Managing in Real Life versus Managing in FM: A Discussion

A very interesting debate as to whether FM realistically recreates the management experience has ben running for a while in T&T. The nuts and bolts of the argument were that, as proven by managers such as Shankly, Busby, Nicholson, Revie, Paisley, and Clough, football was a simple game and tactics didn't play much part. According to that hypothesis, FM was inherently flawed as it required too much tactical thought in terms of having success, rather than just allowing a manager to win down to purely having the best eleven players on the pitch. Not surprisingly, as a 'tactical guru' I didn't agree.

Link to the Full Debate

The problem with the thread, as with all non-realism threads, is a total lack of evidence that all of these 'classic' managers were tactical naifs. All we have had is unsubstantiated opinion, a famous 'Cloughie' soundbite, plus, in GQ, the evidence that a 19 year old professional footballer may find FM too difficult for him. Even without the suspicion that Clough was a master of misdirection in his dealings with the media and footballing authority, that 'evidence' should have been summarily dismissed via Cleon's reference to Keane's analysis of Clough as being a master of detail, fact and specific incident alongside his denigration of other managers bluffing their way through football with a 'pride in the shirt, right attitude' generalisation.

A rough trawl through the media will uncover copius amounts of evidence regarding the thought managers do put into tactical design. Mourinho's famous notebooks, Allerdyce's obsession with ProZone, Ramos's 'surprising' tactical focused team-talks, Benitez's opposition by opposition strategy, Brooking's, in his brief flitation with management, tactical preparation for specific players a wekk prior to the match are all cases in point. The supposed flair based managers, Ferguson and Wenger, are absent from this list, simply because they are so tight-lipped about how they prepare. However, if you watch Man Utd and Arsenal play, tactically naive they are not. All that flair and creativity only comes through focused practice and knowing where your team mates will be at all times. And that, my friends, is a form of tactical preparation.

I find it stunning that regular football watchers can still believe that teams do not apply different tactics for different situations and 'just impose their game on the opposition' by 'simply picking their best eleven and letting them get on with it'. Man Utd and Arsenal can do just that against hapless opponents such as Derby, but that in itself is a tactical plan. The better team will focus on opening space by deepening their d-line, playing possession football, having many players break forward to create multiple attacking strata, allowing flair and creative players their heads in the belief that the oppsoition won't be able to cope and will be unable to offer much threat on the counter. As soon as the opposing team is perceived as offering a counter-attacking threat, the better side, although still trying to impose their game, will be more aware of threats, tighten up and commit less players forward. FM allows you to do that, in the EXACT manner real life managers approach the game. The only difficulty is in translating the sliders into the verbal instructions a real life manager would give his players. In borrowing form the Micah Richard's thread in GQ:

MICAH'S FM MANAGER: "Right Micah, what I want you to do is this: I want you to play in the DMC position, with a run forward to the MC position. I want you to have an "Attacking" mentality, with 5/20 Creative Freedom. I want you to use Mixed passing, Hard tackling and 15/20 Tempo. Close down in your own half only, Time Waste Rarely, and Focus Passing down the Flanks. Zonal Marking, 15/20 Width, Use Target Man, Play ball to Target Man's Feet, Counter Attack and No Long Shots. RunWithBallPlayThroughBallsDon'tCross BallNoFreeRoleandHoldUpBall. OK?"

...translates to...

"Micah, I want you to play the holding midfield role, but you can get forward more when we have the ball if you see an opportunity to do so. Don't dally on the ball or shoot from range, hold your position and make your tackles count. I'm not fussed about how you pass, but look to spread the play wide when possible, and remember Benjani likes the ball played into his feet."

That's all the sldiers are, an artificial way to translate real life verbal instruction ionto tactical design. Despite the remaining flaws in the engine, if you learn to do, and apply instructions logically, that you will succeed to an extent. Once you have reached that plateua, it is the ability to read the 2d and the match stats that turns a good side into a great one, because you learn to make the right tactical decisions at the right time, just like a real life manager does. In FM people lose for two reasons:

1: They are tactically inadequate in that they have no idea how football tactics are constructed. It doesn't help that the engine can allow these tactics to look good via allowing too many (seemingly easy) chances. Every time I have been forwarded a tactic in which the team was creating chances and not scoring, or losing regularly to crazy goals, it has had tactical flaws that would make it non-viable in real life as well as FM. Maybe FM doesn't translate this perfectly into the engine and they look better than they are, but make no mistake, they fail because they should fail.

2: They have better designed tactics but fail to adjust when things, for whatever reason, are going agaisnt them. Learning to read a bad team-talk or a tactical flaw is vital if you want to succeed at the highest level. The 2d and match stats givce excellent feedback as to the strengths and weaknesses of any tactic and should be made use of.

