retired_fanito

Just like the title says...
I'm playing with Barca in my 2nd season. I've read and re-read all the threads here written by obvious experts and veterans of this game. I'm trying to figure out how the hell did my team hit a proverbial wall all the sudden. I am aware of the whole re-ranking thing but in my case I thought it would not be as big of a problem since I'm playing with Barca and am 95% of the time favored to win matches.

I also think I've began to understand the game better as before all the info I've read made a mess in my head. There were just too many ideas floating around and many contradicted eachother but lately it started to make more and more sense.

Anyways. What I've learned was to try to keep it simple so I did. I like using 4-4-2 diamond formation with farrows on the wingers, which I think also suits Barca pretty well with he kind of players they have.

I've also learned that you need to play to your players' strengths, so I gave them all instructions based on their attributes. I also used the RoO framework for their individual mentalities to keep them playing as a tight unit.

I read the scout reports and tried making minor adjustments. These are only global, such as metality, tempo, passing, width and defensive line, that's all.

Seeing how I'm playing with one of the top teams in the world it would make sense that you can play your style of game more often and basically dictate the game, which I do. In my case it's usually a short passing, slow tempo and narrow width style. Basically this gives me a lot of possession and passing completion. I control the game.

Also I did bring in some new players but only 4. I've read that this can mess up your team chemistry and I was aware of this. However, after checking with my assistant he told me that the players have a very strong understanding so I thought we were good to go.

Now, here comes the 2nd season. We start off great and trully dominate, both in the league and in Europe. I'm playing very good football. It is flowing and attractive. The GK and defense are a wall, my midfield is splendid with passing combinations out of this world, and my strikers have apparently taken some form of football viagra as they're banging in goals for fun.

Now we get to November. I'm on the top of the league with all wins and top of my group in CL with all wins. Also I just won an away game at Villareal 3-0 in the rain. Now the next game is at home against an 18th placed Getafe. The odds are hugely in my favor and I decide to ignore the scout report becase my team is so much more superior to their's and just decide to play my own style of game, short, slow and narrow.

After 20 mins I check the stats and they're very much in my favor. My possesion is at 61% and my pass completion is in upper 70% and have 6 shots with 5 being on goal, yet no score. The opposition has 0 shots.

Ok so I just keep on with my game. I have faith in my players and judging by the stats I'll be scoring soon enough. Well guess what, one of my midfielders makes a bad pass which goes to the opposition's striker and he bolts for my goal. So I think my defense will stop him. The striker is alone by the way. He somehow holds off 3 defenders (Puyol, Zambrotta, and Corluka) and just barely nodges the ball towards my goal while my keeper just watches it go by into the goal.

At this point I'm sort of angry but remain faithful. My team will come back. So I increase the tempo by a notch and up the attacking mentality for the team by a notch too. After 15 minutes I check the stats again and I'm still dominating in all areas. The opposition still has just that one shot on goal which happened to go in, that's all they've done.

Very very late in the game do I end up equalizing. I look at the stats and it just makes no sense. I should have put 4 or 5 balls into their net. I had 23 shots, 14 on goal. They had 2 shots, 1 on goal. The game ends at 1-1.

I was angry after seeing this but still optimistic for the next match. Boy was I wrong. I'm not going to go into detail since for the next eight games I was able to win only one, loose two and draw five despite dominating the stats.

It was literally my team playing amazing in one game and the following game doing a complete opposite and just keep on doing it 7 more times after that.

Now I'm thinking it may be re-ranking but then how can that be. I'm favored to win the league and favored in pretty much every match. It's not like I'm a small team who are an underdog in the beginning of the season and then win all their matches and the AI adjusts. What adjustments could possibly be made for a heavy favorite that's doing what it's supposed to which is win most of its matches.

I was winning matches 3-0, 4-0 and even one was 6-0 but then suddenly the AI said "OK, that's enough of that!" That's really what it seems like.

So I've decided to go back a bit more to the drawing board and make some adjustments, like play more defensive away with counter-attacking. Play a more direct, quicker, wider game. Still nothing. Right now I'm lucky to score a single goal and in the AI's case, it really only needs 2 or 3 shots to score 1 or 2 goals.

I've spent the last 3 days staying up until 2am (despite having to go to work the following morning) trying to read the threads and different tweaks to see how to overcome this absolute slump. So far I've come up with nothing. I'm not sure whether I should just be patient and let it pass or if I'm indeed really screwed from here on.

I feel kind of hopeless at this moment since I thought I was really beginning to understand the game and then this happened.

I would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

retired_DonnyLFC

Try my man utd based diamonds on fmdownloads .. Only joking. Do you make asny changes to your tactic at all? If you don't making slight changes every so often might help. Orrrr, you've come to the re-ranking problem, although i can't imagine this with Barca. Read through the thread on re-ranking in the tactics bible, see if thats your your problem.

