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Ah the utter pointlessness of playing deep defensive football in FM


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A record number of shots conceded. Sterling and Silva winning headers from corners. This game doesn’t get the fact the defending deep closes space. I don’t mind losing. But it’s ridiculous how easy City find it to rack up all those shots. Might as well always play on front foot as you concede less chances. And before anyone says the best form of defence is attack..say that to hodgson etc. IMO The reason the game does this btw is that it’s calculated the totals before the game and then creates a narrative to fit that. 

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Well, if it’s just a rant then go for it. Otherwise I would suggest to move on to the tactics forum with a clear vision of how you want your team to play, especially defensive wise. 

From the first impression of the screenshot you are inviting way too much pressure. You can sit deep, but you need to get access to defensive actions and win the ball. Just sitting deep and being passive leads to exactly what your screenshot is providing. 

 

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There is a very good tactic in the forums, which is based on Simeone's non possession based football. I've found it pretty useful for situations in which you are likely to concede huge amounts of possession and shots.

It's good for soaking up and hitting on the break

Might help

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Cheers chaps. It was part rant. I’ve been on the tactics forum and received some great advice. My tactics weren’t too passive at all. Just went for a deep 442 with defensive CDMs. watching the shortest players consistently winning headers at corners goes to show there’s a problem in game. It feels like the code is trying to make something happen to account for the total attribute discrepancy.

I’ve used the tactics ive been advised to use. Seriously 23 shots on target and 46 over all 😂! If I was playing 424 high line maybe, at least we’d have some shots.

people will try to argue it’s my tactics. They were not that bad. This is an anomaly in the game. Defending deep just gives the opposition loads of shots. IRL it would mean loads of possession and fewer shots. They wouldn’t have the space. I was narrow and packed the. central areas . It’s still where the majority of their shots came from. 46 and 23. Frankly it’s absurd 

Edited by FulchesterFred
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6 hours ago, FulchesterFred said:

This game doesn’t get the fact the defending deep closes space.

Unfortunately this is and have been true for a long time. It all comes how formations move laterally and how dynamic individual positions are when defending. Example DL closes AMR CM sup/Def helps CD defend ST or block passline for him. Have to hope this will be next big thing that gets fixed because I'm tired of seeing these 20+ shots, blocked crosses etc. Unrealism in game especially when defending deep etc..

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In a couple of away games to top sides this season I went with two different approaches; in the first against an out of form team I went with a positive mentality 4-2-3-1 and shipped four goals. In the second I went with a counter attacking 4-4-1-1 with defensive mentality and two defensive minded CM and still shipped four goals, so I hear you Fred! :rolleyes:

Of course the alternative explanation could just be that my £180m back five is crap :lol:

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13 minutes ago, IbrahimAliMaher said:

In a couple of away games to top sides this season I went with two different approaches; in the first against an out of form team I went with a positive mentality 4-2-3-1 and shipped four goals. In the second I went with a counter attacking 4-4-1-1 with defensive mentality and two defensive minded CM and still shipped four goals, so I hear you Fred! :rolleyes:

Of course the alternative explanation could just be that my £180m back five is crap :lol:

Lol same could be said for my defence. It is Spurs!

it’s annoying as it makes me think sod tactics. Play the same way throughout the season and see how we end up. I’m sure there are very specific tactics that must have some impact.

And my training is very attack focused. Maybe I need to do 2 months of defending training before games like this.

id like some guidance from the developers.....good luck! They have to understand that FM isn’t football, it’s a game with its own rules that they really should share with us so we know the tools and parameters we are working with.

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2 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

Lol same could be said for my defence. It is Spurs!

it’s annoying as it makes me think sod tactics. Play the same way throughout the season and see how we end up. I’m sure there are very specific tactics that must have some impact.

And my training is very attack focused. Maybe I need to do 2 months of defending training before games like this.

id like some guidance from the developers.....good luck! They have to understand that FM isn’t football, it’s a game with its own rules that they really should share with us so we know the tools and parameters we are working with.

so you didnt seet up to attack, but train very attacking lol

 

i think it is kind of realistic, even if you defend deep, you still have to defend and tackle. they had more yellow cards than you, would of had me calling for more aggression. nothing wrong with going down fighting!

