Jack722

I find that the mez and iwb sometimes stand on top of each other and don't make good passing lanes. Try change the mezs to cma or change the iwb to fb + stay narrower

In what situations would you choose each answer here? To me it seems like the "it will hurt.." is the best response for all scenarios. What good can it do to tell the press youre deflated or have had morale destroyed?

I agree, I think a more realistic response to overpraising is for players to become complacent, or for other players to think you have 'favourites' and respect you less. Or perhaps they can get resistant to it - since if you're being praised all the time, it will become normal and won't make you feel any better. Of course you could still get the odd Roy Keane type who will response negatively though

Like someone says, they don't look at your TI, more so your performance on the pitch. That being said, I also played a short term save with R madrid a while back and had the exact same problem. Also using direct passing. I have a feeling that direct passing in FM is a little bugged this edition. I tried to do a Burnely save after while using 'extremely direct passing + TM and P combo in a 442, and I found that my CBs were constantly passing sideways or only forward to my CM's, I'd rarely come across a long ball. I think it's something to do with how teams play out the back this edition. I remember In FM22 there was loads of long balls. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I don't see any reason why that shouldn't work. Make sure to use the instructions i said as well for a starting point. Also make sure to have the familiarity as high as possible through training and friendlies before using it in a big game.

442 is one of the more difficult ones to do because it encourages you to put in two strikers and two wingers. Four players who may not be that good defensively. Encourage defensive and physical attributes, as well as work rate, over the flashier attributes. In a 442, sometimes I accommodate my more attacking wingers by converting one of them to strikers, and playing wide midiflders or fullbacks at winger. But I'd go for something like: Mentality: Cautious TI's: Regroup, Counter, Lower Dline, Less often pressing triggers, Lower lOE, Defend Narrower. Formation: The roles here are very rough, so you don't need to copy all of them exactly. But if you want to change any: try keep the duty the same (A/S/D), and avoid particuarly risky roles like CWB and AP, that are available on support. try make the roles as similar as possible to your other tactic to avoid drops in familiarity. So if you normally play IW's, feel free to use them here, same with BPD.. Or swap the CMd for a DLPd, or the CMs for a BBMs.

Also this doesn't seem to me like a defensive tactic. I imagine you can get some nice counter attacks with this setup, but I don't believe it's defensive solid and personally wouldn't use it if I wanted to hold onto a lead or play for a draw. I didn't mention anything before because you said it was producing good results, but this has far too many attack duties to be a defensively solid cautious tactic.

What tactic do you use? It's hard to help without knowing what you're doing All I can offer now is a quick summary/checklist for playing cautious and below Roles and duties that make sense Be ultra wary of any attack duty that won't track back so much and will rush forward when on the ball Why have a poacher if you're not trying to make chances for him? Something like a TM that can protect the ball and play over/through a press in general is a better idea. Also why pick a CWB and have someone in your defensive line roam around and take risks and dribble. Don't be afraid to use 'unattractive' roles like PFd and FBd My rule of thumb: 0 attack duties, >= 4 defend duties. Formation that makes sense Again a rule of thumb is any flat formation with no more than 2 players in AM and ST strata. 5-3-2, 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 5-4-1. This formations have enough defensive players and are easier to collapse on to itself and be extremely compact Keep the Dline and LOE and Pressing triggers at the same level always (unless you're 100% sure you know what you're doing) ex. All on lower, all on much lower, or all on standard. Make an effort to keep up tactical familiarity. Practice your cautious tactic multiple times in pre-season If a player has fluid familiarity as an AF in an attacking tactic, make sure he is training as a PFs/d or TMs in order to fit into your cautious tactic when needed. Pick the right players I reguarly train and play natural fullbacks or central midfielders in the winger position to use as subs for when I need to go defensive. I find they have much better defensive attributes than any natural winger. For strikers, finishing/flair/vision/agility is less valuable in these tactics. Instead it's good to have first touch/strength/balance/pace/work rate Keep narrow I always by default use defend narrower if I don't have an extra central player such as a 3 CB or 3CM formation. I find that a 442 will always suffer through the middle in a low block if you don't defend narrower.

