strikers, off ball and RUN FROM DEEP

hey lads,

thats my question :

i need my strikers to do more off ball runs, i know its depending mainly by their "off-ball" parameter but im pretty sure RUN FROM DEEP has a role, innit?

i cant really understand this RUN FROM DEEP, some think is the off-ball runs some others reckon that its how often a player goes back to recover a ball or to help his mates...

so now id like to have a final explanation...all i want is my strikers to do MANY off-ball runs! (since atm my strikers look very static)

cheers

the quality of their movement will depend on their off the ball attribute.

Runs from deep is what it says on the tin. Running from a deep area of the pitch off the ball. Think of Gerrard, Lampard and those sorts of midfielders. Runs from deep is not something you would normally associate with goalscoring strikers, it's more midfielders that should be making these runs. If you have runs from deep set to rarely, your strikers will start their movement from more advanced positions, which I think is what you want

Players with high off the ball rating will pretty much always be in good space. Low rating will see them being static.

Run from deep is where do you want your player to receive the ball. Infront of the marker? Behind the marker? On sometimes, will see them do both.

In a 2 man strike partnership, having both on run from deep sometimes will see them feed the ball off each other.

One on rarely and one on often will see the striker on rarely feed the striker up the field.

Players with high off the ball rating will pretty much always be in good space. Low rating will see them being static.

Run from deep is where do you want your player to receive the ball. Infront of the marker? Behind the marker? On sometimes, will see them do both.

In a 2 man strike partnership, having both on run from deep sometimes will see them feed the ball off each other.

One on rarely and one on often will see the striker on rarely feed the striker up the field.

I can't agree more, very good explanation

Now, it would be excellent idea to explain how RFD combines with mentallity. For example, if you have a DLF on support and Advanced forward with RFD on often, would his mentality and RFD often mean he is to high on the pitch?

I can't agree more, very good explanation

Now, it would be excellent idea to explain how RFD combines with mentallity. For example, if you have a DLF on support and Advanced forward with RFD on often, would his mentality and RFD often mean he is to high on the pitch?

I've never done this as always thought it would lead to the AF being offside a lot, although that may not be the case.

Personally if I play with two strikers I put them both as DLF with RFD sometimes, I think it creates more unpredictability in the teams play. Not to say a "little man, big man" combo can't/doesn't work.

I've never done this as always thought it would lead to the AF being offside a lot, although that may not be the case.

Personally if I play with two strikers I put them both as DLF with RFD sometimes, I think it creates more unpredictability in the teams play. Not to say a "little man, big man" combo can't/doesn't work.

Are they bot on support duty or one support other attack (your DLF's)?

Thanks

Are they bot on support duty or one support other attack (your DLF's)?

Thanks

Both support. There are also a few other adjustments, through balls is on mixed, cross and long shots on rare. Both have roaming ticked and HUB unticked. Wideplay set to normal for both.

Are they bot on support duty or one support other attack (your DLF's)?

A Deep Forward (Attack) and Deep Forward (Support) combination would be an interesting set up... may have to try it out.

Both support. There are also a few other adjustments, through balls is on mixed, cross and long shots on rare. Both have roaming ticked and HUB unticked. Wideplay set to normal for both.

Maybe this is a good concept. Don't know till I try

A Deep Forward (Attack) and Deep Forward (Support) combination would be an interesting set up... may have to try it out.

Yes, I will try it with Rooney and Berbatov with later being the DLF support

Run from deep is 'normaly' used on a deeper player.

What it means is that your player, when you receive possession of the ball, will make a forward run (subject to conditions - see Decisions).

A common misunderstanding is between playing a high mentality and low RFD and a low mentality and high RFD. The difference here is that one player will be ALREADY advanved (note the word 'already'), and when you get possession, will HOLD his position. The other will be deep when you get the ball and will then advance.

I can't agree more, very good explanation

Now, it would be excellent idea to explain how RFD combines with mentallity. For example, if you have a DLF on support and Advanced forward with RFD on often, would his mentality and RFD often mean he is to high on the pitch?

1st of all, there seem to be a bug intended or not or whether it is the way the Match engine interprets it, I could be wrong. I'm gonna explain what it is in a sec.

Using Tactical Creator (TC), when you choose a philosophy, the way mentality is distributed to the strikers seems to screw most people tactic.

