Why so many tactics with pressing defenders?

I literally cannot go 10 games without getting sacked in this game anymore so I downloaded some popular tactics to see where I might be going wrong.

Can I ask how I'm supposed to intuit that giving my defenders super high pressing is a good idea?

Am I alone in just not getting it any more? I used to be dominant in this game, in fm05 I understood everything and wiped the floor with good players in network games, now: 10-20 games, max- sacked.

A high line and pressing defence is a pretty normal strategy in world football. It should succeed to some extent in FM. However, it is by no means the only way to achieve success. It is perfectly possible to do well with a deeper line and lower pressing.

So by 17-20 "pressing" on my defenders what should I interpret them as doing? Sensibly holding in defence until the ball gets relatively close then pushing up onto a free man or the ball?

17 is pressing relatively heavily. 20 is pressing very heavily. Neither should result in totally illogical defensive movement, although having a very low d-linw will be problematic. If you aren't happy with the movement, then lower the d-line or pressing settings.

I have always played FM with below half pressing and d-line, and it's never stopped me from winning very easily. High line with crazy pressing seems overly risky to me.

17 is pressing relatively heavily. 20 is pressing very heavily. Neither should result in totally illogical defensive movement, although having a very low d-linw will be problematic. If you aren't happy with the movement, then lower the d-line or pressing settings.

There is pressure and pressing. I suspect what you're talking about in real football would be called pressure. Pressing at that level is aggressively moving on to 'the next player' who doesn't yet have possession.

The main problem for me is: let's say I want to pass short: I finally manage to get the "passing" and "mentality" bars lined up so I have short options to pass to, it makes the mentality or forward run settings totally inappropriate in another part of play, ie. defending. And I'll end up with 60%+ possession but conceding 2 or 3 CCC's per half. It's all too complicated, mentality has become an incestuous harlot.

There is pressure and pressing. I suspect what you're talking about in real football would be called pressure. Pressing at that level is aggressively moving on to 'the next player' who doesn't yet have possession.

Pressing is not aggressive enough in FM12, even at the highest settings, so I doubt you need to worry about such a semantic difference. The players don't push up with the d-line aggressively enough when a ball carrier is being successfully pressed, meaning too many other opposition players are unmarked. If you are worried about players pressing too much and getting caught the wrong side of the ball, don't be. They are not robots and will react to on field situations.

The main problem for me is: let's say I want to pass short: I finally manage to get the "passing" and "mentality" bars lined up so I have short options to pass to, it makes the mentality or forward run settings totally inappropriate in another part of play, ie. defending. And I'll end up with 60%+ possession but conceding 2 or 3 CCC's per half. It's all too complicated, mentality has become an incestuous harlot.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I know you don't understand how mentality works. I don't want to get into another tit for tat, when I tell you how it works with you then telling me how it should work. Not going to help you enjoy the game.

I think you need to forget about using classic tactics. It is going to be very frustrating spending hours getting all the sliders lined up how you want them only to get beaten week in, week out. No wonder you are not having fun.

Pressing is not aggressive enough in FM12, even at the highest settings, so I doubt you need to worry about such a semantic difference. The players don't push up with the d-line aggressively enough when a ball carrier is being successfully pressed, meaning too many other opposition players are unmarked. If you are worried about players pressing too much and getting caught the wrong side of the ball, don't be. They are not robots and will react to on field situations.

Semantics? The word 'pressing' has a meaning in football, that is why I get confused when I see 20/20 "pressing" does not mean for example, players rushing out to press a free man.

If you would like some literature on the meaning of the words pressing, and pressure you can look up Gabriele Matricciani's 2003-4 thesis from coverciano where Italy trains it's coaches. You will need to use your skills with google translator, I would do it for you but I fear that as usual I would be wasting my time.

http://www.settoretecnico.figc.it/documenti.aspx?c=49&t=pressing

I think you need to forget about using classic tactics. It is going to be very frustrating spending hours getting all the sliders lined up how you want them only to get beaten week in, week out. No wonder you are not having fun.

This is a woefully sad state of affairs for the game. To give you a clearer idea of what I mean: I tried to follow your advice or at least what I understand as the common advice that to play short you have get players making options within a short passing range: Ie. An Advanced ST cannot play short to a flat MC. So Finally I got the passing correct by pushing up full-backs a little, crunching the team together a bit more, trying to make a logical progression for the ball with mentality. The result was 65%+ possession, but a defence so disorganised that I conceded 2-5 CCC's per half with Chelsea.

Semantics? The word 'pressing' has a meaning in football, that is why I get confused when I see 20/20 "pressing" does not mean for example, players rushing out to press a free man.

