How I played attacking possession football on Cautious mentality and went unbeaten in the league for 2 seasons [FM21]

[Fat Lump]

Hi all,

 

First time poster here but long-time lurker. I’ve learnt a lot over the years from all the tactical discussions on this forum and have finally reached the stage where I have managed to create my own tactic that I feel is worth sharing. It is by no means a plug-and-play tactic that will guarantee you win everything, but it fulfils a number of criteria that I have personally been trying to achieve (my own footballing philosophy, if you like):

• Attractive and entertaining possession-based football where my team patiently holds onto the ball and works it around with purpose, probing for an opening
• Address the vulnerability to counter-attacks of a lot of 4-2-3-1 and other top-heavy systems when possession is lost high up the pitch, without having to resort to placing the double pivot in the DM strata
• A successful tactic that does not rely on maxing out the intensity bar through extreme tempo and pressing settings
• Be able to dominate domestically when I am one of the stronger teams in the league, and use the same style of football without compromise in Europe where I am a relative underdog and still do well
• Create a 4-2-3-1 system where both wingers are inverted but the AMC is still able to shine and not get crowded out

Introduction

To help achieve the first two objectives, I have decided to go with a Cautious mentality for my tactic. Playing on this mentality does not equate to boring, safety-first football. Mentality in FM relates to risk-taking behaviours. The Cautious mentality instructs my players to reduce the risks they take when it comes to pass selection, dribbling and forward runs. They will not play speculative through passes that are highly unlikely to come off, but instead will recycle possession and look for another opening. Similarly, wingers will not look to dribble down a dead-end and then smash a cross against the nearest defender when they inevitably run out of options, and attacking fullbacks will push forward for the overlap only when it is safe and sensible to do so. By playing with this mentality, the chances of losing the ball in the attacking third and being hit on the transition are much reduced. The tactics of many teams in real life that play what would be described as an attacking possession style of football, such as Man City under Guardiola, would translate in FM terms to a Cautious mentality in my opinion.

I have chosen Shakhtar Donetsk in Ukraine to try out this tactical adventure. They are known for signing talented young Brazilians to then sell on for massive fees after a few years. Some of them have hung around and become iconic players at the club, and part of the attraction was working with players like Marlos, Taison and Junior Moraes who are well suited to the style of football I have in mind. The Ukrainian Premier League has restrictions on the number of foreigners that each team has on the field at any point of a match, and so retaining a strong core of Ukrainian players will also be a priority. At the start of the game, Shakhtar are a big fish in a small pond, having won the Premier League for 4 seasons running and are expected to continue to dominate domestically along with their rivals Dynamo Kyiv. European competition is likely to be a far bigger challenge. Shakhtar won the UEFA Cup in 2009 and reached the quarter finals of the Champions League in 2011, but since then have only managed to make it out of the group stage on three occasions. This seems like an ideal scenario to test out whether my tactical principles will hold up against better opponents.

The tactic

So with all that in mind, this is what my base tactic (the one attached to this post) looks like:

Starting from the back, we have a sweeper keeper who mops up through passes from the opposition and is comfortable with the ball at his feet. The left fullback is more attacking and will frequently look for the overlap. He has the PIs of Run wider with ball, Stay wider, Shoot less often and Mark tighter. The role of the right fullback is to first and foremost be defensively solid, while also helping the midfield recycle possession in deeper areas and providing width in the final third. His PIs are Shoot less often, Sit narrower and Mark tighter. One CB is a ball-playing defender to help get the ball through the opposition press to our midfield, and the other CB is on cover duty to help protect the left flank which is vulnerable if we lose possession with the left fullback caught upfield. The left CB has the PIs Stay Wider and Take More Risks to help him link up with the players on that left flank.

Moving on to the midfield, the double pivot must be mobile, strong and defensively capable above all else. A player who has PPMs such as Get forward whenever possible and Arrives late in the box is NOT suited to playing in my double pivot. The DLP on support is more static and will mainly recycle possession and switch play, while the BWM is given licence to aggressively close down and terminate opposition counters. The BWM has the PIs Run wide with ball and Hold position – his movement in possession is therefore more lateral than vertical. I think one of the main reasons why my defensive performances were a bit shaky in the Champions League (apart from stronger opponents) is that my main DLP Marcos Antonio is a wonderful technical and creative player but only has 10 for tackling and 9 for strength. We can get away with it domestically against inferior opponents, but the better players we encounter in Europe can exploit this weakness.

