'You're not the boss of me TC' - a method for those having difficulty adjusting to FM13

[lloydy13]

Problem

Please note (especially the mods) this post is not an 'I can't play the way I want to' whinge - I have already done that in another thread and got it out of my system. This post is about developing a way of playing to cope with the hand FM has dealt us this year. I (and a few others on here it seems - I don't think I am on my own here) have a fundamental issue with FM13 in that it seems to want to force you to play using the shout system. I think the shouts are fantastic and a great addition to the game but I can't cope with how you can't customise your tactic AND use the shouts effectively - perhaps in 14 we will have a system where we can choose to edit our tactics without rendering the shouts ineffective but for now this is what we have to work with. I have tested and experimented extensively over the past few days now that I am on holidays and seem to have settled on a method of playing that allows me to customise my tactic and have some level of success.

Background

i am a lifelong Leeds fan and will always use them as my primary FM save. So the squad and budget that I have to work with is depressingly realistic ie middle of the pack at best and no money. If I scrape into the playoffs I will be ecstatic. This isn't the Team Guide forum so suffice to say that I flogged off some of the flotsam and jetsam from the squad and cobbled together enough for an RB, CMa, DC and a WI on loan. The key strengths of the side are now - a big physical presence up front who can finish (Becchio), a sturdy DM (Austin), a CMa who is pretty quick and can dribble, some young & athletic fullbacks (White, Byram and new RB) and a squad with a overall high stamina and workrate. We lack creativity and pace in the final third and GK is a bit of a weakness.

My Tactical Method

I use the TC to create the basic setup and then I tinker heavily with both team and individual instructions. I set up 5 tactics. They all have the same 41221 (451 in the TC) setup but have differences in approach, instruction and roles. There is not much point I don't think doing screen shots as the aim of this post is to outline my approach to the tactics in FM - not to describe the specifics of a particular tactic (hopefully the names give a bit of an idea). The first three are the ones I prepare and the other two are for special circumstances........

1. Napoli - firstly I know that Napoli don't play a 451 before anyone jumps on me! This is my quick counter tactic - i hold the AML/AMR forward and give them limited responsibilities so they are positioned to be outlets, DLF to hold up the quick pass out of defence etc

2. Drogba - this one use Becchio as a bit of a battering ram to occupy opposing defenders and allow the other players to utilise the space behind (just like Drogba did in the mourinho chelsea setup). I slow the tempo here and to allow the fullbacks to get involved as well

3. Barca - like the name suggest, a pale and poor imitation of the barca setup with high pressing (taking advantage of the stamina and workrate of the squad) and short passing. My team generally isn't good enough to play this for 90 min but find for 10 or 15 min of a game can be effective especially against a 442 as the short passing of the midfield 3 can free up my pacey, dribbling MCa against the opposition's midfield 2.

4. Hold the lead - what it says on the tin

5. Desparation - end of the game need a goal put it in the mixer overload tactic

Game Prep

Now, each of the first 3 tactics are not one dimensional approaches that I never touch. On the contrary - I edit them week to week based on the opponent. All 3 can be quite attacking or quite defensive depending on the circumstance eg the Napoli tactic can be really defensive if I sit deep and stand off etc or it can be quite attacking if I look to win the ball further up the pitch and quickly convert opposition turnovers into chances for us. i will give an example of how I approach each game and prepare my team and tactics.......

10th game of the season in my last save of experimenting with this I had Boro away. They were performing well in the league and frankly have a better side than I do. This is what I did......

1. had a look at stats from their last couple of games as well as their team report. They keep the ball well (55% possession) and favoured a 442.

2. There is no way I could hope to compete with them in terms of passing so the Barca tactic is out. Their DC's are pretty good in the air so I ruled out the Drogba tactic as a starting one and settled on a version of the Napoli as my starting tactic - especially after a check of their FB's heatmap showed that they pushed up fairly high - I think I can get in behind.

3. Now given that I am away and have an inferior technical side I am quite happy for them to have the ball in non-dangerous areas so I set my Napoli tactic with a deep defensive line and reduced closing down across the board. I turned my AML's closing down to 0 as I want him to just find spaces when they have the ball and be prepared to counter. I turned up tackling for my Dm & FB's - aim to win the ball from their midfielders once they get a bit further forward and create the turnovers needed to counter.

