Tactics help needed

[Broetchenholer]

Hi Coaches,

 

i am in a bit of a pickle, i am trying to coach a german 3rd league team with no experience of FM or football to be honest. I want to learn the game and have probably picked something that is a rather difficult situation, but i am stubborn and i will prevail. And i need help. Also, the team i am playing, FC Magdeburg, is currently first in the league in real life, which i found out when i tried to check how they were playing, so the squad seems to be fine, just not in my setup.

Into the details! I would like to know how you would set up your tactic with the talent you have, i need a good basis to not be super frustrated. Afterwards i will tell you what i did and what results i have been getting and maybe then i will learn something  Thanks a lot for your time in advance!

First the playerpool that i have:

GK: (1) Good 4 star player, he is not an issue.

CD (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

I have got one Star player CD (2), his only weakness is a 9 in acceleration, he usually plays well. (3) is the captain and plays CD and DM, he is not athletic with a notable weakness in jumping reach, his heading is not good either, but he is great at tackling, marking and positioning. Usually does not play CD. 3 1/2 stars in both roles. (4) is a 22 year old breakthrough prospect, he is solid at 2 1/2 stars for CD and is generally fine, no weaknesses, no real strengths either. Fairly intelligent. (5) is a 21 year old CD/WB, he is athletic, just not very big, his weakness are headers and when a wingback, crossings. 2 stars as a CD, 2 1/2 as a WB. Last real option is (6) a 22 year old CD/DM/CM, mostly athletic, good jumping reach, not very intelligent, marking, passing and first touch at 12, technique at 10, rest lower. 2 1/2 stars on his positions. He also starts with a serious injury.

DL: (2) (5) (7) (8) (9)

(2) is okay as WB, he just lacks pace, acceleration and probably the mindset. He usually does not perform great in the role. (5) is currently being trained in the role, but his left foot is very weak, he also lacks in crossing and dribbling for offensive use. (7) is my vice captain and on paper a really good option, 32 though, and effectively always underperforms. His left foot is only reasonable, would be better at the right side. 3 1/2 stars left, 4 right side. No real weakness attribute wise, not the fastest though. (8) would be the next 21 year old, also a right foot, currently training in the position, fast and good acceleration, all other physicals rather mediocre, decent marking, technique and first touch, very good tackling, mediocre crossing and dribbling. Mentals are mediocre to bad. (9) is a 24 year old dribbler with terrible defensive attributes, the game wants me to play him in the position having 2 1/2 stars as WB AT, he is very quick and agile, all other physicals are meh to bad, teamwork, workrate, determination and flair are fine, rest are liabilities, he is a great dribbler, good first touch and technique, okay passing, tackling and marking at a 6, positioning at 4. bleargh.

DR: (5) (7) (8) (10)

5 would be good for the position 4 stars. (7) and (8) are playing decent as well with the same caveats as described above. (10) is a 25 year old rounded winger, quick, weak stamina, okayish mental stats, dribbling, first touch, passing, tackling, technique are 11-12, marking at 9. 3 stars.

Basically, i have a few options, but i need better defensive players soon, especially CD and left. 

DM: (2) (3) (11) (12) and others

(2) can obviously play the position but is never available. (3) is usually playing there instead of CD, as he has bad aerial values. (11) is a 21 year old with great mentals across the board, good stamina, rest of the physics are 10ish. Dribbling, first touch, long shots, marking, passing tackling and technique are all 11+, already very rounded, weakest point is his positioning of 10. I like him. (12)  is a 23 year old who is not quite as rounded but in the same ball park 2 1/2 stars, not quite as good. And then there are 4 other midfielders that could play the position decently.

CM: (3) (13) (14) (15) (16) and others

Not lacking potential midfielders. My DMs usually play a defensive center field role, so they are here obviously. (13) is a 24 year old workhorse, very agile, quick and endurant, awesome mental, not the most offensive player though. his weaknesses are off the ball, flair, dribbling and shooting. 3 1/2 stars, he runs and fight for balls all day and his passes can be deadly. (14) is my 26 year old more offensive midfielder, less agile then (13) but stronger. Good mentals as well, he is 1 point better then (13) in crossing, dribbling, finishing, first touch, heading and long shots, and one point worse in passing and penalties. 3 1/2 stars. (14) is 28, also very athletic, more offensive then 13, not quite as round as the two former. 2 1/2 stars.

 i will skip left and right midfield and put the offensive midfielders all in one cause there are a lot of them.

