Pattric_b

Mind explaining what some of the columns represent? (wall, pch, eoa, sf, mt, gb, np, np/gb, etc.) I feel like I know my players very well but am interested what your spreadsheet has to say.

I was having problems with my 4-4-1-1, I couldn't get the striker and Cam to link up properly which effected the tactic. I mean we did win the league my first season so it wasn't that bad but I want to see better link up play between those two like how Kenny and Rush used to play, it's great to watch their old matches. With the 4-4-2 I have the Kenny role on the right for now it is basically flipped from how Liverpool used to play because, mistake me if I'm incorrect, but Sounness used to play deeper and was usually the left cm. But for me my deeper cm is positioned on the right. With the players I have it just works better that way. Yeah I holidayed to that year! I enjoy playing with all newgens where I dont know any of the players and I know my game is different from everyone else's. Rather then starting at the same point everyone else does and knowing all the best youth players etc. Glad you enjoyed it!

This is the exact sort of info I've been looking for thank you for your insights. I've gone fluid mainly because I wanted to try and get the strikers and wide players to defend along with the rest of the team which have been mixed, in terms in results, thus far. I use nearly the exact same TI's apart from dribble less and roam from position. The only reason I don't use roam from position is because I don't trust my players off the ball rating just yet before giving them that freedom. That's probably something I'm going to aim for in the third season though. At this point the mental aspect of the players I'm bringing in is the most important, it's hard to find brave players who are good enough to play in my first team though. Determination, teamwork and personality are the first things I typically look at. Cheers for the information!

Theres a book called 'The Mixer' written by Michael Cox, its a great book. He analyzes and talks about the history of Premier League tactics.

Here's my starting tactic: The idea was to create a diamond in midfield in an effort to control the middle of the field with numerical mismatches. We are clogging the middle and forcing the opposition to defend narrow. If they sit off then that allows my central players to camp in the opponents half and move the ball around. Once a defender loses his patience and tries to close my player down that opens up space for our midfielders and forwards to exploit. If they do stay disciplined and stay in shape then we have our CWB's running from deep to receive the ball and deliver a cross in. So far it's been working very well. The CWB- At is easily my favorite role on FM. If you have the right players for the role I highly recommend trying it. Also I needed to make use of all the wingers on this team, I couldn't let them go to waste This is average positions with and without the ball. Look at the amount of ground the complete wingbacks cover! I anticipate I'll be subbing them off nearly every game though. Results: I made one permanent transfer (Sebastian Maier) and one loan deal (Vladelen Yurchenko) and that's all I'll be doing. I am slightly worried about the lack of central players I have who are ready for the first team though. A few injuries could derail what I have going so far. Either way I am enjoying this so far I had a lot of success with the 4-3-1-2 in FM17 and this seems to be a good shape still in FM18

Yeah that thread helped me out a lot when I started doing research, it was interesting to see other peoples take on the team. I remember reading through that thread when I first started playing FM amazing it was 8 years ago haha Now a days it would never work... If Liverpool weren't willing to offer the cash they would just go abroad, similar to what China are doing now. But then again if the sport didn't start generating all this money from TV deals and outside sponsorships, etc teams wouldn't be paying their star players 300k a week to kick a ball I've moved onto the second season and I agree I wasn't really thrilled with what I saw from the Dalglish role so I've been trying a flat 4-4-2 with one striker dropping deep as a creator and the results have been good so far. The movement from the cm's also improved since they have more space in the middle. The most interesting part of this tactic for me though is trying to find someone capable of playing the way Alan Hansen did. He was an amazing ball playing defender and I've seen videos of him carry the ball through the middle trying to play through balls to the forwards. Players like this are rare but if I can find a player to play like that I'll be thrilled. Just want to say thanks for all the kind words so far from everyone. Can't wait to do the next update, I have a lot of ideas!

@Jambo98 are you going to make a new thread or should we start posting in here?

