Simple tactic that works really well for some reason

[michaeldawson75]

I've kind of come to the end of my interest in FM21, and possibly the series, as recently I've found myself simply going through the motions, making the same tactics over and over again and experiencing the same frustrations. I decided I would take my current team, Sheffield Wednesday, and try making a different formation - usually I play 433 all the time, but I thought I would try a bog standard 442 instead. I played one game in control with this formation before I added any instructions or thought too much about the roles, then my wife wanted to watch a TV show together so I decided to sim the rest of the season.

Note that my squad isn't the best, but has some good loan players in key roles. I didn't really pick the roles for the players, and based on the star rating they are not the best roles for some of them (WMs in particular).

Anyway, here is the tactic and what I came back to:

No team instructions as you can see. There is one PI - RB has the instruction to Sit narrower, because I forgot to remove it (it was part of the previous tactic).

Sixth place is a decent result I think, to say that I left it to the assistant to handle. I was impressed by the season young Joe Gelhardt had, along with the number of assists from the DLF and CM. Twenty-one clean sheets from a keeper as bang average as Dawson is also pretty good, though I do have a strong back four.

Anyway that's it. No real point to this other than to share.

[hehehemann]

This tactics is pretty much identical to what I was using at Stockport County and I took them up to the championship in consecutive seasons from the conference league.

Super simple and just worked, it never produced anything fancy to watch, I was switching from Cautious (which I used 80% of the time) to positive if we needed to find a goal. 

Same roles too except for a TMs to hold up the ball as I just dont have good technical players.

 

[halfspace3000]

9 hours ago, michaeldawson75 said:

I've kind of come to the end of my interest in FM21, and possibly the series, as recently I've found myself simply going through the motions, making the same tactics over and over again and experiencing the same frustrations. I decided I would take my current team, Sheffield Wednesday, and try making a different formation - usually I play 433 all the time, but I thought I would try a bog standard 442 instead. I played one game in control with this formation before I added any instructions or thought too much about the roles, then my wife wanted to watch a TV show together so I decided to sim the rest of the season.

Note that my squad isn't the best, but has some good loan players in key roles. I didn't really pick the roles for the players, and based on the star rating they are not the best roles for some of them (WMs in particular).

Anyway, here is the tactic and what I came back to:

No team instructions as you can see. There is one PI - RB has the instruction to Sit narrower, because I forgot to remove it (it was part of the previous tactic).

Sixth place is a decent result I think, to say that I left it to the assistant to handle. I was impressed by the season young Joe Gelhardt had, along with the number of assists from the DLF and CM. Twenty-one clean sheets from a keeper as bang average as Dawson is also pretty good, though I do have a strong back four.

Anyway that's it. No real point to this other than to share.

honestly the best tactics on fm are the simple ones, no need to ever add so many instructions

[Johnny Ace]

It's not a million miles away from what I use in my 4-4-2 save, few roles are different & I've a couple of TI's. I've always dabbled with a classic 4-4-2 but never had the nerve not to have a CM on Defend. This year I tried it out with two CMs on Support & it's effective. You have to be careful with their PPMs & Attributes but it really works  

[rich10]

I agree with this, I think that PPM's override TI's and PI's anyway, so more ficus should be given to coaching your players to do exactly what you need them to do. I often find that giving more than a couple of fundamental TI's makes it difficult to then unpick what exactly is going wrong when troubleshooting poor form.

[Guest]

To be honest PPMs are how I mostly get my teams to play, for instance I inherited Milik in my Marseille save but he doesn't suit the role I want as a striker so my only option was to put him in the winger role as either an IW or IF.

I couldnt change his pi's to dribble less because he frequently turns the ball over when dribbling so I put the PPM on to stop him dribbling and suddenly I have the leagues top scorer who previously hadn't played out wide.

PPMs are badly implemented in FM in terms of learning and unlearning them and they do have a large effect on how your tactic will play out.

[Johnny Ace]

2 hours ago, Crazy_Ivan said:

PPMs are badly implemented in FM in terms of learning and unlearning them and they do have a large effect on how your tactic will play out.

PPM's have huge effects on tactics, that's why it's so hard to give advice around here if a tactic's failing. Could well be that your Fullback (Defend) has the "gets forward whenever possible" PPM but the people giving the advice don't know that 

[danyates8]

IMO the results from holidaying and actually playing the game vary wildly. I don't think its a very trusted method to test a tactic in that way. The results always seem OP. 

 

[YAMS]

General rule with TI's - Less is always more. I only use 3-4 TI's for all my tactics. 