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2 minutes ago, lemeuresnew said:

so you didnt seet up to attack, but train very attacking lol

 

i think it is kind of realistic, even if you defend deep, you still have to defend and tackle. they had more yellow cards than you, would of had me calling for more aggression. nothing wrong with going down fighting!

True that! But lack of yellows was because I changed instructions to stay on feet from get stuck in after 15 mins. This was because we were giving away countless free kicks which their tiny players kept on winning headers from. Again an anomaly.

I play FMT so training v basic. There is no match to match influence on training. Ie doing defensive training in week before game is irrelevant 

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2 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

True that! But lack of yellows was because I changed instructions to stay on feet from get stuck in after 15 mins. This was because we were giving away countless free kicks which their tiny players kept on winning headers from. Again an anomaly.

I play FMT so training v basic. There is no match to match influence on training. Ie doing defensive training in week before game is irrelevant 

they only won 7 mate. think that is for contested headers only maybe? again, doesnt matter how small they are if you just let them do it :onmehead:

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4 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

I play FMT so training v basic. There is no match to match influence on training. Ie doing defensive training in week before game is irrelevant 

Trained 'defensive shape' as my match preparation too, might as well have not bothered...

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1 minute ago, lemeuresnew said:

they only won 7 mate. think that is for contested headers only maybe? again, doesnt matter how small they are if you just let them do it :onmehead:

But how am I letting them do it??? And why isn’t it happening in other games? I really don’t mind if De Byrne plays a perfect ball on to the head of eg Stones. Undefendable fair enough. But Sterling or Silva. In my 6 yard box, which I’ve loaded up. Come on!

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6 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

But how am I letting them do it??? And why isn’t it happening in other games? I really don’t mind if De Byrne plays a perfect ball on to the head of eg Stones. Undefendable fair enough. But Sterling or Silva. In my 6 yard box, which I’ve loaded up. Come on!

well you have to be constantly closing players down, tight marking etc. if you keep backing off you arent doing that

 

if it doesnt happen as much in other games, would be because not every team is man city and you win the ball more?

 

im applying realism here of course. but if you are giving away free headers, still applies

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7 minutes ago, SCCP1910 said:

These types of threads moaning about defensive football are getting a bit stale now. Have you read the tons of other identical threads in this forum? Thre's some great advice there.

No I haven’t. I posted my own question. If it bores you please ignore it.

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Sorry if it came off too hostile, it's just that plenty of people here had the exact same problems as you lately, so maybe you can find something useful in the other threads

Edited by SCCP1910
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6 minutes ago, lemeuresnew said:

well you have to be constantly closing players down, tight marking etc. if you keep backing off you arent doing that

 

if it doesnt happen as much in other games, would be because not every team is man city and you win the ball more?

 

im applying realism here of course. but if you are giving away free headers, still applies

Appreciate the advice. I asked about closing down and tight marking in tactics forum but seems like can of worms. does tight marking mean they’ll be marked all over the pitch, which would destroy my shape? Someone in the tactics forum  said I should hardly use any instructions and trust your players to mark someone in your box. Hmmmmmmm m. The ambiguity comes from SI. I need to really understand what tight marking and closing down means. Where it happens. When best to use it

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2 minutes ago, SCCP1910 said:

Sorry if it came off too hostile, it's just that plenty of people here had the exact same problems as you lately, so maybe you can find something useful in the other threads

It’s fine :-). I’m sure it is repetitive but that probably tells a story!

just easier for me to relate to my own example than trawl through forum tbh, and it’s got a discussion going so definitely a good topic.

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2 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

Appreciate the advice. I asked about closing down and tight marking in tactics forum but seems like can of worms. does tight marking mean they’ll be marked all over the pitch, which would destroy my shape? Someone in the tactics forum  said I should hardly use any instructions and trust your players to mark someone in your box. Hmmmmmmm m. The ambiguity comes from SI. I need to really understand what tight marking and closing down means. Where it happens. When best to use it

your defensive lines control the line of engagement, ie where your players decide to close down. the deeper that line, the more they stand off. if you are camped too deep in your box, it may stop a more direct team but a technical team like man city should still be able to move the ball around AND have quality shots 

