Jack722

March 19

23 hours ago, lied90 said:

If by "out of the box" you mean Preset tactics, then yes they are horrible and serve little to no purpose. This says more about the preset tactics than it does about Route One as a style in FM imo. You can play Route One with moderate success, it just doesn't compare to what you can achieve with gegenpress.

The fact that most people agree this and that the presets have been left in for multiple years is baffling to me. Especially since they're really shoved in your face when you first start a save. I imagine lots of beginners would choose one of these presets and get immediately battered and therefore not find the game fun. It would be so easy to fix as well.

Also it's not just route one, catenaccio is unusable, so are the counter attacking ones, as well as park the bus.

March 18

12 minutes ago, Hootieleece said:

I am not saying it is perfect, but it does work at least at the lower levels maybe not so much at Premier League Level and remember Dyche eventually got sacked and they went in another direction IRL.

They also qualified for Europe finishing 7th and stayed in the prem multiple seasons on probably the lowest budget before being sacked. Now they’ve got kompany playing attacking football and are looking quite likely to be relegated in their first season

March 18

On 10/03/2024 at 21:04, Englishhammer said:

Good thread. Started one today based on it after pondering. Early days though. Don’t get too many fouls like I thought I would.
I set more crossing on PI’s and brought Poulsen in for his aerial abilities. 80 min upwards I’ll drop Counter and add time wasting, slow pace down and be more disciplined.

Goals come from bother strikers and both wingers. Nothing else yet to report. I agree a lot with the last post, it’s not pure Route One. But I see enough of what I want to carry on.

This is just not route one though? The whole basis of route one is to play long ball - that is what this thread is about. You're not even using slightly more direct let alone extremely direct. Youre also playing a higher line and much more often pressing triggers. I would argue this is closer to a gegenpress than a standard routeone tactic.

March 18

I am on the side that route one football is at least slightly broken. I remember doing a burnley save back when they were under Sean Dyche and a tailor-made 442 hoofball team.

One save I used the out-the-box 442 route one , and the other save I used an out-the-box 433 vertical tikitaka, and kept my involvement as little as possible by leaving most day-to-day management to the assisstant manager...

Guess which was better?

Well the hoofball got me sacked half a season in and the vertical tikitaka finished mid table... Whatever you say, something is wildly wrong there. Either the match engine or the tactics creator needs to get sorted asap to make hoofball at least a somewhat viable tactic. - also a lot of peole are defending the ME by saying that hoof ball is just really complicated, or you need exactly the right players. But there is no reason why a simple 442 hoofball and mid / low block should be harder to create than a 433 gegenpress. In my opinion, playing out the back and high pressing is much more demanding in terms of attributes and coaching than any route one tactic - but those seem to be easy in the ME.

I'll redo the experiment if anyone is interested as i understand that at the moment this is just anecdotal.

March 16

On 19/11/2023 at 14:31, crusadertsar said:

Thanks for following mate. Indeed striking the right balance between conceding fewest goals and actually being clinical in the offensive phase can be tricky. Unlike with more aggressive attacking styles where your team is always pushing into the opposition half, you will have far less chances. So this only puts even more stress on setting up the attacking portion of the tactic and the roles just right. You have to have the right players and they have to be doing the right thing. I don't think my tactic is perfect but we seem to be doing more things right then wrong.

Currently sitting in 4th in beginning of March. And it looks like its going to be a pretty close title race. I'm not stressing to win it in our 1st season but it would be a nice surprise. It will certainly be an interesting showdown in the last month and a half between Real Madrid, Barcelona and Villareal (surprise!). I also hope that Athletic Bilbao gets in there too. The more Basque clubs in Europe next year the better . On the other hand Athletico Madrid have bombed the season completely sitting in 12 spot. The level of competition and quality from other teams is exactly why I find LaLiga to be my favourite league in football (and it has been for quite a while now). And every year there always seems to be some surprise factor like Villareal this season.

