The inevitable mid/ end of season slump

[Mst82]

I managed to win the bundesliga with Dortmund in my 2nd season, taking advantage of a slow Bayern start to go on a crazy unbeaten run, even I couldn't believe what I was witnessing.

I won the league by 20 points, however, I did sort of limp over the line following the usual FM loss of form, that came from absolutely nowhere. I was knocked out of the german cup and champions league in the midst of this dreadful run.

Coupled with the end of last season, my unbeaten run neared 40 odd games until Mainz FM'd me and beat me 1-0 at their place. What followed was the usual unrealistic, programmed loss of form that now midway through season 3, I am still not out of. I am playing from game to game scraping results, and have been since that Mainz result.

My players no longer press or can pass the ball to each other, Adeyemi can't hit a barn door and my keeper has grown some lettuce hands.

I tried to tweak initially, changing some roles around, dropped deeper etc etc but I'm struggling like hell.

Morale is still good, and the players are happy, but I still cannot get any consistency going with a single tactic - and if my assistant tells me to drop deeper one more time I'm going to knock him spark out!

I get that for tricky games I have to adjust, but when Augsburg and Hoffenheim are walking through me like my centre mid doesn't exist, the frustration levels go through the roof.

I guess what I am looking for are some tips on how to get out of this awful run I'm in. Are there any things I can do without posting endless screenshots of my tactics?

I always end up starting a save playing exactly the way I want to, but with every FM I end up deeper and deeper playing an awful tactic I hate - over a few seasons my approach and philosophy to football becomes unrecognisable in comparison to where I started.

[alian62]

So its not easy then 

[Teferi]

It's just poor design of the game. Morale is considered to be way too important in game when in reality there's no statistical proof that it's a thing. Apparently if you didn't win your last three games Messi now works at McD. lol

[Matt ex SEGA]

I spent a while figuring this out - over several FM's. I'm still not certain I have, but I do have some stuff I like to try.

Some helpful soul on the forums pointed out to me that as you go on those incredible runs, other teams start to look at yours differently, so you need to adjust. Not so much on a per-game basis - I actually do my best to limit game to game fiddling.   Just - how you go about playing on a month-to-month basis or over the course of seasons.

 

Not sure I have stellar advice here and I'm not immune to changes in form / overall success over the course of a season, but I did learn to manage my expectations a bit.  If you're a lethal attacking team, teams will try to figure out how to stop you or counter you. If you're the best defensive team in the league, teams might decide to keep it tight an challenge you to beat them. Don't just think about how to beat them - think about how they're going to try to beat you.

 

Probably worth pointing out that not many top division teams go on 40-game unbeaten runs. You're going to regress to the mean. Take a look at your data and see where you are, and what might have changed.

 

Other possibly helpful hint - I tend to find that experience, determination, leadership are all generally massively underestimated by human players, and not by the computer. A team full of wonderkids doesn't tend to be brilliant at unpicking why things are going wrong.

 

Good luck. It's a fun challenge...:D

 

[DarJ]

5 hours ago, Matt ex SEGA said:

Probably worth pointing out that not many top division teams go on 40-game unbeaten runs. You're going to regress to the mean

This ha probably the case. I was playing a save yesterday and out of curiosity I looked at the xG table and saw that we were scoring way more than expected but we were also conceding more than expected so with that in mind I already knew that there will come a point where it’s going to even out a bit and that point came and I looked at the xG table and I saw that the xG was the same as the goals scored and we were now conceding less than expected so I just left the tactic because we were still playing well but not scoring goals and it fixed itself again without having to make huge changes 

[Johnny Ace]

Fatigue? It's pretty easy when on a good run to stick with the same starting XI

[SC00P0NE]

Make sure you use all of your 3 tactics slots often enough. As long as these three are different enough, I find it quite easy actually to get out of a bad run of form..  For example, I often find FM wants to sabotage my wingers, so I play with 2 strikers for a while instead.

