Thoughts about the "mid-season slump"

[Mberr]

 

Firstly, i want to state this is not a rant post. I love this game and i´m pretty aware of the logic behind the mid season slump. I think the following is common knowledge in the community: reaching january, the game reevaluates your reputation and teams reread you, and adapt to your new reputation. 
I think the system is nearly perfect, because it has a solid logic behind. It´s not "scripting" as you can find in FiFA career mode or PES forgoten ML. It has to do with the pressure your players get by the increasing expectations, teams being more motivated to play against you, maybe a little bit of tiredness... So you don´t see the ball going through the chest of your cb, it´s more complex, it changes the whole matches and demand more of the players.I usually pick up mid table teams in big leagues, and in those contexts i adapt  generally well, it´s a satisfying thinkering work on my tactics,  when i watch my games to find tweaks to be made, and it uses to work well for me.
 
 This time i decided to try a more complex challenge. I took over Racing Santander, in Segunda b (third spanish divsion). We were expected to reach the play off and we did it easily, reaching the promotion. The club was in a massive  debt, literally 10M debt when our wage budget is, now after the promoton, 2,5M. A few months in, the club got a new owner, who payed part of the debt and reestructured the rest . I choose a lower reputation for my manager to make it a little bit harder, but despite the low squad support, we kept a regular shape all over the season with peaks of great football, it was a very interersting season because i felt the team neeeded that promotion to survive. (tactic below )
 

https://postimg.cc/qz5pztT0

 Now we are in second division. I managed to bring in a couple of players (free loans, free transfers), but i had a very little budget to work with and reinforce the squad, so i knew we lacked in certain areas (lack of height, slow center backs, lack of talent in my attacking players). We were expected to get relegated and my expectations were to somehow overachieve and reach the middle of the table. So i tweaked my tactic to accomodate to a higher level. Not a significant change, it´s was the same tactic with tweaks to make it safer in transitions (mi cbs are slow, as i said).
 The first half of the season was too easy, a few  games in and i turned back to the same approach used for the promotion, only because we weren´t sufferring in defense. When a match started i used the first minutes to accomodate. If we were outplayed i just lowered the line of engagement to compress the space a little bit more, and turned on the counter instruction. The mezzala was often turned b2b, the WB often was given a supportt duty. However, it was a complete fiction. We won most of the games with sufficiency, even we trashed some teams. But then the save reached january, we were first of the league. The last game of december we trashed a middle table team 5-1, and the losing streak began just the game after, 4th january.
 To summarize, not only the teams now play more defensive, but there´s a general improvement in their performance in every sense. They punish me on the counter, they score headers, long shots, set pieces, some of them -the better ones- disrupt my build up with ease, all things they weren´t able to do the first half of the season.

That´s all logical, cause as i mentioned before, we lacked height, we lacked speed in defense, we were not a highly talented team, but the problem i have with this aspect of the game is that it gives you a false impression on the quality of your players. Look, i knew the adjustement was going to be harsh, but i was expecting to suffer counter attack goals mainly, and i supposed i´d need to just make my team safer, play a more transitonal attacking play involving less players. The first half of the season gave me the false feeling of security rergarding my defense. As i said, we faced attacking teams before, we sometimes went cautious for the last minutes to maintain a short lead, and the team did very well. Of course we conceded some headers, but not a lot of them. Sometimes the other teams got a draw in those scenarios, and i accepted that as part of the inherent challenge a recently promoted team faces.
 So, what kind of games we find right now? I adjusted my tactic to be safer. I´m just trying to not get trashed and keep a tight result, we mantain an aggresive mid block that aims to disrupt midfield play. We get 2-3 chances every games, similar to our opposition. It very often ends in a 1-0 loss. The goals range from the fancy ones out of nowhere (i remember three of them at the end of the match that were rutherly painful to watch), long balls to the striker, simple headers and set pieces, being the last the most recurring one. I even take the work of studying next opposition and the way they execute their set pieces to place my taller cb in the key area, but they just score over my taller center back regularly.
We felt off of the play offs spots reaching march.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/MpyWnc1

The situation is not catastrophical, now the next time i play i´m gonna start a complete tactic overhaul. The board supports me, the squad supports me. Morale is not too bad. We should be able to complete the ten remaining games with certain dignity and reach my initial expectation that is mid table, and obviously we are completely out of the relegation battle. But the feelings are honestly sad. Mid table is a great spot to be when you are a relegation candidate, but it feels awful, even humilliating, with such an asimetry, we were two entirely different teams. What makes me keep playing is the narrative i have in my head about portraying a manager trying to lead a modest group of players into making history, and the relative certainty i will eventually success.

