Mitja

Lower mentality will make you play little more cautious in general and keeping possession much easier. But on standard or lower tempo there won't be much going on and that's where high tempo kicks in. With right players it will produce football which creates nice pressure. But of course it comes with reduced possession stats especially against equal teams. One thing I would turn off in your tactics is hold shape. Let players decide to counter or not.

Play the same tactic on lower mentality balanced or cautious. Also higher tempo will put your opponent under more pressure.

Having plenty of experience with dribble less and I'm pretty sure it will only make things worse. Lower mentality, shorter passing, lower tempo, underlaps or overlaps might help a little but I think wide players generally still run with ball a little too much and are too selfish.

Yes him and your number 16. It looks like Christensen was free free for quite some time. Poor defending or tiredness but it happens unfortunately.

You are playing already narrow formation even narrower in such congested space it's no wonder your central midfielders don't provide more. Nature of your formation is it needs more width. I would expect more problems next season when teams start playing more defensive against you.

Play them as IFs or IWs. Dribble less, WBIB + underlap will help a little too.

It's much more improved especially on lower mentalities interplay on the flanks is quite good. On higher mentalities blocking happens more. I don't know why.

That's because all other things equal with more attacking mentality style is counter attacking and with more defensive it's safer and more possessional. Quite the opposite to what you would expect. It has always been like that unfortunately.

Since you are increasing the risk you would also want few more attacking duties to create overloads I guess.

Have in mind 433 isn't really attacking formation I would try to have plan b here. I would definitely change DLFs to DLFa or something even more goal scoring. Short passing game is very tricky with 433 you should try to play with more risk. Since you are using IWB you could easily play wider. Pass into space, counter, more expressive or underlaps are all good options I believe. This is my personal preference but I don't like positive mentality. Now I use balanced instead and I really like how it plays and attacking if things don't go well. Also I use dribble less TI if playing short passing ga

I don't think wingers width is a big deal if you are playing wide yeah they will move inside too early but there are more important things that stop FM being able to replicate real tactics. There's very little consistency with tactics you will dominate possession in one game with 700 passes and in next game you will be totally outpassed just because ai played with different mentality/passing/tempo combination. It's easier to play and dominate possession away against Liverpool than at home vs team that playes short passing defensive style. It's unbelievable how good these teams keep possession

I agree and for my liking all wide roles dribble too much. There should be much fewer roles with hardcoded dribbling especially support duty roles. Football is not played that way. It would be big step forward for the game. Wide players are still too impatient but I think the ME is heading in that direction.

Thank you again your posts really opened my eyes. Wide width looks to be crucial for opening channels and bringing inside forwards into play. New dimension opened for me. Of course crossing works better too. Thanks.

APs for Messi? I'd play him as TQ on the right and build tactics around him. 433 for positive and 4231 for attacking tactics.

There is another thing which wasn't mentioned and it affects and increases crossing numbers a lot. Passing numbers. Passing percentages are too high and passing attempts can be really way too low. From my experience and from what I could gather from ai vs ai games which is more important in a game like FM for the sake of realism very high tempo play is "the only way to go". While I agree modern football is all about tempo it is poorly presented currently. You might easily find there are sometimes even 50 percent less passing attempts than expected. Football looks a little like hockey wher