Also you have a very nice mix of roles there, I really like it. The RHS in-particular has a great balance to it. 

One role I would change would be your CMS to either BWMS or B2B... But that's not a drastic change at all. 

[zabyl]

I use team instructions only for changing something in a match . A cool way to play FM.

 

[04texag]

I've shifted lately to using team instructions for only team defining, DNA type of stuff. Like play out of defense and counterpressing, these are Paramount to my team identity, so we check those boxes and then reduce all others. Then in game I'll add some to respond to what I see or the other team is doing. 

 

It's been refreshing and working well.

[alerosso]

6 ore fa, Crazy_Ivan ha scritto:

PPMs are badly implemented in FM in terms of learning and unlearning them and they do have a large effect on how your tactic will play out.

100% agree. I'm at a point in which I much prefer players with no PPMs as they will finally play the way you want them too.

There's basically just a couple traits I like and funnily enough those are usually not the ones player have lol

[Guest]

11 hours ago, alerosso said:

100% agree. I'm at a point in which I much prefer players with no PPMs as they will finally play the way you want them too.

There's basically just a couple traits I like and funnily enough those are usually not the ones player have lol"

Some of them are basic instructions that 90% of players can change instantly. It really shouldn't reuire an intelligent commited player weeks and weeks of training to unlearn something like dribbling a lot when the player is absolutley **** at dribbling. 

If we are talking learning technical things like using the outisde of your foot or curling the ball or trying tricks then I can get on board with a player learning these things but telling a striker I don't want you to move in to channels when we are in possesion shouldnt be a weeks and weeks learning process with a high chance of not working. I understand that some players in reality have been virtually impossible to change their habits but it's a small minority and it should be better modelled in the game.

[alerosso]

@Crazy_Ivan exactly and I also think most of them are just redundant. For example, if a striker has high off the ball, anticipation and decisions he should already be good at beating the offside trap and moving into channels even without a specific PPM.

Edited September 2, 2021 by alerosso

[Tsuru]

This tactic is kind of similar to the 4-4-1-1 I have been using at Wrexham, however I use a W-Su instead of WM-Su, a BBM instead of the CM-Su and a FB-At behind the W-Su. It is a very simple and balanced way of setting the two banks of four and I like it, I am not focusing on any particular style recently and I just want to play and have fun. Good to know other people are achieving success with this approach too, looks like we have been on a good path 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Tsuru

[Christopher S]

On 01/09/2021 at 13:39, Crazy_Ivan said:

PPMs are badly implemented in FM in terms of learning and unlearning them and they do have a large effect on how your tactic will play out.

This is so infuriatingly true. It take weeks, months even, of in game time to MAYBE change a players PPM either way.

I would MUCH rather have PPMs develop naturally as a direct result of how players are used. Example being if you tell a player, through PIs, to pass short and low risk, he'd eventually develop the "Plays simple passes" PPM as a result of being drilled to do so every game. In my opinion, that reflects IRL to a much larger degree, as that's how players pick up their habits and preferred playstyle anyway - it's through how they are used and what they are told to do. It would be more intuitive as well, as if you sign that guy but want him to be more expansive, you'd instruct him to do so through PIs and he'd gradually let go of his previous habits over time - if given the playtime and confidence. 

PIs, by design, are meant to direct players to do something different than what the team as a whole is instructed to. Right now, PI's are more often than not completely overrided by either ME limitations or PPMs. 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Christopher S

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Christopher S said:

This is so infuriatingly true. It take weeks, months even, of in game time to MAYBE change a players PPM either way.

I would MUCH rather have PPMs develop naturally as a direct result of how players are used. Example being if you tell a player, through PIs, to pass short and low risk, he'd eventually develop the "Plays simple passes" PPM as a result of being drilled to do so every game. In my opinion, that reflects IRL to a much larger degree, as that's how players pick up their habits and preferred playstyle anyway - it's through how they are used and what they are told to do. It would be more intuitive as well, as if you sign that guy but want him to be more expansive, you'd instruct him to do so through PIs and he'd gradually let go of his previous habits over time - if given the playtime and confidence. 

PIs, by design, are meant to direct players to do something different than what the team as a whole is instructed to. Right now, PI's are more often than not completely overrided by either ME limitations or PPMs. 

Yeah that makes total sense to me. For a game that want to be as realistic as possible approaching Dennis Bergkamp to ask him nicely(Which they normally disagree with anyway) to try and teach a player over a few weeks/months (with a high chance of failure) to stop or start doing some basic football things is ridiculous. Again there are some players that were/are virtually impossible to coach because they are so set in their ways but they are literally a small minority.