bababooey

This isnt true. FM24 is by far the best version of the game so far, and you can have success playing with any style you want. You dont have to high press.

Well done!

The idea with the winger roles and duties was that we need width. The wide defenders are both inverted fullbacks, and there isn't a role in central midfield that naturally pulls wide. So where is our width going to come from? We have to use wingers or else this will be way too narrowly focused. I instruct them to cut inside because I want to encourage them to take on their man and be a threat in that way, too. I play on extended highlights once I've got a good handle on how the particular tactic works. But when I need to investigate something further, I will absolutely go to comprehensive, and sometimes even the full match.

I think people totally underestimate the impact of roles and duties, and overestimate the impact of team instructions. There is simply no reason to start throwing a million different instructions at the team, unless you're trying to do some really weird stuff that requires ultra-specific instructions.

Sure thing. It's basically my version of a "control possession" tactic. Mentality: Balanced (I rarely ever change this) In Possession: Shorter passing, play out of defense, fairly narrow In Transition: Distribute to center backs (depends on if my opponent uses 2 strikers, then I will switch this to fullbacks), counter-press Out of Possession: High Press, Higher line, press more often, step up more The only PI's I've used in this approach are telling both of my wingers to cut inside. That's it.

I really can't say enough good things about positional play and how it's been implemented into FM24. It's fantastic. Look at this build up shape, below. It's *perfect*. We occupy all of the important zones on the pitch, and force the other team to either A.) let us have the ball continuously or B.) come close us down, lose their shape, and allow us to penetrate space. How did we end up with this shape? Here's the tactic. It's quite basic and simple. The team instructions are mostly irrelevant here (and this isn't intended to be a comprehensive post explaining how this works). It looks like such a defensive-minded tactic on paper. 4 players on defend duties across the back line, 2 DM's, and only 2 attack duties throughout. And yet, I've never created more scoring chances than with this shape, as it morphs into a 3-2-5 in possession. It was weird going away from my tried and true 4-3-3, but I wanted to make use of having 3 elite attackers behind a striker. And, I wanted to experiment with the roaming playmaker role, which is one I've basically never used to any extent. It's amazing what happens when you give roles the right complementary roles around them. It was also tricky to get the right rest defense shape from our standard 4-3-3. I was using Balde as an attacking fullback, which meant I only had 4 players left to form our rest defense (typically in a 3-1). A 3-2 is significantly more stable, for obvious reasons. As I see it, the 3 most important roles in this shape are the Libero, the RPM, and the AM-S. They form a spine for the team, and if we didnt get that right, the whole thing would fall apart. The CD-D is also really important because he's typically the deepest defender and could get into some 1v1's against long balls.

The 4-2-3-1 is extremely common in real life, so this makes perfect sense. Just like 4-4-2 used to be the most common shape 20 years ago.

Davies actually plays for Liverpool in my save. I sold him for 90 million euros. Our left back in the screenshot have Goncalo Inacio, retrained as an inverted full back. He's a beast of a player.

I'm managing Bayern Munich. We have the best defenders in the world. Their mental stats are insane. I can't do anything if things like this happen:

This is entirely fair and reasonable. If I get the time, I will try to go back and see how many times this has been an issue. But in the interim, I know what I've seen previously. And it's something I'm acutely aware of in future matches. For now, I've adjusted my set piece defending, manually, to ensure we have things locked down a bit tighter on the initial phase of play. The problem is, the resulting second phase, or scramble, where defending becomes much more difficult.

This feels like it's getting off topic. The issue is, fundamentally, how does the defense reorganize after the initial restart of play? Regardless of this being a corner, a throw in, or a free kick. It seems like defenses are "switched off" for a time during the restart of play, particularly during the ensuing scramble for possession if the set piece's initial throw/kick does not result in a goal directly. That's the core issue here. I have no issues regarding the frequency of penalties, or anything like that. And my team can score plenty of goals from set pieces, which is besides the point.

It doesn't matter if it's been in previous versions. That actually makes it worse that it hasn't been addressed. The defending of the "second phase" of a set piece is virtually non-existent. This is game breaking stuff.

It's just infuriating that winning games 2-0 is now risky business because the opponent can easily score from these "set piece scrambles" or second phase after the initial ball. I dont understand how this got through testing. It's so obvious that it's painful to watch.

How does one not give up set pieces ?

I have the same issues. Will SI at least tell us that they're working on it? If not, and we need to wait for FM25, fine. But just tell us where this is at.