Interesting leadership dilemma

I'll preface this post by stating that the nature of this thread left me with some confusion as to whether it belonged in T&T, LLM or general queries. Apologies if this isn't the place for it.

I read recently, a thread dealing with a player who has personal issues. It turns out I have such a player at this point in time. In order to get my situation across and get constructive feedback, I do have to provide some background information...

In games I've played before .02, I regularly selected to manage Worcester, as no doubt many have in their initial lower league games. In those previous versions the squad included a handful of defensive players who are no longer there, as well as some older players who aided the gelling process and had been in the club for some time. In this version I am not afforded this luxury.

I selected Chris Smith as my captain, and Danny McDonnell as vice. There were some other possible choices such as Ryan Clarke (whose personality was too different to the rest of the squad) and Adam Webster (who doesn't get enough time in the first team). I'm looking to replace McDonnell as my first choice keeper within the next month, thus limiting my captaincy options further if I have to settle for a non-leader type keeper.

The situation comes down to this; Chris Smith is having personal issues and the schedule over the coming months is pretty intensive. While he doesn't seem to be degenerating in confidence and morale, he is the captain, and he's also the most capable defensive player in the squad considering the lack of backs in general.

How much of an effect will it have to send a captain home for a month (aside from the obvious shortage of quality players contributing per match)? I'd be interested to know if anybody else has had this occur and how they were forced to deal with it.

Again; apologies if this thread belongs elsewhere.

I sent my captain Rene Mihelic home for two weeks and didn't see any noticeable change... Could be my vice-captain was just as good a leader, or it doesn't really matter.

Did he respond positively at least? Temporarily taking the captaincy off him didn't create other problems?

I think the fact that he is the most capable defensive player in your squad will have more of an impact than losing the captain. I've never sent a captain home, but I did have a captain break his leg and I think the team actually performed better with the vice captain in charge, but he had a good influence stat. If your second in command ticks all the boxes as an adequate captain then I wouldn't think you would suffer too badly.

That's pretty much how I've been looking at it.

To have the absence be no more effectual than a month-long injury with about 2 weeks fitness training afterwards would be a best-case scenario. It has the same effect on the quality of the squad's overall ability.

I'm just concerned that the squad will be mentally shot as a whole, and also that the captain himself may never fully recover enough for the duration of the season.

Tbh, I've never noticed the captain have as much effect on a team as I think he should have. I'd like to see the effects tweaked up a bit for FM09. So, in short, I wouldn't worry about it so long as your number 2 is okay.

On occasion I have noticed the captain having an effect on the team. I picked Lahm as captain, he only had 14 influence but he was a fan favourite and I thought it would work, I picked Schweinsteiger as vice captain he had 17 influence, but wasn't favoured personnel. The influence seemed to have more of an effect than I expected and the performances with Lahm as captain were not nearly as good as when Schweinsteiger stepped in.

The aggression and composure of your captain do play a large part also. One previous game I assigned a bit of a loose cannon as the captain and the whole side saw that as a cue to begin mauling the opposition, no matter what their tackling setting.