In the AM strata, the right winger is an inverted winger on attack who picks up the ball in wide positions and looks to run at defenders and get into scoring positions. He will both create and finish chances. He has been given the PIs Shoot less often and Mark tighter. The left winger is an Advanced Playmaker on support. He will link up with the DLP and AMC to create central overloads, which in turn frees up the left fullback to bomb down the flank and isolate defenders for the right inverted winger to run at. The left winger has the PIs Dribble more and Mark tighter. The AMC is an attacking midfielder on support duty, given the PIs Take more risks, Dribble more and Get Further Forward. He is a key link between our attack and midfield, sitting in the hole and feasting on the ample passing options created by the runners around him. He will rack up an impressive number of key passes throughout a season. If you have a player in this position with decent long shots, we will also score a bunch of goals as he always seems to be in space on the edge of the area. Because he is on a support duty linking up play rather than an attack where he is always trying to drive into the box, his performances do not seem to suffer even when the opposition deploys a DMC. Similarly, because he is not given a designated playmaker role, my team does not force the play towards him when central areas are crowded, and he is free to find space and pick his time to get involved. I have a personal fascination with traditional playmakers from the past like Riquelme and am constantly looking for ways to make playmaker-type AMCs shine in FM, and I am very happy with how the AMC performs in this setup (even though he is not designated a playmaker role). A good player in this position will absolutely boss games – more on this below if you want to read on.

Lastly, our striker is an advanced forward with no additional PIs. His job is to make runs in behind and down the channels to stretch the defence, and finish off chances. Since the overall team mentality is Cautious, he will also occasionally drop off to make himself available as an easy passing option.

The Attacking and In Transition team instructions I think are fairly self-explanatory for a possession style of football. Under the hood, the Cautious mentality has the effects (amongst other things) of lowering tempo, narrowing width and reducing frequency of dribbles and forward runs. To offset the danger of being overly conservative in possession, I have selected Pass Into Space to encourage support players to move into dangerous areas and for the player on the ball to look for through passes when opportunities are on. When defending, Cautious mentality has the effects of lowering the line of engagement and defensive line, narrowing defensive width, lowering pressing urgency, and reducing the frequency of aggressive tackles. None of these effects are particularly helpful for dominating opponents when you are one of the strongest teams in the league, and so I have upped the line of engagement, defensive line, pressing urgency and added Get Stuck In to create what resembles an aggressive high press. My approach to creating tactics in FM is to choose the right mentality that best fits the style of attacking play I want to see, and then add team instructions and choose appropriate player roles to balance out the effects of that mentality setting that you don’t want. This is obviously not the only way to do things, but it seems to work for me.

Results

Here are the final league standings from the first season:

As expected, we dominated domestically. The league season was truncated to just 26 games due to hardcoded in-game Covid rule changes, but you can see we ran away with the title, going unbeaten all season and conceding only 8 goals while scoring an average of 2.9 goals per game. We also won the Ukrainian Cup and Super Cup to complete the domestic treble.

In the Champions League, we managed to win 5 out 6 games in the group stage, losing only to Bayern away from home. In the round of 16, we had a bit of a shocker away to Sevilla in the first leg before storming back in the return fixture at home to win 3-0 and go through on away goals. We then met Liverpool in the quarter-final, and to be honest we were completely outclassed over both legs which was reflected in the results. The vast gap in quality of players between the two teams meant we were never able to impose ourselves with our patient style of possession in the face of their renowned Gegenpress. Still, this was a Champions League campaign to be proud of and I was happy with achieving one of my objectives at the start, which was to play to same style of football that I do domestically and still do well in Europe. This is not one of those tactics or stories where I use unrealistic player roles, a strikerless formation and maxed out pressing settings to exploit my way to winning the Champions League against all odds.

 

We then moved on to season 2, and we managed something that I have never done before in FM which was winning every single league game. Despite many of the teams sitting back and parking the metaphorical bus against us, we found a way in every game to make sure no points were dropped at all:

Our defence was slightly less impenetrable this season (although still conceding less than a goal every 2 games), but our attacking output was a bit better (3.3 games per game). Again, we won the two domestic cups on offer to seal another treble. The league stats overview showed we maintained 61% possession through the season.

In the Champions League, I felt we did well to make it out of a group stage this year that contained Man Utd, Lazio and AS Monaco, before being knocked out by Bayern in the round of 16 although not without giving them a scare in the 1^st leg.

Here is my squad and player statistics from the end of the 2^nd season. Almost every player had an average rating above 7, which with the FM match ratings system means they all contributed effectively in attack and defence throughout the 90 minutes without going for long periods where they don’t do anything meaningful.

