My team plays terribly away from home.

[Fancy Gaffot]

Playing as Liverpool, year 2023, arguably the best team in the world. I'm averaging 5 goals per game at home absolutely destroying opposition but away we keep dropping points against 20th place.

My home form -

 

My away form -

 

I've tried different tactics, making my home tactic less adventurous, etc - team just stops playing well when away. These pics are from last season, currently I am in november 2023 and won just 1 of 6 away games and that was against Tottenham who had 2 red cards in the first half.

 

Any tips?

 

[zyfon5]

Without any context (tactics, players, injuries, type of goals conceded) it's hard for people to give you any useful tips. If you don't mind can you upload just any match that you feel you should have absolutely won but didn't? I have some free time during the weekends to properly review a match and might be able to come up with a few suggestions. It's natural for teams to do better at home than away so don't get too concerned by it.

Edited May 29, 2020 by zyfon5

[Experienced Defender]

30 minutes ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

Any tips?

You'll first have to post a screenshot of your tactic. Without that, you are hardly going to get any meaningful advice (expect for highly misleading speculation). 

[HUNT3R]

38 minutes ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

making my home tactic less adventurous

Why are you making changes to your home tactic if you're struggling away?

--

Put some context to the away matches. What tactic do you actually use in the matches? How does it go in those matches? Do you dominate and get countered on etc? Do you notice any weaknesses or patterns, like their goals always coming quite early or quite late?

[Fancy Gaffot]

1 hour ago, zyfon5 said:

Without any context (tactics, players, injuries, type of goals conceded) it's hard for people to give you any useful tips. If you don't mind can you upload just any match that you feel you should have absolutely won but didn't? I have some free time during the weekends to properly review a match and might be able to come up with a few suggestions. It's natural for teams to do better at home than away so don't get too concerned by it.

I wouldn't say so. It's just that the team is not even recognizable when away and the stats often differ significantly, like:

3-25 in shots but 61-39 possession in a 0-0 draw -

 

2 weeks later I have a lot of possession but no shots - 

 

1 hour ago, Experienced Defender said:

You'll first have to post a screenshot of your tactic. Without that, you are hardly going to get any meaningful advice (expect for highly misleading speculation). 

Home

Away

 

1 hour ago, HUNT3R said:

Why are you making changes to your home tactic if you're struggling away?

--

Put some context to the away matches. What tactic do you actually use in the matches? How does it go in those matches? Do you dominate and get countered on etc? Do you notice any weaknesses or patterns, like their goals always coming quite early or quite late?

Heh, bad wording from my part. Well in my years of playing FM I rarely found much reason to have multiple tactics since I just do boring top team careers and usually able to steam roll everyone both home and away. So here I'm struggling and I meant copying my home tactic and making it more defensive.

Edited May 29, 2020 by Fancy Gaffot

[olegmelnikov]

Wow! And what is your idea to play with 3 playmakers in the middle?

In fact, I'm sure you need to change a lot, especially in terms of roles and duties.

I believe that @Experienced Defender will help you, but you have a lot of work to be done! 

[zyfon5]

30 minutes ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

I wouldn't say so. It's just that the team is not even recognizable when away and the stats often differ significantly, like:

3-25 in shots but 61-39 possession in a 0-0 draw -

 

2 weeks later I have a lot of possession but no shots - 

 

Home

Away

 

Heh, bad wording from my part. Well in my years of playing FM I rarely found much reason to have multiple tactics since I just do boring top team careers and usually able to steam roll everyone both home and away. So here I'm struggling and I meant copying my home tactic and making it more defensive.

Your tactics definitely need some tweaking but I'm sure others could help you too. I asked for saved matches because statistics although can give me an insight of what happened but I still need to look in game to determine exactly why your tactic failed in certain matches which is what you asked initially. But I do respect if you do not want to share it with others. I can just comment based on screenshots.

[HUNT3R]

 

2 hours ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

Heh, bad wording from my part. Well in my years of playing FM I rarely found much reason to have multiple tactics since I just do boring top team careers and usually able to steam roll everyone both home and away. So here I'm struggling and I meant copying my home tactic and making it more defensive.

But what about the questions?

[Experienced Defender]

1 hour ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

Home

Away

Having so different tactics for home and away matches is the first obvious mistake. That's not a good idea even when you manage an average or underdog team, let alone a top side such as Liverpool.