Also as seen in the screenshot above, our attacking is not that shabby for a defensive-focused style. Sitting in 3rd position (behind Real Madrid and Villareal) in numbers of goals scored. So far La Real scored 50 goals (16 coming from our Pressing Forward Sadiq, 10 from AMC Oyarzabal, 7 and 5 from wingers Brais Mendez and Barrenetxea respectively). Mendez has been absolutely key in his right wing position, also assisting on 11 assists. So the team's offensive contribution is pretty much split realistically between the 4 attacking players. My players are playing as to be expected by their roles. Those with attack duties are scoring more while support duties are supporting. Oyarzabal is a bit of an outlier with his offensive contribution but I actually planned for his role to act as a sort of secondary supporting striker for us. I even added "get further forward" instruction to make sure he gets more involved in attacking phase later in the buildup. I like a good old Shadow Striker role but find it a bit too aggressive for my set up, preferring my AMC to also drop deeper and help out the midfielders. I might consider adding "comes deep to get the ball" but I suspect I would need a faster player than Oyarzabal to get the full benefit from it. With his Acceleration I don't think Mikel would be able to keep up in both midfield and attack. So I will keep him as is for now. He seems to be doing just fine.

Tactically, I like to keep things as simple as possible with few team instructions and a couple more player instructions to influence player behavior under the hood. I was actually inspired a lot by a recent excellent comment written by @herne79 in which he described how his West Ham team plays. Unfortunately it disappeared since because its thread was deleted. I sort of see Real Sociedad as a similar team to West Ham in terms of being too good for mid-table but not quite good enough to be a regular in the top 5 of the league. But this type of fluid counter-attacking approach could work very well with both teams.

Now to explain a little my choice of roles and some of the instructions. I tried to keep all the roles different (because I believe tactical variety is key when it comes to roles). The two fullbacks actually play very differently. I used to use wingback on the left flank but since found a simple fullback with "get further forward" instruction to give more balance to our defence. You could get a similar effect by using a player with "get further" trait there. On the right flank, I use a fullback with increased mentality (due to "underlap right" instruction) to a similar effect but less adventurous than my left fullback which is just the way I like it. I want balance in our attack. On the right side we have a more adventurous Segundo Volante (I am currently testing "get further forward" instruction with young Benat Turrientes in that role because he has much better acceleration and pace than Merino). While on the left flank we have a more attacking Inverted Winger so it made sense to switch from Wingback to fullback there. While at same time "get further" instruction ensures that the fullback will still overlap our winger when opportunity presents itself.
I got to say that I really love the Defensive Winger role in this setup. I was rather surprised with the output that we received from Brais Mendez in that role but on second thought he does seem very suitable to it.

Some of the other individual instructions I used so far:

"Roam from position" for my AMC - I don't use a playmaker in this role to avoid him getting marked excessively but he still attracts opposition DMs from time to time so roaming helps alot in that respect. He also gets "Get further forward" but I explained that one already.

The only other role with a few individual instructions is my left DM. I tell him to "Dribble Less", "Shoot Less Often" and "Hold Position". I could use Ballwinning Midfielder in this position to mimic the same behavior but I don't really want my player going too heavy on the tackling. He is one of the hidden playmakers in my tactic (as I usually play Zubimendi or Merino there) and I don't want him to amass yellow cards and risk being thrown out of the game. In general, the goal of the tactic is to be very disciplined and limit number of yellows. As you can see from one of the screens above, we are currently sitting with 14 total yellow cards which is the best in the league.

My left fullback - "Get Further Forward" - already explained.

And now a few more defensive statistics. I don't want to continue bragging but just feel like its relevant here since the objective of the tactic is defensive performance afterall

In March we remain best team in terms of goals conceded (24 for whole season). As you can see from image above there is quite a divide between Real Sociedad and the rest of the league in that respect.

La Real is also tied with Athletic Bilbao (Yay!!) and Barcelona for the number of clean sheets (12) which is a statistic that I am even more proud off. A lot of this probably has to do with the performances of our primary keeper. Remiro is quite good although definitely not a world-class keeper like ones that Barcelona and Real Madrid have. However he is very reliable and rarely gets injured which helps alot.

Here are some of our recent performances. Love seeing all those clean sheets An interesting fact is that all of our goals seem to come in the 2nd half. But realizing that our overall tactical intensity is relatively low it's not all that surprising. Keeping my players fresh and performing at the top of their abilities during the match is part of the master plan. So by minute 55 when the AI is tired from running around and pressing everywhere my players are still in the green and ready to pounce on any scoring chances.

