Chat Does A Player's Morale Effect Their Form?

[Scratch]

I've recently seen quite a few people saying that morale doesn't have any effect on a player's form. Personally, I've always felt they play a little better when their morale is great. Maybe not a huge amount, but enough to make it worthwhile taking the time to praise them.

I thought I run a quick test to see if I could see any difference. Here's what I did:

I took Leicester and Jamie Vardy and replayed the same game 10 times with his Morale as Superb. I then used the editor to knock his Morale down to Very Poor and I replayed the same game another 10 times. Everyone else was left the same. 

Obviously, that's not terribly scientific. Replaying a game can lead to very different results and it can be quite random. It might be that if I repeated the test, the results would be totally different. 

Anyway, here are the results:

Spoiler

 

Averages:

With Superb morale:      14 goals; 8.5 av rating; 43 shots / 24 on target; 56% on target; 10 wins;
With Very Poor morale:    9 goals; 7.8 av rating; 31 shots / 17 on target; 55% on target; 7 wins / 3 draws;

 

Of course it might turn out differently if I repeated the test (I'd love more of you to try it), but it's actually a bigger difference than I was expecting. And that's just for one player. What might have happened if we'd done it for the whole team and not just one player? That said, if you are only going to take the time to do it for one player, your striker is the obvious choice. 

I'm going to continue to make sure that my main players are constantly on Superb (and as much of the rest of my team as I can).

But what do you think? Convinced? Still not convinced? 

 

[BatiGoal]

I like that you've done a test on it, I enjoy looking at such experiments. But like you say, results could be different in perhaps a different save, different league, clubs, players etc. So I doubt it'll change anyone's original stance. 

Having that said *I'd like to believe* it does make a difference, however small, just to ensure my own little reality of the FMM world. Then again, I never ever praise players unless forced upon by inquisitive journalists. I have found praising to be a 50-50 thing and I get very annoyed when I get the opposite effect. So I never bother. 

[Scratch]

17 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

I like that you've done a test on it, I enjoy looking at such experiments. But like you say, results could be different in perhaps a different save, different league, clubs, players etc. So I doubt it'll change anyone's original stance. 

Having that said *I'd like to believe* it does make a difference, however small, just to ensure my own little reality of the FMM world. Then again, I never ever praise players unless forced upon by inquisitive journalists. I have found praising to be a 50-50 thing and I get very annoyed when I get the opposite effect. So I never bother. 

Yeah, I'd like to see some other people doing tests like this. If I had more time, I'd do some more, but that's as much as I can do at the moment.

The other thing is that this test was on the difference between Superb and Very Poor. If your striker is sitting on Very Good most of the time, the difference may be negligible. 

I personally suspect that there is some sort of moderation value that effects a player's performance on the day and things like form, morale, can't get motivated for the game, etc all feed into that and give them a boost or penalty etc.

I always praise my 1KC strikers and keep them on Superb. I also praise the rest of the team occasionally (I just learn which players I can't praise). Also my coaching area is Motivation as I think this helps. That said, once you're winning all the time and the striker is scoring, then morale is pretty damn good.

[broodje kip]

I found this quite true and have been around for a while.

On FMM 18 got Vinicius Jr. on my Fulham save and he is unhappy as he wanted to move to a bigger club. Then he starts to underperform. After half a season he somehow backed down of his request and he starts to score goals every game

On FMM 19 on my failed DT save if anyone remembered... Got both Isak and Felix unhappy which makes them to perform far from what I expected. Sold Felix hoping that Isak will do good but he’s still unhappy and wants to move to bigger club again. He scored averaged 40 a season until he’s peaked then he backed down after 5 season!! And he starts to score 70+ even at the age of 35

Currently on FMM 20 Jonas Wind was unsettled for no reason and got very poor morale. Scored 30 goals for the first half of the season. I renew his contract and he somehow got superb morale and scored around 60 goals impressively

[BatiGoal]

13 minutes ago, Scratch said:

If your striker is sitting on Very Good most of the time, the difference may be negligible. 

Besides form, their morale seems to affect the occasional player's contract negotiations more (as well) so you're more than likely better off having players in the greener of moods. 