Basically, tactical variety seems to be the remedy in my mind once I feel the game tries to sabotage me. To play with comprehensive highights is important for this though so that you can try to stop your team from sucking before it's too late..

Edit: In FM23, I find the team mentality button is really overpowered, so make sure you use it wisely depending on the current state of a match often. In FM21, team mentality certainly wasn't as powerful as it is in FM23 in my experience..

Edited November 28, 2022 by SC00P0NE

[Cobblers]

2 hours ago, SC00P0NE said:

In FM23, I find the team mentality button is really overpowered, so make sure you use it wisely depending on the current state of a match often. In FM21, team mentality certainly wasn't as powerful as it is in FM23 in my experience..

This is what I was about to suggest, but I don't have multiple tactics and tend to stick to only one. A little think about the other team and what is being represented on screen (via the in match video clips) can let you know if your foot should be taken on or off of the pedal from a mentality perspective.

 

[kertiek]

i "cheated" just to check the real value of fatigue of my team when the "slump" hit in january/febrauary and the players that were not performing as good as before were exactly the players that were jaded or really close to being jaded and all the other players that had decent rotations kept their form at good levels for the whole season, yes over a season u have to do a tweak on your tactics to keep the opposition guessing what ur going to do but fatigue is a big factor in performance that at least me didnt notice as much before.

what i did to fix it? ...

improved the whole sport science staff ( they help to keep fatigue low), read this for more info about that role and fatigue https://fminside.net/guides/staff-guides/279-sports-scientist-in-football-manager

on congested weeks of matches i lowered intensity in training -> rest to no training on yellow, half on light green and double on full green, but kept giving 1 day off to regular/importat players after every match especially if the match load was on heavy, maybe they can play 4 o 5 on a roll and keep performing but after 7 o 8 matches every 2/3 days they will start breaking down and the only way to keep them away from jadeness is resting them every chance u get

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by kertiek

[bronaldo1]

I'm back to FM for the first time in about 15 years so i'm by no means an expert but just sharing what has worked. I'm season 1, Spurs attempting for the second time after being sacked just after Christmas first time round because I was clueless. Second time round I chose vertical tiki-taka. And then I hired the best Assistant Manager I could find. To begin with I ignored his advice around tactical changes before matches. Quite a cautious coach whereas I'm gung-ho. After a few losses occurred I just started agreeing with him and ticking "Do it" to his advice and went on a great run up to 4th place. Then I hit a MID - SEASON SLUMP. I googled it and the general advice was just tweak your formation or a few roles within your tactic. So all I did was change my formation to another within the Vertical tiki-taka options. I went from 4-3-3 DM Wide to 4-2-3-1 and am now in the middle of a brilliant run. In 3rd place currently end of Jan. I also think the 4-2-3-1 suited the players I had. I had bought Maddison and was desperately trying to make him a Mezzala but he's a lot happier now as a bog-standard attacking-mid.

[Justin Tomlinson]

Mid season slump… if I can find a gap in the fixture list I often arrange an easy friendly to try and get some confidence back.

[masno]

Mid season slump happens because stats most stay realistic. I remember some years back, one SI dev said that the game doesn't make you lose on purpose, or that you striker miss 1v1 a lot of times because there is some voodoo behind the doors wanting you to lose, is simply that the game has to correspond to RL stats. If the game lets you continue your good phase, your striker that is supposed to get 30 goals a season, will get 90. Your team that is supposed to achieve a usual season, with some draws and maybe one or 2 defeats, can go 38 wins without any difficult. So yeah, the game is kinda scripted to maintain the stats on pair with RL, sometimes you literally have to accept that you gonna lose and thats it, nothing you can do to change that.

And in case you don't believe me, try to replay a game you lose at least 10 times, someone did this some years ago too, and they had like, 1 or 2 victories, 2 draws and 8 or 7 defeats, something like that, even tho they were the best team.

