Squad Rotation/Substitution run outs is it worth it?

[mmunger]

Should I just stick to exactly the same XI instead week in week out and not make any substitutions except for injuries or tactical reasons.

What are your goals? Do you focus on the league, or also want to compete in the Champions League and Cup?

If you want to be good in all competitions, you have to rotate.

Young players get tired when playing 90 minutes or training hard, but they gain skill points faster. You want to have other guys to back them up.

Older players get tired faster than, say, 23 to 27 year olds. You want to sub them out sometimes to prevent injury.

If you want to compete for more than one title and manage energy levels, you must rotate.

[An Bainisteoir]

What are your goals? Do you focus on the league, or also want to compete in the Champions League and Cup?

If you want to be good in all competitions, you have to rotate.

Young players get tired when playing 90 minutes or training hard, but they gain skill points faster. You want to have other guys to back them up.

Older players get tired faster than, say, 23 to 27 year olds. You want to sub them out sometimes to prevent injury.

If you want to compete for more than one title and manage energy levels, you must rotate.

I try to win everything I enter but I am not that bothered if I get knocked out of the cup competition. I find that the cup is too early in the season for me and it does not give me time to make changes to my team.
For this reason I prefer the Champions League and League. There are plenty of chances to rectify previous errors. I try to get to the quarter finals/semi finals of the champions league, at least. I also try and win the league/make sure I qualify for the champions league.

From a substitutions perspective I noticed that I rotate about 4 players max to keep the squad fresh. I always bring on a least two subs if I am watching a game.
I am only level 4 at the moment so I do not know if these tactics will work at higher levels where there are not as many dead/tanking teams.

[Alexandre Labrecque]

Morale does drop seemingly randomly in between games. I am constantly checking the team and have noticed many times where players morale was perfect after a match and then right before the next one it had dropped. No roster changes, no signings, nothing at all to indicate why it happened.

I go into every single match with all 11 at 100% morale. I am a hard attacking manager, the possession is needed although not 100% required. I missed most of a match today against a CL opp that was less than 1* below me. I ended the match with 52% but had 3x the shots on target and won 4-0 on the road.

Possession is an indicator of talent disparity and morale. The other main indicator of talent disparity is not really having many more shots or on targets but the % of on targets that go in.

Since starting my new team back at lvl 1 last season I have not had a worse % in any match and I have not lost any match. In the past when I lost or drew it was always because I failed to get my shots on target enough.

Not sure if it is the hard attacking mentality or just a flaw in the game engine but I find that even the most vastly outmatched opps get too many shots and on targets, they just fail to take advantage of them and there is a higher % of blocks and saves.

I think if you are so much better that you have 80% possession then it is highly unlikely the team your facing will get off many shots. Even looking at some good performances between EPL sides you see Chelsea hold lesser sides to 1-2 on targets and it isn't that rare. The gap in talent between my club and a lot of my opps is much higher than any in La Liga much less the EPL.

Maybe I misjudge the gap but I doubt it. A 3* talent gap is huge and leads to ridiculous score lines of 10-0, 12-0, 14-0 that you never see in real professional matches. So how the team that loses 12-0 and has only 20% possession gets off 15+ shots and 5-6 on target is way beyond any logic I can come up with.

[muskrat]

in another thread, they said morale can drop after the server restarts. Which explains the difference in morale from a game ending to the next one, the next day. Also 1 day is supposed to equal one week, so makes since that it could go down, players aren't constantly happy...