There's no way poor finishing can be due to anything tactical like this. The only thing I can think of tactically that could possibly cause poor finishing is using shoot on side with forwards with poor long shots and finishing, and floated crosses with short players bad in the air. If you have genuinely poor finishing (as in you've checked in the datahub and you're underperforming) , it's a man management issue. Your strikers are getting into good positions and making the correct runs, they're obviously working hard but low on confidence. You have to use press conferences, team talks, and private chats to take the pressure of your striker. You normally get hints of players low on confidence when the press start asking you about it, and when you get that dreaded news item in the inbox "x player determined to break dry spell".

I don't think there's a significant problem for finishing in FM22. Although I do believe that they have programmed confidence to be a bit too powerful in the game. Obivoulsy strikers in real life tend to go on scoring streaks and dry runs, but I feel like in FM almost everyone does it and it swings wildly from one way to another. For example my starting striker has about 15 finishing and has scored a goal a game for two seasons running. Almost every chance he gets, he buries. In that time I've had two backup strikers with similar attributes for finishing and composure, and neither have scored any goals and miss multiple chances every time they play.

Thanks for the positive feedback It's been a while so I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think there were any instructions. Many players have that personal instruction mark, but that's just because I automate it so that a certain player in a certain position will always play a specific role.

mine would be: first touch, composure, balance

This isn't possible in FM yet unfortunately. I didn't actually watch any of Bayern under Pep, but I can guess how they played based on seeing some of Man City and Barcelona under Pep, and how he used fullbacks and wingers. having quickly watched a few highlights of Bayern during that time, I'm fairly sure I know what the problem is. Before we play like this in FM we need either two new roles, or an adjustment to current roles. Firstly we need wingers in the AM strata to be able to stay wide when holding position. Secondly we need to have the wide centreback role, or something similar, in the FB position. The wide centreback role should offset the other two centrebacks to form a natural and central back 3, similar to how the HB does it. The main problem is your left hand side. Defending will be difficult with the hole in the LB position, and attacking will be just as bad, as wingers in AM position always drift too central too early. FM wingers (all players in wide positions, not just inside forwards) are modelled pretty well after the common modern winger. They normally opposite footed to the side they're on, and like to come narrow through both off the ball movement and cutting inside, this way they're in more dangerous positions to score and create space for an overlapping fullback. However, without an overlapping fullback it's far too easy to defend against. What you want is a leftback in defence, that becomes a wide CB in possession, and also a winger who always stays high and wide, essentially sitting on the opponent's defensive line and a good distance outside the opposition fullback. Here is an example of how the wingers play. Pep sometimes adjusts, but the majority of times I watch a Pep managed game, at least one winger is always staying outside the fullback.

Unless you play Longball, I can't see how this will work. Easiest way to break down a low block is by using the wings and stretching the back line. This has 0 width. I'm pretty sure the typical 343 diamond has a wide front 3, with both wingers staying outside the opposition fullbacks in the wide lanes , unless arriving in the box for a far post cross.

I personally haven't experienced any toxicity here. In fact, I've come across other interent FM forums and this is really the only one that I reguarly post on and come back to. Some of the communities I've seen, though, are incredibly toxic. I think we're actually quite lucky here, as the majority are very respectuful.

I think that role training at the moment is quite inefficient and tedious. The option to train three tactics at once is great, and realistic imo, but to compliment this you should be able to train secondary roles. For example if I have a 343 attacking and then a 541 defensive tactic in my second slot, I should be able to train my winger as an IF primarily in role training, and then also as an IW in a secondary slot. So that when we switch to the 541 defensive tactic, his P/R/D familiarity won't take such a big hit. Other realistic uses for it would be having a youth players who hasn't quite nailed down a spot in the starting XI. For example, I have a young winger with good agility, dribbling, technique and passing. It would make sense to be able to train him as an IW at LW, IW at RW and MEZ at CM, so that he can more or less cover multiple positions in a 433, without being 'awkward' in any. I don't expect or want players to be 'fluid' in any position without extensive game time and primary training in the position, but I think it's reasonable to expect players to have the familirty bar around half full for more than one position. Currently the only way to do this is by reguarly going into individual training and changing their role every few weeks. A secondary role will allow us to set them multiple positions to learn and then not think about it again, this will be much quicker and less irritating.