[Freakiie]

1 hour ago, masno said:

Mid season slump happens because stats most stay realistic. I remember some years back, one SI dev said that the game doesn't make you lose on purpose, or that you striker miss 1v1 a lot of times because there is some voodoo behind the doors wanting you to lose, is simply that the game has to correspond to RL stats. If the game lets you continue your good phase, your striker that is supposed to get 30 goals a season, will get 90. Your team that is supposed to achieve a usual season, with some draws and maybe one or 2 defeats, can go 38 wins without any difficult. So yeah, the game is kinda scripted to maintain the stats on pair with RL, sometimes you literally have to accept that you gonna lose and thats it, nothing you can do to change that.

And in case you don't believe me, try to replay a game you lose at least 10 times, someone did this some years ago too, and they had like, 1 or 2 victories, 2 draws and 8 or 7 defeats, something like that, even tho they were the best team.

Yeah no, to all of that.

I've gone on incredible runs that are hardly feasible in real life. Especially when you take over a team in a weaker league and boost it to CL contender levels you will just repeatedly stomp your domestic league while vacationing and leaving everything to your AssMan going on triple digit unbeaten streaks, the game is not scripted to mirror real life stats at all.

As for replaying games, as people tend to point out in those very threads, a lot of what goes into a match is decided long before match day, so saving and reloading right before the match will not change those factors. If anything, it shows that things are working as intended, as the same factors going in have the same result going out most of the time, just like they should. A match starts with the post match team talk from your last game basically. What you say there, what you say in the post match press conference, what you say in the pre match press conference all factors into how your players approach the next game. None of these things change by reloading on the day of the match. Add to that under the hood figures like jadedness and you will end up with games where your team just doesn't show up. It happens in real life often enough as well, plenty of favorites will have days where they just don't look like they ever had a chance at winning that afternoon.

[busngabb]

A lot of it is due to expectations and complacency. I find that when you go on a good run, your players always become very complacent and you've got to be really harsh to them. Demand a win, even when away to Man City or Bayern, tell them off at half time if they're getting less than a 6.7, that kind of thing. Just really up your expectations, but it becomes very stressful. The AI seems to change the reputations of teams periodically through the season. So if you're doing well, it's like a switch being thrown and all of a sudden the AI completely changes how they approach the games. Every game becomes a grind because the opposition isn't even trying to score, they're just sitting deep and trying to counter. Then you get the daft ones where they score from their only shot and your 37 shots on goal result in nothing but your mouse hitting the wall.

I guess it's got to be like this though? Otherwise your 40 game winning streak would be 60/80/100 games and the game would be far too easy.

I still think they need difficulty levels on the game. At the moment it's so unbalanced. The tactics and in game stuff isn't bad, it's quite challenging. Things like this add to the challenge. Selling players is also challenging, it's not as easy as it used to be. But buying players and assembling a superstar squad and just simply overriding all of the above is way, way too easy. Even as financially stressed teams like Everton or anyone from the Championship, you can assemble a collection of the world's best young players in 2 or 3 years and it doesn't really matter too much what you do tactically, you'll still do well. I'm playing as Everton, and although I can't sell players for love nor money, it's still insanely easy to sign players. Nico for £4M, Schelderup for £7M, Mannswerk for £3M, Endrick and Moukoko at the start of the third season for £30M in Klarna installments. In real life, there's no chance any of those players join Everton, let alone all of them. It's like you have to create the difficulty for yourself by not doing anything unrealistic, which is a bit masochistic.

 

[masno]

Em 05/08/2023 em 11:47, Freakiie disse:

Yeah no, to all of that.

I've gone on incredible runs that are hardly feasible in real life. Especially when you take over a team in a weaker league and boost it to CL contender levels you will just repeatedly stomp your domestic league while vacationing and leaving everything to your AssMan going on triple digit unbeaten streaks, the game is not scripted to mirror real life stats at all.

