How to turn things around when losing a match?

[Ianinuk]

I always do "ok" in this game in terms of keeping a club at or getting a club to a decent league position, reasonable cup runs etc. I'm usually pretty good in the transfer market, getting rid of the bad players and replacing them with better ones, improving squad depth etc. And when it comes to tactics I always base my tactics on my best players and work from there. I usually also decide on two sets of tactics, both of which will compliment my best players, and if a match isn't going too well then I will switch to my second tactic. But this only helps sometimes. I accept that I will always lose some matches just because the opposition are too good. But when I'm losing a match I always feel like I'm just guessing a bit when it comes to changing tactics or making substitutions. So what do other people do when they are losing a match? Does anyone look at the stat screens for help, like the action zones, or home and/or away stats screens? Or maybe look at which opposition player is doing the best (if any), and change the formation to try and cancel that out maybe?

At the moment I'm managing Southport, and we're in 7th place with 10 games to go, only 2 points away from the playoff places, which I'm pretty happy with. We just beat Kidderminster 5-1 which was great. We also recently had a fantastic 4-4 away draw at Fleetwood, where we just kept coming back from behind. Once we came back to 4-4 with 10 minutes to go, I had to decide whether to carry on playing an attacking style and go for glory, or go super-defensive with men behind ball etc and hope we could hold on. But seeing as we were huge underdogs, I chose the latter and it paid off. A well-earned draw I think. The only problem I'm facing at the moment is with the finances - when the contract negotiations came around I stupidly just accepted them all, which you can get away with in the Premier League, but not in the BSN. But the chairman is happy with everything else, so I'm sure I'll be until the end of the season, when I can offload quite a few players anyway.

But if I had a better idea of how to turn around matches then I'm sure I could get us into those play-off places, but I'm sure we will probably finish outside them as things are.

[myfmdaily]

When you are losing a match it's important to realize, if you are controlling the match, but the opposition scores on his first chance or if you are being dominated.

If you are controlling the match doesn't change nothing immediately and see how your team reacts, if they continue create chances. If that's the case and you still can't score increase the mentality to attacking or try to use an alternative formation that can create a more offensive game.

If your team is being outplayed, try to use fast players up front, play direct game and apply the pass into space shout. That sequence of instructions will avoid opposition pressure and exploit defence with high defensive line, creating counter attacks.

Is also important to see on match stats if there are area where your team is missing too many passes, for example my defenders sometimes misses many passes and on those situations I activate the shout playout from defence or instruct the goalkeeper to do distribution with a long kick, trying to give the directly to the midfielders or forwards.

The determination of your players are a key attribute for the capability of your team to around a result.

[Ianinuk]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I'm actually on the iPhone version, so I can't do specific player passing instructions, but I'll give the direct passing with fast strikers a go. And check the match stats for passing stats too, which might help to spot problem areas.