As a conclussion, i want to say i don´t think this reevaluation system needs to be replaced by a totally different one. It´s a good system, and i understand the sheer complexity of making a game with that ridiculous amount of variables to be estable, and i realy admire the work made by the developers, but i think it needs some adjustements. Even if I know that maybe a game to game reevaluation is impossible,  i´d like to see a more sensible one, like revaluation every five or ten games to make things more gradual. It would probably be more demanding for the players, forcing us to adapt regularly, but it would surely be more natural. We wouldn´t have reached the leading position that way, and i firmlly believe we shouldn´t have make it, because we weren´t the best team in the league, not even close.

 Finally, i want to make a comment on the revaluation process itsellf. When we reached january we were first of the league, but we also were a recently promoted, relegation candidates. The game went straight from considering us relegation candidates to considering us candidates to promotion, and that´s too abrupt if you ask me. I find the problem is not only the lack of different "rereading instances", but it is the extrermism of the diagnose the game does. I´m sure there´s an intention on reflectiing how the media works, but i still think it needs an adjusment, like, to say something, have different media publlications with heavily different views and the resulting atmosphere should be more balanced, not only a monolitc narrative of an imbeatable team, nor a catastrophical one when there´s a bad streak of results. 

 Football manager offers us the posibility to live fantastic histories, to make a small team become a giant, and even when i have poblems finding the right save, the euphoria i feel after winning a UCL remained intact over the years. I just want it to be even bettter, but maybe if the system was not like it is the game wouldn´t work that well.

 I encourage all the brave people that went through this confuse wall of text to share their opinions on this subject, thank you.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Mberr
ortographical correction

[Jack722]

On 11/05/2023 at 06:08, Mberr said:

I think the following is common knowledge in the community: reaching january, the game reevaluates your reputation and teams reread you, and adapt to your new reputation. 

This is 100% not true.

I used to have the worst mid season slumps, to the point where it ruined many of my saves and had me tearing my hair out. Ever since I stopped listening to this advice, my mid seasons slumps reduced to 2 or 3 games - or dissapeared entirely.

There are two main reasons this recalculation theory makes no sense. 

1. This doesn't happen in real life - does anyone really massively change how they place against, say, Fulham in the premier league now? not really.. They continue attempting to play their own game against pretty much everyone, apart from the big six and certain scenarios (like winning late on) where they'll be more defensive. Reputation takes years to change signifcantly to the point where teams change the way they play against you.
2. Supposedly teams start playing more defensive against you.. Then why do we start suddenly conceding more goals? and why does barely anyone else ever play defensive and win reguarly playing great football like all these teams are apparently doing to you?

People on these forums forget that football in real life, and FM, is massively influenced by factors outside of tactics. What normally happens is a variety of non-tactical factors. 

• Normally players start complaining about new contracts / transfers/ playing time in mid season, and get unhappy. This can lead to huge consequences if not managed properly.
• Teams can genuinely get a bit unlucky and lose a couple games (no big deal) but then if not managed correctly can lead to frustration / second guessing themselves / nervousness / giving up etc.. Numerous times i've seen my teams play well and lose for a couple games, then suddenly forget how to play football and get badly outplayed against mediocre sides after
• You can have a genuinely hard fixture list and go 4 or 5 games winless. Players can lose confidence after a run like this and subsequently go on a bad run of form
• Frustration can occur after a huge 4 / 5-0 loss where every shot the opposition takes basically goes in
• Strikers are programmed to be able to go on a dry spell and cost your team results, same with keepers losing confidence.
• An unexpected title race / possible champions league qualification can lead to the pressure getting to your players.
• And many more...

There are methods in game to stop all of these happening. I think one clue to be sure that your problem is non-tactical is by checking morale and dressing room atmosphere. If they're not green then you are guarenteed to be leaving points on the table. It's crazy how powerful those two indicators are.

[Jack722]

On 11/05/2023 at 06:08, Mberr said:

Finally, i want to make a comment on the revaluation process itsellf. When we reached january we were first of the league, but we also were a recently promoted, relegation candidates. The game went straight from considering us relegation candidates to considering us candidates to promotion, and that´s too abrupt if you ask me. I find the problem is not only the lack of different "rereading instances", but it is the extrermism of the diagnose the game does. I´m sure there´s an intention on reflectiing how the media works, but i still think it needs an adjusment, like, to say something, have different media publlications with heavily different views and the resulting atmosphere should be more balanced, not only a monolitc narrative of an imbeatable team, nor a catastrophical one when there´s a bad streak of results. 

