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Deep line/low pressing tactics


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I've gone up 3 straight times with this tactic, National League North to League One, with Scarborough who were only just promoted to the National League North at the start of this year, and I'm second in League One with the runaway best GD so a 4th straight promotion to the Championship seems in the cards barring disaster. A few keys for me:

1. Stack the midfield with size, pace, physicality and numbers: The ball spends alot of time loose and in the air over the midfield this year, having bigger, faster and more players in the midfield means you'll be able to scoop up a large percentage of those loose balls. One of the best part of backing off and not pressing high is that invites the opposition CBs to try to play the ball to their mostly unmarked midfielders and try to tiki-taka their way through your center rather than flinging balls over the top, as the success rate of long balls has infuriated lots of people in this match engine. With overwhelming numbers and physicality the opposition are going to have lots of trouble breaking you down if they go with a possession based game that goes through the midfield. One of the main reasons my tactic uses a DLF rather than a forward who camps on the back line is just adding an extra body to our midfield to gather those loose balls and create a higher volume of dangerous counters.

3. Progress ball primarily with ball carrying/pace rather than passing: With players generally becoming much worse at passing and having much looser first touches this year I find that, rather than playing hoofball, low-blocks are most successful when using a Crystal Palace style counter-attack where you lean primarily on carrying the ball. My teams have spent around just 40-45% of their time in possession on their climb up the league ladder, but they always lead the league in dribbles by an enormous margin. The play pattern that is by far the most successful for my club is to win back the ball in the center, spread it wide very quickly with either one or two passes, then flood the box with runners for either a header, a tap in or a late arriving open shot.

2. DLF with good passing & first touch & either "Gets in Opposition Area" or "Arrives Late In Opposition Area": The DLF will be the key to unlocking your attack. Once the ball is won he receives it and then picks out the player who will progress the ball into the final third for you. He's going to be receiving passes in crowded central areas so he needs a deft first touch, and because this is a player who will be making a large portion of your important progressive passes it's very important he has good passing. You can actually skimp on passing for the rest of your team: you are trying to limit the number of players who need to consistently touch the ball for a move to develop so that your players on lower salaries and of lesser overall quality can compete by specializing in the key areas for their role. The two player traits ensure that the DLF will arrive on the other end of moves far, far more consistently and make him a much bigger goal scoring threat, they basically serve to give him a very high "Off the Ball" attribute without him actually needing a high OTB attribute.

3. "Move into Channels" player trait on IF (A): I initially put a Raumdeuter here when I put the tactic together because I wanted someone who would break into the channels for the DLF to find on the turn. However, I found Raumdeuters just play really badly in FM23 for some reason, and that the player there was inevitably very uninfluential in that role. I put an Inside Forward with the "sit narrower" player instruction there, but the role was still relatively uninfluential until I put a player there with the "Move into Channels" trait. This has consistently made the player a much bigger threat on the counter, as the player will actually make goal-scoring runs now as opposed to always running wide and then laying it off when getting the ball on the counter.

4. "Pass it Shorter" and "Dribble More" player instructions for CBs, preferably the "Runs with Ball Often" & "Gets Forward at All Times" traits as well, CBs who are natural full-backs and thus can dribble are preferred: CBs in this match engine love, love, love playing long passes over the top, and with this tactic that's not actually something we want, as our striker is not likely to be level with the defence and therefore balls played to him are much more likely to be contested aerials: the defense can come forward instead of glitching out and losing track of the ball, as that only really happens with balls played over their head. What we want is CBs who will run into the acres of space that they are given and then play a pass on the ground, preferably to the DLF, DLP or even right to a breaking winger. These passes have a much higher chance of completing than the aerial long balls that centerbacks will play if they are given their choice in the matter in this match engine. The way we cut down on this tendency is with the "Pass it Shorter" and "Dribble More" player instructions, and preferably with some coinciding player traits. "Runs with Ball Often" and "Gets Forward at All Times" all but ensure that if your CB sees space in front of them then they will run into it, I know this because my right-sided CB, Olosunde, has these traits and averaged over 5 dribbles a game playing exclusively at CB. I constantly saw him make these very pleasing surging runs into the midfield before playing it short to a playmaker in highlights. Don't worry, "Gets Forward at All Times" really only seems to affect CBs when in possession, out of possession Olosunde plays like a normal CB. Worth noting of course, these traits are very difficult to train onto pure centerbacks, Olosunde is a natural right back, but he has the size to play a decent enough CB. These are the players that I think you should look for in this system, fullbacks who can run with the ball that can be converted to centerback because they have the size to get by there. If you have a more traditional centerback then make a personalized role for him that tells him to play more conservatively: even if they are given lots of space players who are awkward in possession of the ball will make costly mistakes if you tell them to bring the ball out of defence, such is the nature of the looser touches and upped interceptions in this match engine.

