In the game manual it says:
"...or you can use your depth chart strictly until the 4th quarter, then tell the coach to try and win the game however he thinks is best (Depth Chart until 4th)."
My interpretation of this is that in the 4th quarter, the coach SHOULD pick the best players which you included in the Starters, Back-ups and potentially Reserves to try and win the game in the 4th quarter (though I am unsure if the coach will select from Back-ups only, or both Back-up and Reserves). This would be a great point to clarify in the game manual.
My specific complaint comes from my most recent cup game, in which I selected the Depth Chart until 4th option. My game was a very close one, and so I expected that in the 4th quarter my coach would bring in the most talented and/or well performing players from my line-up to try and win the game. My team was making a come-back, and then with 2:55 left in the game
(http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/19961601/reportmatch.as...), my coach brought back Quyet Nguyen for Robert Martonyi when there is not a SINGLE category in which Quyet has a better rating. I can point out more specifics of what line-up I would have liked for my coach to selected, but this substitution in particular seems to make no sense at all. While I ended up still going ahead one more time, before finally falling behind and losing, I feel reasonably confident that with my top team in, I would have held on to win the game (or at least had a better shot).
The frustration for me, is that I assumed the coach would play my best possible line-up in the 4th quarter. If I did not have this expectation, I could and would have tried to win the game another way, by either trying harder (I played take-it-easy), or by simply putting in a better starting line-up. However, because I understood that there was an option to specifically let the coach put the best player in for the 4th quarter, I did not see the need to do this. I am looking for clarification on:
1. How does the coach behave differently when using this option?
2. What factors the coach will use to select the best line-up to give my team a chance to win?
3. Why would a coach put in a player who is worse or even in all player-talent categories?
To my mind, that opens another staff position - getting a smarter and better coach - but that is for another time.