Centre Midfielders

Why can't I get any of my midfielders to play well in any variation of 4-4-2? I know that the strikers don't have good ratings (I can't get them to play well either), but my CMs (Gerrard, Alonso, Mascherano, Van der Vaart) all have lower than 7 averages and it's doing my head in! I'm top of the league but the ONLY player who has above 7.4 average is Srna.

i have noticed that my centre mids often come in at halftime on 5.something and it does annoy me that i have to say something to them to get them to play properly

Yeah the ratings for CM's are pretty low, I know its a coinfed phrase but it could be our tactics. It affects me and I have a pretty good combination of cm's like the op. Its something in player instructions im just not sure what. The only positive about it is that your fans dont get on the players back about them playing poorly.

Try setting all your players to close down on exactly the same level as their mentality. I did this and it's now 3 games in a row where all my players except the goalie have got over 7. I was having the same problem with CM's. Can't guarantee that's the solution though, as I have also tweaked other things.

Doing this has also helped my full-backs to actually tackle.

It's been noticed elsewhere. In FM08 DMs got low ratings however well they did. In unpatched FM09 it was strikers who couldn't win headers. Now in 9.2.0 it seems to be CMs. Annoying, but so long as they are playing well I guess we just have to ignore the ratings - again!