04texag

What would be good PPMs for a Regista?

I'm working on a new tactic that uses two DMs and I'm researching the roles, as I'm not as used to them in this slot. Does anyone with a good grasp of then have a nice comparison between the regista and Segundo volante?

Can you explain thinking behind the PPM plays with back to goal for an AMC? How do you set him up with that and how does he play? Sorry if I missed that from before.

Holy bananas that guy's attributes are flaming hot.

Awesome, and congrats on winning the CL with a big underdog team and all of the promotions, etc!

@Flokerface This is an excellent thread and write up. I like how you have explained progression through each flank and how the roles are working together. First a question, for your Mez on the left, do you prefer a right or left footed player here? Second, do you really want the left IWB to be on Cautious? One thing you could try would be a fullback on automatic duty. Can be told to hold position, sit narrow, and still has a positive duty.

Oh ..I need this. Or at least did when running my threads on this. I still always try to play this way tactically.

Something that would really help this approach would be to add the ability to create custom views to the stats tabs/reports on your own players. I'm probably missing something, but you can't see the same level of stats on your own players as you can with scouted. On the scouted players screen you can change the view and add lots of stats.

High acceleration attribute can help players get separation from defenders before playing a pass, cross or shot. I've never tested this per se but passes the common sense test.

You nailed my thinking on it, but I couldn't recall where I'd seen it come up with that so wanted to check for others thoughts. Thanks!

Question on footedness. If you had a BBM, or Mez, that you were wanting to play as a runner, would you want a right footed player at MCR or MCL?

This is great feedback of things to consider. In the context of evaluating team depth chart and where to slot guys in who play multiple positions, I'm just leaning on trying to find something objective beyond the, I feel like Odegaard always does better when playing x position. One variance you mentioned is things like set pieces, etc. Generally, within my team, if Odegaard is set to kick corners, he's going to be doing that no matter which position he is on the field. My goal in looking at this stuff is to prep me for the pre-season, so my plan would be to play Odegaard at AMR and really pay attention in those games. So less about making a concrete permanent decision but a guide of what to evaluate and test further. But ya great catch and point, thanks!

