Mentality home and away

[Dreambuilder]

What mentality do you play home and away, vs "equal" and "better" opponents?

 

For example I play all league games at home on positive or attacking, and all away games on balanced or sometimes cautious mentality.

 

I haven't had much success playing on positive away. Perhaps only vs easier opponents. 

 

 

[CARRERA]

I almost never change mentality. It’s the fundamental baseline of the tactic and changes almost every aspect of how the team plays. Usually I just make changes to certain team instructions during the match. 

[Cloud9]

10 hours ago, Dreambuilder said:

What mentality do you play home and away, vs "equal" and "better" opponents?

 

For example I play all league games at home on positive or attacking, and all away games on balanced or sometimes cautious mentality.

 

I haven't had much success playing on positive away. Perhaps only vs easier opponents. 

 

 

Think it's a simplification/misleading to say just adjust the mentality. If you upload your tactic we can give specifics about changes you can make game to game. 

In general, I'd go into games on balanced on a fairly blank slate. See how things are progressing, and make changes at 10-15 minutes.

 

[Johnny Ace]

11 hours ago, CARRERA said:

I almost never change mentality. It’s the fundamental baseline of the tactic and changes almost every aspect of how the team plays. Usually I just make changes to certain team instructions during the match. 

This, keep to the baseline mentality and normally just adjust a duty or TI or two 

[GabiGoll]

I did dozens of tests with teams Chelsea, Leeds, Crystal Palace. I have come to the conclusion that the best mentality is balanced. This is especially visible in the game IFa in 433, with CFs they do amazing things :). In 433 giving LOE max and DL max , without prevent GK pressing works fine too

[Johnny Ace]

20 minutes ago, GabiGoll said:

 IFa in 433, with CFs they do amazing things

That's an awesome combo to be fair

[woolymuffler]

I've had reasonable success adjusting starting team mentality based on the match odds, although I never start defensive or attacking. I've been told that match odds are also how the AI determines their starting mentality against you, although obviously no one but SI truly knows that.

I start cautious if the underdog (especially away), balanced for evenish odds away or slight underdog at home, positive for roughly equal at home or clearly favored home or away. I do go with gut feeling sometimes if I think the odds don't reflect the actual situation; if I'm playing a bunch of youth players and backups I'll go one mentality down from my normal plan, if I'm confident I'm better than the other team, regardless of what the odds say, I'll go one level up in mentality. I keep the same roles, TIs and PIs, just changing a few duties to reflect the team mentality for the match. 

I then change team mentality as needed in the match (along with adjusting player duties; 5 attacking duties on attack, 4 on positive, 3 on balanced, 2 on cautious or defensive), always having 3 defensive duties and the remainder support.

I have no idea if this is the right way to do it, but the results have been good enough and the team is familiar with the tactics and seems to know what they are supposed to do for the most part.

I used to never change team mentality and just adjust player duties and team/player instructions, but it took a lot more clicks and didn't seem to work any better for me than just changing team mentality and a few player duties to go more attacking or defending. In fact, it seemed less effective when I really needed a goal, as a team on balanced, even with aggressive duties and roles just seems to lack urgency. It also seems to be the way the AI plays (they seem to adjust team mentality as needed by the match situation, although again, only SI knows that for sure ).

[bosque]

3 hours ago, woolymuffler said:

I've had reasonable success adjusting starting team mentality based on the match odds, although I never start defensive or attacking. I've been told that match odds are also how the AI determines their starting mentality against you, although obviously no one but SI truly knows that.

I start cautious if the underdog (especially away), balanced for evenish odds away or slight underdog at home, positive for roughly equal at home or clearly favored home or away. I do go with gut feeling sometimes if I think the odds don't reflect the actual situation; if I'm playing a bunch of youth players and backups I'll go one mentality down from my normal plan, if I'm confident I'm better than the other team, regardless of what the odds say, I'll go one level up in mentality. I keep the same roles, TIs and PIs, just changing a few duties to reflect the team mentality for the match. 

I then change team mentality as needed in the match (along with adjusting player duties; 5 attacking duties on attack, 4 on positive, 3 on balanced, 2 on cautious or defensive), always having 3 defensive duties and the remainder support.

I have no idea if this is the right way to do it, but the results have been good enough and the team is familiar with the tactics and seems to know what they are supposed to do for the most part.

I used to never change team mentality and just adjust player duties and team/player instructions, but it took a lot more clicks and didn't seem to work any better for me than just changing team mentality and a few player duties to go more attacking or defending. In fact, it seemed less effective when I really needed a goal, as a team on balanced, even with aggressive duties and roles just seems to lack urgency. It also seems to be the way the AI plays (they seem to adjust team mentality as needed by the match situation, although again, only SI knows that for sure ).