So that's it for now! In a future mini-update I would love to share some of the nice clinical goals I have been seeing with this system and some of the heat maps of player positioning perhaps. There is definitely a lot that I am loving with this campaign and many more things I am looking forward to sharing, especially our youth intakes which I've always found to be exciting with Real Sociedad in my previous saves.

Below is the preview of the 1st intake coming in only a few weeks now. Very excited to see what it brings! 5-star golden generation is good indication of what to expect but I am also thrilled to be getting some excellent midfielders and defensive midfielders it seems. And probably a decent centreback or two. Which is exactly what we need in the future.

Agur! And thanks for following along with me on this journey everyone!

Sorry but this is definitely not a defence first tactic. It's just not an overly attacking / possession focused tactic that we see everyone use on Football Manager. It would be interesting to see you use some of the lower mentalities and reduced pressing instructions, as well as some of the more defensive roles like No nonsence centre back.

October 20, 2023

i read this earlier today and saw a lot of GK injuries in the comments. In my second league game of the season i had 2(!) keepers injured within 10 minutes of each other. I finished the game with my CB in goal and then found out that both my keepers are out for at least 5 weeks. I feel like this is probably turned up too much! I already want to give up on the season.

June 30, 2023

Any schedule looking like that is nothing to do with tactics. Just poor man management

June 30, 2023

On the pre match team talk screen, you get this image, and you can see the player's moods. Sometimes, theyre nervous, motivated, complacent, or just composed.

Let's say youre coming up against a team that you should easily win against, but everyone is already motivated before the team talk, would you still demand a win? Or would you go for a more neutral team talk , like encouragement or relaxing?

May 30, 2023

On 11/05/2023 at 06:08, Mberr said:

Finally, i want to make a comment on the revaluation process itsellf. When we reached january we were first of the league, but we also were a recently promoted, relegation candidates. The game went straight from considering us relegation candidates to considering us candidates to promotion, and that´s too abrupt if you ask me. I find the problem is not only the lack of different "rereading instances", but it is the extrermism of the diagnose the game does. I´m sure there´s an intention on reflectiing how the media works, but i still think it needs an adjusment, like, to say something, have different media publlications with heavily different views and the resulting atmosphere should be more balanced, not only a monolitc narrative of an imbeatable team, nor a catastrophical one when there´s a bad streak of results.

I guarentee this was not because of reputation change or teams changing how they play against you, but the fact that in January, people start talking about the title race and relegation and top 4 etc.. Your players just got nervous and basically sh*t the bed.

You probably started reciveing questions about top 4 and the title race. There are two things you should've done at this stage.

Take off as much pressure as possible from your players to do with end of seasons goals. Any press question about winning the title say "we're just taking things one at a time", "we have a long way to go before we're on the same level as Barca", "I think Barca / Real will win the league" or something similar
Never use the title race in team talks. Once you start getting close to the end of the season you should tell players to "go out there and enjoy yourselves" or something along those lines. The pressure would be immense at that stage to win a potential once in a lifetime title, they already have motivation enough to do well.

May 30, 2023

On 11/05/2023 at 06:08, Mberr said:

I think the following is common knowledge in the community: reaching january, the game reevaluates your reputation and teams reread you, and adapt to your new reputation.

This is 100% not true.

I used to have the worst mid season slumps, to the point where it ruined many of my saves and had me tearing my hair out. Ever since I stopped listening to this advice, my mid seasons slumps reduced to 2 or 3 games - or dissapeared entirely.

There are two main reasons this recalculation theory makes no sense.

This doesn't happen in real life - does anyone really massively change how they place against, say, Fulham in the premier league now? not really.. They continue attempting to play their own game against pretty much everyone, apart from the big six and certain scenarios (like winning late on) where they'll be more defensive. Reputation takes years to change signifcantly to the point where teams change the way they play against you.
Supposedly teams start playing more defensive against you.. Then why do we start suddenly conceding more goals? and why does barely anyone else ever play defensive and win reguarly playing great football like all these teams are apparently doing to you?

People on these forums forget that football in real life, and FM, is massively influenced by factors outside of tactics. What normally happens is a variety of non-tactical factors.

