Player Stats arnt worth sod all!!

Player stats dont mean a thind on match day. Why is this game so random,

When your winning and turning over teams like Chelsea, how can the club bottom of the leageu with low morale bad player rating a striker who scores 1 goal in 5 games and bad stats turn up for a game and completely turn you over and make your player look like sunday league players?????

the same defenders that kicked the likes of Drogba and essien off the park become terible over nite.. i oftern watch the al game's too and it happens to them, teams Like Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea get beat at home 2-0 by the bottom 3 club who cant score ever.

Stats mean alot. They just dont mean everything.

Because it takes a different tactical approach to beat a team from the bottom of the league.

I have to say it. Its your tactics. All tactics have flaws. Maybe the teams from the bottom three play attacking which means you should knock the mentality down a couple of noches so your defence doesn't get exploited.

it doesnt seem to do any thing tho. it just invites more and more pressure on, if two teams play the same way. surly the weakest team will lose?

it doesnt seem to do any thing tho. it just invites more and more pressure on' date=' if two teams play the same way. surly the weakest team will lose?[/quote']

Not necessarily. Team talks, morale, condition and luck all play important factors.

What Nejj, Bongo-Bongo and Ched said. Luck and morale are hugely important, but attributes just as much.

trouble is tho just from watching dots or reading txt, there is nothing clear cut to deside why it happens

If you watch a full match, you will get a better idea of why things happen, be it tactical, players not being good enough or other reasons. Key highlights doesn't really show you a great deal.

There are also plenty of match stats on hand to give you an idea of what your players are/aren't doing, though I do believe an assistant analysis tool would be helpful.

3d graphics like fifa soccer lol may help

You can always use your creative imagination and create a tactic totally different from those available to AI and stop believing that all tactics have flaws.

As about stats take a look on German players, the research team there has a different philosophy so they spread player's stats almost equally for every position (strikers with marking 11 etc) ...and German clubs can not win anything...

I notice german players all seem to have good mental stats.. but then again they are IRL. they always reach the finals when you least expect them to. it's there mental arrogance whch takes them threw.

if english players had the germans mental strenght then may be we would of won the Euro and World cup last time around. we bottle it every time.

I think IRL Germans and English are not far enough in mentality , the difference is that many English players have their brains over their heads and think that they are better from what they really are.

Also Germans are more sportsmen , football there is a game for the masses not live and die matter .

In the game as i said German players are jack of trades and it looks that this does not work well with the engine.

Player ratings are a pain too. I just put 5 goals passed a keeper, didn't concede any, 2 of my players scored twice, and the opp keeper ends up with a 9 rating and MoM.

yeah there was a big controversial thread about stats not being worth anything a few months ago,and many other theories involving positional ratings,heights of players that the game system has its own way of calculating besides attributes...

i certainly think it goes a different way about them than previous version's..

IRl if you stick a poor striker who cant run, has no off the ball skills and is weak water up against good defenders of international quality. they would't even get a sniff. they may get luckt and scor a goal. but they wouldnt go on to score a hatrick and beat a team of quality players, especially if there other 10 players where as poor..

IMo if my defenders. tactics, formation, team talks are so bad, wrong etc, are that bad that a poor player can out class me, then i shouldnt be beating and outplaying top teams..

Take last season. Barnsley beat Liverpool in the Fa CUp. you may say it's the same thing. I don't buy it.

how can i go from beating Arsenal 1-0, they havnt lost in 17 games. they scored over 40 goals in last 10 games. i beat them 1-0 then go loase to watford bottom of league with no points in 10 games. and then there striker suddenly play like Alan Shearer.. i know it happens from tiem to time. but it happens every time as a human manager my club loses...

saying one thing in the press one day may work a week later given the same circumstances it doesn't.. seen as this is not real life. we can't really judge or see how a player is or how he reacts. if i give a half tiem team talk. and a top player thinks im talking crap. he would have it with me there and then. not go on the pitch and play like a sunday league footballer..

It seems more like a guessing game knowing what to say and when to say it. there's no emotion telling a computer how it is. if i stand in front of 11 footballers IRl life and tell them how it is. you get some feed back and it easier to remember what that person reacts too.

