Tactics of a Cup Run, Giant-Killing & the 6-3-1 (Highly Structured)

[FJW]

Oh it’s verging on torture now!!!

[kaffekatten]

What kind of players are you looking for in general to play this type of football?

And specifically for each position or strata or so?

 

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

22 hours ago, kaffekatten said:

What kind of players are you looking for in general to play this type of football?

And specifically for each position or strata or so?

 

Honestly, beggars can't be choosers. I was looking for the best all round players I could find, but ultimately working with what I had available. My most effective strategy was sniffing around the academies of the big clubs I find that they produce very good quality players, but are also very wasteful and struggle to find opportunities for their young players.

I eventually settled on a structured, medium block 3-4-2-1 which was solid but also easily created a 3-2-5 in attack. I hope to find time to eventually write a thread about it, but it's again very FM2018 specific.

[FJW]

🤞 we all hope you find time.  There are still a few of us playing FM18.

[woodyy2r]

Hopefully you'll get a chance. 

Can I ask what roles you are choosing for the 2 CM in the 343. Would be very interested to know. Cheers

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

Interesting video about use of similar defensive shapes when you're faced with a mismatch 

 

On 12/07/2021 at 14:48, woodyy2r said:

Hopefully you'll get a chance. 

Can I ask what roles you are choosing for the 2 CM in the 343. Would be very interested to know. Cheers

I use a Defend and a Support role. Most commonly either a Ball-Winning Midfielder (Defend) and a Box-to-Box Midfielder (Support) or simply a Central Midfielder (Defend) and a Central Midfielder (Support). Note that nobody in my squad, even right the way up to the Premier League, was high enough quality to be a playmaker.

You do need one of them getting into the space ahead of the midfield and connecting with the attack as that's one of the weaknesses of the 3-4-2-1 variants. I found work rate and general dynamism to be more important than positioning given the midfield pivot is often outnumbered 3v2 and does have a 3 (or 5) man defence behind them.

[Jack722]

On 20/03/2021 at 10:42, Ö-zil to the Arsenal! said:

The mentality structure becomes:
 

        10

11    3     3    11

11   3   1   3   11

         1

 

Mentality vs role and duty selection is always a bit confusing I find. I've asked about it on the quick answers thread a while back, but I think you might disagree with the response I got, and I'm still not convinced myself.

Currently, I'm unsure whether I should read more into the role descriptions, or look at the inidivdual mentalities, to decide who's going to be running forward and playing risky passes. If you're playing supporting fullbacks in a balanced system, but then decide that you're happy with the result and what to shut up shop, would you just select "very defensive" and rely on the individual mentality change to stop the fullbacks advancing into dangerous positions? Or should you also change their individual duties to defend, so that they follow the role description of "staying in line with the centrebacks".

At the moment, I do a bit of both (generally have more defensive duties when playing a defensive mentality) but looking at your use of the mentality calculator has me thinking that changing both of these options both has me doing a redundant task and / or leaves me being more defensive than needed.

I think the general response I had before was that it is still worth changing duties with mentality as each duty has their own individual instructions.  

[woodyy2r]

10 hours ago, Jack722 said:

Mentality vs role and duty selection is always a bit confusing I find. I've asked about it on the quick answers thread a while back, but I think you might disagree with the response I got, and I'm still not convinced myself.

Currently, I'm unsure whether I should read more into the role descriptions, or look at the inidivdual mentalities, to decide who's going to be running forward and playing risky passes. If you're playing supporting fullbacks in a balanced system, but then decide that you're happy with the result and what to shut up shop, would you just select "very defensive" and rely on the individual mentality change to stop the fullbacks advancing into dangerous positions? Or should you also change their individual duties to defend, so that they follow the role description of "staying in line with the centrebacks".

At the moment, I do a bit of both (generally have more defensive duties when playing a defensive mentality) but looking at your use of the mentality calculator has me thinking that changing both of these options both has me doing a redundant task and / or leaves me being more defensive than needed.

