Drake

exactly this. However, just for the sake of argument, it can also be noted that using a lot of attacking roles which wouldn't make sense in real life is also often a sign of an "exploit" tactic (and those same tactics that use those instructions on your screenshot often do that too). And in this case it's kind of justified to call that an exploit I think. It's exploiting a particular weakness of the match engine. I think you can say the issue is more about the balance if, let's say, CF(s) constantly outpeforms F9 or DLF(s) in any tactic. But if a tactic uses 3 AFs which no one ever does IRL - that's more of an exploit IMO, as that works only because ME AI has no idea how to defend against it and how to punish it. You're right that currently overachievement can be done with variety or roles though, as long as certain prerequisites are met. It can probably be boiled down to having the most proactive tactic possible. People are having some ridiculous results with attacking or very attacking mentality and lots of roles running forward. It's just that attacking roles naturally tend to run forward so they are typically overused in such tactics. Forward passes, lots of people who can get on the end of them as fast as possible = AI can't defend. And unless AI itself uses gegenpress it's nearly helpless to prevent being destroyed. It's customary to have 30-40% of possession and just absolutely dominate and destroy. Hard tackling and pressing just allows you to win the ball more often so you can immediately play it forward more often. The really bad thing is that even without 3 AFs or lots of people on attack - you can still vastly overachieve. Even with tactics that aren't, on paper, unrealistic - and that is a balance issue, yes. They just work, much, much better and that honestly is a source of considerable demotivation to play the game in its current state. I honestly do not remember last time it felt as skewed to one side as it is now.

I think the problem is less with Gegenpressing in particular, rather with the fact that nearly any OP tactic involves passing into space and a lot of attacking roles. Pressing doesn't even work that amazingly well, it's just that Gegenpress has 'pass into space' by default and with current (? ongoing for a couple of years, actually) defensive problems, defenders simply can't deal with this particular form of attack. Just take a look at something like Knap's tactics list, every ridiculously overachieving tactic has the same recipe - shorter passing, pass into space, 5-6 attacking roles. There was a time around FM16 (I might be mistaken by a couple of years heh) when there really were no more "diablo tactics" available. Nowadays the game has regressed into having a "diablo approach", in which dozens of tactics are overperforming as long as they have passing into space and roles running forward. The 'kick and run' era of FM! And yeah, with Gegenpress specifically, fitness levels over the course of the game, even with maximum intensity, are still too easy to maintain if you rotate enough to not have people tired before the game.

I think in general, even if a player is 15 y.o. increasing any of his attributes by more than 5 is either very difficult or nearly impossible. At least, I don't think I've ever seen that happening. Would be nice to be wrong on that one. And there's of course a quite realistic limit to what you can teach a player. I think from the very beginning more often than not you already see what type of player a newgen will be, turning him into something completely different is not possible and not realistic either. At such age players are already developed IRL, too. They might change/learn positions/roles to play, but a fast small winger won't turn into a towering target man, e.t.c. In this case his finishing will never be strong, and I think reaching even 13 is completely unrealistic. I'd say 12 is best case scenario but even that ONLY if he's like really, really talented - around PA 200 basically. He's 19, he'll improve of course, but such a dramatic increase in one attribute, again - if it is at all possible - would probably come at the expense of other attributes - and I don't think he has any to spare :). He basically needs to improve in nearly everything except technique and balance to be a real star and even if it was possible to increase his ability in one direction only - that would probably make him a worse player than all-round natural development. Let's be honest, if he stays like this but has 13 finishing - he'd be quite mediocre in every regard, while if he instead improves his key attributes by +2 each he'll be a very, very good player indeed, albeit not good at finishing. Doing both I don't think is achievable. So just give him "looks to pass rather than attempting to score" trait and he'll be fine. My bet would be that he won't go above 10-11 finishing in his entire career. And yeah, I think your idea of improving him in his current role by making him work on his attacking movement is a good one, that's exactly how I would develop him as well. Attacking movement should grow fairly quickly because both his anticipation and off the ball are still trainable - of which tbh probably only off the ball is really important to him - anticipation he's also kind of stuck with being not a genius forever. Yeah, you can get ant to like 13 if you're lucky, but even that's not great. On top of that - just a couple of my thoughts about him as a player currently - take it or leave it :). He has potential, but he's also a tricky one to develop into a really good player. IMO his technical skills drag him down quite a bit. For an advanced playmaker or supporting inverted winger 13 in first touch and passing isn't very high. He needs to improve in them. Currently he's quite fast, can dribble well with that balance, pace+accel and dribbling, but when it comes to giving the ball away - so either passing, shooting or crossing - he's only capable of passing, and even then not accurately enough. Also with that teamwork - he's pretty much set on always being a player who will be mostly doing his own thing. To be successful, such players need to be exceptional at that thing in order to not let the team down, and so far he's not that exceptional in any particular one thing. Also because of his anticipation and first touch, he's better off running with the ball from deep than being up front and waiting for a pass - so support and deeper roles suit him better. IMO his success depends very much on whether he'll improve sufficiently in his passing and off the ball. Preferrably first touch as well, otherwise he'll always need a lot of space around him to start doing his thing - basically the difference between playing an advanced playmayker in MC/s or AMC/s vs MC/AMC/a or IW/s vs IW/a e.t.c. The tricky part here is that passing won't be easy to improve with individual training. He already has high technique and vision stats, so most likely if you assign that to him (invidual focus "passing"), he (and the coaches) will start moaning that he's already developed enough and it's not helpful. So you just have to hope that passing will grow naturally as he's getting more experienced. If he gets to 15 - he's class. If it's less... well, a flawed diamond I guess. Personal traits I would consider, to underpin his strengths and hide weaknesses "looks to pass rather than attempting to score", "runs with the ball often", "tries tricks", "curls ball" (might help with so-so passing and crossing). "Comes deep to get the ball" - especially if his off the ball develops further, but mostly to combine with running with the ball often to underpin his ability to bring the ball forward from deep by himself.

