Playing wide ends always me getting smashed ***FM2013***

[SpartanUTD]

After playing for 24 seasons, in 7 different Countries and managing 12 clubs, if I play wide (no matter what the pitch dimensions are), it means 1,000% defeat for my team and 90% that I'll have conceded 2 goals in the first 10 minutes.

I was smashing it during summer friendlies (see screenshot below), playing rigid/standard and narrow; up until I decided to play push-up/wide/exploit middle against Stuttgart away (narrow pitch 101mx65m) and in the first 13 minutes, they were winning 4-0 :mad::eek:

One thing I've learned, is playing control tactics and try to go narrow, won't work. So, I am trying to go control & wide, I'll usually score 1-2 goals in the best case scenario but I'll concede 3 or more.

So, my questions are:

1. How can I play wide, without exposing the defense so badly? (e.g. should I keep my MCs more defensively?)

2. Playing friendlies against good teams, is giving us loads of information about how the team performs?

Friendlies list:

[herne79]

Width is an in possession shout, so when defending your team automatically revert to a compact shape. Adding width may make your players start from a position slightly further apart when transitioning to defence, but that doesn't take long and once defending you'll be compact.

You'd need to post your detailed tactical set up really.

[SpartanUTD]

Width is an in possession shout

I am not sure if I understand that bit, as I never knew how to use shouts. I only use match instructions.

My tactics details are in this thread

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/461001-Good-attack-bad-defence-or-average-defence-but-cannot-score-(

[herne79]

Read "Shout" as "Team Instruction", and according to that other thread you are just playing with normal width and Standard strategy (4231).

And you've already been given advice why your 4231 formation may be leaking goals, and it's nothing to do with width?

[Svenc]

What herne said is that the width you encourage, they try to follow that when in possession, when your team has the ball when you attack. When you lose the ball and your opponents have it, defending players play more narrow by default, there is no instruction as such for that. The wider you play, the slightly longer it takes when you lose the ball / start defending visibly for the players to get narrow again, is all. So as a short answer: No playing wider plus push up plus exploit the middle does NOT in itself cause to concede lots of goals.

It may make the issues you previously had (if they are still there) to be more pronounced. For instance, exploits the middle makes central players not on defend duty to push more up when on attack, which may put more pressure on your other of the two CMs, as previously you said the two of them where often dragged all over already. Additionally push up higher may see an increase in through balls due to your central midfielders not being able to put pressure / mark everyone, as was previously also the case (they never got much help from the players in front of them).

So, my questions are:

1. How can I play wide, without exposing the defense so badly? (e.g. should I keep my MCs more defensively?)

2. Playing friendlies against good teams, is giving us loads of information about how the team performs?

1. Is it because playing wide or because of what was said previously in the thread? I.e. your AML/AMR/AMC not defending very much, not getting back to defend as in your screenshot?

2. You may check if your team plays the way you like. However the results/scorelines don't mean overly much, the AI Manager may not field his best eleven, and in particular in the 2nd half, make a dozen of substitutions. Plus player's motivation can be affected due to it being "just friendlies". I once won away at Bayern in early pre-season as a 2nd league club, as like almost their entire squad was still on holiday after a World Cup. Didn't cause us to smash it up in the Champions league the following season. :-)

Additionally nobody knows if your CM's might be too attacking as long as you make manually slider tweaks. In particular: mentality and runs from deep. Don't touch those if you have issues! Runs from deep dictates how commited a player is to making forward runs when you attack from his position. A defend duty players has it set to "never", and thus never makes such. Mentality can be a reason on some earlier versions such as FM 2013 that all of your advanced players don't help much with defending as well, which was happening on your previous screenshots (manually tweaking it for each player).

Speaking about manual tweaks made to sliders, it is important to understand that if you do such, using team instructions and shouts can become meaningless. For instance, you said you encouraged to push up, but manually set the defensive line yourself according to your shots. You encouraged to play wider, but had set the width manually yourself. If you still do, much of the effect of those instructions is moot. You would have pretty much played as wide as you played in all the matches before in terms of player's positioning. Again, don't touch these if you have issues.

Additionally, if you tweak a player's sliders, his role description can become meaningless as well. In hindsight threads such as these may highlight that it was to much benefit of the game that ever since FM 2014 or 2015 there are no sliders to tweak anymore. Not only for the sake of arguments. But because you could literally make a team act like muppets without knowing why. Current versions still leave plenty of room for bad management. But perhaps realistically none of the options will cause a team to behave as if they'd never kicked a ball before.

[SpartanUTD]

...Speaking about manual tweaks made to sliders, it is important to understand that if you do such, using team instructions and shouts can become meaningless. For instance, you said you encouraged to push up, but manually set the defensive line yourself according to your shots. You encouraged to play wider, but had set the width manually yourself. If you still do, much of the effect of those instructions is moot. You would have pretty much played as wide as you played in all the matches before in terms of player's positioning. Again, don't touch these if you have issues.

Additionally, if you tweak a player's sliders, his role description can become meaningless as well. In hindsight threads such as these may highlight that it was to much benefit of the game that ever since FM 2014 or 2015 there are no sliders to tweak anymore. Not only for the sake of arguments. But because you could literally make a team act like muppets without knowing why. Current versions still leave plenty of room for bad management. But perhaps realistically none of the options will cause a team to behave as if they'd never kicked a ball before.

I need to apologise first, I have actually made a few amendments since my last inquiry, just gave you an old link by mistake

So, Svenc thanks again for making clear the match instructions not affecting team instructions, because I was not 100% sure.

Do you use shouts at all, or just manually tweak the team instructions and let the game play?

I have left all the mentality bars untouched and things did improve a lot. Morale was quite low last season though, I gave the players plenty of 2 weeks fines too but in friendlies, defense seems to be my weapon for the new season.

The 4 goals conceded in the first 13 minutes must have happened because of two reasons:

1. Push up and play wide is indeed, defense-risky and

2. My DLP (MCR) was set to "run from deep" sometimes, so I guess that the area in front of my CBs was exposed.

Here are 2 pics from the 1st goal of the 4 conceded in that horror friendly (the rest was scored in a similar manner):

Before the through pass

Before he scores