VinceLombardi

I'm not a skinner, but maybe this will help. https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/571436-is-it-possilbe-to-bring-back-the-“team-report-》squad-depth”-of-senior-squad-in-fm23/#comment-13863333

Correct. The last thing to remember when you do this is that changes in Mentality often has knock on effects that you may need to compensate for depending on your tactics. This is most notable in TIs like Pressing, Tempo, and Passing Length. For example, if you like a slow, short possession style passing game and you want that in every variation, but still want to change mentality, then make sure the training formations account for it and you have offset the changes that mentality has hardcoded in. Else you will spend valuable training time on variations you don't actually use, and you will often reduce your overall tactical familiarity since the training is formation aren't as close to a match to the final product on the field as they could be. Conceptually, I like to think as my 2 training formations as reflecting the most extreme variations of my tactics, with the primary tactic being the average. This creates a range of instructions where the training formations reflect the bookends of the ranges you are like likely to use. Then you can feel confident that so long as you play between those bookends, you will have a reasonable tactical familiarity. Additionally, if you feel like you want to increase tactical familiarity in the system overall, you can shrink those ranges, but understand that it means that you are reducing the number of variations you can play without taking a larger hit to tactical familiarity. Alternatively, if you have a particular match coming up that you know you are likely to play more in a variation vs default, then you can change your primary trained tactic to something that reflects that variation so that you get a little boost in tactical familiarity in preparation for that game.

I haven't stress tested this for '24 yet, but based on my experience on previous versions, I don't feel that low tactical familiarity is terribly detrimental to most teams. And I say that with having played systems with 30+ tactics that I would regularly cycle between. The most effected players are typically your high mentals, low athleticism/technical players. This is because the penalty, at least in previous versions, largely just applied to mental attributes. Your hyper athletic winger doesn't run slower because of low tactical familiarity, but your midfield playmaker may find his lowered anticipation and decisions has him out of position more often and if he is unathletic on top of it, can struggle to recover. One of the best ways I have found to mitigate this is basically set up a primary default tactic as normal. Then use the other two tactics to basically set up tactics that represent the trainings for any other variations you play. For example, if your default tactic is Positive mentality, but you want to be able to push mentality up and down, while minimizing the effect on tactical familiarity, then have the other two tactics be balanced and attacking respectively. Similarly if you have a wide player that you typically play as a Winger, but like to bring inside occasionally, have a formation/role in the 2 training formations that reflect that change. Note: These training tactics don't need to viable or used in a match. They just represent the bookends and various variations you might introduce at some point. This typically isn't enough to keep you at 100% familiarity as you make changes, but you will find that you can make a lot of changes and still be like 85%+ familiarity with the final product. See these posts for more detail on how you can set up training formations to cover a large swath of options for use in match: Note that these are older versions of the game, but I played a similar system in '21 without issue and I haven't seen any glaring issues yet in '24, though admittedly I haven't gone too deep into the new version yet to confirm.

On the team instruction side, do you have the team to attack narrow? Can you make it more narrow or do you have it maxed? Also one thing to remember about rotations is that they depend on where you are on the pitch. They don't immediately make the rotation when you recover possession. Early in the buildup, your wide players are going to stay wide. They typically won't come central until the transition from the middle third into that attacking third. If you want them central throughout the buildup, then you might want to consider moving them into the MCL & MCR strata and then using man marking instructions to give them specific defensive instructions to get them where you need them on defense. This will cause them to move central from their defensive assignments immediately when you recover possession. (Note that if you do this, you might actually have to reverse to narrow instructions above to playing wide to get some of your width back.) Another option is to tick the team instructions to attack on both the right and left flanks. This instruction doesn't actually tell your players where to go with the ball, rather it increases the attacking mentality of the player on the effected flank. This could get those players to get inside quicker in the middle third, but it's also going to make those Wingbacks more aggressive, so you might want to tone them back down to WB(S) w/gets further forward to offset it if it's too much. These last 2 options are definitely big changes though and will have knock-on effects to other players and the team as whole. That may or may not be a good thing and definitely will require observation and further tweaks. Also expect that further game patches are likely to effect AI some too, so you might want to give it until mid November or so before you really sink a huge amount of time/effort into perfecting it. (Also note that player traits could have significant effects here and have not really been discussed. Specifically, something like "moves into channels" would be have a very large effect on the final movement which is why sometimes the player itself is as important as the instructions.)