As for replaying games, as people tend to point out in those very threads, a lot of what goes into a match is decided long before match day, so saving and reloading right before the match will not change those factors. If anything, it shows that things are working as intended, as the same factors going in have the same result going out most of the time, just like they should. A match starts with the post match team talk from your last game basically. What you say there, what you say in the post match press conference, what you say in the pre match press conference all factors into how your players approach the next game. None of these things change by reloading on the day of the match. Add to that under the hood figures like jadedness and you will end up with games where your team just doesn't show up. It happens in real life often enough as well, plenty of favorites will have days where they just don't look like they ever had a chance at winning that afternoon.

So maybe the devs from the game are wrong in the end lmao.

Like I said, years ago when people were complaining about strikers not scoring 1v1 consistenly, and some dev came and said exactly what I said in this post, things most be realistic, if you simply go unbeaten every match, scoring galores of goals every time you face someone, this will defenitely not be realistic.

If you had a incredible run, is because you had a incredible team, or maybe you had a exploitable tactic, but if you play the game without buying all the best wonderkids, and using usual tactics, it is intended that you will hit a wall at a given time, because at the end, Fm is a game, and as such, it have coded behaviours, So, yeah, everything is scripted in the game, or otherwhise it wouldn't work 

[Freakiie]

19 minutes ago, masno said:

So maybe the devs from the game are wrong in the end lmao.

Like I said, years ago when people were complaining about strikers not scoring 1v1 consistenly, and some dev came and said exactly what I said in this post, things most be realistic, if you simply go unbeaten every match, scoring galores of goals every time you face someone, this will defenitely not be realistic.

If you had a incredible run, is because you had a incredible team, or maybe you had a exploitable tactic, but if you play the game without buying all the best wonderkids, and using usual tactics, it is intended that you will hit a wall at a given time, because at the end, Fm is a game, and as such, it have coded behaviours, So, yeah, everything is scripted in the game, or otherwhise it wouldn't work 

The devs stated that the overall game world is balanced to somewhat mirror real life statistics. That's something completely different from what you are implying and doesn't back up your conclusions at all. Plenty of people have massively over achieved to degrees that are simply not realistic, but the game doesn't stomp them down at some point and goes "nope, this is too unrealistic, bad luck!". No, the game is designed that naturally these performances are incredibly unlikely to happen, but the moment you throw the player into the mix all of this changes as experienced players are far better than the AI. Plenty of people have gone on massive winning streaks, have broken goal scorer records by absurd amounts, have gone from the 10th league to the Premier League with consecutive promotions every season and at no point does the game prevent this by somehow rigging the game against them to prevent these unrealistic achievements.

This wall you're claiming simply doesn't exist, otherwise the very exploit tactics you're talking about would never work as they would hit that would faster than any "normal" tactic due to how massively you can overperform with them.

[masno]

1 hora atrás, Freakiie disse:

The devs stated that the overall game world is balanced to somewhat mirror real life statistics. That's something completely different from what you are implying and doesn't back up your conclusions at all. Plenty of people have massively over achieved to degrees that are simply not realistic, but the game doesn't stomp them down at some point and goes "nope, this is too unrealistic, bad luck!". No, the game is designed that naturally these performances are incredibly unlikely to happen, but the moment you throw the player into the mix all of this changes as experienced players are far better than the AI. Plenty of people have gone on massive winning streaks, have broken goal scorer records by absurd amounts, have gone from the 10th league to the Premier League with consecutive promotions every season and at no point does the game prevent this by somehow rigging the game against them to prevent these unrealistic achievements.

This wall you're claiming simply doesn't exist, otherwise the very exploit tactics you're talking about would never work as they would hit that would faster than any "normal" tactic due to how massively you can overperform with them.

Yes, it exists, and you just proved my point with your arguments.