 

tight marking stops them attacking the ball unchallenged, according to ingame descriptions. think of it as deciding if you want to give Silva a free header in the box, or some one at least being there to challenge him. he might still win, but at least then you can blame the game and not yourself

 

 

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16 minutes ago, lemeuresnew said:

your defensive lines control the line of engagement, ie where your players decide to close down. the deeper that line, the more they stand off. if you are camped too deep in your box, it may stop a more direct team but a technical team like man city should still be able to move the ball around AND have quality shots 

 

tight marking stops them attacking the ball unchallenged, according to ingame descriptions. think of it as deciding if you want to give Silva a free header in the box, or some one at least being there to challenge him. he might still win, but at least then you can blame the game and not yourself

 

 

Interesting and great advice, but if I’m tight marking eg Silva does that mean I’ll drag my FB out of position if he suddenly pops up in a  deeper postion? And if it basically is a mechanism for stopping the dangerous players why not tightly mark all of them in every game? 
and sorry to be annoying but why not tightly mark and close down every creative player all over the pitch? 
I’m asking because you’re offering valuable help!

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8 minutes ago, Pasonen said:

Hey could you upload .pkm of this game here or directly for me. I would like to watch it. :) 

Love to but I play FMT on iPad. Can’t do that:-(

I posted on this forum as it’s same ME and tactics which is where my post was focusing on. And this forum gets a lot more attention and assistance 

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21 minutes ago, lemeuresnew said:

also, if you are deep in the box already and being toyed with, does this matter lol

Good point but I’m also trying to relate to the game in general, not Just the city match.

 My assistant advised me to tightly mark stones. Does that mean Harry Kane will be marking him at CB?

it is a relevant question 

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8 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

 

 My assistant advised me to tightly mark stones. Does that mean Harry Kane will be marking him at CB? 

Only one way to find out, eh? 

As others have said, defensive football requires an aggressive style, just sitting back and let the opposition play never works IRL either. Defensive football is the easiest way to beat city IME, exploit the flanks their fullbacks leave wide open.

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10 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

Interesting and great advice, but if I’m tight marking eg Silva does that mean I’ll drag my FB out of position if he suddenly pops up in a  deeper postion? And if it basically is a mechanism for stopping the dangerous players why not tightly mark all of them in every game? 
and sorry to be annoying but why not tightly mark and close down every creative player all over the pitch? 
I’m asking because you’re offering valuable help!

in that instance, it would be man marking, not tight marking. tight marking does not mean follow 1 player, if you are zonal marking they will still change who they are marking, but again the better players will lose a marker and it is easy to overload a defender too

if you watch any team defend successfully against Liverpool or City they do close down or tight mark every creative player. because if you dont you concede 23 shots on target

8 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

 My assistant advised me to tightly mark stones. Does that mean Harry Kane will be marking him at CB?

that means you have SERIOUSLY failed to have any kind of out ball. Stones is a defender, he should be marking your players! 

 

 

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14 hours ago, FulchesterFred said:

IMO The reason the game does this btw is that it’s calculated the totals before the game and then creates a narrative to fit that. 

 

 

It's completely the other way around. THe ME is a kick by kick simulation, with second by second on and off the ball movement. Whenever a sequence of play leads to a goal is a goal. The totals are whatever the toals are at the end of that. 

Otherwise you'd never be able to influencne matches and the run of play, as better players clearly do.

Now as to deep defending, and it being hardish to do (may be true): If I'd be into conspiracy theories, I'd go more alongside the line of the following:

- human players hugely love attacking tactics with loads of goals, so they tweak the game in accordance to that. 
- human players absolutely detest having loads of shots without scoring against an AI playing park the bus tactics, ditto (see also "getting FM'd")  Still laods of complaints about that mind, curiously.

Don't know if true, but both of that has been the case ever since FM 1799. :D 

If you want to do a quality analysis as to WHY deep defending was flawed, you had to analyze and You'd then have a chance of getting listened to. If you don't believe me, as an example from a previoius edition: This wide midfielder defensive positioning thread from ca. FM 17ish. SI had tweaked wide midfielders to almost always cover out the flanks, rarely coming inside to defend central areas (and help the centre mids). This influenced play -- and results.

