Strategy to DIY your own tactics with high winning ratio

[Dr.Y]

  In recent years,  Knap and other guys have shared lots of popular tactics on internet and fascinating results can be achieved (thanks for their sharing). While in most of such tactics, lots of TIs and PIs are set that it is sometimes difficult for people to modify the tactics to better fit  their own teams and players, thus may make your game less creative and the pleasure may be limited especially if you use such tactic for more than one season. Here in this article I would like to show that it is possible to DIY your own tactics  at similar winning ratio as Knap, while with your own style. All examples tried below are based on FM2019, hoping the ideas work well for other versions.

  To make a fascinating tactic with lots of wins and goals, the key idea is to make the tactic of high-risk, which means to try making more goal chances when in possession, and to give more pressure on the opposite team when out of possession, hoping them to make mistakes. But before going into detailed tactical settings, I would like to discuss more on some basic concepts which are often ignored.

1. Team Shape

  The team shape can be very flexible to achieve a successful tactic, but it is very important to understand what is team shape and how it affects the team performance. Team shape can be understood as the distribution of player positions when in defending, while the player movements in attacking depend more on player duties and PIs rather than team shape. So when you consider team shape to choose, you are mainly considering the defending focus of your team. For example, players positioned in the first two grid lines on the formation panel (including AF, AM and Wingers) can give pressures better to the opposite players in the defending lines but can not cover the space of the opposite CM and WM players at first time, making them easy to receive the ball. A team shape with less than 2 players assigned in the first grid lines may be inefficient in high-pressing even with highest engage line and pressing intensity. 

2. Pressing Intensity

  Pressing intensity is one of the key parameters defining your defending styles. It is popular to set the pressing intensity to highest level but actually it may not always work well. Higher pressing intensity can put greater pressure on the opposite players with ball, but will reduce the pressure on opposite players without ball at the same time, which means that the opposite players can be easier to receive ball by the room you exposed when pressing up, especially when the opposite got superior numbers in some specific areas. So sometimes, higher pressing strength does not equal to higher possession ratio. According to my personal experience, extremely urgent maybe effective to opposite teams with high tempo, while 3/4 or moderate pressing intensity may perform better when the opposite are playing a slow tempo. 

3. Player Duties

  The player duty setting has important influence on the attacking performance of your team, even more important than the team mentality. Players with attacking duties (or with PI of get further forward) will frequently get into opposite penalty area (or get near to byline to give crosses for FB or WB players) to create score chances, while players with supporting or defending duties help to better recirculating the ball and keeping possession. In a attacking tactic, you should try to throw more players into opposite penalty area, and usually one or two defending/supporting duties is enough (excluding central-backs). On the other side, you may find it hard to make lots of goals even for possessions more than 60% and even when 'attacking' team mentality is applied.

 

  Here some example tactical settings are presented. Different team shapes can be tried while 442 and 4231 maybe good starting points as the good balance and wide covering area at defense. More details will be given in the following.

a) To fully explore the attacking talent of your team

  Different TIs are important to define how you play the game, so good understanding about how they work is suggested. (One can find more information from https://www.guidetofm.com/)  I prefer to use TIs of Pass into space, Run at defence and Play out of defence all the time to increase the attacking risk. Play wide will help to expose the weakness of opposite defending, and sometimes you may find it is more easy to keep possession by playing wide, especially when the opposite team defend narrow. You can also encourage your players to make more long shoots if they are capable, it can usually make your attacking more direct and efficient. You can choose the passing style suitable for players. For example, short passing for players with good skills but poor physical strength and vise versa. At the same time, fast or moderate tempo are suggested no matter what kind of passing style you choose.

  Too much TIs are unnecessary unless you fully understand it. For example, explore left/right will increase the mentality of wide players but at same time reduce mentality of middle players, while 'overlap/underlap' may reduce the mentality of wingers/WMs to make them waiting for FB/WB to make forward runs, so will suppress the dribbling talent of wingers. The TI of 'Be more expressive' may balance the player mentalities with different positions, silimar as the 'Team Fluitiy' TI in earlier FM versions.