Screen Shot 2022-11-16 at 2.07.37 PM.png

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  • 1 month later...
On 17.11.2022 at 21:40, jacob_m_mack said:

I've gone up 3 straight times with this tactic, National League North to League One, with Scarborough who were only just promoted to the National League North at the start of this year, and I'm second in League One with the runaway best GD so a 4th straight promotion to the Championship seems in the cards barring disaster. A few keys for me:

1. Stack the midfield with size, pace, physicality and numbers: The ball spends alot of time loose and in the air over the midfield this year, having bigger, faster and more players in the midfield means you'll be able to scoop up a large percentage of those loose balls. One of the best part of backing off and not pressing high is that invites the opposition CBs to try to play the ball to their mostly unmarked midfielders and try to tiki-taka their way through your center rather than flinging balls over the top, as the success rate of long balls has infuriated lots of people in this match engine. With overwhelming numbers and physicality the opposition are going to have lots of trouble breaking you down if they go with a possession based game that goes through the midfield. One of the main reasons my tactic uses a DLF rather than a forward who camps on the back line is just adding an extra body to our midfield to gather those loose balls and create a higher volume of dangerous counters.

3. Progress ball primarily with ball carrying/pace rather than passing: With players generally becoming much worse at passing and having much looser first touches this year I find that, rather than playing hoofball, low-blocks are most successful when using a Crystal Palace style counter-attack where you lean primarily on carrying the ball. My teams have spent around just 40-45% of their time in possession on their climb up the league ladder, but they always lead the league in dribbles by an enormous margin. The play pattern that is by far the most successful for my club is to win back the ball in the center, spread it wide very quickly with either one or two passes, then flood the box with runners for either a header, a tap in or a late arriving open shot.

2. DLF with good passing & first touch & either "Gets in Opposition Area" or "Arrives Late In Opposition Area": The DLF will be the key to unlocking your attack. Once the ball is won he receives it and then picks out the player who will progress the ball into the final third for you. He's going to be receiving passes in crowded central areas so he needs a deft first touch, and because this is a player who will be making a large portion of your important progressive passes it's very important he has good passing. You can actually skimp on passing for the rest of your team: you are trying to limit the number of players who need to consistently touch the ball for a move to develop so that your players on lower salaries and of lesser overall quality can compete by specializing in the key areas for their role. The two player traits ensure that the DLF will arrive on the other end of moves far, far more consistently and make him a much bigger goal scoring threat, they basically serve to give him a very high "Off the Ball" attribute without him actually needing a high OTB attribute.

3. "Move into Channels" player trait on IF (A): I initially put a Raumdeuter here when I put the tactic together because I wanted someone who would break into the channels for the DLF to find on the turn. However, I found Raumdeuters just play really badly in FM23 for some reason, and that the player there was inevitably very uninfluential in that role. I put an Inside Forward with the "sit narrower" player instruction there, but the role was still relatively uninfluential until I put a player there with the "Move into Channels" trait. This has consistently made the player a much bigger threat on the counter, as the player will actually make goal-scoring runs now as opposed to always running wide and then laying it off when getting the ball on the counter.

4. "Pass it Shorter" and "Dribble More" player instructions for CBs, preferably the "Runs with Ball Often" & "Gets Forward at All Times" traits as well, CBs who are natural full-backs and thus can dribble are preferred: CBs in this match engine love, love, love playing long passes over the top, and with this tactic that's not actually something we want, as our striker is not likely to be level with the defence and therefore balls played to him are much more likely to be contested aerials: the defense can come forward instead of glitching out and losing track of the ball, as that only really happens with balls played over their head. What we want is CBs who will run into the acres of space that they are given and then play a pass on the ground, preferably to the DLF, DLP or even right to a breaking winger. These passes have a much higher chance of completing than the aerial long balls that centerbacks will play if they are given their choice in the matter in this match engine. The way we cut down on this tendency is with the "Pass it Shorter" and "Dribble More" player instructions, and preferably with some coinciding player traits. "Runs with Ball Often" and "Gets Forward at All Times" all but ensure that if your CB sees space in front of them then they will run into it, I know this because my right-sided CB, Olosunde, has these traits and averaged over 5 dribbles a game playing exclusively at CB. I constantly saw him make these very pleasing surging runs into the midfield before playing it short to a playmaker in highlights. Don't worry, "Gets Forward at All Times" really only seems to affect CBs when in possession, out of possession Olosunde plays like a normal CB. Worth noting of course, these traits are very difficult to train onto pure centerbacks, Olosunde is a natural right back, but he has the size to play a decent enough CB. These are the players that I think you should look for in this system, fullbacks who can run with the ball that can be converted to centerback because they have the size to get by there. If you have a more traditional centerback then make a personalized role for him that tells him to play more conservatively: even if they are given lots of space players who are awkward in possession of the ball will make costly mistakes if you tell them to bring the ball out of defence, such is the nature of the looser touches and upped interceptions in this match engine.

Screen Shot 2022-11-16 at 2.07.37 PM.png

Great tactic, works really well with OI. I got a promotion on my second year with a team that has a transfer ban and I had to play youngsters because the team didn't even have enough players for the registration. Did you make any tweaks?

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  • 1 month later...
On 13/11/2022 at 15:16, Domoboy23 said:

Anyone having any joy with the above?

Not sure if it's the ME or my team. Just wanting to see if anyones having success with a tactic that doesn't rely on pressing, IE a side new into the top flight looking to sit back against bigger teams

I've unfortunately never managed to get one working. 

It's seems attack is the best form of defence in many cases when it comes to FM. 

Every time I set up to soak pressure and counter I get pinned back and concede tons of goals. 

Press High and Press Often! 

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