NB: I do not believe the engine is perfect. For it to be perfect, no crazy formation would work (e.g. kimz multiple arrow 4-5-1, ruff's weird barrowed 4-1-3-2, even, whisper it quietly, Cleon's fullbackless wonders). However, they quite patently do. It is then down to the player to determine whether to follow a creative though unrealistic tactical strategy, or, in a tactical variant of LLaMaism, remain pure to the concepts of football realism. Both types are fantastic tools in terms of engine development, as the former helps in terms of patching engine holes and the latter in terms of seeing if realsitic tactical strategy works.

A very interesting debate as to whether FM realistically recreates the management experience has ben running for a while in T&T. The nuts and bolts of the argument were that, as proven by managers such as Shankly, Busby, Nicholson, Revie, Paisley, and Clough, football was a simple game and tactics didn't play much part. According to that hypothesis, FM was inherently flawed as it required too much tactical thought in terms of having success, rather than just allowing a manager to win down to purely having the best eleven players on the pitch. Not surprisingly, as a 'tactical guru' I didn't agree.

Link to the Full Debate

The problem with the thread, as with all non-realism threads, is a total lack of evidence that all of these 'classic' managers were tactical naifs. All we have had is unsubstantiated opinion, a famous 'Cloughie' soundbite, plus, in GQ, the evidence that a 19 year old professional footballer may find FM too difficult for him. Even without the suspicion that Clough was a master of misdirection in his dealings with the media and footballing authority, that 'evidence' should have been summarily dismissed via Cleon's reference to Keane's analysis of Clough as being a master of detail, fact and specific incident alongside his denigration of other managers bluffing their way through football with a 'pride in the shirt, right attitude' generalisation.

A rough trawl through the media will uncover copius amounts of evidence regarding the thought managers do put into tactical design. Mourinho's famous notebooks, Allerdyce's obsession with ProZone, Ramos's 'surprising' tactical focused team-talks, Benitez's opposition by opposition strategy, Brooking's, in his brief flitation with management, tactical preparation for specific players a wekk prior to the match are all cases in point. The supposed flair based managers, Ferguson and Wenger, are absent from this list, simply because they are so tight-lipped about how they prepare. However, if you watch Man Utd and Arsenal play, tactically naive they are not. All that flair and creativity only comes through focused practice and knowing where your team mates will be at all times. And that, my friends, is a form of tactical preparation.

I find it stunning that regular football watchers can still believe that teams do not apply different tactics for different situations and 'just impose their game on the opposition' by 'simply picking their best eleven and letting them get on with it'. Man Utd and Arsenal can do just that against hapless opponents such as Derby, but that in itself is a tactical plan. The better team will focus on opening space by deepening their d-line, playing possession football, having many players break forward to create multiple attacking strata, allowing flair and creative players their heads in the belief that the oppsoition won't be able to cope and will be unable to offer much threat on the counter. As soon as the opposing team is perceived as offering a counter-attacking threat, the better side, although still trying to impose their game, will be more aware of threats, tighten up and commit less players forward. FM allows you to do that, in the EXACT manner real life managers approach the game. The only difficulty is in translating the sliders into the verbal instructions a real life manager would give his players. In borrowing form the Micah Richard's thread in GQ:

MICAH'S FM MANAGER: "Right Micah, what I want you to do is this: I want you to play in the DMC position, with a run forward to the MC position. I want you to have an "Attacking" mentality, with 5/20 Creative Freedom. I want you to use Mixed passing, Hard tackling and 15/20 Tempo. Close down in your own half only, Time Waste Rarely, and Focus Passing down the Flanks. Zonal Marking, 15/20 Width, Use Target Man, Play ball to Target Man's Feet, Counter Attack and No Long Shots. RunWithBallPlayThroughBallsDon'tCross BallNoFreeRoleandHoldUpBall. OK?"

...translates to...

"Micah, I want you to play the holding midfield role, but you can get forward more when we have the ball if you see an opportunity to do so. Don't dally on the ball or shoot from range, hold your position and make your tackles count. I'm not fussed about how you pass, but look to spread the play wide when possible, and remember Benjani likes the ball played into his feet."

That's all the sldiers are, an artificial way to translate real life verbal instruction ionto tactical design. Despite the remaining flaws in the engine, if you learn to do, and apply instructions logically, that you will succeed to an extent. Once you have reached that plateua, it is the ability to read the 2d and the match stats that turns a good side into a great one, because you learn to make the right tactical decisions at the right time, just like a real life manager does. In FM people lose for two reasons:

1: They are tactically inadequate in that they have no idea how football tactics are constructed. It doesn't help that the engine can allow these tactics to look good via allowing too many (seemingly easy) chances. Every time I have been forwarded a tactic in which the team was creating chances and not scoring, or losing regularly to crazy goals, it has had tactical flaws that would make it non-viable in real life as well as FM. Maybe FM doesn't translate this perfectly into the engine and they look better than they are, but make no mistake, they fail because they should fail.

2: They have better designed tactics but fail to adjust when things, for whatever reason, are going agaisnt them. Learning to read a bad team-talk or a tactical flaw is vital if you want to succeed at the highest level. The 2d and match stats givce excellent feedback as to the strengths and weaknesses of any tactic and should be made use of.