I have to say it. Its your tactics. All tactics have flaws. Maybe the teams from the bottom three play attacking which means you should knock the mentality down a couple of noches so your defence doesn't get exploited.

trouble is tho just from watching dots or reading txt, there is nothing clear cut to deside why it happens

Just to go a little off topic here, but I often see people suggest that "If they are attacking, you should defend", when I think the opposite may well be at least as true, if not more apt. And as we know, its not a matter merely of 'how attacking' or 'how defending', but of shape, speed, style, width, etc.. To truly dominate a match, most if not all aspects need to both suit the team, and consider the opposition. We've all had the games where our tactics seemed like a perfectly fitting glove, pinning the other team in their own half and destroying any chance they might have had. But many other games are won or lost on a shoestring, and there luck, a bit of individual brilliance, or general tactical cohesion might have made that difference.

I recently had a run of games beating the AI teams 2:0, 1:0, 3:0, 5:1, and 2:0. All those games were games I was expected to lose badly. The odds were 2/1 against or higher. But then I had a game against an even lowlier team than me, and I won 3:2 after coming from behind. But I was not surprised because I had not changed my tactics, and my tactics are quite attacking.

Now the interesting thing is, all those 6 games, the AI set up in a 4-4-2, except the 5:1 win, which we'll throw out. That was a case of my tactic being the perfect foil for theirs. But the last game, against the lowly team, I immediatlely could see that they were playing much wider than usual. Also they were counter-attacking. And they were closing down all over the pitch. In short, they came expecting to be sieged, and their defense worked. Had I set up a more patient tactic I could have broken them down because my team really is better than theirs, and our morale is clearly better. In short, if I had also set up somewhat defensively I could have broken their defensive shape by utilizing more of the park. I won by luck and a good half-time team talk. Winner in the 92nd minute.

But I do agree with the OP that dissecting the problem can be very frustrating. Although it would be vastly different in the 'real world', it might not be any easier when games are played without dominance and are one on a few turns-of-event. In effect, trying to figure out how to have been luckier is a fools errand. Rather, try to figure out how to really dominate against those end-table teams. It might not be attacking, or it might be overloading (over-attacking) compared with your usual tactic, but as you insist and I think correctly: It should be possible.

Not necessarily. Team talks, morale, condition and luck all play important factors.

I'd say the only factor, in my opinion, I can just take a random tactic off the 'Standard Tactics' list, play a few games with it and start winning if I make sure all my players are fit and I follow the team talk guides. Team Talks hold far too much importance in this game.

But I do agree with the OP that dissecting the problem can be very frustrating.

It's frustrating because there is no feedback from the game letting us know why things arent working, the AI doesn't have this problem because it has a programme telling it how to react to onpitch events.

A fairly significant advantage in my opinion.

But I do agree with the OP that dissecting the problem can be very frustrating. Although it would be vastly different in the 'real world', it might not be any easier when games are played without dominance and are one on a few turns-of-event. In effect, trying to figure out how to have been luckier is a fools errand. Rather, try to figure out how to really dominate against those end-table teams. It might not be attacking, or it might be overloading (over-attacking) compared with your usual tactic, but as you insist and I think correctly: It should be possible.

And just as in the real game, it depends on how much time you spend on determining what works against which team/setup. Time - and tactical insight - is the key in winning after all.

I have just the same problems with winning against teams who are much lower in the league than my team, but I seem to have found some solution for that recently after digging through several hints and tips on this forum and some common sense, combined with my utterly genius for being a manager. And still it took me years (in-game) to win this much with a squad who has no motivation to win whatsoever.

Might work only for this year - or the first few months, think of the winter-dip - or it might work only for this team, but it all boils down on how much you analyze and how good you and your team are in coming up with ideas, and adapting them, to successfully counter your opponent.

That is, until FM gets a proper way of carrying the info to you about what you're doing wrong.

Player stats dont mean a thind on match day. Why is this game so random' date='

When your winning and turning over teams like Chelsea, how can the club bottom of the leageu with low morale bad player rating a striker who scores 1 goal in 5 games and bad stats turn up for a game and completely turn you over and make your player look like sunday league players?????

the same defenders that kicked the likes of Drogba and essien off the park become terible over nite.. i oftern watch the al game's too and it happens to them, teams Like Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea get beat at home 2-0 by the bottom 3 club who cant score ever.[/quote']

*Sighs* Because that has NEVER happened before has it? I mean West Ham didn't beat Liverpool last season and then lose to a very poor Wigan side did they? And that Arsenal team who steamrollered so many lower teams last season didn't draw twice with Birmingham - who couldn't score for toffee - did they?

Look, it happens, deal with it.

liverpool always struggle against bolton in real life. bolton are rubbish.

*Sighs* Because that has NEVER happened before has it? I mean West Ham didn't beat Liverpool last season and then lose to a very poor Wigan side did they? And that Arsenal team who steamrollered so many lower teams last season didn't draw twice with Birmingham - who couldn't score for toffee - did they?

