retired_lesley22

I started a game in the demo playing as West Brom, and have continued playing it into the full game proper. Up to the first game I played in January I was 2nd in the league and had won every single home game.
At home I play with three 4-4-2 formations and employ each one depending on how the match is going. My mentality is set globally on 11, 14 and 17 for these three, and my width and tempo match this accordingly, rising from 11, to 14 and then 17 again (for the 2 more attacking of the 3 of these formations I also focus passing down both flanks, the mentality "11" formation is mixed). My passing however stays on 11 for all 3 of these home formations and is again global.
This setup at home has served me very well, I create enough clear chances to win every game at home, possession is always 50-60% in my favour and crucially my pass completion rate is extremely high. Watching my matches on full game length, my performances have been fluent and effective and every player is doing what they have been asked.
Then came January! My first 3 games in the new year have all been at home; Colchester (drew 0-0), Leicester in the FA Cup (drew 1-1) and Hull (drew 0-0).
In these 3 games my performances were dire. I watched each game in full as usual and for some reason my players now look totally clueless. Everyone all over the pitch is now just hoofing the ball long 90% of the time, or playing ridiculously over-hit crossfield passes that just go out of play. All my fluidity has gone, my players just look to be panicking and seem clueless. In these 3 games I have created next to nothing chanse-wise, posession has dropped to around 45% and my pass completion has fallen from 75-80% to 55-60%!!
In the manual it suggests that players employed in a very attacking mentality high up the pitch who are using direct passing are liable to overhit balls out of play frequently. My players are doing just that all the time now, yet my passing is only 11 (mixed) for all 3 of my formations. The same thing is happening for all 3 of my formations when my mentality is 11, 14 or 17, and all my players all over the pitch in every position are doing exactly the same as each other and are committing the same errors.
Obviously I've tried to sort this out. Apart from frantically swapping over with my 3 different formation variants to no avail I've also tried shortening my passing which kept me the ball a lot more for 5 mins or so but then evrything went wrong again. I also tried scrapping my global mentality and tried employing the rule of one because I still had a nagging doubt that maybe my defenders were trying to pass it too far forward too quickly.
This change did nothing though and maybe made things even worse. After all, it wasn't just my defensive players who were starting to play like a pub team, it was everybody! From the goalkeeper right up to the centre forwards, whereas before they had been playing like a slick well-oiled machine, they were now hoofing and over-hitting everything. And I emphasise again, this was happening on ALL 3 of my different variants including my most conservative one, where my mentality is set at 11 (normal), and passing, width and tempo all match this.
I have come to the conclusion that for the next few matches I'm going to continue with what I had been doing and stop tinkering to try and fix it (after all, I had won all of my home games up to the new year, and none of my tinkering was fixing the problem anyway).
So I've started thinking maybe the problem isn't to do with my tactics. My first thought was something had changed within the match engine from the demo to the full game that was making things a lot harder. But I'm guessing this is probably wrong because the demo is designed to play exactly as the full game would do, the only changes in the match engine would appear in the first patch when bugs are starting to be fixed.
Then I thought maybe it's the January transfer window that's got something to do with this.
Five new players arrived before the start of these 3 terrible matches, and afterwards I thought maybe they had disrupted things. The morale in my squad was all 'very good' to 'superb' during this time though, and my assistant tells me that the squad are blending together extrememly well. Also, of these 5 players, none of them made it into my first team for any of these games and only 2 made it onto the bench. The others are just squad player signings and a young 3rd choice goalkeeper.
This all had me thinking, do a large number of new signings still disrupt a team even if they're not actually playing? Can a new look squad still upset the confidence and flow of an unchanged and settled first XI?
I don't know, and I'm totally confused by the whole situation here. Maybe I just need to carry on with what I'm doing and play myself back into good form again, just like what happens in real life.
But it shouldn't be like that, just a spell of bad form, a rut which you can't control and then all of a sudden, one win and everything's fine again. Or maybe it should?
Just wondered what people thought about the theories I've put forward as to why my team's gone down the pan.
Some people might think 3 draws in a row isn't the end of the world (and I'm still in 2nd place) but it's more the nature of the performances I'm worried about, everything about them has changed for the worse.
...That went on for a lot longer than I planned, if you're still reading- thanks!

retired_ramsey72

Same thing happened to me. Changed Tactics completely and now im on fire again! i think the AI gets used to ur tactics quicker in 08 as ive ahd t change mine numerous times due to poor spells!

retired_lesley22

Cheers
I've changed my passing now, it's no longer global.
I give my strikers and more attacking central midfielder short passing on all my formations now. The MC now has a forward arrow so he moves into the AMC position now, and the 3 players link up really well.
I leave my wingers on team passing, which is always set on the same notch as my team mentality which is still global.
My other MC has a barrow back into the DMC position which means I now drop my D-Line back 2 notches below the team mentality setting.
I drop all my defenders' closing down to match this, so in effect my defenders closing down is always set to match the D-Line setting, and the rest of my team's closing down is set to match my team mentality setting (which is always 2 notches higher than the D-Line).
I don't need to increase my center backs' passing as they still have options in range of them, they can pass to the full backs and the MC who now has the barrow which puts him into the DMC position when we're defending.
However I do need to increase my full backs' passing as beacuse of the D-Line drop they are now further away from my wingers, and the wingers and DMC are the prime passing targets as I don't want them passing back in to my centre backs.
For my more defensive away formations I increase te full backs' passing by 2 notches, but for my 3 more attacking variants at home I increase this by 4. This is because my wingers have forward arrows which means when we get the ball they will bomb up the pitch and my full backs have a much greater distance to cover with their passes.
I also make sure my more defensive MC is set to pass 2 notches above whatever the team passing setting is. This is because when we win the ball back he is now often in the DMC position and his passing targets (my wingers and other MC) will all be bombing forward at home (just my attacking MC will be doing this away from home) so again, his passing must be set higher to adapt to this adjustment.
I've found that this approach to passing is showing much better effects with my team than the previous global passing I was using, especially upfront where there is a lot of short interchanging going on and we look really dangerous.

retired_sweet

I've developed a theory, through hundreds of hours of FM07, that says that each player not only has a hidden Pressure attribute, but a hidden Pressure value as well, which goes up and down through the season depending on wins, losses, media comments and team talks.

Basically when this value hits a certain threshold (I'd say directly related to their hidden Pressure attribute) they s**t themselves and their performance goes out the window until that pressure is relieved, either through a loss or being named underdogs in a match.

The long and short of this is that being favourites week-in and week-out takes its toll and many players can't cope with it. I think also that when a team starts to exceed its pre-season expectations the pressure really gets to them and is only relieved by several poor performances and a resulting slide down the table. Then when the team stop being favourites for away matches you know the pressure is off because the team starts performing like champions again.

Like I said, just a theory.

retired_sabrnes123

I would say its the "re-rank" theory said here.

My tactic is based on that which you can find in this forum.

retired_sweet

I've read all about supposed re-ranking but I think that's only a small part of it.

I see players succumbing to pressure long before and long after Christmas.

I think week-to-week match odds have a bigger effect on form slumps than re-ranking. At least in my experience.