I think the general response I had before was that it is still worth changing duties with mentality as each duty has their own individual instructions.  

So I'm sure @Ö-zil to the Arsenal! would have a much better reply, but I would be careful and know exactly what you are achieving with each players mentality when you change both the team mentality and the players duty (D/S/A), as each one they can have a big impact on the compactness of the shape - of course it depends on what your team shape is.

With a very fluid team shape, you are unlikely to need to change the duties as well, as the mentalities are so close in any case i.e. if you look at some threads on here, you'll find that an attacking very fluid 433 can give all your players a mentality of 14/20 (with a striker on support being 12 the only difference). Switch it to counter and all players are on 6 or 7 (which, fyi, would be horrid and very defensive with no outlet, but very compact). A highly structured team shape would need more careful planning because what may have been a well thought out mentality distribution - like compactness on the flanks or your defensive midfielder being close to your CBs (in both cases have similar mentalities) - switching the team mentality to defensive could have disastrous consequences.

Take one of my old tactics for example a 3-5-2

I believe this tactic has a nice spread of mentalities, creating a compact defensive structure which is hard to break through (on control mentality) - CB close to DMC close to MC close to STC and with the WBs not too disimilar to the CBs, DM and MCs.

Change the team mentality to Defensive...

and it looks awful. WBs way too aggressive and not at all in sync with what I am trying to achieve by going defensive and there isn't a good mentality distribution from back to front. This tactic would be deep, but have huge gaps in the channel and between Wbs and Cbs. In fact (IMO) you'd have been better off sticking to the control mentality to defend your lead. SO here you would need to change the duties of at least the DMC, WBL, MCR, STCL to create some compactness and stop the AI just passing straight through you and leaving the defence exposed. 

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

On 01/09/2021 at 10:32, Jack722 said:

Mentality vs role and duty selection is always a bit confusing I find. I've asked about it on the quick answers thread a while back, but I think you might disagree with the response I got, and I'm still not convinced myself.

Currently, I'm unsure whether I should read more into the role descriptions, or look at the inidivdual mentalities, to decide who's going to be running forward and playing risky passes. If you're playing supporting fullbacks in a balanced system, but then decide that you're happy with the result and what to shut up shop, would you just select "very defensive" and rely on the individual mentality change to stop the fullbacks advancing into dangerous positions? Or should you also change their individual duties to defend, so that they follow the role description of "staying in line with the centrebacks".

At the moment, I do a bit of both (generally have more defensive duties when playing a defensive mentality) but looking at your use of the mentality calculator has me thinking that changing both of these options both has me doing a redundant task and / or leaves me being more defensive than needed.

I think the general response I had before was that it is still worth changing duties with mentality as each duty has their own individual instructions.  

Good question  you're absolutely correct that team mentality, role, duty - and I'd add individual mentality to that list - are extremely confusing.

In the FM Tactics Creator, individual Mentality is a function of team mentality and duty (with some influence of TIs). In real football, the 'team' is a function of the individuals. Personally, I'd flip the Tactics Creator on it's head and set individual mentalities, do away with roles and have team mentality as a function of the individual mentalities set.

Regarding your question about whether individual mentality or role will be more of a factor in determining a players behavior, ultimately the answer is both.

My approach is to decide which duty I need within the framework of my team as a whole, and then select a role within that duty which has the behaviors I am looking for. In your example, it may be Get Forward More or Hold Position.

Beware of the statement about using more defensive roles in a defensive mentality as role and team mentality are cumulative so a defensive role in a defensive system will be extremely defensive, likewise an attacking role in an attacking system will be extremely attacking. My advice would actually be the opposite. I will often select duties which counter-act my team mentality. For example, in a Defensive team mentality I will use more Attacking duties. In an Attacking system, most of my team will be on Support as they're attacking collectively, rather than as individuals.

Hope that makes sense.