4. OK so starting tactic is ready to go and set up with 3 days to go. But I need to be prepared for things to not go to plan. So I think through the possibilities that are likely given my opponent and my planned approach. If they score and I need to chase the game I will need a plan B so I set up my Drogba tactic to be pretty attacking - pushing FB's into things, lots of crosses and pushed MCa forward so he is close enough to Becchio to get his knock downs and run at defenders. I modified my Barca tactic to be quite defensive with the aim of keeping the ball and pressuring their creative players if we go ahead and they are madly chasing the game.

During the game

The first 20 min panned out roughly as I had planned with them having possession (53%) but creating very little - just a couple of long range attempts. Things changed though - a dodgey clearance from Paddy Kenny, a ball out to the right wing, he gets by aidy white to the byline, drills a cross and a tap in for Scott McDonald 0-1. I am now left with the choice of persisting with my starting strategy which was working OK although not creating many chances (I had one decent one with their GK saving a Becchio header) or switching to the Drogba strategy. I stuck with the original plan - at least for the next little while. The game meanders for the next 25 with nothing really of note - couple of longshots for both but thats its. HT - time to change it up. I bring on the more attacking of my RB's and switch to the Drogba strategy and give an encouraging team talk (which most of them ignored!). Plan works to perfection - 55min. DM chips forward to Becchio who heads it wide to Diouf who dribbles and cuts it back to the D for my MCa who takes a touch, jinks past a defender and lasers one into the bottom corner 1-1. Fearing a Boro backlash I switch to the defensive Barca tactic and try to just kill the game for 10 min. I take the slightly gutless approach after this and go back to my Napoli tactic. My guys create a great chance on a counter down the left which results in a backpost cross for Diouf who blazes over, while a comedy backpass from David Norris gifts them a chance which Emnes generously drags wide and it ends up 1-1. A result which I will happily take after going behind against a better side.

Conclusion

Have I magically turned Leeds into world beaters with my tactical genius? NO but on my experiemental save I was 5th going into the january window and quite happy with the level of control I had over my tactics and the way my team played. Really the point of this long winded post was to offer an alternative to the FM'ers out there who like me have gotten used to micro-managing their tactics Benitez style and just can't bring themselves to rely on the TC. There is a way (if quite labour-intensive) to do it our way on FM13.

I have just started my 'real' Leeds save now after all of this experimenting and will post my progress if there is enough (any) interest!

[kazm]

Pretty interesting read. Post some more matches with pics and people will get interested i think.

[lloydy13]

thanks kazm - am working through the preseason right now and will post some descriptions & screens of some games once I get to the season.

I should also note that what I presented above is by no means an original or radical approach - it is basically what everyone did pre-TC (except those that favoured ME busting tactics) and would resemble what anyone who still uses the Classic tactics mode does - I just wanted to put it out there as an alternative for those who (like me) had felt that they had hit the wall with the TC/Shout system.

[lloydy13]

I will have a go at trying to turn what I do into screens and descriptions - again I am wary of just gibbering on here so please mods or whoever let me know if you think I am just carrying on and cluttering up the forum and I will stop Anyway here is my first league game in my 'real' leeds save.........

Leeds vs Palace

Pre Game Prep

Ok the League Cup game was a bit of a disaster - my star DM Austin injured along with Diouf and we got slack (or I did - stayed attacking too long) and paid for it with a late equaliser, got through on pens but have a pretty tired group going into this first game which is Palace at home. Now, I am obviously concerned about Zaha for them and his explosive pace and dribbling (especially with the current state of the ME favouring this sort of player). Checking the team report they will likely play a 4231 with DM's and Zaha on the right. Their defence is not particularly strong in the air and their right back position looks like it can be got at, so I settle on the Drogba tactic as my starting setup. I free up the AML Luque from much in the way of defensive responsibilities (closing down zero) as I want him free to attack, run at the RB and cross for Becchio. I have gone with 2 wingers rather than an IF because I really want to focus on getting balls into the box. I will play direct but not too attacking (standard for Dline, width) and keep my FB's on support and my DM as an anchor man to handle the Zaha threat. I will use OI's to force him inside and hope that a few good solid kicks from Michael Brown will discourage him. I am also much happier having him shoot with his left foot than I am getting to the byline and crossing with his right. here is my setup (ignore the conditions I took this screen after the match)

There are significant alterations to individual instructions but seems uneccessary to post 11 more images - I think you can probably gather from my descriptions what they might be. I have the napoli (counter) and barca (possession) tactics set up if plan a fails.

