Zero Team Or Player Instructions

[Lbsaligh]

Hello the fine people of this community. Just wanted to open up a discussion about the topic in the title. As the title says has anyone had success implementing tactics that didn’t use TIs or PIs?
 

Ive played FM for a quite a few years but has always focused on plug n play tactics instead of making my own tactic and thought I’d change my approach this year. I’ve read numerous resources about the importance of roles and duties in creating a tactic especially the great guide pairs and combinations but one thing I’ve always wanted to know is whether it was entirely possible to create a winning tactic focused solely on player roles and duties without TIs or PIs? Just focusing on a balanced, simple tactic?

[kingjericho]

Like this?

It is absolutely possible to create a good tactic without TI or PI. For the record I never use any PI in my tactics. And TI are only a set of instructions of how you want the team to specifically do something. But if you have a general idea of what you want, often enough setting the appropriate roles to your desired effect is just enough.

A simple example: I want to play deep, breaking out in quick transitions. I can set a cautious mentality and then use roles like BBM, W, IW, and AF to have those players attack the space left behind at full speed.

[CARRERA]

Yes, you can completely do that. TI / PI's is just a secondary or third layer to customize your tactics and match a specific style or whatever. When creating a new tactic your first step should always be to set up your formation, roles and duties (and mentality for the broad idea of how you want to play) before starting to fine tune with TI's after a few matches.

[Lbsaligh]

43 minutes ago, kingjericho said:

Like this?

It is absolutely possible to create a good tactic without TI or PI. For the record I never use any PI in my tactics. And TI are only a set of instructions of how you want the team to specifically do something. But if you have a general idea of what you want, often enough setting the appropriate roles to your desired effect is just enough.

A simple example: I want to play deep, breaking out in quick transitions. I can set a cautious mentality and then use roles like BBM, W, IW, and AF to have those players attack the space left behind at full speed.

Hey that’s really cool! Not seen that resource before so I’ll defo check it out. It’s also reassuring that it is possible to create a winning tactic without TIs and PIs especially when you’re still learning about what each team instruction does. Thanks for the reply. 

[Lbsaligh]

41 minutes ago, CARRERA said:

Yes, you can completely do that. TI / PI's is just a secondary or third layer to customize your tactics and match a specific style or whatever. When creating a new tactic your first step should always be to set up your formation, roles and duties (and mentality for the broad idea of how you want to play) before starting to fine tune with TI's after a few matches.

Appreciate the response, I never thought to look it at like in that order. I’ve always loved the idea of playing with a 442 or 4411 due to the balance and stability they provide so I may revisit these formations. So say I wanted to play a 442/4411 a good starting point is to focus on finding a good balance of player roles and duties first and then tweak until it plays as I want it to play then start incorporating TIs?

[CARRERA]

55 minutes ago, Lbsaligh said:

Appreciate the response, I never thought to look it at like in that order. I’ve always loved the idea of playing with a 442 or 4411 due to the balance and stability they provide so I may revisit these formations. So say I wanted to play a 442/4411 a good starting point is to focus on finding a good balance of player roles and duties first and then tweak until it plays as I want it to play then start incorporating TIs?

Yeah, I mean you might have a general idea of how you want your team to play. You can then match that how it actually plays out. 

You can easily make up a lot with the right roles. You may for example look for less crossing, then try to pick roles that don’t have „cross more often“ hardcoded. And there is more. 

also keep in mind, that your base layer of instructions is coming with your choice of the mentality. If you are looking for example to press high up the pitch and apply pressure to the other team, I would recommend to start with a positive or attacking mentality instead of a more cautious one and then start to fix every aspect of your game with countless instructions.

It is also to consider how your formation does affect your style of play. A good starting point is always to check where your formation has a numerical advantage of players. Many forwards (including AM strata)? It may excel at pressing high. Most players in central areas, then a mid press might be your preferred choice. 