I think "n10" position should be defined by the type of player that you have. Donny wasn't a dribbler, so probably wouldn't be very succesful as SS, but Kudus, for example, would fit that role perfectly. I think the tactical effect is pretty much the same with AM/a and SS, it's the personal approach that's different. The point is that the player must make a lot of runs from the deep into the box and be an active participant in the attacks as a finisher, he's not expected to sit "in the hole" - although in some games I think ETH did ask of Donny to sit a bit deeper depending on the opponent. Regarding width - yeah I think on both flanks there was at least one person holding the width while the rest of the team was packed in the middle, most often width was offered by the fullbacks. Nico Tagliafico more of a runner and great defender with crossing ability, while Mazraoui is more of a technically gifted type with great passing and ball keeping. In the latter seasons with Tadic on the left he definitely hugged the line a lot as a left winger and was the width outlet for the team with Blind behind him almost as a "left defender playmaker" role usually sitting more narrowly, but not in 18/19. That specific team in 18/19 mostly put 4 attacking players in a close bunch up front in the middle. That's also one of the things about EtH's Ajax - it wasn't the same every year. How the team played, also the roles e.t.c were dependent on the players that the club had. Indeed, the team that has annihilated everyone in the CL group in 2020/2021 (only to flop against Benfica in 1/8) - didn't actually play by the same system as 18/19 team. There were similarities, but also differences - 20/21 played much wider, using high crosses more to reach tall Haller e.t.c. Post 18/19 teams were also quite interesting in the sense that it's really difficult to put down the formation. It was indeed a mix between 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1, but which exactly is difficult to clarify and difficult to reproduce in FM. But 18/19 was really a "classical" 4-2-3-1 if you look at the heatmaps for most games. Two central defenders, then a line of 4 people - two full backs and defensive midfielders very often on one line, and then everyone else up front in attack in the middle - much narrower than the previous line. Whatever attempts I had at recreating that team in FM23 faithfully weren't very successful, as you just have to make changes to accomodate for the players that you have...

Just for the sake of historical accuracy, since it's a recreation, I would argue that: Passing style IMO wasn't much shorter, but just a regular shorter. Don't take my word for it, I'll link some statistics. In Eredivisie Ajax was of course just completely outclassing everyone so most teams have simply tried to park the bus, skewing passing stats massively. In CL though, Ajax quite often ended up with less passes then opponents and numbers usually were in 400-500 per game. The way "much shorter passing" works in FM it looks like futsal with players often really refusing any possibility for any kind of a pass longer than 10 meters. That's something Barcelona is fond of since Cruijff's times, but normally not so much Ajax, also not under ETH. https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/250/Tournaments/12/Seasons/7352/Stages/16651/TeamStatistics/Europe-Champions-League-2018-2019 Here you can see that while clearly favouring short passing, Ajax weren't fanatical about it with 451 short passes on average (while Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona had 600+). I think in Eredivisie it was about 100 more, 550 or so on average. I think FM's "much shorter passing" will typically yield you much more than 550 on average, especially when you are just so much stronger than the rest of the division, but I might be wrong, I seldom used it. Another thing is that Ajax mostly played narrowly. You can also see that in average positions in many games, like https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1370009/MatchReport/Europe-Champions-League-2018-2019-Tottenham-Ajax or https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1368026/MatchReport/Europe-Champions-League-2018-2019-Juventus-Ajax or https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1370010/MatchReport/Europe-Champions-League-2018-2019-Ajax-Tottenham or https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1343400/MatchReport/Europe-Champions-League-2018-2019-Ajax-Real-Madrid I would say that to my memory ten Hag made changes to that sometimes in Eredivisie, but for the most part the team preferred to keep short distance between the players both horizontally and vertically. Keeping possession was also arguably not a massive priority. In the now legendary destruction of Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabeu, we had just about 42% of the ball, which is uncharacteristically low for Ajax, especially considering the result. Yeah, it wasn't always this low of course and Ajax definitely didn't like giving the ball away pointlessly or on purpose to play counter, but there was also far less emphasis on just keeping it without advancing (something a lot of previous Ajax coaches in this millenium were guilty of, most notably Frank de Boer). Other than that - yeah, looks more or less accurate. I'm not completely sure about Shadow Striker for Donny, he's typically not the player to run with the ball a lot and beat his man 1on1 (and SS has hardcoded dribble more). But the role definitely had very heavy emphasis on getting forward and into the box, into channels, e.t.c. Frenkie's role of course is impossible to recreate accurately, mostly because Frenkie's role was heavily influenced by his abilities. You just can't ask anyone else to do that, I think not only in FM but in real football, too :-). it was a problem in the following seasons after Frenkie left for Barca - Ryan Gravenberch is talented but he couldn't fill in the shoes and ended up playing further up the pitch and more to the left in a soft of carrilero/sometimes even mezzala role, but while good at keeping the ball he still wasn't capable of those slaloms Frenkie so frequently pulled off and was generally less effective in defence, too - thus prompting alteration of the role by ETH. HB-d seems rather far away though to be honest. Indeed due to hardcoded "dribble less" - running forward with the ball was trademark Frenkie. Maybe if one can find or train a player with "drops deep to get the ball" "brings the ball out of defence", "runs with ball often" and something like "plays one-twos" you can just put him on DM/s role and he'll do Frenkie things naturally. But yeah, there's no role in ME that would do all of that regularly with any player.