During the Match

Things go OK for most of the first half. They have slightly more possession as you can see from the stats below. My tactical aims are right there - winning most of the headers, completing a good number of crosses and while we are slightly behind in possession I can live with that considering how many long balls my team is playing. Key points from watching the match......

- my aim to attack down the left wing have been very effective, both of the half chances I created were Luque crosses for becchio headers, one of which hit the bar

- Zaha had a couple of good runs but as hoped was pushed inside resulting in quite harmless long range shots

- I wish there was an option to fine my midfielders for launching speculative long shots because they were all guilty of this despite having longshots on rarely for everyone

Now overall I was quite happy with how the first half went in general play. Their goal was actually a product of my tactical plan - Zaha went on a run was forced inside and into a congestion of players on the edge of the area. He tried a shot - straight into my DC but deflected to Goodwillie who was in the area minding his own business. He gratefully slotted home. Not really much we can do about that one - I felt we edged the first half but thats football I guess.

Here are the halftime stats......

here is the lead up to the Palace goal - as you can see my LB has turned him inside where there is help and it looks at this stage to be well under control. Goodwillie is the furthest guy forward and as the play unfolds Zaha shoots into the left DC and it deflects to the striker who is making a run between my 2 DC's

This is my best chance of the half - again all going to plan with Luque my winger who is pretty good technically making space and crossing for Becchio. As the play unfolds he beats those defenders to Luque's drilled cross and heads onto the bar. The thing I noticed from this more than anything was how deep my two midfielders are - they need to be much further forward (or at least one of them does) as the defensive header is likely to squirt out to the D and they are not in a position to follow up. I need to fix this for the second half.....

Adjustments

Okay so based off what I have seen + their goal just before half time I need to change a couple of things but I don't need to scrap the overall strategy. I am going to stay with my Drogba setup and just tinker. pushing the MCa a bit more attacking and forward runs often and pushing the team sliders a little wider and d-line up a bit - we need to compress the space and win the ball back more often. I am also going to dispense with any pretense of building from the back and get GK paddy Kenny to aim long for Becchio.

We pushed and pushed in the second half with Becchio hitting the bar AGAIN from an almost identical play to9 the first half. At about 65 minutes I start to throw caution to the wind and take the shackles off my FB's and get them to just attack - very dangerous approach given the pace Palace possess but pays off with my left back Aidy white getting to the byline with a great run, cutting back to my MCa on the penalty spot who shoots straight at the keeper - my only clear cut chance of the game. Last 10 go to my Desparation tactic and just get the ball into the mixer but no dice and in the end have to live with a 0-1 defeat.

Final Stats

Final stats reflect a fairly even game with us just perhaps shading it. I came away pretty content that I had mostly made the right tactical choices on the day, given my team a good chance to win and it just didn't quite happen.

Hopefully this illustrates pretty well how I play the game and how I operate outside of the TC and Shouts.

Having said that all that though I am always keen to learn so if anyone has any suggestions as to what I could have done differently please let me have it. Also if I am boring everyone senseless let me know that too!

[soldierblue123]

You seem to have found a method of playing for yourself. You have also added 5 players to your first team and have them playing your way. So well done and it will add to your enjoyment of the game. All you have said thus far is really interesting and I cans ee mnay taking up your style of play.

I too support Leeds and in the first season I don't buy anyone (Bates doesn't give me a war chest ). Although, I do loan one or two.

