Does slump on FM 23 last forever?

[flauta kicma]

For many years there were some kind of slump in the second season to which players needed to adjust their tactics. After some time, it was again "normal".

But now it seems to me the slump after the initial success last forever. It's as if the decline starts from the third season and no matter how I adjust the tactic, I'm not at 100 percent like it was before.

Titles are won, champions leagues are won, there is success but it seems that there is simply not that smooth feeling that was there before that slump. It is irrevirsible thing. And it is tiring me...

Is there a solution? 

Cheers

[Etebaer]

As far as i understand SI made AI clubs more reactive to your tactics so the "slump" should happen all the time while the AI tries to fight you and that would make matches less "smooth" i guess.

To me its a sign that it somehow works as inteded.

[cleaner475]

This is really weird as I’m having this too.

 I battled in season 1, played really well with a semi/decent Arsenal, scored a decent amount of goals. Started season 2 and we miss so many 1 on 1’s and other chances, can barely score.

 

change to a different formation, aboskutlty batter the competition scoring 6+ goals most games. Get to season 3, can’t hit a barn door again. Seriously struggling to even get one or two goals despite 10+ guilt edged chances each game.

 

Just don’t get it and it’s stopped me from playing further.

[santy001]

The AI tend to become more cautious as you become more successful, and as strange as it may sound as your team becomes more familiar with your formation the harder this can make it. 

If you're applying a sustained pressure perfectly, cutting off passing avenues for the opposition and forcing them to just hoof it clear you are in some ways making it harder for your team. I'm not good enough at managing the intricacies of a game being squashed into a 20-30 yard band of the pitch. I find myself having to have set-ups which give the opposition space to attack. Tactics that let them build out and push up. 

Sometimes the best thing you can do is give the opposition the ball and wait for them to mess up. 

[Jack722]

On 21/04/2023 at 23:40, flauta kicma said:

For many years there were some kind of slump in the second season to which players needed to adjust their tactics. After some time, it was again "normal".

But now it seems to me the slump after the initial success last forever. It's as if the decline starts from the third season and no matter how I adjust the tactic, I'm not at 100 percent like it was before.

Titles are won, champions leagues are won, there is success but it seems that there is simply not that smooth feeling that was there before that slump. It is irrevirsible thing. And it is tiring me...

Is there a solution? 

Cheers

There is a solution.

You have to get better at man management and understand that tactics aren't everything. The common response that the AI figures out your tactics or goes more cautious against you is lazy. You built your tactic around your players (or vice versa), you've won trophies.. It's a good tactic. Going from winning so much to an endless slump just doesn't make sense.

What can happen though is that players can lose confidence, get complacent, get unhappy, and probably much more. 

My last bad run of form, we had lost about 5 of our last 7, and drawing the other two. I managed to turn it around, firstly by maintaining high morale. The important thing here is to not let frustration get the better of you. If you narrowly use 2-1 with a close xG and game stats against a team on a similar level to you - tell them they got unlucky. If you lose 3-1 away against top of the league, but you got a few shots on target and made it difficult for them - tell the team they played well. On my 7th winless game we still had a very positive dressing room atmosphere.

Secondly, I looked at the analysis tab.  - People here massively overcomplicate tactics and analysis. I noticed two things. On our winless run we actually never went a game without scoring. Secondly, we never kept a clean sheet. It seemed likely that the problem lay with my defence. Then I saw on the analysis tab that 7 of our last 8 goals conceded had come from close to the penalty area. This suggested to me that my centrebacks weren't doing there jobs properly. Had my goals conceded come from long shots, i may have looked to my keeper to see what I could change. If the analysis team told me we had conceded a lot of final third entries, I may look to change something with my midfield. My centrebacks were two of the first names on my teamsheet, they had also both been at the club for at least over a season, and were 24 or above. There was nothing to suggest that they needed time to improve there partnership, or any gentle encouragement. They should be playing better.

I then did three things:

• Individually demanded a good performance from my defence in the next pre-match talk
• Changed one of my two fb(a)'s to a fb(s)
• Made sure to switch to my cautious tactic earlier if we go a goal up (rather than wait for +2GD late in the game)

We had 4 games left in the season, drawing two games 1-1 and winning the other two 1-0, importantly getting 2 clean sheets.

There also are other relatively common ways i've seen results go bad. 

• Pissing off an influential player
  • Best solution here is to avoid it in the first place , or to get rid of the player if possible
• Striker losing confidence
  • There are some good clues to know if your striker has lost his confidence. FIrstly you can normally tell visually if he just seems incapable of scoring and that all his shots are going straight at the keeper or well wide. Secondly if he's getting decent ratings despite not scoring in 5+ games. Thirdly the game basically tells you when the news item comes out saying "x players vows to end his scoring drought"
  • Here you got to navigate team talks and press conferences carefully. Offer encouragement and sympathy. Don't let journalists criticise him and tell him individually he was unlucky at the end of games.
• Keeper losing confidence
  • I've not had this one too often, but I say it's similar to the previous. You gotta to be careful whether to sympathise or criticise. If they're younger / been at the club for not too long then i'd lean towards sympathising. Same for if they make the occasional blunder but in general play well.
• Freak bad results / tough run against multiple top teams
  • Here you've just got to keep morale and the dressing room atmosphere up. Let's say you're away against top of the league and get a man sent off within the first 10 mins. The game is essentially a write off at that point. Even if you lose 5-0 you should really try make the team forget about it and move on instead of dwelling / criticising. There are ways through press conferences and team meetings to do this.
• And many more that I don't have time to write about at the moment...

 

[Daniel Evensen]

The answer by @Jack722 is 100% right on the money.  Very well said.