Let say i'm playing Very Fluid philosophy in a 4-4-2 formation. If you have a look individually at the mentalities of all the player, you'll realise that the striker on support is 2 notches below and the striker on attack is 2 notches above. In a Very Fluid philosophy, this is wrong. Both striker SHOULD! be on the same mentality.

Now change the tactic to 4-5-1 or any lone striker formation whith Very Fluid philosophy. Now have a look at the mentalities of all the players. Thats! how it should be. This bug seems to affect all formation which employs more than 1 striker.

How to fix it. If you employ a tactic with more than 1 striker, lower the notches by 2 for the ones on attack and increase the notches by 2 for the ones on support. Lone striker formations are not affect by the bug.

I'm gonna start a big thread somewhere when I have time on these apparently no one has pointed this out. This bug seem to cause casual, new players who use the TC alot of fustration.

So back to topic.

Depends on the philosophy you play. Different philosophy has different mentality distributed. Also the formation you play will help me answer that question.

Run from deep is 'normaly' used on a deeper player.

What it means is that your player, when you receive possession of the ball, will make a forward run (subject to conditions - see Decisions).

A common misunderstanding is between playing a high mentality and low RFD and a low mentality and high RFD. The difference here is that one player will be ALREADY advanved (note the word 'already'), and when you get possession, will HOLD his position. The other will be deep when you get the ball and will then advance.

Not necessary.

If you read my post above, the mentality is abit screwed and I think i need to write a whole chuck about how mentality works.

For just this argument, I'll will use a 4-4-2 Formation in Rigid philosophy in balanced strategy, roles and duty will be the default the TC chooses.

So in a rigid philosophy, Central defenders will just responsible for the defensive phase, Full backs and defensive midfields will be defensive and transition phase, attacking midfields will be for transition and attack phase and forwards just attack phase.

In order to distribute these philosophy to the players we use the menality system. So now we need 4 different mentality to tell the players to follow the philsophy.

Since I'm playing balanced, the first notch of balance which I will label mentality 1 will be given to the CBs

Full backs and the midfielder on defend will be given mentality 3.

Wingers and the midfielder on support will be given mentality 5.

Both Strikers will be given mentality 7.

Guess what the Balance has only 7 notches in total and we can now distribute these mentality amount the players starting from the 1st notch of balance to the last notch(the 7th notch of balance).

I now want the striker on support to play during the transition phase too. So now I change the striker on support to have mentality of 5 instead of 7. This way I've encouraged him to play in the building up of play which complement his support duty.

One thing ur right about is that the player with the higher mentality will generally play higher and will lead the line. This way you can cause the defense to stagger abit. For that support player, this will allow him an extra yard or 2 for him to make his decision before the DC close him down. Depending on how the defense react and what kind of player you have, you'll have different way to attack the ball.

If I play a slow Target Man in attack, RFD set to Rare. This will discourage the midfielders not to give him a through ball as he is not making any runs forward. Then I could employ a DLF in support RFD often. During the transition phase, he will stay back and hold his run once the attack is on, he will surge forward and could probably play 1 2 with the Targetman.

I could play a fast poacher in attack and RFD to often. This will see him play shoulder to shoulder with the defender trying to break offside traps. Then I could employ my support DLF to RFD rare and stagger the defense. This way the other DC will come forward to close him, leaving space behind him to exploit.

The idea is there, the players you have will dictate which route u take.

Pretty much what Iam and smallen said. Others still think "run from deep" works the same as foward runs, which isn't the case. The ME has changed and it interprets these runs differently. Prior to FM2009 you'd probably have your advanced striker on foward runs so he could latch onto through balls (or so was the idea) on the new ME "run from deep" are best allocated to deeper players. For example, giving your advanced striker RFD-rare will see him stay up top and play on defenders shoulder while RFD-often is more likely to see him spend more time playing deep. I did read somewhere that wwfan was involved in writing some new default tactics for the new ME and one thing that got altered on the new ME was the "foward runs" as they didn't accurately portray what these runs did.

I play a lone striker, and I've recently changed his settings from an attacking mentality with RFD sometimes to normal mentality with RFD often. This seems to get him more involved as well as gettin him more CCC's. Just sayin'.

Interesting discussion going on here and maybe this is the right place to check a few ideas I have been having.