NB: I do not believe the engine is perfect. For it to be perfect, no crazy formation would work (e.g. kimz multiple arrow 4-5-1, ruff's weird barrowed 4-1-3-2, even, whisper it quietly, Cleon's fullbackless wonders). However, they quite patently do. It is then down to the player to determine whether to follow a creative though unrealistic tactical strategy, or, in a tactical variant of LLaMaism, remain pure to the concepts of football realism. Both types are fantastic tools in terms of engine development, as the former helps in terms of patching engine holes and the latter in terms of seeing if realsitic tactical strategy works.

My biggest problem with real life management compared to FM management is the simplest instructions are still slightly lacking. Why do I need a combination of sliders to get my central defender to stay goal side at all times? Surely I should just be able to select the opposition striker from a drop down menu and tick "stay goal side" - this would help for trying to get full backs to stay in front of a dangerous winger too, a big problem I have.

Either way, that's just an example of something that to me is a little too complicated. It's a basic, straight-forward instruction, so make it that.

Some tactical changes/tweaks a real manager wants to make he can just yell out and have them implemented immediately. On FM you have to wait until the tactics are implemented, and if the I scores a goal while you're waiting to do something as simple as swapping your central defenders around or switching from zonal to man marking, it can be incredibly frustrating.

That said, I realise the match engine needs to make fresh calculations in this situation, so it may be unavoidable.

...and if the AI scores a goal while...

I can appreciate the frustration in that regard, but it is a translation difficulty rather than engine flaw (notwithstanding the processing time for tactical change to be implemented).

You see your DC being constantly turned or your FB being caught out of position on the wing, you check for two things. Firstly, player attributes: the relative pace and strength stats, plus a comparison between off the ball versus positioning etc. You then look at marking/d-line to see how you can minimise the problem. 'Stay goal side because he is quicker than you' translates to [unposted so as not to upset those who don't want tactical advice].

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. The main flaw in the tactical interface (as opposed to the match engine) - what wwfan refers to correctly as a "translation issue", is that the sliders don't always address the instructions a coach would give his players. The best example of this is marking - there are two choices, tight and not-tight. IRL, I would sometimes want a marker to stay goalside, no matter what, because the attacker is faster and thus more diffcult to contain; or I might want him to mark ballside, because the attacker is so good that it is worth gambling being caught behind him in order to deny him the ball; or I might leave it to the defender's discretion. Of the things I can't tell my players, that one irritates me the most.

The other major irritation I have is that there seems to be no way to tell my backs to move up into the attack, but only one at a time. Several years ago, I took my son to see the US Men's National team play against Mexico. Bruce Arena was still coaching them back then, and I remember very well that he played a 4-4-2, and whenever the US went on the attack, one of the backs pushed up well into the midfield. Usually, it was one of the outside backs, but occasionally one of the center backs (but never the other) pushed up into the central midfield. It kept the Mexicans off balance throughout the entire match (granted, they didn't have their A team with them that day). But there is no way I can set alternating mentalities on my backs. Or anyone else.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt in my mind that the match engine itself is as sophisticated as it has ever been. And the availability of a variety of tactics is also at an all-time high. And the frustration we feel when we can't get our sides to perform as we instruct them, or when we devise the perfect strategy and lose, anyway, is doubtless the same frustration the pros feel when it happens to them.

There are obvious limitations in the engine, of which gunnerfan has pointed out two, but the AI suffers from these limitations as well. We can exploit them as much as we are exploited by them. To state the engine is perfect would be a remark of pure fallacy. The difference is that the AI doesn't get frustrated, it just keeps on plodding onwards.

One area we need to take into consideration is the extent to which tactics have hegemonised as a result of standardised coaching qualifications. Every real life manager 'knows' how to implement a bog-standard 4-4-2 that can restrict the opposition to the fullest amount possible. What they don't know, and what these courses drum out of you, is how to creatively think about new and improved tactical sophisitication that can revolutionise the game. That type of stuff happens, but via the best of the best, the more Maverick manager who rises above such mundane drudgery and possesses a vision above and beyond the check box tickers at UEFA. It might well be that type of person Cloughie dismissed as being clueless even at dominoes.

What happens in FM is that many of the users aren't able to replicate even the basics of a UEFA coaching/tactical qualification and thus design horrficially flawed tactics from the off. Because similar types of tactics worked in earlier editions, they rant and rave that the engine is broken and that tactics shouldn't matter so much. The fact that their tactics are performing badly because of serious flaws doesn't enter their heads for two reasons:

1: Such tactics have worked before

2: The engine suggests they are working well (although I have immediately seen the flaws in the 2d every time I have tried a supposed super-tactic, or one that creates masses of 'easy' chances, which might suggest people can't read/understand football as well as they think)

The AI is a UEFAised vision of tactical design and thus its tactics are all solid for the situation in which they are employed. We, as the users, have an one advantage and three disadvantage. One disadvantage is that we have to learn to translate unwieldy sliders into real world tactical instruction. The second disadvantage is we have to quickly learn how to construct a basic tactic or suffer the frustrations of constant defeats. The final disdvantage is having to come to terms with the non-tactical elements of managing, such as media interaction and team talks, of which the AI also has a UEFAised understanding. The one advantage is that we can think creatively and thus can take a step beyond the UEFAised AI and beat it by being more sophisticated than it can possibly ever be.

