14 DAY TRIAL // I am hitting a rough patch, after losing a home game to Q.P.R. and having problems scoring on away trips, which means that I have to do something pretty radical pretty quickly in order to change the course of this title campaign as the board has been grumbling a little about my performance.
One way to achieve this would be to make big changes to the team as I have found in Football Manager 2011 that radically changing things tends to give players a boost for a few games.
Another would be to take a fine comb to my starting line-up and make some small tweaks here and there, hoping that replacing my right back and giving him an attack order instead of a support one is all that's needed to get my team back to winning ways.
But in Football Manager 2012 the developers at Sports Interactive have introduced a whole new mechanics, something called a Team Meeting, which allows the manager to get his team all line-up in the conference room and get them to talk about their concerns while spurring them towards better performance.
It's basically a sort of player chat with more participants and with a longer set of possible answers and it can have quite the effect on players.
It feels somewhat more wooden than the simpler player talks but that might be because it still has that new smell and I have not had the time to learn what replies are required for which situations.
I have managed to do quite a bit of damage to my players in my first Team Meeting, mainly because I suggested that skipper Gerard could play better, but I have since managed to get quite a few good performances out of everyone when I managed to encourage them and plant the idea that the title was still within reach.