Anti-Football: My pursuit for clean sheets

[BuryBlade]

Intro

One of the beauties of FM is that you can essentially play it however you want. It’s a single player game and you get to create your own in-game universe. However, in recent iterations, it certainly feels like you have a better chance of success playing attacking, gegenpress, high temp styles. Those wanting to play defensive football had a harder time creating something that actually worked in the match engine.  

I’ve never written a detailed post on here before. I have been playing the game since CM2, and exclusively spend my FM time playing FM Touch on the iPad. As an adult, I don’t have the time or energy to commit to full-fat FM anymore. The thought of working all day in an admin job, and then spending my evening renegotiating contracts for 50 staff members (more admin!) is not how I want to spend my ‘fun time’. FM Touch (specifically FMT20) allows me to still play the game but at a pace that better suits being an adult.  

Every iteration of FM, I always tried to create a defensive minded approach, but always struggled to get what I had in my head into the match engine. I had kind of given up on the idea and was experimenting with my usual Strikerless tactics (shout out to Guido Merry and his Strikerless blog; Guido has been a big influence and helped me learn the game over the years) when I found myself down to ten men after 5 minutes of a match. I maneuvered players round the tactics screen in a desperate attempt to keep things tight for 85 minutes. Not only did it work, but it was the birth of an anti-football monster.  

The Creation of my Anti-Football monster

If the system I had hodge-podged together with ten men worked, I was now desperate to refine it and see how it played with eleven on the pitch. I have spent the last year tweaking and testing with various teams and felt it was finally ready for a proper examination. My real-life manager hero is Diego Simeone. The level of anti-football his teams have demonstrated in previous years (I’m ignoring the ‘new’ style they play this year) has been an inspiration for what I have tried to create. I want to suck the life out the game and become one of the worst teams to have to play against. I waited in game until Simeone was either sacked or moved to another club, and I took over Atletico Madrid (4 seasons in). 

 

Aims of the Tactic 

• Clean sheets are more important than goals. 0-0 is a perfectly fine result. 1-0 is the holy grail.  

• Be as difficult as possible to break down. Force teams wide and pack the middle of the pitch.  

• Focus on set-pieces. Can we score from our own, and even better, can we counter from the opposition's corners.  

• Use positions that players can feasibly interchange throughout a game, or season. E.g. CM can play in the DM, CM and AMC strata. Versatility opens up options. 
  
   

  The Tactic 

  There are multiple versions of the monster, that become more defensive each time. Below I explain when I use each one, and what I’m looking for during a match to help me choose which approach to use.  
  
  

  This is the main tactic. Let me start by saying I am not a tactical guru. I wouldn’t even say I am good at tactics. I will try to explain why I think it works/why I set up this way, but I’m no Cleon.  

   

  I started from the picture of what I wanted to see in my head which was defensively solid, focus through the middle, and roles that would provide off the ball movement that would pull opposition defences around the pitch. When we have the ball, I want to pass it quickly and rely on this movement and unpredictability to create openings. This often manifests itself with the 3 players in the AMC strata drawing in defenders, and space opens up for the CWBs to attack in to.  

  Without the ball, my aim was to try and force the opposition wide and we defend the central areas with a lot of bodies. I have three tall, fast defenders who can deal with any aerial threat, but also cover the space in behind.  
  
   

  Tweak 1 – more defensive 

  If the opposition is managing to create chances easily, I will drop into this version with less ‘roaming’ from the CM, DLP, and WBs. I also switch off counter press and will look to see if these tweaks help tighten up the defence. I also tend to move into this version around the 70-75 minute mark if I am leading.  

  

   

  Tweak 2 – Much more defensive 

  I use this version if I want to really tighten the defence and limit any space through the middle. I have compacted the midfield, and instructed them to hold shape and regroup. This version is not really looking to score goals, but to make sure we don’t concede. If I am leading, I usually move to this version around 80-85 mins.  
   

  

   

   

  Tweak 3 – Ultra defensive – the final stages of the game 

  With a few minutes left on the clock, if I am looking to hold on to the current scoreline, I will use this. Moving the WBs to FBs on defend is to try and limit any space in behind them, and stop them wandering too far forward.  

  

   

  You’ll notice how all versions still have players in the AMC strata. One of the big things I learnt from Cleon’s Art of Defending posts is that you can’t just pull everyone back into defensive positions and expect to be successful facing wave after wave of opposition attacks. An outlet is needed to help get the ball up the pitch.  