Recently I've made the switch from using a lone striker in combination with wingers to simulate a front-three line attack to actually using three pure strikers - STLC, STC, STRC. I would like to have the outer two drop deeper on defense but run ahead of the middle one in attack, similar to how Barca's front trio of Villa, Messi and Pedro play. Let me try to illustrate:

On defense:

--------------------------STC----------------------------

-----------STLC-----------------------STRC------------

In attack:

------------STLC---------------------STRC-------------

--------------------------STC----------------------------

Now to achieve this do I need to have the middle striker on a role with attack duty and no RFD (advanced forward?), while the outer two strikers on roles with support duties (complete forwards, support?) but with RFD on sometimes or even often? How would their closing-down play a role in all this as well? What would be the best choice for wide plays setting for all three - moves into channels for the outer two and normal for the middle one?

Of course I can try and see how this works myself, but wanted to know if anyone has any other tips first on how to achieve the desired effect. For additional info, my midfield consists of three MC's, with the middle one being very defensive a la Busquets.

@yonko1 depends on what sort of football you are playing.

Attacking football - You don't want too many players to be dropping deep and inviting pressure, so you'd probably set your wingers on RFD - often and the lone striker RFD - rare, this will allow the wingers to drop deep and make their runs from deep while the striker will hold his position up top and keep the defenders occupied.

Defensive/Counter football - With this sort of football your players will be spending much time deep on their own half looking to win the ball and springing attacks from deep, so you'd probably have both wingers and lone striker on RFD - often, players will drop deep (helps with more bodies behind the ball ) and will look to spring their attacks from deep (very handy against attacking teams or teams deemed to be stronger than yours) my two cents.

Normally you'd deploy a DLF on support to help bring other players into the game, but Barca seem to play with the front three on attack and it works. I've been experimenting with having the lone striker on an advance role and i'd say i rather like it, you could try that.

Back in FM 2010 I played 4-2-3-1 formation with 2 wingers. I had attacker on Complete Forward. He destroyed every defence (Hulk) because role enabled him to search for holes in defense wall romaing both in width and height. But this new FM 11 is not working for strikes. And thanks to FyB I now have a solution

@yonko1 depends on what sort of football you are playing.

Attacking football - You don't want too many players to be dropping deep and inviting pressure, so you'd probably set your wingers on RFD - often and the lone striker RFD - rare, this will allow the wingers to drop deep and make their runs from deep while the striker will hold his position up top and keep the defenders occupied.

Defensive/Counter football - With this sort of football your players will be spending much time deep on their own half looking to win the ball and springing attacks from deep, so you'd probably have both wingers and lone striker on RFD - often, players will drop deep (helps with more bodies behind the ball ) and will look to spring their attacks from deep (very handy against attacking teams or teams deemed to be stronger than yours) my two cents.

Normally you'd deploy a DLF on support to help bring other players into the game, but Barca seem to play with the front three on attack and it works. I've been experimenting with having the lone striker on an advance role and i'd say i rather like it, you could try that.

But I'm not using wingers. Instead I'm using three strikers. And yes, I'm trying to play attacking football.

I tried to set up my front three like I described in my previous post. Without the ball, the outer two (STCL & STCR) drop deeper, while the middle one (STC) stays further forward. So when I'm defending it works well just like wanted. With the ball, when I'm attacking the opposition, the outer two strikers don't advance too much beyond the middle one. Also, the middle striker doesn't drop deep enough like I want him to during the attacking phase. My strikers individual instructions are:

STCL & STCR:

Complete forward, support

RFD - often

RWB - mixed

LS - rarely

TTB - mixed

CB - mixed

Wide Play - moves into channels

Roaming - yes

STC :

Advanced Forward, attack

RFD - rarely

RWB - often

LS - rarely

TTB - often

CB - rarely

Wide Play - normal

Roaming - yes

Team Philosophy: Balanced

Team Strategy: Attacking

@yonko1

Did you apply the bug fix which i have stated earlier in the post?

Dropping the mentality of the STC by 2 and increasing the STCL and STCL by 2.

Cuz the way mentality works, the Match engine computes the lowest mentality in the team and the highest mentality and finds the average. This average is use to find out what kind of football your playing. From this average it is then compared to your individual players mentality to find out which phase the player will be responsible.

