Team suddenly stops working
I would like to start by saying that this post is neither a rant or a complain about the game itself. We all know that FM26 has issues but I'm not blaming the game itself.
Still, if I have to be honest, had this happened to me in FM24 or any previous game I wouldn't have made this post.
Long story short, I start a new save with Sampdoria. I crush Serie B in the first season. Points record, goals scored record, 20 points over the second team and so on. My only issue was conceding at least one goal in more than half my matches. But I was okay with it since my 343 was quite offense oriented.
Following season I start in Serie A. I get a couple of good players but the starting players are all the same aside from my striker because he retired. I got two good players, a young guy and an experienced striker, both way better than my previous striker who ended the season with 18 goals. (Coda was my old striker, Pascual and Milik the new ones, not important but you may be curious).
I'm predicted to end at the middle of the table (same prediction I got in Serie B btw).
I win all my friendlies and I get my first lose against Reggiana in the Coppa Italia. Quite a hit since they are a Serie C side but it can happen.
I then start Serie A with mixed results. Basically I win all the matches against similar teams, I draw against top teams like Milan and Napoli and I lose two matches against weaker teams. Both matches with super high XGs by my side and super low on their side, so just bad luck.
Then it started, I'm now 11 games past that with 9 losses and 2 draws. At first I blamed it on the winter form and bad luck since my XGs were very high but I didn't score.
Now I tried everything, I tried playing more defensively, I tried another formation, basically I did everything a coach usually does when things go wrong. But I simply can't score.
It doesn't matter if it is against a weaker team at home or against a top of the league team away.
Everything stopped working all of a sudden.
Even the two teams that I used to crush the previous year in Serie B defeated me 1-0 with super low XGs compared to me.
What worries me is that my team stopped shooting at the goal. Almost every shot goes out or even worst gets blocked by the defense. My players seem to stop to wait and shoot even when they could easily go 1vs1 against the keeper.
This brings me back to the start of this post. I'm not complaining, I may just suck as a manager, but is this something that has been happening with FM26? Because it never happened to me before. I got bad winter forms, I fucked things up with teams before but never that way.
And I can't even blame it on going from Serie B to Serie A because for once I did it so many times in the past and also the season was going quite well until the middle of October.
I'm not following the news about FM26 so I don't know if people reported this kind of behavior. I would like to know if it's all my fault+bad luck or if that's something that has been happening to others too and it's out of my control.