Fergie Time

[Bailey1]

Noticed during this interview of Sir Alex Ferguson where they discuss the risk in the last 15 minutes of games to try and find a late goal. Man united were great at this back in the day and Sir Alex references getting more bodies into the box, getting the ball out wide and causing havoc.

Interesting to hear other people’s thoughts/methods on chasing a late goal. You see many teams chucking a centre back up top as a ‘target man’ in an attempt cause havoc and win flicks on to hopefully get a goal.

In FM, I understand the ‘mentality’ is an indicator of how much risk you want to take. Why would it not work to just change from positive to very attacking and keeping the same style of play? Aren’t you taking more risks with your passing and getting more bodies into the box this way without having to change your philosophy?

https://youtu.be/ExfC1nRVLSU

 

[NotSoSpecialOne]

Re: the mentality question. It is an indicator of risk, certainly, but you also have to factor in that many of the settings are also slightly different under the hood (tempo, pressing, defensive line etc etc) depending on mentality, so especially with a mentality change that large you could have more knock on effects than you realise.

[Bailey1]

8 minutes ago, NotSoSpecialOne said:

Re: the mentality question. It is an indicator of risk, certainly, but you also have to factor in that many of the settings are also slightly different under the hood (tempo, pressing, defensive line etc etc) depending on mentality, so especially with a mentality change that large you could have more knock on effects than you realise.

Okay I see, so why wouldn’t you just increase your risk to let’s say very attacking if you’re chasing a late goal? You’d want to get the ball back quicker, play higher up the pitch, more direct passing etc.

 

[NotSoSpecialOne]

8 minutes ago, Bailey1 said:

Okay I see, so why wouldn’t you just increase your risk to let’s say very attacking if you’re chasing a late goal? You’d want to get the ball back quicker, play higher up the pitch, more direct passing etc.

 

Because I may not necessarily want all of these things or even perhaps any of them at all. Personally I don't have any hard and fast rules for "Fergie Time" though - I just take each situation as it comes. 

[Mitja]

Since you are increasing the risk you would also want few more attacking duties to create overloads I guess.

[Experienced Defender]

4 hours ago, Bailey1 said:

In FM, I understand the ‘mentality’ is an indicator of how much risk you want to take. Why would it not work to just change from positive to very attacking and keeping the same style of play? Aren’t you taking more risks with your passing and getting more bodies into the box this way without having to change your philosophy?

Simply taking more risks - and playing faster as well (because upping the mentality means upping the tempo along with many other things) - against an opponent who is pleased with the result and defends in a deep and tight low block in an attempt to preserve that result is more likely to produce more lost possession and wasted chances for your team (due to an increase in the number of speculative shots) than help you break them down effectively. So rather than changing the mentality, I personally prefer to:

- either alter my attacking patterns by tweaking a couple of roles/duties (but so as to keep good overall balance of my tactic)

- or make a couple of subtle tweaks to instructions

- or sometimes a bit of both

But whatever strategy I may apply in a given situation, it is never done on a random basis but exclusively based on my careful observations while watching the math.

Does it work in every single situation? Of course not. But such approach has a greater chance of success than a simple mentality change IMHO. 

[Bailey1]

44 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

Simply taking more risks - and playing faster as well (because upping the mentality means upping the tempo along with many other things) - against an opponent who is pleased with the result and defends in a deep and tight low block in an attempt to preserve that result is more likely to produce more lost possession and wasted chances for your team (due to an increase in the number of speculative shots) than help you break them down effectively. So rather than changing the mentality, I personally prefer to:

- either alter my attacking patterns by tweaking a couple of roles/duties (but so as to keep good overall balance of my tactic)

- or make a couple of subtle tweaks to instructions

- or sometimes a bit of both

But whatever strategy I may apply in a given situation, it is never done on a random basis but exclusively based on my careful observations while watching the math.

Does it work in every single situation? Of course not. But such approach has a greater chance of success than a simple mentality change IMHO. 

Interesting, thanks that makes sense I’ll try changing a few instructions.
 

I always toy with putting the CB up top as a target man and pumping balls on the box like real life! Maybe that could be a potential feature in upcoming FMs ‘send centre back forward’ 

[NotSoSpecialOne]

It's definitely an option you can make use of depending on your players and the situation at hand. In one of my saves I won the champions league after doing just this in the final - it was a change that made sense within the context of the match.

[Experienced Defender]

1 hour ago, Bailey1 said:

I always toy with putting the CB up top as a target man and pumping balls on the box like real life!

That's also a legitimate option. Sometimes works, sometimes not. More or less like anything 

[CARRERA]

6 hours ago, Bailey1 said:

In FM, I understand the ‘mentality’ is an indicator of how much risk you want to take. Why would it not work to just change from positive to very attacking and keeping the same style of play? Aren’t you taking more risks with your passing and getting more bodies into the box this way without having to change your philosophy?

Well, its not a bad idea and it for sure can work. However, you may also look at it like this: Simply by choosing a mentality, an overall level of risk your players are willing to take is set. If you now look at many tactics, proberbly at your own, you will noticed that most of them further increase their default risk level and will end up way above average risk. So now even further increasing the main layer of risk, might just be too much and players will start to make mistakes and not be efficient anymore. Besides that, simply increasing the risk overall, might not be the key to unlock teams which are just fine with the result and sitting deep. However, in a battle for victory, where both teams are looking to score the winning goal, it can be quite effective to increase risk for a period of time.

[howard moon]

I often struggle chasing games, so am interested in learning how others do it.

As a United fan, I grew accustomed to seeing us get late goals. There was not many things more thrilling in football than watching those United sides chasing late goals, particularly at Old Trafford.

One of the key things that United always did in these situations was to get plenty of men into the box, and use lots of width. They'd put crosses in - not aimless ones, but hit with quality, and have lots of people both attacking the ball, and lots ready to pick up the second ball if it was cleared. That helped them to build the pressure.

Apparently they used to practice these scenarios regularly in training.

[howard moon]

I forgot to add, one of the reasons why I tend to struggle in these scenarios is that the AI becomes very good at hogging possession. Even far weaker teams start passing the ball like Guardiola-era Barcelona  so it becomes very difficult to create that 'sustained pressure' that Fergie's teams were so good at doing.