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.

[Prince Umair]

Oh well i agree with you somewhat, today i had a CL match, the opposition was weaker than me and i had lot of possession and shots on targets and yet it was a draw 1-1.

[Al Svanberg]

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.

I am sorry for that, I know how annoying it can be so please accept my apology. Its just the underlined part I want to nuance. Like sit down and watch a game from the Euro 2016 with Northern Ireland (long passing team) and one with Spain (short passing team) and chalk up how many long passes from D's to strikers are made by NI and how many are made by Spain. Expand it and look at how many long passes are made while under pressure and how many are not. You would surely find that in today's modern football game, the difference just isn't that big. Its not like NI would make 60 long passes and Spain 3.

The difference is that in some specific situations, NI will choose to not take a calculated risk, but instead send the ball long, and Spain while under no pressure never will make long passes in those situations. In -- by far -- the most situations, the player with the ball just do not have many options. He have not had time to look up, the target player might not be in position or unmarked, the target player might not have support, the player with the ball is pressured so hard -- that the pass that is made is more or less the only natural option for this player. That is the game of soccer, a throw in is made, one player gets open, passes the ball back to the thrower who chips it up along the side, new throw in. The game just consist of 100s situations like that. The big difference you will find is that Spain manage to play themselves -- out -- of pressured situations, while NI don't manage to do that. Hence Spain's possession will be higher and they will make many more short passes. Spain and NI will in reality try to solve most situations in the game of Soccer in more or less the same way, you just don't have that many options.

I mean like, lets look at stats from the PL last season. It shows what I am trying to say, Watford, making by far the most long balls in the PL, made short passes 80% of the time as opposed to Arsenal (the team making the most short passes) making them 90% of the time. The difference in the real world is that the team making the most long passes in 1 of 10 situations will pass long instead of short compared to the team making the most short passes.

R -- Team Long Balls pg --Short Passes pg -- Short Passes %
1 Watford 80 308 79,4%
2 Crystal Palace 74 293 79,8%
3 Norwich 74 313 80,9%
4 Everton 73 405 84,7%
5 Leicester 72 282 79,7%
6 Sunderland 71 270 79,2%
7 West Bromwich Albion 71 255 78,2%
8 Manchester United 71 461 86,7%
9 West Ham 70 332 82,6%
10 Newcastle United 69 333 82,8%
11 Tottenham 68 427 86,3%
12 Aston Villa 67 341 83,6%
13 Southampton 67 355 84,1%
14 Bournemouth 67 394 85,5%
15 Swansea 65 419 86,6%
16 Stoke 63 371 85,5%
17 Liverpool 63 460 88,0%
18 Chelsea 62 461 88,1%
19 Manchester City 56 487 89,7%
20 Arsenal 49 513 91,3%

I just want to point that out because that is truly one of the things I do love about this game, that it is not so mechanical. That an "order" from the side in the blink of an eye change a game, because that is not how it works in the real world. Then I understand that this is not what you are saying, just want to nuance what you pointed out a bit. BTW big thanks for your input in this thread, like I said I agree with a lot of it!

[Sunil Chetri]

I am not agree with that, as I usually tend to see a good effect when I do substitutions, or move players of position inside lines like invert the MC's left-right and vice.
+attending is a +8% and this is something that after seasons one can see that can make a differance, in terms of chances.

Another thing is that, if one don't attend the scenario is one, and if one attend, the scenario is another.

Maybe some of are not affected this, in my team case, I attend or absent during the game whatever I do match result go through by game engine only, the only benifit we will get by watching my match is, 1)substitution-this effects very rarely, 2) Red card- we can fill the minimum needed player if our player got red....
Some teams are not training their players regularly but they still manage to win everyday, by this way what's the use of training??
And one more thing I want to say that I'm doing these experiments in official match, not in friendly matches,

[Tactician]

Maybe some of are not affected this, in my team case, I attend or absent during the game whatever I do match result go through by game engine only, the only benifit we will get by watching my match is, 1)substitution-this effects very rarely, 2) Red card- we can fill the minimum needed player if our player got red....
Some teams are not training their players regularly but they still manage to win everyday, by this way what's the use of training??
And one more thing I want to say that I'm doing these experiments in official match, not in friendly matches,

This is what I have said too - it seems that some are not affected, or maybe their team is so high in quality that this gives them the impression that doing this or that is working when in fact it is not. For me, lately, some matches looked more like matches on playback, like you are made to watch a match that you have little control of but is given a controller and you are pressing the buttons, thinking that you are controlling things or making things happen. But, I have noticed this only lately; this was not like this in the past. Maybe Nordeus changed some things deliberately or something went wrong with the game.