying that "Team X finished the league in 8th place (or whatever), and face a difficult home game against league leaders, team Y. Team Y finished the league in 1st place". Yet its 2 months till the end? Is my save corrupted or something? But if it was, I wouldn't think its likely it would even load....

Don't worry about it, its a text bug in the news message which occurs for leagues in which there are post-season matches. It happens for every MLS pre-match report, too.

Ah, a relief there Amaroq regarding the text bug. Since the two things were correlated I was getting nervous.

.......

And thanks a lot for the thoughts on checking into the squad individually, and especially considering a new captain. You answered some questions I didn't know I had! I'll keep updating if I figure things out. Four games to go. I'd like to win them all but it is looking unlikely.

It might be factionalism or the slightly poor quality of my captain.

Hmm. Well I chose my captain fairly well it seems: "Determination, Team Work, Work Rate, and Composure .. who speaks the same language as the rest of the team, has been at the team 2+ years, and is one of the older players on the squad"

He's high in all these areas, and has played the longest at the club, but from observation must have a relatively low consistency score as he just doesn't seem to lead the team when he can. He's our free-kick taker as well, when he's on the field, yet he's missed quite a few recently.

The players all admire a slightly older player who would also make a good captain, though doesn't have quite as high a set of 'captainy' skills as my main captain. But if they all are 'pleased to be playing alongside Patricio', then maybe Patricio should be captain?

But he's been recently revalued from 8k to 900k, so I think I'm going to lose him to pay off my debt. He's 29 and my captain is 27 years old.

You mentioned Determination, Team Work, Work Rate and Composure but left out probably the most important stat for a captain... Influence. What's his stat for that?

Thing with the captain is that they have to respect him and he has to have those stats. IMO, there isn't much room for either or. I'm actually pretty worried about this now because I don't have any young-ish leaders in my team and my current captain is on the verge of losing his first team place.

Oh, mon capitan has 14 influence (Romeo), and the suave Patricio has 12 influence, and lower captain stats all around. But everyone seems to like Patricio, whereas they could give a damn about Romeo.

Neji - I didn't list Influence because its a trainable attribute. You can improve it through tutoring to an Influential player, and through naming the player as Captain. Somebody did an experiment a ways back in which they named an Influence 3 player as their Captain, and he rose to 12 by the end of the first season, 15 by the end of the second, and capped out at an Influence of 18. That's why I stopped valuing it as much, as part of my decision who to name as captain. In your situation, I'd pick a young player who is strong in the other four leadership attributes, and name him Vice-Captain with your on-the-way-out guy remaining the official captain. The youngster should improve his Influence, while you won't outrage the guys who love the current captain.

Smac - yes, it sounds like Patricio would have been the right choice for your captain .. because he's so well liked .. and it also sounds like selling him might shatter what's left of your cohesion. I'm not sure what advice to give you, it sounds like a frustrating situation. I'd be tempted to hold onto Patricio for two or three years, despite his likely decline in attributes due to age, and name him as captain while trying to groom a replacement as described above. Romeo doesn't sound like he's getting the job done, despite the better apparent attributes..

Yeah, that is what I'm generally thinking Amaroq, but look at it this way:

Romeo has the right attributes.

The team was increasing in cohesion as would be expected of the squad size and makeup under a decent captain.

Then the squad loses cohesion.

We can see that it isn't anything inherent (at least obvious) about Romeo that's undone the cohesion. In fact he'd done an o.k. job till February, according to the feedback.

It just seems less likely that its a captaincy issue all around because of these things. If he were new, or of the wrong stats, or if the team had never shown cohesion in the first place, then I think it would be easy to suggest changing the captain based on lack of other options. But as things stand it seems like something else is going on.

Maybe as the team decided they liked Patricio, Romeo's tentative leadership was undermined slightly? And if the cohesion was tentative, this might have been enough to tilt the balance towards disintegration. Its always hard in the first season with a club because of all the new relationships, so I'm just going to write it off as an oddity and consider player's preferred personnel more highly in the future (that doesn't really solve the problem of a new squad though).

Can you think of anything else that would upset cohesion?

Nothing that you wouldn't have mentioned.

I've had a major change in formation cause problems, but its usually just "familiarity with formation", you see it as missed passes, mental mistakes, etc, on the pitch. I've never seen it show up in the Cohesion report before.

The other thing I can imagine is the number of loaned-in players - does a second consecutive 12-month loan count as a 13th month at the team, or does it reset to the 1st month at the team for purposes of calculating Cohesion? If the latter, then that's a bug, really .. but I'm not sure.

Shifting relationships between players, of course, but if you're only seeing positive comments regarding Patricio, and no negative comments anywhere, then I can't see that really crippling your Cohesion as you've described.

Have you got any other concerns amongst your players? E.g., some guys reacting negatively to your team-talks, unsettled, looking for a bigger club, etc?

