The "ready" thing is Enthusiasm.
If your enthusiasm level is at ready, that means it is pretty bad. Enthusiasm ranges from exhausted (1) to unstoppable (15). "Ready" is a 4. I would guess most of the top teams in this league have a enthusiasm level of 10-13
You can control your enthusiasm level with the Attitude drop down in the lineup window (Normal, Take it Easy, Crunch Time)
By playing with a normal attitude, the players perform at a normal level and the enthusiasm will not change much.
By "Taking it Easy" your players will get a performance decrease during the match but will increase their enthusiasm.
By playing "Crunch Time" your players will see a performance increase during the game but it will heavily decrease enthusiasm.
Most people TIE (Take it easy) most of the time during the regular season and play "normal" against top competitors. That way the will have an optimal level of enthusiasm for the playoff run.
As for game shape.
Game shape is an individual stat for ever player.You can see the game shape on the player screen right below Height and Potential.
Managing your player's game shape is quite simple but difficult to do.
The rule of thumb is, if a player plays between 48 minutes and 68 minutes per week, his game shape will go up. If the player plays less than 48 minutes or more than 68 minutes, his game shape will go down.
Another way to increase game shape is by training it. Simply choose "Team Training" and "Game Shape" from the drop down menu on the training screen. I wouldn't recommend doing that though because it is just a waste of training.
Your top players' game shape is pretty bad, which explains why you are losing to worse teams.
Your top SG has a GS (Game Shape) of inept, which is a 4 out of 9
To give you a comparison.
Your top SG has a salary of $25,331 with a inept GS, which gives him a DMI of 77,300
My top PG has a salary of $26,611 with a strong (8) GS, which gives him a DMI of 174,300
One of my PG has a salary of $6,266 with a proficient (9) GS,which gives him a DMI of 73,500
You can see that my $6k player plays at roughly the same level as your $25k player and my top PG who has a similar salary completely outperforms your top player because his GS is better.
I hope that wasn't too much info at once and that it is somewhat coherent ;)
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