The Myth of Managing

[Berlitz]

In this post, I would like to address the myth of managing advertised in the game.

People seem to join the game and expect that their management of the team will provide them with good results. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The game is quite random. Even if your team is twice as strong as another team, your team will lose because the engine decided that it would lose.

In an experiment I conducted over the course of 6 seasons, I can reliable say that you will get 5-8 trolls a season (i.e. you will lose or draw against teams that are 25%+ weaker, no matter what you do).

The experiment was conducted by gaming the system for the draw. I sold all players in a teams except the 4 best players right before the end of a season and then, once I had been drawn into a league with teams of 25-60%, I would buy players so that the team was around 86-96%.

90% of the games were played in the following conditions:
1. opponent team in league was always 35%+ weaker
2. opponent team was not managed

For one team, I managed the team. For the second team, I did not touch the team.

In doing so, both teams always won the League but there were 5-8 irregularities each season for either team. In these games the team, regardless of being managed or not, lost or drew to opponents who were significantly weaker. In one extreme situation, the 89% managed team tied against a 24% team, with 8 shots on target. Moreover, in 1 season, I lined up players in illegal formations (CD were DL, no midfielder, 1 ML, 1AML, 1 MR, 1AMR, 2 ST were AMCs). This caused an extra 3 upsets, but the team still won the league.

For the Cup and the CL, the results were somewhat similar. First rounds were a breeze and then, suddenly, against a weak team, a surprise result. The surprise results rarely came alone and would either occur over the Home and Away game of the tournament or on the same day. Once the bad results occurred, the team would hammer the next opponent by 4+ goals.

Conclusion: Managing your team increases your win chances relatively little. If you are stronger than every opponent you encounter, you will still lose between 5-10% of your games.

[Bendi85]

Thats the whole idea of managing team isnt it?
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. In real life, strong team do lose to weaker team as well.

[alien7ss]

All is very close to real. Of course you should get a troll result. I won sometimes tankers 20-30% above me, using tactics.
The chance of losing in Cup or CL of a team close to your position in league is very high, even if he is 10% lower