Look, it happens, deal with it.

i tell you whats hard to take. this isnt real life. we dont get days of training and watching real life matches. b4 a ball is even kicked on Fm because of the match odds the Computer has already set out the match game plan knowing who is the best team, to actually get a win when its against the human manager takes alot of luck. I know this for a fact because i have replayed the same game 10 times with different team talks and tacics in an attempt to fin dout what i sneeded to win. and the winning team was the winning team 90% of the games, if thats the case. tacics on FM are worhtless for soem games because they dont do any thing.. and when you lose it's always yo players who are having a rubbish season.

Bad days happen sometimes. What you do is to adjust your tactic and get over it.

I drew to Rosenborg and Catania twice in a row(both would have been romps normally), adjusted my mentality and won Palermo 2-1, and thrashed Rosenborg 5-0 after that. It's all about what you do.

thing is tho, the game is over be for you can do any thing about it, it's like russian ruelette, if your favorutes to win, you would play your usual tactic that works so well as a rule. once the game kicks off, in moast situation's i find nothing turns the game plan back in my favour.

I do not entirely disagree with the points you've made so far Wayne, but there is one thing about tactics that I want to add here.

What I do see a lot IRL, is that if a team does not have its day so to speak, tactics go down the drain. What I mean is that if a team has a bad day, players start walking out of position, they don't have the confidence to close down opponents, defenders only react if the ball comes into their area because they're afraid to makes mistakes, creative players (AM's and Wingers mostly) don't dare to outplay their opponent because they're afraid to lose the ball, they don't dare to make risky but creative passes again because they're afraid to lose the ball, strikers don't dare to shoot from difficult angles, etc. And there is not much a manager can change about that during the match. Only an inspiring half-time team-talk can help at that point.

thing is tho' date=' the game is over be for you can do any thign about it, it's liek russian ruelette, if your favorutes to win, you would play your usual tactic that works so weel as a rule. once the game kicks off, in moast situation's i find nothing turns the game plan back in my favour.[/quote']

Disagree. Many times in a season i've turned the game completely on it's head, coming back from 1-0 to win 3-1. The players also credit me for the win, saying my spirited talk was what did it.

It makes me feel good inside.

I make plenty of tactical mistakes, but I agree with the guy who said the effect of team talks is waaay to big. If you get your half time team talk wrong you can do whatever the hell you like tactically or with substitutions in the 2nd half and you don't have a cat in hell's chance of making up for that one badly chosen sound bite at half time. I've seen so many games where my team performs really well first half and then so appallingly second half it is a total joke. I know the AI manager will have revved up his team and there's always that bit of complacency if you are infront, but neither of those things makes up for the differences I see and team talks are so unsubtle that you can't get any kind of mix between making your players complacent or making your players hate you for telling them not to let their performance drop.

or making your players hate you for telling them not to let their performance drop.

That's interesting, the don't let your performance drop one always works great for me.

It's frustrating because there is no feedback from the game letting us know why things arent working, the AI doesn't have this problem because it has a programme telling it how to react to onpitch events.

A fairly significant advantage in my opinion.

I have to say I do agree with this. I've recently been looking over the vast amounts of tactics threads posted over these forums; specifically the unofficial tactics bible. And I'm still not alot closer to understand why a formation that beat a defensive 4-4-2 w/Counter attacking Chelsea side, is having trouble defeating Bolton who are playing with the same game plan. You can say it's the opposition players etc, but I don't buy it. The most frustrating thing is that I know how to beat this strategy as well; play a low tempo game with a mixed amount of forward runs from your wingers.

It's just a pain. I just save before a match, reload if I lose and then play around with different formations, tweaking variations etc, until I stumble across something that works. That's how I learn anyway.

Also, just as a note, I find when choosing which players to field it helps to take my AM's opinions into account. Every now and then they maybe a little off (playing Rooney on the right in place of an in form Ronaldo springs to my mind) but it can quite often be the difference between a draw and a win. The amount of times I've seen my team play badly because I switched around a few players...

That's interesting, the don't let your performance drop one always works great for me.

Sometimes it works great for me, often it doesn't - there's no consistency to it which is what is so frustrating. Against a similar strength of opponent, with scoreline the same and player morale the same I can give that team talk at half time in 2 different matches and get two vastly different responses.

Sometimes it works great for me, often it doesn't - there's no consistency to it which is what is so frustrating. Against a similar strength of opponent, with scoreline the same and player morale the same I can give that team talk at half time in 2 different matches and get two vastly different responses.