Concerning tactical issue - Football Manager General Discussion - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com)

 

Another example, FM 15 advanced players in top heavy formations given an attack duty not at all tracking back to defend so that there respective defenses were overrun every other attack, and if the attack was intercepted, a counter attack would start (hockey scorelines incoming) -- actually a good deal of player attributed this to keepers being "rubbisH" back then, revealing that apparently they barely ever watch the match play, maybe because of such wrong theories as yours.

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Official Football Manager 2015 Feedback Thread 15.2.1 - Football Manager General Discussion - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com)

Page 42 scrolling down as the link doesn't seem to lead to my own posts back then.

Each of those were luckily fixed in subsequent patches / editions, though. :D 

Edited by Svenc
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7 minutes ago, lemeuresnew said:

in that instance, it would be man marking, not tight marking. tight marking does not mean follow 1 player, if you are zonal marking they will still change who they are marking, but again the better players will lose a marker and it is easy to overload a defender too

if you watch any team defend successfully against Liverpool or City they do close down or tight mark every creative player. because if you dont you concede 23 shots on target

that means you have SERIOUSLY failed to have any kind of out ball. Stones is a defender, he should be marking your players! 

 

 

Ha exactly. Why has the assistant advised that? 

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3 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

Ha exactly. Why has the assistant advised that? 

Because they got so many freekicks and corners that stones got loads of headers to a goal. In other words assistant is speaking nonsense and you should have changed your defending setpieces. :D

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3 minutes ago, FulchesterFred said:

Ha exactly. Why has the assistant advised that? 

because there defender is camped in your box maybe? he has no defensive duties, because you have no out ball for him to worry about...

 

also, 22 corners. every 4 minutes, he is their main threat in your box :D

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2 minutes ago, Pasonen said:

Because they got so many freekicks and corners that stones got loads of headers to a goal. In other words assistant is speaking nonsense and you should have changed your defending setpieces. :D

he wasnt making any tackles to give away free kicks :lol:

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from a quick google search, in the top 5 leagues 3% of corners lead to a goal. so if you played city like that 5 times they should score from 3 corners on average. but having that many in 1 game probably left your players shell shocked

 

would love to be able to watch this game, as Pas said

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So after starting this debate in the Tactics section, while refusing to acknowledge what people told you there if it didn't fit your opinion, you decide to come and whinge in the general discussion now?

But sure, just keep blaming the game, instead of ever acknowledging that you yourself might be the issue here. :rolleyes:

As for the people wanting to watch the game, considering the threads he started in the Tactics section my guess is something along the lines of "Defensive Mentality, Much Lower LOE, Much lower DL". Aka: We won't actually defend until the ball is in our goal already, yet somehow I'm shocked by us conceding lots of shots! So, give that combination a shot and you should probably see something similar to what the OP produced.

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2 minutes ago, Freakiie said:

So after starting this debate in the Tactics section, while refusing to acknowledge what people told you there if it didn't fit your opinion, you decide to come and whinge in the general discussion now?

But sure, just keep blaming the game, instead of ever acknowledging that you yourself might be the issue here. :rolleyes:

As for the people wanting to watch the game, considering the threads he started in the Tactics section my guess is something along the lines of "Defensive Mentality, Much Lower LOE, Much lower DL". Aka: We won't actually defend until the ball is in our goal already, yet somehow I'm shocked by us conceding lots of shots! So, give that combination a shot and you should probably see something similar to what the OP produced.

Hahaha. Hello mate. I think I referenced multiple times how helpful the tactics forum was. Even in this thread. 
thanks for your help everyone. Freakiie not sure why you’re so angry. This thread would be better off without you.

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I'm going to guess that your idea of a defensive tactic is to set up with a low DL, low LOe, defensive mentality, low pressing, and narrow defending, right? Which is exactly how you bet utterly pounded like this. If you are going to invite a good team to constantly attack you without a coherent strategy and no threat of your own, you are going to lose nine times out of ten. 

There have been a few threads like this lately, which display a misunderstanding of how defensive football works. I'm tempted to try to write something about this if I can find the time. 

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22 minutes ago, sporadicsmiles said:

If you are going to invite a good team to constantly attack you without a coherent strategy and no threat of your own, you are going to lose nine times out of ten. 

