VI - Squad factors.

Team gelling

The current level of understanding is more than a neat little feature you can see when looking at your assistant’s team talk feedbacks, this can be crucial regarding two key issues, which do determine your tactical success in the long run: quality of performance and consistency of performance. Both of these factors, combined with the quality of your tactical approach, will decide whether you will succeed or fail at your current club.

This may look a little bit keen at first sight, but let me try to give an admittedly very drastic example: you start a game as a quite unknown manager, take over a squad and instantly bring in a good number of new players (be it because you need them objectively or just suppose so) by spending the largest part of your budget, and finally you are trying your own tactics that may not have been fully finished or you are downloading one or several sets in order to find the best suited for your squad. If you look at it closely, this seems exactly to be the scenario of many new games, regardless of playing in lower leagues or at top clubs.

You now have a reduced morale throughout the squad because of an inexperienced manager, you have simultaneously reduced the team cohesion - if it comes worst significantly - and you intend to make tactical tests with this team, which may lead to a long period of tinkering if things go wrong. In other words, you have changed so much at one time that it is next to impossible to find out where it does go wrong. You may see a different team in half a year, once the morale is up and the understanding strong, your tactics may be great but simply will not work or perform consistently because these are mental issues and morale issues the team does have.

The only advice that does make sense: avoid this situation at any costs. If it is already too late, stick to your tactics unless you definitely know they are flawed fundamentally, get the morale up by applying team talks and media feedbacks as presented in this article, try to grab a win and to survive this period. Apply all of the given tips and try to maximise your efforts in man management to keep morale high at any cost, and eventually you will get through this without ending in a catastrophe. This may be a situation where man-management can save your job more then any tactical skill.

New players, loan players and youngsters

If you need to make major changes in your squad, you should always try to do this when you are tactically settled, but you also should never expect to get results within no time, except for some lucky signings. Many players will need six months or longer to adapt to a new country, if you are having bad luck and playing in a country with a difficult language, even longer.

You can help your new players adapting by trying to make it as easy as possible using your man management skills. Give them good feedbacks, take off the pressure in early games, give them positive feedbacks after the first games, and help them if they play below expectations with giving media feedbacks. This can shorten the period extremely. Especially with keeper debuts in foreign countries you should be very careful. This seems to be one of the most difficult adaptations in the game, even more so if the keeper did not have time to learn the language.

What has been said about new players is equally important for loan players. Why ever the designers thought that you could not give media feedbacks to players on loan contracts, this does affect your players’ morale and there is no way to work around this. Always give them good team talks before most matches. You will also note soon that these players are more vulnerable to losing their good morale between the matches, so you will have to spend much more efforts on keeping them on their toes compared to your own players. This can be an annoyance and cost you a lot of time, but it definitely can be worth the effort, even more so if you do not pay their wages.

To a certain degree the same has to said about youngsters. They may still be missing consistency, but in combination with tutoring, sensitive team talks and media interaction, you may help them to perform much more consistently. Whenever your squad is relying on a number of these players, new signing, loanees and youngsters, you should try to take maximal advantage of your man management skills to avoid those problems. Once a team has matured and settled, you may become a little bit more lenient with this.

Captaincy

Choosing the right team captains always was an important point, but in the past players could fiddle around with this important factor indefinitely without seeing too many negative results, maybe except for choosing the wrong guys for one or two games. Now finally the situation is closer to real life: there is a captain already, there will be a recommendation by your assistant usually recommending this captain and a vice captain, and you will need to decide if you want to take this advice or not. And even better, the decision will not come for free. If you want to change things, you should have a good reason and you should be willing to take the consequences as well.

I do not have any tentative results, but in two of four cases so far the previous captain was not the best choice. I am simply looking at these attributes first: Influence plus determination. If they make the player a candidate, I also look for decisions, work rate and finally bravery. He should have a certain age and last not least have been at the club for a while and he should be highly respected by his team mates, you will see this in their good relationship screens. But, and this is a big but, sometimes older ‘natural leader’ have just joined the club (only if settled in the same country!) or the ‘real life’ manager has a strange way to find captains. Then it is time to verify the choice, which I did twice so far. In both cases this was very well received, even though it does come at a cost and some candidates will feel left behind.

I reckon it could be an important measure to look at this if you ever should take over a team in a crisis: verify if the captaincy choice has been right. This may also be a measure to be applied if your own team is deep down. But take into account that it will be a gamble and you should have a good reason to make such a switch.

Bonuses

At start of the season, you can determine the sum that will be paid out at the end of the season, based on the success in several competitions. I think that there is not much of a choice here. Even if you are running a cash-strapped club, select the highest available option. First off all, this sum is included in your budget anyway, but also important: it is based on your success, which does mean you will have to pay less if the team fails to reach the season’s goals. As always, achieving something will generate more income for your team, so do not try to be miserly with bonuses. I never knew whether contracts have an influence or not, but I always tried to offer low wages, but high bonuses in contract talks.

Good bonuses do have an effect like a permanent media feedback at start of the season, I did not try to do the opposite, but most likely it has to result in a reversed effect. So, even if you are cash-strapped, give your guys the best bonuses. Morale and motivation will always pay off; a lack of it will cost you much more.

Pre-season
With credits to Abramovic
Several observations suggest that having a good start into the season is pure gold and having a good team morale cannot be underrated in FM 08 at this point of time. You can try to support this with a careful pre-season fixture list and try to arrange difficult games at start while finishing your friendlies with some easy, probably morale-boosting ‘shootouts’. This could be especially helpful for all those players who manage the likes of Man U, Barca and Milan as Sunday league footballers.