Inverted Winger (A) if you are trying to get them to focus more on runs-on-goal and scoring. Inverted Winger (S) if you are trying to get them to play a more creative role and stick more in the space between the lines. Inverted Winger (S) with get further forward if you want a bit of both. I would also recommend having them sitting narrower to allow more space for the Wingbacks to rush up on the flank. If you need to push them further inside, you can also try to add roam from position and switching the Complete Wingbacks to just Wingbacks on attack. That will hardcode the Wingbacks to the flank, as Complete Wingbacks will roam inside sometimes. And if your Inverted Wingers are also roaming, that can actually cause them to move outside to make room for the Complete Wingback making an odd run through the middle. That said, if you have the players for it, you might want that sort of variation in your attack to make it more unpredictable.

Playing in '21 version and yeah, you can drive a CBW(a) and IWB(a) (prolly others too) at a post to finish off a cross. The only issue is that they start so far back that it's never a quick developing, early crosser type play. It's slow, and is typically the 2nd or 3rd option on a play off like a pass back or switching the field or something. If you want the wide player to wide player type crossers to be a primary part of your tactic, the finisher has got to be in that midfield strata or further forward (or otherworldly fast), even in previous versions. Otherwise it just takes too long to develop and you can't beat the defenders to the post.

That all sounds good to me. '23 could actually be really awesome. I haven't had time to put hands on it myself. Big problem for me is that, my playstyle really emphasizes physicality. The '22 changes made that style super dominate (without the AI reacting to it properly). Since I already played that way, it was like playing on easy-mode and then some. Kinda like if you enjoy creative central passing play in the '16 ME. Is physicality still king? And more importantly has AI player valuations/tactics/roster decisions caught up with understanding that about the ME?

To the extent that it's developed any in '21 vs '19, it might be documented in this thread: That's actually the save I am still playing.

I like playing my only wide players as wide central midfielders and I've found it works alright on most versions of the game (not tested '23, but it worked more or less '16-21). What I like to do when I play like that is play a double DMC(s) pivot behind them to help cover the more aggressive wide players. It also helps ensure that there is always someone to help recycle possession on the flanks since the wide players can get too far forward. And makes sure that there is at least somebody, somewhere in the defense to assist your solo wide players against opposing wide attacking pairs to help defend the 2v1 against you. That said, once you remove these traditional wingback responsibilities from your requirements for your wide players, it enables you to really open up the options when it comes to how you play those wing players and what kinds of players you get. You can get a physical mismatch for the opposing wide defenders, a creator/playmaker type, a dribbling ball wizard type. It's really opens up when you look at the position as a wide attacker instead of defender that gets forward.

Not really. I opted out of '23. I played '22 and I went back to '21 because the ME stuff. I didn't see a lot to suggest that it was addressed this year (and I've just been busy IRL). Playing '21 as I type this. Real bummer too. I love the WCB play from '22 (which I understand changed in '23) and a lot of the new tactical options look interesting. I'm hopeful next year will get me excited. At this point it wouldn't take much -- just tone down the big guys in front of goal and that'll prolly do it. And this coming from somebody that loves that style of play.

I'm partial to playing both DMs as DMC(s) with hold position, close down more, tackle harder. But I rarely have a world-beater at DMC, opting instead to spend that money elsewhere. So I'm typically only looking for a strong pivot and positioning to recycle possession and not looking for a source of any backbreaking plays.