In contrast to his experience, I had a season a few months ago with Ingolstadt 04 that went absolutely horribly.  I managed to make everybody angry by selling influential players, reacted to that the wrong way by selling even more influential players, wound up losing all confidence in the squad, and watch us lose game after game.  The season actually started off pretty well, but then we went on a losing streak, capped off by a 7-0 loss to Munich 1860 that marked the end of the save.

Fiddling around a little bit and messing with the data analysis page will help you out immensely.  And, whatever you do, don't react to poor performances by throwing those 2 week fines around, lol.  That's what caused me to lose the players completely, and wound up with me resigning in disgrace instead of waiting for the sack.

[SOULjah]

10 hours ago, Jack722 said:

There is a solution.

You have to get better at man management and understand that tactics aren't everything. The common response that the AI figures out your tactics or goes more cautious against you is lazy. You built your tactic around your players (or vice versa), you've won trophies.. It's a good tactic. Going from winning so much to an endless slump just doesn't make sense.

What can happen though is that players can lose confidence, get complacent, get unhappy, and probably much more. 

My last bad run of form, we had lost about 5 of our last 7, and drawing the other two. I managed to turn it around, firstly by maintaining high morale. The important thing here is to not let frustration get the better of you. If you narrowly use 2-1 with a close xG and game stats against a team on a similar level to you - tell them they got unlucky. If you lose 3-1 away against top of the league, but you got a few shots on target and made it difficult for them - tell the team they played well. On my 7th winless game we still had a very positive dressing room atmosphere.

Secondly, I looked at the analysis tab.  - People here massively overcomplicate tactics and analysis. I noticed two things. On our winless run we actually never went a game without scoring. Secondly, we never kept a clean sheet. It seemed likely that the problem lay with my defence. Then I saw on the analysis tab that 7 of our last 8 goals conceded had come from close to the penalty area. This suggested to me that my centrebacks weren't doing there jobs properly. Had my goals conceded come from long shots, i may have looked to my keeper to see what I could change. If the analysis team told me we had conceded a lot of final third entries, I may look to change something with my midfield. My centrebacks were two of the first names on my teamsheet, they had also both been at the club for at least over a season, and were 24 or above. There was nothing to suggest that they needed time to improve there partnership, or any gentle encouragement. They should be playing better.

I then did three things:

• Individually demanded a good performance from my defence in the next pre-match talk
• Changed one of my two fb(a)'s to a fb(s)
• Made sure to switch to my cautious tactic earlier if we go a goal up (rather than wait for +2GD late in the game)

We had 4 games left in the season, drawing two games 1-1 and winning the other two 1-0, importantly getting 2 clean sheets.

There also are other relatively common ways i've seen results go bad. 

• Pissing off an influential player
  • Best solution here is to avoid it in the first place , or to get rid of the player if possible
• Striker losing confidence
  • There are some good clues to know if your striker has lost his confidence. FIrstly you can normally tell visually if he just seems incapable of scoring and that all his shots are going straight at the keeper or well wide. Secondly if he's getting decent ratings despite not scoring in 5+ games. Thirdly the game basically tells you when the news item comes out saying "x players vows to end his scoring drought"
  • Here you got to navigate team talks and press conferences carefully. Offer encouragement and sympathy. Don't let journalists criticise him and tell him individually he was unlucky at the end of games.
• Keeper losing confidence
  • I've not had this one too often, but I say it's similar to the previous. You gotta to be careful whether to sympathise or criticise. If they're younger / been at the club for not too long then i'd lean towards sympathising. Same for if they make the occasional blunder but in general play well.
• Freak bad results / tough run against multiple top teams
  • Here you've just got to keep morale and the dressing room atmosphere up. Let's say you're away against top of the league and get a man sent off within the first 10 mins. The game is essentially a write off at that point. Even if you lose 5-0 you should really try make the team forget about it and move on instead of dwelling / criticising. There are ways through press conferences and team meetings to do this.
• And many more that I don't have time to write about at the moment...

 

@Jack722 is on point.

The problem with things are even though the AI is getting more intuitive (which I applaud) our own tactic management is stuck in the dark ages. I agree that changing tactics throughout the season is generally a good thing. However, the gauges like familiarity make you feel like you are doing something wrong as if stating "Do not do this" if you are someone that changes tactics throughout the season.

@Jack722 points out that doing a lot of player management things will help out slumps and this I do agree with, for example praising conduct to each and every player once every couple of months is quite a good thing to do you barely get a negative reaction, the problem is this elongates my season a tad plus other things that I do concerning player management and I never understand how FM players tear through a season in a matter of days. When I first played FM it used to take me a whole month to get through a season I have now cut it down to about 2 -3 weeks with a few tweaks here and there concerning managing the actual match. However, I do feel this is still far too long to be playing a season and would really like to cut it down some more. 

[Draakon]

Very well said by @Jack722

My own example (although from FM22) is that I play with Ajax and we play possession-based 4-2-3-1 with low tempo and short passing. It worked like a treat... until it didn't.

The same happened as described above - teams started to come against us with cautious and defensive mindset, with bottom heavy formations and parked the bus very effectively. We circled around the area, but attacking players rarely found enough space to run into and chances became rare despite our possession. And, as it often happens in FM, opposition started to stun us with an odd counter-attack goal or used their couple of chances they got in the game. 

So, when I noticed that we can't get through in the first half, I started to switch tempo to normal. Slightly quicker tempo, circling the ball faster, attempting to overload their defence in certain areas. Quicker tempo also meant more counter-attacks from us (even though I didn't tick the 'counter-attack' box in the tactics screen), because my players moved the ball faster and found forward options right after winning the ball back. So suddenly we found space again and chances started to come.

 

Morale of the story is that you don't need to overhaul your tactics if things don't work out. Very often it's just a small detail - a role of one player, personal instruction or a set piece solution that can make a huge difference.