Alot of what Communication & Psychological Warfare ‘10 has concentrated on has been about your own squad management, getting your own players fired up and interacting with your own players to get the best result. But Football Manager 2010 gives you the ability with the in-game TV widgets to not only see your own sides motivation, but that of the opposition. We look to see how the information can be used to exploit your opposition.

Positive motivations

Players that are confident and looking to have a good game, will be those players that are happy. The right team talks and buttons have been pressed by the manager to make them perform. Depending on their ability these might be the players that you might want to target more, reduce the amount of time they are on the ball or the amount of space that is made available to them. Motivated players will be those players that will can be the most likely to cause you problems. It’s not about putting to much emphasis on these players, just take them into consideration.

Exploiting negative motivations

Looking Fired up

Fired up players are something to be cautious about they could be motivated to prove their manager wrong or get one better on the opposition, which can make them more aggressive, taking excessive risk. Therefore keep an eye on how these players are playing. Just like when you go out out overload in the final minutes the risk could be too much. But if you direct the ball in their direction, have your player running in their direction you could get lucky and bait them into the wrong decisions, into giving away freekicks and even penalties, keep an eye on their stats to see how they are performing.

Playing Nervously

The player or players are lacking in confidence. This can easily happen if the team is in a bad run of form, the game isn’t going in their way or the occasion is getting to them. These players will make more mistakes, won’t be good under pressure. Nervous players will want to spend as little time on the ball as possible, closing them down quickly to reduce the chance of them finding a simple pass. If you see many of their players playing nervously, attacking them would be the best option putting as much pressure on them as possible.

Playing Complacently

Complacent players will be sloppy football as they think that the whole game is much easier then they imagined. Although I wouldn’t focus too much on these players, it is good to consider if your players have the ability to meet these players in a challenges. Just like nervous players you might consider being more attacking, depending one which players in the opposition are complacent.

If it a lot of players in the midfield or defence, consider trying to control the ball, these sides aren’t going to work as hard for the ball. Exploit the area where the complacent players are with touchline shouts.

But with everything in terms of personality and motivation, nothing is ever so simple. Make sure that you keep an eye on the match as players confidence can grow quickly throughout the game and just because a player is complacent, it may not always suggest they are going to have a bad game. But taking all these possible situation into consideration will help equip you with the tools to make better decision from game to game.

We talk even more about these concepts in the Communication & Psychological Warfare ’10 eBook which you can download now.