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YEAR ONE Background: 2017- Now The year is 2052 and Liverpool are no longer considered a top 4/5 club. They now float around mid table and have done so for the past 15 years. Liverpool have had minor success in Europe, lifting the Europa league a few occasions, as well as winning the FA Cup a few times but they have not won the league in 62 years! Winning the League is my main goal, however the bookies don’t rate our chances. With 39-1 odds they have us finishing 10th in my first season in charge and I honestly consider that a failure if we finish that low. Like I mentioned in the intro, I want to play how Shankly and Paisleys teams played. That means few team instructions, keeping possession of the ball, and generally using a 4-4-1-1 (debatable for some but I always viewed Dalglish as a 10 more so than a striker) shape. But of course my team is probably not suited for playing such a style just yet, at least not at such a high and successful level. So to ensure that I don’t get sacked my first season I will adapt to the players I have and slowly introduce my philosophies as the team improves and is capable of playing that way. Tactic This was the starting template I worked with. As the season progressed the tactic continued to evolve as TI’s were added and removed and player roles were changed. Looking back I probably made too many changes and lacked patience with my original set up, but the season is behind us and I can’t go back. Here was my thinking Mentality: Standard: I didn’t want to mess with the team instructions in any way so I chose to just leave this on standard and use the TI’s to influence play for now. Team Shape: Fluid: Pretty obvious choice given the fact that Shankly has stated many times in the past how he wants his team to play as a unit. Team Instructions: Shorter Passing: Those of you who are familiar with this Liverpool team know they did a good job of keeping possession of the ball and didn’t play a wasteful long ball too often. I chose this instruction to be my ‘possession’ instruction. Pass Into Space: Some will see this instruction and ‘shorter passing as opposites but my way of thinking was that if we can complete short passes into space we can promote forward thinking and make moves towards the goal rather than boring sideways and back passes. This shout was chosen in order to try and get the players moving off the ball and running onto balls. Close Down More: Watching their games back you can see they wanted to camp in the opponents half for as long as possible, working the ball around until they find their opening. Liverpool were quite aggressive at times in their closing down in order to win the ball back and retain possession. Hard closing down and possession tactics go hand and hand so I opted for this shout. I wanted to keep it simple and see how my squad plays with little influence from me and at in the first half of the season we had very positive results but didn’t score many as I suspected might end up happening. Matches Our first real test of the season came against Man City at home. City are still one of the best and most dominant teams in England so I knew I was in for a tough one. Although having the Anfield crowd backing us I didn’t change anything and wanted to control the game our way. We played well and created a good amount of chances while being responsible with the ball, exactly how I want them to play. One thing I noticed however, was that my striker seemed to be too deep far too often which led to a lot of attacks being halted and forced to recycle possession. Notice the 9 and 11 are right on top of each other. I want the players to be spaced out so they have them as an option for a pass to continue the attack, not stop it. I also saw a potential issue with this pass map. My central midfielders and wingbacks are very far away from my center backs and since I’ve instructed my keeper to pass the ball to the center backs I’m worried they will have no options and boot the ball up the field. We went through the season and actually went unbeaten until January. The wins weren’t particularly pleasing on the eye however. Our style of play reminded me of Van Gaals United at times, which is worrying. We held possession just for the sake of possession and yes did scrape a bunch of 1-0 victories but we were drawing far too many matches. Some kind of change had to be done. End Of Season Tactic This is a pretty big difference mainly in the team instructions I used. But I felt we weren’t being aggressive enough on defense and wanted to win the ball back more in order to attack the space left behind our opponents. This is a far more risky way of playing, but if it worked then we would start scoring a lot more goals. I figured and those 1-0’s would become 3-0’s and the 0-0 and 1-1 games would turn in our favor. The reward was well worth the risk in my eyes. I also wanted to start introducing this style to my team because this is how I want the team to be playing by the time the third year comes around. Depending on the match I removed some instructions I thought were way too risky. When we played Man Utd away I reverted the d-line back to normal and removed play offsides, otherwise we would have gotten destroyed by balls over the top. This new style of playing went down pretty well although didn’t make a huge difference as teams began to treat us like title contenders. The space I so desperately wanted to attack was much harder to come by. We had to really work hard for openings and chances. With one game left, the title race was closer than ever. We were tied with United with 81 points atop the table. United had a better goal difference though and so they were sitting first. We had to play our best game of the season and hope for a miracle that United didn’t manage to somehow win at home. MATCH DAY 38 Pre match Southampton lined up against us in a typical 4-1-4-1. We lined up in the tactic shown above and prepared for war as we looked to bring the title back to Anfield for the first time since 1990! I did notice something odd though, as the game kicked off Soton quickly changed formation to a 4-1-3-1-1 DM narrow. No idea what happened there… anyway. The game didn’t look like going to plan when in