Learning to play FM is about first overcoming the three disadvanatages and then being able to tap into human creative thinking capacity to design tactics that the AI struggles to contain. Once you reach level four you will win and win consistently. That it takes time to do that, even for the 'gurus', should be a celebration of the engine rather than a condemnation.

Appologies for picking and choosing what parts of the post I want to quote.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by wwfan:

One area we need to take into consideration is the extent to which tactics have hegemonised as a result of standardised coaching qualifications. Every real life manager 'knows' how to implement a bog-standard 4-4-2 that can restrict the opposition to the fullest amount possible. What they don't know, and what these courses drum out of you, is how to creatively think about new and improved tactical sophisitication that can revolutionise the game.

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">

What happens in FM is that many of the users aren't able to replicate even the basics of a UEFA coaching/tactical qualification and thus design horrficially flawed tactics from the off. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">

The AI is a UEFAised vision of tactical design and thus its tactics are all solid for the situation in which they are employed. We, as the users, have an one advantage and three disadvantage. One disadvantage is that we have to learn to translate unwieldy sliders into real world tactical instruction. The second disadvantage is we have to quickly learn how to construct a basic tactic or suffer the frustrations of constant defeats. The final disdvantage is having to come to terms with the non-tactical elements of managing, such as media interaction and team talks, of which the AI also has a UEFAised understanding. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Surely this point could be helped if the user had access to some default formations, such as 'bog-standard 4-4-2 that can restrict the opposition to the fullest amount possible' and other ones that all real football managers would know.

While not giving the player an upper hand, it wouldn't put new users at such a huge disadvantage, and woul provide a solid base for begginers at creating their own tactics.

To take your idea eve further, how about a tutorial option, int the style of the UEFA pro liscence to cover the basics of creating your own tactics.

The Uefa pro liscence currently covers:

# How to plan and evaluate your team's strategic season programme

# How to succeed in one key fixture during the season

# Improving the performance of one key player

# Improving your own interpersonal skills

# Building upon your existing coaching skills with specific emphasis

These cover tactics, training and player interaction, areas of the game that many players struggle with, and an in-character introduction to these ideas, wile not giving out the super-advanced methods to make you inbvincible, would, in my opinion, only be a good thing.

if I look at standard of our national league the most obvious difference with top european leagues is lack of tactical knowledge. our players techincal skills are quite good, also physicly things have improved in last years. after yugoslavia fall apart the lack of big matches, bad financial power and low league quality are responsibile that our teams tactical standard is poor. having most money=best players, should secure you winning trophies. even though things look like they might improve with our strongest side dinamo showing the path, with some good planned managment.

everyone who thinks that wenger or fergie don't deal with tactics very detailed is naive. they succed with hard work. making tactics is a lasting process. you don't just give your players instructions before match and that's it. they build their team's style of play during years. they needed right players to make it work. also they evolve and tweak their tactics and their tactics grows with players maturing. I'm sure arsenal is stepping the next level of their era with such a win over milan.

how is all that implanted in FM? quite OK, IMO. personally I'm one of those who would like more tactical details in the game. I like sliders and I understand that sliders are only a code to say what we want of our players. this is a game and we can't talk to our players and that's why there are sliders. that's our lenguage. many people are confused why we need to tweak so much. answer is quite simple; ME (our players) doesn't recognise that we are winning and need to close down the game (like players do automaticly IRE), for example. and we need to do it manualy.

ther's plenty of room for FM's tactical aspect to improve further. player instructions being the the first, IMO.

The biggest problem FM hs is that you virtually have to get your players into the correct positions, as their own "intelligence" does not reflect the way real life players can adapt to situations that are coached intom them in training.

For example time wasting, or tightening up after scoring- a real life manager will have this drilled into them so they already know what to do, not having to wait a few minutes to adjust in which time its easy to concede.

Also theres no good reason for some sliders such as timewasting to have 20 notches- this is just plain ridiculous and even more ridiculous when you find that this slider can influence tempo.

This latter point also exhibits a problem with the game in that the interface is a barrier and not a conduit due to SI choosing to not implement more intuitive means of puttign across our tactics- hence a lot of the challenge is working out what does what and not the battle of tactical wits it should be.

Theres no excuse for things like defensive line and width to not be displayed and manipulated graphically, perhaps this could also apply to closing down too.

We also once had a tool that replicated a coaches white board or tactical board with the with/without screens. How much is this game crying out for this? But nope SI copped out because of "supertactics"- giving us the sliders we have now- I cant underline what a poor decision this was- as for me it said SI cared more for the AI than the people actually buying the game.