Ah okay, well I just can't remember a game in which that team-talk has changed the match for me. That's why I found it interesting. But anyway we're getting off-topic here.

Ah okay, well I just can't remember a game in which that team-talk has changed the match for me. That's why I found it interesting. But anyway we're getting off-topic here.

Also it can depend on the player's professionalism etc, which is another area of the game I'm not too fond of: hidden stats. I think after a while of having a player at a club you'd get to know them fairly well, and be able to tell how versatile, professional and consistent they are.

I think the hidden stats are cool, because you DO actually have to get to know the players. And if you get to a certain point at which you think: Hey he is very consistent, you can just add that to your in-game notes.

That's ok so long as you can pinpoint it - e.g. consistency is something quite obvious - in a sense it doesn't really matter what his hidden consistency attribute is, once you have the player at your club all that matters is how consistent he actually is. I have a very well known striker at Fiorentina who just constantly blows hot and cold for me - when he's hot he's almost unplayable, but then he'll go 2 or 3 games doing nothing. I never look at hidden stats in 3rd party tools, but someone who does said he has a Consistency of 13 (it may not be hard coded, but as a high profile player chances are it is) so clearly there is some other hidden attribute that is causing this because his visible attributes are all excellent. Which all comes back to the original point, that the player's visible attributes don't appear to be contributing enough to explain his performance.

Disagree. Many times in a season i've turned the game completely on it's head, coming back from 1-0 to win 3-1. The players also credit me for the win, saying my spirited talk was what did it.

It makes me feel good inside.

but what if your already leading, or it was 0-0, may be you win the second half 2-0 or 3-0 but your sill already to far gone to do any thing about it.?

That's ok so long as you can pinpoint it - e.g. consistency is something quite obvious - in a sense it doesn't really matter what his hidden consistency attribute is, once you have the player at your club all that matters is how consistent he actually is. I have a very well known striker at Fiorentina who just constantly blows hot and cold for me - when he's hot he's almost unplayable, but then he'll go 2 or 3 games doing nothing. I never look at hidden stats in 3rd party tools, but someone who does said he has a Consistency of 13 (it may not be hard coded, but as a high profile player chances are it is) so clearly there is some other hidden attribute that is causing this because his visible attributes are all excellent. Which all comes back to the original point, that the player's visible attributes don't appear to be contributing enough to explain his performance.

I believe that was me? You're talking about Berbatov right? Yeah I looked it up in the editor and it said consistency 13. But that's not low enough to make his ratings so inconsistent so you're right about stats not explaining his performance in this case.

.

Also, just as a note, I find when choosing which players to field it helps to take my AM's opinions into account. Every now and then they maybe a little off (playing Rooney on the right in place of an in form Ronaldo springs to my mind) but it can quite often be the difference between a draw and a win. The amount of times I've seen my team play badly because I switched around a few players...

what i think you will find mate when they play Rooney out on the wing like that is they use him in a swop with 1 of there forwards, i tried man marking him on 07 and i found he kept going wide, when i looked at there formation he actually swops with the winger..

I believe that was me? You're talking about Berbatov right? Yeah I looked it up in the editor and it said consistency 13. But that's not low enough to make his ratings so inconsistent so you're right about stats not explaining his performance in this case.

I suppose things like work rate, determination, professionalism, et al, may factor into it too. If letting you know a few of these hidden attributes is not an option, then at the very least the player descriptions need to be more detailed. Some descriptions are kind of ambiguous, such as Resolute and Resilient.

Wont beleive what now happend to me, one of these games where bottom of league teams pull my defence apart. any way i score to make it 2-2. from there kick off, for soem reason my golie is standin gon the edge of the centre circle. they kick off and score from the hafl way line.

WTF does these pathetic things have to happen/ why on earth would my golie suddenly be up there. Just adss pain to insult

Since 8.02, a playr's preferred foot is much more important than his overall stats.

By the time you've spotted where the opposition are dominating/dangerous your probably already 1-0 down, also there are games where you dominate for the first 20 mins only to concede from their first attack (corner/free kick generally) and theres not a whole lot you can do about that. This fairly accurately reflects real life, but what isn't accurate is the weak team having the belief and ability to NULLIFY a (much)stronger team AWAY for 70 minutes. I'm a Tottenham (real life) fan, often we take leads against stronger teams (and indeed outplay them for extended periods), rarely we win those games. FM doesn't get this right at all.

so on the whole, is there a rebalance needed some how ot make thing's a little bit more on a level basis?