Normally players start complaining about new contracts / transfers/ playing time in mid season, and get unhappy. This can lead to huge consequences if not managed properly.
Teams can genuinely get a bit unlucky and lose a couple games (no big deal) but then if not managed correctly can lead to frustration / second guessing themselves / nervousness / giving up etc.. Numerous times i've seen my teams play well and lose for a couple games, then suddenly forget how to play football and get badly outplayed against mediocre sides after
You can have a genuinely hard fixture list and go 4 or 5 games winless. Players can lose confidence after a run like this and subsequently go on a bad run of form
Frustration can occur after a huge 4 / 5-0 loss where every shot the opposition takes basically goes in
Strikers are programmed to be able to go on a dry spell and cost your team results, same with keepers losing confidence.
An unexpected title race / possible champions league qualification can lead to the pressure getting to your players.
And many more...

There are methods in game to stop all of these happening. I think one clue to be sure that your problem is non-tactical is by checking morale and dressing room atmosphere. If they're not green then you are guarenteed to be leaving points on the table. It's crazy how powerful those two indicators are.

May 30, 2023

I see the positive -> defensive advice passed around a lot for FM, but to me it doesn't really make any sense. From the point of view of the underdog, if the other team goes defensive and stops pressing me so high, i'm gonna have my FB's and CM's on defend staying back and just passing between each other, running down the clock until we get pressed - when we'd just clear it.

Personally, in these situations i always make sure to demand a win in the team talk. Not just a good performance, not wishing them luck - but a win. Any press question you get, also choose the option that puts most pressure on the players.

"Is the bad weather going to make it difficult to play?"
- "No, my team is prepared for every scenario"
"is it going to be hard playing without x player being injured?"
- "No, the rest of my team can manage"
"How important is it to get an early goal?"
- "It's extremely important to start well"

From a tactics point of view, I either use positive or attacking. If i start with postiive but am drawing at half time, i'll switch to attacking as well as press higher. I also tend to push both my fullbacks up to attacking (depending on my tactic) and / or switch my defensive midfielder from defend to support. Think about it, if the other side are just parking the bus and putting 10/11 men behind the ball, you don't really need fullbacks and DM's staying back to stop a counter attack, your CB's should manage just fine. In attack with the extra numbers, your fullbacks can help overload the flanks and the DM can step up into postions outside the box unmarked to take a long shot.

May 30, 2023

20 hours ago, _mxrky said:

Still no pep style wingers.

Still no ability to have a full back play as a 3rd cb (let alone the stones role)

Still no way to adapt your pressing shape to the opposition and tell exactly which player you want to press who.

When will any of these be introduced? From a tactical replication point of view the games been the same for years except we have wide centre backs now.

Pep style wingers have gotten better in FM23 than 22 - but I agree they're still not perfect and it's still difficult to create Guardiola tactics.

FB as 3rd CB would be nice i agree, since i see this all the time irl.

Pressing shape imo is a bit over the top. I think with the triggers being added in FM22 the pressing and defensive side of things is good enough. As someone who's a bit of tactics nerd i can't even see myself wanting to set up pressing shape every game according to opposition, let alone the majority of the player base that are more casual than us.

On the other hand, the set piece creator could do with being updated as well as opposition instructions. It would be cool to seperate a pressing trigger - perhaps for an opposition CB with poor first touch / composure, and closing down - for a midfielder with great vision / flair / long shots. Also a way to double up on opposition wingers or some way to 'focus' on one specific player (think those times when Messi would be surrounded by like 3 different players)

May 9, 2023

On 21/04/2023 at 23:40, flauta kicma said:

For many years there were some kind of slump in the second season to which players needed to adjust their tactics. After some time, it was again "normal".

But now it seems to me the slump after the initial success last forever. It's as if the decline starts from the third season and no matter how I adjust the tactic, I'm not at 100 percent like it was before.

Titles are won, champions leagues are won, there is success but it seems that there is simply not that smooth feeling that was there before that slump. It is irrevirsible thing. And it is tiring me...

Is there a solution?

Cheers

There is a solution.