This happens to me as well. I'll try to post some examples when I have time. But another similar issue is staff responsibilities. Even if you give all contract renewal and loan / transfer responsibility of b team to other staff members, loan and transfer offers will always come to me. Players will also come to me asking for new contracts (along with their outrageous demands) I think both bugs are related. It seems as though the game is misinterpreting the relationship between the bteam and the senior team. For example, it would make sense for the players to demand "regular starter" status for the bteam, but not for the senior team - as they are currently doing. Also in terms of the responsibilites, it seems as though bteam and cteam renewals come under the responsibilities of senior team renewals, since it doesn't matter which staff member is responsible for recieving contract renewal demands or loan offers - they always come to me.

Also @StatboySpurs have you made a bug report for this?

This happens on my saves as well. I'm 100% sure it's due to the playing styles of the manager. I'd love playing styles to be eliminated in future versions for multiple reasons. This being one of them. Leeds are always top half and tough to beat. Whereas Spurs are terrible and I always seem to beat them no matter how bad my team is. Another thing I've noticed that backs up your theory @StatboySpurs is that the same thing happens to Atleti and Diego Simeone. He always does terribly with Atleti, but I imagine that, because of his reputation, he stays for a couple seasons finishing 5th-8th before being sacked. And Atleti are always in a terrible state due to players leaving after not qualifying for the CL in multiple seasons.

And just for fun, we decided to see out the last 5-10 minutes of the game on very defensive. When I have any doubts at all about how to setup my tactic. I pick the mentality first based on the game situation (which should normally be quite easy based on if youre winning / losing and on the betting odds). And then I re-read the mentality description, to remind me of how I should set up the formation, roles and duties. If you look at very defensive: What's important here is that: We're not looking to score. At all We always play the safe option. If there is no safe option, we clear it. Keeping more players behind the ball than usual and reducing space. this immediately makes me think three things. Firstly, a bottom heavy formation. Secondly, everyone on defence, while defending as deep as possible. Thirdly, sub in as many naturally defensive players as possible. the resulting abomination is what i ended up with below: Important points: As low of a block as possible Only possession instruction being to waste time (if we're not looking to score, why do I need to overload them with instructions on how to score?) The wings are occupied by a nautral FB and a natural CM that are both competent playing on the wing. There is no need for pacey dribblers with flair in this situation. The way we saw out the game, to me at least, was absolutely beautiful. Although I'm sure it will hurt for a lot of you to look at. Here are the final few seconds of the game: My favourite part was our striker (#20) putting in a tackle on their striker (#10).

I've left the West Ham save for now, and tried bringing some defensive football to a stronger team with larger ambitions. Villarreal. The year is 2025, and although we are fresh from winning the league last season, Villarreal is still some way of the giants of Real Madrid and Barcelona. We're more or less on the same level as Ateltico Madrid. With our squad strength, unlike West Ham, we should be able to play positively against pretty much every team in the league. Apart from Madrid, Barca and away to Atleti. Fast forward to mid way through the season, and our defensive tactics have already done their job for us. We're one point behind Real madrid, in a title race which is leaving everyone else behind. We have also already played away against all the big three. With two 1-0 wins and a 1-1 draw. However, the most recent game, away to Atleti, was by far the best. It was for me, a defensive gameplan carried out to perfection, and was what inspired me to continue this thread. We were coming up against an Atleti managed by Pep Guardiola. So this game was always going to be an interesting clash of styles. 4-3-3 vs 5 at the back. Play out of defence vs hoof it long, Relentless pressing vs low block. Tiki-Taka vs Anti football. My 'default' tactic, which I used for the majority of games where I was superior, was a standard 4-3-3: However, it would've been a mistake to simply 'adapt' this tactic and starting XI by lowering the pressing lines and changing mentality. Firstly, due to personnel. Although my midfield is very balanced and is equally comfortable in defence as attack, both my fullbacks are much more effective going forward. As well as this, my wingers are much more suited to playing on the front foot. they lack work rate, stamina, marking and positioning to track opposition fullbacks up and down the field all day. These players simply aren't quite suited to playing low blocks and grinding out results in a 4-3-3. Even worse are the roles and duties. My fullbacks immediately bomb up the field when we get the ball, since they are on attack. this isn't good if, as soon as we get the ball, we want to play it safe. Not only will we play very few passes forward to these players, we won't have defensive cover for turnovers nor will we have sufficient passing options deep to play through any pressure. Secondly, we have two attack duties up top. This means these players won't track back very much, especially the striker. We cannot afford to invite pressure if we don't get the numbers back to defend. The solution? 5-3-2 Changing my left winger for an extra centreback gave us two benefits: 5 at the back gives our poor defensive fullbacks more room for error than a back 4 Moving our remaining winger up to the ST position gives him less defensive responsibility and lets us utilise his pace and dribbling better on any counter attacks, seeing as he won't be tracking back all the way to his own corner flag. In terms of players, subbing out our normal starting CM, Ilic, for a BWM, Thorsby, allowed us to sacrifice a good dribbler and passer, in exchange for more energy and better tackling in midfield. Since we won't be controlling the game, we need fewer excellent technical players, and more who are willing to get stuck in. Also, you will notice fewer attack duties and more defence + support duties. A mix of defence and support allows us both to defend compactly / have men behind the ball, as well as have enough players willing to get forward if it looks like a counter is on. When there looks to be no opportunity to get forward, everyone will stay back for security and to offer safe passing options. The result was that we were able to force a scrappy game, with neither side having an xG of greater than 1. Looking at the average positions, you can see that we rarely left out own half, and defended in a solid low block, which forced Atleti to play round our front and sides. Atleti dominated the ball in the middle third of the pitch, but were unable to get so close to our box, with only 8% of the play being in our third. We scored what turned out to be the winner in one of the most anti football goals you'll ever see. Cautious sideways and backwards passing between our defenders, and once the pressure comes, we go all the way back to the keeper to hoof it long. Chukwueze pounces on the CB's missed clearance and slots home the 1v1.

