Poor defensive free kick positioning?

[marty78]

Can anyone explain why defender would do this with default instructions? The player is a left midfielder with no personal instructions at all, let alone any set pieces instructions. By default his defend free kick command is "form wall".

Screenshot 1: The players line up to defend a free kick. The player in the usual left back area is all on his own but deeper than the rest of the defence.
Screenshot 2: The kick is about to be taken and our defense are neatly lined up along the 18 yard line but still the same player is deeper than the rest and playing the whole opposition attack onside. Obviously it was an easy goal with them having a seven vs one with the keeper but why did it happen?

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By martybully at 2012-06-27

[edgar555]

It is mainly his poor positioning but not helped by the limitations of setting up defensive free kick orders. What is his positioning stat?

[marty78]

His positioning is low at 7 but I don't think that is low enough to justify this on its own.

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[PGB_SPURS_FM09]

Its equally frustrating when this happens in the opposite way... your whole defence lines up on one side and so do the opposition attackers but one of their attackers(normally their best striker) will sit in roughly the same position as your winger (but onside). So then the free kick taker obviously passes it to him and he has an easy 1 on 1 which he always seems to finish.

Just a bug in the engine I would say that occurs rarely but it would still be nice for it to be cut out

[edgar555]

His positioning is low at 7 but I don't think that is low enough to justify this on its own.

I'd say that positioning of 7 is more than poor enough to justify that kind of thing happening. 7 is very poor! Ally that with his concentration of 10 and it's a recipe for disaster. I'd look at what you do with him on defensive free kicks in the future and that will hopefully stop him being a liability in that situation.

[marty78]

Well its French Ligue 2 not Champions league and if any player stood in that position in any real life match, regardless of level, the other players would be screaming at him to push up and wouldn't let him stand at least 4 yards off the defensive line. If it was a yard then fair enough but I find it hard to believe a gap this big is normal even if he had 2 for positioning and 2 for decisions.

PGB_SPURS_FM09 - Yes I have seen that a few times and also from throw ins if a player stands in an offside position it sometimes as if the defenders don't understand he can't be offside and leave him unmarked.

[CityAndColour]

I'd say that positioning of 7 is more than poor enough to justify that kind of thing happening. 7 is very poor! Ally that with his concentration of 10 and it's a recipe for disaster. I'd look at what you do with him on defensive free kicks in the future and that will hopefully stop him being a liability in that situation.

Why does a poor rating for something seem to equal "has never played the sport in his life"?

[edgar555]

Whatever level you are at, 7 is a poor number and is going to result in him being in the wrong place more often than not. Level of play has nothing to do with it in this instance. He's just gonna get it wrong a lot.

[edgar555]

Why does a poor rating for something seem to equal "has never played the sport in his life"?

It doesn't, where did I say that? How else are you supposed to judge him on in this kind of scenario?

[CityAndColour]

He would need to have a position stat of -20 and be blind to go and stand by himself, 15 yards from every other player. He looks like a lost dog or something.

I think the situation in the OP is clearly a bug.

[marty78]

He would need to have a position stat of -20 and be blind to go and stand by himself, 15 yards from every other player. He looks like a lost dog or something.

I think the situation in the OP is clearly a bug.

I'm glad you said that as I was beginning to think I was going mad. Even if he was stupid enough to stand there for 30 seconds surely his teammates would not let him. I just wondered if anyone had seen this and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. We won the game in the end it is just annoying. We have since had two similar free-kicks and that player stood in a two man wall. It looks like a weird one off.

If a 7 attribute made someone this bad across all attributes this game would be unplayable imo.

[edgar555]

The attribute doesn't mean that he's poor all the time but surely you have to accept that it has some impact? Otherwise what's the point of the attributes?
By all means if you think it's a bug put it in the bug forum but if it's a one off then perhaps it might just have something to do with that dodgy attribute?

[CityAndColour]

I just think there's a difference between poor positioning, where he might be late stepping up or starts a little too deep, and the OP, which is just ridiculous. Otherwise it would be like a striker with 7 for finishing who rounds the keeper and then shoots backwards.