You have to get better at man management and understand that tactics aren't everything. The common response that the AI figures out your tactics or goes more cautious against you is lazy. You built your tactic around your players (or vice versa), you've won trophies.. It's a good tactic. Going from winning so much to an endless slump just doesn't make sense.

What can happen though is that players can lose confidence, get complacent, get unhappy, and probably much more.

My last bad run of form, we had lost about 5 of our last 7, and drawing the other two. I managed to turn it around, firstly by maintaining high morale. The important thing here is to not let frustration get the better of you. If you narrowly use 2-1 with a close xG and game stats against a team on a similar level to you - tell them they got unlucky. If you lose 3-1 away against top of the league, but you got a few shots on target and made it difficult for them - tell the team they played well. On my 7th winless game we still had a very positive dressing room atmosphere.

Secondly, I looked at the analysis tab. - People here massively overcomplicate tactics and analysis. I noticed two things. On our winless run we actually never went a game without scoring. Secondly, we never kept a clean sheet. It seemed likely that the problem lay with my defence. Then I saw on the analysis tab that 7 of our last 8 goals conceded had come from close to the penalty area. This suggested to me that my centrebacks weren't doing there jobs properly. Had my goals conceded come from long shots, i may have looked to my keeper to see what I could change. If the analysis team told me we had conceded a lot of final third entries, I may look to change something with my midfield. My centrebacks were two of the first names on my teamsheet, they had also both been at the club for at least over a season, and were 24 or above. There was nothing to suggest that they needed time to improve there partnership, or any gentle encouragement. They should be playing better.

I then did three things:

Individually demanded a good performance from my defence in the next pre-match talk
Changed one of my two fb(a)'s to a fb(s)
Made sure to switch to my cautious tactic earlier if we go a goal up (rather than wait for +2GD late in the game)

We had 4 games left in the season, drawing two games 1-1 and winning the other two 1-0, importantly getting 2 clean sheets.

There also are other relatively common ways i've seen results go bad.

Pissing off an influential player
- Best solution here is to avoid it in the first place , or to get rid of the player if possible
Striker losing confidence
- There are some good clues to know if your striker has lost his confidence. FIrstly you can normally tell visually if he just seems incapable of scoring and that all his shots are going straight at the keeper or well wide. Secondly if he's getting decent ratings despite not scoring in 5+ games. Thirdly the game basically tells you when the news item comes out saying "x players vows to end his scoring drought"
- Here you got to navigate team talks and press conferences carefully. Offer encouragement and sympathy. Don't let journalists criticise him and tell him individually he was unlucky at the end of games.
Keeper losing confidence
- I've not had this one too often, but I say it's similar to the previous. You gotta to be careful whether to sympathise or criticise. If they're younger / been at the club for not too long then i'd lean towards sympathising. Same for if they make the occasional blunder but in general play well.
Freak bad results / tough run against multiple top teams
- Here you've just got to keep morale and the dressing room atmosphere up. Let's say you're away against top of the league and get a man sent off within the first 10 mins. The game is essentially a write off at that point. Even if you lose 5-0 you should really try make the team forget about it and move on instead of dwelling / criticising. There are ways through press conferences and team meetings to do this.
And many more that I don't have time to write about at the moment...

May 8, 2023

DId you use the editor to max tactical familiarity? I find if i do that then the bars sometimes don't match up and you need to fast forward a few days and do it again

May 1, 2023

defo wouldn't play messi on the right of a 442, i reckon he'd have to be one of the strikers purely just to not have to defend. Maybe a treq

April 8, 2023

23 minutes ago, Mutumba said:

How does "no comment" on every question affect morale (other than the journalists morale )? Anyone done any research on that matter?

Interesting question. I wouldn’t think it would have a direct effect on the players. Although I have seen journalists be unhappy with my responses before. I guess could cause them to write more negative articles about you if you keep doing it? Perhaps making it more likely for fans to turn against you if you underperform.

I remember reading a post by an official SI staff on these forums saying that everything in the game is there for a reason. So I don’t think they add in those negative journalist reactions just for the sake of it.

April 8, 2023

"For me, maybe 90% of being a successful manager is the way you manage the group."