   

  Approaching the hardest games 

  My approach for the hardest games, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Champions League knockout ties, is usually to go with one of the defensive tweaks from the start, with added OIs focussed on pressing and tackling hard against the opposition attackers. My belief is that 0-0 draws against Barca and Real are good results, and keeping knockout ties as close as possible, will always give me a chance to progress.  

  When testing the tactic over the last year, this approach helped me win the Champions League with FC Basel in just 3 seasons by drawing 0-0 and winning 1-0 in knockout games.  
  
  You can see a very compact shape, with everybody defending deep, making it hard for Liverpool  to create good chances. Game finished 0-0.

  

   

  Another example, this time against Barca, where I played much more defensively from the start (tweak 2) with a goal of grinding out a 0-0. There were ZERO key highlights in this game.
  
  

   

  In game tweaks are a huge factor to being successful at the game (not just with my tactic). I am always watching what the opposition is doing and what changes they are making. If they change their formation or mentality in game, I need to be thinking how this changes the dynamic and what I can do to maintain the upper hand. 

   

  When it all goes wrong and the sheet is not clean 

  One major limitation of the tactic is it is not designed to score many goals. I’m playing to win 1-0 essentially. So when the opposition takes the lead, it can be a struggle getting back into games. I tend to start by changing the mentality to positive on the starting tactic and seeing how that goes. If we need a goal late in the game, I tend to go with the below approach, and play very direct football.  

  

  Having players who can play roles in different ways 

  This is another thing I learnt from Cleon’s writing. I don’t want all my AMCs for example to play the role in the same way. This would make us very one dimensional. In my pool of AMCs I have players who are very fast and good dribblers, players who are very technical and excel at linking play, and I have a 6ft 7in beast I can deploy if I need to go more direct. Same position and role, different ways of playing.  

  I’m also very specific about players I sign. I want players who have high determination, decisions, composure and stamina. If we are going to be successful, I think these four attributes are some of the most important. I will regularly pass on signing a world class player if they have low scores in these.  
  
  The Results (the bit you were hopefully waiting for)
  
  In the next post (file size limitations), I will show the results from my experiment with Atletico Madrid.

Edited February 23 by BuryBlade
formatting

[BuryBlade]

Results 

I took over in December of season 5 in game and needed to do a minor rebuild of the squad to better fit my tactics, and also to sort the finances out as the club was heavily in debt. This first ‘half season’ I saw as preparation for the following year, but was disappointed to lose 1-0 in the Copa Del Rey final to Barcelona (119th min goal), and 1-0 to Chelsea in the Europa League final.  

I managed to reshape the squad the way I wanted in the summer and in my first full season in charge, the team finished 2nd in La Liga behind Barca, but incredibly won the Champions League using my approach of playing for 0-0 draws. The semi-final against Real, and the final against Man Utd were both won on penalties.  

However, the defence was not as tight as I wanted, and we finished way behind Barca in the league. We had been beaten 4-1 by Villareal, and struggled to defend against teams like Sevilla, Valencia and Vigo. The summer was spent improving the defensive personnel, including spending 70 million on De Ligt who had been transferred listed by Zebre (no name fix on iPad!) 

What ensued during the next league campaign was exactly how I wanted the game to be. After 13 league games, we had yet to concede, before a freak own goal against Bilbao ruined the streak. Getafe scored twice against us in the final game before Christmas (I was fuming!) but they would be the only domestic team to manage this feat all season.  

The Champions League campaign was a disaster, with us losing to eventual winners Chelsea in the first knockout round. They scored early in both legs and I had to try and chase the game, something I know this system is not built to do. 

A shaky finish to the league season saw us lose our first and only game at home against rivals Real (0-1), to setup a nervy final day where all three teams could win the league. Beating Vigo 2-0 secured the title along with our 31st clean sheet in the league, and just 8 goals conceded in 38 games! 

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed playing this save a different way, and hope someone might find my ramblings interesting or useful.  

Edited February 23 by BuryBlade

[esteve69]

great job i love thats! 

[Jack Sarahs]

Brilliant stuff I love this! 

[HanziZoloman]

Just amazing 

[carloshcorbalan]

Hello.
I uploaded the links of the tactics to try them...

[BuryBlade]

1 hour ago, carloshcorbalan said:

Hello.
I uploaded the links of the tactics to try them...

There are no download links for two reasons:

1) it’s FM Touch on the iPad. Its not possible to provide download links.

2) All the information you need is in the post. You could easily recreate the tactic. 