I guarentee this was not because of reputation change or teams changing how they play against you, but the fact that in January, people start talking about the title race and relegation and top 4 etc.. Your players just got nervous and basically sh*t the bed. 

You probably started reciveing questions about top 4 and the title race. There are two things you should've done at this stage. 

1. Take off as much pressure as possible from your players to do with end of seasons goals. Any press question about winning the title say "we're just taking things one at a time", "we have a long way to go before we're on the same level as Barca", "I think Barca / Real will win the league" or something similar
2. Never use the title race in team talks. Once you start getting close to the end of the season you should tell players to "go out there and enjoy yourselves" or something along those lines. The pressure would be immense at that stage to win a potential once in a lifetime title, they already have motivation enough to do well.

[ReadingFan82]

My logic with it has always been that morale, team cohesion, dressing room atmosphere, managerial support, etc..., is super super important, as suggested by Jack722. If your managing a mid table team for example, who end up by the new year in the top 4 for example, and then have a legitimately tough run and lose a couple of games, your teams morale dips and then performance and then results become worse. If you keep losing after the drop in morale, it will only get worse, likely leading to and more losses, harming atmosphere/moral further, and on the cycle goes. I think Jack sums up the reasons for why this can happen quite well, but that of course means it can be hard to judge what it actually is that has gone wrong. Are you genuinely being unlucky, or have teams 'figured' you out? Should you stick with the tactic or twist, to something new, potentially untrained, and thus has less cohesion, which can of course then impact on results  if your tactic was fine and you genuinely were being unlucky, having an off day which can happen, and so on. I think what's difficult is figuring out why poor runs of form can sometimes come out of nowhere, and if you don't know the reason for why things are not going well its going to be difficult to fix them.

When morale's down, the only way to fix it is seemingly to win a game, at least in my experience. But if morale is shot because of poor form, then your unlikely to get good results, and morale will thus stay low and the cycle continues. I think more ways to try and get the teams morale up may be a good way to improve results but I'm not really sure how it is you go about that. When your form and morale is bad it seems nothing tactically different you do works, and every shot on target flies part your keeper and nothing goes your way, which of course does genuinely happen in real life, but in a game its so difficult to try and find a way around this. The past few times I've had this I've just ended up getting sacked, or got really lucky and scraped a win and magically all of sudden the team performed brilliantly. Of course, again, this does happen in real life, its just I find it really difficult to try and find ways out of these horrible ruts you can sometimes get into in this game, so whenever someone's frustrated about it I completely get it.

I do disagree slightly with Jack though on a few things. While it seem to be counter intuitive, going more defensive can sometimes help score goals. If the ai knows your an attacking team, playing a high line, being aggressive, etc..., might see you pull them to pieces, so sitting back and letting your team have the ball, particularly if your not an elite level team with amazing technical players, might keep you out. You in turn might go more attacking to try and break down a defensive team, and thus leave more space in behind, have less players in defensive positions should the ai opposition counter attack and so on, and thus a defensive team with the ability to counter might score more goals being a more defensive team than they would had they been attacking, ultra aggressive off and on the ball.

[ReadingFan82]

I do think a huge issue I have is having a wobble when things start going badly, changing tactics to something my team has not played before and is not used too, or even one not as 'meta' as a gegenpress (or whatever defaults are agreed generally in the community to be good), and thus performing worse because we have 'worse' tactic, and one the team aren't comfortable playing in yet, or never will be because it might be a style that just does not fit the squad of players you have.

Changing the tactic usually leads to more bad results, and stuck in the so called cycle you can then find yourself.

[wazzaflow10]

On 09/06/2023 at 18:44, ReadingFan82 said:

When your form and morale is bad it seems nothing tactically different you do works, and every shot on target flies part your keeper and nothing goes your way, which of course does genuinely happen in real life, but in a game its so difficult to try and find a way around this. The past few times I've had this I've just ended up getting sacked, or got really lucky and scraped a win and magically all of sudden the team performed brilliantly. Of course, again, this does happen in real life, its just I find it really difficult to try and find ways out of these horrible ruts you can sometimes get into in this game, so whenever someone's frustrated about it I completely get it.