-Manuel Pellegrini

Football Manager discussion on the internet is almost entirely about tactics. It's seen as the number one most important thing to get right in the game. I constantly come across posts and videos like "my tactic got 100 points last season" and "i'm playing so badly at the moment, someone help me with my tactics". What I find funny is that when I started playing Football Manager, I would also focus 100% on the tactical side, and nothing anywhere else. My tactics were massively complicated - normally with 10+ instructions, I would change things up signifcantly every half season as soon as form took a slight dip, and any match in which we were underperforming, the problem would always be diagnosed as a tactical mismatch.

But the more I play FM, and watch, play and read about real life football, the more I realise how wrong this interpretation is. Not just in real life - but also in game. My tactics now are almost always extremely simple, hardly ever more than 5 instructions. neither do I significantly change anything - with tactical tweaks only ever to accommodate new signings or for the benefit or a substitute that doesn't play exactly the same as the starter.

Let's say you've got a very basic level of knowledge and confidence in your tactics - That's to say you recognise it's not the best idea to play tiki-taka when you've got a team with poor technique and passing; to play a 442 diamond when your 2 best players are natural wingers - Let's also say you won't use an obvious exploit tactic. How much of a difference will it really make to play a 4231 or 433... Wide or narrow width... Inverted winger or inside forward? I think not that much. What's more important is to sign / train high-ability players to play their position well, transmit confidence and motivation to the team, and train the team well so that everyone is on the same page and well drilled.

While I've seen a posts and videos about team talks, I don't think they ever really go into much depth - mostly saying to spam "I have faith in you, go out there and make a difference". And with press conferences, I don't think I've seen anything written about them. Despite being a huge part of the man management aspect of the game. In fact, all i remember reading is how boring people find it and how useless they are.

Press conferences and team talks are important in every game, but they're especially important in the following situations:

Avoiding complacency on a winning run
Turning around a poor run of form
Title races
Big matches (Rivalries / cup games)
Underperforming players
Strikers on goal-droughts

For example, if you find yourself unexpectedly at the top of the table, Journalists will start asking questions about the title race. You can use these questions to deflect pressure away from your players and allow them to continue playing how they were without worrying about 'bottling it' or being the one who ruins a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. On the other hand, if your team was expected to win the league, you can use this opportunity to up the pressure. The players knew what was expected from them, and should take the pressure positively and use it to instill a winning mentality.

Let's say your managing liverpool at the top of the league, and the merseyside derby is coming up at home against a relegation zone Everton. The journalists will ask you all about the rivalry. How important is it to you? Do you want to win this more than any other game? - Here you can answer yes, big up the game as much as possible, raise the pressure, don't let them think "oh it's an easy home game against a bottom half team". While on the other hand, if you're managing Everton in this situation, you might want to play the game down. Say "It's just another game". Realistically, this isn't the kind of match you need to win in order to stay up. Raising the pressure in this situation is likely just to cause nerves, as well as deterioate the dressing room atmosphere when you inevitably lose.

In terms of general game-to-game usage of team talks and press conferences, here in my Southampton save, we just lost a tight game in the FA cup fourth round against Aston Villa. A game for which we were very slight favourites:

I'm about to head into the post-match team talk and press conference. But before I do that, I refresh my memory for a few things.

How did we play?
- quite well but not outstanding
What are our board/player's expectations for this competition?
- not high, only to be competitive
How is our form looking?
- quite bad, our last 4 games being 0W-1D-3L.
What were our expectations for this game? -
- Very slight favourites

Team Talk

Since we played well against a similar level team and weren't expected to get far in this competition, I can't get too angry at the players. Although on the other hand, we were slight favourites for this match, and I want to create a winning culture at home. So I think the best response was what is highlighted in red. Here we recognise the good performance, but still express dissappointment at being beaten in a very winnable game.

Press Conference.

Again highlighted in red were all the responses I chose. The themes of the day were: Exit from the competition, Poor form, and individual player. As you can see, all the responses are divided between being positive or negative about the team. For the first question, we were asked about our exit from the competition. Here I was slightly positive, due to the exact same reasons as my team talk choice - We played well and were never expected to go far anyway. I could've gone extremely positive and praised the team, but i don't want to create a culture of being too content after any home loss, no matter how well we play.

