retired_rthorn23

just started a season with the villans,,, a.k.a aston villa

made a few signings etc and crazily found myself top of the league for the majority but now am 2 and 3 pts behind arsenal.

i have only conceded 11 goals all season but for sum strange reason my defence in the last 4 games is playing absoleulty shocking. every goal i concede, commentary says "bouma" or "melberg" will have to take the blame for that!

I havent changed my tactics all season and am currentlyplaying a 4-5-1.

i was just wondering if anybody had any tips for me on the player instruction or anything else to sort these recent performances out from them.

Hypo

Ii my opinion, the most important thing for a winning side to have is a very high morale throughout the whole squad. Do whatever you can to keep up morale for the remainder of the season.

With regards to your defence, if it was my team I would drop whoever is causing the goals or playing worse. I find that if a player has been playing well for a long period of time but suddenly loses form it can be because of tierdness or maybe its because he doesnt feel threatened by other cb's in your squad. Either way, leaving out the player for one or two games might help your situation

retired_rthorn23

team morale is all vvery good or superb,
they avtively state that competition is high for their place.
all on 100 % condition and match fit.
i cnt drop all 4 defenders ?

Hypo

I had a game with west brom there a while ago. I was winning the championship comfortably but half way trough the season i went on a 7 match bad run. i think it was 5 defeats and 2 draws. I had a cup game against a league two side so i dropped loads of players to give them a rest as i was concentrating on getting promoted. I won the game 7-0 i think. I kept some of those players in the squad, particularly in defence, as thats where my problems in the league were, and slowly brought back my strongest team over a few weeks in the game. I got back to winning ways in the league and got promoted and curtis davies ended up fans player of the year even though he was one of the players i dropped for a few weeks. just try mixing up your team a bit so that players dont get to comfortable and feel their positions are safe. it worked for me in my game. a perfect time to do it would be in a home game against a struggling side.

Something else you could try is tweaking your tactics slightly by playing more defensive and trying to implement the counter attack.

Those are just what I would try, feel free to try them yourself or maybe someone else will have better advice. either way i hope iv helped :thup:

retired_monica90

Re-ranking perhaps? What do you say in pre-match media comments?

retired_janellewood86

I used Cleon's approach in changing for every game for Villa.

Yes, their defence starts off awesome, but Bouma and Melberg will decide to become rubbish halfway through the season for no apparant reason. It's partly an issue with those players. Using Learner's money I drafted in a couple of replacements, so if they play crap I can drop them.

I only really managed to deal with it by going extreme - dropping the players. Also, I changed my outlook for games to a little bit more defensive so that my DM and wingers would help out the obviously ropey (for no reason) defence.

I'd recomend: Wayne Bridge, Liam Ridgewell, Micah Richards and Lucas Neill. All of them have made sure that Melberg, Laursen and Bouma (the main offenders) stop being so damn annoying.

Chin up, eh?