the 17th minute, they scored and went ahead 0-1. Our aggressive and risky style cost us early on when their center back, Ricardo, hit a long ball over our high defensive line. This had happened a handful of times before this match and I didn’t properly learn my lesson. I knew that this could happen but went for the reward anyway. Soton’s #11 collects the ball just outside our penalty area and is 1v1 with the keeper where he buries it. I remained calm though. United had gone down 1-0 to Bournemouth and I knew there was still a lot of time left to make something happen. Here our keeper just passed it short to Schonberger. You can see our central players out number theres. If we are quick with our passing and smart we can work our way past them fairly easily given all the options at our disposal. My only issue here is that I would probably want my wide midfielders to be a little closer to the forward allowing an easier passing option. We work the ball around probing our options, at a pretty slow pace I might add. This allowed Soton to get back into better defensive positions. We moved up the pitch with the ball holding possession waiting for a player to make a move off the ball when suddenly our #7 and #17 make eye contact. #17 sees the space the center back and fullback have given him so he makes a dashing run towards it. #7 gives a perfectly timed and weighed pass. As this is happening my #14 also begins his run off the ball. This looks very promising when I notice #14 run past the center backs unmarked. #17 picks the ball up in the penalty box and takes a few dribbles then plays a simple pass into the center where #14 is waiting for the easy tap in. 1-1. This type of off the ball movement is exactly what I was aiming for and hoping we could achieve. The through ball from #7 didn’t just initiate a run from #17 but also #14. This shows me we are playing like actual intelligent footballers in a fluid system. We still needed to win in order to have a chance of securing the title. Regardless of what was happening in the United game I knew I couldn’t take any chances. We had to at least win the match. The boys were really up for this match thankfully and executed the game plan very well. When in possession we moved the ball around not forcing anything. Waiting for space to open up. My players were supporting each other and giving whoever had the ball an option. Then magic happened. 35th Minute Sequence Of Events: 1. Our #31 passes the ball to #2 who has his back facing our opponents goal. Rather than trying to turn and potentially lose possession he plays a short and simple pass back to #31 2. #31 holds the ball as he starts to get closed down by their #7 and #12. He then plays the ball to our #7. 3. #7 attracts attention from #7. At this point their 16 hasn’t begun to close down anyone and is instead marking Duhamel. 4. Our #7 passes the ball over to #26 who finally attracts their #16 towards him leaving Duhamel unmarked and in acres of space. 5. The final move is when 26 plays a ball to Duhamel, who sees the space and gladly takes it. Going on a Messi like run in between their center back and right back. Showing determination and pure speed he dribbles past their team and places the ball beautifully in the net. 2-1. Our patience did them in. We simply held the ball and waited for the AI to make a decision. Once they did we simply passed the ball off to another player in red. Duhamel saw space and, using his decision making, attacked it with aggression. Surly a bit of brilliance from him helped us here but our simple game plan forced the AI into error. Simplicity rules. Half time came and I was thrilled with how we turned it around. I checked up on the United game and somehow, someway they were trailing 0-2 at home! I didn't change anything given how well we were playing and at home. We controlled the second half. We continued our dominance of possession and eventually scored another goal. The game ended 3-1. We dominated. You can see the positive effect the removal of 'pass into space' TI had on our passing percentages. When I left the match I was greeted by a fantastic bit of news. We won the league! SEASON OVERVIEW We scored only 72 goals but conceded 32 which is the fewest allowed in the league. So essentially our defense won us the title. Moving into next season I would like our team to be scoring around 90 goals. I want this team to turn into a lethal attacking side. Since one of my goals was to play a short simple passing game that retained possession I'd say based on the team stats screen we did a pretty good job of that. I'd say our good defensive record is down to the fact that we didn't really give up the ball too often. We won every game when it came to the possession statistic but simply holding the ball doesn't win you games. Its what you do with the possession that matters. Scoring only 72 goals is actually not too far away from what Liverpool used to do in their heyday and they used to play 42 league games. But that number seems too low for me, especially in the modern game. There were quite a few comparisons you could make with my Liverpool and Paisleys. My striker was our leading goal scorer (Rush), our CAM scored goals as well as created chances (Dalglish) and we played a short simple passing game with lots of off the ball movement. I already have ideas for how I see this tactic evolving over time. The most important thing now is that I am efficient with the funds the board has given me to buy new players. We're a decent side but no where near as good as Paisley's teams in the 70's and 80's. I'm still in the summer following my first season, so I'm not sure how long it is going to take until the Year 2 update but it is coming at some point. In between I will touch upon other topics like how I decided on signing which players this past transfer window, analyzing an actual Liverpool game that was managed by Paisley or Shankly and how I sometimes use my analyst reports to help me decide which TI's I should add or remove from my tactic. I'm not too sure if this is any good or entertaining for people? But I hope someone finds enjoyment out of it or at least gets some people talking about this team because I don't really hear enough about them. Thanks for reading either way!

