Hi guys,
I am new to this excellent forum and its great for all the FM lovers. I have been redirected to this discussion by a certain "Jake, super moderator" after I posted one of the issues that I found really strange. I have to admit that i posted that message initially out of frustration and it came out as not how it was intended.
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/fm-2011-general-discussion/77537-cheating-ai.html
The issue is similar to many of the posts here. Everything was going fine with my Bayern team until this CL match with Real Madrid in Madrid. This is my second season and I was unbeaten so far this season. So that takes away the 'form' argument against my team. What happened was that we were playing really well with 1-0 up in the first 30 minutes. It was a 4-5-1 Counter-attacking tactic which I normally use for tough away games with Ribery, Robben and Olic up front. It worked superbly initially and Ribery and Olic were ripping apart the Madrid defense with their dribbling and if not for Casillas, socre would have been 4-0. Olic also missed couple of chances, which he usually does, so that is nothing different.
What happened after that is both Ribery and Olic got injured after 35 minutes after strong challenges from Ramos and Pepe and both were not booked. I had to bring in Gomez and Kroos as substitutes and Robben was the main threat remaining. Immediately after he rattled the crossbar with one long shot, he was red carded for a challenge and sent off. What happened after that was really crazy. My defenders refused to mark the Madrid players properly, did not go for the challenges and left them easily inside the box. Finally Madrid won 3-1.
It was really strange because even Anthony Annan refused to put it in any tackle at all in the second half. Usually he is a beast in the Anchor man position and he averages 7.7 tackles per game this season!
So, out of curiosity, I reloaded my previous save and played the same game again. Similar things happened, 1 player gets injured, solid first half followed by terrible second half.. more reloads but the results the same. I even tried changing different tactics, attacking, defensive, different players, 5 men in the back etc. No matter what your tactics is, there always seem to be some invisible thing that forces you to lose the game. Once, Khedira scored a 40 yard goal in the 89th minute to win the matach and he hasn;t even scored once this season for Madrid.
All of these seemed too premeditated to be random. After I posted the message, some had commented that Bayern's defense is poor and it could happen. I agree that they are not the best in real life, but in FM they are quite decent. Moreover, the same defense kept a clean sheet in the home game against the same Madrid 10 days before and the same team won the CL the previous season beating Barcelona in the CL final conceding only once.
I am not trying to win every game nor do I want to discredit FM. I was called a 'deluded; conspirator in the previous post and when I read through this discussion, a lot of things make sense and I'm not the only one who face this. If the developers really want to slow down your wins, they could atleast show a fair game where you lose fairly. But to make you lose the game by injuring your players, showing your players not playing, moving well etc. is simply not fair.. I would like to repeat that I love FM and enjoy the game so much. But openly discussing such things we face while playing it will help in improving the game even more is what I feel.