[supermini]

(WARNING: Loooong rant)

I've just had one.

It's my 12th season in my current save, playing in Ligue 1.

We've won our first title 2 years ago, and we've defended it successfully last year and even managed to win the Coupe de la Ligue and the French Cup (a first treble, yay!). I've been frugal with spending for a long time, waiting for my youngsters which I signed 5-6 seasons ago to reach maturity and upgrading facilities all the time. Last season I spent hugely, even getting the board to give me more transfer money (just qualifying for CL and the TV rights made sure that I wouldn't be in the red for a long time).

So now, I have a great team with great personality (squad personality is 'fairly determined') and almost all of my players are good professionals... I haven't had an argument over a fine in long, long time. The squad has gelled (extremely strong understanding with each other) and we've been playing the same tactic with few tweaks for the last 6 seasons, so I know how it works inside out.

We've started the season beautifully, with 5 straight wins. Then we were drawn to FC Nantes, who play 4-2-4 flat... Umm okay, I guess at least they don't have problems when one of their strikers is on a dry spell. I should be able to overwhelm them in midfield. And I did, creating 7 CCCs...and scoring one goal. They also scored one from a 30 yard fluke long shot. Well okay, we got carried away a bit with our form I'm thinking. I tell the players that I'm disappointed. Morale drops a bit, but nothing drastic.

Next we have a match in the Champions League at home against Zenit, who has a terrible injury crisis with something like 8 first team players out on injuries. Match odds are 2.0 vs 3.something. The only meaningful question in the press conference is how I think the match will go. I say 'We're confident as long as we stick to our game plan'. Match begins, I ask the assistant what should I say to the players and he says (surprise, surprise), 'For the fans!'. I don't like getting my players fired up, there are some temperamental ones in the team that get unnecessary yellow cards when I do. So I tell my players 'you can win today' and here we go!

I've left the match on and went to get a glass of water. When I came back 5 minutes of the match were gone and we were down 0-1. I rewind to see what happened... 30 yard longshot. Well, ok, I might have needed to push the d-line a bit higher. Next attack, an opposing striker (from Zenit reserves, mind you) WALKS PAST my defenders who look like a pair of headless chickens and slots another. We're down 0-2. All this time we can't get a coherent attack going since we can't connect two passes. My main playmaker just stands in the middle of the pitch clueless while he's being closed down and loses the ball. Defensive midfielder (on normal tackling) slides on a player for no reason whatsoever (he's at least twice as fast) getting a yellow card and giving them a free kick from 30 yards. That shouldn't be a problem, my centre backs are good in the air...Except that it is. My centre-back is standing 5 feet away from the player he's supposed to be guarding, and my goalkeeper is rooted to the spot. Scoreboard reads 0-3, and it's the 30th minute of the match.

At least some of my attackers are looking motivated, I'm thinking. I switch to attack, hoping to overwhelm them. We create 4 CCCs in the next 15 minutes but no goals. Over the goal from the penalty area (how often do you see that irl?), missed penalty, another sitter miss from an inside forward running behind their defence, and another sitter miss from a one-on-one chance). Halftime.

My backline has an average rating of 5.5 with the two CBs at 5.0 and 4.9. The rest of the team is around 6.2-6.4. I switch the centre-backs (I don't have enough subs, and I'm too afraid of potential injury to use up the third sub). I ask the assistant what should I tell them... 'Where's the passion lads?' That was a WTF moment. Because we've been notching up straight victories, my determined professional players have become uninterested over a tie in the Champions League that we need to win if we are to have any chance of progressing (the other teams in the group are Porto and R. Madrid).

To cut the long story short, they've shut up shop for the rest of the game and we've had 3 more CCCs and scored one goal. Final result 1-3.

Now ok, I've been playing FM for a long time and I'm kinda used to this sort of crap. I just want to find out what went wrong.

Team talk feedback.

'You can win today'

Looked demotivated, looked delighted
Looked demotivated, looked delighted
Looked demotivated, looked delighted
Nothing specific noted
Looked demotivated, looked delighted
...

All I want to know is, what exactly was I being punished for here? Previous success? Clicking on the wrong random teamtalk?

The assistant manager has 18 in 'Motivating' and 19 in 'Man management'. And his pre-match comments were 'Nothing specific to note'. Not 'your players feel confident so they probably don't need more encouragement'. I would assume that a real manager that's worth anything would probably notice that in his players.

I decide to reload the match (I don't usually do it). 'I expect a win today'...We won 6-0. They had one shot on goal. From a distance.

So why exactly am I playing this game? To practice babysitting imaginary babies? With no feedback whatsoever?

[Millie]

supermini, on 16 June 2011 - 09:37 PM, said:

With no feedback whatsoever?

Biggest problem with the game. Virtually ever reply to ever survey we run comes back with this complaint.

[cagiva]

I'll try to draw a slight pararel with some real-life example.

When Liverpool faced Spurs few weeks ago the Dalglish's team was in it's best form for almost two years - playing greatly, creating chances and scoring goals. You know the story. Yep, the difference with your case is that Spurs wasn't in such injury crisis that were Zenit in your case, but still..