For my example, I will explain using your formation and philosophy. You are using a 4-3-3 Balanced formation. Playing a Balanced philosophy is very balanced like what the TC says and in my opinion, suits alot of formation and its a good philosophy to try out different formation. If you lack alot of tactical football knowledge, its a good base to fall to. In a Balanced formation, mentality is split into 3. Starting from the lowest 1, 4 and 7. Players with 1 mentality will be responsible for the Defend phase, players with 4 mentality will be responisble for Transition phase and players with 7 mentality will be responsible for the Attack phase. Now you'll be wondering, this is exactly what it says in the TC in the description for the Very Rigid philosophy and its is very similiar. The only difference is players in position higher up field could be playing a similiar mentality than the player position down the field and vice versa. Unlike in Very Rigid, Player up the field will have a higher mentality than player down the field. The reason why its similiar is, if you set all your defenders to Defend duty, all midfielders to Support duty and all forwards to Attack duty, you will end up playing a Very Rigid philosophy.

So now your STC will have a mentality of 7 and your STLC and STRC have a mentality of 4. Like the description your STC will be responsible only during the Attack phase as he has the highest mentality in your team while the STLC and STRC have mentality of 4 which tells him to responsible only during the transition phase. However, there is a catch, Playing a mentality of 4, doesn't mean the player will only be responsible for that phase. There are other factors which affects this.

1) Position of the player

2) Average mentality between the highest player and the lowest player in relation to the whole mentality bar. (Pretty much means what strategy you are playing)

Since your STLC and STRC are position high up the field, they will also join in the attack phase and with Attacking strategy, they are even more compelled to join in the Attack phase.

Another example for a player down the field, for example a MC with Defend duty will have the mentality of 1, meaning he will only be responsible for the Defend phase. Since he is playing a central position in the field, he will look to play in the Transition phase as well. With a Attacking strategy, it will also encourage him to take part in the attack phase but less than players with higher mentality.

For my recommendation, the average mentality should not be more than 7 mentality between the lowest and highest metality in the team. Hence, that is why I say that it the way TC sets the mentality for the strikers are bugged in a formation with more than 1 striker. As it tends to screw up philosophy.

I hope this will help you understand and many other people how to set your tatics. I know there are many people out there who knows how to play the football but simply can't translate that into the game and gets fustrated with the sliders.

With all I've said, I could be wrong but this seems to make the most logical sense to me. If any other players believes I'm wrong, post your thoughts anyway so we could have a discussion going.

@ yoko

Something to add again, your instructions for ur strikers seems fine.

Just a few tips with 3 striker vs a 4 man defense, in this scenerio, all your strikers will be literally playing in channels between each defender. By asking your outside strikers to run into channels, you are also encouraging him to run into the channels your STC is in, which is something you don't want since you want the STC to play central. What happens is when your outside striker goes into the channel the STC is in, he will go and take up the position where you outside striker was, if this is what you want, then keep it that way. I wouldn't recommend you roaming either for you STC if you want him to play central. For your outside striker, with roaming, you will sometime see him go wide to the flanks and play as a winger. By keeping the wide instruction as normal, he will do whatever seems to be the best decision for him.

Against a 3 man or 5 man defense, this means all your Strikers will each have a marker. Now you can ask your outside strikers to play in channels, they will constantly run between the 2 channels. For your STLC, he will look to play in the between DC and DCR or the DCR and DR/WR/MR. Dragging those defenders away for other players to exploit. However, your STC will need to be strong (high strength) and have very good first touch to receive the ball if not he will easily get dispossessed or lose control of the ball, unlike in a 4 man defense he is playing in a channel where it will may take a sec or 2 to get closed down so he may be able to get away with it.

Good luck. Hope that helps you see things from another perspective.

FyB, thank you for your explanations. This is the first time in FM series that I try to make a tactic with three strikers work. In fact, I haven't even used a two-striker formation in ages either. I have either used 4-1-2-2-1 (4 defenders + DMC + 2MCs + AMRL + STC) or both wide and narrow 4-2-3-1 with MC's. So this is somewhat new territory for me. I appreciate your (and anyone else's) insight!

Now, like many other FM gamers here, I'm trying to make my three strikers act like Messi, Villa and Pedro play for Barca IRL. In my current Barca save I have recently acquired Aguero as my starter along side Messi and Villa ( I hope Barca do the same IRL). Therefore, I would like to see if playing the three of them as strikers will produce better results at recreating Barca's attacking trio's movements than if I was using my usual choice of playing with a lone striker and two wingers.

