[FM21 - A guide to identifying a personal formation and playstyle]

On 13/11/2020 at 21:52, engamohd said:

The reason for having two strikers is that I prefer to have our attacking threat centrally rather than from out wide.

I do feel that central strikers are getting more chances in this ME. Are the wide strikers weaker than FM20 though?

On 13/11/2020 at 21:52, engamohd said:

AMR/AML are forwards rather than midfielders, and hence have much less defensive responsibility

I played a season with AP(A) on AMR and AML under Attacking mentality and they defend so deep that they are juat infront of the Full Backs. I suppise only RM, WTM and IF(A) will stay up front to receive long balls?

[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

11 hours ago, JoOSTAR said:

I really liked your setup and decided to try it out myself, with some adjustments to suit my players. The performance of Fekir looks awesome!

Did you use any specific PI's?

Thanks for this great read!

I did have PIs:

- Move Into Channels for ST, AMCL and AMCR. Depending on the player you could take Move Further Forward for AMs for attacking runs.

- Shoot Less Often for both Carrileros and both Full Backs to make sure players without the ability to shoot do not shoot.

- Mark Tighter for both Carrileros, both Full Backs and the Deep Lying Playmaker for pressing reasons.

- Shorter passing for both centre Backs, both Carrileros and both Full Backs to make sure less gifted players wont lose possession.

- Stay wider and Cross From Byline for both Full Backs for Quality Crosses.

- Distribut to Full Backs for Swepper Keeper to guarantee possession after a goal kick.

And then what is left is how do you want the full back to defense. I personally set it up to just top the crossing and not for winning back possession:

- Mark tighter and Ease off Tackels. Closing Down Less should be preselected if you follow my setup, but if you made a change make sure to keep it less. This way the full backs will only press the opponent crosser in deep positions.

 

 

 

[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

I just have a go at this challenge as I have not set up any tactics for poacher since FM16 and it is a lot of fun. Here's a bit of sharing:

Club: West Ham

Final Ranking/Seasonal Expectation/Media Prediction: 1st/ qualify for euro cup/ 10th

Team Stats: Rank 1st with 94 points, 111 goals 40 conceded 94 points, 4 draw 4 loss

Poacher: Javier Hernandez

Poacher Stat: 33 Appearance 33 goals (3 penalties), 8 assist average rating 7.55, Top Scorer of the league.

Tactic: 4-3-2-1 Christmas Tree

Here are the thoughts I go for when setting up the tactic:

How to set up a Poacher?

A poacher only wait for chances closer to the goal, does not participate in defense and does not make dribbles. Therefore, the best way I could see to set up a Poacher is to set up a heavily attacking inclined tactic with enough balls being fed to the Poacher in dangerous position. It is not the most efficient way of winning games or playing football, but the poacher's impact is at its maximum.

Why 4-3-2-1 and the respective roles?

There could have been more strikers, but then the chances would be divided between the strikers. To maximize the Poacher's effect, I would play 1 striker.

Since advanced playmaker does not participate in defense, it can ensure they have good positions when attacks initiate, which in turn would feed more chances to the poacher. Since advanced playmaker has inherent ball magnet mechanism, the balls would not go directly to the poacher which is very important due to the fact that Poacher cannot make dribbles and picking up the ball down the field really hurt the poacher's positioning.

Carrilero is used to cover the flanks in defense. Deeplying playmaker has the deepest poistion that I can get from a CM, and I would not put him in the DM poistion since in CM it would push the 2 CAR wider during both attack and defense phase.

I need the crosses (low cross chosen in tactic) to create chaos and I tried out the Full Backs on both Attack and defense duty, and it turned out FB(A) are very noticeable in having better positions to cross whilst the drop in defense is acceptable.

Sweeper keeper is to compensate for the high defensive line.

Why this set of team instructions?

This set up is to compensate for the loss in pressing pressure for playing a Poacher. Therefore to acheive high pressing, Close Down Much More, Use Tighter Markings, Much Higher Defensive Line and Use Offside Trap are chosen. I am not a fan of high pressing but during tests in freindlies, this proves to be most successful based on observations:

- Much Higher Defensive Line actually gives more time than Higher/ Normal Defensive Line for the central defenders to chase back an opposition striker that had ran away

- Use Tighter Markings is neceesary since if it is dropped, too much space are given for opposition to shoot or cross, partly because of 3 front players sacrificed for attack quality

The remaining instruction are to craft out better chances for the Poacher. Attempts on dropping Play Much Wider, Pass Into Space and Work Ball Into Box are made, but without them the resualt are not as good.

Why Atttacking Mentality with Fluid?

Attacking Mentality is for the players to take risks in attempting an attack and this should craft out as much opportunities for the Poacher as possible. Fluid is a balance between Flexible and Very Fluid, whereas I do not want the striker to participate in defense but I also do not want the attacking midfielders to completely gives up pressing.