Hope that helps and good luck.

retired_fanito

Thanks ssaun. Yes I do tweak pretty much every match except on a few occassions where I think I can really force my style of play on the other team. I keep my tweaks simple though, not too much and I've read the re-ranking thread twice already. I really have no idea or don't understand how re-ranking can work on a team like mine.

retired_mgavlick

I have a few questions that will need answering before I can give any advice.

1: What are the mentality settings of the front men? Are they standard RoO (19-20) or are you playing a TM link man? If you are he should have mentality 14. I advise trying that as it really helps offensively.

2: What kind of formations are you playing against?

3: How much are your FBs a) going forward (FWRs) and b) closing down?

4: Where is your d-line?


5: Are you regularly playing teams who only play one up front? Are you man-marking with the two DCs?

retired_fanito

wwfan, here are the answers to your questions:

1. I do use the RoO system and a TM link man. My target man is on setting of 16 while his partner is on 18. Perhaps I should lower the TM's mentality some more like you suggest? By the way the AMC's mentality is 17.

2. I usually come up against 4-4-2 formations with farrows on wingers or 4-1-3-2 formations, so both seem offensive. However, in the scout reports it says a lot of times that the team likes to play possession football but will look to counter attack. So my thinking is that they will actually play a more direct style.

3. When I play at home the FBs are going forward often and close down on the first notch of often. Away, the FBs FWRs are mixed and closing still often. I did this to make them more involved in my attack at home and it actually worked out pretty well until the slump began.

4. My d-line setting varries depending on the scout report, but I usually set in on the first notch of deep when the scout report says that the opposition will be counter attacking.

5. This really varries, sometimes there's a single striker and sometimes two. I use man marking on DCs, and sometimes on FBs. I also use the opposition instructions to close down or mark any dangerous players.

One more thing I'd like to ad is that yesterday when I played I changed my approach a bit. I usually play a slow narrow style game and what I did was play even more narrower and slower and shorter passing through the middle.

I had an away game versus Espanyol. They lined-up in a 4-4-2 formation with farrows on wingers. My scout said that they will try to counter attack. So I went with my attacking formation but with very narrow width (2 notches from the left), slow tempo (2 notches from the left) and short passing (2 notches also), focus passing through the middle. I went up 2-0 in the first half and my possession was high. In the second half I still had shots on goal and possession in my favor but didn't score any more goals, but I won the game.

In my next match, which was home, I played again in a similar fashion and won again 1-0, however, the goal came pretty late in 87th minute.

It's getting better I think but I still feel like my team isn't really playing the kind of football that was witnessed early in the season. Should I continue in this fashion for now and then later on maybe start going a bit more wider and more direct?

retired_Susana

I would move the defensive line up a bit if you're playing on the new patch. On the old patches a high defensive line seemed to be death for me for some reason, but it's better now if you have fast defenders. Play higher at home with the offside trap and you'll be a much tighter unit (as long as you're not up against strikers with pace that your defenders can't match).

Fisher

A couple of other things to look at; team talks, and player selections.

If you're controlling team talks perhaps your response after the 1-1 draw didn't help. Morale is obviously going to drop when you don't beat Getafe at home, but those games happen sometimes. If your assistant manager has good Man Management, Discipline and Motivating stats, I'd suggest getting him to take team talks for the next couple of games, and see how results go (checl team talk feedback after each game to see what your ass. man is doing and how effective it is). Alternatively if your ass. man already does team talks, do it the other way round. Take over yourself, and see what effect that has.

With regards to player selection, did you make a lot of changes in a knee-jerk type fashion, which could disrupt the team? Or similarly did you not make any changes, leaving players who don't warrant to still be in the first team on the pitch. If you're going to change one striker, check the AM's and the other striker's profile, if they feel they work well with the player you're going to drop it might be detrimental to the team.

That said, you've said results appear to be picking up a little. In that case, I'd keep on plugging away. After a loss of form, the results aren't going to suddenly go straight back to normal, you need to build up form before you can start steamrolling opponents again.

retired_fanito

Thanks for your replies guys. It seems lately I've achieved some more tactical clarity. I was pretty close to giving up though. Anyway, I did manage to string a few wins together and get my morale back up. I also took over team talks again because my Ass. manager was making them before. After that I was able to go on a 25 match unbeaten streak and win the league title. On top of that I won the Copa del Rey, and the Champion's League.

In the CL I thought I'd have many problems actually considering how I did the year before. I was barely able to score a goal against Liverpool in both legs of the quaterfinals. I lost at home to them. This time though it was a different story. I managed to completely storm through the latter stages, recording wins like 6-0, 3-0, 4-2, and in the finals I wipped the floor with Man Utd 4-1. Boy, was Sir Alex angry that day

So to conclude; my second season was head and shoulders above my first season, considering all the threads I've read where people claim to crash in their second seasons. Mine on the other hands was absolutely spectacular.

Thank you everyone for all your patience and help. You have kept me in the game even when I was on the brink of calling it quits, and now it is paying off big time.