Possession thing..

I think something really weird happens with the possession of the ball in this new game...

I noticed some very strange possession percentages when big teams like Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea etc, played against Hull, Sunderland etc..

Liverpool played at home against Sunderland in my game, won them 5-1 and they had possesion 40%!!!Is this possible?

Man Utd at home against wigan, they won 3-0 with 41% possession..

Me playing as Arsenal won Stoke 1-0 with only 41% possession having 5 players in midfield and made 16 shots while Stoke made only 4..

I can't understand how this happening and I think this has been mentioned for previous FM games too..

So what do you think?

its just a bug... i play as Chelsea and beat Hearts 6-0 in a friendly..... i play 2 CM's, 1 AMC, and 2 wingers so have a packed midfield and i finished with 38% possession?! how?!

I think it's under review, or going to be fixed in the patch or something.

To be honest...by now I think that possesion is thing that have been fixed. While playing Barcelona...I haven't got a geme below 60% possesion.

It's discouraging to hear this issue is still in the match engine for FM09 since it was one of the things that tee'd me off most about FM08.

Way too often I would end up with just 40% possession against a vastly iniferior opponent because their defence and midfield just played the ball around amonsgt themselves. Even when my Hibernian team beat Mid-Annandale (no, I'd never heard of them either before we played them!) 5-0 in a cup match they had greater possession. In real life teams like Arsenal dominate possession against lesser teams because they dictate the flow of the game, it isn't dictated by the lesser team playing the ball around. I've had teams who play a short passing game similar to Arsenal and we should have more possession, but we don't because of these unrealistic opposition tactics.

But the lesser team would probably choose to play the ball around if Arsenal were not closing them down high up the field and putting pressure on them.

I've tried having my teams closing down all over the park, but it still isn't a realistic tactic. It was too easy in FM08 for an AI team to just pass the ball safely between defenders, making no attempt at all to attack.

I've talked about it here before, but the responses i got were "That's what happens irl", "No team has the divine right to have more than 60% of possesion" and the obvious "It's your tactics!".

The problem is that the weaker team tries to pass the ball in their own half! Which is non-sense, there's no power in this world that can make those teams go to attack in the game, which causes some matches to end with the weaker team not even attempting a single shot the whole game and with ridiculously high possesion. IRL, even when the're playing against a much more powerful team, they try to go to attack, most of the times by awkwardly trying a built-up play or simply by hoofing the ball foward.

I've talked about it here before, but the responses i got were "That's what happens irl", "No team has the divine right to have more than 60% of possesion" and the obvious "It's your tactics!".

The problem is that the weaker team tries to pass the ball in their own half! Which is non-sense, there's no power in this world that can make those teams go to attack in the game, which causes some matches to end with the weaker team not even attempting a single shot the whole game and with ridiculously high possesion. IRL, even when the're playing against a much more powerful team, they try to go to attack, most of the times by awkwardly trying a built-up play or simply by hoofing the ball foward.

I don't think there is a problem with your tactics or our tactics because as I mentioned even the big AI teams playing against small ones have less possession than them...

If you check IRL never seen Hull, Newcastle, Bolton dominating in Old Trafford or in Stafford Bridge and that is something annoying in the game...

This is definitely one of the worst examples I saw from FM08. Mantova made no attempt whatsoever to attack and just passed the ball around aimlessly amongst their defence.

I've never seen a real life game where individual players made so many passes going nowhere. Saying "it's your tactics" is rubbish too - my tactics gave me a 2-0 win so I was happy enough with that, but the lack of realism annoyed me. I wasn't about to tell my team to chase around like madmen though just to get the chance to thrash them 4-0 instead of 2-0.

So any official response on this?