When fine tuning later, don’t mix things up. Focus for example on how your team defends or attacks and then make slight adjustments and don’t add like 10 instructions at once. 

later on when you exactly know what everything does you might see several things you can fix at once in different phases of play, but I wouldn’t recommend that unless you are really sure about it. 

[davidbarros2]

Let me also refer you to this one, it's great to see different views on the same subject (oh I miss the community challenges)...

 

 

[Lbsaligh]

8 minutes ago, davidbarros2 said:

Let me also refer you to this one, it's great to see different views on the same subject (oh I miss the community challenges)...

 

 

Appreciate it David! I’ll give this a read now. 

[herne79]

I've been pinged a couple of times here so one thing I'll add if going down this road - it's important to understand the relationship between the role you give to a player and the player's own attributes / Traits.

Each player will play the same role in a different way because of their attributes & Traits.  The example I usually use here is the Trequartista.  If you read the Treq's definition and look at the defined PIs for the role, you'll expect the role to be all flair and no trousers - a genius on the ball but a passenger when possession is lost.  We've probably all seen that clip of Messi just standing there as an opponent with the ball runs past him.  So if you use a player with a very poor work ethic (according to their attributes such as Work Rate) then that's what you'll get on the pitch.  But use a player with a high degree of work rate in that role and it'll play very differently on the pitch - he won't just stand there watching people run past him, he'll get involved in the action even when defending.

As far as Traits go, consider this as an example - lots of players who play in the fullback / wingback positions have the Trait "gets forward often".  Now think what might happen if you take a player with that Trait and give him a wingback or fullback role with the Attack duty.  That'll make him very aggressive at getting forward but he might not be so good at getting back to defend.  So do you really need to give such a player the Attack duty?  Would the Trait with a less aggressive role/duty actually be sufficient?  That's not to say you can't, you'll just need to pay attention to how things play out and adjust if needed.

What I'm describing here is important for any tactic you build, regardless of how many TIs and PIs you use.  But it becomes arguably more important to pay attention to how players and roles combine the fewer TIs and PIs you use because you're relying more on your players and their roles without the crutch of TIs and PIs to prop things up.

[Lbsaligh]

9 minutes ago, herne79 said:

I've been pinged a couple of times here so one thing I'll add if going down this road - it's important to understand the relationship between the role you give to a player and the player's own attributes / Traits.

Each player will play the same role in a different way because of their attributes & Traits.  The example I usually use here is the Trequartista.  If you read the Treq's definition and look at the defined PIs for the role, you'll expect the role to be all flair and no trousers - a genius on the ball but a passenger when possession is lost.  We've probably all seen that clip of Messi just standing there as an opponent with the ball runs past him.  So if you use a player with a very poor work ethic (according to their attributes such as Work Rate) then that's what you'll get on the pitch.  But use a player with a high degree of work rate in that role and it'll play very differently on the pitch - he won't just stand there watching people run past him, he'll get involved in the action even when defending.

As far as Traits go, consider this as an example - lots of players who play in the fullback / wingback positions have the Trait "gets forward often".  Now think what might happen if you take a player with that Trait and give him a wingback or fullback role with the Attack duty.  That'll make him very aggressive at getting forward but he might not be so good at getting back to defend.  So do you really need to give such a player the Attack duty?  That's not to say you can't, you'll just need to pay attention to how things play out and adjust if needed.

What I'm describing here is important for any tactic you build, regardless of how many TIs and PIs you use.  But it becomes arguably more important to pay attention to how players and roles combine the fewer TIs and PIs you use because you're relying more on your players and their roles without the crutch of TIs and PIs to prop things up.

Interesting. I’m literally, as we speak, reading through all the posts in your no/less TIs and PIs challenge and it’s interesting to see how other FMers have set up their teams with minimal TIs/PIs instructions. It’s interesting the points you’ve made that I hadn’t considered regarding player traits. There is still a level of complexity in regards to creating a tactic and choosing a balanced set of player roles and duties whilst also taking into account individual player traits. Thank you for stopping by and giving some advice, it’s given me lots to consider!