If you would like some literature on the meaning of the words pressing, and pressure you can look up Gabriele Matricciani's 2003-4 thesis from coverciano where Italy trains it's coaches. You will need to use your skills with google translator, I would do it for you but I fear that as usual I would be wasting my time.

http://www.settoretecnico.figc.it/documenti.aspx?c=49&t=pressing

This is a woefully sad state of affairs for the game. To give you a clearer idea of what I mean: I tried to follow your advice or at least what I understand as the common advice that to play short you have get players making options within a short passing range: Ie. An Advanced ST cannot play short to a flat MC. So Finally I got the passing correct by pushing up full-backs a little, crunching the team together a bit more, trying to make a logical progression for the ball with mentality. The result was 65%+ possession, but a defence so disorganised that I conceded 2-5 CCC's per half with Chelsea.

Why would Closing Down affect Marking? What you describe as "pressing" is Marking and Positioning, not Closing Down. Closing Down is simply how high up the field a player is willing to go in order to put pressure on an opponent who has the ball. Defensive Line affects the starting point of that run; where the defense position itself when you are in possession of the ball, and how long they wait before backtracking when you are not. Thus, if there is a large disparage between Defensive Line, closing Down and Mentality, your team will become a flock of panicked sheep.

As for passing, if you struggle with creating a tactic that works, trying to direct the players to do very specific stuff with and without the ball is a recipe for disaster. You are the manager, not the player, and no matter what you do you cannot control every detail of the match. This includes passing. What you are trying to do reminds me of Player Manager on Amiga, where I created a tactic which repeated a successful attacking move every time I had the ball in certain positions.

The truth is that one of my tactics used direct passing on most of the players, but for the most part they passed normally among each other. Now I have a tactic with almost short passing all over, but this doesn't mean that they won't pass quickly forward if they are given the chance. If you want your players to pass short among each other, just make sure there are enough passing options within range and that their mentalities aren't too attacking. Passing style isn't actually affecting those things too much. If the players are able to make the correct decision, they will choose someone within their range, so I suppose setting the range too short will make things difficult for them, while too long ranges may lead to loss of possession too often. I prefer Passing to be within the Mixed range for this reason.

Why would Closing Down affect Marking? What you describe as "pressing" is Marking and Positioning, not Closing Down. Closing Down is simply how high up the field a player is willing to go in order to put pressure on an opponent who has the ball. Defensive Line affects the starting point of that run; where the defense position itself when you are in possession of the ball, and how long they wait before backtracking when you are not. Thus, if there is a large disparage between Defensive Line, closing Down and Mentality, your team will become a flock of panicked sheep.

Hi there BiggusD, I was thinking about this before. With tight-man marking, the 'pressing' (I will use this word even though it is incorrect) issue of defenders is taken take of- so for that situation I agree with you. But when defenders are playing zonally, which since 1990 is fairly ubiquitous then 'pressing' is not obvious. If I give anyone on the pitch 20/20 pressing I am expecting them to pay less attention to their positioning off the ball and more attention towards getting onto the next man to press him. I am told this is "unreasonable" or "unrealistic", which reminds me of using Wing-Backs and seeing them in an equal line with my defenders despite having 20/20 mentality, 20/20 pressing and often forward runs. Good to know that rather than "pressing" meaning "pressing" it actually means whatever "reasonable" action somebody has defined for them when making the ME (like the abundantly 'reasonable' wing-back playing full back and leaving 70 yards space in front of him is 'reasonable') . It is of course very unreasonable to play around with the meaning of the basic elements we have to set up our tactics, and therefore make them unintelligible.

As for passing, if you struggle with creating a tactic that works, trying to direct the players to do very specific stuff with and without the ball is a recipe for disaster. You are the manager, not the player, and no matter what you do you cannot control every detail of the match. This includes passing. What you are trying to do reminds me of Player Manager on Amiga, where I created a tactic which repeated a successful attacking move every time I had the ball in certain positions.

I'm simply trying to get a short passing tactics to work without the MC passing back to the DC passing back to the MC passing back to the DC passing to the DLC passing to the MC passing to the DRC passing to the...........

It is frustrating to me that I have to get mentality spot on otherwise the players simply don't come short to get the ball.

All of this can be synthesized into a very simple phrase:

The sliders simply do not do anything near what you would expect them to, given their names and given an understanding of how those terms are used in real football circles. I have watched on in horror as the game has strayed further away from reality and further and further into it's own logic and twisted, confusing terminology and now it has got to the point where, if you sat down a Premier League Manager in front of these things to define his own tactic, there is not a snowflakes chance in hell that they would get anywhere near to what they produce on the pitch.

Semantics? The word 'pressing' has a meaning in football, that is why I get confused when I see 20/20 "pressing" does not mean for example, players rushing out to press a free man.

If you would like some literature on the meaning of the words pressing, and pressure you can look up Gabriele Matricciani's 2003-4 thesis from coverciano where Italy trains it's coaches. You will need to use your skills with google translator, I would do it for you but I fear that as usual I would be wasting my time.

http://www.settoretecnico.figc.it/documenti.aspx?c=49&t=pressing

Before you get too high and mighty about your knowledge, there is no 'pressing' slider in FM. There is a 'closing down ' slider. I was using 'pressing' as you were using it.

