I can't explain

I feel hot and cold..

Name one time in world football where a team has gone from challenging for the title, taking on all comers to TOTAL INABILITY to play football at the flick of a switch. Oh wait, THAT's NEVER HAPPENED HAS IT? Unless i'm mistaken, Arsenal are not fighting relegation this season ?

Sure we all remember the famous Keegan "I'd love it" rant where Newcastle bottled it after being 10 points clear in the 95/96 season. But did they suddenly totally lose the ability to play football ? Did they never win a game again ? No, that didn't happen did it.

We all remember Leeds implosion after breaking into Champions league. But unless I have missed something, I don't *think* any of my FML team went on a bender and decided to have a rumble at some night club resulting in a court trial. Further more I don't recall, as the manager, writing a fucking book about it,(plus i'm not certain my players would be able to read it if I did) neither do I have any recollection sending my team into financial doom by signing shite players.

Point is, there are generally reasons why teams have a downturn in form. What doesn't happen is... one day, for REASONS UNKNOWN, your team suddenly can't play football any more, a 15 year old doesn't suddenly gain the magical ability to destroy your team, the opposition GK doesn't turn into Spiderman, the opposition players don't gain +10 boots of longshot and the ability to score from 65 yards just by punting the ball somewhere in the general direction of your goal.

Now I try and look back and try to deduce what happened, what has caused this ? Well I did sign a new striker for £1.2m, a 4* reputation 32 year old. But he didn't even play any games, he was signed as cover and to replace someone who I was going to sell a week later ? So does signing one player, who you don't even play in the team, mean your team is suddenly likely to lose every single game ? Who knows... Lets ask Mystic Meg, she can probably give a better indication of what is likely to happen in FML.

This isn't the first time I have encountered this "form switch", it's actually the third time in as many seasons. The first time was the most ridiculous series of events I have ever seen. After storming away and having an awesome first season with returning stars I had about 4 defeats in 50 games. Then suddenly, I think there may have been a full moon that night, my team lost all ability to play football and I literally went 50 odd games with one fucking win... and I was lucky to win that.

I actually put out a challenge in the lobby - first team to lose to me can have one of my players at any price. So the challenges come in, people WANT to lose to me, they are playing their youth teams, stupid tactics and the lot. So now i'm going to win some games... No i'm not... I continue to lose every single bloody game. My previously invincible team can no longer do anything which resembles football. I ended up having to restart and pick a new team because my form was so broken, so then off I go again winning every game in sight.

So here we go again.... I'd actually restart again at the end of this season so I could win some games but alas that would mean losing Franco, so no can do. I'm not even sure the genius of Franco will be able to sort this out.

I'd just set up the outside of the box corner hack but sods law is my only player who can hit a reasonable long shot is my bloody corner taker! I guess I could sign some 16 year old with 1 long shots though, he will probably score 1 in 1.

I'd also suggest everyone starts using this bloody corner routine so it gets more attention and hopefully fixed. Basically you have your best long shot man outside of the area and setting corner man to pass to penalty area (I've not actually tried this properly so this might end up being wrong) will pass to the free man who you can't get anyone to mark without using mark specific (and that doesn't work properly) He scores a 30 yard drive every single game, or takes ball into box and scores from there. With the default tactics no one will mark that outside of the area guy from what I can tell, and even with spending a day trying to sort it manually I STILL can't get ANYONE To mark this guy even with my entire team back for corners. Go on. Try it.

Oh look, i've lost to another youth team while typing this, and my GK has been injured. Seriously... Bring back the old ME. I know I slagged that off, but it was only annoying because the only games you lost you got super keepered and one shot wondered, but at least it made sense. At least the results at some basis in reality...

Oh and #2, despite all this I panned some team 4-1 in the cup, who beat me 6-0 in league the other day. 1-1 to the random-o-result generator.