Advanced Playmakers

Before analysing the Poacher, it needed to be mentioned that the Poacher played well on the basis of the advanced playmakers playing well. If both of the advanced playmakers failed to perform, the Paocher usually would not perform as well. Here are some stats on these players:

Both Advanced Playmakers played very well during the season, and Lanzini has the most assists in the league. 

Both of them on the top of Chances Created and Key Passes charts of the league.

Poacher Analysis for Javier Hernandez:

56% on target ratio is just a little bit above average for non-AI tactic. Goal Conversion rate 18.4% (57/201) is above my expectation. However I don't see this as a success by sheer ability of the Poacher, it is just the whole tactic crafting out enough chances for the Poacher and he converted them at an average rate. If the tactic crafted out more chances than the opponenet then this whole machine just starts winning games.

83% passing rate hugely exceeds my expectation. For the position that a Poacher should be in I expect him to lose possession more often, the expected rate should be less than 75%. I think this is the benefit of having the whole team pushingup, including the full backs, to give the Poacher a lot of easy passing options. Since Poacher has the fewer risky passes option PI preselected, it can be gurantted that the Poacher will not lose possesion too often.

This is the goals scored location for the whole team (could not get a single player version):

AS expected, most goals are converted in the box with the Poacher's existence. After a bit of grouping Hernandez's goals, the goals usually comes in three ways:

Type 1/ Running on the back of the offside trap

Type 2/ Receiving a pass in the box and convert it

Type 3/ Converting a cross

Ending Words

After finishing this challenge, my understanding was that Poacher takes dedicated effort to run in a tactic, because of its small play area, minimal defensive and pressing effort, and its lack of creativity. Comparing to the efficiency of other tactics that I have set up, Poacher is not an effective way of winning football matches, but it certainly is a fun way to get the most out of a star player.

P.S. I really think that this challenge is a very good way to gather a lot of  information from others on a specific topic in one go. Can we have more of this kind of challenges? Does not even have to be role specific. Could be TI or PI specific.

[What is Key Pass?]

15 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

I've asked and asked and asked. 

 

9 minutes ago, eple said:

FM17.  I'm basing it mostly on what I've seen the AI and my team do. Checking the stats in my current game it's the same.

FM16 had the opposite problem, too many key passes.

3 pr game seems like a realistic number for C. Eriksen. Last season he had 3.3 according to Whoscored.com. 

You can find out what's going on by going into the analysis tab in a match. Click 'Players' and then 'Passes' - Click the key pass box for the relevant player. You can click each individual pass to see what they where.

eple is right. I just checked my 16 save and Eriksen is getting 274 key passes a season lol. Other players a the top of the table are also getting 200-ish.

So if the number of key passes went down from FM16's 200 to FM17's  30/40, it means that they changed the counts for it, and probably the definition of it. I think that is good news, but if they don't tell me what is the definition of it, I can't exploit it. Or can I find the definition in the game hidden somewhere?

[What is Key Pass?]

13 hours ago, eple said:

Definitions differ from where you look it up... but I would say in the current version key passes are not counted accurately. I raised it quite a while ago and it's been raised after the public beta. Compared to RL-stats, key passes in the game is very low right now. Players rarely have above 1 pr game, whereas RL-stats will show plenty of players above 2 pr game

Some assists are key, some are not and in the ME it's hard to tell the difference between those that are counted and those that are not.

Some crosses are key, some are not, and again, it's difficult to tell why.

The only thing that consistently seem to be counted as key are through passes -> passes behind the defence and between fb-cb or cb-cb

Most passes that lead to goal scoring chances or crossing/passing opportunities to create chances are not counted as key, unless they are through passes

Is that experience from 16 or 17? As i remembered I used a similar tactic from 16 but did not get those numbers. I got my Chrsitan Eriksen to get 94 Key Passes in 30 league games , averaging 3 per game, so something is happening?

10 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

The key pass stat is flawed. It's flawed to such an extent that SI are unable to even provide their own definition of what a key pass is, (and isn't), because it's not accurately replicated within the game. 

You are best off completely ignoring it. 

That is quite sad because it is one of the 10 stats highlighted in player overview tab of the league. If it is true then it is the only one that is useless in those 10 stat.

[What is Key Pass?]

I have just finished a season in FM 17 with one of my players getting 94 key passes in the league, with the AI usually getting 30-ish in all major leagues. I wanted to know which part of my game is so strong that the number would be 3 times of the AI teams, but have no idea what is key pass.

 

What I have observed (based on the Analysis tap in game) is:

- It is usually a pass in the attacking process which unlocks another player to a good position, but usually not a shooting opportunity

- Assists are usually not key pass (can't say for 100% sure), even if it is a really good pass and crafts out a very good opportunity. 

- Crosses, including free kicks, are not key pass

 

So what is a key pass? Is the system currently inaccurate like the clear-cut-chances count?

[The "Official" Tactic Request Thread - Can't find what you're looking for? ASK HERE!!]

I am looking for a tactic that has WTM Wide Target Man and where the WTMs play well. WTM(A) or WTM(S), 1 or 2 of them both does not matter.

Helps appreciated!