Loan Evaluation Last up before we start simming forward into the offseason is our evaluation of our youngsters on loan. A tip: make sure you send loan players out to leagues that are playable. I'm not sure if this effects stats and development any, but it does effect the information you can see after the loan to evaluate how they played. One of my guys, Xavi Simons, who I'm very interested in evaluating, was lent out to Schalke. Normally that's great, but for some idiotic reason I forgot to load the bundesliga in my save. I have sense fixed this and that league will be playable starting next season, but when you go to evaluate the player, a lot is missing. It shows he played games like normal, but when you go to the development>tactics screen, the money stuff from post 2, it's empty. What you can do, is go to Dev. Center> Loans, and look at the players out on loan details screen. I can see Xavi played well. But I cannot see other info. On his general profile screen I can see his attributes are moving in the right direction, and the loan report shows good feedback, but again it's limited. You can if lucky still see some info, I signed last summer but did a full year loan back for Isak Johannesson. He plays for FC Kobehavn. The league isn't loaded but the team played in the Euro Cup, so you do get stats and more information because of those games, just not any league games. He's another guy who played well and I'm ready to test on the first team squad. Alberto Moleiro is one I'm most excited about. He should easily replace the outgoing Nuno Santos. He played all season for Las Palmas performing well. His league was loaded so we get much more information. This is great to see, as I'm planning to play him exclusively at the AML behind Lemar. He actually got more games at the AMC. Both performances look pretty good but it's good to have this data. As is, I don't really know how Xavi got his stats and played in the Schalke setup. Folarin Balogun Here is a good example as well. My staff continues to report that he is a 5 star potential player. But unfortunately, he doesn't look good enough to get the minutes I know he needs to continue developing for us at Arsenal. I need to decide whether to loan him out again, or to sell him hoping the high potential gets him a decent transfer value. He's been playing well with good stats, although half of that is international and I know the USA team plays scrubs in FM in Concacaf, so I don't trust that number. But I did myself a disservice by loaning him to Salzburg and not having enough data points. My plan will be to quickly try to loan him out to a good top flight. If he can get a commitment for a regular starter role at a good team, good division, I'll keep him another year. I'm thinking of targeting Portugal and Spain for him. After reviewing the youngsters on loan, I've decided that Xavi Simons, Isak, Alberto, and Hugo Felix will all fight during the preseason to earn playing spots. If they stay, they will need to show me they can play enough backup mins in PL games, and start cup games, to ensure they continue development. If they do not play well enough to feel like that can happen, I'll loan them out. Youngster Now the youngsters in U18. I went through that list of players, most are 15-17 and so they will all stay on the U18 team where I manually control their PRD training and the overall training calendar. Isse Hassan is a Newgen anomaly for me though. he's 17, and I need to decide what to do with him. Ideally, since he's still 17, he should stay with the U18s as I'll give him better training than elsewhere, but I'm curious if I loaned him to an average league somewhere how he'd perform. The clincher for me is that he likely wouldn't get minutes at a league I have loaded as playable, so he'll stay where I can monitor and train him best until he's 18. Additionally, he's already getting called up to the Saudi national team, so he'll get some minutes through that. A last glance at the main Dev. Center window and there are no listed first team candidates. I always check the ones to watch to make sure I don't need to act on something. Right off the bat, the 18 year old Reuell Walters jumps out to me. Now that he is 18, his development would benefit more from game time than my manual training at the home club, so I need to definitely sort out a loan for him. So, lessons learned from this whole exercise so far is, let's make sure he goes to a league that is playable so I can track him better. At this point, I'm feeling pretty setup for starting to sim into June. I have my squad pretty well evaluated. I know my rough plan for my youngsters. I know who I want to transfer out, and I have a shortlist of guys to come in.