One of the most annoying things in this game is when your team forgets how to play and look like sunday leaguers overnight. And every opponent you face turns into 2010 Barcelona and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Of course if you try to have a team meeting about it they all get pissy too. 

[Etebaer]

A real life example of this mid season slump would have been Hertha BSC a few years ago when they were not so bad a relegation candidate that they were able to start well into a season and let the season slip after the winter break with such regularity it became a running joke.

In 2016/17 Hertha had 32 points in the first leg vs 18 points in the second leg.

In 2017/18 it was 30 v 19 points.

The worse they became the more it equalized...

And. btw. some Vids say Hertha never played in the CL - that is not true as they played CL in the 1999/2000 season, when they had a good team instead of a bunch of some better than average players that related on single oustanding players actions for success.

###

What happens in FM could be for one the influence of weather as winter is bad for the more technical aquainted teams and a multitude of new players may disturb the team cohesion as well a lack of friendlies may left the players match unift at first and as FM is a momentum + morale manager that alone could break any winning streak!

Edited June 11, 2023 by Etebaer

[Draakon]

On 31/05/2023 at 00:55, Jack722 said:

This is 100% not true.

I used to have the worst mid season slumps, to the point where it ruined many of my saves and had me tearing my hair out. Ever since I stopped listening to this advice, my mid seasons slumps reduced to 2 or 3 games - or dissapeared entirely.

There are two main reasons this recalculation theory makes no sense. 

1. This doesn't happen in real life - does anyone really massively change how they place against, say, Fulham in the premier league now? not really.. They continue attempting to play their own game against pretty much everyone, apart from the big six and certain scenarios (like winning late on) where they'll be more defensive. Reputation takes years to change signifcantly to the point where teams change the way they play against you.
2. Supposedly teams start playing more defensive against you.. Then why do we start suddenly conceding more goals? and why does barely anyone else ever play defensive and win reguarly playing great football like all these teams are apparently doing to you?

 

I believe that how AI teams will play against you (or any other team) is connected to two things:

1) general approach that teams play with lower mentality settings in away games and more attacking at home (same formation, but for example balanced at home and cautious in away) by default

2) pre-match predictions (bookies coefficients) that you see in match preview that pretty much indicates who's the favourite. Being small team in good form and high in the table in January doesn't necessarily make you favourites in a game against bigger clubs. I don't know how exactly those bookies predictions are calculated - I assume that both reputation, form and home/away factors are taken into account. I've noticed that against some teams we're favourites at home and they're favourites in their home game against us. Anyway I believe that those predictions will give you a hint how AI could approach his game against you.

 

Last, but not least it's affected by how the match starts and who scores first. If you find the first goal your game could be fairly easy, but when you somehow concede first you have to be prepared that AI will start to protect the lead and finding an equaliser could be more difficult than finding the opening goal, depending on tactics of both teams.

 

[Viking]

This is usually the point where I start to cheat in a save... When it's impossible to win because there's always some woodwork, some 6.2 season average goadlkeeper with a 8.0 match, ot a late equaliser in the way. Depressing. 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Viking

[herne79]

On 30/05/2023 at 22:55, Jack722 said:

This is 100% not true.

Yes and no .  The AI absolutely can re-evaluate how they play against us based, at least in part, on our performance.  It’s not just restricted to January however.

On 30/05/2023 at 22:55, Jack722 said:

Supposedly teams start playing more defensive against you.. Then why do we start suddenly conceding more goals?

Teams don’t play more defensively - they play more cautiously.  That’s not semantics, it’s an important difference.  Teams can start to restrict space in their own half, space that our teams perhaps once enjoyed.  Likewise we may see that teams’ attacking play becomes more measured, so fewer chances may be created but at the same time those fewer chances may be of better quality (and therefore potentially more goals scored).

Anyway, in answer to the OP there may be any number of reasons why our teams hit a slump.  Our star striker may hit a bad patch; our players become complacent; us managers can also become complacent and not take due care when setting up for the next match or not noticing what’s happening on the pitch until it’s too late (that’s an important one btw); our tactic might need a tweak; we’ve bought a new player who doesn’t fit in / sold a player who did; we’ve annoyed half the team because we didn’t give our 4th choice fullback the pay rise / playing time he demanded and so everyone else went ballistic; something else entirely; any combination thereof.

TL;DR - it’s not about January, it’s about effective management during the course of the whole season because a bad run of form can happen at any time.