Instead, it's far more advisable to have one (primary) tactic, which you would use in the vast majority of matches. This tactic needs to be based on your players' strengths and weaknesses. And then you can create a secondary tactic that would be essentially very similar to the primary one. That other tactic would be used only in "special" matches (i.e. against other top teams).

And btw, neither of your 2 current tactics looks sensible and balanced. The setup of roles and duties looks disjointed, one-dimensional and basically contradicts the team instructions you are using. On top of that, you use as many as 3 playmakers. which - to make things worse - are literally next to one another (the entire midfield consists of playmakers only). Team instructions, for their part, are needlessly aggressive and you use too many of them. Keeping it simple is always a better idea. 

[Experienced Defender]

Not to mention that you replaced such fantastic and complete midfielders as Fabinho, Hendo, Vijnaldum, Keita and Milner with the likes of Tielemans and Havertz 

[Fancy Gaffot]

Thanks guys. To be honest I never really learned much when they added player roles. I always thought it was mostly just presets of personal instructions. So I'm just setting whatever roles make my player have perfectly green circles

7 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

Having so different tactics for home and away matches is the first obvious mistake. That's not a good idea even when you manage an average or underdog team, let alone a top side such as Liverpool.

Different tactic is a measure I tried since my usual tactic is not really working away from home.

[Experienced Defender]

25 minutes ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

Thanks guys. To be honest I never really learned much when they added player roles. I always thought it was mostly just presets of personal instructions. So I'm just setting whatever roles make my player have perfectly green circles

Different tactic is a measure I tried since my usual tactic is not really working away from home.

Well, it does not work because it's contradictory and poorly balanced (as I already explained). The most probable reason why it works at home despite all its flaws is the superiority of your players, rather than the tactic itself. 

[Fancy Gaffot]

14 hours ago, zyfon5 said:

If you don't mind can you upload just any match that you feel you should have absolutely won but didn't?

Here are 3 of my recent away games, I'd be glad to hear suggestions

Leeds Utd v Liverpool 1-0.pkm Fulham v Liverpool 1-1.pkm Shakhtar v Liverpool 0-0.pkm

[zyfon5]

8 hours ago, Fancy Gaffot said:

Here are 3 of my recent away games, I'd be glad to hear suggestions

Leeds Utd v Liverpool 1-0.pkm 271.82 kB · 2 downloads Fulham v Liverpool 1-1.pkm 268.37 kB · 1 download Shakhtar v Liverpool 0-0.pkm 256.82 kB · 1 download

Hi I have watched all three matches. Main issue I found is the players are rushing too much to move the ball forward resulting in very few quality chances created. The very few quality chances created are often by winning the ball from a press close to the opponent goal. Your front three is also too narrow and too rigid which made them easy to defend and they often do not have any options to pass the ball so they take a shot even from bad positions. Your defenders might be too risky also. Major modification is needed for your tactics so I will see what other people suggestions are and add on from there if needed. You might also want to describe how will you like your Liverpool side to play as a starting point for your tactic.

[Fancy Gaffot]

4 hours ago, zyfon5 said:

Hi I have watched all three matches. Main issue I found is the players are rushing too much to move the ball forward resulting in very few quality chances created. The very few quality chances created are often by winning the ball from a press close to the opponent goal. Your front three is also too narrow and too rigid which made them easy to defend and they often do not have any options to pass the ball so they take a shot even from bad positions. Your defenders might be too risky also. Major modification is needed for your tactics so I will see what other people suggestions are and add on from there if needed. You might also want to describe how will you like your Liverpool side to play as a starting point for your tactic.

Thank you. 3 forwards being narrow is what I want with fullbacks providing width. But rigidness yes I've noticed it too. I'll try roam from position for IFs?

I made some changes yesterday:

no more offside trap
short GK distribution and no quick distribution
narrower width
lowered tempo to minimum
changed DLP to CM (support) and let him roam from position
less crosses for Wbs (still getting 50+ crosses per game)

Less prolific at home but away we've been much better

 

[Fancy Gaffot]

You know guys I think it was just a matter of things getting stale. After the tweaks I mentioned above my team went on to get 2 PL records in games won in a row and undefeated streak

 

But after a while my teams started playing poorly again. I guess it's the "AI teams adapted to your tactic" stuff.