Finally the teamtalks are a disaster- apart from the magic bullet effect that can turn or lose a game they need to allow us to comment on specifics of a players performance. Players not closing down long shots or sticking to a man? I want to be able to tell them that their not adhering to my instructions.

Why SI think its a good idea to improve AI and tactical complexity whilst leaving us with the same means to put across our ideas is just beyond me. All this results in is the "challenge" being to suss out the system- which once you have means the tactical side is nothing more than a case of countering whatever the AI does in a version of scissors, paper, rock.

The tactical side of FM is all about beating FM not about learning real life tactics and the way they are conveyed or drilled in real life- those who think so are kidding themselves. Its a game and the interface we are given and the micromanagement that is at times required only underlines this.

even thoughg mostly I agree with you, there are some points I would like to make.

you're questioning AI's inteligence. I agree, it's not too impressive. I'm not a software expert, but I don't think it's an easy task. if SI think they could improve it over next few years, then that should be their first concern, IMO.

you're right about tweaking. we should be able to change our tactics imediatly, especially after scoring, conceding.

timewasting slider really NEEDS TO CHANGE. 3 notches or just a tick box.

with/witoutball screen. it was ok, but still I would find players sticking to those positions too much just like they do, now. I'd want more unexpected, versitile movement to be able to set my players. it's something I will write a thread - Player Positional Instructions.

teamtalks are silly. this whole motivating aspect has great potential and teamtalks should be just a little factor in it. I noticed that their effort was cut down on 802?!

quote: as proven by managers such as Shankly, Busby, Nicholson, Revie, Paisley, and Clough...

Surely all that proves is Old Football was rubbish, which we all know anyway.

Football has moved on in absolute leaps and bounds from them, in all areas (fitness, tactics, finesse, skill, technique).

George Best couldn't do 5% of what Cristiano can do. If Best was playing now I reckon he would be about the level of Ryan Giggs, a very good player.

I coach high school football here in the USA. It may not be big time club football like in the leagues represented in FM, but we make alterations in our tactics all the time, whether it be from match to match, or for different in-match situations. The biggest thing we look at in our match preparation is the formation we anticipate our opponent is going to use, and then how we can best pressurize the opponent. We're usually a high pressure team, but when we establish a lead we drop back into either low pressure or what we call situational pressure.

We also evaluate the opponent's personnel, and how we want to mark certain players, if we wish to alter our normal marking strategy.

We have what we call a "scramble" strategy, which is basically an ultra-high pressure defense with double teaming to try and win the ball back quickly. We use this when we are behind and need a goal.

Some of this can translate to FM quite well, but not all of it. The way tactics works in FM is pretty close to real life, except in real life you don't necessarily use sliders.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">The tactical side of FM is all about beating FM not about learning real life tactics </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly, thank you.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by George Graham:

This latter point also exhibits a problem with the game in that the interface is a barrier and not a conduit due to SI choosing to not implement more intuitive means of puttign across our tactics- hence a lot of the challenge is working out what does what and not the battle of tactical wits it should be.

...

The tactical side of FM is all about beating FM not about learning real life tactics and the way they are conveyed or drilled in real life- those who think so are kidding themselves. Its a game and the interface we are given and the micromanagement that is at times required only underlines this. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I have to agree with Mr Graham here, and not for the first time I have to say.

I don't spend much time on these forums, and usually skim really quickly down topics, but when I see posts by George, sjm, Amaroq and a couple of others, I always take the time to read them because in my opinion they usually talk a lot of sense and feel the same way about the game as I do.

I have the utmost respect for wwfan and what he has achieved, but really I feel that you are one of a very select few at the extreme end of the demographic, and not many people will be willing or able to spend the time and effort that you have in mastering the science of FM tactics.

I deliberately used the word science and not art there, because I feel that the interface we are given for creating tactics just feels like entering values into a set of equations (which of course underneath it really is!) and not human interaction. When I'm adjusting mentality sliders and ticking boxes, I don't feel like a football manager communicating with my players, instead I feel like a computer programmer. In real life I *am* a computer programmer, and so the game is to me rather like the proverbial "busmans holiday".

I really hope this thread develops, and doesn't just drop off into obscurity amongst all the plankton in the GQ forum. Only the other day I was thinking how interesting it would be to get a debate going between people like wwfan who have mastered the tactical nature of the game, and people like George who want to see changes and improvements and are able to criticise constructively rather than rant and slag off SI.

Cheers guys.

I'm crossposting this from the Micah Richards thread; I think its relevant:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Amaroq:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by arrogantio:

Exactly. Real managers

don't determine the players' positioning on the pitch to the nearest metre and don't need to spell out what risks not to take when a goal up but they earn their money through observation like "that right back tends to drift forward too much so look for the opportunity to play diagonal balls in behind him, especially since their keeper is dodgy under crosses, and I want someone to try to get in front of their quick lone striker to cut off his supply with another standing goalside at all times, AND LET's HAVE SOME PASSION LADS. Which bears no relation to the FM tatical setup whatsoever.... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

See .. people love to say that, but I read that paragraph and see exactly how to translate that into FM tactical terms: in fact, I've done every aspect you describe, at least to my satisfaction:

For the taking advantage of the right back:

- left midfield, forward runs Often, attacking mentality so that he tries to get in behind the right back.