Team Evaluation First up, we need to evaluate our current squad at the end of season, include evaluations of returning loan players, assemble a depth chart for next season, then see where our true needs and surpluses are. Before we can do all of that, we need to make sure that we are getting the best information out of FM. One thing I've been a big fan of is fully utilizing my Head of Youth Development. For all of the normal reasons, but also because he often has the attributes of a scout, but is a part of your coaching team. This means, you can assign the HoYD to be the one who gives you your player reports and ratings, and since he likely has the best judging player ability and potential, your reports will improve dramatically. Here is how you set that: Next up, I read through the Assistant Report on the squad screen. I notice pretty immediately the team depth chart (on the assistant screen) is messed up, as Odegaard isn't my best DLP, and Ismael Bennacer who is, is not my best RPM. Those two guys are switched. Sometimes the AI doesn't really mesh with understanding how you as the player have setup tactics and intend for guys to play, etc. The list of strengths and weaknesses on this report I think is maybe a little more helpful, and it highlights some things I've been aware of. My team doesn't have great concentration (which I really want in my defenders) lacks finishing (only my strikers are great here, all of my playmakers are lacking some), and our natural fitness needs work. This is most likely because we press high and hard and so tactically we need a lot. These screens are very subjective, so read your own and make decisions here. But my takeaway confirms my feelings, we need some good defenders. Team Depth Chart This screen has so much potential, but out of the box, it just doesn't really prove that helpful. I'm still not super comfortable with this screen's settings, but here is what I've tried. First problem is that the screen shows players in every position if they rate there, even if you never would actually use them there. Martin Odegaard as an example is listed first on the depth chart for all 5 midfield/attacking positions in my 4231. Yes, he's great and a starter, but not everywhere, we can't plan efficiently like that. I wish you could select a player and assign them first and second choice priority on positions for where you plan to play them, to reduce this clutter. Thankfully, you can click the red minus symbol to do that manually. Before we do that, let's make sure we have the top bar settings correct. I like to look at both SHOW All (current ability) and then after role suitability. The bar settings are different for each. Unfortunately, a big failing is that on all current ability, it defaults and isn't changeable from the player's best role. I might want to play Lemar on the left flank, but my default tactic is for an Inverted winger, and that doesn't match up with what this screen will show because his best role on the left flank is either APs or Ws. For this one, make sure you change to currently selected role for tactic. To make things most meaningful, I removed most players from being listed more than once. Some guys that may not be my #1, but require lots of gametime I've listed twice, like Suso at AMR and AMC. After cleaning things up, I have a much clearer picture. I wish you could zoom out on this screen BTW. Making Decisions After reading through the analysis, looking at the depth chart and making some decisions, I can start to draw some conclusions about current players. But first, how did I make decisions, well that's entirely subjective. But I individually reviewed the players form and stats from the season, or their loan reports in the case of guys like Alberto Moleiro, and then layered in how I felt about them. I do also in my squad building have a value in positional flexibility. Guys like Lemar, Odegaard, Viera, and Suso can play 3-4 positions each. I will often within games rotate these guys and interchange them in my different playmaker spots. I value guys that do this well quite highly. It's mostly subjective, but you can also look at two more screens that are helpful in this. On the depth chart, choose from SHOW, Times played in position this season. I also filtered out loan players here as I didn't control that and they played on random AI tactics. Downside to this report is that if you used or altered tactics a lot, the data isn't great. But you can see some patterns on where you played guys often to make this analysis less subjective. You can also use the individual players tactical analysis to try to uncover where they have been performing the best. Let's try these two thins for Martin Odegaard, as I always struggle to figure out where I should be starting him. You can see on your tweaked depth chart a quick snapshot of games played in position. Unfortunately though, this screen is missing data, as I know Odegaard played at the AMC and Striker spots at least a handful of games. The next screen is the money though. Select the player you want to analyise, go to development, then select tactics. At the bottom of this screen, you can see the games he played by position, even broken down between club and country. It also gives you some high level stat analysis broken down by position. This is SUPER VALUABLE to be able to look objectively at player positional performance. According to this, I should explore playing Odegaard more from the AMR position. You can then select that position on the positional abilities section of this screen, and then it will list out his best roles when playing there. For the final step, if I want to make the decision to play Odegaard at the AMR, I should reference what my tactical plans would ask for him to play. So on the far right, select the correct tactic, then select the PRD, and it will show you their familiarity with that specific tactic and PRD combo, wow! This is good to analyze, but also, after making your future plans, you can use this to see what this player or the team might need to train in order to increase tactical familiarity. So for Odegaard, I would take away from this that in the pre-season, I could explore starting him at AMR, and offer him training in that PRD. Conclusions for my team post analysis After analysing my team's individuals, I'm finding that multiple players have their best form and statistical output when playing the same position. But unfortunately, I also want to get my best 11 players all playing at the same time. So some guys either need to ride the bench, or play in their 2nd best position from a numbers standpoint. That's ok, because now that I know some of this information, I know when I want to do positional rotation during a game, what are smart moves. If after preseason I decide to continue starting Odegaard as my #1 RPM at MCR, I can mix things up by moving him to the right flank at AMR and expect him do well. Fabio Viera is a good example of the above dilemma. His stats show he has played better at the AMR position, but his tactical familiarity is near perfect at AMC. He's rated below Odegaard at the AMR, so if Odegaard plays there, Viera will slide central, etc. Team changes Nuno Santos has been ok performance wise, and he's been serviceable as a backup to Lemar at AML and the AMR spot, but he's not good enough to start, which is what he is adamant he wants. Additionally, when reviewing the squad depth, if I want Alberto Moleiro to get gametime next year, Santos would be in direct conflict with that. At AMR, with Odegaard, Viera and Suso, Santos won't play there either. So he needs to go. At central defense, the analysis confirms I need depth. Additionally, Gabriel wants to leave (due to contract issue over failing to win a domestic cup). We have mediocre/average veterans (Pablo Mari), and some highish potential players younger players (William Saliba). Ben White is pretty good, but he has also made some mistakes leading to goal. I like that he's an English national, I need more of those.... Outs - Gabriel and Nuno Santos Needs - BPD Depth, ideally one veteran and one young player. I've already been playing Pablo Mari and William Saliba together as a pair, so I can bring two new guys in at the same time, and have them start fresh as a player pair.