As an Ajax fan of some 25+ years, I can tell you that there's no single "Ajax 433 philosophy". Arguably there never really was. Nowadays you can narrow it down to "playing attractive, technically pleasing attacking football with high defensive line and a lot of pressing". There was a time (in 70s) when Ajax was really unique, particularly due to blurring of traditional roles and players who were able to play in more than 1 position on the field, but nowadays it is at least partly integrated into modern football by pretty much everyone. Ajax academy still puts ball skills in the first place for everyone, even defenders, as well as development of young players in various positions and roles and even lines - but that is, again, no longer unique in modern football. But as far as tactics themselves go, there really isn't some "Ajax" way of playing, meaning that you could argue that there's a number of other clubs that by now have also been doing that - "playing attractive, technically pleasing attacking football with high defensive line and a lot of pressing" - for decades, because it's not exactly a narrow definition. Ajax themselves have been playing quite differently in different eras. Michels' Ajax was a bit different to Kovac's Ajax, which was again different to Cruijff's Ajax, which was different to van Gaal's Ajax, which was really different to Koeman's or de Boer's or Bosz's or ten Hag's Ajax. The last four really were quite different to each other, too. People talk about "Ajax DNA", but if you ask me that's largely a misconception when it comes to management and tactics. People like Frank de Boer and Ronald Koeman supposedly have all the Ajax DNA that is possible to have - they come from the academy. But their styles of play are completely different and under Frank de Boer, despite domestic successes and some occasional good games in Europe we were playing some unbelievably boring football at times - prioritizing possession over attacking, sometimes having 80% of the ball and hardly making any meaningful shots on target. Bosz and ten Hag aren't even supposed to have any "Ajax DNA" at all - they haven't even ever played for the club (Bosz even played for Feyenoord), but both were highly successful in bringing back the flamboyant way of playing with attacking, taking risks and still getting great results. Even the formation is largely a misconception at this point. A lot of people are saying "4-3-3 is sacred" while even under Michels and by his own words it sometimes came closer to 4-2-4 because he preferred for one midfieder to push forward in possession - again being ahead of his time in that. With Cruijff and van Gaal we weren't even playing a 4-3-3 in the same sense as before, we played a diamond-shaped 3-4-3 DM AM in possession which became 4-3-3 in defence. With Bosz and ten Hag it was 4-2-3-1 which again was different to one another and under ETH we even played different versions of it in that successful CL season of 2017 and in later years. TL;DR you can't have "Ajax 4-3-3" tactic because there's no such thing. You can try to emulate a particular manager's approach. Or if you want a unique, really pretty much Ajax-only formation, that wouldn't even be a 4-3-3 but a 3-4-3 DM AM :). Other than that - play with high DL, at least positive mentality, high intense pressing, avoid "specialist" one trick players that can't play the ball but are just very strong or very fast and possess no footballing intelligence - that's a very un-Ajax type indeed. Everything else is entirely up to you. Team instructions like width and tempo in particular were vastly different under different managers. Passing length you could argue gravitated on average towards shorter, but again it was different under different managers. Player roles were very different with every manager too of course.

I had some decent success with using regista alongside a half-back in a 4-2-3-1 DM. He gives quite a few assists, sometimes scores from long shots or the edge of the box. In possession the system can sometimes look like a 3-3-4 in build-up with regista being in the very middle in between the wing backs pushing up, while HB drops between two CDs going wider. I can't say the team plays through him every time, but he will be your main riskiest passer. If anyone can be called a playmaker in this setup, it's the regista. I didn't use an F9, because I had no player really fitting the role, but ideally that's exactly what I'd want to do. Obviously, it's a highly attacking setup.

Depends on whether they fix the issues with ME like unrealistic passing accuracy and useless inside forwards playing like wingers.

Uh... I think the tough season has definitely taken its toll on me.