  Low crossing/Float crossing is suitable if wide players have low crossing ability (low crossing for forward players with good agility and float crossing for target man who can win sky battles), while float crossing is hard to defend against but asking for good crossing ability from wide players. If you are not sure which one is superior for you, a mixed one maybe a good starting point.  

b) PI adjustments to fit your players

  Once the principle of duty distribution is  guaranteed (enough attacking duties), detailed adjustments can be applied to fit your players better. For example, technical players with good passing and long shoot but poor physical strength can be assigned with supporting duty; Defenders or midfielders with poor tackling can be  given 'Ease of Tackles' PI; Fast wide players with good crossing but poor shooting skill can be set as wingers while wide players with good passing and shooting skill can be set to be inside forward no matter which prefer foot he has. Any contrary PI against TI is invalid and unnecessary, for example, if 'use tight marking' TI is applied, PI of mark tighter is invalid; if full pressing intensity is used, PI of 'press more' should not work.  

c) Better balance by setting Defending/Engaging Lines properly

  It is widely accepted that the distance between defending and engaging lines should always be narrow or moderate, while it may not be necessary according to my personal experience. High engaging line can help to pressing the opposite players from their defending lines, to perturb the attacking organization. While high defending line may expose your goalkeeper to direct passing, which is extremely dangerous especially when facing a strong team. For better balance, the combination of high engaging line and relatively low defending line may be considered. In such system, when losing possession, the main duty of your defenders is to try to delay the opposite counter-attack, waiting for the teammates to move back to join the defending, rather than to make risky tackles at first time. It sometimes perform better than 'high+high' settings.

d) Other detailed settings 

  Other TI settings can be decided according to the characters of your team players. For example, if your midfield players and defenders are in good physical strength and with good marking skill, you can consider the TI of 'use tight marking', otherwise, it is not suggested as your player may lose in physical fights and expose the weakness in behind. If the opposite team is good in counter attack, you may consider to cancel the 'Counter-Press' TI. You can assign some of your superfluous players (usually in the front such as forwards and wingers) to man-mark opposite players on some specific position, to help make advantage in number in such areas (but may reduce the effective pressing intensity). You can defend wider if you are the better side, which can make your players cover wider field and reach the opposite players faster; You can also defend narrower if the opposite play narrow when in possession, which may help you win the numbers in the central field. When using OIs, one should be careful that too many OIs may disturb your team defending settings (show onto foot will not disturb the defending plan).   

 

Testing Results

  In the above discussions have been made on how I create the high-risk tactics (Sorry for poor English). I have tested the ideas for a few seasons with different teams (top teams). During the test, modification of team shape, TIs and PIs and also rotation of players are frequently made based on the schedule and fitness condition. Results at similar level with famous tactics contributed by Knap, TFF and other great guys can be achieved, with lots of goals. The average possession is about 50-55%. Some of the results (Lossless in whole season and win all the champions) are shown below with no Save/Load (Nearly no Save/Load haha). (Corner and Trhow-in tactic is copied directly from Knap tactics)

 

  

  

 

Conclusion

  Ok, my goal here is to show how I make a high-pressing, high-risk and fascinating tactics and the ideas behind it. I believe that many of you can do better than me. And more importantly, I would like to show that it is possible to DIY your own high-performance tactics which can work as good as famous tactics from internet forums. Hope it can bring you some different ideas on how to make FM tactics and make you enjoy the game better.

  In the attachment is an example tactic but as I said, it is only one example, it is more importance the whole ideas how to create your own ones. Please enjoy!

Attacking_4231_Wide.fmf

 

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by Dr.Y

[kelvin0131]

THANK SO MUCH BRO !!!!!!!! 

Could you post the 442tactic ??  thanks  

[Dr.Y]

9 小时前, kelvin0131说:

THANK SO MUCH BRO !!!!!!!! 

Could you post the 442tactic ??  thanks  

  Sure. Here in the attachment. Also other team shapes may bring similar performance, you can design a tactic to fit your squad, for example the 343 tactic at below (not fully tested). Detailed TIs and PIs can be adjusted according to your player's ability and also the opposite, as discussed in this article. 

Attacking 442.fmf Bayern_343_temp.fmf

[Dr.Y]

Other team shapes may bring similar performance, you can design a tactic to fit your squad, for example the 343 tactic at below (not fully tested). Detailed TIs and PIs can be adjusted according to your player's ability and also the opposite, as discussed in this article. 

Attacking 442.fmf Bayern_343_temp.fmf