You will notice the outrageous numbers posted by my AMC Vladlen Yurchenko. I signed him at the start of the first season for £2.1m as I wanted a Ukrainian AMC to strengthen the core of the team, and he happens to fulfil home-grown requirements for the Champions League having come through our academy before moving abroad earlier in his career. Yurchenko’s numbers are inflated by being my main penalty and set piece taker, but 50 goal involvements in 35 appearances was beyond my wildest expectations of what a playmaking AMC can achieve within the constraints of the FM match engine.

Gameplay examples

Finally, I will show some examples of how this tactic plays out. This first clip perhaps best illustrates what we are all about – playing out from the back, intricate one- and two-touch passing moves using the full width of the field, and then a lovely through ball from the DLP Marcos Antonio to our striker to score when an opening appears. All of this achieved with Cautious mentality against Lazio in the Champions League who are no pushovers.

Here is another example of a goal resulting from playing out from the back through Dynamo Kyiv’s press in the domestic cup final.

This time, an example of us winning back possession through our own aggressive press before patiently probing for an opening. Our advanced forward. Marcos Leonardo is able to get in behind from an intelligent ball forward from our ball-playing defender, and he lays it off to our left winger to slot home.

Another well-worked goal after regaining possession from an opposition goal kick. Some lovely build-up play before our left winger Fischer is played in behind and squares it for a tap-in for our right winger Tete.

One more example of patient build-up play from a free kick won on the halfway line before our DLP spots an opportunity to play in Tete who smashes it home

To round off this overly long opening post for a tactic upload, here is a selection of examples of beautiful AMC play from Yurchenko

 

Enjoy!

Dominate Possession 4-2-3-1.fmf

[bosque]

This is a very good and well thought system. I really like how all makes sense. and how you explained it. I think it would be better if you post it in the tactics forum instead of in tactic sharing centre as it would help a lot of people and I think the debate will be great.

Just for curiosity. Why you use tight marking on the flanks players?

Edited July 26, 2022 by bosque

[Black Africa]

Great write up, i think i will go back to FM21 to check it with some other team;) 

[Mutumba]

Wow! Great post and a great write up. I was so excited to try this until I realised its for FM21...

[calimero80]

Great article, congratulations.

[Fat Lump]

On 27/07/2022 at 00:22, bosque said:

This is a very good and well thought system. I really like how all makes sense. and how you explained it. I think it would be better if you post it in the tactics forum instead of in tactic sharing centre as it would help a lot of people and I think the debate will be great.

Just for curiosity. Why you use tight marking on the flanks players?

Hi bosque,

 

The tight marking PI applied to my flank players was inspired by this interesting thread by bababooey from a while back. The idea is for my wide players, when defending, to apply heavy pressure to the opposition wide players as soon as they receive the ball. They are then forced to make a quick decision to either recycle possession into central areas where I have the solidity of a double pivot, or to try their luck dribbling down the touchline which in many ways is easier for my team to defend as there is only a finite amount of space there for them to operate.

 

And yes I did also wonder whether this post would have been better off in the tactics forum instead but wasn't sure. Maybe a mod can move it there if they feel it is more appropriate.

[Fat Lump]

9 hours ago, Mutumba said:

Wow! Great post and a great write up. I was so excited to try this until I realised its for FM21...

I think this tactic should work reasonably well in any FM version given it is based on (in my opinion) tactical principles that make sense rather than match engine exploits.

[Robson 07]

You made a good post + tactic @Fat Lump, really liked it, thanks.

[Mutumba]

Couple of questions:

1. The CMs should be mobile but also that they houldnt possess traits such as getting into the box and such. So, do you simply mean that they should have high work rate? Or should they also have high off the ball-attribute?

 

2. Do you ever change the cautious to balanced or even positive? Or higher? What do you do when you need a goal or two?

[Fat Lump]

21 hours ago, Mutumba said:

Couple of questions:

1. The CMs should be mobile but also that they houldnt possess traits such as getting into the box and such. So, do you simply mean that they should have high work rate? Or should they also have high off the ball-attribute?

 

2. Do you ever change the cautious to balanced or even positive? Or higher? What do you do when you need a goal or two?

The CMs should have decent work rate, stamina, pace and acceleration in order to patrol the space between our AMs and our defensive line. They need to be able to quickly fall back into position when possession is lost. I basically want them to have the physical attributes of box to box midfielders without the attacking movement tendencies. I don't think they really need high off the ball attribute.