This plenty of people that overachieve in the game are also the ones that know how the game works, I am one of them, and I know there isn't a script that make my team go bad, but there is one that make my player good run became a average, or even bad run, and when I identify this problem, I change him, and maintain my team good form. Usually players that understand the game have a good XI and substitutes to maintain their form, but if you don't have players getting in bad forms, because they are programmed to do it, otherwise you would have a team full of Messis 24/7, then you are probably playing a different game from everybody else.

 And about the exploitable tactics, they are literally a cheat in the game, how many people can be seen using them and winning non stop because the ME can't handle whatever BS the tactic has as its objective, like in FM16 where the tactics to exploit the wings and crosses, people would win games very easily despite their team being bad, because they were exploiting a part of the game, this has nothing to do with good or bad phases, this is literally "I am cheating the system of the game, and that is why I am winning".

[Freakiie]

So, there's a literal wall that you must hit. But wait! If you know what you're doing, then you don't hit that wall and thus there is no wall. What is this, Schrödinger's Wall?

[masno]

34 minutos atrás, Freakiie disse:

So, there's a literal wall that you must hit. But wait! If you know what you're doing, then you don't hit that wall and thus there is no wall. What is this, Schrödinger's Wall?

You want to be a Ahole, so be it, I will not engage with a troll no more.

[Freakiie]

1 hour ago, masno said:

You want to be a Ahole, so be it, I will not engage with a troll no more.

That's a shame, I really wanted to learn more about Schrödinger's Wall.

[wazzaflow10]

On 05/08/2023 at 18:07, busngabb said:

I'm playing as Everton, and although I can't sell players for love nor money, it's still insanely easy to sign players. Nico for £4M, Schelderup for £7M, Mannswerk for £3M, Endrick and Moukoko at the start of the third season for £30M in Klarna installments.

You've likely got too many players loaded for the number of leagues you're running. i.e. if you've only got England loaded but picked a large DB with players all around the world (125k+) there won't be much of a need for teams to buy players for anything more than bargain prices. 

Check out some of the Daveincid threads for how to balance a save with the right number of leages/players.

 

[busngabb]

On 14/08/2023 at 14:45, wazzaflow10 said:

You've likely got too many players loaded for the number of leagues you're running. i.e. if you've only got England loaded but picked a large DB with players all around the world (125k+) there won't be much of a need for teams to buy players for anything more than bargain prices. 

Check out some of the Daveincid threads for how to balance a save with the right number of leages/players.

 

Where would I find those? On this forum? Shouldn't the game balance things like this for you? Or at least warn you? I think i've got England, Italy, Spain and Scotland with a large database, but maybe just the top leagues outside England.

[wazzaflow10]

17 hours ago, busngabb said:

Where would I find those? On this forum? Shouldn't the game balance things like this for you? Or at least warn you? I think i've got England, Italy, Spain and Scotland with a large database, but maybe just the top leagues outside England.

 

google.com??  

j/k

here's the thread for FM22. Same principles still apply for pretty much every game save. The game doesn't really warn you until you go over the 125k player recommended size. Its a bit of guesswork tbh. He's pretty responsive if you ask questions here on on his site and active making mods for the  game that in my opinion make the game world much more dynamic.

 

[ScotchWhisky]

On 28/11/2022 at 09:01, SC00P0NE said:

Make sure you use all of your 3 tactics slots often enough. As long as these three are different enough, I find it quite easy actually to get out of a bad run of form..  For example, I often find FM wants to sabotage my wingers, so I play with 2 strikers for a while instead.

Basically, tactical variety seems to be the remedy in my mind once I feel the game tries to sabotage me. To play with comprehensive highights is important for this though so that you can try to stop your team from sucking before it's too late..

Edit: In FM23, I find the team mentality button is really overpowered, so make sure you use it wisely depending on the current state of a match often. In FM21, team mentality certainly wasn't as powerful as it is in FM23 in my experience..

How do you get those three tactic slots to have high familiarity values with a semi-pro outfit?