My strikers missed big chance in last three matches. What I doing?

[isignedupfornorealreason]

Not really what I was talking about, though, is it?

I was talking about slumps where my striker misses lots and lots of good chances that he would normally put away. Thus, from that we conclude that I do watch games and I do like to talk about tactics (which is why I have several hundred posts here in the tactics forum).

Anyways, I stumbled over one solution to the issue at hand in my current save. Instead of relying on strikers with up and down form, I rotated a lot, sold/bought lots of players, and used a tactic that saw a lot of movement in the front four (see my thread on a narrow 4-5-1 for details). We won the league and went far in Europe eventhough my top scorer was a midfielder that scored 9 goals all season! Most players in the squad had over 5 goals to their name. Strength in numbers!

I'm half and half on this...

See, I usually have the striker as a creative outlet, he's not strictly there for the goals, but they're useful anyway! I can identify the 'hot patches', lets say Van Persie is blasting in 2 goals a game, he's the first name on the team sheet (fitness permitting) and he'll score in each of those games as well. After say 8-9 games he'll drop off and either be doubled-up on or his form will go down the drain and he'll miss easy chances quite often but here's the thing...

I don't mind him missing those chances provided he's doing the creative aspect well. Other people can step up and do stuff. However, the game makes a big deal out of it. "Ten hours without scoring" blah blah blah, his morale plummets, every shot he does will magically make its way to the post and his form suffers even more - Even though he's doing what I want him to anyway. There's no real way to tell him 'meh, it's no biggie', I do tell the media he's doing his job, it's not a big issue but at some point he's going to have the confidence issue crop up. It happens to anyone with the FWD capability role, even if I play them as a winger; in fact the game doesn't seem to recognise that if I play Welbeck on left wing for 4 games as cover, it doesn't mean he's suddenly lost his goalscoring touch and is now rubbish, he's just playing in a position where he might not get the chances he would in a central position, but lo and behold when I switch him to FC he'll be impacted by that 'form is rubbish' issue.

A funny example for me, was seeing it happen with Rooney; now Rooney is exclusively a creator and not a scorer for me, on a more severe level than Van Persie. He's meant to be the 'last creative outlet' high up the field and he does that well he gets something like near enough an assist a game. In short, he's bloody magnificent, even though I can't stand the guy personally (in game that is...). He went something like 15 hours without scoring, never mind he came on as a sub for a few games and his confidence dropped, he couldn't hit a barn door, he was being silly even though he was still assisting. How did I resolve it? I didn't get the chance, he scored for England and suddenly that gave him the injection needed to go on a goal-scoring run, even though it's not his primary function.

Basically; I do think there's an over-empathises on strikers and scoring goals. And I can relate to those who see strikers miss sitters, it's pretty poorly conveyed, you just know someone under that crisis of confidence is going to hit the post from an open goal, and I'm aware of how to manage it but there's not much lee-way for the thinking of the role the player performs.

[Fabian Jonsson]

I'm half and half on this...

See, I usually have the striker as a creative outlet, he's not strictly there for the goals, but they're useful anyway! I can identify the 'hot patches', lets say Van Persie is blasting in 2 goals a game, he's the first name on the team sheet (fitness permitting) and he'll score in each of those games as well. After say 8-9 games he'll drop off and either be doubled-up on or his form will go down the drain and he'll miss easy chances quite often but here's the thing...

I don't mind him missing those chances provided he's doing the creative aspect well. Other people can step up and do stuff. However, the game makes a big deal out of it. "Ten hours without scoring" blah blah blah, his morale plummets, every shot he does will magically make its way to the post and his form suffers even more - Even though he's doing what I want him to anyway. There's no real way to tell him 'meh, it's no biggie', I do tell the media he's doing his job, it's not a big issue but at some point he's going to have the confidence issue crop up. It happens to anyone with the FWD capability role, even if I play them as a winger; in fact the game doesn't seem to recognise that if I play Welbeck on left wing for 4 games as cover, it doesn't mean he's suddenly lost his goalscoring touch and is now rubbish, he's just playing in a position where he might not get the chances he would in a central position, but lo and behold when I switch him to FC he'll be impacted by that 'form is rubbish' issue.

A funny example for me, was seeing it happen with Rooney; now Rooney is exclusively a creator and not a scorer for me, on a more severe level than Van Persie. He's meant to be the 'last creative outlet' high up the field and he does that well he gets something like near enough an assist a game. In short, he's bloody magnificent, even though I can't stand the guy personally (in game that is...). He went something like 15 hours without scoring, never mind he came on as a sub for a few games and his confidence dropped, he couldn't hit a barn door, he was being silly even though he was still assisting. How did I resolve it? I didn't get the chance, he scored for England and suddenly that gave him the injection needed to go on a goal-scoring run, even though it's not his primary function.

Basically; I do think there's an over-empathises on strikers and scoring goals. And I can relate to those who see strikers miss sitters, it's pretty poorly conveyed, you just know someone under that crisis of confidence is going to hit the post from an open goal, and I'm aware of how to manage it but there's not much lee-way for the thinking of the role the player performs.

Well, actually, I find that the game itself is very much part of the emphasis on strikers scoring. If a striker is set in a supporting role and supposed to create more than score, the press suddenly start to nag on about that guy not scoring for so and so many minutes, and they start to loose confidence cause they're on a goal drought etc. Which is very annoying sometimes.