- Central midfielders and strikers on "Play Through Balls" so that they put the ball into space.

- I might try "focus passing down left" if he wasn't getting enough service, or maybe a side-arrow to pull one striker out into that gap.

For your "double cover the lone striker", I've done exactly that

- Central defender on Explicit Man Mark - lone striker; Loose marking

- Defensive midfielder on Explicit Man Mark - lone striker; Tight marking

The DM tries to cut off service, and the central defender stays goalside.

This guy came in one day complaining that he knew exactly how the back six in a 5-3-2 should play, but he couldn't get them to play the way he wanted. He gave a very articulate explanation of exactly what he wanted each player to do ... and I was able to translate that into FM instructions for him that got his defense set up exactly the way he wanted.

Now, why that isn't clearer is a different issue: from his posts, it was clear that he was very smart and understood real football well enough. I'm an unsophisticated American: I couldn't have told you what the right way to play a 5-3-2 was, but once he told me I was able to represent it via the sliders.

So there's some disconnect there: the tactical interface "makes sense" once you've gotten your head wrapped around it, but if its unclear to an intelligent person who knows football, there's something a bit wrong.. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

As wwfan describes, there is a big gap between "FM Sliders" and "A real world knowledge of football", and I think its very frustrating for people when they can't see their way from the latter to the former.

That's why I've long been an advocate for additional communication: in real life, a manager who was frustrated about that would be able to talk about it with his assistant manager.

There's a number of ways that could be brought forward:

- Pointing out where things aren't working.

- Suggesting why things didn't work.

- More detailed analysis of upcoming opponent.

- An "ask a question" mechanic.

Obviously I don't want to get to a point where the game tells me what I need to do, I make the input, we play the match, then the game tells me what I need to do for the next match ... but we've discussed this on numerous occasions and I'm convinced that all of the objections can be overcome with a good design.

Squirmy's point, that it feels a bit like the way a computer programmer might interface with a program, is valid: I wonder if this interface tends to appeal to the mathematically-minded, and really doesn't work well at all for the artistic-minded or language-minded?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">As wwfan describes, there is a big gap between "FM Sliders" and "A real world knowledge of football", and I think its very frustrating for people when they can't see their way from the latter to the former. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Funnily enopugh, that's something that I've tried to address in The Bootroom. This month's 'How To Create Tactics' is based around exactly that idea.

I think we have to keep something in mind. The AI can never be programmed to "think" like a real life manager, and players - ours or the AI's - can never be programmed to "think" like players. That is the great limitation on our game, and it's why we will always, to a certain extent, have to do what George doesn't want to have to do - tell our players the bleedin' obvious.

Because if we don't have to do it, then we take a step backward, to the days when the game assumed that the better a player was, the better he would know what to do on the pitch. Translation: the game was about getting the best players and then winning.

It's the same limitation in dealing with players - up until now, it was a matter of learning the right responses for the right players for the right situations, and once you learned the right answer, you always gave it and the game became a little dry. Now, you can't always guess what the right answer is, you make some mistakes, and it costs you. People get frustrated.

So, that's the continuum we're on...predictability/boredom at one end, and unpredictability and frustration at the other. The latter is more realistic, IMO.

As for Amaroq's point about more realistic Assistant Managers, keep in mind that to avoid the pitfall of passively doing what the game tells you to do, the AM will have to sometimes be wrong. And that will inevitably lead to seething posts ranting about how "the AI used my own AM to swindle me out of a match!"

But, just as you can now ask your AM to suggest the team as well as the team talk, you should be able to ask him to suggest a formation and suggest tactics. Right now, the only way you can do that is go on vacation on match day. And even then, you can't see everything your AM did in your absence.

It seems there are two arguments to unpack:

1: The ability/inability of the FM08 match engine to accurately represent real life football

2: The difficulty in translating slider instructions to the instructions a real life manager would give to his players.

Match Engine

Let's set it straight to begin with. The mach engine is not perfect. There are issues with the engine that inarguably fail to parallel real life:

a) the ease of scoring via a certain corner routine

b) the ease frorm which a player can score from 20-25 yards out (which is how I perceive the issue of people complaining about 'long shots'. I would agree that to many goals are scored from this range, but if they happen with regularity from a longer range, there is a tactical issue)

c) the number of passes a weaker, defensive minded team can make without being put under pressure, which leads to flawed possession stats

I think we can all agree on the above. Let's assume we can all deal with the above points in ther following way:

a) use a non-exploitative corner routine

b) conceptualise the 20-25 yard shots as being equivalnet to a 18-12 yard shot in real life

c) use harsh team talks and heavy pressing to minimise the affect

From this point on, we can argue the realism issue.

The two camps are pretty much set in stone. The first argues that the engine does accurately reflect real life football to a great extent and that real life footballing strategies can and will work. The second argues that the engine is fundamentally flawed and that real life footballing instruction fails. Let's first analyse the camps.