In my last match, I decided to experiment and changed Messi's role (STC) to Trequartista. That dropped his attacking mentality by a few notches in the TC. Unfortunetely, I didn't consider checking to see if the mentality of my outer two strikers changed to higher level even though they remained set as I've previously posted. However, playing and watching Messi's behavior since the changed role, I noticed him dropping a little bit deeper and as a result he scored a hat-trick - first goal was a screamer from distance after the defenders failed to step up and close him down, second one was from a PK, and the third was after the defenders failed to stop his dribbling run from deep position outside the box. So my conclusion is that the different role worked to changed Messi's movement on the field to produce the desired effect in the game. My outer two strikers movement and behavior wasn't any different, therefore I suspect that their mentality wasn't bumped up as a result of Messi's slight drop of mentality due to the Trequartista role.

This leads me to the following question: What would happen if my philosophy is changed to Fluid and I select all three strikers to be on the same duty but with different RFD and closing down settings? STCL&R would have RFD often but much lower closing down, while STC will have RFD rarely and highest closing down. I'm tempted to test this out.

I would appreciate any further recommendation and advice. Thanks again.

@yonko1, nice to see you have abit success with making your own tactic. The reason why Messi played the way you want him was you got his settings right. Apparently, the default mentality for a trequartista is not "bugged" as in the TC gives him mentality of 7 instead of 9 which the bugs gives him. With that the whole team down the line will be playing much better. Especially the midfields, as they are now also joining in the attacks due to the change in the average mentality between the highest and lowest mentality in your team.

The reason why your outside striker is still playing deeper is they still have a mentality of 2 which tells them to focus on the defensive phase. If you bump it by 2 to 4, you will now be tellling him to focus on the transition phase so he doesn't fall that deep to help during the defend phase. That should fixed what your outside strikers are doing. Some roles are bugged so always check their mentality and fixed it up and don't just blindly follow what the TC recommends without understanding what they do. Using mentality is straight forward. In a balanced philosophy you only have 3 mentalities, 1,4 and 7 and its not hard to figure out who do you want to give that mentality to. All you have to do is ask the question, which phase do I want you to focus on? Defend = 1, Transition = 4 and Attack = 7. Now that is balanced philosophy for you.

Fluid philosophy, in a fluid philosophy mentality is split between just attacking and defensive player but not so much of a split between the player with the highest mentality and the lowest mentality. In order to translate that into the match engine, we now need to decrease the mentality between the highest mentality and the lowest mentality in the team. In balanced, it was 7, therefore, for fluid the TC uses 5, in theory using 3 is also viable if you want your playing really close together but not as close as in Very Fluid althought some would argue that the difference in mentality is to close to see any difference.

For this example we will use the difference in mentality of 5 as you will be able to see the effects better. Since the fluid philosophy will split the mentality between either attacking or defesive, you will only have 2 mentality throughout your team. The lowest being 1 and the highest being 5. All your defenders will have mentality of 1, all your striker will have mentality of 5 and midfielders on defend duty will have a mentality of 1 and midfielders on support or attack duty will have a mentality of 5. Thats pretty much the jist of a fluid philosophy but whether it suits your formation or not, thats another story. For me personally, I haven't tried fluid alot as I usually play LLM so I haven't experimented on it alot but on paper I do have a idea how the players will behave.

Like any 4 man defense the fullbacks usually have a lot of space to work with so I don't really like FBs to have a low mentality. However, your FBs will defend much better that your FBs in a balanced philosophy on support duty. For your midfields, nothing much will change just that now, they will be ecouraged to focus more during the transition phase if they are on defend or attack duty while midfields on support duty will be ecouraged to focus on the attack phase. This will see MCs like Iniesta and Xavi take part in the Attack phase while also not forgetting his other duties during the Defend and transition phase compared to a MC with attak duty in a Balanced philosophy, the MC will be highly offensive.

