I'm rubbish at this game...

[Wwarrddy]

I've decided. I'm absolutely pants at this game. Every season I get that mid-season slump, every. single. season. It's written in the stars! No matter what I do. Team meetings. Keeping the same team. Changing the team. Keeping the tactics. Change the tactics. It does not matter. I just don't get the game...I just went 12 games unbeaten. With Northampton. Of all clubs! Second season in the Premier league and then BOOM... I lose 10 of the next 13 games. Absolutely heart breaking!!

Even when i would be in League 1 and 2 it would hit me. And after 10 games or so I would FINALLY recover and scrape promotion. In my 7 seasons as Northampton manager it has happened in every single season. I just can't do it....I've loved the game but I am defeated.

[Lord Rowell]

Welcome to management. In any field. Thing is, don't lose your temper in team talks etc., identify what the problems are (if any?), and ride out the storm.

It can't rain all the time.

[FrazT]

I would suggest that you head over to the Tactics forum, read their guidelines and open a thread in there with as much detail as you can about your team, tactics, formation, instructions etc and they can offer you some help.

[vishers]

Taking Northampton to the Premiership suggests you're actually quite good at this game!

[Wwarrddy]

That's just it FrazT...I shouldn't have to go and read over a load of guidelines and get a load of external help. I should be able to learn through PLAYING the game but I just don't get it. Literally every single year it's happened. It's a time bomb waiting to go and as soon as it happens there's no going back. So frustrating.

[Cougar2010]

6 minutes ago, Wwarrddy said:

That's just it FrazT...I shouldn't have to go and read over a load of guidelines and get a load of external help. I should be able to learn through PLAYING the game but I just don't get it. Literally every single year it's happened. It's a time bomb waiting to go and as soon as it happens there's no going back. So frustrating.

Every team goes through good & bad patches in a season just like real life.

As a manager a big part of your job is to extend the good patches & minimise the bad ones.

 

It usually comes down to one or more of the following three things:

A) Good runs bring complacency & overconfidence, this leads to a bad run following.  Here the trick is to keep the players focussed as much as you can which means building your squad around good personalities and using the media interaction/team talks to keep their feet on the ground.  Once a bad run starts the quicker you recognise it the better you can deal with it, here its a mix of recognising whether a performance is poor or unlucky followed by the appropriate team talk to either improve morale or give them a kick up the arse.

B) The opposition.  If you have had a good run & are doing better than expected then in the reverse fixtures the opposition recognise they underestimated you in the first half of the season and give you more respect.  This means giving you less space & playing more defensive.  You need to be recognising when that happens and identify what you need to do tactically to improve your chance of winning those matches in light of the opposition changes.

C) The weather.  Maybe less of an issue now compared to previous FMs, especially higher up the leagues where pitches are better looked after but poor weather conditions bring different challenges such as wind, wet pitches, hard pitches etc.  How do your tactical choices cope with different types of pitch?

[FrazT]

26 minutes ago, Wwarrddy said:

That's just it FrazT...I shouldn't have to go and read over a load of guidelines and get a load of external help. I should be able to learn through PLAYING the game but I just don't get it. Literally every single year it's happened. It's a time bomb waiting to go and as soon as it happens there's no going back. So frustrating.

If it is happening to you every year, then surely that is telling you that you need to do something different to stop it from happening?- asking in the Tactics forum is not an admission of weakness but sometimes having someone else look at how you do things can quickly pinpoint areas that can be improved on.  If you just want to express frustration in here, then that is fine, but if you want help, you know where to go.

[Svenc]

11 hours ago, vishers said:

Taking Northampton to the Premiership suggests you're actually quite good at this game!

Never ceases to boggle the mind, but you beat me to it. ;-)

Since there is literally nothing in the game that would script anything and make it bound to happen -- neither constantly conceding late goals, nor always having a lot of injuries, nor CLIMBING THE ENTIRE LEAGUE TIER WITH MINNOW TEAMS ( :o) )  -- if there actually is a pattern, then that may not exactly be spoon feeding stuff that there is something going on. But it's about as close as you can get.

Frustatingly from experience such anecdotical claims are often hugely exaggerated. Player claims the opposition always needs a shot to score turns out to be that actually they take quite a fistful (and on many occasions, don't even score at all). Which is no surprise as if that was literally the case, you would need to field a highly experimental basic formation or combine one of like three possible things that would at all make this to happen -- occasionally. And so on. Talking about Northampton, I'll throw in another possible reason. Your players aren't that good for the level and you're prone to ride very naturally dynamics such teams also tend to face in real football. Like Hoffenheim 2008 season coming 1st just getting promoted in the Bundesliga gifted goals even by the minnows who thought they could go attack from the get-go, only to face much more cautious opposition in the second half of the season. Playing one of those incredibly aggressive tactics that pushes like every single player upfield for the entire 90 minutes every single match no matter the opponent which is more likely to get exposed with the lower confidence that follows a bad patch, as that can increase errors slightly (misplaced passes, occasionally additionally missed last ditch tackle such a tactics always forces upon teams). Or amore obvious one, though it would be an unlikely run of chance -- the successfully runs extended due to nothing but sheer luck, the bad spells happening in spring likewise, whilst the overall win record is actually quite indicative of the quality of the squad (or lack thereof).

