Smallen

I can't help but feel the Spurs researcher has gotten a little too carried away after a good few opening weeks for them with a manager who plays more exciting football than his predecessor. Cristian Romero has been given a huge boost in his attributes, CA and PA in 24.2. He was mostly a meme player in the premier league before this season, but after 3 months of the season with Spurs sat in 5th place and the 6th best defensive record in the division (also yet to play Man City, Newcastle, West Ham and Brighton) it's been decided he should have a CA of 163 and PA of 178? After a season in game he becomes the best CB in the league along with Saliba. By way of contrast Fabian Schar (147 CA) and Sven Botman (156 CA) were both performing out of their skins as part of the best defence in the league last season across a whole season, and have again been part of a better defence than Spurs in 23/24 so far. Saliba's CA is 164 as well for example, and this is a player who has proven himself to be elite over the course of last season and this season. It seems obscene for Romero, a player known mostly for bad tackles and getting sent off, to receive this boost to his attributes after such a short period. I would suggest reducing his CA and PA by 15 each would be appropriate along with most weighted attributes to suit. Pape Matar Sarr has been given a fixed PA of 172. This is pretty much Rodri-level ability and would make him one of the best midfielders in the league and a surefire world class player. He barely played last season and has around 800 minutes this season where he's been good but not standout in a team that is only 5th in the premier league. I think -85 would be more appropriate and this would make him a guaranteed good PL potential player at least, with the possibility of being world class in some saves. Yves Bissouma is rated as the best DM in the Premier League after Declan Rice and Rodri. This was actually in the initial data for FM24 iirc and so was based on a few weeks of the season. It's a better CA than Partey, Casemiro, Moises Caicedo who were all fantastic last season; and wildly better than the likes of Luiz and Kamara at Villa who've had just as good seasons so far. Again this seems highly irregular. He couldn't get a game last season and was poor when he did appear. Surely these players should have to show form for more than a few weeks before they're made into world class talents on the game?

Bruno Guimaraes' instalment and sell on clauses to Lyon appear to have been duplicated somehow.

Hi Tom. Not going to refute any of the other stuff but finishing of 12 + composure of 11 does seem underrated based on the evidence to me? Barnes scored 13 non-penalty goals from an xG of 8.9 last season. He was also in the 90th percentile amongst wingers/attacking in the division for goals per shot, implying that he took his chances very well: In the 21/22 season he scored 11 from an xG of 7.9, in the 20/21 it was 13 from an xG of 7.4. That's 3 consecutive seasons of massively outperforming the quality of chances provided to him. I can't deny that he doesn't seem like a player who will be particularly involved in other parts of the game. I'd probably argue that his dribbling attribute of 16 and flair of 15 seems way too high based on what I've seen of him and the supporting data that suggests he doesn't dribble much, and when he does he gets tackled more than 90% of other wingers do (this is last season's premier league data vs other wingers/attacking mids): ---- edit: The reason he hasn't played much is because he came to us relatively late in the window and hadn't had a pre-season prior to that. Howe also demands extremely high standards of fitness from the players. Even Bruno Guimaraes didn't come straight into the team when he joined despite us being in a relegation battle at the time. He then went on to get a serious injury in one of his first starts.

Football Manager 2023.10.19 - 21.30.48.03.mp4 Another really fun goal with some cool new animations. Really liked Anderson's first touch and the directness of Murphy as the winger (attack), who you can now give the cuts inside instruction to! Really enjoying positional play as well with the inverted full back playing exactly as I'd expect. For once my box to box midfielder feels genuinely box-to-box too!

enjoyed this goal. Look at Schar when he gets the ball. Has a quick glance over his shoulder before doing a sweet little Cuyff turn and passing it to the player he glanced at!

Cities: Skylines runs on Unity and the modding community basically made that game what it is. I wouldn't worry about it.

Have been tweaking my original tactic a fair bit since posting but not happy with it yet. Also been working on a secondary tactic for when we play against a narrow pressing shape (5-3-2, 5-2-2-1 etc). These are some principles I want to implement though: - More often than not, from goal kicks the backline will set up for short distribution but Pope will go long anyway. Form a data standpoint Pope is one of the longest kickers in the league and Newcastle don't seem to mind if this loses possession because the counter-press or ability to win the second ball high up is so strong. - Allow creative freedom to deviate from the attacking structure occasionally as outlined in the video posted a couple of posts up - Getting Bruno Guimaraes forward more often in transitions to support counters - Fabian Schar's long passes, switches of play and through balls to the LW:

enjoyed this video on Howe's setup for anyone interested.

good stuff @alanfishead! Those seem like realistic and sensible tweaks for that kind of game. Liverpool’s biggest threat is their RW so it makes sense to move Dan over to deal with him directly.

I've struggled against the big teams. However, one thing that seems to have started working for me - when I'm facing a bigger team with a central striker who has the "likes to beat offside trap" I've found them to be pretty deadly against this tactic. Rashford played there for Man U in a game and tore me apart, Haaland did and tore us apart (but we beat City when he didn't play) as well. So now on those games I've changed the central CB to a cover duty and that seems to work better for those games (but only those games - it's worse in other games when I've tried it). I'm going to start trying a mid or even low block (but same PI/OIs) in these games too I think. Newcastle have played a lower block against these teams away from home at times IRL this season so it's worth trying to make it work. ---- Another thing I'm going to try at some point is creating a second tactic for how Howe plays against teams who play with a 5-3-2 or 5-2-2-1. When the opposition have a very narrow pressing structure like this Howe changes the back four quite dramatically. He'll play Trippier much deeper and narrower, with Burn taking up a very similar position on the other side and he'll build with more of a 4-2 shape where both full backs are always free for a switch of play. He did this the other night against Leicester and has done it vs Spurs this season too.

Yeah, as I say he started poorly for me but when I brought him back in the second half of the season his form really picked up and he contributed goals and assists. Asking him to take less risks, shoot less often and cross left often is what I've done to try and make him a good ball carrier in transition and I think he works well for that. There are reasons I've not used the winger role as I've outlined in a post above. No, I haven't noticed that. We managed 104 league goals with the original Newcastle squad so our attacking play wasn't a problem. We were just conceding too much which is what I'm trying to work on next...

yeah, I'm yet to try this with other teams. There might be some player traits that don't work there, I'm not sure without testing further. I might try this out with Brighton for a season. I'll also add that Allan Saint-Maximin started the season poorly for me at LW so I moved Isak there and he started playing well. Then Isak got injured for 3 months so I had to go back to ASM and he was on fire and became undroppable . I think players can be very streaky on FM this year. Another thing I've found - since changing my CB from a left-footed player to a right-footed player I don't think we are playing down the right as much as I'd like us to. I will keep testing this, but obviously a lot of this tactic is designed around building most attacks down the right so that might be a problem.

here's an example of just this, @mrjun Untitled video (2).mp4 The stay wider inverted winger holds their width until the mezzala attracts the full back; opening up the channel between full back and centre back for the inverted winger to attack. The IW then attracts the centre back, opening up the space for the ST. A lovely goal. Nice and direct.

I will maybe get some examples later when I’m home of how this works, but I don’t want the LW to always be a touchline player like the winger role would be. I also don’t really want them crossing the ball much as that’s not something the left side of Howe’s team does. They prefer to either cut inside for a shot or through ball, or recycle possession around the box. Sometimes I want them to hold width (and in the ME they do tend to do this in the first phase of build up as my screenshot of the 3-2-5 shape shows), but I also want them to combine with the mezzala to overload the channel between the full back and centre back. Sometimes I also want the mezzala to overlap them on the outside too.