(9) is obviously okay as a left winger, he has 3 stars in it. his crossing is 8 though, i haven't been successful with him, he gets past his opponent with great dribbling and speed, then he stops, turn and passes back. He can't play IW(R) but i guess i could train him there. 

(10) is okay at 3 stars as a right winger or inverted winger, he isn't good at crossing either though, having a 9. He has been successfull on the position but not consistently. He can also play decently on the left.

(17) is my "best" attacking player, his best role is attacking midfielder or left IW/IF. his physics are not super great, he has good acceleration and agility, pace and stamina are better suited for a playmaker though. His mentals are not great, but he has good vision, off the ball, flair and composure, so where it counts he ain't bad. Technically he is great, his weakest stat is finishing at 10 and of course heading is 6 as he is a tiny whirlwind. He just does not perform well. He shoots goals from time to time, but i feel he is a non factor in creating opportunities. He is playing mostly IW(L) for me and while he had 4 goals in 6 games, he had no assists. He is at the right place if the team is able to create an opportunity for him, but that seems to be it. He has a fairly strong left foot, never see him flank with his 12 crossing.

(18) is my next winger without crossing, can play both sides, is fast, weak right foot though, good stamina, decent mentals, 13 dribbling, 11 first touch, 12 long shots, goof off the ball and flair, bad finishing though, okay passing and technique. really weird player, don't know what to do with him. starts of with a long time injury as well.

(19)  21 year old prospect, fast and agile, weak and meh stamina, reasonable left foot. Dribbling finishing and first touch are good, decent passing and technique, good flair, off the ball and  decisions, meh crossing, no heading, bad at long shots. again not really a winger, i usually play him as IF(R), but his left foot is probably not good enough. 

Then there is (20) , 26 year old "winger", decent physics, across the board, decent mentals across the board, not really a passing player, 7 at crossing, as an AF he has 2 1/2 stars due to good dribbling, finishing and first touch, good long shots. also injured at the start of the season. He might be a good shadow striker as well, on the wings he is kind of an inverted player. 

(21) and (22) are both bad 22 year old wingers with their best technical rating being a 10 at... technique, but they are fast and stuff. never play them when i can avoid it. Game rates both at 2 1/2 at the wings.

(23) is also a 2 1/2 star winger, this time old, with decent winger attributes, just everything at 11 basically. 

And then my two forwards.

(24) is 22 years old, best as target forward, he is a good physical player, has decent mentals accross the board, finishing 12, heading 12, tecnique 12, rest that matters at 8. 3 stars as TF. I want to like him but he is aggressively mediocre.

(25) is a 2 1/2 star target or pressing forward, he is strong, he is slow, has decent mentals, finishing 23, first touch 11 and heading 14. the rest is sub 10. 

 

That was exhausting, if you have read through that all, thanks a lot. compared to the rest of the league, we are very technical, we have good endurance, we have good passing game, we are small and can't head a ball a way, we are bad at crosses. I have very little real depth as CD and DL, our midfield is okay, we have way too many wingers and our wingers are all not really good at being wingers and our forwards are mediocre at best. In real life the club is playing 4-3-2-1 usually with

       (24)

   (17)  (19)

 (13) (11) (14)

(9) (2) (3) (10)

        (1)

I have played 4-3-3 as well now in several iterations. Tried with IF/IW, with real wingers and with 2 AFs on high attacking width. midfield is usually (13) on BTBMsu, (11) or (3) on BWMde and (14) on Mezzala(at). I have so far played with a

(a) pure tiki-taka and a

(b) watered down tiki taka with longer passes and faster game, no hold shape in transition when we get the ball and

(c) standard wing play with pressing.

In all 3 cases i get the same result. Some games i just completely dominate, great, take it, we are generating plentiful chances, scoring some of them, enemy does not react at all. Then there are the other games, where we dominate possession still, but don't get a lot of highlights on our side, barely generating chances. Most highlights i get is us playing around the penalty area, trying to find anything at some point there is a weak shot made. But as we are pressing and have a high line of defence, the enemy does one or two magic passes, my rather slow defenders don't keep up, 1on1, goal. Also very susceptible to corners and crossings. I tried to react to that in pulling the defensive line back, which seemed to work. But i can't seem to fix the issue with generating chances. My forwards seem to be not involved in the game at all, and when they are, they seem to be not very efficient at scoring. I can't convert my possession and pass quality into goals and this means that the defense we are sacrificing for keeping pressure on the opponent does not pay off. Any help is appreciated, i have sunk so much time already into this, i want to improve :)

[Fotb89]

If you have experience in football thier is an age old saying KIS KEEP IT SIMPLE .. your managing in the 3rd tier of Germany they aren't quite national league in England but still are very limited in what they can do. You have done a good job in evaluating your squad and you can see what they are good at and what they aren't in the the lower leagues less is best go direct with passing you will always get chances to score and you will miss loads aswell as concede a few.

