Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher

[Coyh]

I always play with a  poacher, i would be happier with either of the players you pick if they had better first touch and technique, and i would prefer him to be able to cross to a good degree as well. The way they play in game is nothing like lefty linekar did either. I have achieved what you said in my current save.

media gave us 5th, board wanted champions league qualification . We won the league Gianluca  Lapadula was top scorer and won the golden boot. Lucianno Vietto and Rodrygo are my current poachers  with Vietto bieing my god in the game i love the player. Bakambu was a good player as wll but he has taken the wages on offer in china. The tactic i have used is posted in the sharing forum.

 

 

 

A recent match were my poacher gets 2 https://www.dropbox.com/s/bd35yw4vtykm0i0/Villarreal v Real Madrid Poacher gets 2.pkm?dl=0 

 

Edited May 4, 2018 by Coyh

[JoOSTAR]

On 3-5-2018 at 18:23, moolochicken said:

I just have a go at this challenge as I have not set up any tactics for poacher since FM16 and it is a lot of fun. Here's a bit of sharing:

Club: West Ham

Final Ranking/Seasonal Expectation/Media Prediction: 1st/ qualify for euro cup/ 10th

Team Stats: Rank 1st with 94 points, 111 goals 40 conceded 94 points, 4 draw 4 loss

Poacher: Javier Hernandez

Poacher Stat: 33 Appearance 33 goals (3 penalties), 8 assist average rating 7.55, Top Scorer of the league.

Tactic: 4-3-2-1 Christmas Tree

Here are the thoughts I go for when setting up the tactic:

How to set up a Poacher?

A poacher only wait for chances closer to the goal, does not participate in defense and does not make dribbles. Therefore, the best way I could see to set up a Poacher is to set up a heavily attacking inclined tactic with enough balls being fed to the Poacher in dangerous position. It is not the most efficient way of winning games or playing football, but the poacher's impact is at its maximum.

Why 4-3-2-1 and the respective roles?

There could have been more strikers, but then the chances would be divided between the strikers. To maximize the Poacher's effect, I would play 1 striker.

Since advanced playmaker does not participate in defense, it can ensure they have good positions when attacks initiate, which in turn would feed more chances to the poacher. Since advanced playmaker has inherent ball magnet mechanism, the balls would not go directly to the poacher which is very important due to the fact that Poacher cannot make dribbles and picking up the ball down the field really hurt the poacher's positioning.

Carrilero is used to cover the flanks in defense. Deeplying playmaker has the deepest poistion that I can get from a CM, and I would not put him in the DM poistion since in CM it would push the 2 CAR wider during both attack and defense phase.

I need the crosses (low cross chosen in tactic) to create chaos and I tried out the Full Backs on both Attack and defense duty, and it turned out FB(A) are very noticeable in having better positions to cross whilst the drop in defense is acceptable.

Sweeper keeper is to compensate for the high defensive line.

Why this set of team instructions?

This set up is to compensate for the loss in pressing pressure for playing a Poacher. Therefore to acheive high pressing, Close Down Much More, Use Tighter Markings, Much Higher Defensive Line and Use Offside Trap are chosen. I am not a fan of high pressing but during tests in freindlies, this proves to be most successful based on observations:

- Much Higher Defensive Line actually gives more time than Higher/ Normal Defensive Line for the central defenders to chase back an opposition striker that had ran away

- Use Tighter Markings is neceesary since if it is dropped, too much space are given for opposition to shoot or cross, partly because of 3 front players sacrificed for attack quality

The remaining instruction are to craft out better chances for the Poacher. Attempts on dropping Play Much Wider, Pass Into Space and Work Ball Into Box are made, but without them the resualt are not as good.

Why Atttacking Mentality with Fluid?

Attacking Mentality is for the players to take risks in attempting an attack and this should craft out as much opportunities for the Poacher as possible. Fluid is a balance between Flexible and Very Fluid, whereas I do not want the striker to participate in defense but I also do not want the attacking midfielders to completely gives up pressing.