[Ian]

Low morale did affect Troy Parrott with me on my first 1kc. He wanted a new challenge but was tied down but wouldn’t sign again for years so his morale was often low. I found the praise that worked for him and would use that as often as I could or usually after he’d blanked to bring it up a bit temporarily. Never affected team results for me as I’d just find a lot more goals would go to somebody else in the team.

Here are his returns for those years.

I think the new challenge thing might’ve started around the 41 game season when he suffered a bad injury but he came back fine and you can see the goal drop off from season 2028/29. He was late 20’s these years so well in his peak and we’d hit the 100 goal club the season before the 96 goal haul and I’m sure he’d have hit returns similar later on without the poor morale.

Probably not enough proof here to persuade anyone who doubts it but it’s enough for me as it was obvious whilst playing it with same tactics, similar squad that he was just nowhere near as prolific. 

[Scratch]

53 minutes ago, Lord Danish said:

I found this quite true and have been around for a while.

On FMM 18 got Vinicius Jr. on my Fulham save and he is unhappy as he wanted to move to a bigger club. Then he starts to underperform. After half a season he somehow backed down of his request and he starts to score goals every game

On FMM 19 on my failed DT save if anyone remembered... Got both Isak and Felix unhappy which makes them to perform far from what I expected. Sold Felix hoping that Isak will do good but he’s still unhappy and wants to move to bigger club again. He scored averaged 40 a season until he’s peaked then he backed down after 5 season!! And he starts to score 70+ even at the age of 35

Currently on FMM 20 Jonas Wind was unsettled for no reason and got very poor morale. Scored 30 goals for the first half of the season. I renew his contract and he somehow got superb morale and scored around 60 goals impressively

Yeah, I've definitely noticed things like that. Can really kill a save if you can get them happy again.  

[Scratch]

46 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

Besides form, their morale seems to affect the occasional player's contract negotiations more (as well) so you're more than likely better off having players in the greener of moods. 

Good point! I think morale probably affects a few things and having them happy is pretty important. That's why I invite them all over to mine for a piss up every so often... 

[Scratch]

30 minutes ago, Ian said:

Low morale did affect Troy Parrott with me on my first 1kc. He wanted a new challenge but was tied down but wouldn’t sign again for years so his morale was often low. I found the praise that worked for him and would use that as often as I could or usually after he’d blanked to bring it up a bit temporarily. Never affected team results for me as I’d just find a lot more goals would go to somebody else in the team.

Here are his returns for those years.

I think the new challenge thing might’ve started around the 41 game season when he suffered a bad injury but he came back fine and you can see the goal drop off from season 2028/29. He was late 20’s these years so well in his peak and we’d hit the 100 goal club the season before the 96 goal haul and I’m sure he’d have hit returns similar later on without the poor morale.

Probably not enough proof here to persuade anyone who doubts it but it’s enough for me as it was obvious whilst playing it with same tactics, similar squad that he was just nowhere near as prolific. 

Yeah, I've noticed similar things. That's pretty good evidence for me! Even if they aren't wanting a new challenge etc or just not being at the top level of Morale has some effect in my experience - things like being much more likely to get a hattrick if they are happy. But once they want away then they are really likely to struggle with their form...

[Chris]

I believe it does affect performance, and quite a lot. I was recently on a 125 game unbeaten run. We lost a cup final and everyone's moral plummeted. We then lost 3 out of our next 5 games... Like you say though there are many factors to consider, and will always be hard to prove. 

[Scratch]

On 19/12/2019 at 20:50, itzChris92 said:

I believe it does affect performance, and quite a lot. I was recently on a 125 game unbeaten run. We lost a cup final and everyone's moral plummeted. We then lost 3 out of our next 5 games... Like you say though there are many factors to consider, and will always be hard to prove. 

Yeah, I've always placed a decent amount of importance on it and been a bit mystified when others say it has little to no importance. The one thing I will concede though, is that when you are winning a lot then players mostly have high morale, so you don't have to do much and maybe people think it doesn't have much effect as a result (ie they all have high morale anyway)