In terms of question two regarding form and morale, you have to go think about the recent games you've played as well as the current one before you decide. In my last 4 games we've conceded two late goals to lose us points, we've been the better team on xG twice, and the two deserved losses were both by 1 goal against 2nd and 3rd in the league. Realistically we're not playing too badly, and all we need is a bit of luck and time to turn things around. So again I chose to be positive. If you look at the negative answers, they involve calling for more "hard work" from the team. this is the kind of response necessary for when your losing games and being outplayed. We don't need our players to start second guessing every decision they make and lose confidence right now.

The last question gives me the opportunity to praise or criticise a youth player, Samuel Edozie. I've been training him to play in left midfield instead of left attacking midfield, just so that he fits in my tactic. He only played today for the sake of rotating in a cup game, and hasn't played particuarly well or badly. For this reason, I picked the middle response, which is almost always neutral and essentially means you skip the question. I tend to cut lower ability players a lot more slack than my highest earners, and Edozie's season average rating of 6.7 and lack of any significant goal/assist contribution is acceptable in my eyes for a youth prospect.

On to the next game away against Everton in the league...

This is always going to be a tight game, with Everton looking like they might edge it. Altough we're above them in the league, we're on poor form, playing away, and Everton have a higher predicted finish. These sort of games are tough to navigate in terms of man management, since you can't really demand a win nor do you want to allow the team to be content to lose.

Press Conference

Here we had another question about an indiviudal player, as well as one talking about the opposition.

Our first question gives us the choice to out the spotlight on one of our players, Che Adams, or take it away. The clue is in the responses. "I expect he'll impress.." puts a bit of pressure on him, while on the other hand you can call out the media by saying "you lot love to pile on the pressure..". While Che Adams doesn't have a particuarly strong personality, he ticks all the boxes for being someone to rely on. He's our first choice striker, he's on a high salary, he's not young, and he's been at the club for a long time. I think a little bit of pressure could force him to play better this game.

The second question gave us an opportunity to give our thoughts on Everton's play style. We can either criticise the way Everton play, forcing our players to back up my offensive comments with a good performance, or we can be more cordial, appreciating that Everton were going to be a difficult team to play against. I chose to appreciate them, responding with "This is going to be a real challenge". I liked this question because now in my team talk I can be a bit more demanding of my players, as they will be more relaxed in the knowledge that a loss won't be the end of the world playing away against a strong team.

Team Talk

I thought that this team talk was pretty easy. I didn't want to demand a win, since we were not favourites, but I wanted to put pressure on in a different way, since this certainly wasn't unwinnable. Asking the team to "Impress me" seems more like we want to focus on the performance rather than the result. A good performance against Everton is definitely a more realistic target than a win.

In the end we managed to beat them, with the extra expectations on Adams helping him get on the scoresheet! I really felt like I could use the team talks and press conference to keep spirits and confidence high despite the 4 game winless run, and turn things around before we started to slide down the table.

There's still a lot of questions that i'm not 100% sure how to answer, and some team talk options that I struggle to know when to use. But I'm certain this has a massive effect on games. I've replayed games in the past as experiments where I change press conference/team talk responses and get widly different results, all using exactly the same tactic. But it's something that's barely discussed on the internet -This is also a "strategies" forum afterall.

Has anyone else used interesting team talk/press conference strategies to turn things around?

December 10, 2022

I used to never be abe to play defensive football until around FM22 where I challenged myself to use it. I played a whole season in detail using primarily defensive football to varying degrees of success and wrote about it here.

I haven't had as much time to play FM23 so far as I did 22, but I already had a feeling that defensive football was better than last year. When I saw your post I made sure to play my next two games (both away games where I'm only slight favourites) on cautious mentality. And IMO it went pretty well.

^Close game and unfortunate loss, but looking at the stats and gameplay I think the tactic was working as expected.. Low possession for us and poor SoT ratio for the opposition. The tight xG suggests to me that if we played this 5 times over and with our strongest team, we probably would have drawn most of them.

^This was a really nice game to watch with everything coming together beautifully. Only 4 shots on target the whole game with three of them being ours and scoring 2 from them. Mourinho would be proud :cool:

November 27, 2022

8 hours ago, Domoboy23 said:

The unthinkable has happened in my FM world.