The point though is that without looking at actually data from the actually save, you can never ever tell. A more important point though is: Contrary to the wild exaggerations, you, Sir, aren't rubbish! :-)

[warlock]

Well, just for the sake of prolonging one of the more interesting topics on the forums at the moment, I'd say it's possible to be both successful *and* rubbish at FM and I largely think of myself in that category.

Through a combination of luck, judgement, having the right players and opposition tactical errors, you can - and I have - had a few saves that were very successful. Among the recent examples, I took Derby to Championship winners and a sixth place finish in the Premier League the next season. I've taken Man Utd to three consecutive Premier League titles, in a spell that also saw us winners and runners-up of the Champions League, and a League Cup (for some reason the FA Cup eluded me), all in the first three seasons. Against that, there are literally hundreds of aborted saves that simply didn't work. Tactics, and tactical approaches, that worked well for other players just didn't click for me, and that's where I'm rubbish. I can't figure out why they're not working or, like the OP, they work for a while and then simply stop and I don't know why, or how to fix it.

Sometimes it may be the reasons mentioned above. Over-confidence, possibly - although since I play mostly in FMT that's less of an issue. Other teams tightening up and playing more conservatively, perhaps - but over a number of saves I haven't seen that happen much. Particularly with Man Utd (my favourite club to manage) you come up against teams that park the bus and/or play on the counter from the start. Early in the season you can beat everyone, regardless of their quality or tactical setup, and then - usually around January-March, you can't buy a win. Even early in the season you might (will!) drop a few points in away games, but when the slump comes you start losing at home too.

One thing I know for certain: it isn't because a wild, unrealistic tactic eventually gets found out. I always play pretty straightforward, commonplace tactical approaches - 442, 4123dm, 4231, 433 with a flat midfield, always counter, standard or control (rarely attacking). I've used tactics with no TIs, and I've used as many as eight or nine, but never more than that.

One thing I have noticed as a problem and now try to be aware of it happening is what you might call tactical drift. You hit a run of bad form, so you change something in a game. Maybe it works so you try it again next game; maybe it doesn't, so you try something else. Then again, and again, and after five or six games you're a long way from the tactical vision you started with. Another observation: when the slump comes I often find that it isn't the team as a whole playing badly but two or three key players - your best defender, you midfield creator, your star striker - and your backups can't step up.

As I said, successful (sometimes) and rubbish (mostly). But I can happen upon something successful often enough that I keep coming back for more. It's a sickness.

[Soninho]

Started a new save with Brighton. Was going to try a possesion based tactic but failed misserably..

Thing is, I went 14 games unbeaten still! But when my first loss came, it just crashed..!

Hope I've started to turn things around after a stunning 4-0 win against Ipswisch (2nd in the league) after having a rough time against a couple of lower end teams..

Having a harder time with FM16 than any other FM/CM ever played!

[Wwarrddy]

20 hours ago, FrazT said:

If it is happening to you every year, then surely that is telling you that you need to do something different to stop it from happening?- asking in the Tactics forum is not an admission of weakness but sometimes having someone else look at how you do things can quickly pinpoint areas that can be improved on.  If you just want to express frustration in here, then that is fine, but if you want help, you know where to go.

Yeah...I just feel if I'm getting advice they're just telling me what I need to do to turn it around. It's like cheating to me and I will always refuse to take on tactical advice haha. I am very stubborn in that way, I like it to be from my own back. I do try something different every time and it just doesn't work. 

Thanks to the other posters also and I know getting Northampton to the Prem is an achievement and as a whole I'm incredibly proud of my Northampton side. I won back to back promotions in my first full 2 seasons to the Champ. Getting to the Prem was the hardest. I think it took 3 years and after I lost the play off final to Cardiff 1-0, I admittedly reloaded the game and played it until I got promoted. I never do that any more, I just knew that I would not play any more if i didnt get promotrd as I couldnt bear another year in the Champ. So it was a way to keep playing more than anything. 

If you can check my post history, I posted my story of my first promotion from League 2 with Northampton and how thrilling it actually was. The best season I've ever had in an FM game, it was so good.

But my time is at an end with FM16 unfortunately. I may come back to it one day.

[FrazT]

Since you clearly dont want any help and you are finished with FM 16,I will close this thread now.