Then again in real life you could set your attackers to defend deeper to interfere opponent buildup play and it would not affect their attacking positions when attacking. (Or wingers sup -> etc etc) Example setting 2 st's support but when attacking having them up the field. Defending deep has benefits in real football to anticipate passes to wide even when playing deep and narrow. It's understandable that people think you can play like this (deep, narrow, low engaging) because game is named FOOTBALL manager.

Edit. Deep defending teams would not clear the ball back to opponent from deep after interceptions like in FM. After interception defending players would rush up for a pass now this is very minimal. Engine is unfortunately lacking a lot of important things when talking about deep playing.

Edited by Pasonen
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Playing on a low mentality isn't pointless at all. Just don't expect to be successful with it as it isn't designed for that purpose.

If you allow your opponent to progress unchallenged into shooting positions on a regular basis they are unsurprisingly going to take a lot of shots, that's just common sense.

The fact that there is less space in your final third as you correctly identify actually encourages them to have more shots not less. If there is no forward pass available to progress their attack as everyone is marked then if the opponent is close enough to goal they are going to shoot.

The majority of those shots weren't dangerous but from sheer weight of numbers, statistically, some are going to find their way into the back of the net. Especially against one of the best teams in the world but even still they were only able to convert just over 6% of the shots they ended up having which actually isn't bad.

That being said, your game plan was completely wrong for that game and that's why you got beaten in the manner you did. You set up to be a complete pushover and completely nullified the strength Spurs has and that is on the attack.

You played that game like you were terrified of Man City and just sat back and hoped that you could keep them out, why?. There was only one team trying to win that game and that was Man City. After you went a goal down and you saw that the game plan wasn't working why didn't you change anything? Why are some players so reluctant to make changes? I can't understand it.

This is a management game and knowing what to do when things aren't going your way is a key component of management. Being a passive observer and just allowing things to happen is in my view dreadful management and you might as well just stick a scarecrow in the dugout. You may not have the correct solution to the situation but at least try to do something to change things, anything!.

Incidentally, even short players can win headers if they are unmarked. Maybe instead of trying to explain it using a conspiracy theory that the game result is already determined maybe a more productive use of your time would be to look into your defensive corner routines. If you are allowing players like Sterling and Silva to win headers against you from corners there is something desperately wrong with how you are setting up. 

I very rarely concede goals from corners but then again I can't recall a game where I conceded 22 corners either.

Best of luck

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2 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

I'm going to guess that your idea of a defensive tactic is to set up with a low DL, low LOe, defensive mentality, low pressing, and narrow defending, right? Which is exactly how you bet utterly pounded like this. If you are going to invite a good team to constantly attack you without a coherent strategy and no threat of your own, you are going to lose nine times out of ten. 

There have been a few threads like this lately, which display a misunderstanding of how defensive football works. I'm tempted to try to write something about this if I can find the time. 

Defending deep is much easier than pressing all over the pitch in real football. It's also the most usual way of defending.

All defensive prestes are set that way and AI plays like that when it's trying to defend. I really don't see anything unusual there except how mentality works in FM. 

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6 minutes ago, pheelf said:

Playing on a low mentality isn't pointless at all. Just don't expect to be successful with it as it isn't designed for that purpose.

If you allow your opponent to progress unchallenged into shooting positions on a regular basis they are unsurprisingly going to take a lot of shots, that's just common sense.

The fact that there is less space in your final third as you correctly identify actually encourages them to have more shots not less. If there is no forward pass available to progress their attack as everyone is marked then if the opponent is close enough to goal they are going to shoot.

What's the point of having mentality in game then? To dominate possession against much better teams? Lower mentalities are practically useless In T&T forum there's not a single tactic which uses lower mentality than balanced. The only way to have solid counter attacking tactics is to use higher mentalities. Such startegy is promoted by all tactical experts there. 

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21 hours ago, Svenc said:

 

It's completely the other way around. THe ME is a kick by kick simulation, with second by second on and off the ball movement. Whenever a sequence of play leads to a goal is a goal. The totals are whatever the toals are at the end of that. 

Otherwise you'd never be able to influencne matches and the run of play, as better players clearly do.

Now as to deep defending, and it being hardish to do (may be true): If I'd be into conspiracy theories, I'd go more alongside the line of the following:

- human players hugely love attacking tactics with loads of goals, so they tweak the game in accordance to that. 
- human players absolutely detest having loads of shots without scoring against an AI playing park the bus tactics, ditto (see also "getting FM'd")  Still laods of complaints about that mind, curiously.