1: The Realism Camp: Most of these people follow and contribute to, or at least are aware of, the better conceptual threads in the tactical forums, being TT&F, FFM and the 2-6-2 theory. In none of these threads do the authors declare awesomeness of tactic. What they do do is offer a more or less useful translation of the sliders, that goes above and beyond that offered by the manual. Mark Vaughan's Hints and Tips does much the same thing. That these theories conflict with and contradict each other is not a determination of their weakness, rather the engine's strength, in that alternative ways of playing the game can work, as they do in real life. Using these threads as empirical evidence, the argument that the engine can produce realistic football is hard to ignore:

Examples

I made a chelsea-esque 4-3-2-1 formation based on your theories. As aston_martin stated, I didn't follow you word for word, but your theories have enabled me to understand how tactics should be structured, and now no matter what formation I play, I am confident that my team will play as a team.

Where I think I have really benefited from reading this thread is in creating a 4-5-1 with instructions similar to wwfan's counterattack suggestions. I never thought I would win the league when I noticed that I had Liverpool and Man U away as two of my last three games, but using this tactic I beat them both easily and won the Prem (just, from Chelsea) in my first season.

after reading and slightly digesting your theories i put them into action. i have not torn trees up or gone on massive winning and scoring streaks, it's more a case that i have begun to understand the mechanics of the 2d match engine and now seem to have a more stable and compact side. it's not just the tactics side that has made a diference it's the whole management side off it. as you pointed out - it starts from the media stuff alway to the team talks and back again. i do find i repeat myself alot in team talks but this does not bother my players. i keep forgetting they are not human and are only a load of numbers crunching about inside my pc. once again thanks for getting me back into fm...... from a very old user.

having attempted almost every other God forsaken tactical method on any forum, tried and failed to construct tactics of my own, and having had pethetic results with all downloaded tactics, i stumbled across wwfan's thread.

This has, single-handedly, restored my faith in the FM series and i now understand significantly more what it takes to be successful in the game, and consider myself to be an effective, succesful manager for the first time fince FM05. WIth FC Moscow i finished a miserable 8th using shambolic tactics downloaded from sites such as this. I then refused to begin the new season until i'd found something i could actually enjoy watching my team playing. All i can say is im pleased i found this.

It took me 2 hours to do it all properly, based around the players i have, but i constructed 5 tactics, in depth, using the framework plus set pieces etc. 24 games unbeaten and won the Russian title for the first time ever on the last day of the season by 1 point, finishing ahead of Zenit Peterberg who have a far better squad (aka Arshavin). Not bad considering i was tipped no higher than 6th. Im now going into season 3, Champions League, a whopping 2.5mil to spend...after this season im going to look elsewhere. But the point is i havent had the luxury of other clubs wanting me in ages.

Anyone, with any club, can use this framework to make a succesful winning structure. Just read everything carefully and take your time. Learning when to apply which one is key. I use attack when heavily favoured at home, counter when away to better teams, defence when hanging on and control when its' in the trenches. The rest of the time im always playing balances, and it seems to be fine. I'd recommend to definately watch the 2D match engine for the first few games using it, then just use extended highlights from then on.

Be patient, choose your tactic wisely, dont panic, and watch as your team improves. I play a 4-1-2-2-1 but it'll work with most formations i believe. THIS is the solution to all of my FM2008 problems on 8.0.2. Pure magic. wwfan, cheers

This, plus my own empirical observation, suggests that it is more than possible to recreate real life football in the engine. If I didn't think it was possible, I would hardly be beating myself over the head trying to prove it was on the forums. I enjoy the current match engine hugely, and think it is a work of art, although a flawed one. All I want is for other so perceive it in the same way I do.

2: For those who argue that the engine fails horribly to recreate real life football, their are some potential perspectives to explore:

a) that the above users/contributors are lying and they can't really get the engine to play as they wish

b) that those who can get the engine to work in a real footballing manner have a better understanding of real life football

c) that some people can better translate real life football instruction into the sliders and thus achieve realistic style success

To unpack the above, (a) assumes a huge number of users are liars or cheats which requires a hugely cynical view of human nature, (b) that one's understanding of football is less perfect than previously assumed, which requires great humility, or © that the game itself has a flawed instruction system. I think we can discount one, unless we wish to assume personal moral superiority over people we do not know. Two can only be discounted if one has no self-reflective ability and is in possession of massive personal hubris. Let's assume the user base can, by in large, fail to fit into one and two. That leaves, three, which is the translation issue.

NB: there is a separate issue to address with regards to the continuing obsession with the super-tactic. The only argument that people come up with to defend the fallacy of opinion that manager's do not change their tactics, indeed hardly even think about them, is the argument referred to in the first post. That argument is not only absurd to anyone who actually watches football, but also deconstructs the argument for super-tactics. One who never thinks about tactics and only plays his best eleven is hardly going to come up with a super-tactic, is he?

