Morale

Very important – its effects should not be under estimated. The basic rule I follow is that if a player has very low morale then he is automatically relegated to the reserves. If he has low morale then he wouldn’t be a first choice pick but may make it on to the bench, depending on the importance of the game, the bigger the game the less likely he will make it even on to the bench.

If a player with low morale is on the bench then it is advisable not to just throw him on for the last twenty minutes of a game as you most likely will not have given him enough time to do anything significant in the game and he will therefore probably end up with a rating of 6, this is not going to do his confidence any good. If you intend bringing him on in a bid to boost his morale give him at least 35-40 minutes.

If his low morale continues for longer than a couple of weeks I usually relegate the player to the reserves as I don’t want those people mixing with the first team.

The same applies when a player is unhappy for whatever reason, if he doesn’t snap out of it after a week or two then you need to relegate him to the reserves before he upsets others. In the event of a big match coming up you may have to move quicker as you don’t want to be going into a big game with other big stars getting pissed off due to another player being unhappy.

This scenario happened to me a couple times in season six, where a couple of players had spoken to the media about their desire to play for another club, this then upset other players who believed they were making a mistake. Their unhappiness then spread to others who were upset at the team morale. In order to correct the whole situation I had to quickly sell off the players who had shown a desire to move on, this in turn made the players who were unhappy with them, happy again. Unfortunately it takes a bit longer for the unhappiness related to team morale to disappear and so I had to relegate all those players unhappy because of this to the reserves.

The important thing to remember is if it looks like it could be an issue that will affect others you need to quickly act upon it. If it looks more isolated to one player then you can monitor the situation and then take action if it is still a problem after a week or two.