How to know "what went wrong"?

[steve.battisti]

Hi all,

Would like some advice on figuring out "what went wrong." I've noticed that my general approach seems to be very simplistic. I set up my tactic. I play out the games (only using key highlights). Rinse and repeat. I'm not really doing much managing other than hoping we will play better after a loss.

I'd like to better understand what went wrong in a particular game, so I can try to figure out, for example, what I might want to change the next time I play that same team other than randomly messing with tactics and hoping it works better.

But I realized, I don't really understand how in FM24 to figure that out (what went wrong). For example, we recently played a game against a team far below us in the standings. We're in 1st. We lost 2-0 and only generated .8 xG. I have two trained attacking tactics and switched at half-time; neither made a difference. All of the "intangibles" seemed to have been good - we were in form, have good team cohesion, tactical familiarity, happiness, and manager support.

How do I figure out why we lost and what we could do differently? I know there are all of those performance graphs and so on (although I'm in Vanarama North and don't have a performance analyst), but I just don't really know how to analyze what happened.

Anyone have any good suggestions?

[FrazT]

I would certainly start by watching more of the game -extended highlights at least.  You probably need to manage the game more than you are currently doing because every change that you make can affect the final outcome as the game recalculates the end result each time there is a change.

[steve.battisti]

10 minutes ago, FrazT said:

I would certainly start by watching more of the game -extended highlights at least.  You probably need to manage the game more than you are currently doing because every change that you make can affect the final outcome as the game recalculates the end result each time there is a change.

Awesome, thanks for the tip.

[Dadecane]

Watch more of the game (extended or comprehensive highlights)

 

pay attention to player form, and if any are struggling in their last 3-5 matches dont be scared to rotate them and put in a backup. Remember the stars u see in ability is just the opinion of your assman, everyone here has seen plenty 2stars who performed much better than the 3star starting in front of him. Theres also hidden atributes so maybe a guy youve catalogued as a “backup” is rotting in your bench even tho he would do much better than the starter in front of him. Demand excellence, if players arent averaging 6.7+ over their last 5, sub them out a game or 2. You said youre in first place tho, so maybe things arent so bad.

go to competition stats before each game, check out how your opponent is doing in corners, set pieces, attacking and defending them. If they score a bunch on corners, obviously set your focus to defend corners, if they’re scoring more on Fk’s then set your focus to defend fk’s. Same defensively, if they allow a lot of corner goals, set your focus to attack corners, etc etc. 

when you watch more of the game, dont make SO many changes every 5-7 mins or after every dangerous play given up. Yes, like the poster above said, u need to influence ur game more tactically, but beware of changing instructions every 5 mins and not letting the players settle. Thats not good. Sometimes, they need to be given time, if u come into a game confident of your tactic, and in min 2 u allow a goal, dont stress, let them play out a good 15-20 mins in that tactic u so trusted, theyll probably tie the game again rather quickly, maybe even take the lead. Find whats good, and TRUST it. 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Fm always comes down to 3 things. Your tactic. Your players and/or yourself. Or any combination of the 3. 

 

 

[AndrikoDS]

From a tactical perspective, watch the game in extended or even comprehensive highlights and look for trends and tendencies over time - for example, do your attacks get bogged down on the edge of the area or what ever. If the same sort of thing keeps happening, then that's something you can tweak, but as said above, don't over do the adjustments otherwise it turns to chaos.

Beyond the game itself, there seems to be a lot of factors that can go into why the team do well or not that I don't entirely understand and aren't entirely clear. Even the match engine stuff is not always obvious.

You are winning the league, so it maybe that such a weak team as you were playing chose to shut you out of the game and wait for a lucky counter attack. They could also have better intangibles, such as form etc going into the game that you can't do anything about.

Also, it's one defeat and you are top of the table. It does happen to the best of them from time to time. Maybe your team were wearing grey jerseys or something.

[steve.battisti]

Thanks all for your great feedback!

(For the record, we had a nice wobble, but hung on and won the league in the second to last game.)

Edited January 16 by steve.battisti

[illionore]

Thanks for all the insights! I'm new to FM and still have a lot of things to learn! I think the tips above may help me trying to improve 'my struggles' a bit as well.

My situation is very different from OP's: I'm playing in the lower league and my club (projected to end up around 7th at the start of the year) dropped from around 6th position all the way back to 12th ( L - D - X - L - L ). I think some of those matches I should have been able to win, BUT I think in my situation there's a LOT of trouble in the club, which I partially contribute our 'bad run' towards: There's 3 social groups plus 3-4 players constantly in the 'Other' category. One of the "not gelling players" is my team's captain and there's nothing that seems to work: he just doesn't (want to) fit in with the rest. I haven't (probably because of this) been able to raise team cohesion above "very poor" at all, even with weekly team bonding sessions, match reviews and an occasional community event. So I think I have a feeling I know where the problems are... but playing matches a bit better despite of this might help improve things a bit... hopefully the above tips can contribute to that  

[GIMN]

If you click on a previous match, there will be a button on the screen titled "Analytical Data" - this will bring up a pop up with some tabs.  You can use the information in here to identify lots of different things, and then watch the associated event in the game.  I will often use this to see if there were specific players or areas of the pitch where passes weren't completed.  Maybe someone isn't as good as I think, or maybe not as good as they think (they keep trying passes they don't have the capacity to pull of consistently).  Maybe there's a striker who is meant to be the recipient of these passes, but he's too slow to get on the end of the them.  Maybe our centre-backs are sending the ball long too frequently.  And so on.

The inverse of this can be useful, too.  Maybe most of the opposition's key passes were coming from a specific area of the pitch, and I need to think about changing a player, their role or instructions to address some form of defensive deficiency.

[whatsupdoc]

It's easier to see clear problems defensively: the highlights you see will often point out a problem.

How did the opponent's goal start? 

For example if you have a player try to run with the ball and lose possession, it might be that he doesn't have the ability to do it and you've asked him to, so changing him to 'run with ball rarely' might be a tweak.

Watch the goals closesly and look for recurring issues.

[illionore]

Thanks for these tips! I will go look at the 'previous match' data, to see what I can learn there... and thanks for the example too, whatsupdoc!

By the way, as a 'follow up' on my "bad club situation"... I relaxed the player instructions a lot (common beginner's mistake apparently to click too many boxes - and even though I READ about that before, some people suggested which things to all put on to make it work - but for my team it only made things worse! Surprise surprise!) - Next game I won 4-1 against the current number 2 in the league and the game following it I won 2-1. To my surprise, after that, the team DID glue together and now everyone is suddenly in the 'core group'! I was quite amazed! Team cohesion is still 'poor', so even with that I'm actually not doing badly I think... and I guess it takes some more time for that to improve too.