Part 2: Sophomore at Tactics University - Morale management and financial management

[prince0102]

Following on my freshman year where I played a few seasons at San Marino. The first thread was primarily about creating a tactic with a lot of help from wwfan of course

In this second part, I will recap how I answered the thing that really annoyed me from my last thread.

a) Morale and man management.

b) Financial management - this is something I perfected in FM12 and still works great.

I think this series might help novice players to connect better as they will likely go through very similar struggles.

San Marino - Year 2 in Serie B. I struggled heavily my first season. My tactic has a lot of holes but its not too bad. Going against wwfan's advice, I still opted for my favorite 4-2-2-2 (or 4-2-4) tactic as I wanted to play my super regen striker/ IF Bellemo along with my two towering strikers (with plenty of crosses).

Here's the same tactic as in my freshman thread.

[prince0102]

Shamelessly copied from another thread. Thanks to Biggusd to help build up an understanding of Morale management

Quote Originally Posted by BiggusD View Post

Ok you have entirely misunderstood what team talks in FM are and how to use them. Green responses does not mean you picked the correct team talk and red responses does not mean that you picked the wrong team talk. The fact that saying "you have faith" or "no pressure" will -always- yield a positive green response should have given this away already, but since it hasn't I'm telling you now so that this myth is busted once and for all.

I haven't had the following thoughts of mine officially confirmed but they haven't been objected to either:

.......|----------o----------|-----------o----------|

Nervous.....................Focused............... ....Complacent

1. The goal of man management including team talks is to keep your players as focused as possible.

2. From observation and experience, I can tell that players are nervous and complacent at all times, even when the team talk feedback and in-match body language tells you they are not. Just like they are fatigued/jaded at all times even though the game tells you they are superbly fit and at 100/100%, and worried about something (i.e contracts) even though morale is Superb and the game tells you they are enjoying life at the club. These aren't on/off features.

3. So on that line above, between the o's the player is labeled "composed" or other positive feedback, but he can still be rather nervous or complacent anyways.

4. The only way you can tell which side of that bar he is on, is through watching the matches. An anxious/nervous player will make poor decisions and a complacent/uninterested player won't bother with all that running.

5. There are several things influencing where any given player is on that bar: The player's Determination, Professionalism, Ambition, Pressure attributes; The player's attitude towards you and the club as well as his morale; To which degree the team are favourites or underdogs in any given match; How many matches the team has won/not lost/not won/lost in a row; The importance of the match; Media interaction leading up to the match.

6. There are two ways in which team talks can influence where any given player is on that bar: A) Putting pressure on the team will move them to the left, and B) Reducing pressure on the team will move them to the right.

Pre-match

....................No Pressure......Good Luck......You have faith/Impress me.....For the Fans.....Expect a Performance/Expect a Win

Cautious

Calm

Passionate

Assertive

Aggressive

7. The farther down and the farther to the right, the more pressure you put on your players and the farther to the left they go on the above bar. The farther down and farther to the left, the less pressure you put on your players and the farther they go to the right on the above bar.

Half-time

....................No Pressure......Delighted......Pleased......Not good enough.....Embarrasing/pride at stake

Cautious

Calm

Passionate

Assertive

Aggressive

(there are several other variations of these, but the point remains the same)

Quote Originally Posted by BiggusD View Post

Green responses are a slight morale boost and red responses are a slight morale drop.

If your player goes from Good to Fairly Good morale because of a "confused" or "angry" response you won't notice much of a difference in terms of motivation after the first 10 minutes of the half, but the Warn Against Complacency teamtalk may have taken a serious chunk out of his Complacency - and that you will notice.

I have still not lost or drawn a game in FM13 after warning against complacency because of a one/two goal lead at half time. I cannot remember losing a three-goal lead where I praise them either, but I always make changes if they get a goal; usually removing complacent or underperforming players.

What the responses actually say may have a much bigger impact than the colour coding. Angry = good because Aggression = good. Confused seems to dissipate immidiately after kickoff so i cannot say I have noticed any consequences at all. Disenchanted is bad, though - they sometimes go on to become Uninterested, which is one of the worst "motivations". Looking Very Confident is a whisker away from Complacent in my experience. Fired-Up is good but I don't think that the best performances I have seen were from Fired-Up players. They are more aggressive and work harder, perhaps, but I have the feeling they shoot earlier than they should - maybe too close to Nervous/Anxious? Composed is the standard, neutral (and thus very broad encompassing all kinds of body languages) feedback and it tells us very little. The best ones are in my opinion Looking Motivated and Looking Confident. Then they often have the right focus in addition to being confident.

