bluenose1

I'm going to go into some detail (which i think is necessary for any potential advice givers)

The Slump

This is plea for help to save me from the much maligned contagious disease which is floating around FM games everywhere. Commonly known as ‘The Slump’ it tends to affect those managers who feel like they are settling in to a period of winning form, and dare I say it, achieving your teams potential (if not better). I myself have caught ‘The Slump’ a few times and without turning to my local GP to diagnose and remedy the disease I have come here to consult my brethren.

My Current Career

My current managerial career sees me in Spain trying to guide perennial overachievers Getafe into a period of sustained success after the departure of Bernd Schuster to Real Madrid. Despite relative mediocrity in my term (11th, 10th, 10th, 9th) I feel I have established the club in La Liga. I have faced numerous problems including the following:

1) Hideously low funds for a top tier club – probably being attributable to the hideously low attendances at our games – we’re lucky if we can get 13,000 through the gates. I went the first three seasons without spending more than a million in total (I lived off free transfers)
2) The chairman’s unforgiving attitude toward bids for my top youngsters – so far he has sold a few of my gems and most recently the fast rising Nacer Barazite to Barcelona for a poultry £5 million despite his emergence in the first team
3) The reluctance of my players to sign long term deals and decision to leave on free transfers

Despite the problems I have overcome them largely due to my Arsene Wenger style transfer approach: Binging in players for very little at a young age, getting them into the first team, retraining them to a new position as necessary and getting them signed to long term deals as soon as I spot potential.

Using this method of management I have stabilised the clubs finances and built a squad, who I believe, now have the potential to qualify for Europe through the league.

This belief was borne out by a 17 game unbeaten run – a nice way to start your 5th season in charge. Then I became infected… 8 games later without a win I decided to turn to you

The Tactics

I have employed a few different tactical systems in my time as manager and in the past two seasons I have used a 4231 with sarrows on the amr and aml and barrows on the 2 mcs.

I have used an approach similar to slider apathy – my back four and defensive midfielder are on individual instructions and the rest of the team is global – generally set to normal creative freedom and first notch of attacking mentality

I tend to tweak my system using the width, tempo, passing, defensive line and time wasting sliders – I tweak according to the opposition – if I feel I should win I try to be a bit more short/ slow orientated whereas if counter attacking I go direct/fast. I thought these constant tweaks would see me through any dip in form but currently my team is impotent.

Regardless of the changes I make I still see the same sequences occurring – I dominate early on – they hit me on the counter – they go defensive – I get one back – they hit me again.

Morale has been fine because after the 17 game winning streak my players were flying high. The morale only started to drop after 5 games without a win. Injuries haven’t been a problem either. Even teams like gimnastic are beating me at home!

What is the cause of the slump? What is the cure? Do I need to change my formation and my tactics? Or will just tweaking my tactics (i.e. keep the 4231 formation but change the Slider Apathy approach) do I need to sit it out and stick the system which brought me 17 games unbeaten?

If we can understand the cause i think we can understand how to avoid / escape The Slump

Hopefully my ills will be alleviated by discussion…

Newky

I am toying with the idea that the ai dosent like you using the same formation for too long.

After going on a 17match winning streak I had 2 draws where my players simply missed easy chances, we dominated the game as before but it just feels like you are never going to score (Im sure you know what I mean).

Fearing the dreaded slump I changed my fullbacks with short farrows to wingbacks with barrows and my mc with barrow to dmc with farrow.

Hey presto I won the next 2 games 3-0 and 4-0. No visible change to my style of football but the opposition played like they had never seen this formation before.

Maybe a fluke, maybe we werent going into a slump anyway but worth giving it a go. Try just changing your mc's to dmc's with farrows

ncfcgee

2 reasons for it, one your players getting tired later in the season and perhaps the most likely one being that when you start out all the AI managers view you as an unknown with little-no talent in the managerial stakes and so use attacking tactics against you leaving themselves exposed at the back etc

Once you start doing well for long enough they will take notice and become more defensive against you making it much harder to get the desired results.