I had the same experience. I can see better results / the team doing what I was expecting to happen by only changing mentality rather than changing team instructions.

[edhdurham]

I have a similar questions.

I am playing as Reading in the English Championship, I went 20 games un-beaten and sat second in the table by only 2 points.  I played a 4-2-3-1 formation but narrow, using the vertical Tika-Taka instructions, with minor tweaks.  Going into each game I would make small changes, i.e. changing one of my W-S to an IF-S if I thought I could utilise the space better, changed mentality from Balanced to either Cautious or Positive, depending on who I was playing and match odds.

Then my form dropped off a cliff, 12 games without a win and now sitting 8th.  No matter what I try, I cannot buy a win.  The game kept saying that the fans where unhappy as I would not change tactics...  so does that mean you must have two different formations, or can you have a base tactic that you can tweak.

And how do you use the opposition scouts report to amend you approach to the game?  Should I change mentality or change roles / TI?

[Cloud9]

10 hours ago, Johnny Ace said:

This, keep to the baseline mentality and normally just adjust a duty or TI or two 

Curious about this, I usually train my three tactics to be the main tactic and two variations of the same tactic--usually with the variations being a step up and a step down in mentality. 

Is this misguided?

[Johnny Ace]

5 minutes ago, Cloud9 said:

Is this misguided?

No mate, you can play any way you like, that's fine 

[HUNT3R]

8 hours ago, Cloud9 said:

Curious about this, I usually train my three tactics to be the main tactic and two variations of the same tactic--usually with the variations being a step up and a step down in mentality. 

Is this misguided?

There are many, many ways to play.

Normally, I have 1 main tactic. As Johnny said, I'll make small tweaks depending on how we start the match. My 2nd tactic is usually a tactic that I'd use to see out a match, especially if it's a tight match and I feel it would be too risky to keep the main tactic. Sometimes, my main tactic will have a weakness... maybe against 2 striker systems or against 3 central defenders etc and in a case like that, I would make a tactic specifically for that situation and I only use it in those matches where I know my main tactic will be weaker.

In my current save, I have a main tactic and I use it for 80% of matches. I'm a top 3 team in Portugal right now, so when I meet the other 2 (away from home) or superstar teams in Europe, I use my 2nd tactic, which is more solid defensively and more counter attacking. My third tactic is a bonkers tactic that I use in matches where I am a clear favourite and it's goals galore. 

[Prolix]

On 30/03/2023 at 08:32, woolymuffler said:

I then change team mentality as needed in the match (along with adjusting player duties; 5 attacking duties on attack, 4 on positive, 3 on balanced, 2 on cautious or defensive), always having 3 defensive duties and the remainder support.

I'm curious why you play with more attack duties on higher mentalities. Won't your players already have more aggressive tendencies due to the higher baseline mentality?

[Dreambuilder]

After reading som guides I think now that mentality need to be set after how good your team is vs the opponent. The more attacking mentality, the more it demands your players to be skilled enough to execute it, because higher mentality automatically raises tempo etc that require more skill. If you tell your players to be attacking and take alot of risk vs an opponent that is better, you will get punished by taking too high risk with too bad players vs that better opposition who takes advantage of your mistakes and lost possession

I think thats why the game wants you to be less attacking vs a superior opponent so they doesent feed on your mistakes, which makes sense to me. Playing cautios or defensive vs far better opponents have payed off quite alot by reducing their shots on goal and give chances to counter goals.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Dreambuilder

[sonnevillejr]

I use the same mentality for every games, especially when I want to impose my style. 
For instance, I’m playing a possession based system at the moment and, even against better opposition, I use the positive mentality. The only things I might do to adapt against these teams away is to remove counter press and perhaps play with a mid block. 
If I’m losing at the end of the match, I raise the mentality to attacking, and if I want to preserve a result, I prefer to use TIs such as dropping the rythm, time wasting and things like that rather than changing the mentality

 

[woolymuffler]

15 hours ago, Prolix said:

I'm curious why you play with more attack duties on higher mentalities. Won't your players already have more aggressive tendencies due to the higher baseline mentality?

I agree with that logic for sure, and I didn't used to change the duties, but the game actually advises you to increase the number of attacking duties on higher team mentalities (and reduce them on lower team mentalities). I don't know if it's the best thing to do, but it hasn't seemed to hurt anything, and it stops the Assistant Manager from giving that as advice in the tactical meetings.

However, I ignore the AM when they advise more defending duties on lower mentalities as I don't like to have more than 3 dedicated defensive duties other than the most extreme circumstances (like holding a one goal lead as a minnow late in an FA cup match, etc.), so I do pick and choose when to listen to the in-game advice.