[carloshcorbalan]

[Guest]

"I waited in-game until Simeone was either sacked or moved to another club"

I really admire your level of respect there. Lol.

I would be curious how this plays on the new ME in 24. I'm right there with you, I don't really have time for full fat FM anymore but I also get frustrated with the UI on Touch. I've dabbled with the new version on iPad and the graphics look pretty great but team building isn't as fun IMO. 

[BuryBlade]

12 minutes ago, BlitzkriegBob25 said:

"I waited in-game until Simeone was either sacked or moved to another club"

I really admire your level of respect there. Lol.

I would be curious how this plays on the new ME in 24. I'm right there with you, I don't really have time for full fat FM anymore but I also get frustrated with the UI on Touch. I've dabbled with the new version on iPad and the graphics look pretty great but team building isn't as fun IMO. 

Haha it didn’t feel right usurping him so I waited my turn! 
 

I played FMT23 and had a very successful low block system but the game was a mess. Youth development didn’t work, along with basic gameplay issues like half time being skipped (since FM21 this was an issue)

FMT24 is a train wreck and I stopped playing it after a few days. It’s a shame because the match engine is actually beautiful. 
 

I don’t think you could take this system and put it in a newer FM and get the same results. Each match engine is different and as players we get used to what works and doesn’t in each iteration. It just happens that this works in FMT20. 

[mikcheck]

Really nice job but man, that's a lot of TI's for my liking  

[BuryBlade]

15 hours ago, mikcheck said:

Really nice job but man, that's a lot of TI's for my liking  

Haha thanks, and yes I get that the number of TIs is excessive! My tactics normally have very few of these but somehow this just worked in FM20’s match engine. 

[BuryBlade]

Started the next season with a squad very similar to last season. 4-0 at home vs Vallecano, and 2-1 away at Getafe meant I was already behind last seasons goals conceded mark (13 games, 0 conceded last season)
 

Match 3 was away at Barcelona. Deployed tweak 2 from the start of the match, and applied hard tackling and pressing to Barca’s front three.

This is my favourite type of match, and it’s so satisfying when it all comes together. 
 

[Litmanen 10]

10 hours ago, BuryBlade said:

 but somehow this just worked in FM20’s match engine. 

If you approach tactics in a manner like you would in real football then style of plays will basically never be dependant on the match engine. Obviously there are extremes like FM 2017 but in general sensible approaches should always work quite well. 

This thread is brilliant by the way. And also a good example of different kind of approaches working in the game. 

[BuryBlade]

1 hour ago, Litmanen 10 said:

If you approach tactics in a manner like you would in real football then style of plays will basically never be dependant on the match engine. Obviously there are extremes like FM 2017 but in general sensible approaches should always work quite well. 

This thread is brilliant by the way. And also a good example of different kind of approaches working in the game. 

Thanks, appreciate your comments 😊

[BuryBlade]

It must be really painful, particularly for the neutrals, watching my matches 😆

Spanish Super Cup semi final and final (2 matches in 3 days)

 

 

My approach was slightly different compared to my original write up. Whilst I started both games using my defensive tweak tactic, I did not want a 0-0 and extra time. 
 

Therefore I wanted to keep the game tight and choose my moment to attack. Against Barca, I switched to a more attacking formation in the 82nd minute. Barca were pushing and I felt we could sucker punch them.

In the final against Real, I noticed their mentality was cautious, so I switched tactic in the first minute to be more attacking than normal to try and score early. Thankfully we did and I immediately went defensive for the rest of the game.

Edited February 27 by BuryBlade

[LUFCspeni]

Have to say, I love this approach. Huge fan of Simeone and defensive football in general. Would be interesting to see someone apply this to the FM24 match engine.

[Mutumba]

20 hours ago, LUFCspeni said:

Have to say, I love this approach. Huge fan of Simeone and defensive football in general. Would be interesting to see someone apply this to the FM24 match engine.

Im no expert but I pretty much just copied this straight off into FM24. Instead of "defend wider" (which isnt an option in FM24) I picked "trap outside". Have been using "much higher D-line" as well and has worked well for me for a number of different sides (both club and international) but I guess "higher" would be perhaps even better as Ive seen the opposition getting a couple of passes behind our D-line.

 

Only issue is wih the CWBs who just, despite whos playing there, tends to get quite low ratings.

