Mythbusters of top eleven

[talisman]

In my experience most of these 'fixed' matches seem to occur when the opposition manager does not attend, making it highly debatable whether their tactics have anything to do with it. A team can only play to the formation and tactics set for it up until 3 minutes prior to kick-off. If a manager is present at a match, he can change the players, formation and tactics (orders) to cope with events as they unfold on the pitch.

The only way an unmanaged team can change is in response to changes made to the managed team, eg formation change from a true counter-formation to one that allows the unmanaged team the exploit the facets of the formation it is using that the counter-formation had previously suppressed. It may be the case that in some matches that are eventually reported as 'Troll' matches, the manager has exacerbated the effect of 'nothing I do works' by making extreme changes that have been to the detriment of his team.

This is why I try not to make many changes of formation or players during this sort of match, and instead rely on changes in orders and bonus application to try and get my team to overcome the stubborn opponent - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...

[Tactician]

In my experience most of these 'fixed' matches seem to occur when the opposition manager does not attend.

I confirm that I have observed the same.

'The only way an unmanaged team can change is in response to changes made to the managed team' is when the game has decided that you will be knocked-out of the competition at this particular stage no matter what you do.

In those anomalous cases, nothing seemed to work in terms of changing the course of the round, that is who will be qualified and who will be disqualified. If ever you make very appropriate changes in tactics, you will dominate the match and your team will score a few goals, but the opponent will respond with more goals that seems to be too easy for them to do. The way your defence let them to come and score appear to be too strange. Even the behaviour of the GK is strange. In other words, it can be observed how the game set things up and make things happen on the pitch in such a way so that the desired final result (qualified or disqualified) is respected.

I still will leave a small room for the possibility of the opponent having gone through due to tactics (initially selected tactics), but I highly doubt it.