I'd be lying if I claimed to be a psychologist of any note or distinction. I merely have my amateur observations and tritely reached conclusions to go on. But an idea came into my head when stuck on a train. About an hour and twenty minutes after said train had drawn to an unplanned stop, it started moving, finally, transporting me home. A 45 minute train journey would definitely stretch to over 2 hours. In those embryonic moments of the train being re-born, when everyone held the fears one might at the birth of a lamb, that a collapse was imminent, my flagging mind scrambled to find somebody to blame. I could hardly blame the driver and the conductor - a points failure is emphatically not their fault. But then perhaps I could blame them only for the loose, vague updates we were sporadically supplied with. "We're still stuck because of a points failure. Engineers may or may not be on their way. This may or may not fix things. You may or may not get home tonight. Apologies for the inconvenience this may or may not be causing you."

But then, what more could they have done? Lied, told us everything was fine, tell us every 5 minutes that we would be moving in 5 minutes, repeat ad infinitum? No, they surely did little wrong with the information they were being drip fed. So it must be the fault of those drip feeders, who were being so damned unhelpful. But they weren't responsible for the points failure either. Those engineers were so sloth in fixing the problem. But actually, if they're being called from some far away depot, analysing the problem, finding the root cause and then fixing it, they probably aren't doing a terrible turnaround. It's the whole damn system's fault for letting it get to the stage where points failures could happen so frivolously and haphazardly. Well yes, that probably is true, but at this point, I was realising, what good was blaming anyone or anything doing?

At the risk of having tested your patience to breaking point with that (and I use the phrase utterly loosely) introductory bit, I'm going to talk about Football Manager now. Blame is a theme that runs as endemically through football manager as it does through football in general, and life in general. Art imitates art imitates life. As inconsequential, though, as blame may seem to your gameplay, it is just a spare and poorly planned out thought of mine that analysing your blame patterns, where you perceive the fault affecting you to have been spun from, might help you adjust and improve.

The referee ruined the game

There is a sickness among managers in real life. One might point to Jose Mourinho, Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger or any manager they choose as an example of somebody who uses criticism of the referee to justify poor results and deflect attention from their team. And sometimes it is reasonable to suggest the referee made a decision, wrongly, that was crucial to the result. But there is an endemic quality to it that that leads me to deliberately use the word 'sickness'. Simply put, the referee does not have as big an impact as any given press conference might have you believe. Consequentially, if you find yourself directing your rage at the referee, you might be better placed taking a step back. The game is clever enough to mean you can be screwed by the referee, but you can equally be screwed by your team. If you've had a man sent off, or given away a penalty, it could be your aggressive, clumsy player not the ref. There's referee ratings in game, remember - maybe peruse those before shifting your focus.

The AI screwed me

Similar in ways to blaming the ref, but just no. The game has bugs. They're usually very noticeable. The game doesn't screw you over conspiratorially. Have a cold drink and refocus

My players screwed me

We're now on to the more legitimate topics. The occasion may occur, unfortunately rather frequently, where your players let you down. Players have bad games, bad moments, and sometimes just come up against players who are much better than them. If it is completely evident that your player is to blame, then fine, act on it. Fine them for being stupidly sent off, or tell them you're not happy with their poor performance. But are you sure you can only blame your players? Though changes might only need to be microscopic, tactical changes might nevertheless smooth out some of the issues you put down as solely your players' fault. If your player is caught in possession, maybe he needs more options to pass to. If he keeps shooting from miles out, it could be his personality, but you could also need to tell him specifically to not try them. If he has 3 for crossing and you're getting frustrated at his frequent crap crosses, well that's your own fault.

Blame your self (or your parents, thanks to Freud)

Yeah, hard as it may seem, maybe it's your fault. It's a complex game, if you've been lazy, it could be your fault. Maybe your fault is you expect too much, and you get angry at your team at losing a game that, all things considered, it was fairly acceptable to lose. But hey, buddy, don't be so hard on yourself. You can't win them all. You might have been able to do things better, but don't go beating yourself up over minutiae you could have got better, only more glaring or systemic faults warrant blaming yourself more fully.

This is basically building to a hippy mantra as a crescendo. Maybe you just shouldn't waste time meting out blame. You might have more fun if you just relaxed, dude, and let things flow. But more likely, you'll win more if you know where the problems are and apportion blame appropriately and act on it. Action - reaction.


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