High Shot Count/Low Goals vs Low Shot Count/High Goals

Hey guys! So I have been playing FM for many years and I am generally pretty successful within my games, however this year is different. I am glad the game seems to have gotten harder, however I'm going to post a few examples of something I just can't get my head around - why do I have SO many shots and SO few goals while the other team manages 2 shots on target and scores both to win the game? All of the below are from a relatively short space of time apart and you can see what I mean by looking at the match stats.

Below are my tactics and instructions. If anybody can spot an obvious problem, I'm all ears!

I would say it comes down to quality of chances.

You're set to press high and generally dominate games in the opposition half. This leads to your opponents packing their own box, and the quality of chances you create, with a slow build up and only the CF (A) offering any real penetration probably being not the best. Think about it this way - you're closing down heaps and winning the ball back by forcing the opposition defence to make poor passes out from the back. When they lose the ball they're already packed into their own half, then your team retains possession and plays slowly, so even if they are a little out of shape, they have time to get back into shape while your players wait for the right opportunity. Probably leads to a lot of soft shots on goal.

On the other hand, the opposition occasionally break out and catch you on the counter, create few chances but probably pretty good ones

The stats can be a bit misleading, even looking at the number of clear cut chances.

Who takes the shots? Morata looks isolated to me. bowieinspace makes good points.

the game has preposterous bias towards teams who defend deep, making even poor team seem to have a defence like milan 1990 , best advice is to play defensive and on the 'counter' to score more, sounds ridiculous but it works for me

the game has preposterous bias towards teams who defend deep, making even poor team seem to have a defence like milan 1990 , best advice is to play defensive and on the 'counter' to score more, sounds ridiculous but it works for me

No. Just no.

the game has preposterous bias towards teams who defend deep, making even poor team seem to have a defence like milan 1990 , best advice is to play defensive and on the 'counter' to score more, sounds ridiculous but it works for me

It has no bias at all. It's just that less aggressive mentality structures are more calculated because their less rushed so naturally they are easier to get to work compared to attacking ones. That isn't bias because you can still be effective on higher mentality structures it's just naturally harder to achieve and is logical.

Now the main difference between these two styles of play is that attacking sides naturally give up space so they do half the job for you. Even if you have a tactic that isn’t that great you should still be able to create chances against these type of sides. It’s probably the easiest sort of sides to play against and one of the reason why so many people can beat the bigger sides yet fail against the smaller sides.

If you come up against the more stubborn sides though who sit back and hit you on the break, then creating and using that space falls solely on you and your tactic and this is when tactical set ups can be exposed and show faults. You need to create lots of movement both on and off the ball. This is when you can tell if a tactic is good or not, in the way it handles these sides.

This in turn impacts shot quality and the types of chances created.