INTRODUCTION In recent years I’ve found myself becoming more and more discouraged when it came to soccer. The modern player is a main cause for that. All too often you will see a player on the losing side smiling and hugging a friend on the opposing team after the match. There are too many individuals in todays game who play for themselves and it really bothers me seeing this sort of stuff (way more than it should). I’m not saying players like this didn’t exist in previous generations, it just seems much more common due to the fact that social media and the tabloid journalism have become prevalent in my lifetime. This dissatisfaction with the modern game and its players led me to start looking up and researching some of the classic teams in history to remind myself how the game used to be played. Hungary during the 50’s, Sacchi’s Milan, Rinus Michels Ajax, the 1970 Brazil world cup team, The invincible Arsenal team, 1999 treble winning Manchester United and eventually, the Liverpool side that totally dominated most of the 70’s and 80’s. I’ve always been aware of their dominance but never really looked into anything further like tactics, key players, philosophies, records, etc. The more I read about Liverpool during this time period the more I learned about Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley. The more I read about their teams and players ,the more I wanted to bring their ideas into FM and see how I fair. They shared a simple playing philosophy, which is something I think a lot FM players should read about and try out on their own. Their tactics and game-plans have never really been fully detailed because I believe it would be a really short report. Shankly and Paisley lived by a simple philosophy; “You pass the ball to another red shirt and then take up another available position.” Pass and move. Of course there was more to it but that quote sums their style up perfectly. They wanted their teams to play simple and express themselves in a fluid framework. Shankly wanted everyone to play and operate like a well oiled machine, turning out results after result. Once they started playing the way he liked, Liverpool began their reign of England and European soccer and had one of the most dominant periods ever. Shankly was mostly opposed to giving opposition instructions as he always considered his team to be better than anyone they came up against. He mostly focused on how he wanted his team to play and had full confidence in them to secure a result. He relied on the players intelligence and technical abilities to win matches. You need a certain kind of player in order to carry out this game-plan. In todays world we're basically talking about a team similar to 2010-11 Barcelona. A team full of 'complete players' is what Liverpool had and that's who I will look to develop and recruit to the club while I manage them. Key Attributes: Technical: First touch, Passing, Technique Mental: Anticipation, Decisions, Determination, Off the Ball, Teamwork and Work rate Physical: Acceleration, Pace and Stamina This is probably going to be the hardest part of this honestly. Finding players of this calibre are hard to come by and if you do find players like this they will not come cheap. If I have to cough up the cash to get the perfect players to play this style then so be it. And these players also have to have a positive personality, obviously. PHILOSOPHIES TO LIVE BY Being that I am a fan of Shankly’s way of thinking and since it ultimately brought Liverpool years of success and trophies, I will be following everything he did as well as adding a few of my own twists to make it fun. After doing some research online, I found a brief summary on his philosophy called “Nine points of Shankly” Not all the points are possible to translate into FM so I omitted them, but this will be my strict philosophy as I embark on bringing Liverpool back to the promise land. (my notes are written in between just to be clear): “Scottish Socialism: - part of the Liverpool success at the time was built around the socialist ethic of collective effort with equal wages and no prima donnas. There was no room for anyone thinking he was above the club. Building a strong team spirit and the fact that no one player was more important than the greater good were his cornerstones.” -I have no desire to bring politics into the sport but I