[marty78]

I've reported in the bugs section. To be honest I would rather this turn out to be a bug rather than the match engine working as it should.

[mkjellander]

Marking on set pieces is generally atrocious, but this looks like a bug to me. The defenders don't generally fall asleep until *after* the ball is in the air ;-)

[marty78]

Video clip of goal.

[PGB_SPURS_FM09]

I respect Edgars opinion and see what he means to a degree but this should nt be something that is influenced by any stat. Even my Saturday team this wouldn't happen... Once the ball is played from the free kick then it should take into account player stats

[isignedupfornorealreason]

Disregarding stats and so on.

If as you say, you've left it on default instructions, then that's why. The defaults are awful, punting everyone forward and everyone back. So what happens is when the AI leaves one or two back for whatever reason it ends up with your instructions having too many people back so the 'loose' man goes walkabout. That's imo, just custom make your own defensive freekick set ups and edit it down to the very bare minimum and you'll never see stuff like that happen again really. At least I don't.

[eplkewell]

Disregarding stats and so on.

If as you say, you've left it on default instructions, then that's why. The defaults are awful, punting everyone forward and everyone back. So what happens is when the AI leaves one or two back for whatever reason it ends up with your instructions having too many people back so the 'loose' man goes walkabout. That's imo, just custom make your own defensive freekick set ups and edit it down to the very bare minimum and you'll never see stuff like that happen again really. At least I don't.

So how would you advise setting up the insturctions for defending free kicks?

[Pacman Jones]

Not having them on default, look on the tactics section but I never have any default instructions. I'm sure you can work out the rest

[marty78]

Well according to my analysis tabs I have conceded from 1 free kick in the last 50 matches so I don't think the defaults are as bad as you make out.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

So how would you advise setting up the insturctions for defending free kicks?

Erm, well I haven't tinkered too much with them to be fair. But Doing a lastx50 on everything I've never conceded apparently.

I have the wingers stay forward, one MC and the Fwds as wall, the rest man mark.

I'm better off with corners, only conceded 1 in the league, 3 in europe with:

FB's on the post, CB and CM's mak mark, a winger to 'lurk' on the edge, everyone else forward.

What usually happens is a corner gets cleared to the lurking winger who launches a counter and as noted because the AI overload the box at times, it results in a 4 on 3 or 2 situation. I tried to have less men in the box but if you remove the winger from his position then the AI does the exploit of launching it to a lurker who'll volley it in from the edge of the box, so he has to guard that area.

On attacking corners;

Fwds -Forward
CBs - either post
1 x winger takes corner
1 x winger lurks
Everyone else stays back.

Its on mixed I believe, and we get a fair few goals, usually at the far post, but the main thing with my set up is it absolutely prevents any counter attack. The default setting leaves you with one or two defenders at the back who usually get wrecked on the counter. My setting has I think four men back (both fullbacks, both CM's who for me are so short they're useless at headers anyway) and the AI usually only has one or two men waiting for the counter, so they're outmatched and nullified in an instant. Plus any long ball will be fed back into the box via the two central midfielders who for me are usually creative engines in any case.

I'll stress though, my set ups aren't going to get 20+ goals a season directly. They've been tailored to prevent the default set up's 'overload' that for me, always results in dangerous counter attacks that really ruins things either by, forcing a professional foul, a yellow card or a goalscoring opportunity. Plus my players defend surprisingly well when there's less commotion in the box because the AI has to adjust its strategy or be flooded on the counter attack.

I'll probably take a hit on this forum as I suppose you could say it's exploiting certain limitations to how the AI sets up its own set plays but that's SI's fault, it's been this way since FM10 and probably further back and I got bored seeing the same old.

[Dekker2]

Every now and then, I get a situation where myentire defence splits in two and lines up on opposite sides of the box, leaving all the opposition unmarked and onside in the centre, directly in front of goal.

It's infuriating.