I usually play 4-4-2 and the good thing about that squad - despite its poor players - is that many players can play in multiple positions. Therefore if anyone is injured there is a player of almost equal ability to take his place. Since the game came out I must have started 20 new leeds saves and only once have I failed to finish first in the league. That was second to a rampant Wolves team.

As you know LUFC's squad is middle of the road and the problem with that is you can easily get run over. But using your method you have achieved more than your promise to the board which is top half. I am really looking forward to your progress. So yes please do keep posting and giving the community fresh ideas on how to play the game.

Cheers MOT

[Althaz]

Problem

Please note (especially the mods) this post is not an 'I can't play the way I want to' whinge - I have already done that in another thread and got it out of my system. This post is about developing a way of playing to cope with the hand FM has dealt us this year. I (and a few others on here it seems - I don't think I am on my own here) have a fundamental issue with FM13 in that it seems to want to force you to play using the shout system. I think the shouts are fantastic and a great addition to the game but I can't cope with how you can't customise your tactic AND use the shouts effectively - perhaps in 14 we will have a system where we can choose to edit our tactics without rendering the shouts ineffective but for now this is what we have to work with. I have tested and experimented extensively over the past few days now that I am on holidays and seem to have settled on a method of playing that allows me to customise my tactic and have some level of success.

The shouts are HOW you customize your tactic further and offer plenty of control (I don't believe there are any footballing ideas that the sliders can translate to the game that the TC and shouts cannot). The shouts are poorly names, IMO - they aren't just for using during a match, but you can have a set of them that you always use (I have play out of defence, push-up higher and work ball into box going for every match, with other shouts depending on what I'm seeing in the match).

[lloydy13]

You seem to have found a method of playing for yourself. You have also added 5 players to your first team and have them playing your way. So well done and it will add to your enjoyment of the game. All you have said thus far is really interesting and I cans ee mnay taking up your style of play.

I too support Leeds and in the first season I don't buy anyone (Bates doesn't give me a war chest ). Although, I do loan one or two.

I usually play 4-4-2 and the good thing about that squad - despite its poor players - is that many players can play in multiple positions. Therefore if anyone is injured there is a player of almost equal ability to take his place. Since the game came out I must have started 20 new leeds saves and only once have I failed to finish first in the league. That was second to a rampant Wolves team.

As you know LUFC's squad is middle of the road and the problem with that is you can easily get run over. But using your method you have achieved more than your promise to the board which is top half. I am really looking forward to your progress. So yes please do keep posting and giving the community fresh ideas on how to play the game.

Cheers MOT

thanks mate for the kind words. have to say I am very impressed with you being able to win the league with the existing leeds squad. I certainly had no Bates war chest either - as I said in my first post I bought a RB (free), DC (170K) & MCa (40K). Unfortunately early in the season McCormack was sold (3M offer from Norwich - who else! and board jumped in and accepted on my behalf) and Diouf suffered a 6 month injury so the two wingers were panic buys using the huge 500K that Ken gave me from the mccormack money. not exactly what I had in mind! MOT

[lloydy13]

The shouts are HOW you customize your tactic further and offer plenty of control (I don't believe there are any footballing ideas that the sliders can translate to the game that the TC and shouts cannot). The shouts are poorly names, IMO - they aren't just for using during a match, but you can have a set of them that you always use (I have play out of defence, push-up higher and work ball into box going for every match, with other shouts depending on what I'm seeing in the match).

I can see where you are coming from here and agree that you can create just about every possible team approach using the TC + Shouts. Its the individual instructions that cause the proble for me. I will give you an example of what I am talking about......

My anchor man - I want him to sit deep and basically never enter the attacking third. The TC anchor man settings achieve this. But my DM who I want to play there can pass the ball pretty well so I want to give him the ability to occassionally launch counter starting through ball passes. There is no real way for me to do this - to get those passing settings I would have to change him to DM (S) which would mean he would charge forward at times or tell my WHOLE team to pass long and into space but I don't want my DC with passing 6 doing any such thing.

Do you see what I mean when I say I can't customise my tactics the way I want to and still maintain the ability to use shouts.

[wwfan]

I can see where you are coming from here and agree that you can create just about every possible team approach using the TC + Shouts. Its the individual instructions that cause the proble for me. I will give you an example of what I am talking about......