Earlier in the thread, Amaroq suggested that FM may be tailor made for those with a mathematical bent over and above those who are artistic or linguistic-minded. Rashidi would fall into that category as he is mathematically biased. However, in the assumption I am accepted as being an 'expert' on tactical thought in FM, I am a trained artist who is now involved in researching and criticizing the over application of mathematical and scientific theory into the real world messiness of management. I do not quantify the match engine, I qualify it. I watch the 2d for stylistic suggestion as to how I perceive football should look and later the sliders, based on my conception of translation, in accordance. I accept that real life management is not positivistic, that supposedly commensensical instruction fails in translation, that things will go wrong, and approach FM in the same conceptual manner. I simply do they best I can. With regards to that conception of the management experience, FM is far and away the best tool in the field, as it accurately represents the frustrations of the real management experience, be it organizational or sporting.

If the sliders are so horribly designed as to handicap anyone with a real like knowledge of football (as in Amaroq's example) form ever being able to succeed, is that an issue? Many great footballers fail as managers, many average ones succeed. The issue is not a knowledge of football, but a knowledge of how to translate that knowledge into a set of instructions the team can follow. The slider system represents that, perhaps not perfectly, but still very well. That the players can;t think is an inherent weakness of Ai simulations, but that can happen in reality as well, when a team is overly drilled into following a poor tactical system.

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that the slider system is flawed, but in its flaws it accurately represents the management experience. A perfect system would return us to the days in which the better players always won, which is not reality. And reality is the name of the game in the football simulation market.

A typically excellent post - although it did take some time to read...

Personally i saw a massive improvement when i started approaching my tactics from a more realistic POV. Although in part it was my lack of understanding regarding some of the sliders (tempo and time wasting) that caused my initial problems - in my first attempts at tactics i failed to consider what ramifications increased tempo would have on my team, hence it just didn't work. After a couple of users had pointed out what would happen IRL if high tempo was always used, i felt utterly daft and realised what i had done wrong.

the tactics work fine and if you have a decent knowledge of football it should be pretty easy to translate from real life ideas to the tactics screen on fm.

one problem, i think is the game could do with a few more subtle options.

also there is the case of brillient team tactics vs inspiring the brillience of individuals in the team via other non tactical methods

I was just replying to something in another thread, and realized that it fits perfectly in with this discussion.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">

My main gripe with the sliders is that there seems to be too many options. I mean, what is the difference between 17 and 18 on the attacking slider? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

My response - Well, wait a minute. What does it mean when I tell one of my players, "Push up more on the attack"? Or "Put more pressure on the ball"? Or "Check to the ball and then slide into space"?

My experience coaching IRL is that instructions are always imprecise, to at least some degree. I might want my holding midfielder to overplay when marking my opponent's attacking mid, marking him ballside. But after watching him for a while, I might also come to the conclusion that he's cheating ballside too much and is now leaving too much open space into which the other team can play a killer through-ball, and I might tell him to drop back a bit more. Note that the instructions are imprecise - they have to be - but also tend to be incremental, as they have to be.

The key to the sliders is not in thinking that they represent precise instructions, but rather that they represent incremental ones.

My Input to this debate is not an arguement or even a very good question. It's simple a statement.

Football has evoled quite a bit the past decades. The fact that managers in the past weren't too concentrated on tactics might well be true, but in the modern game tactics are becoming more and more important. There's a reason why Kevin Keegan had sucess before but fails misserably today. Mainly becaus he lacks the tactical knowledge that's needed.

Just look at Ferguson, Wenger, Benitez, Mourinho, Manchini, Spaletti, Rijkaard, Ramos. Every last one of them are tactically genius, and every last one of them have had sucsess.

I would say that FM is quite realistic as it's true that tactics is becoming more and more part of the manager's life.

As for representing a managers life, hardly. It's great when it comes to the tactical aspect and the matches. But media pressure, player interaction, board interaction, media interaction, assistant manager advices, coach advices, youth system development, training development, staff interaction, manager interaction, problems and such, is far from included in the game. But tactically I think they are spot on most of the time.

In the parallel thread I am running at FMB, Leroy responded thus:

Firstly I'd like to recommend my holiday reading material :-

Attacking Soccer - A Tactical Analysis by Massimo Lucchesi and the highly recommended Soccer Modern Tactics by Alessandro Zauli.

All I can say is if you read these or similiar material the argument of whether tactics are important in football disappears.

Here is a quote from Marcello Lippi which I think sums up this debate.

"Of course I have to give the team some guidelines for the offensive maneuvers. But I can't expect my players to totally follow my guidelines during a game. When you're coaching players like Zidane, Del Piero, Vieri etc.... you can't have them thinking that the score should come only in the way the coach wants! On the other hands there could be some players who struggle to understand certain maneuvers. The role of the coach is to make things easy! This doesn't mean improvisation or confusion, but to find a balance between talent and organisation of the game."

Worth reposting here I think.

Brian Clough was a ****ing genius.

All we needed was a Cloughie soundbite to settle it