Where I make a mistake?

[Faukazet]

I have been struggling in a couple of saves. I have always thought that the reason were bad tactics. But to figure out if it's the case I started save in Manchaster City and applied tactic from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRonyWfitbk. At the beginning of January I already drew in 6 league games and lost 2. I had a couple of great games against strong rivals, won against Liverpool and MU playing as away team, smashed Real Madrid 4-1, but generally my results are nothing like in this video. My team is not tired because I'm rotating a lot, thanks to that morale are also on a very high level. I handed over training to my assistant, who has good abilities. 

Usually I manage to have a decent run of good games during the season, but then suddenly, out of nothing it collapses. In RB Leipzig for example it looked like that - a couple of games where my team was playing amazingly well, and from the game against Bayer results got much worse, I even lost against Herha, last team in the league table. Similary in Manchester City, I had great results, but at some point I drew against Fulham, Southampton and lost against Brighton. Between these games I won 1-0 with MU. 

So what can be possible cause of my struggles? 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Faukazet

[CARRERA]

I've screened it from the Video so everyone can have a look at it. (You can just copy & paste screenshots into the textfield)

[Jack722]

1 hour ago, Faukazet said:

I have been struggling in a couple of saves. I have always thought that the reason were bad tactics. But to figure out if it's the case I started save in Manchaster City and applied tactic from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRonyWfitbk. At the beginning of January I already drew in 6 league games and lost 2. I had a couple of great games against strong rivals, won against Liverpool and MU playing as away team, smashed Real Madrid 4-1, but generally my results are nothing like in this video. My team is not tired because I'm rotating a lot, thanks to that morale are also on a very high level. I handed over training to my assistant, who has good abilities. 

Usually I manage to have a decent run of good games during the season, but then suddenly, out of nothing it collapses. In RB Leipzig for example it looked like that - a couple of games where my team was playing amazingly well, and from the game against Bayer results got much worse, I even lost against Herha, last team in the league table. Similary in Manchester City, I had great results, but at some point I drew against Fulham, Southampton and lost against Brighton. Between these games I won 1-0 with MU. 

So what can be possible cause of my struggles? 

 

40 minutes ago, CARRERA said:

I've screened it from the Video so everyone can have a look at it. (You can just copy & paste screenshots into the textfield)

To be honest, I haven't watched much of City this season. But in FM terms, I don't think this is a very good tactic.

No matter of the roles you use, every 433 will see the front 3 pinch in narrowly in the final third, as they're all forwards who want to score (even wingers). Because of that, this tactic basically has 0 width, with an inverted fullback and a supporting fullback. So i can imagine your draws against the smaller teams come from you struggling to break them down. The easiest way to get a balanced 433 working in FM is to use attacking wingbacks to provide width, then have a holding DM (like you have) to cover the wingbacks, and then supporting midfielders who can also cover wingbacks and help move the ball into attack.

If you want your fullbacks to move into midfield or stay back, you probably want to switch to a 4141, as the wingers in this formation naturally stay wider through all phases of play and provide width in attack. then with this you can enable both your central midfielders to have more freedom in attack. This would recreate the City of 18/19 with Sane and Sterling as wingers, and players like De Bruyne getting forward from a CM position.

[Gdansk]

Thankfully in FM21 mostly you can't just put in a tactic and win every game, if you don't create anything against bad teams for example, you need to try something like maybe higher tempo or switch a role or duty, not run the game down and be surprised that nothing changed.

[Gdansk]

@Faukazet can you maybe upload your savegame with ManCity in January for example? Because I've just downloaded the tactic, loaded it up with Man City, did set pieces so they're not completely bad and holidayed til May and have 85 points after 33 games, FA Cup Final and they destroyed Bayern, Chelsea and Juve in the CL. So there's something you must be doing wrong in addition.

