Now this should make sense - all contributions welcome

[saab693]

Morning all!

Introduction

I am a huge fan of the FM series and in particular the tactical side of the game, which has been brilliantly enhanced by the likes of wwfan, crouchaldinho, Millie, heath etc ( you know who you are ).

I have no issue with taking the time to create a tactic set and think there are various threads which will help the casual user achieve this. I then got to thinking, what if, as a player, none of this information was available to me? How would I go about making a great tactic/set of tactics using only my understanding of football and the utilities in FM?

The Starting Point

So I clicked on the tactics tab and I am presented with the standard 442 set up. What now? Well, for all the bemoaning they get, the default tactics jump out at me. (Quick tip of the hat to lam for his excellent thread on the defaults ). They are provided by the makers of the game as the first port of call to the tactic creator and logic tells me they must be a useful starting point; why else would they be included?

So I've checked the odds of my next match. The odds are close and I'm at home so I've selected the standard default 442 as this seems the logical option to me. I've picked the best starting 11 at my disposal and clicked play.

Half Time

Overview

Negatives

So looking at the general stats, the first thing that jumps out at me is the woeful 42% possession we are 'enjoying', especially given that we are at home!

The second thing is that we have created one blocked shot in 45 mins of football! Pretty grim. (Prob worth saying at this stage that my ass man rates all of my players as good enough to be in a side competing for the title).

As a third point, our crosses completed stat is pretty poor for a team with wingers and two decent strikers who can head the ball upfront. Admittedly, this stat never seems to go too high but 28% does seem low to me.

Finally, we have picked up 4 yellow cards and committed 8 fouls in the half which is too high.

Positives

Our passing completion rate is good at 65%. Tackling is pretty good at 83% and headers won is excellent at 88%.

Action Zones

So the next thing I have available to me is the action zones screen. From this I can deduce that the match has been fairly evenly contested in my third and the middle third, but we have had the ball in the final third for just 5% of the game. This again suggests that we are not getting it right going forwards.

Player Stats

Next I look at my player stats to get a better understanding of what each of them is doing out there!

Negatives

I can see who the four yellow card culprits are as well as who has been fouling the opposition most (Mr Pont appears to be an animal!)

Saroa is having a terrible game with a 6.0 rating. Looking closer at his stats, he has only made 9 passes. completing just 4. His strike partner, Alfred, is playing a 5.7, only attempting 11 passes and of those completing just 5. Conclusion here, which corroborates the other match stats, is that we are not connecting with our strikers at all well.

As a third point, our left winger Kottmann has only attempted 9 passes and completed5 of those. God bless them though, he's the only man who's bothered having a shot!

Positives

As indicated earlier, our passing is good except for the strikers and the left winger.Our tackles attempted and won stats match up nicely and we're winning the ball in the air.

Assistant Feedback

So, I turn to my Ass Man for some pointers on how things can be improved. I would point out that I am playing in the Swiss second tier so this guy is no Carlos Queiroz. His tactical knowledge stat is a lowly 7. Even so, this is what I have available to me, so I may as well ask!

He tells me that Servette are dominating possession because we are giving the ball to them. Well, he may be no guru, but this makes sense. We are being dominated in the possession department and this appears to be a result of our passing. He seconds that by saying we saying we are misplacing way too many short passes.

He's telling me that Alfred isn't playing well - thanks for that!

Finally he has given me some opposition instructions to use to limit the potency of a couple of their players.

Implementation

So, I have assessed all the available information to me. This is where hopefully things will get interesting. We are all smart enough to be able to make this basic tactic work and I'd be surprised if anyone on this forum doesn't know enough about football to improve the first half performance. I would like to get a discussion going on how you would alter the tactics.

As I started the thread, I may as well go first!

Tackling - I'm going to knock tackling down to 'easy' for the players who are committing fouls.

Crossing - On the basis that we don't appear to be having much luck with this, I'm going to change the crossing settings for my full backs and wingers. They are both currently set to often, so I shall knock them down to mixed for now.

