Slider Tests

I have been doing some tests altering the sliders to see the outcomes in game, I used Real Murcia, and the game I used was an away game against Gimnastic, the formation I used was 4-4-2.

for each of my tests I set everything to the middle, or mixed setting, except the slider I wanted to test, which I then put at its highest level for half the team, and at its lowest for the other half, I then switched them round and played again.

Mentality - Positionally there was not much change that I could see, except the initial movement of the palyers changed, forward for the high mentality and backwards for the low mentality, the only real noticable postional change was the strikers, who had a large gap between them.

However.... stats wise, things were quite noticable, the pass completion rate of the defenders rose by around 15% when they played as defensive mentality, midfielders rose a little, and strikers dropped slightly compared to the attacking mentality.

Tackling and Heading were similar, along with all other stats, the striker with high Mentality was offside 4 times in the two games, compared the other striker's 0. Also what was interesting was that the Defensive Mentality players made more pass attempts than the attacking mentality players.

Creative Freedom - Positionally again the players didn't show much difference depending on the setting.

the stats show that the players with the high creative setting produced more key passes, and generally had more shots on goal that the low creative freedom players.

Passing Style - The Centre-Backs had similar success over both distances, the left and right backs had slightly better success over short distances, the midfielders had similar success over short and long distances, and the strikers had similar success. All the key passes were made by midfielders and strikers, In centre-mid, the player with short passing performed better in the key pass statistic both times.

Closing Down - Closing Down was interesting because the players with hih closing down did not travel further than the players who had no closing down, they were about the same, although through watching the game, by high closing down, players do get dragged out of position, and this leaves space for open shots, so I would recommend not leaving the good long shot players free, I had high closing on the right, and there left centre mid was Bauza, who has 16 on long shots, the ball was down the line on the left, all my players on the right rushed over, the ball was played inside, and Bauza had a hattrick of goals from outside the box by the end of the game. otherwise only a slight increase in interceptions was made with high closing down.

Forward Runs - This was the setting that increased distance covered, or decreased distance covered dramatically, by as much as 3.5km

passing was both less often and worse for those who had forward runs, and those with often also had more shots, than those who had rarely. watching the game, those with rarely tended to sit deeper, whereas the often players tended to overlap and run into spaces behind players.

I know some things were quite obvious, but others were not, I hope it helps.

interstening. i also used to run little tests like this before but i don't bother anymore..

imo closing down seems little odd in 930. was there an obvious difference in behaviour between players on 1/20 closing down? imo it should be very noticable.

The players on high closing down were slow to react to situations, the player with the ball takes a touch, turns, and then the defender starts to close down, and when the ball is passed to another player the same happens, they just wait a bit, then start closing down, they should be running crazy after the ball, running towards the player even before they have the ball, they don't seem to realise until the player has received the ball. so if you play a quick tempo, they never get near the ball.

yeah it's a long term issue where players don't anticipate as they should. seams even more obvious in 930.

These are very interesting observations.