Hm yeah that seems really strange. No wonder some veterans here in the forum do try to avoid watching their games. ^^
Did you switch something regarding your tactics or formation before the opponent manager came into the game?
And as far as I had understood, the arrows don't necessarily do pressure on the other players. They just move the player's position to another (half-)spot in the field.
Jeeves (one of the forum's administrators) wrote something about that in the following thread and it did help me to "use" the arrows better:
https://forum.topeleven.com/top-elev...tml#post467276
Best,
Nidd