[Broetchenholer]

Hi, thanks for the tipp. The thing is, i have tried several iterations now and they just don't perform well. With the starting players, i am bad at crossings, as my wingmen either don't have high crossing, or are too slow to utilize it. Still, of my 25 players, 12 are wing players. On the other hand, i am getting sooo many goals against me from crosses or corners, it's insane. The engine seems to really love those compared to anything else, but this could be just my observation as my team is so bad at defending against them. Having no left winger that is more then a speed demon hurts even more, considering that on the left side my better inverted winger would love to get some action. I would accept that the team is just not build very well in FM, but there must be something i just don't see, as i saw comments in the chat of some streamers i am watching to educate myself stating how dominant they have been with exactly that club.

So i would appreciate if someone had some idea what to do, playing direct is something i am trying but the team is more then inconsistent with it. I am really at a loss and i am slowly losing my mind due to it.

[jens_dewit]

13 hours ago, Broetchenholer said:

Hi, thanks for the tipp. The thing is, i have tried several iterations now and they just don't perform well. With the starting players, i am bad at crossings, as my wingmen either don't have high crossing, or are too slow to utilize it. Still, of my 25 players, 12 are wing players. On the other hand, i am getting sooo many goals against me from crosses or corners, it's insane. The engine seems to really love those compared to anything else, but this could be just my observation as my team is so bad at defending against them. Having no left winger that is more then a speed demon hurts even more, considering that on the left side my better inverted winger would love to get some action. I would accept that the team is just not build very well in FM, but there must be something i just don't see, as i saw comments in the chat of some streamers i am watching to educate myself stating how dominant they have been with exactly that club.

So i would appreciate if someone had some idea what to do, playing direct is something i am trying but the team is more then inconsistent with it. I am really at a loss and i am slowly losing my mind due to it.

You've done a great write up but if you want more suggestions, I think your best guess is just posting what you're using and let people help you based on that, instead of letting them guess.

Some will doubtless have problems interpreting your write up simply because of the lack of graphics. (I know I do)

[Broetchenholer]

Is there a way to get some of this information out of the game without posting a million screenshots?

[breum]

Not really, I guess you could upload the save file?

[Speedyol]

I did not read the whole post, but i understand you want to create the tactic around your players in lower league. I play a lot of lower league. Here is my tip:

• Dont look at attributtes, focus on performance and regular football. Average rating, matches played, fitness, goals, assists ect.
• Select "Create you own style", then put your 3-4 best players into their best spot on the field and fill out the other 7-8 places to form a tactic.
• Remove every "in possession", "In transition" and "out of possession" instruction. No overlap, dribble less or anything EVERY option NOT selected or default.
• Find Teamreport -> Comparison with lots of "Bar Graphs". Use them to see your strength and weakness compared to your division. Pick MAX 1-3 options in each of the "in possession", "In transition" and "out of possession" Do not select everything. Keep it simple.
  • With low Passing skill; use short passing
  • High Pace/Acc defenders: High defence line - High Heading skill+ low Pace/Acc: Low defencive line
  • Low dribble skill: Dribble less
  • GK has high throwing skill: Throw out - GK has high kicking skill: long kicks (on the main GK perhaps not on team report comparison.)
• Do not select any Overlap/Underlap or focus play on left/right/center.
• If you are in a low money club; to keep a smaller squad try to use 3 MC and possibly 3 ST's... you can have a 18 player squad and still have backup for all the roles, since 1 guy can replace/sub 3 possitions on the pitch. no need for lots of types of subs.

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Speedyol

[Broetchenholer]

Hi, i have now settled somfortably into 2. Bundesliga and am improving, but i am hitting a limit of my playstyle as recruiting end of contracts does not help me anymore and the players i do get need a lot of persuasion to move to this small and underrated 2nd league german team. So, the players that i get and like have to be convinced through pretty but playing time promises. It means that i have little wiggle room for new players coming in. But also, due to being just a small 2nd league team, i do not get all too many young prospects yet, my scouting reach is europeand the few young players i find are usually highly contested. So, i was very happy with binding 3 new great young forwards to my team and until now this worked well, but now two of them have become unhappy with their playing time and i think the third will follow. I need some help with deciding who to drop or how to solve it without dropping anyone.