For the strikers, all of them will be working together and form a line. In this situation, RFD setting will see the most effect. All 3 on RFD to sometimes will see them each dart in and out of the opposing D-line, thus constantly staggering the defense. With the STC on rare and the outside 2 doing this will also help you acheive what you want messi to do. Run at defenders from a deep position while also make a pass if a situation arises. The outside stikers will also be able to drag their marker away by trying to run behind the marker dragging the defender away for messi to run into with the ball. However Messi will strugggle when up against a 3/5 man defense as he will naturally not be playing in the channel and a strong defender marking him will see him give the ball away while trying to receive a pass.

Hope you get the idea what the transition from Balanced to Fluid philosophy means.

Good Luck!

Edit:

By also giving your STLC and STRC roaming will allow them to play deeper too.

@yonko1, nice to see you have abit success with making your own tactic. The reason why Messi played the way you want him was you got his settings right. Apparently, the default mentality for a trequartista is not "bugged" as in the TC gives him mentality of 7 instead of 9 which the bugs gives him. With that the whole team down the line will be playing much better. Especially the midfields, as they are now also joining in the attacks due to the change in the average mentality between the highest and lowest mentality in your team.

The reason why your outside striker is still playing deeper is they still have a mentality of 2 which tells them to focus on the defensive phase. If you bump it by 2 to 4, you will now be tellling him to focus on the transition phase so he doesn't fall that deep to help during the defend phase. That should fixed what your outside strikers are doing. Some roles are bugged so always check their mentality and fixed it up and don't just blindly follow what the TC recommends without understanding what they do. Using mentality is straight forward. In a balanced philosophy you only have 3 mentalities, 1,4 and 7 and its not hard to figure out who do you want to give that mentality to. All you have to do is ask the question, which phase do I want you to focus on? Defend = 1, Transition = 4 and Attack = 7. Now that is balanced philosophy for you.

Fluid philosophy, in a fluid philosophy mentality is split between just attacking and defensive player but not so much of a split between the player with the highest mentality and the lowest mentality. In order to translate that into the match engine, we now need to decrease the mentality between the highest mentality and the lowest mentality in the team. In balanced, it was 7, therefore, for fluid the TC uses 5, in theory using 3 is also viable if you want your playing really close together but not as close as in Very Fluid althought some would argue that the difference in mentality is to close to see any difference.

For this example we will use the difference in mentality of 5 as you will be able to see the effects better. Since the fluid philosophy will split the mentality between either attacking or defesive, you will only have 2 mentality throughout your team. The lowest being 1 and the highest being 5. All your defenders will have mentality of 1, all your striker will have mentality of 5 and midfielders on defend duty will have a mentality of 1 and midfielders on support or attack duty will have a mentality of 5. Thats pretty much the jist of a fluid philosophy but whether it suits your formation or not, thats another story. For me personally, I haven't tried fluid alot as I usually play LLM so I haven't experimented on it alot but on paper I do have a idea how the players will behave.

Like any 4 man defense the fullbacks usually have a lot of space to work with so I don't really like FBs to have a low mentality. However, your FBs will defend much better that your FBs in a balanced philosophy on support duty. For your midfields, nothing much will change just that now, they will be ecouraged to focus more during the transition phase if they are on defend or attack duty while midfields on support duty will be ecouraged to focus on the attack phase. This will see MCs like Iniesta and Xavi take part in the Attack phase while also not forgetting his other duties during the Defend and transition phase compared to a MC with attak duty in a Balanced philosophy, the MC will be highly offensive.

For the strikers, all of them will be working together and form a line. In this situation, RFD setting will see the most effect. All 3 on RFD to sometimes will see them each dart in and out of the opposing D-line, thus constantly staggering the defense. With the STC on rare and the outside 2 doing this will also help you acheive what you want messi to do. Run at defenders from a deep position while also make a pass if a situation arises. The outside stikers will also be able to drag their marker away by trying to run behind the marker dragging the defender away for messi to run into with the ball. However Messi will strugggle when up against a 3/5 man defense as he will naturally not be playing in the channel and a strong defender marking him will see him give the ball away while trying to receive a pass.

Hope you get the idea what the transition from Balanced to Fluid philosophy means.

Good Luck!

Edit:

By also giving your STLC and STRC roaming will allow them to play deeper too.

Thanks again, my friend.

Since my last post (and before reading your response to it) I have experimented a little bit more and changed my Philosophy from Balanced to Fluid. I noticed that my outer two strikers' mentality went higher than before, but the middle one (Messi with Trequartista role) remained the same (only a few ticks higher than them). I will try to take some screen shots of that and will post here for better illustration purposes.