Advanced Playmakers

Before analysing the Poacher, it needed to be mentioned that the Poacher played well on the basis of the advanced playmakers playing well. If both of the advanced playmakers failed to perform, the Paocher usually would not perform as well. Here are some stats on these players:

Both Advanced Playmakers played very well during the season, and Lanzini has the most assists in the league. 

Both of them on the top of Chances Created and Key Passes charts of the league.

Poacher Analysis for Javier Hernandez:

56% on target ratio is just a little bit above average for non-AI tactic. Goal Conversion rate 18.4% (57/201) is above my expectation. However I don't see this as a success by sheer ability of the Poacher, it is just the whole tactic crafting out enough chances for the Poacher and he converted them at an average rate. If the tactic crafted out more chances than the opponenet then this whole machine just starts winning games.

83% passing rate hugely exceeds my expectation. For the position that a Poacher should be in I expect him to lose possession more often, the expected rate should be less than 75%. I think this is the benefit of having the whole team pushingup, including the full backs, to give the Poacher a lot of easy passing options. Since Poacher has the fewer risky passes option PI preselected, it can be gurantted that the Poacher will not lose possesion too often.

This is the goals scored location for the whole team (could not get a single player version):

AS expected, most goals are converted in the box with the Poacher's existence. After a bit of grouping Hernandez's goals, the goals usually comes in three ways:

Type 1/ Running on the back of the offside trap

Type 2/ Receiving a pass in the box and convert it

Type 3/ Converting a cross

Ending Words

After finishing this challenge, my understanding was that Poacher takes dedicated effort to run in a tactic, because of its small play area, minimal defensive and pressing effort, and its lack of creativity. Comparing to the efficiency of other tactics that I have set up, Poacher is not an effective way of winning football matches, but it certainly is a fun way to get the most out of a star player.

P.S. I really think that this challenge is a very good way to gather a lot of  information from others on a specific topic in one go. Can we have more of this kind of challenges? Does not even have to be role specific. Could be TI or PI specific.

I really liked your setup and decided to try it out myself, with some adjustments to suit my players. The performance of Fekir looks awesome!

Did you use any specific PI's?

Thanks for this great read!

[moolochicken]

11 hours ago, JoOSTAR said:

I really liked your setup and decided to try it out myself, with some adjustments to suit my players. The performance of Fekir looks awesome!

Did you use any specific PI's?

Thanks for this great read!

I did have PIs:

- Move Into Channels for ST, AMCL and AMCR. Depending on the player you could take Move Further Forward for AMs for attacking runs.

- Shoot Less Often for both Carrileros and both Full Backs to make sure players without the ability to shoot do not shoot.

- Mark Tighter for both Carrileros, both Full Backs and the Deep Lying Playmaker for pressing reasons.

- Shorter passing for both centre Backs, both Carrileros and both Full Backs to make sure less gifted players wont lose possession.

- Stay wider and Cross From Byline for both Full Backs for Quality Crosses.

- Distribut to Full Backs for Swepper Keeper to guarantee possession after a goal kick.

And then what is left is how do you want the full back to defense. I personally set it up to just top the crossing and not for winning back possession:

- Mark tighter and Ease off Tackels. Closing Down Less should be preselected if you follow my setup, but if you made a change make sure to keep it less. This way the full backs will only press the opponent crosser in deep positions.

 

 

 

[makul]

I'm already in the third season with this challenge, I haven't used the striker as a P for a long time. 
I use a 4-4-2 with TM(s) and the P(A), The numbers of the P are great and the tactics perform very well (counter-flexible)

First option

Second option

 

[YasoKuul]

I use a poacher in my 4-4-2 narrow diamond tactic with the following roles:

                    GK d

FB a   CD d   CD d   FB a

                    DM d 

          CAR s     CAR s

                    AP s 

          P a     CF s

Mentality: Control // Team Shape: Flexible  // TI: Drop Deeper + Lower Tempo

Both my starting poacher and my young back-up score a lot of goals. They get most assists from AP + CF but also some from both CAR and both FB.

[JavierChicharito14]

I NEVER used poacher in previous version...

But this year I tried it and it is a good role. 