Liverpool played probably it's most poor game from a couple of months under Dalglish and Spurs won. Did Dalglish has his team-talk wrong? Does Liverpool's players felt over-confident, or they were lacking any kind of motivation to won this particular game (due to the whole debat if the club will benefit the participation in the Europe second-tier tournament)? Does Liverpool's previous form was forcing the players to be complacement?

Now look at the goals - a goal in result of some fluke long-shoot after corner-kick and a goal from penalty.

What I'm trying to say is that in football anything can happen. And in the game everything can happen. There is no definite rules. Yes, in ten matches Hercules will lost probably ten from Barca, but this season they won at Nou Camp. Did Guardiola have a rant - of course! Did he was pleased - no, of course! But did he had the chance to "reload" the match - no. As one legendary Dutch is saying - football is football!


Finally - yes, SI can include much more feedback in the game. And for everything. And in the future years I'm more than sure that they will do just that. But nothing is so easily to recreate. So we all should be patient and just remember that in football everything can happen.

[SFraser]

supermini, on 16 June 2011 - 09:37 PM, said:

So why exactly am I playing this game? To practice babysitting imaginary babies? With no feedback whatsoever?

The level of obvious, in-your-face feedback is lacking yes, but babysitting imaginary babies is part and parcel of the game. You got your feedback anyway though, taking the pressure off your players for a must-win game resulted in a beating, demanding a win from them saw them raise their game and hand out a beating.

If you think about the entire situation for a moment, the way you played the game corresponds to the outcome. You are Ligue 1 Champions for two years running, not a European Giant by any stretch of the imagination, and the point you put across to your players was that you were not expecting much from the match. A logical statement given your clubs position. And the outcome precisely followed that pattern.

The second match you took your Ligue 1 Champions, your European minnows, and instead of saying them to you didn't expect much, you challenged them to raise their game for a tougher competition, to defy the odds and expectations, to rise above their reputation, and they went out and stonked the opposition.

If I was the Chairman of your club, or a reporter that followed your club regularly, I would be thinking that the managers ambition doesn't match the abilities of his players. That the manager is happy to settle for what is expected rather than pushing the bar higher.

[supermini]

SFraser, on 19 June 2011 - 10:34 AM, said:

The level of obvious, in-your-face feedback is lacking yes, but babysitting imaginary babies is part and parcel of the game. You got your feedback anyway though, taking the pressure off your players for a must-win game resulted in a beating, demanding a win from them saw them raise their game and hand out a beating.

If you think about the entire situation for a moment, the way you played the game corresponds to the outcome. You are Ligue 1 Champions for two years running, not a European Giant by any stretch of the imagination, and the point you put across to your players was that you were not expecting much from the match. A logical statement given your clubs position. And the outcome precisely followed that pattern.

The second match you took your Ligue 1 Champions, your European minnows, and instead of saying them to you didn't expect much, you challenged them to raise their game for a tougher competition, to defy the odds and expectations, to rise above their reputation, and they went out and stonked the opposition.

If I was the Chairman of your club, or a reporter that followed your club regularly, I would be thinking that the managers ambition doesn't match the abilities of his players. That the manager is happy to settle for what is expected rather than pushing the bar higher.

I understand where you're coming from and I agree - to a certain point. Hindsight is always 20/20. Issue that I'm having is that the whole game seems to have hinged on what was said in the dressing room before the match. One team talk turned my backline into a bunch of headless chickens and the other one didn't. I had no feedback that could give me a clue. In the past season I've had matches with similar odds where I demanded a win from my players (again, with no feedback whatsoever) and they went out very nervous - and I suspect that it's due to the fact that my squad is one of the youngest in the league, and inexperienced players can get nervous when you put a lot of pressure on them.

I don't have a problem with either of those scenarios - they are realistic - the problem is that I have to make uninformed guesses in press conferences and the dressing room and that the range of things that I can say to my players is extremely limited.

In the last two (title-winning) seasons I went with 'For the fans!' in 95% of the matches because it seems to be the least likely to produce a negative result (players becoming demotivated), although it caused a lot of unnecessary yellow cards. I don't think that's how the game is meant to be played, and I probably missed a lot of opportunities to further motivate my players because of it, but as soon as I start mixing it up I start getting hit on the nose for reasons I don't quite understand.

[cagiva]

For me "For the fans" is the only one team-talk that is focused mainly on the moral of the player, upping it. That's why for me it's the most neutral option - focusing only on the moral side, this team-talk don't put pressure or decreased/increased (directly at least) the motivation of the players.

And that's why (for me at least) this is the default team-talk for the AI's ass. managers - they just don't want to be backfired with their team-talks. And from then (during the half-time mostly) they react according to the specific needs.

But I'm strongly agree that in such as important sphere the game is not giving us much feedback.

[Zinedine Zaiddin]

This question only popped up in my mind when I got some kind of revelation of been playing FM for too long.