Passing - The hardest to rectify I'd imagine. From my assistant's feedback, it looks like we're playing too short a passing game for the players at my disposal. I'm going to change all the players with short passing to the lower end of mixed to see if this improves things.

Connecting with the strikers/wingers - I need to bring these players more into the game. I shall set focus passing to 'down both flanks' to get Kottman more involved. For Saroa, I am going to knock his mentality a couple of notches down to get him closer to the midfield. To compliment this, I'll set his forward runs to rarely and ask him to hold up the ball as he is strong (15). This should hopefully see him link the attacking midfield moves to the front two. Just to be on the safe side. I'm going to drop Alfred's mentality one notch to hopefully bring him further into the game.

Opposition Instructions - As per my ass man's recommendations, I am going to close down Kukell and Rochat.

Please do let me know what you think about these decisions and whether you would have done the same or something different.

Here are some tactical screenshots so you see exactly how things are set up by the default tactic:

Team Instructions

GK

FB

DC

MCd

MCa

Wingers

ST

I'm also more than happy to upload screenshots of the players themselves if that would give further insight. I'm a strong believer that this game can be manageable without an in depth knowledge of the match engine or overly complicated systems. With a bit of a luck, this will become the forum's 'baby' so to speak, and we will all learn enough from it so that each casual player of the game can enjoy the challenge and know how to make tactics themselves based on in-game information and common sense.

I appreciate this is a long read so thanks to all who've managed it!

Forum open

[saab693]

I'll update this as I have now played the second half, which we subsequently won 2-0.

Full Time Match Stats

So, our possession has improved slightly, but still lower than I would like. We have created 3 chances to the one we made in the first half and our crosses completed stat has improved too. There was only one foul compared to the 8 in the first half and no yellow cards.

So improvement generally, but it looks like we still need to work on the possession side of our game.

Full Time Action Zones

We are now competing evenly in all three zones of the pitch which is a good sign. Looker a little further into it, we could do controlling more of the play in the middle third. This may explain our poor possession stats overall.

Full Time Player Stats

Good to see that Kottmann was made MoM - looks like focussing the passing down the flanks helped there.

Pass completion ratios are not ideal. I'd really expect Cicoria and Guarda to be completing the vast majority of their passes given they play in the centre of the park - there should be plenty of options open to them.

Assistant Feedback Second Half

So we are still misplacing too many short passes despite the change in players settings to low end of mixed. It looks like we are going to have to play a direct style of football to avoid these errors and see if that improves things.

I am also told that we are missing crucial interceptions. Looking back at the player stats screen, it looks like it is only the back 4 that is making any interceptions really. This is worrying as it pretty much means the opposition are passing the ball around freely until they get into the final third. This could also explain why they have had the lion's share of possession.

Implementation

Poor passing/possession - I'm going to try a direct style of passing to see if this will improve things. Otherwise, I'm tempted to stick with a low-mixed style but slow the tempo down to see if the team will take their time to connect the passes better.

Too few interceptions - Well this must be linked to closing down surely? I'm going to increase closing down to 'whole pitch' for my midfield and strikers to see if this will increase the number of interceptions and hopefully stop opposing teams dictating possession.

Aside from this, it looks like the Ass Man has no further comments on the tactic which is good. Hopefully we can continue to step in the right direction

[HELP ME WITH FM PLS]

When they say "Our passes are not connecting at all, no matter what the distance" i have no idea what to do

usually I just set it to shorter passes but im not sure thats the right instructions

[saab693]

When they say "Our passes are not connecting at all, no matter what the distance" i have no idea what to do

usually I just set it to shorter passes but im not sure thats the right instructions

it will be interesting to see if i get that message for playing a more direct game. I'd def look at changing tempo in those circumstances mate. If you think about, if you have tried all types of passing and things are not improving, then common sense says it is something beyond the passing style itself. I'd try altering tempo and failing that, have a look at individual players mentalities/forward runs to see if there are gaps which are too big to allow for the type of passing you want your team to play.

Thanks for the input though. The whole point of this is that it's going to have to be a trial and error process to try and develop tactics and that makes sense to me