Anyway, since the changed to Fluid, Messi scored 5 goals (match rating of 10!) and I won the game 7-0! In the previous two games he was playing with 6.6 and 6.5 rating.

I'm also curious to read your take on using players in STL and STR wide positions instead of in the center close to the STC. Do the variations of roles, duties, mentality, closing down and RFD affect their behavior the same as middle strikers or more like wingers in the AMR&L positions? I guess the answer would be in the fact that only wide attacking roles are available for selection and not the ones for "true" strikers.

Thanks again, my friend.

Since my last post (and before reading your response to it) I have experimented a little bit more and changed my Philosophy from Balanced to Fluid. I noticed that my outer two strikers' mentality went higher than before, but the middle one (Messi with Trequartista role) remained the same (only a few ticks higher than them). I will try to take some screen shots of that and will post here for better illustration purposes.

Anyway, since the changed to Fluid, Messi scored 5 goals (match rating of 10!) and I won the game 7-0! In the previous two games he was playing with 6.6 and 6.5 rating.

I'm also curious to read your take on using players in STL and STR wide positions instead of in the center close to the STC. Do the variations of roles, duties, mentality, closing down and RFD affect their behavior the same as middle strikers or more like wingers in the AMR&L positions? I guess the answer would be in the fact that only wide attacking roles are available for selection and not the ones for "true" strikers.

If you decrease Messi's mentality by 4, he will have the same mentality as your defenders. Thats what it means by have a range of only 5 between players. If you play with a any other role other than a trequartista, his mentality will be higher by 2 which is a bug. Likewise your Outside striker has a mentality of 3 which means if you decrease it by 2, he will have the same mentality of your defenders. You need to increase their mentality by 2 to 5 so that they will be be playing the same mentality as Messi which is how the Fluid philosophy is played.

By default Trequartista gives Messi roaming ticked. What roaming does is it allows Messi to move to another position, Messi might move to the AMC position and play like a false 9, however, your outside striker are preventing him to move wide cuz, they already holding positions out wide and there is no position Messi can move into. If this is what you want, keep roaming tick. If you just want Messi to stay in is STC postion, then have him untick.

In my opinion, as long as they have the same mentality of 5 either in STL/STR or STCL/STCL or AML/AMR or AMCL/AMCR and both strikers have roaming tick, they will move into position whereever there is space. So you can see them play like a striker once then, drop deep into the AMC position another instance or go wide if your wing backs cannot make it up there in time. If you have your wing back always run from from deep to take up position high up the field on the wings, they will try not to take up position which already has a player in it. So if you have player who always stay central, they will also not try to take up his position.

Just so you know about roles, they default settings given by the TC is not always the ideal choice. They are meant to help you out if you are new and learning the game but once you have a idea, you can disregard them completely. For instance, I want a midfielder who alway wins the ball and I want him to stay back all the time and I don't want him to close down players beyond the halfway line and I also what him to play a during the transition phase. For this, 1 would think "Oh a hard tackler, I need to give him the Ball winning role on support duty". The default settings for the Ball winning role on support duty has different settings that what I want him. So I don't use it. Instead I start from a template. Say I play with a Balanced philosophy. I could start with role Central Midfielders on support duty and tweak from there.

Going in order.

Mentality - I want him to focus during the transition phase, so I would automatically put him a mentality of 4 (which means that the player with the lowest mentality in you team is 1 and his will be 3 notches higher as the mentality in a Balanced philosophy are split 3 ways 1,4 and 7 which I have explained already in posts above)

Creative freedom - This will affect how much they will follow your instructions. I won't go into detail here as this requires another thread on itself. High setting here will see the player completely ignore your instruction while low setting here will see the player follow your instruction to the book.

Passing - You can have short passing (not over the top balls), mixed (player will mix it up) and direct (player will attempt over the top balls more often). Just a note, even if you have short passing but sometimes a player will try to play through ball, you will him play over the top ball. So if you have player you just want to play short simple pass, have through ball to rare. For this player I just want him to play short passing so I set it accordingly.

