Creating chances

[neushoorn70]

Despite having 55-60% possession every game game against almost any team, my team seem to create a very small amount of chances while the opponent creates a lot them, sometimes 15-20 shot a game when I have like 5. I play a flat 4-4-2 with a cover and stopper centre-back, two FB's on support in defence, my midfield consists of 2 wingers (attack) a BBM, and and advanced playmaker in attack is deep-lying forward(support) and a poacher. I was wondering if any1 could give me some help on how to create more chances and make the opponents create less.

If you want some screenshots or anything just ask me.

Thanks in advance.

[jim morrow]

Beste Neushoorn70, misschien can you put a screenshot of your tactic ? with screenshot of your team instruction. Also What is the mentality instructions of your 11 players from GK to Strikers ?

Do you have assistant manager advices always the same during your match ?

[neushoorn70]

Sorry I just closed the game, I'll post some screenshots tomorrow. What exactly do you mean with assistent advices?

[Tom14]

Do you play a possession game? I used to have this problem where my players were preferring to keep the ball and play a simple pass rather than try to get someone in a goalscoring position.

[Marsupian]

The reason your opponent can so easily create chances is probably because both of your central midfielders tend to get forward a lot. I would personally want one of my midfielders to guard the area in front of the defense so I would switch the more defensive midfielder to a deep lying playmaker and play the more attacking midfielder as box to box or advanced playmaker. You should also think about how you set up your defensive line and closing down. Usually you want to either sit deep and stand off opponents (as you would if you play with a counter strategy for example) or you want to play a high line with more pressing (as you would with a control or attack strategy).

I can't really tell you how to create more chances easily as a lot depends on how your opponents are playing. One thing that might help a bit is changing your deep lying forward to an attack role, I personally find he will still come deep but will also get at the end of moves more often. The big thing to look at is probably your tempo, time wasting and mentality. You say you have a lot of possession so I presume you play with quite a bit of time wasting and low tempo. Playing with less time wasting and a higher tempo can help a lot in creating chances as it allows you to catch the opponents defense out of position on the break instead of wasting time and allowing them to set up. This will however lead to less possession as your players will try to move the ball forward faster which can lead to a lot of missed passes. Increasing the teams mentality will have a similar effect but more global. It will make your players want to be more aggressive in general both when going forward and when defending.

Another good option is to keep the tempo relatively low but decrease time wasting, this will give your players more time on the ball instead of forcing them to make a quick decision but it gives them more incentive to move the ball to a more attacking position and discourages back or side passes. This can allow you to move the ball forward relatively quickly while not putting too much strain on your players individual ability. It will still lead to less possession tho.

Creative freedom is another area you might want to look at. It encourages your players to look for more spectacular options and is a great tool to encourage the creation of chances. It also gives your players more freedom to play the game how they like to play it. Again increasing this can and probably will lead to less possession.

I am personally having a lot of success with a counter attacking strategy with the only creative freedom and marking changed (more freedom and zonal marking). It gives the opponent space and encourages them to move out of position after which they are vulnerable on the counter. When there is no counter attack possible the team plays a relatively slow build up game and relies on the higher creative freedom and good movement to create chances. Maybe it's something to try out.

Veel succes in ieder geval!

btw. Increasing passing length will have a similar result as increasing tempo or decreasing time wasting, the ball gets forward faster but you will have less possession. Also changing your match preparation focus area to "attacking movement" should help a bit.

[jim morrow]

As Marsupian explained, there are lot of reasons and solutions to your trouble. So we need more informations about your tactic and team to help you.

About match, as you know FM is a computer game based on statistics to rule the Match Engine, so to help us, they put some advices during the match to warn us about statistics of your player and opponent.

If you want to react to the match event(that's it the goal of watching FM match), you need to take care of this advices. They can be positive or negative. Negative, you need to find a solution to try to resolve it, each advice has a possible solution you will discover with experience. Positive, you can continue on this way to beat your opponent.