Don't know if true, but both of that has been the case ever since FM 1799. :D 

If you want to do a quality analysis as to WHY deep defending was flawed, you had to analyze and You'd then have a chance of getting listened to. If you don't believe me, as an example from a previoius edition: This wide midfielder defensive positioning thread from ca. FM 17ish. SI had tweaked wide midfielders to almost always cover out the flanks, rarely coming inside to defend central areas (and help the centre mids). This influenced play -- and results.

Concerning tactical issue - Football Manager General Discussion - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com)

 

Another example, FM 15 advanced players in top heavy formations given an attack duty not at all tracking back to defend so that there respective defenses were overrun every other attack, and if the attack was intercepted, a counter attack would start (hockey scorelines incoming) -- actually a good deal of player attributed this to keepers being "rubbisH" back then, revealing that apparently they barely ever watch the match play, maybe because of such wrong theories as yours.

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Official Football Manager 2015 Feedback Thread 15.2.1 - Football Manager General Discussion - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com)

Page 42 scrolling down as the link doesn't seem to lead to my own posts back then.

Each of those were luckily fixed in subsequent patches / editions, though. :D 

Are you trying to say the ME doesn’t pre calculate? If so how do you think it knows when there’s a highlight that is going to lead to a goal/chance?

The match is pre calculated based on a lot of variables and then re calculated as those change. Like making a sub. 

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1 minute ago, Mitja said:

What's the point of having mentality in game then? To dominate possession against much better teams? Lower mentalities are practically useless In T&T forum there's not a single tactic which uses lower mentality than balanced. The only way to have solid counter attacking tactics is to use higher mentalities. Such startegy is promoted by all tactical experts there. 

I think I have gone over this with you previously, the point of mentality is to act as a simplification for the AI and user. I agree that the way some are set up is flawed and that could be improved but removing them entirely doesn't actually solve the problem. Instead it creates far more problems, how would the AI cope when it already struggles with mentalities?

Lower mentalities aren't useless, it doesn't matter how many times people keep proclaiming them to be so, it doesn't make it any more true. Of course there aren't any on the T&T forum because those tactics are all about scoring a lot of goals and overachieving. You can't do that with a tactic on a lower mentality as those are designed mainly to defend. A lot of the reason why players will download a tactic is because they want a proven successful system. There simply isn't a market for players looking for a tactic which may be more solid defensively but comes at the cost of scoring much fewer goals.

You can create solid counter attacking tactics on lower mentalities but it has to be done with the right team. For e.g. you can't expect to be successful with a counter attacking approach with one of the better teams in the division as opposing teams aren't going to be adventurous in bringing men forward to give you the space to counter them. Additionally, building an approach around counter attacking is one which is most dependent on how the opposition plays against you whereas other more proactive approaches aren't as dependent.

Cheers

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2 hours ago, Pasonen said:

Then again in real life you could set your attackers to defend deeper to interfere opponent buildup play and it would not affect their attacking positions when attacking. (Or wingers sup -> etc etc) Example setting 2 st's support but when attacking having them up the field. Defending deep has benefits in real football to anticipate passes to wide even when playing deep and narrow. It's understandable that people think you can play like this (deep, narrow, low engaging) because game is named FOOTBALL manager.

Edit. Deep defending teams would not clear the ball back to opponent from deep after interceptions like in FM. After interception defending players would rush up for a pass now this is very minimal. Engine is unfortunately lacking a lot of important things when talking about deep playing.

You can already do this, with either TIs, PIs, or OIs (or some combination that works for you). I use forwards to disrupt opposition build ups as a matter of course in a split block. 

With clearing the ball, it depends on the situation. A defender who intercepts the ball and is under pressure might just lump it forward if told not to take risks. A 'keeper claiming a cross might let everyone push up and then clear it. The latter you can set up by avoiding things that encourage quickly playing the ball. The latter just makes sense to do in general. This is not a blanket statement that the ME cannot be improved, of course. It can, and will be. 