Closing down - Like many other theory on this boards, there are some theory, that CD also affects how your player shape up. This is thru to an extent. A player will close down a player when the following conditions are met

1. They don't already have any player to mark in their zone.

2. The player with the ball does not have a player marking him or has another player trying to close him down already.

3. The player with the ball is within the closing down distance.

4. Zonal marking and Man marking will affect who they will close down and who not to close down.

Since I want my MC to close down player who is unmarked in my own half, I put the CD settings to the halfway point.

Tackling - I want my MC to be a ball winner, I will natuarlly set it to Hard, having a hard setting means, if a opposing player is trying to dribble past my MC, he will go in hard if he is on the verge of getting passed.

Run from deep - I don't want him to go forward and just receive the ball behind his marker so I set this to rare.

Run with ball - I just want him to make short simple pass and not run at players so I set this to rare too.

Long shot - My MC has a good long shot stats so I set this to sometimes cuz I want him to be effective if he has the stats in this area.

Through Balls - I want my MC to play short simple pass so I give him rare setting for this.

Cross Ball - Again Rare for this which is self explainatory.

The folllowing I will ignore as they are self explainatory.

Cross From

Cross Aim

Wide play

Swap position

Marking - I will set this to Man marking cuz I just want him to be resposible for marking the opposing MC playing in an opposite position. Note: CD does not influece how far up infront he goes to mark his man, he will just mark whereever the opposing MC goes.

Tight marking - I will set him to Yes so that opposing MC is always marked and he will have a diffcult time receiving the ball.

Roaming - I don't want him to roam.

Hold up ball - I want him to hold up the ball so when he gets the ball I will let the opposing MC close him down to make space left behind by the MC while he is being closed down, he would need support on his sides so he can square the ball. If he does not have anyone and he makes a bad decision to hold it up for too long, he will get dispossessed.

Of course you are playing with good players with good off the ball and positioning and with roaming tick they will more often do the right thing than not.

Hope these made sense.

I have read the entire post but if someone can explain me how do the mentalities behave in this new FM 11? I mean, for every philosophy what are the values for all players and where is the bug? I have read for balanced and fluid through this post but what about others?

Also, I don't know did I get right this balance and fluid mentalities. For Balanced there are 1,4 and 7 values and 7 in attack should be 5 for both attack and support roles. is that wright?

What about fluid and other philosophies?

THnak you, very much

I have read the entire post but if someone can explain me how do the mentalities behave in this new FM 11? I mean, for every philosophy what are the values for all players and where is the bug? I have read for balanced and fluid through this post but what about others?

Also, I don't know did I get right this balance and fluid mentalities. For Balanced there are 1,4 and 7 values and 7 in attack should be 5 for both attack and support roles. is that wright?

What about fluid and other philosophies?

THnak you, very much

The bug is with the strikers only when you play in a formation which have more than 1 striker and any other roles other than trequartista.

I've alread explained how mentality works, it just tellls them which phase of the play do they are responsible for, either defend, transition or attack.

For balanced is straight forward, you look at the duty to set the mentality. 1 for Defend duty, 4 for support duty and 7 for attack duty.

For fluid, all defenders and defensive midfielders are 1 mentality, the rest are 5 mentality.

Very rigid is almost same as balanced with the 1,4 and 7 values but you look at the players position to distribute them. 1 for Defenders, 4 for midfielders and 7 for forwards.

Rigid uses the mentality 1,3,5 and 7. 1 for Central defenders, 3 for full backs and defensive midfielders, 5 for attacking midielders and wingers and 7 for forwards.

Very fluid uses 1 mentality across the board.

The bug is with the strikers only when you play in a formation which have more than 1 striker and any other roles other than trequartista.

I've alread explained how mentality works, it just tellls them which phase of the play do they are responsible for, either defend, transition or attack.

For balanced is straight forward, you look at the duty to set the mentality. 1 for Defend duty, 4 for support duty and 7 for attack duty.

For fluid, all defenders and defensive midfielders are 1 mentality, the rest are 5 mentality.

Very rigid is almost same as balanced with the 1,4 and 7 values but you look at the players position to distribute them. 1 for Defenders, 4 for midfielders and 7 for forwards.

Rigid uses the mentality 1,3,5 and 7. 1 for Central defenders, 3 for full backs and defensive midfielders, 5 for attacking midielders and wingers and 7 for forwards.

Very fluid uses 1 mentality across the board.

Thank you, really

Fyb tnx for this explenation, its really really helpful