Preface (Long but context) I love FM, and sometimes I'm pretty good at it. But most often, I'm really not that great, as I in the moment I often deviate away from best laid plans, and end up causing a mess for myself. Well, those messes usually end up working out, but not always as intended. Example. I love signing hot prospects. I love signing hot prospects so much, that I often don't stop. And then I often sign too many, and then last years great signing ends up being extra. So then that player either doesn't get the playtime he needs, goes out on loan and maybe doesn't benefit from the mentoring I had planned, or many things happen. But often enough, the new shiny signing will take the spotlight from someone else. That someone else being a player I was super excited about last season. I've decided to slow down in my offseason and signings to try to avoid that endless cycle. I want to focus on developing the players I've already committed too. I'm finally doing a proper save in FM22, bringing all of the ideas from my previous club DNA and Juego de Posicion threads to the latest release. And it's been a blast. I think taking almost a full year off from the game helped me to see things fresh again. And in this save, I'm 2 years in, and I've been doing a bang up job (mostly luck) at building out a fantastic young squad, and a plethora of young talent on loan or in the u18/23s. I found myself wanting to keep going, finding new hot players, etc. Or splashing out the cash (board gave it to us, might as well use it). But then I started brainstorming the depth chart and realized, I don't need to. Or at least I think. So let's try to do an offseason better. And here I'm going to document what I've done. There should be a few tips sprinkled in that maybe you know, maybe you don't. And after I share, since I'm still pretty new to FM, I'm almost certain that you all can give me lots of pointers to do it better the next off season. If you want to see some context to how I play FM, here are the old threads, which the tactics and approach are what I'm using in this playthrough, not necessary, but perhaps good reading if you haven't seen them before. Current Youngsters I forgot to screen shot it, but I have 5 players that showed up on the Nxgn 50 list, including a top 3. I was super excited about that. #3 was Benjamin Sesko, who has been tearing it up with 22 goals in the last season while splitting time. Also on the list are Arsen Zakharyan (super excited about), Alberto Moleiro, Xavi Simons, and Marcelo Flores. Ideally, each of these guys would stay at Arsenal next season as I can keep a close watch on their development. I'm not sure Xavi and Marcelo are good enough though for regular playtime amongst our other youngsters though. Pre-season will test that out. Other great young players: Charles de Ketelaere, Isak Johannesson, Fabio Viera, Calegari (right wingback from brazil), Angelo Stiller. You can probably sense something, we are stacked with young attacking talent. Not surprising, as this is what I love to scout for and build teams around. But there's too many, and so, even though I want to sign Jude Bellingham, who looks perfect to play in my JdP systems, won NxGn 2 years in a row, and scored the winning goal for England in the World Cup, I just don't need him as much as I want to in order to justify that massive spend. Pre Offseason (Or what I did after January signing window) I started a new shortlist just after the January window ended. I realized that I'm really stacked everywhere except for my defense. I started assigning scouts to individually look for players, added them to the list, and then also started scouting for some end of contract players. Let's look at these steps: Scout Assignments: First up, I set a scout (making sure he was knowledgable in these countries) to look for defenders. In order to cast a wide enough net, I did not expressly look for BPDs. I specifically selected 3 competitions from the scope dropdown (these need to be leagues you actually have loaded in your database). I chose Spain, France and Italy. Then I selected the central defense position. I added two additional conditions, scouted current ability is at least good, and age is at most 25. Finally I selected the specific scout who has good stats and knowledge of those nations. The scout turned up one of the first players that showed up on my short list, and in fact, I'm pretty sure he will be my first signing. He is a good BPD, has great physicals and determination, and he's only 20. Initially, the scout turned up the name, then I chose to fully scout him with my chief scout, who has the best judging ability/potential on my scouting staff. I decided to cast nets, then use my best scouts to get great reports on the guys I plan to actually sign. I also added the player to my 2023 signing shortlist to track him. After doing the above exercise, I have the below shortlist which has been cultivated throughout the spring as we move towards the offseason. You'll notice with all but one, I've had conversations with agents so that the players can start registering our interest in them. I've still got a few other players that aren't needed on this list, but it's kind of a sign them now, or pass and they are likely to move on big contracts elsewhere kind of thing. Second thing I started doing in the spring to prep for this offseason was to search for players going off contract. The advantage to doing so was that if I could sign a player direct, I could avoid a big transfer spend and just have the new players contract obligation. There are two ways to do this, and on one I messed up the scout screen, but here is how I should have set it up. This scout was set to look for end of contracts players. In the transfer type dropdown at the top, set it to End of Contract. Then I added under scope Central Europe as a region. The only other thing I set was in additional conditions for the current ability to be at least Good (here is where I messed up and accidentally clicked superior). My scout found no one due to this. Since that assignment failed, here is another way to search. You can select in the scouting search window for contract status Expiring (X months). Just select the duration that matches up with the end of June. I set an age limit, and then nothing else. This pulls up a big list of players, but on the results window you can sort by the transfer values column to get a rough idea on quality of players. Then select and scout any that pique your interest. Additionally, I added those I chose to scout to a new shortlist created just for expiring contracts. That takes us through the Pre Offseason, I'll make a new post for length, and we will dive into squad evaluation and depth chart, to really find out where we have gaps and actually need to bring in players, or perhaps move some along to raise funds.