 

Here is my tactic:

1) Luca Schuler. He is my legacy player, he scored all the goals in my first and third season, but he has not performed all too well now that i rotate him a lot. He is on a regular starter promise and has just been promised to get an increase in playing time. He is usually reliable and clinical, he is a fan favourite and a team leader.

2)Tom Kljun. He is my first new young player. He is a winger and when he plays we switch the 2nd CF spot to a left winger. He hasn't performed that well so far, specially with the playing time he had, he is on an important player promise and will soon be unhappy about that. He is the most obvious person to cut, but he has a high potential and is getting better, he also wants to have a new contract.

3)Milan Bulatovic. My current star player. He is great, i have recently giving him a new contract because interest in him is high, he is scoring and playing very well, but he is consuming a lot of game time. He is also not showing that five star potential, but apart from that, which is the only reason i could see not to keep him. He is also not super sought after by other clubs.

4) Carlos Rodriguez, the newest and youngest. He just got over being unhappy, i had to play him in more matches. He rewarded me with a lot of goals and he will develop a lot. He is currently on impact sub, which helps a lot and there is a lot of room for me to pay him well. He is wanted by a lot of clubs though.

[Tsuru]

I have been playing LLM on England and after many seasons trying to develop a tactic from scratch, now I have been creating a playstyle based on my assistant manager´s suggestions. Why? Because even if I had evaluated my team and my players before, and also created some tactics based just on what my players can do (best roles/duties), I was never fully satisfied. The team played well for some matches, then suddenly it stopped working.

How I have been working with the assistant´s suggestions to build my tactic?

1. I use his evaluation to select the TIs, based on one of the templates he suggests - Tiki Taka, Vertical Tiki Taka, Control Possession, Fluid Counter Attack etc.
2. I normally keep all the "in possession" instructions of the template, adjust the "in transition" ones (normally I tend to remove "Counter" and "Counter Press", for example) and normally I remove the "out of possession" ones, as I think the templates have too aggressive or too passive defensive strategies and I don´t like them.
3. I try to develop a defensive TI strategy based on my team and being logical to the level that my team is playing. For example it is LLM so I try to avoid higher lines for example.
4. The formation/roles/duties are something that I normally do from scratch, as I don´t like the template suggestions (they seem horrible TBH). I try to do something logical, balanced and sensible, based on what my players can do, trying to match them with the playstyle, and I normally use Rate my Tactic (https://ratemytactic.web.app/en) to help me finishing the job. It is LLM so I try to not overcomplicate, normally I use 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 (4-1-4-1 DM Wide is good too but it rarely works with me).
5. Once the tactic is ready I avoid looking at the assistant´s suggestions again, because it seems that he changes his mind a lot - and if I change it all the time the players will never get familiar to it. If there is a serious performance problem that no adjustment can solve then I consider looking at his suggestions again.

Until now this has worked for me, maybe it can help you too.

1 hora atrás, Broetchenholer disse:

Here is my tactic:

What do you think that could improve on your tactic? The problems you mentioned were more related to squad management than from the tactic itself. Personally I would do some adjustments but if it is working I think you shouldn´t change it.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Tsuru

[Broetchenholer]

I am not too worried about the tactic, i was just showing it to provide context for the decisions i have to make. It currently works (with occasionally bad spells) provided that iam still not nearly spending as much as the rest of the league. But i think it is pimportant to note that Tom Kljun is not a natural fit to the rest of the squad, as everytim he is on the field an AF switches to a winger. He also just requested more playing time, which i told him i would provide, and he was awful in the first game i played him in and got carried by a stroing team performance in the second. still 0 goals/3 assists in 10 games. He is also not being targeted by transfer offers right now, the one team that is interested wants him for a third his minimum tranfer value. Rodriguez on the other hand is being persued by a bunch of clubs and i just offered him a contract about as expensive as Schuler and Bulatovic have. And to make everything even more confusing, Schuler just scored a hattrick in the second game i played him to ensure my promise for his playing time.

I should also mention, that money really is a secondary issue. I am locked on playing time of my existing players, i could buy and pay a buch of additional players, i just don't have targets that would be better and willing to play less to switch them.