The general problem people have with defending deep is that they invite pressure, but have no clear idea of how they want to funnel that pressure, contain that pressure, or provide an attacking outlet. They are just overly passive, and passive defending will eventually lose more often than not. This kind of defensive football is suitable for defending a lead or if you are really expecting to be outclassed, and even in this case you probably want to do more.

When defending deep, you do not want to just put players in the way and hope. You want to understand how to funnel the ball into different areas of the pitch where it can be dealt with. Into wide areas, for instance. You need to know how you want your midfield to engage, when to engage, and why they are engaging. Denying players time on the ball close to the area, or denying space to thread a pass, depending on where the opposition is trying to keep the ball. And having a proper, coherent way you want to attack. Not just launching counter attacks but when you possess the ball. That is what people miss. Sticking players behind the ball and hoping is the same as sticking all your players on attack duty with attacking mentality and expecting to score and win. 

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19 minutes ago, DP said:

Are you trying to say the ME doesn’t pre calculate? If so how do you think it knows when there’s a highlight that is going to lead to a goal/chance?

The match is pre calculated based on a lot of variables and then re calculated as those change. Like making a sub. 

Yes, but it's not like the game decides that this match will end 3-2 and then fit a match into that. The ME will process the match in the background when you see that "teams are warming up" message. At that point the game knows what score it will be at half time and it knows what highlights to show. Then the game flows and if you make a change it will recalculate from that point on. So there is not any scripting done, but a calculation of what will happen IF no changes/influences are made.

The game does not, never, create a narrative or set things up for dramatic happenings. It simply calculates and shows it.

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37 minutes ago, Mitja said:

Defending deep is much easier than pressing all over the pitch in real football.

I don't agree with that.

Defending in a low block isn't easier it's just less energy intensive than playing a pressing style (which I agree isn't nearly punishing enough).

Defending passively in a low block requires a completely different profile of player to carry out effectively.

You could argue that it's far easier to get players which suit the attribute profile to carry out a more pressing style of defending than you can for a more passive style.

All you really need to press is to have a team that has relatively strong physical attributes, there is also a great degree of overlap in terms of attribute spread for your more attacking players (for e.g. it's very easy to find players who play in the ML/MR position which have good stamina, acceleration and work rate which are all very useful attributes if they are expected to press).

On the other hand, for a more passive style you need very strong mental attributes, there is also very little overlap in terms of attribute spread for your more attacking players (for e.g. you'll find it hard to identify players who play in the ML/MR position that have good concentration, positioning etc.) 

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5 minutes ago, pheelf said:

I don't agree with that.

 

That's a well known fact. In any sport it's much easier to defened congested space than wide open one. Another fact in football is that every team will use both defending styles even in one match let alone in a season.

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27 minutes ago, sporadicsmiles said:

When defending deep, you do not want to just put players in the way and hope. You want to understand how to funnel the ball into different areas of the pitch where it can be dealt with. Into wide areas, for instance. You need to know how you want your midfield to engage, when to engage, and why they are engaging. Denying players time on the ball close to the area, or denying space to thread a pass, depending on where the opposition is trying to keep the ball. And having a proper, coherent way you want to attack. Not just launching counter attacks but when you possess the ball. That is what people miss. Sticking players behind the ball and hoping is the same as sticking all your players on attack duty with attacking mentality and expecting to score and win. 

Same could be said for more aggressive tactics too. Or any tactic. And I really don't see any reason why counter attacking tactics should be harder to setup correctly when irl it's the other way around. Otherwise all teams would be like City right? I'll repeat even tactics gurus in T&T forum suggest using more aggressive approach (mentalities) when trying to setup counter tactics even with TIs like push higher up. I'm yet to see any successful and proper counter tactics (with lower mentalities) there. But I've seen AI doing it quite successfuly.

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22 minutes ago, sporadicsmiles said:

Sticking players behind the ball and hoping is the same as sticking all your players on attack duty with attacking mentality and expecting to score and win. 

Good point and also points out the biggest area of improvement needed for FM. How ME represents situations in game when manager does everything/something wrong. Over attack or over defend. When over attacking should cause against you dangerous counters and lost balls it causes 30 shots Vs 1 and lost header in freekick. When over defending should give you too many fouls, penalties, bad bounces and minimal penetration to opponent it shows against you 40 shots. There just aren't that much chances (good or bad) in football.

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