Constantly bidding on players may affect morale. It is mentioned in the hints. I've notice drops in team morale during the transfer window period, may explain some mid season slump as well.

Formation: Yeah I've had that cause problems of course, but as you say, not with cohesion.

Loanees: This is my first season, first job, and the loanees are all on 'end of season' contracts. All brought in pre-season. They're all 'happy to playing at a successful club' too. Your speculation r/e 13+ months being treated as 1st months is interesting. I hope that doesn't happen, but wouldn't be too surprised if it was overlooked as few players go to a team for more than one season, especially without 'returning to base'. Hopefully its just a db of all the players having played for your club so they'd fit right back in, but who knows?

No negative relationships.

My main AMC is ****ed that I can't offer him more cash, and he's on $65 a week when others are on $150 and few key free signings on $500. But he responded with glee when I told him that we'd work it out off-season.

Team Talks are having less and less effect, but I'm chalking that up to the cohesion problem, and not the reverse. No bad reactions.

The one thing I wonder about is that I'd tried to lower wages a few times by offering new (improved!) lower deals for my high wage players. They mostly declined, and morale didn't seem to take a hit. And I can't imagine this would affect cohesion so much as morale, so......

Surprisingly nobody is looking for a bigger club. I think because we were predicted to come in 15th they are all still dizzy with the success. After all, they'd resigned themselves to relegation battling and here they are on the eve of ..... well, relegation battling in the premiership of Argentina.

cice2: I've only bought one player in the winter, as backup, and he was a free transfer. He was the only one I could afford, @ a whopping $65 / week.

In your situation, I'd pick a young player who is strong in the other four leadership attributes

I don't have one

Interesting about the influence rising so quickly though. Should make my decision a little easier, thanks.

Yeah, I didn't know that either. Amaroq is an acronym for Allknowing Manager and Roshi of Queries, right?

Nah, it refers to my thick head: "Am a rock".

I didn't run the experiment cited, personally, and I haven't had that much rise for a single player, ever, but I have had pretty good luck with taking decent captain-material players and seeing their Influence rise pretty solidly over a year or two in the role - enough that I've really downgraded it as a "requirement" .. that said, its still the thing I sort by, personally, when choosing a captain, its just that I'm likely to pick the guy who is 5th down the list due to his having good other leadership attributes .. and within a year or two he's usually up at or near the top of the list.

Don't worry about me. Just signed a new CM for 34m. The most I've ever spent on a player, I was nearly sick

He has perfect 'captain stats' apart from his influence is only 14. That being said, I've taken your advise, thick head, and gave him the vice captaincy.

Let us know how he gets on over the next couple years, both as vice- and then hopefully as captain .. if I'm giving bum advice, I want to know it!

How old is this £34mil CM? old enough to teach? or young enough to learn?

How old is this £34mil CM? old enough to teach? or young enough to learn?

He is 25 and his stats are monstrous.

Amaroq, I shall keep you updated.

good luck with your new signing Neji, hope he becomes the gem of a player you need. BTW, what team are you? and how did you generate that £34mil to buy said player?

good luck with your new signing Neji, hope he becomes the gem of a player you need. BTW, what team are you? and how did you generate that £34mil to buy said player?

Thanks. I'm Sheffield Wednesday and having my most successful game yet. It's 2021 and no one is anywhere near me in quality, it's easy but I'm having ALOT of fun on with it. I raised the money by winning and a couple of seasons ago I sold a young striker I had for 38m to Real Madrid.

Sorry Smac for hijacking your thread

no problem. If anyone has any further insights into team cohesion though, I'd love to hear them

he's now the official cohesion man ^^

&

Good luck with Sheff Wed, Neji. Not that it sounds like you need it

Smac, I hear super-glue does wonders for team cohesion.

Win some games.......not trying to be a jerk but that might do it. I've never had this problem so my range of advice is more than limited.

If your team talks are doing nothing, choose options you don't normally choose (say you normally say you can win/expect a win - start saying pressure off/for the fans and obviously vice versa), the game actually tells you that using the same team talks reduces their effect (which is patently stupid but whadyagonnado?).

Additional questions concerning what may be going on: Did you try and sell anyone between the good cohesion-poor cohesion period? Did you overpraise your team? Are they a young team? A great way to get your team playing better and gelling better would be to buy some older guys even if stats wise they are inferior to your current players (if said current players are young).

winning games

varying team talks, though I will say that they seem to have less effect with less cohesion, and I do think the causality works that way, not the reverse.

Didn't try to sell anyone. I may overpraise them a bit compared with some other managers, but I've not seen this reduce cohesion before. And by overpraise I mean: Just a little more positive than Wolfsongs guide, on the occasional player, once in a blue moon.