 

Results pretty much identical to the OP. A lot of 1-0s and some absolutley beautiful shithousery

Edited February 28 by Mutumba

[BuryBlade]

4 hours ago, Mutumba said:

Im no expert but I pretty much just copied this straight off into FM24. Instead of "defend wider" (which isnt an option in FM24) I picked "trap outside". Have been using "much higher D-line" as well and has worked well for me for a number of different sides (both club and international) but I guess "higher" would be perhaps even better as Ive seen the opposition getting a couple of passes behind our D-line.

 

Only issue is wih the CWBs who just, despite whos playing there, tends to get quite low ratings.

 

Results pretty much identical to the OP. A lot of 1-0s and some absolutley beautiful shithousery

I’m delighted to hear you’ve managed to successfully recreate this in FM24!

[BuryBlade]

An incredible title race goes down to the wire in the most dramatic fashion…

 

 

Our final game of the season couldn’t be much harder though!

[BuryBlade]

I expected Barca to win their game, meaning a draw wouldn’t be enough for us. This put me in a difficult position knowing we probably needed to win, and not play my usual 0-0 ball. 
 

I setup cautiously to begin with, wanting to see how Real would approach the game. When Real were on top, I went more attacking for 10 minutes to try and change momentum. I’d then switch back to cautious again.

The result was a fabulous 1-0 win, securing back to back titles. Not quite as good defensively this season, but still very very good.

[BuryBlade]

My final update for this story, as I think the save has now run it’s course… 

My team has won 4 consecutive league titles, with a great rivalry each time with Barcelona. Two of the titles went down to the very last game. We managed to win another Champions League title, beating PSG with only ten men.

 

The glaring flaw with playing defensive football is what to do when we go behind, as was happening in the Champions League knockout games in most of my seasons. I had grown tired of being unable to solve the problem so I did more testing and created a new tactic; 1845 Big Bird’s Kill Streak, designed to simply blow teams away. Quite the opposite of my original. 
 

The plan was to use the two together. Against much weaker teams we could rack up big wins. Against harder opponents we can either play defensive and switch later, or start aggressive and then defend a lead. 
 

Here are two examples of the chaos:

 

In my final season of the save, I spent nearly 500 million on 3 world class players in an attempt to be able to run Big Bird in the majority of games. I still started defensively against Barca and in the Champions League knockouts, but everyone else had to deal with my new approach. 
 

The end result:

Still defensively impressive with only 15 goals conceded in 38, but an enormous 113 goals scored. Sadly I still failed in the Champions League, losing 4-3 in the Quarterfinals to Man City. 
 

It’s been fun, but it feels like it’s time to take my chaos to another save and team. 

[carloshcorbalan]

Very good results and shots on goal.
Post screenshot of the tactic pls

[BuryBlade]

2 hours ago, carloshcorbalan said:

Very good results and shots on goal.
Post screenshot of the tactic pls

I’ll get it up as soon as I can. 

[carloshcorbalan]

[BuryBlade]

Here is 1845 Big Bird’s Kill Streak. It does contain PIs on all players. No I can’t upload because it’s on iPad not PC.

PIs

GK- pass shorter

WBs - shoot less often, tackle harder

CBs - fewer risks, tackle harder

HB- shoot less often, tackle harder

DLP- tackle harder

Mezzala- dribble less, shoot less, tackle harder

AFs- roam from position, tackle harder

When a player gets booked I change their tackle instructions to ease off.

[Litmanen 10]

Otherwise great topic but the new tactic. 

[Rashidi]

Got to love this thread, I do enjoy playing a low block and its a different kinda feeling when you can play an entire season with a low block and achieve goals. 

[BuryBlade]

48 minutes ago, Rashidi said:

Got to love this thread, I do enjoy playing a low block and its a different kinda feeling when you can play an entire season with a low block and achieve goals. 

Thank you. I’m honoured to receive feedback from a tactical genius like yourself! 

[Rashidi]

7 minutes ago, BuryBlade said:

Thank you. I’m honoured to receive feedback from a tactical genius like yourself! 

I am no genius, thanks for the kind words though,

[carloshcorbalan]

hace 7 horas, BuryBlade dijo:

Here is 1845 Big Bird’s Kill Streak. It does contain PIs on all players. No I can’t upload because it’s on iPad not PC.

PIs

GK- pass shorter

WBs - shoot less often, tackle harder

CBs - fewer risks, tackle harder

HB- shoot less often, tackle harder

DLP- tackle harder

Mezzala- dribble less, shoot less, tackle harder

AFs- roam from position, tackle harder

When a player gets booked I change their tackle instructions to ease off.

👍👏👏