FM12: The birth of the poacher?

Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm a tactical genius, because to be honest, I'm not

However, in the last couple years, in all the save games I have played, I have never had any success with playing a player in a poacher role. No matter what I do, they just never regularly scored goals. Perhaps it was the setups I was using, but I have used varying setups and had no success at all. Currently playing through the demo for FM12, and I have one of my CFs set as a Poacher, and he seems to be regularly hitting the back of the net.

Now I will admit, I am playing as Man Utd for this demo so I can get a feel for it, and even though I support them, I probably won't play as them once the full game is released. So that probably will make it a little "easier", but still, I'm impressed with the amount of goals he seems to be scoring.

Anyone else noticed success with playing a Poacher?

Poachers have always worked well.

always use poacher.. and almost always have succes to some degree

Given that you're playing as Man Utd, I'm gonna hazard a guess that your Poacher is Hernandez, which is really why he's scoring so many goals as opposed to a newfound effectiveness of the Poacher role. Poachers have always been boss if you get the right support for them.

You'd guess wrong then I've been using Welbeck upfront.

Looks like it's just me then...as I said I've tried many different formations, tactics, whatever else I can with someone in a Poacher role, and I have felt that it has never worked for me. Granted it's still pretty early in the season, so perhaps it's just a fluke, and perhaps I was a bit overzealous in making a thread on the evidence of a few games. But it's certainly something new on me, and something I'm looking forward to playing around with some more once I start properly when the game is released.

I wonder what each of us considers "success" when talking about this. First screen below is the start Welbeck has made, the second one is the stats from one of my players in FM11 that I have used in a Poacher role.

I had to use Wellbeck in Fm11 for 10 straight games due to injuries and his stats was almost same as yours. It depends on your players and tactics. I had great success with King as poacher( not in Manu).

I've actually never used a Poacher to be honest.

I must admit, id not actually used a poacher in fm untill and FM11 then i didnt have much success (mind, I didnt have success at all, using peterborough utd, 3 seasons to get to the prem from L1, 2 uefa cups, 1 league cup and a multitude of top four finishes plus 2 prem runner up and 1 champ league runner up)Fm09 i had my strikers set out to have one playing more forward linking the play and 1 more withdrawn playing slightly deeper, fm10 i used a lone frontman as an advanced forward (sometimes target man) and fm 11 i tried many

different styles and whilst i got success with a poacher in L1 and the Champ (mackail-smith banged in 62 league goals in 3 seasons) once i got to the prem, I found it difficult with a poacher.

This year so far so good but, I have only played 5 league games and 2 cup games.

Fm2011 was poachers paradise I'd say, it worked really well because pace was overpowered and target-men generally stank.

Fm2011 was poachers paradise I'd say, it worked really well because pace was overpowered and target-men generally stank.

Pretty much my feelings too.

FM11 was very poacher friendly, and looking around Europe poachers or players with decent poacher attributes, but who should have limited involvement in build up play, would routinely score as many goals as Messi or Ronaldo every season. People like Huntelaar, Mario Gomez and so on. But it does look like FM12 will be even more so. In my first game as Juventus against Schalke Huntelaar scored a hat-trick against me inside 13 minutes, just drifting in behind the defence every time.