So it's interesting to know to help you if same advices is showing always during your matches, perhaps your trouble can be resolve thru this way. Sometimes, advice show us a trouble in your team and other sentence talk about a specific player and so the trouble come from this player.

Second things to watch during match, it's action zones, where you can see who from you or your opponent dominates the defense, midfield and attack zone. It's important to have possession in midfield (except if you play counter-attack) and so if you see that you are dominated in midfield, you need to resolve this trouble to play better. Same in defense or attack, you need to be always dominating in this part. So it's a good way to know if you are good in the match or not, and which zone to change things to resolve this.

(some remarks about this : it will be easier to have possession in attack zone cause attacking players build their attack so will have normally more the ball than the defense. Tactics and number of players in a specific zone influence also the possession cause having a midfield of 5 players against a 3 players midfield, it's easy to understand that the 5 midfield will have more possibilities of passes and possession. Some strategies also need a lot of possession in the midfield, control for example, and counter-attack need a domination by your opponent to be able to counter it. So with this zone panel, you can see if your possession is compatible with your strategy).

[brad71]

i also seem to in a way have this problem i can create chances but so does the other team.reading marsupians explanation i think i also could do with dropping one of the centre mids back, at moment i play with 2 ball winning mids what do i need to alter to make one sit back more player mentality or creative freedom or both.or something else.

[jim morrow]

for Ball winning, you can put defend, support or attack. what is your actual configuration ? perhaps a MD will be better ? do you test ?

[ham_aka_stam]

How much of your possession is at the back? If you're playing a Standard mentality or lower, your defence are likely just passing the ball amongst themselves. If you're telling them to pass short, and they have a lowish mentality, they won't be wont to pass forwards very much. And if your CMs aren't receiving the ball, there's bound to be problems creating chances.

I'd suggest increasing mentality as a first step, but that's assuming I've diagnosed the problem correctly. Will need more stats to confirm.

Looking at your MF roles, try dropping both or one of the wingers to support and make one of the CMs a deeplying playmaker. DLP and B2B would work well.

[mirto1985]

Possession alone doesn't mean much really. Having 60% possession does not mean your team is actually playing well. You'll have to analyze your problem more closely (look through the analysis tab after a match for example) to see where that possession is, where your players are moving to while attacking and why they aren't dropping the ball more into the oppositions box. "I have high possession but I don't score" isn't really saying much.

[neushoorn70]

I want to thank every1 here for the help, my team is playing much better now, I've won the last 7 games in a row, my defence is a lot more solid now and I'm scoring more as well, I guess the change from BBM to DLP had a big impact, I also now play counter-attacking football in away games because there we were much worse than at home, but at home I still try to dominate the game and have more possession since that seemed to work before and it's working now as well.

Thanks everybody

[ham_aka_stam]

Good to hear it.

One final point, don't automatically play counter attacking away and domination at home. Play counter attacking when you think it will suit the game. By that, play it against teams who like to play a high line, have slow defenders, or who like to dominate and are better than you at it. Then go for the domination tactic when you're confident you can do it and win.

For example, I play as Manchester United. This season I've been weak player-wise, yet I still won the Champions League by knowing which games suited what style of play. I was confident I would beat Real Madrid, but concerned that they can always score goals, so I risked my possession based-game, with the intent on switching to a more reserved style if the game changed or it wasn't working. I was delighted when I went 1-0 up away from home - changing the game, I now knew they'd attack me non-stop and probably dominate me. I instantly switched to my counter-attacking absorption game and came away from the Bernabeu with a 4-2 win. However for the home leg, because of my advantage, I went with my counter attack from the start, allowing them all the possession they wanted in 2/3s of the pitch, parking the bus in my 1/3. I came away with a 1-0 win and 5-2 in aggregate, by starting the games with the opposite style you'd expect, and the opposite to what would have happened if you had a set style for home and away games.