[Tsuru]

Em 30/03/2023 em 13:32, woolymuffler disse:

I've had reasonable success adjusting starting team mentality based on the match odds, although I never start defensive or attacking. I've been told that match odds are also how the AI determines their starting mentality against you, although obviously no one but SI truly knows that.

I start cautious if the underdog (especially away), balanced for evenish odds away or slight underdog at home, positive for roughly equal at home or clearly favored home or away. I do go with gut feeling sometimes if I think the odds don't reflect the actual situation; if I'm playing a bunch of youth players and backups I'll go one mentality down from my normal plan, if I'm confident I'm better than the other team, regardless of what the odds say, I'll go one level up in mentality. I keep the same roles, TIs and PIs, just changing a few duties to reflect the team mentality for the match. 

I then change team mentality as needed in the match (along with adjusting player duties; 5 attacking duties on attack, 4 on positive, 3 on balanced, 2 on cautious or defensive), always having 3 defensive duties and the remainder support.

I have no idea if this is the right way to do it, but the results have been good enough and the team is familiar with the tactics and seems to know what they are supposed to do for the most part.

I used to never change team mentality and just adjust player duties and team/player instructions, but it took a lot more clicks and didn't seem to work any better for me than just changing team mentality and a few player duties to go more attacking or defending. In fact, it seemed less effective when I really needed a goal, as a team on balanced, even with aggressive duties and roles just seems to lack urgency. It also seems to be the way the AI plays (they seem to adjust team mentality as needed by the match situation, although again, only SI knows that for sure ).

This is really, really interesting because I have been considering applying a similar idea here. However, using a different TI package for each game strategy can hurt my tactical familiarity and it seems not to be very good on FM. Changing the mentality and adjusting duties seem to be much easier and logical, considering the game´s way of working.

You said that you keep the same TIs and PIs despite the mentality. But in this system change method, how do you select the Tis? Do you choose them for a specific style? Maybe generical TIs? Or you do/did start with no one and then add/added them later?

[woolymuffler]

3 hours ago, Tsuru said:

This is really, really interesting because I have been considering applying a similar idea here. However, using a different TI package for each game strategy can hurt my tactical familiarity and it seems not to be very good on FM. Changing the mentality and adjusting duties seem to be much easier and logical, considering the game´s way of working.

You said that you keep the same TIs and PIs despite the mentality. But in this system change method, how do you select the Tis? Do you choose them for a specific style? Maybe generical TIs? Or you do/did start with no one and then add/added them later?

Saying I always use the exact same TIs isn't totally true. I do change things up during matches; for instance if I'm getting a lot of shots but none are on target, I will switch to "work ball into box". . If the other team is dropping off and intercepting my passes to my forward line or I'm just not getting any attacking highlights at all, I'll switch to pass into space and more direct to get my players moving away from and past their markers. If i"m trying to see a game out, I'll drop the tempo and defensive lines and go more conservative.

But the basic shape I'm using for the team doesn't change much; if I'm using a high pressing, high-tempo system, I keep the defensive line and pressing high regardless of team mentality, at least to begin games and usually for the first 60 minutes, regardless of situation.

[ultrAslan]

On 31/03/2023 at 06:50, HUNT3R said:

There are many, many ways to play.

Normally, I have 1 main tactic. As Johnny said, I'll make small tweaks depending on how we start the match. My 2nd tactic is usually a tactic that I'd use to see out a match, especially if it's a tight match and I feel it would be too risky to keep the main tactic. Sometimes, my main tactic will have a weakness... maybe against 2 striker systems or against 3 central defenders etc and in a case like that, I would make a tactic specifically for that situation and I only use it in those matches where I know my main tactic will be weaker.

In my current save, I have a main tactic and I use it for 80% of matches. I'm a top 3 team in Portugal right now, so when I meet the other 2 (away from home) or superstar teams in Europe, I use my 2nd tactic, which is more solid defensively and more counter attacking. My third tactic is a bonkers tactic that I use in matches where I am a clear favourite and it's goals galore. 

I know its been a while when you commented on this, but can you share your tactic for inspiration so I can make one balanced / defensive / suprise tactic?

[Brian]

Managing Celtic FC, from season one I play on Positive both home and away. But thats more due the fact I'm expected to be the dominate side in every game. 

I tried attacking, but that just exhaust my players as I'm playing a Geggenpress system. And I found that I get more balls over the top when playing attacking vs positive.

 

In the Champions League I play on Cautious in away games. Expect against the big boys like Real Madrid, Dortmund, PSG, etc.. There I play both home and away Cautious on the counter.