What is important to notice is that most players will be "Composed" at 0-0 and as the result changes and stats build up, they respond to that. A bad referee decision can make the entire team Anxious or Furious or both, and a player having a bad day can become unsettled by that for the rest of the match. You can in other words tell if each player experiences a normal day at work, a good day or a bad day by the "permanent" body language that is there if you pay attention and ignore the minor fluctuations. I normally just sub those who can't shake off the doubt, unless I can spot a clear reason for his poor performance (for instance my central defender in the defending trio being too small to handle a big single striker) and make tactical changes accordingly.

Quote Originally Posted by prince0102 View Post

I started jotting down a few things after biggus post and have a theory. I have no proof but if nothing else it will spur some discussion. There are 3 questions to this morale module

a) What are all the different states (body language) in a scale which can be changed using man-management ?

b) How do you change the state of your players ?

c) how does the ME code and use it ?

BigUS, I think, very elegantly answered question b). I.e. how your team talks (and press conferences etc. ) are ways to change the mental state of player. A good way to think about it like the sliders in the tactics module. The answers change every player's mental state along a slider (plus or minus). The player's hidden attributes such as professionalism, pressure, age etc. all play into how much you affect it.

Now question a) was also partly answered by BigUS. A confidence scale [nervous--> focused --> complacent]. However, if there was only 1 scale this would be easy. SFraser in my favorite thread on this forum talks about a few other scales. I believe you simultaneously change all of them by responses you give in answer b) above. Sfraser talks about 4 scales. Comfort, Happiness, Motivation, Morale. So lets put these in slider form because that is how a game will really use it. As a series of numbers.

1. Comfort/ Confidence [nervous-->focused-->complacent]

2. Happiness [ angry--> frustrated-->composed-->happy-->delighted]

3. Motivation [Disenchanted--> indifferent-->motivated--> fired up--> Convinced]

4. Morale [ very poor --> poor --> okay --> good --> superb.]

Obviously we only see the 4th slider which is a longer term effect. i.e. carries from match to match. But you can have a player who is superb, complacent, happy and indifferent at the same time in a match.

Ok finally the most important, question c) how does it really affect your game calculations or match engine. I don't think it can affect passing or pace like attributes since suddenly a player cannot become a better passer or runner. But we see a huge difference in passing accuracy and when they run. Why ? I think the answer is background and primary attributes. These are the attributes that are used as a first check for everything, passing, shot hits the target or not. (http://www.mantralux.com/2010/11/pla...tes-explained/). Here's an example from the website

short pass by the player in ME is (Background attributes > Creativity (prime) > Decisions (prime) > Passing (secondary).)

In short, I think these attributes are affected.

1. background attributes - determination, concentration, teamwork, work rate

2. primary attributes - decisions, technique, anticipation, creativity

Now its easy to see how you convert the 4 mental scales from above into these attribute changes.

1. nervous = -concentration, -decisions, -work rate

2. complacent = -concentration, -determination, -work rate, -decisions

3. angry = +determination, +work rate, -concentration,

4. delighted = +creativity, +anticipation, +teamwork, -determination, -workrate

5. Not motivated = all background attributes -ve

6. Fired up = all background attributes +ve

7. poor morale = all primary attribute -ve

8. superb morale = all primary attributes +ve

I think a theory like this explains a lot. Why the mental state affects everything that players do. Why you can have a superb morale squad so they are creative and have great technique but also complacent so they have lower determination and work rate.

It explains why Man Utd with great players are easier for morale mini game while a bunch of young, low mental attributes players are very susceptible. It explains why if players are angry it still has a positive effect on field.

I have no proof but maybe others can build on this or disprove it.

[prince0102]

I went crazy in team talks for this year. I used aggressive --> I expect better for half-time or full time talks anytime I got losses. I used assertive --> fans at start of match. Best I can describe is Di Canio style.

Interestingly, I was able to break the pattern of slumps with this technique. However, I couldn't get a winning streak going either.

Also my team of youngsters was a little more mature so they played better too. Combined together we ended up mid-table. Here's a snapshot of match results.

As you can see, my match results were dramatically different from year before.

Year-end league table.

As you can see, I was in the top 3 in the league for goals scored but also bottom 3 for goals conceded.

Lots of goals came from crosses as expected

[prince0102]

After a few seasons in the Italian league, I was kind of missing the premier league as I follow the premier league every week on television. So I started playing with Blackburn and used the same tactic. Got them promoted to premier league but couldn't make much headway in the premier league for years.

