i just got fm08, and decided to give man city a try.

in the friendlies everything seem to be fine, apart from some very ppor defending.

two months into the season, all my goals re from long shots, despite all players having instructions not to take long shots, my defenders run away from the opposition ball carriers, and the likes of elano, ireland, petrov and bianchi seem to think they are playing rugby, shotting over the cross bar everytime they get into the 6 yard box, and are compleatly alone with a free shot in front of them.

i have downloaded the patch (8.0.1), but to little avail, has any one got any suggestions as to how i can stop players doing what i told them not to, get my defenders to tackle the opposition, and finally convince my 'star' players this is football and rugby, and the ball goes under the bar?

Is it possible that team and/or player creativity is too high. As far as I know, the higher you set creativity, the less likely your players are going to follow your instrustions (unless they have decent creativity themselves).

If i'm talking cobblers, would someone step in

try lowering creative freedom. very low for defenders. elano should be the only with higher amounts. use CF sparingly.

this might help also;

http://community.sigames.com/eve/for...7/m/1402000773

unfortunatly all players except elano and petrov were already on minimum creative freedom, they just seem to ignore it.

:eek: what's your time wasting? can you put more info about your tactics..... but probably just a patch

I know it may sound frustrating to start over again, but have you tried the newest available patch? It may help, some suggest that it is also best to start a fresh game after running and selecting the newest game patch.

Sorry,should of read your post much more clearly, best see the tactics as a whole really to be able point out possible floors if any, also what's the opposition up too, maybe long shots is your only hope?

tactics are mainly the generic individual tactics with exception to creative freedom, which as i said is on minimum for all but elano (who is on about three quarters) and petrov (who is set at just under half) , all players have long shot on mimimum, bianchi is target man, with distribution to head,
closing down is at max for dm, and high for two centers backs (yet all three run away from ball carrier or they keep at least three-four meters from player, whilst the rest of the team just run away most of the time.
wingers cross from byline, whislt fullbacks cross from deep, all aiming at target-man. and all have 'cross ball' set to often, yet seem to prefer shooting from halfway into the opponents half, and i havent seen more than a couple of crosses a game.
also a lot of the long shots seem to be straight in front of the player whether he is actually in line with the goal or not, half the time it looks like the players believe the object of the game is to get the ball over the byline.

and i dont even know how to stop players blazing it over the crossbar from inside the 6-yard box, i havn't figured out if there is an instruction which affects this, is there?

Hey, irish, have you read
Communication and Psychological Warfare

over in the T&TT forum?

I've had a couple of people who reported that applying what they learned from that thread stopped their strikers from missing so blatantly.

Basically, your striker misses from 6 yards when he's completely bereft of confidence. You need to do things that increase his confidence:

Tactically, making sure that he gets good chances, and can put them away .. how you could make it better than unmarked on the 6 I don't know but if that chance comes in the 60th minute after he's missed ten earlier chances, its "too late" ..

.. and then, in general, addressing team confidence, etc, in your team talks.

The other thing I'd say is "Make sure you're giving your players options", ideally, that there are always 2 or 3 players within 1 diagonal positional square of your player. That will help to ensure that they pass - it seems like "Shoot from range" is the default action that they take when they don't spot anything better.

cheers Amaroq, i'll give try, tbh my team talks do tend to be more tyrant style than confidence boosters (using the 'angry' comment a lot).
that might well be the problem with the strikers.
but as for having players within 1 diagonal positions, i dont think i quite understand that bit? i use standard 4-4-2, with the wingers having farrows up one row, how would i go about getting the players within one diagonal of each other? put the wingers up to where the farrow is now or otherwise using an AM and a DM? or do the farrows/barrows count as being in that space?



(rant)btw i have now seen the most ludicrus move ever in fm, elano pinpoint long-pass to petrov, who crosses it into the center with his first touch, bianchi heads it into the path of samaras, who is now totally open, with only keeper to beat, he shots once and hits the keeper, tries again with the same result, and then tries a third time only for the keeper to catch it this time.
is that even physically possible?? rant over, sorry bout that just letting some steam off