Basic 442 , 2 wingers , 1 Def Forward(d) + 1 poacher.

45 apps 43 goals 11 assists although it happened in National League :)

32 apps 15 goals in my Championship save with 2 WTM(s) 

 

[westy8chimp]

On ‎09‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 18:55, NabsKebabs said:

@herne79 gonna be cool to see how we both go using Aubameyang at different teams! That 5 goals against Bayern is insane!

I managed to beat City 6-0 with an Aubameyang hat trick (similar situation with Pep pressing high up the pitch and using complete wingbacks).

And funnily enough I was also using a 4411.

Only just looked at the stats of the match and I don't think I've ever dominated such a good team so convincingly in terms of shots and chances created:

Aubameyang's shots:

I think I need a break from my Leverkusen save this weekend so was thinking of doing this challenge... my first thought was a narrow tactic as I always end up with overpowered wingers (Bailey at the moment is a world beater). So I thought ... Arsenal in the window update (lost Sanchez, Walcott and Oxe... brought in Auba).

I'll take either a 4312 narrow or 442 narrow diamond. Bellerin and Kolasinac (or new LB) providing attacking width, Xhaka as DLP, Ramsey Mez (maybe sign Savic) paired with a Carilero support. Ozil AP behind Laca and Auba. Laca probably a DLF or CF (S)

Like your work with Aubameyang... my favourite bit of your post - the number 14  I assume you purposely chose it, rather than a coincidence? I'm going to pinch that idea

[Louisking1992]

On 09/03/2018 at 15:51, herne79 said:

Dortmund

I'd been considering some teams to start this challenge with.  West Ham was my initial thought (that's Hernandez pictured on the left in the screenshot in the OP) but as a West Ham fan I tend to play them to death.  Genoa was also a contender due to Lapadula who I found made a great Poacher for my FM17 West Ham save.  But I've been playing extensively with Monza recently so need a break from Italy and also low league football.

As @NabsKebabs mentions above, I also don't like playing with the winter update database, so I'm starting with Dortmund and Aubameyang.

Initial Set Up

I'm not reinventing the wheel.  I'll adapt my 4-4-2 I wrote about in FM16 and used again in FM17 for FM18, and will probably also use my 4-2-3-1 (with tweaks) I used in FM17.

The 4-4-2:

As Dortmund, I have no chance to go with a big man / little man "classic" combination, so I'm going with the Poacher / Creator combo.  I need to feed my Poacher and to do that I'm mainly looking for through balls and crosses.  Through balls will come (hopefully) primarily from my #10, crosses from the wings.  I want variety in my team in order to be able to do this, so my wide players have different instructions and - this is a great thing about Dortmund - I have different types of players who can cover the same positions.  In my 4-2-3-1 for example (I'll link that later) I may tend to start with Yarmolenko as an IF, but I can easily swap him for, say, Pulisic and even change the role to Winger at the same time.  Options and variety.

And Bayern found out the hard way not to try mind games in their pre-match press conference:

Bit of a freak result, but if you play with a high defensive line against PEA (as Bayern did) you get punished.  3 of PEA's goals came from through balls made from near the half way line for him to run on to; one was a near post header from a short Yarmolenko cross; and the fifth was a diagonal ball from the corner of the area.  This is one of the through balls showing Bayern's high line:

Gotze makes the through ball for PEA to run to behind the Bayern line.  And this is one of the great things I like about the Poacher role - it's ability to run the line of the last defenders - to sit on their shoulder waiting to dart in behind (Anticipation, Off the Ball, Acceleration) always on the lookout for the opportunity.  Gotze ended the match with 4 key passes, 3 chances created and 2 assists.

BTW, I found the highlights of Lineker's hattrick against us on YouTube.  I was standing behind and to the right of the goal (left as you watch the clip) and was watching Lineker's movement for that first goal.  Before the ball got to him I knew it was a goal - his Anticipation of where the ball would be delivered and his movement in the box to find the space was incredible.  He left his marker for dead.