However, I did get them very solid financially. Players underestimate the importance of financial discipline but its critical for a long term save. I mean what is the point of buying all the top players and running the club to ground.

This is using a depth chart technique that I use a lot since fm12. It has a first team XI, a backup team XI and then a youngster high potential regens team. I have only 1 player in each position and manage the demographic such that any young player goes from u18 team (16-18)--> backup team (19-22) --> first team (23-28) --> backup team/ sold (29+).

Here's a Blackburn snapshot for year 1. I use stars from scout's opinion but not everyone likes stars.

This has allowed me to have this financial status in 2016

A surplus of 100+ MM in 4 years.

[prince0102]

Onto the Blackburn Tactic

I was using a 4-2-4 and my top players were Jordan Rhodes, Ruben Rochina and a regen striker. The rest of the team was 4* and mostly from the depth chart above. However, I found Rochina as an IF was terrible. He is a 4.5* player but with shoots from distance ppm, decisions & teamwork < 10. He would waste all the chances the team created. Then someone mentioned in the stupid questions thread that the best way to use him is poacher.

Poacher for Rochina made sense as that would put him up forward and hopefully in the box and decrease his requirement to make decisions or be a teamplayer.

So I started using the 4-3-3, I had created in my freshman thread.

However, this tactic is very weak on the wings as we all know. So, I thought... hey, maybe I can create a tactic that plays like 41221 when not in possession but as a 433 when in possession. Here's a chalkboard for it

The small changes would be 1 CM pulled back to DM and the 3 strikers have 2 DLF(s) and 1 poacher. I would then specific man mark the opposition DR-DL. It played exactly like I expected, a 41221 off the ball and a 433 on the ball.

[prince0102]

I ended up mid-table with this tactic. Here are some match results (you will see slump and win-streak patterns again because the morale module was too annoying for me so I just used assistant for it)

The 1 good thing was Rochina was top scorer with 20+ goals.

However, I ended up rage-quitting and getting frustrated quite a few times. I couldn't figure out why I was winning matches against Liverpool and tottenham but throwing games against weaker opponents. It seemed all random. I started quite a few threads detailing my frustration on analyzing games

"why doesn't the assistant provide better feedback" - I wanted him to tell me why I won/ lost a game.

"why is reloading giving different results everytime" - it makes it impossible to analyze games

"how to watch games" - I wanted to tweak my tactic.

I think I have now got a way of getting answers to these questions which I will detail in part 3.

[prince0102]

What do you guys think of my journey till here. I would like to hear thoughts on this 4123 tactic before I post in my part 3 thread, how I tweaked this tactic to get amazing results with exactly the same team.

[wwfan]

Nice to see you are moving forward in your understanding. I hate the flat, narrow 4-3-3 tactic and don't think it would ever succeed in reality. It's been a favourite in FM for years because it could exploit weaknesses in the ME. For me, that's why everything will seem random to you. I'd bin it and play a more common tactical shape.

[prince0102]

Nice to see you are moving forward in your understanding. I hate the flat, narrow 4-3-3 tactic and don't think it would ever succeed in reality. It's been a favourite in FM for years because it could exploit weaknesses in the ME. For me, that's why everything will seem random to you. I'd bin it and play a more common tactical shape.

too late I got it to work :o. It acts more like the Napoli's 3-4-3 tactic now but it works quite beautifully now as I will show in part 3 of this thread.

[grimslaa]

Really intrigued by the depth chart as a means of financial control as it's something I've done in the past but only to help me evaluate my squad depth. Can you offer any explanation as to how it works to keep your finances so healthy?

[prince0102]

Really intrigued by the depth chart as a means of financial control as it's something I've done in the past but only to help me evaluate my squad depth. Can you offer any explanation as to how it works to keep your finances so healthy?

The bottomline is you buy youth cheap, nurture them, move them gradually to your first team. Always have them on long contracts and if they don't realize their potential sell them. The depth chart allows you to do this and control your squad size, age balance, wages.

When you first start managing a club you will realize some badly run clubs are bloated in many positions but weak in others. Eg some managers will come in and do total overhaul selling all first team players and getting superstars. Superstars are expensive. You might get instant jump in standing with a huge debt. This will also limit opportunities for youngsters in your backup team. I always buy them young and turn them into superstars.

It also helps keep a tight squad size. No more 5 strikers on 100k salaries. You have 2 and if they have a slump your youngsters are always willing to take opportunities.

I did not buy a single player over 2M. And superstars like joshua king who didn't make my first team were happily sold for 12M+. In 4 yrs, I have a fantastic team at a solid wage level..