Football Manager 2014 Question - MORALE - Help!

[Zinedine Cygan]

Hi guys and gals,

I am Sheff Utd manager in the English League One.

I have just won manager of the month for October (4 wins out of 5), yet nearly all players are on 'Okay' morale or there abouts.

This isn't an isolated incident, even when winning I find my players are dropping morale.

I am not critical of players or ripping into them in public, can someone please please tell me whats up with FM14. This is the only Football Manager that I have struggled with and had me scratching my head,

Many thanks in advance,

Zinedine.

[css_matt]

Not had this particular problem but morale does seem to play an absolutely massive part in this years game.

If I lose a few games in a row I get into a spiral, my Hull team didnt win for the first 18 league games, condemning us to relegation.

I can only suggest praising individuals after good performances.

That said for a club such as Sheffield United, 4 wins out of 5 in league one will not satisfy many people. They really should be in a higher division and maybe this is reflected somewhat through player morale from there POV.

[Zinedine Cygan]

@css_matt

Thanks for the advice, I just can't understand it. I have never had these type of problems on any previous FM's. I have even stopped resetting the team on the tactics page (clearing the starting 11 ready for the next game) just in case it's something silly like this.

[Ryknow]

Do you praise them after wins, with calm or cautious approach? Do you say you have faith in them to do even better, etc?

I've encountered no problems with morale, so it might be another issue relating to your level. Remember it only takes one small loss for players to drop from superb to good, then a few wins to get back up to superb.

[Garethjohn79]

I have noticed in this FM if you slate your Def your Mids/Att will also react,this is probably what could happen IRL as they would be present during a Team talk.I would like to give an individual player talk after I had made my team ones.If 1 Def has had a blinder I would like to praise him but when I slate the rest of the Def he will react as if I slated him as well.

[chinch]

spirals of bad form/morale do seem to be difficult to get out of. Although that isn't what the OP's problem was.

My morale solution seems to be plough through with the bad form until you see a run of 3 or 4 easy games...then go all in for team meetings and private chats with players...then just go at it with your absolute strongest 11

[duke79]

Hi in this FM 2014 i win games and i have the same problem with all players dropping down the morale to abysmal frequently, i don´t know why in Career mode only but in Classic mode the morale bug doesn´t happen...Answer me please when you find out the cause buddy

Thanks

[Äktsjon Männ]

One tip if you want better morale is the team cohesion training focus. I constantly have the team training on that and I don't get very poor/abysmal morale even through longish bad streaks. It also doesn't randomly drop to 'okay' from the positive extremes.

[Pelz]

One tip if you want better morale is the team cohesion training focus. I constantly have the team training on that and I don't get very poor/abysmal morale even through longish bad streaks. It also doesn't randomly drop to 'okay' from the positive extremes.

I think training in general plays a far greater role in morale this year. I noticed during pre-season when schedules were high and rest days few and far between squad morale, despite generally thumping teams for 7 or 8, would rise at a far less rate than in previous versions and steadily decline whilst not playing games. I think if you can get a firm grip on training (I finally have everyone happy) you'll see a massive improvement.

[Luke159]

I suspect if your having a bad streak and you have some players who have the ability or potential to play in higher league's will reflect their disappointment through the morale system which in turn makes winning harder as they won't be as committed in any position and the player's who would normally play well despite the run of bad games will also start to suffer from low morale. Perhaps something to test, try having player's who are good for the league your in and a team with player's who can play in higher league's and see how it goes, this would also give reasons as to why top teams start to struggle because the teams who are expected to be fighting relegation or top 14 are so pumped up by the fact that they are up there fighting for a European cup play that nothing can go wrong and a few loses doesn't effect them as much as it would do for a team who is expected to qualify for Europe. If this is the case then I think this needs to be addressed because it is game breaking as far as top teams go and gives smaller clubs the upper hand in all matches.

[PurpsUK]

I've noticed this, I'm playing as Crewe, toward the end of the first season the teams moral dropped from a high positive to fairly poor and lower, we were on avoid relegation and sitting nicely in the top half of the table, the drop happened after a 3-1 away win and then just continued to drop, I switched all training to team, did regular talks, praised them, and had a high motivation coach doing team talks. The moral jumped a bit after each but by the time I could do anything else it was low again.

During the second season, we were on a mid table requirement, sitting in 3rd place, moral was very high, then suddenly while 2 - 0 up during a game, the entire team dropped to OK, then continued to sink, which resulted in a 3-2 loss, since then they can't seem to win a single game, no matter what I do to send the moral positive it just sinks back to below OK in no time at all and again even while winning half the teams moral is still dropping.

This is in career mode and I'm guessing it's a bug. I'm running the steam version from the recent sale.

[Dagenham_Dave]

How you handle your players' morale is key in this game.

As an example, my Bath team are on a wretched run of form just now, as you can see here...

And here is the current morale within the squad...

It's all about how you handle team talks (particularly position specific or individual ones), and when, and how often to hold a team meeting and what to say. One tip is to not always wait till the prompt for this, judge it for yourself. As you can see, even though the morale of my players is generally fine, I'm still struggling to pick up points, so it's not the b all and end all that people will have you believe.