Poor form

[Joelewis]

How can I get out of a really bad run of form? I started the season winning 11 of my first 12 games. Since then I haven't been able to string wins together for the life of me. Started thinking I may be in a title challenge and now I'm in 6th in worrying form with 10 games to go. I've tried team meetings/morale boosting friendlies etc. I am assuming it is the ai becoming familiar with my tactic and nullifying it. Is a change of tactic to another  my team is  familiar with supposed to help a bit? And if so, if I eventually change back to my original tactic, will the opposition again know how to play against it and my bad form inevitably returns? 

At a loss and I would say I'm looking g for a quick fix but I've tried different things to no avail and my poor form has lasted 15 odd games now. Any suggestions welcome

Thanks in advance!

[kepz]

Personally, I wouldn’t change the tactic if it got you the wins. Dance with the one that brought you. 
 

I think you’d be best served to take a look at two sections of the game:

Player morale - how’s the team cohesion and player morale at this time? How’s their support for you and their belief in your management? Give a chat to your players and endear yourself to them. I know it sounds silly, but I promise you it matters in the long run. 
 

For the tactic itself, go into the data hub. I have no idea what you’re trying to accomplish so I will walk you through briefly how I examine my 433 within the data hub. I want my midfielders winning the ball and pushing it forward. To see if they’re doing this, I go look at “midfielders - possession” and see where my starters land on the scatter graph. Sometimes you may not have this info because of your data analysts ability, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t have all the info. Repeat this process for the other two tactical lines and the goalkeepers as well and I think you might find the answers as to why your tactic is breaking down. If you’re not sure about how to do this level of analysis, check out YouTube videos on how. 

Also, see who is playing poorly within the team and maybe give them a break from playing for a match or two. It does nobody good to keep them playing if they’re playing poorly. During the season I pay more attention to tactical familiarity and form than star ratings, but that’s just me!

I hope this helps, it sucks being in a rut but nothing feels better than clawing your way out of it. 

[Joelewis]

Thanks alot for your help dude. The data hub is something I haven't spent too much time looking into yet so will give it a go to see if I can spot anything. I know runs of bad form are pretty common but since I won 11 out of 12 from the start of the season, I have just been inconsistent and can't string wins together for 20 games now. I've tried a few different things but hasn't changed alot as of yet. I will get stuck into the data hub to see what I can find

Cheers 

[Cassius]

This might sound silly but are you watching your games in comprehensive? 

It really helps me to break down what is working and what is not. While being in comprehensive, pause the game to analyse the situation at times. When you lose possession or a player tries a **** pass/shot, rewind a few secondes and pause to analyse why. Low support? Pressure by the other team? Lack of options? Players too far appart? Etc

Same for an opposition goal/clear chance : is the formation solid? Why was my fullback defending alone? Was the opposition having to much time on the ball? Was my line of defense too high/too low? Etc

Playing in comprehensive until I am happy with the team flow (or for the full duration of the game, my preference unless we are steam rolling the opponent) was critical for me to improvebmy tactical skills and understanding of the game. 

 

Also, with such a poor streak, I guess moral is an issue. What I do in all my saves (but you may have done it already) is to abuse the personnal talk with the players in order to improve the moral. I have great results by setting up a system of "rolling" personnal individual talks :

- every 5th and 20th of the month, praise or warn about training. 

- every 10th and 25th, praise conduct. 

- every 15th, praise OR warn about form. Do NOT hesitate to warn a player about poor form, if the critic is deserved and he is not a shithead, it will go down well and should push him to improve moral and performance. 

- every 1st of the month, team meeting to assess form. 

It sounds a bit of a hassle, but 2min of mouse clicking every game week is nothing when you look at the results on and off the pitch. To keep track of the "chat agenda", I make 5 recurring reminders in the Note section (under personnal profile) 

 

Finally, after every bad performance, individual fine for poor performer. I go accordingly :

- 6.5 = warn player

- 6.4/6.3 = 1 week fine

- 6.2 and below = 2 weeks fine

 

if the player is not deluted, he should accept the fine. If not, tone down the fine a bit (half week and 1 week, instead of 1 and 2 weeks) OR trust your captain to talk the player into putting his complaint aside. 

 

 

So, in a nutshell :

- watch match in comprehensive to detect and understand what is working and what is not. 

- regular and consistent talks with the players, to monitor them and up the moral. 

- strict discipline for every bad performance. 