This is a woefully sad state of affairs for the game. To give you a clearer idea of what I mean: I tried to follow your advice or at least what I understand as the common advice that to play short you have get players making options within a short passing range: Ie. An Advanced ST cannot play short to a flat MC. So Finally I got the passing correct by pushing up full-backs a little, crunching the team together a bit more, trying to make a logical progression for the ball with mentality. The result was 65%+ possession, but a defence so disorganised that I conceded 2-5 CCC's per half with Chelsea.

Not my advice. Nor my fault.

You don't understand the sliders. You confuse that misunderstanding by using terms that the game, at least the English version, doesn't include. Then you blame me. I didn't name the sliders. The only two I had any influence on were changing 'forward runs' to 'runs from deep' and 'free role' to 'roam from position' as I didn't think the previous terms explained them well enough.

The sliders simply do not do anything near what you would expect them to, given their names and given an understanding of how those terms are used in real football circles. I have watched on in horror as the game has strayed further away from reality and further and further into it's own logic and twisted, confusing terminology and now it has got to the point where, if you sat down a Premier League Manager in front of these things to define his own tactic, there is not a snowflakes chance in hell that they would get anywhere near to what they produce on the pitch.

This was exactly the argument I made a few years back. We pretty much solved it by introducing the TC. Any football manager with any degree of tactical knowledge can make a working system in the TC in minutes. The sliders are too abstract, which is why they are an underlying control mechanism now. You don't have to use them. I never even look at them any more.

Your problem is you look at the TC settings and complain that they don't fit your interpretation of the sliders. Until you stop thinking like this, you have no chance of achieving or understanding anything. Your interpretation is wrong, thus everything that follows is wrong. Yes, the sliders do not make interpretation easy, but there is a system that stops you from having to worry about it.

Before you get too high and mighty about your knowledge, there is no 'pressing' slider in FM. There is a 'closing down ' slider. I was using 'pressing' as you were using it.

Granted, the phrase used is irrelevant however, it's that the same term is used differently depending on the part of the pitch you use it on. Anyway this is moot given your admission that the sliders are too abstract to understand. I'm happy to leave it at that if we can agree on the fact that someone who hasn't studied the game in depth is unable to intuit their meaning accurately.

This was exactly the argument I made a few years back. We pretty much solved it by introducing the TC. Any football manager with any degree of tactical knowledge can make a working system in the TC in minutes.

An unfortunate sentiment that will inevitably hurt the game. Though a perfect solution for SI. It will ensure that FM becomes a game, not of a broad array of unique ideas, but of a piecing together of someone elses lego blocks. Streamlined data, streamlined play- it takes away all the difficult problems reality poses. Eventually if you have your way we will only have a game with your pre-sets and people who enjoyed the original series will cease to play. I think this happens in the life of any series- it changes focus from being good to being easy to play/popular with a wide audience.

Your interpretation is wrong, thus everything that follows is wrong. Yes, the sliders do not make interpretation easy, but there is a system that stops you from having to worry about it.

Don't worry- everyone will be using your "solution" soon enough. Attitudes like this have completely destroyed the possibility the Match Engine will actually get fixed, because they are too deeply invested in your sticky-tape solution at this point.

This argument only works if you believe that 20 notch sliders are the best way to instruct footballers. Although I think the massive array of possibilities the sliders offer is required to get the ME close to reality, the sliders are tools, not concepts.

The TC provides you with a set of concepts. Although it requires extra sophistication to meet all the concepts in real world football, it offers a considerably more sophisticated set of concepts to the ME and AI than was available to them previously. To get the ME working effectively, you need to base it around a set of concepts. Not one, nor the infinite possibilities offered by the slider system. But some. The sliders require the ME to cope with billions of possibilities. The TC merely a few million. That will result in the ME becoming far, far more robust. The ME produces good football when teams follow the concepts well. When they break them into bits, the football will be pretty horrid.

Prior to its introduction, the AI based all its tactics around an extremely simplified interaction of sliders. It used a single concept for everything. Users could overpower this pretty easily, as it was so one dimensional. It was not difficult for users to design a tactic that was simultaneously better in defence and attack than anything the AI could come up with. Although this is arguably still possible, it is much harder to achieve. Part of this is because the AI has a more robust set of concepts to draw from. Part of it is that the sliders are more sensitive to extreme settings than they used to be.

Historically, of course, innovative football tacticians have designed systems of play that nobody else could cope with. The sliders in their previous form would allow this. However, with modern technologies, this is no longer possible. Everybody knows how other teams play. Hence, it should be impossible to design a super tactical system that simply beats everything put in front of it.