Gave you a follow and comment. Cool stuff

One benefit to them being in the same training unit, especially in similar positions, is that mentoring groups can pass on player traits

You should hover over the mentality selection and read them. I would personally not try attacking. I mentioned balanced but even considered cautious. Mentality is the most important tactical setting IMO and really changes a lot. Now you can once setting one use other TI to balance different things out. I've even had great luck doing positional play dominating possession with cautious mentality, but I would always start with reading the descriptions and picking the best fit based on overall style you're going for. Counter attacking is primarily about solid defense and then breaking away chances, and counter attacking IMO is just not what the attacking mentality is meant for.

You mentioned trying a 4411, that would be a good change if you find that there is too much space on the flanks. If you have players with good teamwork and work rate it's likely not an issue and they normally play a 4231 so will be familiar.

Sorry, i meant to tick the counter instruction, so add that TI. Yes, Diaby sounds like a great option to put on an attack duty then, but may want to try as an IF-A instead of IW-A so that he looks to create scoring chances for himself as well as the striker.

Maybe drop the mentality back to balanced. tick off counter instruction. Then you need some runners to get on the end of balls. I'd make that Paulinho, and just change his duty to attacking, and perhaps drop Wirtz and Frimpong to support. Might also take off prevent short GK and add tighter marking. I'm not very familiar with this team and players though.

That third goal is so nice, the give and go...

One thing that has served me well is always hiring the best head of youth development you can. There are all of the obvious reasons (intakes), then here are a few more: Often can find them with good judging player ability/potential. This is like a hack, as it's like having a scout who is on the coaching staff, not scouting staff. Use the HoYD for the whole team's coaching and training reports. This gets you hopefully as accurate as info as possible about the player. Bonus points when you can get one that matches your preferred formation and attacking/defending styles.

I haven't played much FM22. Only just fired it up the last week and started an arsenal save. I have enjoyed the gameplay on the latest update so I might get to doing an update down the road.

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!