Striker crisis

I'm having real problems with my strikers at the moment - and no, it's not bug related, it's just all of my strikers are completely out of form. My three man strike force of Adebayor, Iaquinta and Trezeguet which fired me to the double last season, plus an up and coming Henri Saivet are being carried by the rest of the team at the moment. Their form averages are all around 6.6 and they're really struggling for goals. I've tried keeping faith in Adebayor, who is the best one, and I criticised him in the media which brought an improvement for one match but then he went back to being crap and got injured, I could've given him an injection for the Milan game but he's been so poor lately I didn't think it worth it. Iaquinta got a hat trick vs Milan in the super cup but has barely got above a 6 since. And I don't think Trezeguet has managed a 7 all season, I planned to gradually phase him out and bring in Saivet but he's not really impressed since I brought him in, I think he lacks the strength to play as a lone striker. All of them have superb morale, I haven't changed my tactics or players, they've just all decided to be crap at the same time. Any suggestions (and I can't do anything in the market; it's October)?

I'm having real problems with my strikers at the moment - and no, it's not bug related, it's just all of my strikers are completely out of form. My three man strike force of Adebayor, Iaquinta and Trezeguet which fired me to the double last season, plus an up and coming Henri Saivet are being carried by the rest of the team at the moment. Their form averages are all around 6.6 and they're really struggling for goals. I've tried keeping faith in Adebayor, who is the best one, and I criticised him in the media which brought an improvement for one match but then he went back to being crap and got injured, I could've given him an injection for the Milan game but he's been so poor lately I didn't think it worth it. Iaquinta got a hat trick vs Milan in the super cup but has barely got above a 6 since. And I don't think Trezeguet has managed a 7 all season, I planned to gradually phase him out and bring in Saivet but he's not really impressed since I brought him in, I think he lacks the strength to play as a lone striker. All of them have superb morale, I haven't changed my tactics or players, they've just all decided to be crap at the same time. Any suggestions (and I can't do anything in the market; it's October)?

It may now be time to try a different tactic, most likely teams have caught onto what your trying to do tactically and have countered that with their own tactic, something new and fresh might get the strikers back into goal scoring form. Also if you are playing all 3 at a time maybe try dropping back to 2 up front and rotate them on a game to game basis. They will then have more space to move towards goal.

My results otherwise are good, my record is P11 W9 D2 it's just that my strikers are not performing and I think it's just a matter of time until the rest of my team starts to drop off form wise and we'll struggle. As I say Adebayor is out for a couple of weeks so it's now a choice between three of them. My tactic is switching between 4-1-2-2-1 and 4-2-3-1 so I'm not really sure what I can do other than change the formation, but as my team is playing well I don't really want to do that. The only thing I can do is give Saivet an extended run and play run onto ball for him, but he's young and I'm not convinced he can play lone striker yet. I think I have a couple of easier games up next, I'll give him a shot and see what he can do.

It sounds like its time to develop an Individual Team-Talk approach for each of them.

If its available, some guys respond well to the "Expect a Better Performance".

Other than that, either "No Pressure", "I Have Faith", or "Expect a Performance" will probably work for one or the other of your strikers.

I have a guy who basically only scores when I tell him there's "No Pressure". I often save it for halftime; if we're winning, I don't "waste" it, but if we're losing and I'm giving the rest of the club "I want to see more from you", I give him "No Pressure", and he tends to bag an equalizer, a winner, or both.

When its going well, most strikers seem to respond well to "Pick Up Where You Left Off!"

How far into the season are you? It could be a case of Adebayor just not in form this season but Trez an Iaquinita being too old.