Thanks for asking about in-game tweaks - I didn't know if there would be enough interest to warrant going into them in my already lengthy original post. Along with the base tactic I also train 2 other variations in the spare tactic slots that I may switch to during games depending on the situation:

• Chasing a goal: changed mentality to Positive, and lowered attacking width, tempo, line of engagement and defensive line all by 1 notch from the base tactic. I may also change the left fullback to WB attack if I have a good enough player there (keep in mind WB attack is hard coded to Dribble more)
• Control and see out the game after 60 minutes if holding 2+ goal lead: lowered tempo by 1 notch and turned off counter. Occasionally I also turn on Work ball into box, but only if I have better players than the opposition (if my team does not have the required technical ability to carry out this instruction relative to the opposition, there is an increased risk of turning over possession deep in the attacking third with too many numbers forward and being hit on the counter)

If trying to hold on to a narrow lead against good quality opposition in the last 15 minutes, I will switch to the "seeing out the game" variation and change one or both CMs to defend duty, and the right fullback to FB defend to lock down that flank.

If I notice my team is struggling to play out from the back against a high press, I tend to increase tempo by 1 notch.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Fat Lump

[Mutumba]

Trying this with Shakthar in FM22, and well so far its underwhelming.

 

Far off any unbeaten run. Sitting in 10th after 4 games in the league, only won 1. 

 

However. I do have the highest xG for. And the lowest xg against. But I feel with this tactic - the opposition gets one good chance and they score, and then you're in trouble because this is not a goal-bonanza-tactic. I think the general problem is that with cautious, the team becomes a bit low block and teams get too close to the penalty area

Edited August 4, 2022 by Mutumba

[Fat Lump]

On 05/08/2022 at 03:02, Mutumba said:

Trying this with Shakthar in FM22, and well so far its underwhelming.

 

Far off any unbeaten run. Sitting in 10th after 4 games in the league, only won 1. 

 

However. I do have the highest xG for. And the lowest xg against. But I feel with this tactic - the opposition gets one good chance and they score, and then you're in trouble because this is not a goal-bonanza-tactic. I think the general problem is that with cautious, the team becomes a bit low block and teams get too close to the penalty area

Sorry to hear it's not been as effective for you in FM22. You are right in that it's definitely not a goal bonanza tactic. It's more designed to control possession and dominate your opponent into submission. They can't score if you have the ball all the time, but like any possession tactic the danger lies in being hit on the transition when possession is lost. In FM21 I've not really noticed the issue of my team ending up in a low block. I've not played around with the FM22 match engine but perhaps try increasing the defensive line to the highest setting to see if that helps.

[Fat Lump]

A quick update from season 3. Not sure if I will continue with this save or go back to my long-term journeyman save from here.

Another unbeaten season in the league, which makes it 86 unbeaten league games in a row.

We managed to concede only 7 all season, and only 2 were from open play.

European competition this season was more frustrating, and we had some of our worst performances in this save thus far. We came 3rd in our Champions League group containing Liverpool, Lyon and Rangers but could just as easily have topped the group if not for missed chances at crucial moments. We therefore dropped down into the Europa League, and I was cautiously optimistic that we could go all the way in this competition. We cruised into the quarter finals but at this point both my main striker and his backup sustained long-term injuries, and I was forced to rotate between a couple of youth players for the rest of the season. The better of them had 12 for finishing and 10 composure, and our attacking output really dropped off. Still we managed to overcome Arsenal in the quarter finals before bowing out meekly to Bayer Leverkusen in the semis without scoring a goal over 2 legs (though not through lack of chances).

 

During the first couple of seasons I had noticed that my tactic struggled the most against 4-4-2. The 2 strikers have the potential to combine in a deadly manner on the counter in the space left between my double pivot and my defensive line if I lost possession deep in the opposition half. This season I experimented with a deep version of my base tactic with the double pivot placed in the DM strata. I used this version only in a handful of games when facing 4-4-2 or narrow 4-2-3-1 (3 AMCs) formations. It provided more solidity in defence and plays much the same way in possession, and results were promising. As the double pivot starts in deeper positions during buildup in our own half, I increased tempo by 1 notch to encourage my team to move the ball more quickly into opposition territory rather than muck around passing it around in my own half. The right fullback is also changed to a wingback - the deeper pivot allows him greater licence to get forward.

 

I've attached the deep 4-2-3-1 tactic here in case anyone wants to try it.

Dominate Possession deep 4-2-3-1.fmf

Edited August 6, 2022 by Fat Lump

[ta11zx]

THis is amazing.  Can you do the complete opposite and do a Diego Simeone type tactic?