 

 

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Cassius

[HanziZoloman]

Nice read @Cassius do you know if individual fines are possible in FM20?

[Cassius]

il y a 6 minutes, HanziZoloman a dit :

Nice read @Cassius do you know if individual fines are possible in FM20?

I've made the jump from FM19 to FM21, but it was available on FM19 so I guess it is!

[DarJ]

2 hours ago, Cassius said:

This might sound silly but are you watching your games in comprehensive? 

It really helps me to break down what is working and what is not. While behing in compressive, pause the game to analyse the situation at times. When you lose possession or a player tries a **** pass/shot, rewind a few secondes and pause to analyse why. Low support? Pressure by the other team? Lack of options? Players too far appart? Etc

Same for an opposition goal/clear chance : is the formation solid? Why was my fullback defending alone? Was the opposition having to much time on the ball? Was my line of defense too high/too low? Etc

Playing in comprehensive until I am happy with the team flow (or for the full duration of the game, my preference unless we are steam rolling the opponent) was critical for me to improvebmy tactical skills and understanding of the game. 

 

Also, with such a poor streak, I guess moral is an issue. What I do in all my saves (but you may have done it already) is to abuse the personnal talk with the players in order to improve the moral. I have great results by setting up a system of "rolling" personnal individual talks :

- every 5th and 20th of the month, praise or warn about training. 

- every 10th and 25th, praise conduct. 

- every 15th, praise OR warn about form. Do NOT hesitate to warn a player about poor form, if the critic is deserved and he is not a shithead, it will go down well and should push him to improve moral and performance. 

- every 1st of the month, team meeting to assess form. 

It sounds a bit of a hassle, but 2min of mouse clicking every game week is nothing when you look at the results on and off the pitch. To keep track of the "chat agenda", I make 5 recurring reminders in the Note section (under personnal profile) 

 

Finally, after every bad performance, individual fine for poor performer. I go accordingly :

- 6.5 = warn player

- 6.4/6.3 = 1 week fine

- 6.2 and below = 2 weeks fine

 

if the player is not deluted, he should accept the fine. If not, tone down the fine a bit (half week and 1 week, instead of 1 and 2 weeks) OR trust your captain to talk the player into putting his complaint aside. 

 

 

So, in a nutshell :

- watch match in comprehensive to detect and understand what is working and what is not. 

- regular and consistent talks with the players, to monitor them and up the moral. 

- strict discipline for every bad performance. 

 

 

 

In addition to this one thing I'd do is before every game I'll go and watch how the team plays so I'll go and watch highlights of their goals to see if there's any pattern sometimes you'll find that they score a lot from crosses, set plays etc so once you've noticed that you can try and adjust your own tactic just so you don't keep losing and once I've started winning again I'll just stop doing that because it's time consuming

[HanziZoloman]

vor 19 Minuten schrieb Cassius:

I've made the jump from FM19 to FM21, but it was available on FM19 so I guess it is!

Can’t find it, would you help please? 
wow, after a long poor run of form, all this talking paid off. 1:4 away victory against Bremen. A relief…

found it!! Thanks

Edited January 13, 2022 by HanziZoloman

[Cassius]

il y a 21 minutes, HanziZoloman a dit :

Can’t find it, would you help please? 
wow, after a long poor run of form, all this talking paid off. 1:4 away victory against Bremen. A relief…

Had to dig the old FM19 and sabotage my team for a game lol

Bear in mind that sometimes the game won't let you warm/fine at 6.5 but starting at 6.4 instead (I guess there is a decimal under the hood explaining this. 6.54 and 6.45 will both show 6.5)

Also, back on the ol' FM19, we had less options than now. Only "Warning", "1 week" and "2 week" fines.

This is what you should see :




Glad that the talking is working ! I have a strong feeling high moral and constant monitoring/talk of player good AND bad deeds (on both training and performance) greatly help getting the best out of each player. Hence over-performing.

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Cassius

[HanziZoloman]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb Cassius:

Had to dig the old FM19 and sabotage my team for a game lol

Bear in mind that sometimes the game won't let you warm/fine at 6.5 but starting at 6.4 instead (I guess there is a decimal under the hood explaining this. 6.54 and 6.45 will both show 6.5)

Also, back on the ol' FM19, we had less options than now. Only "Warning", "1 week" and "2 week" fines.

This is what you should see :




Glad that the talking is working ! I have a strong feeling high moral and constant monitoring/talk of player good AND bad deeds (on both training and performance) greatly help getting the best out of each player. Hence over-performing.

