Solution to the lack of freedom without arrows

I've enjoyed this game less than I've enjoyed any for many years, and I think it's because the tactics side of things feels too restricted now that arrows have been taken out. Specifically it troubles me with wide players and telling them cut inside.

As an example, trying to do England's current formation is impossible. On the left you have a player who is fairly narrow and told to come inside often, being overlapped by an attack minded fullback. Whereas on the other side you have a touchline hugging winger who is just told to put in crosses, and a more defensively minded fullback.

The solution to this problem can be done in two ways:

Individual player instructions for 'Width':

The idea that you just have one 'Width' setting for the entire team is silly, really. I might not want both my wide players to act the same, and I certainly don't want to be telling my fullbacks and wingers to do exactly the same thing. Taking England as an example, I'd have Walcott set to 'Wide' and Gerrard to just below halfway, into the 'Narrow' setting. Cole would be set to be wide and Johnson slightly more narrow.

New individual player setting - 'Cut inside':

This new setting is an absolute must for me to replace what was lost when the ability to have side arrows was taken out of the game. This could be a simple slider bar with 3 settings (Rarely/Mixed/Often) and would determine how often you tell the wide player to come inside. With Gerrard this would be 'Often' and Walcott 'Rarely'.

It's very possible to want to have players in a very wide starting position but tell them to come inside often (Ashely Young would be a decent-ish example), but this just isn't possible at all at the moment and makes playing 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 formation very difficult.

There are probably other ways, I'd be interested to what people think, but something has to be done because the game is poorer for not having this freedom anymore.

great idea, I would like to see ronaldo cutting inside in game as irl

Yeah good idea, the addition of these wouldnt do any harm and theyre not difficult for the people on these forums who have trouble with tactics to understand, the width is just the ability to do it for individual instructions aswell as for team instructions and the cut inside is just like the long shots, run with ball etc sliders, so its not like its a new concept for people to get to grips with. Great idea and welcome to the forums:thup:

Cheers for the replies guys, and the welcome (although I did post here quite regularly years ago but forgot my login details!)

I do understand why SI took the arrows out so I didn't want to just come and bitch and moan about it, but rather offer something constructive to replace something I think is dearly lost in the game.

Ronaldo is another great example of someone who is very wide when they are out on the wing, but is still told to come inside frequently. Just not possible to do this at the moment. I want to do a similar thing with Robinho in my game at the moment but obviously I can't.

PaulC

Hooray! I would LOVE to see more choice in individual playing instructions, width in particular. Cut inside would be nice too.

I think both of these ideas are essential and I'm glad they're already being considered by SI

I think what is being suggested here makes sense and is already under consideration at our end.

That's great news, and thanks for taking the time to reply.

Paul, just get rid of the stupid AI mistakes and I'll work around the arrows and width difficulties.

Sorry, posted that too quick, really good idea man, and it wouldn't add much difficulty to the game. Hopefully they do actually listen to your suggestion and put it in the next game.

Good news, but tbh when the arrows were done away with, the obvious (to me) thing to do was give individual width settings, at least. Cutting inside could still have been done by a PPM, although there will obviously be times when you ask a player to do it even if it's not normally a part of his game. If it is implemented though, I hope everyone won't be going 'He was told to cut inside! I don't care if his decisions stat is low and it's not natural to him! He HAS to do it all the time and do it well!'

Realistic in terms of manager over-expectation, sure...but that's about it.

As for why it wasn't implemented this time, I don't know but I'd guess it was to get a stable ME going, especially with the 3D representation seeming to highlight things even more than the 2D used to.

I'm just slightly concerned that the ME might still suffer a bit and people will crucify FM2010 despite the obvious problems that individual width settings might create.