Marshdweller

Thanks, that seems to have worked perfectly.

I've installed a couple of skins on FM15 and they appear to have messed with the default skins somehow. Is there a way of completely removing all trace of the downloaded skins and resetting the game back to the deault, out-of-the-box skins? Thanks!

Whenever I try to envisage a Limited Full-Back, I think of the times Jamie Carragher played at left-back for Liverpool. Great defensively but offered nothing much going forward (from what I remember).

Thanks for the confirmation I've said this a few times already in other posts and threads - I think this would be a massive help. If not sliders, how about an 'estimated heat map', which will show you an approximate width etc.? (admittedly, this wouldn't show the impact at a player level, which the sliders did).

I was just thinking that too!

No, you're quite right. If you really wanted him to play like an anchor man, then I think the 12 Step Guide is suggesting that you would need a more rigid philosophy. I'm guessing you might be able to get him to play more like an anchor man in a very fluid team by reducing his personal creative freedom, and maybe adding a couple of other PIs. My general point (and I think WWFan's too if I've understood correctly) is that if you want specific behaviour from a player but put them in a very fluid system, you might find that they have a very loose interpretation of your instructions and don't do exactly what you want, so you might as well give them generic roles and then let the team instructions influence how they play rather than their personal role.

I'd suggest retraining Cathalina to a RB and investing in a new CB, or even simply swapping him with Ibanez.

Can I just double-check something? Are both FM13 and FM14 the same 'under the hood'? E.g. Changing the team mentality or fluidity will have the same effect in FM14 as it did in FM13? As I've probably said in a number of posts elsewhere, I've really struggled with the lack of visual representation of the changes in TI's caused by changing mentality etc. If I can confirm that the changes have the same impact across versions, then that will be a major step forward for me. Sorry if this has already been answered...

It occurred to me yesterday after my original post that the roles are just a shortcut to a given collection of settings for a player in the same way that the shouts are a collection of settings that can now be applied with one click whereas before it would have needed adjustments to tempo, mentality, width etc to be done separately. Ultimately both sliders and the new buttons are just different languages for the manager to talk to the match engine. It also occurred to me that I could hypothetically take screenshots of the sliders for certain roles in FM13 and then take them back to Fm09 and apply them there. I liked the sliders because regardless of how well you understood them, they gave a visual representation of the impact of your changes before you implemented them. However, I think the new system is much more logical and intuitive. I'll also freely admit the limitations of my tactical knowledge are being brutally exposed over the last two or three versions so I'm doing my best to improve 😊

I don't think it's necessarily that bad things will happen, just that your anchor man will deviate from the anchor man instructions and play like a more general defensive midfielder because the fluidity gives him the freedom to do so. So it may be that you want the player to play like an anchor man, but he won't.

I don't think Very Rigid actually affects the formation in the way I understand you want it to; I think for what you want you should select the Be More Disciplined and Stick to Position shouts.

I also seem to remember you mentioning that you could create a very defensively strong system with an attacking mentality. I would love to know how you would go about doing that. I've had some ideas myself, but I seem to be doing the opposite of everything you've done in the defensive set up - pushing higher up, playing wider, closing down more, etc. I don't know if this is logical or whether my simple brain is telling me to try the polar opposite of your approach. Also, I noticed that you have used what I would consider to be attacking roles in your defensive system (Regista, CM(A), Treq, 2 strikers...) - would you fill the attacking system with defensive roles as the whole team would be camped further up the pitch (in theory)? So would you use a Defensive Forward, Defensive wingers, full backs rather than wing backs?

If I've got one thing from this thread, it's that Cleon's proving that defensive mentality in the tactic creator doesn't necessarily translate into defensive football. So you could do both - play the 'Celtic way' and also use a defensive mentality.

I'm inclined to agree with QWERTYOP here. Surely most of these roles could be created already? E.g. Roaming playmaker = BBM with more creative freedom, also pick a player with high creativity and flair Raumdeuter = IF(A) with less closing down? Inverted Wingback = normal wing-back, played on opposite side to strongest foot, instructed to cut inside and maybe given Roam from Position and Be more Expressive PIs Wide Playmaker = WM with more creative freedom. Also, since we can currently pick the AP role in AML/R positions, why was this needed? I don't want this to sound overly critical of SI and the new version of FM before it's even released because I'll freely admit my tactical knowledge is not up there with the best so I could well be missing something crucial about these roles. I'll be very interested to see how they differ from what's currently available.

Completely missed that announcement! Thanks for the confirmation.