Tactic evolution

[LeeWHU888]

After some help. I've struggled with creating tactics on FM  for a while so on my latest game I've tried to use the pre set tactics.

I've actually had some great success with using the vertical tiki taka with West Ham - didn't dominate and win every game but every game was entertaining, chances for both teams and always felt I had a chance of a result. I finished the 1st season in 8th and won (albeit very lucky) the FA Cup. 2nd season started well, was hovering around the Champions League places and won our Europa League group and everything was still rosy and then we just hit a wall. 

After beating Southampton at the start of February, we then only won 2 more games in the league, fluked our way through the 2nd KO round, played well in 1 of the 2 legs in the QF and held on enough to reach the semi final where we were awful and got knocked out. I thought it was either fatigue setting in late on in the season or teams looked as us differently and started to set up differently against us or a combination of both. However, started season 3 and we are just a mess -we're creating nothing, opposition players are just picking the ball up and running through the team and either scoring bangers or playing in team mates for simple 1 on 1's. 

I'm now going to try and tinker with the tactics a bit and see if I can sort it out however my question is, when this happens, how drastic do the changes need to be? Is it a case of ripping up the tactic and starting again or can slight adjustments be made. My main Achilles heel is not really understanding how minor changes affect the overall tactic and I start to get the right hump when I make changes yet the same old mistakes are happening and also, how do your tactics evolve over the years as you progress and become a bigger club? 

Edited January 27, 2022 by LeeWHU888

[Xander2000]

More often than not, you don't have to make any drastic changes to your tactic. I certainly don't do that. You're completely right that you need to evolve and further develop your tactic as teams start to recognize you as a serious threat so you're off to a good start. 

You haven't uploaded a screenshot of the system(s) you use, so it's quite hard to give you any specific advice. However, as always, if I find my side to be in poor form for more than, let's say, three to five matches, I always try to evaluate and identify what's going on. Sometimes you can get desperate and throw all sorts of combinations (or a lack of) and TIs and PIs at the ME but it often just complicates things further. So in the few cases where I've lost track of my tactic and ideas, I go back to the basics and ask myself the following questions:

a) Who's going to create space? Who's going to exploit that space? How do I want to defend?

There are probably a few more things to take into considerations that I've forgotten on the spot, but nonetheless, I ask myself these questions and readjust my tactic. Often that means taking off a lot of TIs and PIs and spending time actually watching the matches to see how things pan out. Getting visual confirmation is 10x easier when you know what to look for. Seriously, I cannot stress this enough. 

On the other hand, if I'm already pretty certain what to expect from my players, I go to the match analysis and try to identify why we're underperforming. Maybe a key player is simply on a poor run? Maybe we play with a too high D-line? Maybe my strikers aren't getting enough support?

Both approaches can be done both separately but also in combination with each other. 

[CaptCanuck]

Are you watching player morale? Is Team Cohesion very good or higher? Does the core of your team (and as you get better eventually everyone) have high determination, teamwork, and workrate? And then anticipation, decisions, off the ball, and positioning? Is it a physical enough team/large enough squad to play 60 matches a season?

If you were beating your club's preseason expectations and had largely seen good form and good play when watching the matches, these items will go further to getting successful results than your seemingly sound tactic.