Anyway, this is the shot analysis (Dortmund on the right and just one shot from inside the area for Bayern):

And this is just PEA's shots.  He had 11, all of which were on target and just one from outside the box.  Most were him latching onto the end of through balls, either similar to the one from Gotze I posted above or shorter ones from in and around the area.  Exactly what I expect from a well fed Poacher:

Overall then 5 goals for my Poacher is a fantastic start, but a long way to go yet.

Really enjoyed reading this. 

 

I've decided that it's time I put 100% focus and faith in the Poacher and this thread has been brilliant. 

In the past I've given up on the Poacher within a a game or 2 simply because I havent seen the ratings that I hoped (which I know isnt right as the (P) onky really gets better ratings when he scores) 

I'm currently using a flat 442,

 

         ?????   Poacher

IW-S  CM-D    BBM    W-A 

WB-A     CB     BPD     IWB-D 

Now I'm looking to use the second striker on attack duty as I feel it works best in counter attacks for me, I was looking at DLF-A but deep down i would love to get a Treq working next to the poacher. 

What's yours thoughts on a T - P combination? 

 

 

 

[Dicko1878]

On 09/03/2018 at 15:51, herne79 said:

Dortmund

I'd been considering some teams to start this challenge with.  West Ham was my initial thought (that's Hernandez pictured on the left in the screenshot in the OP) but as a West Ham fan I tend to play them to death.  Genoa was also a contender due to Lapadula who I found made a great Poacher for my FM17 West Ham save.  But I've been playing extensively with Monza recently so need a break from Italy and also low league football.

As @NabsKebabs mentions above, I also don't like playing with the winter update database, so I'm starting with Dortmund and Aubameyang.

Initial Set Up

I'm not reinventing the wheel.  I'll adapt my 4-4-2 I wrote about in FM16 and used again in FM17 for FM18, and will probably also use my 4-2-3-1 (with tweaks) I used in FM17.

The 4-4-2:

As Dortmund, I have no chance to go with a big man / little man "classic" combination, so I'm going with the Poacher / Creator combo.  I need to feed my Poacher and to do that I'm mainly looking for through balls and crosses.  Through balls will come (hopefully) primarily from my #10, crosses from the wings.  I want variety in my team in order to be able to do this, so my wide players have different instructions and - this is a great thing about Dortmund - I have different types of players who can cover the same positions.  In my 4-2-3-1 for example (I'll link that later) I may tend to start with Yarmolenko as an IF, but I can easily swap him for, say, Pulisic and even change the role to Winger at the same time.  Options and variety.

And Bayern found out the hard way not to try mind games in their pre-match press conference:

Bit of a freak result, but if you play with a high defensive line against PEA (as Bayern did) you get punished.  3 of PEA's goals came from through balls made from near the half way line for him to run on to; one was a near post header from a short Yarmolenko cross; and the fifth was a diagonal ball from the corner of the area.  This is one of the through balls showing Bayern's high line:

Gotze makes the through ball for PEA to run to behind the Bayern line.  And this is one of the great things I like about the Poacher role - it's ability to run the line of the last defenders - to sit on their shoulder waiting to dart in behind (Anticipation, Off the Ball, Acceleration) always on the lookout for the opportunity.  Gotze ended the match with 4 key passes, 3 chances created and 2 assists.

BTW, I found the highlights of Lineker's hattrick against us on YouTube.  I was standing behind and to the right of the goal (left as you watch the clip) and was watching Lineker's movement for that first goal.  Before the ball got to him I knew it was a goal - his Anticipation of where the ball would be delivered and his movement in the box to find the space was incredible.  He left his marker for dead.

Anyway, this is the shot analysis (Dortmund on the right and just one shot from inside the area for Bayern):

And this is just PEA's shots.  He had 11, all of which were on target and just one from outside the box.  Most were him latching onto the end of through balls, either similar to the one from Gotze I posted above or shorter ones from in and around the area.  Exactly what I expect from a well fed Poacher:

Overall then 5 goals for my Poacher is a fantastic start, but a long way to go yet.

I'd really like to try your tactic out mate, any chance you could upload it?

[the SLC]

has anyone tried this on fm20?