My anchor man - I want him to sit deep and basically never enter the attacking third. The TC anchor man settings achieve this. But my DM who I want to play there can pass the ball pretty well so I want to give him the ability to occassionally launch counter starting through ball passes. There is no real way for me to do this - to get those passing settings I would have to change him to DM (S) which would mean he would charge forward at times or tell my WHOLE team to pass long and into space but I don't want my DC with passing 6 doing any such thing.

Do you see what I mean when I say I can't customise my tactics the way I want to and still maintain the ability to use shouts.

Umm.....

DLP/D or DM/D perhaps?

[lloydy13]

Umm.....

DLP/D or DM/D perhaps?

I agree that those would both give me the passing settings that I am after but it significantly changes the mentality, closing down, creative freedom and tackling as well which is my main point (the DM is just an example) - customising your tactics (basically using Classic mode to create tactics) rules out using shouts. its ok i'm not criticisng the game or anyone who plays it that way - just illustrating how I play the game to get around this problem for me.

[wwfan]

They aren't altered significantly. Just a little bit.

Not criticising how you are playing, but just wondering the level to which you think a two notch shift in creative freedom, for example, will significantly alter how the team plays?

[Althaz]

I can see where you are coming from here and agree that you can create just about every possible team approach using the TC + Shouts. Its the individual instructions that cause the proble for me. I will give you an example of what I am talking about......

My anchor man - I want him to sit deep and basically never enter the attacking third. The TC anchor man settings achieve this. But my DM who I want to play there can pass the ball pretty well so I want to give him the ability to occassionally launch counter starting through ball passes. There is no real way for me to do this - to get those passing settings I would have to change him to DM (S) which would mean he would charge forward at times or tell my WHOLE team to pass long and into space but I don't want my DC with passing 6 doing any such thing.

Do you see what I mean when I say I can't customise my tactics the way I want to and still maintain the ability to use shouts.

This sounds identical to a DLP-D in the DM slot... DLP-D will sit in front of the defence and break up attacks and will pass the ball out from the back. He will sit in the same spot as the anchor man but will also attempt to dictate the play from deep. Most of the movement of the player will be VERY similar to an Anchor Man-D but with a wider range of passing, eg: exactly what you want . With a longer range of passing of course he'll need a little bit more creative freedom to make use of it. If you watch the two roles over the course of a game you'll see there's effectively no difference between an anchor-man D and a DLP-D except the passing. DM is a totally different sort of player though, more of a ball-winner.

Are there any other things you need help translating to the TC? I"m not trying to sound condescending, but I would be willing to lay down a signifigant outlay of cash down in a wager that there's nothing you can come up with that can't be replicated in the TC that can be with the sliders (in terms of footballing ideas, there's probably weird broken things you can do).

[lloydy13]

real life intrudes at the moment and I have to do a bunch of stuff for work so I will do a quick example now and come back in a couple of days with screens and more details if people need them.

My Leeds team lacks in creativity - the only player who has a bit of flair/creativity is Diouf. His best spot is AMR. So I play him there either as a winger or AP depending on what I am trying to achieve with my tactic. One of the only strengths my squad has is work rate and stamina so I often press more. The exception to this strength is diouf - he has low values for stamina, fitness and workrate. If I get him to press in line with everyone else he is exhausted by 60 min and very likely to hack someone down and get a red because of his high aggression. Also as the team's main creativity I don't want to give him too much responsibility defensively so he can be available and in space when we win the ball. So the team needs to press in most of my tactical setups - except for Diouf. This is not really possible in the TC (unless I'm missing something - again always happy to learn) unless I move him to AM slot and make him a Treq - which I don't want to do because its not his best spot so I manually alter his instructions to closing down zero, rarely for tackling and up his creative freedom (which is low for the rest of the squad). Without making these alterations and just relying on the TC/Shouts I feel like I am not getting the best out of my squad/player.

Again I feel I need to say that I am not having a go at the game, the TC or anyone who plays it that way - just trying to illustrate how I play it to achieve some level of success outside of the TC/Shout system.