04texag

When you say you needed to nail the attributes here can you elaborate?

@dcayton9 I haven't been around here in awhile, heck haven't played much FM since 2022 dropped, but this is a great post. I really like the way you methodically built things up from nothing, without overdoing the instructions, etc. Well done!

I've been wanting to do a series like this since I started playing FM. My biggest issues that kept me from doing this until now were threefold. First, I'm still relatively new to even watching soccer and certainly playing FM. Second, I had never done a major thread before, but after my last two were received fairly well, I'm hopeful that I can get this going in a fun way, being interactive and hopefully informative. Third, the last two versions of FM were very stale for possession focused teams, especially those looking to exploit the middle areas of the pitch. I believe FM21 has finally taken steps to get better balanced gameplay, and the work on overloads has really opened up a lot of tactical options to creators within FM. So, the final inspiration and the direct guide for this thread will be the wonderful video by Football Made Simple, which you can find on youtube here. Pep Guardiola Perhaps one of the greatest coaches of all time when you look at his track record so far, which is impressive considering he is still fairly young. He has won major trophies at all three clubs he has coached at, and been considered a top dog/favorite in just about every season, which always increases the odds against you as everyone is gunning to knock you down. Yet, with three very different teams, Pep has managed to advance his 433 positional play variants to success, but adapted the overall tactics employed at each stop based on the variations of players he had at his disposal. I do not claim to be an expert here, but must lean on the shoulders of other giants. This video will essentially guide us, so we don't have to study and come up with the tactical analysis ourselves. Our job, is to try to emulate these three teams playstyles within the game of Football Manager, specifically FM21. Thread Gameplan My idea for the thread is to do 3 separate 1 season saves, with one save each dedicated to one of Pep's three teams. I will be doing posts within this thread as I put together everything, so you guys can follow along and learn alongside me as I do this. I really love interactive threads, and many of you are much better at FM then me, and most of you have watched more football than me. I have only watched replays of anything prior to 2018! Save 1 - Pep's Barcelona - FM21 variant Athletico Madrid I believe they have a pretty complete squad. I can put together the midfield 3 maestros with Llorente, Koke, and Saul. Then with Felix dropping deep as a False 9, I'm excited to see if I can push the youngster to great heights. When he struggles, I can unleash great finishers to pick up some slack. Save 2 - Pep's Bayern Munich - FM21 variant (either Napoli or Bayern themselves, as Muller and Lewandoski still remain) Save 3 - Pep's City - FM21 variant City I do not aim to replicate the trophies. I don't believe this is as important as getting the style of play correctly. Yes, trophies would be great, but we should get some really good performances and good play. That is what I will focus on. I could choose to focus on getting trophies, but then I would be shaping the tactics more to how each of the three teams are different, which is not the aim here. Additionally, since these will be 1 season saves, I do not have the time in game to groom players or acquire any to fill specific roles. But you could. Hopefully, with what we learn across all three saves, we will learn more about Pep's style, how to manipulate different tactical pieces, something I've discussed in my longterm DNA thread (which I will resume after this). And then you can put these to use in your own saves, where you can buy players that might be better fits and then you can win the trophies! Post plans I will plan to do a big initial post for each save. That way I can show the tactics, why I chose the team with specific players ( so you can know how to evaluate players for these roles), and then get into the TI and PI's of the tactics. After the main post, I will give updates as the season goes, discuss any in game instructions I use, and try to analyse what I'm seeing. If stuff works out well, I'll put together some youtube highlight videos for each save. Shameless Plug Doing threads like this takes a lot of time, and so it is really helpful to receive cooperation/participation with comments. If nothing else, if you enjoy the work, please click the up vote button to like the thread, as this really encourages me to keep working on this stuff.