don’t want any prima donnas either. I want one united squad and any player who steps out of place and gets a big head will be shown the door. Simple as that. “Simple Strategy: - “You pass the ball to another red shirt and then take up another available position.” Pass, move, receive the ball. A very basic man with a simple approach – the way to learn how to play football was by practicing with a ball against better and better players.” -Simple playing style with an emphasis on retaining possession and having great off the ball movement. Easier said than done but this is the ultimate goal. I want to be able to give my team the freedom to express themselves and create beautiful plays on the pitch. Very similar to total football. "Tough, Skillful Northern Players who had Served Apprenticeships: The Liverpool way was to sign skillful, resilient players who could fit into the passing and movement game, players who would respond to tough training principles and serve an apprenticeship in playing the Liverpool way, players who could take responsibility for themselves and make decisions on the pitch for the good of the team. He was keen to sign players with character and commitment.” -Theres no way of knowing if my players have served apprenticeships in FM but I can easily find hard working and determined players and thats who I will look to bring to the club. I’ll also be looking to recruit mainly Irish and British players if possible. There is usually a high domestic bias with the all time great teams. I’ll also be focusing on: Youth Development: Liverpool has a rich history of bringing players through their academy and giving them a chance in the first team. Gerrard, Carragher, McManaman, Owen, Fowler, Callaghan and Thompson are just some of the names who came through the academy and went on to have successful careers. I intend to carry on this tradition and give the kids a chance to own their place in the side. 4-4-1-1: It can be argued which formation they used most but they were at their best when they had Dalglish playing behind Rush in my eyes. The only time I may venture away from this formation is in Europe. Paisley had said that you have to change your play style in order to be successful in Europe. Wether I will have to do that or not remains to be seen as we aren't in any European competitions my first season. CONCLUSION My decisions on roles, team shape, team instructions and all that will be shown in my next post I just wanted to give a basic introduction into what I'm doing and why. I am giving myself a deadline of 3 seasons to win the Champions League playing in a similar style as written about above. Obviously it’s not the toughest challenge considering it’s Liverpool after all but I’m in the year 2052 and things aren’t looking to great for the club (I will go over this in my next post). I will be documenting my progress in this thread and look forward to achieving this style of play. I’d also like to open this up and get as many opinions on Liverpools play style and players during that time (70's-80's) as possible. The more information I can gather the more detailed and realistic I can make this. So feel free to express anything you’d like relating to this era of the club! Some sources I used: https://community.sigames.com/topic/344324-bob-paisley-liverpool/ https://community.sigames.com/topic/156880-liverpool-4-4-1-1-quotpass-and-movequot-paisley-era/ Notes On Passing Rhythms Liverpool FC and the Transformation of Football "Red Machine" the story of the dominant 80's Liverpool side Youtube: When Liverpool Ruled The World Liverpool FC In Training In 1970's Everton 0 v Liverpool 5 1982/83 | Football League Classic Matches

I was sorta hoping for a more oddball formation but I like the 4-3-1-2. I used that mostly in FM17 so I'm hoping for moderate success at Koln!

Alright either team is fine but I'd prefer Koln because they're in Europa.

I'm in! My vote is for Real Sociedad then Bordeaux. Looking forward to this

No problem @craiigman! Yeah I've always wondered as well. I figure it's so you can look at the graph quickly to see the players strong areas? Like if you look just at the polygraph and see the player has more speed than anything you can presume he is probably a wide player. Or if they have mostly defending, aerial and physical attributes then the player is usually suited to play center back.