Simple thinking will bring you success

[liam crane]

Hello all, first of all id just like to introduce myself, my name is Liam and i have been a fan of the FM series going back to the old CM days so thats a long time!! I like many others on this forum have struggled to get the best out of my teams and setting up tatics has really given me headaches for hours on end wanting to no why things are just not working out. But after a lot of hard thinking and having no luck what so ever i decided to start from scratch and try and keep things simple and to my suprise it does in fact work. You dont need to be some kind of crazy geek to work things out all you need is a fairly good footballing brain and a little bit of no how. I think the main problem people are having when setting up a new tatic is they play around to much with players mentality how much creative freedom shall i give my best players etc and all in all you end up with a very unbalanced side. Now we have a fab tool in the TATICS WIZARD its the best thing that has come for us FM fans, for me it is anyway cos i actually feel like im controlling my team now, im not moving sliders notch by notch trying to tweak little things.

My example of this, i started a game with my beloved chelsea side and decided on a 4-5-1 due to the lack of options i have upfront and also having a lot of talented midfielders, REMEMBER dont make a tatic to suit your needs you have to build from what you have, if you only have 1 good forward dont play 2 upfront with someone out of position because your teams performance really will suffer, like i said at the start simple thinking!! Anyway back to my tatic like i said its setup for 4-5-1 with a flat back 4 and 1 def mid, 2 cm of which 1 is a box to box on support and the other an advanced play maker on attack, then i have my to wingers on attack and my 1 complete forward on support so overall a very balanced team. Now you have your base in which to work from. All thats left to do now is to set up your strats and how you want to play game by game, there is no need to go and change every players individual settings as they will change as and when you change your strat plans, of course there are minor things you might want to change like a wingers wide play for instance, when playing an atacking strat your wingers are told to hug the touchline but if you want them to play slightly narrower just change there wide play to normal, just simple changes like that.

Now to the games themselves, imo the best way to get the most out of your team is to actually see what they are doing!! Through all my CM and FM years i like many just watch the text commentary and change things when i could be arsed, now the beauty of the match engine, im addicated to it and i watch the full game of every game now and i can see before my very eyes when things are going badly instead of just going by match stats, i would advise people to really watch a few games you will be amazed to see where your side is failing and you can change it with the click of a touchline shout, to me it makes me feel like a real manager. A good example i had im Chelsea playing at home to newly promoted Wolves, my assistant has already told me how he believes they will setup so they are rock bottom and im top, so straight away i think im going to attack them as they will park the bus, so i set my strat to attack and my passing to shorter as i wanna pass it around a bit more to draw them out, straight from kick off i set a touchline shout to my team to work the ball into the box, as im watching the match engine nice triangle passing and indeed wolves parked the bus but 10 mins in the full back gets dragged out my winger cuts in plays a cross bang 1-0, so i got the goal i want, changed my strat to standard and saw out the game easilly winning 3-0. The thing to remember is take everything game by game dont try using the same style all the time cos you like it you have to adapt to the suituation, if things dont work out simple tweaking no major changes. My last example after the wolves game i had Inter away different game all together from wolves, there is no way i wanna go attacking from the off so i set my team to control from the start and after watching the first 45 mins it was a bore draw but i was happy 0-0 at inter at half time, but from watching the game i could see they were exposed down the flanks with the narrow midfield so there was 20 mins to go i changed to attacking and shouted for my team to exploit the flanks and pass into space and bang i scored when they least expected it, changed my strat to counter and player narrower and saw out the game 1-0, the thought that i out master minded "The special one" was great.

So overall to conclude just keep things simple and watch the match engine to see where things are not working out, you will learn alot from it i did.

[Cleon]

Nicely put fella

[mikcheck]

I think that see the full game is the better way to understand the opponent and correct some things.

[liam crane]

Yea deffo mate i just master minded a fab 3-1 victory at the emirates!! My assisatnd told me they were missing alot of 1st team players such as RVP sagna gallas so my first intentions were to go there and try control the match and see how arsenal set up, straight away i could see there right full back was very weak compared to sagna so i set up to attack down my left wing where i have di maria and he tore him to shreads, 2 goals came from this, if i was not to have watched the match i never really would have known how bad this player was and would not have changed anything, if you can spot a weakness to have to exploit it!!