Watching games doesn't make a big difference in Match results,

[Tactician]

Tactician- I agree with a lot of what you say, but in other cases I think you are way to cathegoral. Even if you tell your players to prefer to take long passes, there will of course still be short passes made in a soccer game. Have you ever seen a real soccer game where only short/long passes are made? Like I said, you cannot think of it like you are playing a game of chess, where if you move your queen you move your queen. A coach ordering his player to make the long pass in a soccer game would in a real game result in what, 3-4% more long passes being made? 10%? You don't set your players to only make long passes, a soccer team making a lot of long passes means that they in a few transition plays send long passes on a target striker instead of going through the midfielders. Most passes in a soccer game is other type of passes that are not long/short, but passes made with the back against the field, under pressure, up field and what not. And even besides that, the players aren't robots. They don't do what the coach tells them to do always.

BTW I don't understand your comment on the man-man issue. It's of course possible to play man-man if you are down a man. It's not like the defending team short a player would just stand and look if the player "left out" would get the ball. I am not even sure it matters if you play man-man or zonal, I've never tried and just guessed at man-man. The problem is this. With that formation you are good offensively, which I recon is warranted. BUT, you should be exposed defensively. With a DL-DC-DR defensive line, the DL and DR will be quite offensive when you have be ball. They will support the wingers, go up field and cross balls etc. But they are not exposed defensively to the extent they should be. From my POV, in real soccer that would be a suicide strategy. That is why there -- never -- have been a team at any kind of level that have played with one DC in real soccer. Hence I think Nordeus should tinker with the engine since it's so successful in TE. Defensively it works like you have 3 DCs and offensively like you have wing backs. That would be suicide in a real game, shouldn't be able to have both in TE.

I have not said that the players must do long passes only. Please don't say or imply things that I have not said; this is annoying. If the preference is set to long passes, the players main strategy to advance forward (especially from own half to other half) should be by long passes. The players must do a long pass when the opportunity is there or do short passes backwards or sideways and wait for the opportunity for a long pass to come and do it, or do long passes no matter what, but surely not do short passes forward only to give the ball away, especially not when the is a free player available to receive a long pass. It is as if the game make or force things to occur in this game or to show them in the highlights so that the calculated outcome is respected, no matter what your orders and formation are. The same thing with passing on the flanks. A player is free to receive a pass on the flanks, but the ball is passed into a crowded middle, only for it to be given away. You set P1 to take both right and left corners and free-kicks, it is P2 who takes them. What do you have to say for the free-kicks and corners? So, sometimes it seems that it does not matter whatever you do with your orders and/or substitutions, if the game has decided against you, nothing seem work as such so that you will get the desired result, hence 'coming' to the Sunil's concern; some matches appear more like playback matches.

If an opposing team is one man down, playing with DL and DR only (no DMC), and you play with 3ST and enough midfielders, man-on-man cannot work because: (1) the team is one man short, and (2) the player that will try to mark the middle ST will be too far from him or will already be taken to mark an opposing midfielder; every time he will have to run back to mark the middle ST, which is bound to fail after some time due to tiredness. So, it can't be that a team playing with 3ST or even 2ST and an AMC is having trouble to score against a team with one man down and playing DL and DR only at the back and no DMC. Both zonal and man-on-man marking should fail in this situation, so it can't be due to either types of marking.

There is not much football sense in this game lately. Suicide strategies will work, and logical or good strategies will fail. You can use odd order combinations, odd formations and so on and still win against teams using what should be much better formations and orders.