Agree that long-term, old players will help. But the basic conundrum is this: Why did cohesion go down?

Thanks.

I remember that, upon winning promotion, one is able to comment on how the team will fare in the new, higher league. Did you, by chance, raise your expectations by saying that you don't need any new signings because your current team should do just fine? Or instead, did you say that you will have to turn the whole team around (very unlikely, seeing how you didn't change many players)?

The first might put the pressure on the team, while the latter might unsettle your players, which could potentially have the same effect.

And just for the record: I'm also giving my players individual training schedules, but they're still 'willing to die for each other'. I just so hope they won't do that, because I don't really have any youngsters good enough to replace them yet. But that aside, I don't think the individual training should impact that much on your cohesion.

Gentleman,

I did consider that media interaction upon winning promotion. I never like that one because you have to say something and you know that some players are capable of reacting badly to any of the responses. Yet this time I had no reaction from my players and thought I must have chosen well. But that I didn't see a reaction might not have meant there wasn't one.

I'm also wondering if all my loanees at some point started looking to next season when they would likely not be with my club. Is it possible that at a certain point before the end of the season all players consider who they'll be working with next season and build relationships with them if possible? That would cause a major shift in my team.

Consider the example of a player who's been pre-contracted to transfer at the end of the season. Why would he improve his playing relationships at his current club any more? So perhaps this is coded in such a way that players not likely to be at the club much longer stop contributing to the team cohesion.

I did consider that media interaction upon winning promotion. I never like that one because you have to say something and you know that some players are capable of reacting badly to any of the responses. Yet this time I had no reaction from my players and thought I must have chosen well. But that I didn't see a reaction might not have meant there wasn't one.

The lack of response by itself gives me the creeps, really ... I haven't ever seen a promotion (and trust me, I've been promoted many times) where I didn't get a response in one way or another.

I'm also wondering if all my loanees at some point started looking to next season when they would likely not be with my club. Is it possible that at a certain point before the end of the season all players consider who they'll be working with next season and build relationships with them if possible? That would cause a major shift in my team.

Consider the example of a player who's been pre-contracted to transfer at the end of the season. Why would he improve his playing relationships at his current club any more? So perhaps this is coded in such a way that players not likely to be at the club much longer stop contributing to the team cohesion.

Although I do agree with you on the 'looking to the future' part, I don't think that should be influencing your cohesion. A player can be having a low morale, but I doubt he'll stop liking his teammates. I mean, players do have a player as favorite personnel, right?

But now I think of it, players do lose track of their memory. I remember people saying they had an excellent team where player A said he worked best with player B. And Player B said the same about player A.

Now, you left the club, became a manager at club X and then bought player A and B. And then they start playing like they have never seen each other before in their entire life. Not even a glimpse of recognition, gelling or the - yes - cohesion you are talking about in this thread. Perhaps it can be related to that? But that's on a much bigger scale than simply your problem as you mention it.

Let us know how he gets on over the next couple years, both as vice- and then hopefully as captain .. if I'm giving bum advice, I want to know it!

Just an update for you Amaroq. Been vice captain for one season and saw no change in Influence, now been the captain for nearly an entire second season here. It's April and still no change

Can you post screenies of him Neji, see how good his general performances are??

Have any other attributes risen Neji? IE, is he at the max of his CA?

Here a screenie of his seasons

Smac, you make an excellent point. Three attributes have gone up over the season but he may very well be at his CA. Good suggestion

He's had a very varied carear (can someone please tell me the correct spelling) but he seems to have found his form playing in your team. Have you got any more screenies that could show us how he has progressed??

Career.

These are the only stats that have improved.

Green - Off The Ball

Purple - Flair

Pink - Reflexes

He's doing well then. And thanks Neji. Career, i'll remember that

Just an idea. Maybe your own manager stats make that drop of cohesion?

I bough ta forign player to replace my current defender and captian, mainly because my Gk disliked me and the player i bought had the new player listed as a favorute player.

Any way, i gave the new guy the captain's arm band and didnt even think to check if he spoek english. as it happens he didnt. 4 players in the team stated that they could do a better job of should of been the captain. morale didnt drop tho and as far as my results go. they been better than the season b4. i have since droped my captain because hsi rating is below 6.8 iv reverted back to the same defenders i had the year b4.. im waiting untill he speaks english now b4 i start him as captian. and when he does start. im going to tell him i expect a performance form him every game he plays. and show my anger when he plays bad.

after all, you need your captian to lead by example and play well yeh. if your captian is playing bad, how do you expect other players to raise there game? would you want soem oen having a nite mare of a game shouting at you to do better????

Are we thinking a little to, "into the game" here? have SI taken into account that the fact that players can't speak certain languages, effects there performances in the game?

Yeah, language barriers are programmed in.

Ah right, thanks Neji, i actually never knew that.