I spent a good few months on FM playing around with only defensive tactics. I made a thread about it here. What I think after all this time is that defensive football is absolutely viable. And although I don't believe it is as good as some clearly OP tactics like the gegenpress, it is criminally underused by the FM community, and quite shockingly misunderstood, even by top youtubers and forum posters with high reputation. Once you figure out how to setup a defensive tactic, and more importantly, when to use it.. I would say it is more or less 80% effective compared to how it is in real life. The only big issues being that counterattacks are quite poor, with a ME tendency to dribble wide instead of play an easy pass through the middle; as well as far post crosses and sometimes corners being a bit OP. When sitting back and inviting pressure, I see far too often a 5'6" winger outjumping my fullback and directing a perfect header straight at goal. I think everything else works fairly well. Firstly you have to understand when to use it. No successful manager, under any circumstances, will play defensive football every game. If you actually watch multiple full games of literally any manager known for being defensive, they will only use defensive tactics as a tool in specific situations. Even Jose Mourinho and Diego Simeone. Defensive tactics will come out when: Defending a lead Playing as the heavy underdog Because most of us will only watch these managers play in the big games, they bring out these defensive tactics more, and we assume too much that they play like this all the time. But after the CL semi final, Atletico Madrid will play at home to some team like FC Cadiz, and play almost the entire game looking to attack and press, unless already winning. The thing is, playing defensive football every minute of every game is just silly and not viable. When you think about it, if you were a player in a league game, and you came up against a team much worse than you, you will always attack and try to pressure the ball, it literally makes 0 sense to sit back from the first whistle trying to defend for 90 minutes. You will do this even with no manager or tactical insutrction telling you to do so.. Because it's common sense. But when a big team comes along, this is when you decide to sit back and focus on stifling the opposition attack. And even in this situation, you wouldn't and shouldn't expect to win. Not even draw. You're doing this to only lose 1-0 or 2-0 and maybe have a small chance to draw, instead of losing 5-0 and having morale destroyed. The only other situation is using it to defend a lead. The problem is that most people on the FM community just seem to only use one tactic, maybe a second tactic very rarely. This instantly eliminates the possibility of a defensive tactic being successful. Because the instant you concede, the game is basically over unless the opposition make a mistake. And they may never make that mistake if they decide to play defensively as well. But if you play attacking, if you go 2-0 down, you can always win 3-2. The other mistake everyone makes is setting up their tactic. Everyone has an obsession with creating 'balanced' roles. Normally a couple of goal threats, one fullback going forward, one staying deeper.. 1 Dm and one CM on attack - getting forward to support the striker. And then when they switch to defensive, they wonder why they instantly concede. This is because your having players not tracking back (attacking IF and AF's, P's..), while sitting deep and inviting pressure, while having deep players rush forward (like overlapping fb's and attacking cm's) without getting the ball forward to them. A defensive tactic should keep most players back, for example 2 defensive FB's + CB's + 1DM, and should have the attacking players track back. This means very few, if any, attack duties, and a bottom heavy formation. My favourite is a 541 with defensive fullbacks, 1 defensive + 1 supporting CM and a supporting striker. PLay this with a deep block and little pressing and its so hard to break down.