 

Nice 1 !!! Thank you for digging in FM19 for this purpose.

I hope things will improve further as it’s really hard to get out of the relegation battle with a poor team. 
 

Edited January 13, 2022 by HanziZoloman

[Cassius]

@HanziZoloman are you happy with your tactic ? If moral and monitoring of the dressing room is good, maybe you should start a thread for your tactic ?
(or maybe your players level is unfortunately really below the average required in the league, that happens too...)

[HanziZoloman]

Thx for your encouragement @Cassius I am happy with the tactic. I am consistently ratet as a relegation candidate, every year after promotion, low income and low everything (Kaiserslautern) but managed a respectable 12th place last year and getting the manager of the year award.

Your team management Tipps will help us to improve further, I know it.

[Joelewis]

11 hours ago, Cassius said:

This might sound silly but are you watching your games in comprehensive? 

It really helps me to break down what is working and what is not. While behing in compressive, pause the game to analyse the situation at times. When you lose possession or a player tries a **** pass/shot, rewind a few secondes and pause to analyse why. Low support? Pressure by the other team? Lack of options? Players too far appart? Etc

Same for an opposition goal/clear chance : is the formation solid? Why was my fullback defending alone? Was the opposition having to much time on the ball? Was my line of defense too high/too low? Etc

Playing in comprehensive until I am happy with the team flow (or for the full duration of the game, my preference unless we are steam rolling the opponent) was critical for me to improvebmy tactical skills and understanding of the game. 

 

Also, with such a poor streak, I guess moral is an issue. What I do in all my saves (but you may have done it already) is to abuse the personnal talk with the players in order to improve the moral. I have great results by setting up a system of "rolling" personnal individual talks :

- every 5th and 20th of the month, praise or warn about training. 

- every 10th and 25th, praise conduct. 

- every 15th, praise OR warn about form. Do NOT hesitate to warn a player about poor form, if the critic is deserved and he is not a shithead, it will go down well and should push him to improve moral and performance. 

- every 1st of the month, team meeting to assess form. 

It sounds a bit of a hassle, but 2min of mouse clicking every game week is nothing when you look at the results on and off the pitch. To keep track of the "chat agenda", I make 5 recurring reminders in the Note section (under personnal profile) 

 

Finally, after every bad performance, individual fine for poor performer. I go accordingly :

- 6.5 = warn player

- 6.4/6.3 = 1 week fine

- 6.2 and below = 2 weeks fine

 

if the player is not deluted, he should accept the fine. If not, tone down the fine a bit (half week and 1 week, instead of 1 and 2 weeks) OR trust your captain to talk the player into putting his complaint aside. 

 

 

So, in a nutshell :

- watch match in comprehensive to detect and understand what is working and what is not. 

- regular and consistent talks with the players, to monitor them and up the moral. 

- strict discipline for every bad performance. 

 

 

 

Perfect, thanks alot for this. I'll give the Individual chats a go and see how i get on

[glengarry224]

On 11/01/2022 at 10:56, Joelewis said:

How can I get out of a really bad run of form? I started the season winning 11 of my first 12 games. Since then I haven't been able to string wins together for the life of me. Started thinking I may be in a title challenge and now I'm in 6th in worrying form with 10 games to go. I've tried team meetings/morale boosting friendlies etc. I am assuming it is the ai becoming familiar with my tactic and nullifying it. Is a change of tactic to another  my team is  familiar with supposed to help a bit? And if so, if I eventually change back to my original tactic, will the opposition again know how to play against it and my bad form inevitably returns? 

At a loss and I would say I'm looking g for a quick fix but I've tried different things to no avail and my poor form has lasted 15 odd games now. Any suggestions welcome

Thanks in advance!

Hard to say without knowing why and without seeing your tactic.  Did you start to concede more?  Can't score anymore?  Do you have a high-pressure tactic and your players are tiring?  If you post your results page and tactic, might be able to write more....

[HanziZoloman]

I have much better individual player ratings and better training performances since I talk to my players like @Cassius mentioned. 
of course tactical issues can play a huge role but in my case I had a solid tactic which gave me manager of the year award, I even have some better players but a hard run of form. A penalty here a missed clear one there a set piece and then it’s a draw or even a loss. in this cases talking helps a lot and don’t changing to much but also I try to adapt my tactic to concede less goals to be safe at the back with a little more conservative variant of my tactic.