I've actually been successful in lower league and now managing Hajduk Split, one of the bigger boys in the Croatian top division.

I'm used to playing either a counter attacking or pressing style, which has been fine in the past as it's rare teams will set up against me just for a point... But now it's different.

How do you go about being a favorite and breaking teams down when they set up to sit and frustrate you?

Attacking mentality, Play out of defence, wide, Attacking fullbacks / wingbacks, no more than three defend duties including CB's

November 19, 2022

On 09/05/2020 at 22:49, Seb Wassell said:

Ah so that is what I was answering, although clearly not well enough!

Training position alone means they are training in all the attributes for that position but to a lighter degree. They are not focusing on a single role. Training in a position alone is a lighter workload than training a specific role and covers a broader range of skills but to a lesser degree. It'll default to where they play.

What does this mean in terms of position/role/duty familiarity? Is it expected to train someone with a nailed down first team position, like Salah as IFa (RW) in their specific role, while train a squad player as playing position so that they can fill in semi effictively in different roles when needed?

November 15, 2022

I'm sure it affects your resutls negatively somehow, whether that's a one point difference or 15 - I honestly have no idea.

Although personally for realism sake I put in a lot of effort to max it out. In real life there's no use having a great tactic if you don't coach your team to play it well and have everyone well drilled and knowing exactly what they need to do. Also I think the position/role/duty should be the most important of the familiarity bars. When I play footy or any other sport, It's quite easy for the team to slow down or speed up the tempo on demand without practice, based on the demands of the game and whatever your manager yells at you. Same with width. But being asked to change from being a static poacher up top all game to participating in buildup and linking up with teammates as a DLF will be a lot more difficult to build chemistry with your team and know when to drop / stay up, or hold up the ball / dribble if you've never played that way in training before. And also for your teammates, suddenly having different passing options, and perhaps fewer runs in behind.

Not just roles but positions and therefore formation, defending in a back 5 would be different to a 4, with CB's in a 5 likely having to step up more and be more aggresive. These are things that take a lot of time for players to get used to playing with each other. This should really be worked on in training every week with position/role/duty training. I see lots of people do what you do and train people in roles that hit most attributes, but play them as something completely different in games. But what is going on there in theory is that your team does tactical sessions and match practice where strikers are told to roam about all over the place as Complete forwards while fullbacks are bombing forward with freedom as Complete wingbacks, only for in the pre-match briefing before the game, you say "oh and btw I actually want you to be a poacher and stick to your position, and I want you at fullback to stay deep and narrow to protect against the counter.. good luck"

Also I believe that role training has very little impact on player development. For example, training someone as a target man won't make them big and strong and good at heading and holdup play by itself. If you want your striker to improve their physicals and aerial play, you're better off using the general training sessions and inidividual focus. Do lots of strength/resistance sessions, attacking wide and attacking direct.

November 7, 2022

I understand when to use pretty much any other combination of pressing triggers + type of press. Although I can't see any reason to use High press + fewer pressing triggers. Same can be said for any defensive line lower than higher + High press.

Normally I tend to leave the options on the same level (eg. Low block + fewer pressing triggers) although I can see the reasoning behind using a low block + more pressing triggers if you're happy to sit back but also pounce on any sloppy passes / first touches.

November 4, 2022

Have you tried left footer on the right with cuts inside trait?

November 1, 2022

12 hours ago, Delial said:

Any set of results looking like that is 100% a man management issue and not tactical. Look at your team talk feedback and dynamics page. Be very sympathetic with your press conferences and team talks, make excuses for your players, encourage and relax instead of demand, praise draws and any scrappy win. Wait until a really easy home game and use the press conferences and team talks to demand an end to the poor run of form. Good luck.

October 27, 2022

Away games are hard. Lower the pressure on the players in press conferences and team talks before the game. Also avoid doing anything silly like playing someone in a different position for the first time or drastically changing a tactic just before an away game. It's not a tactical problem, other than perhaps going too attacking. For example, if my standard tactic is an attacking mentality and high pressing, for most away games (apart from the easiest of teams) I will add another defensive duty, drop to positive, and defend in a mid block.

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Posts posted by Jack722