Cautious doesn't offer a low block. I drop both the lines and the intensity to lower.

Good question. I think yes. I see different choices being made in different mentalities, for example in lower mentalities, players are more likely to pass back under no pressure, then clear when put under pressure, even if they have more direct passing, which encourages forward passes in buildup play. I also see players tracking back less on higher mentalities, regardless of role or duty. WIngers in AMR will track their man back to their own touchline on defensive, but will stay further forward ready for the counter attack on attacking. Although the way I use mentalties means that I don't come across this dilemma. For example, if I choose cautious, I rarely will tell the team to play with a 'much higher tempo' and 'be more expressive'. Because it won't really make sense, because then you're asking the team to be more attacking, and you may as well have chosen a positive mentality. Same goes for role selection, I won't choose two poachers and then park the bus and starve them of service. Normally, I choose mentalitiy, read the mentality description, and then choose my instructions and roles with the menatlity description in mind. I always use three tactics, and reguarly rotate between them, between and even during games. My template is: Attacking and High Pressing When we need a goal or are playing as heavy favourites Positive and Mid Block (Blank pressing instructions) My standard tactic Cautious and Low Block Defending a lead, or playing as heavy underdogs. What I also do, is sometimes tweak the tactics. For example, If I want to dominate the game more, but still be wary of the counter attack, I'll use my positive tactic, but play with a high press. The tactical familiarity will only hardly change if at all, because we have already worked on the high press in training with our attacking tactic. It's important to note that the formation used does not get trained. Formation is indirectly trained in individual training. So you can switch from a 442 to a 541 by subbing out a striker for a centreback and not change the tactical familiarity. If you want to have flexible formations without losing familiarity, you have to train players in different positions and roles in individual training. That's up to you. I try to keep the role (Poacher, advanced forward, false 9...) the same as much as possible. Since I reguarly change mentalities, I'm sometimes forced to change roles and duties. For example, if I have two attacking wingbacks in an attacking tactic, and I change to cautious, I will change both my fullbacks to wingbacks on defend. Just changing the duty (A/S/D) has a smaller effect on familiarity than changing the role and duty, Although sometimes you're forced to change more than you'd like. If I feel that I need to play really defensive, I will change my Poacher or Advanced forward to a supporting Deep lying forward, or defensive Pressing forward. This effects my familiarity, but I'd rather have my striker tracking back and help defending, even if he's slightly clueless, instead of staying up waiting for service that will never arrive. Assuming I've already switched to the most appropriate of my three tactics (cautious, positive or attacking) I think that a mix of opposition instructions, touchline shouts and team talks are far more effective in turing games around. Most poor performances are caused by either low confidence or low motivation, which can be corrected with appropriate team talks and touchline shouts. Also, sometimes an unexpected poor result is caused by one or two opposition players playing extremely well. In this cases, you just remove most opposition instructions, and focus all your attention (hard tackling, tight marking etc..) on that one player. A change of formation or tactic is rarely necessary.

I don't believe that mid season slumps are due to other teams changing how they play against you. In fact, I never change my tactics 'purely' or directly because of poor form. In general I'd have an attacking and defensive variation of the same tactic, then I'd select between the two game by game based on many factors (who's more likely to win, do i need 3 points or am I happy with 1...) Poor form might lead me to tend to being more defensive but only because form is taken into account when deciding who is more likely to win. What's more important is team talks, press conferences, training and team meetings. You've got to reduce your expectations and praise more, because normally poor form is due to low confidence. Then, when a winnable game comes up, for example at home against <15th place, you've got to be assertive and say "its time we put an end to this poor run of form", if you win, heap lots of praise, then next game say "I want to see more of the same".