[RDF Tactics]

23 hours ago, Faukazet said:

I have been struggling in a couple of saves. I have always thought that the reason were bad tactics. But to figure out if it's the case I started save in Manchaster City and applied tactic from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRonyWfitbk. At the beginning of January I already drew in 6 league games and lost 2. I had a couple of great games against strong rivals, won against Liverpool and MU playing as away team, smashed Real Madrid 4-1, but generally my results are nothing like in this video. My team is not tired because I'm rotating a lot, thanks to that morale are also on a very high level. I handed over training to my assistant, who has good abilities. 

Usually I manage to have a decent run of good games during the season, but then suddenly, out of nothing it collapses. In RB Leipzig for example it looked like that - a couple of games where my team was playing amazingly well, and from the game against Bayer results got much worse, I even lost against Herha, last team in the league table. Similary in Manchester City, I had great results, but at some point I drew against Fulham, Southampton and lost against Brighton. Between these games I won 1-0 with MU. 

So what can be possible cause of my struggles? 

 

22 hours ago, Jack722 said:

 

To be honest, I haven't watched much of City this season. But in FM terms, I don't think this is a very good tactic.

No matter of the roles you use, every 433 will see the front 3 pinch in narrowly in the final third, as they're all forwards who want to score (even wingers). Because of that, this tactic basically has 0 width, with an inverted fullback and a supporting fullback. So i can imagine your draws against the smaller teams come from you struggling to break them down. The easiest way to get a balanced 433 working in FM is to use attacking wingbacks to provide width, then have a holding DM (like you have) to cover the wingbacks, and then supporting midfielders who can also cover wingbacks and help move the ball into attack.

If you want your fullbacks to move into midfield or stay back, you probably want to switch to a 4141, as the wingers in this formation naturally stay wider through all phases of play and provide width in attack. then with this you can enable both your central midfielders to have more freedom in attack. This would recreate the City of 18/19 with Sane and Sterling as wingers, and players like De Bruyne getting forward from a CM position.

Hello, guys. So this has been brought to my attention in my Discord server.

Like @Jack722 explains, there's hardly any width and 'defensive' sides tend to defend the middle well unless you break that shape and get width. This tactic can work, given you have quality players (as you do with City) minor tweaks. What also may work is if you add dribble more on the full backs and get further forward. Defensive sides sit back, so naturally on FM your full backs will look to get forward no matter what, and you can tune their behaviour with PIs rather than having to change the role completely. With the IWB and IW on the same side, they will almost never invert at the same time (as it says in the IWB description) but you can always add overlap on the right as well to get him making the overlap more a little more frequently, helping break down sides.

I also agree with @jack772 about the recreation itself. City liked to use wingers with a CM breaking through centrally. But on FM, that doesn't happen as frequently as you need it to and it felt a waste trying to achieve that. City's wingers could also invert as Pep never stuck to the same every match so instead, I tried to use inverted roles but asking them to stay wide, in hope we can achieve both staying wide and inverting.

In FM, there's not really right or wrong roles. People tend to think or believe certain roles will not work together. There are faults with playing a IWB and IW on the same side but at the same time, it can also be rewarding,

Not the best way to test tactics, but I just ran a holiday test with it (photos below). It did win the league and never drew as much, but certainly lost more than expected. 
 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by RDF Tactics

[Tsuru]

Em 11/07/2021 em 13:51, Gdansk disse:

Thankfully in FM21 mostly you can't just put in a tactic and win every game, if you don't create anything against bad teams for example, you need to try something like maybe higher tempo or switch a role or duty, not run the game down and be surprised that nothing changed.

Yes, I figured it out that and I created a simple strategy to deal with this situations, as I don´t like micromanaging.

Usually I try to change the game with substitutions, if it is not working, I add the TI "Be More Expressive". If it is still not working and the match is on the last 10 minutes, I move LOE and DL to Much Higher, to give opponents even less space. Until now I didn´t suffered any goals with much higher lines, instead we scored a goal on the last minute on one match and almost won a hard game which was 0-0. 

The strategy itself is not important, I think the most important part is to have a strategy to change the game, even if it is a very simple one.