Tsuru

Thank you so much for your feedback. As I have been playing a Youth Challenge the key point here will be to develop/build my own Shadow Strikers, based in youngsters that have this profile, either if they come from the advanced midfielder or striker positions. The thing that helps me is that it is in Serbia, so I hope to get nice prospects very soon This save was migrated from FM 23, so you can imagine that things were a little bit different. On the left I am using a Fullback on Support with Get Further Forward, backed up by a DM on Support with "Hold Position" and a IW-S ahead of them. I experimented a "Overlap Left" instruction but it cut off some of our speed and made the IW very slow on transitions so I removed it. While on the right side I have a Fullback on Support with "Cut Inside with ball" and instructions to tuck inside. This is because my best fullback is a natural WB and could struggle as a traditional IWB. The idea is that he moves into the space vacated by a Segundo Volante-At, and ahead of them I have a Winger on Support giving us some width and speed in the flank. The first test was good. After I removed the Overlap instruction the IW-S carried the ball through the left flank and crossed it to the W-S, which served the right FB to score our winning goal. Also the Segundo Volante almost scored the third goal a little bit later. The team played well, I think we need more time for tactical familiarity and for the players to get used to it, in general it seems very promising. I will sure come back to give you a more detailed feedback as soon as I have it. Thank you!

Hi @crusadertsar. This thread is quality! I used it as an inspiration for my own tactic, which I started to test in my YC in Serbia. This is the current version - my GK also distributes to FBs and CDs, this option is not available in Rate my Tactic. The left fullback has "Get Further Forward" and the DM-Su has "Hold Position" as PIs. I also started to use a Shadow Striker as my strikers are struggling here and I don´t have any good boys to be my spearhead - yet. So the idea for now is to make my CAMs as my main goalscorers. I also tried to use my best players in their preferred roles/duties to emphasize our best virtues. I am still testing and tweaking, however looking at it, the tactic seems to be too crowded in the middle. Also I don´t know if I need a IF-Su with an overlapping fullback in the right as I already have an attacking pair in the middle. I will try an IW-Su/W-Su with an underlapping instruction in the right, I think it will be a nice combination and it will create some good variations here. And also maybe add "Overlap Left" so the left FB can work more closely with our playmaker. The first tests were good as I said, I will keep working and testing and I will come back here when the tactic is more mature and consolidated. Thank you!

Thank you @Rashidi this will be very helpful. I will also try to experiment myself with some roles and duties change and the use of Hold Shape too and try to learn from experience. I have always played FM trying to find a perfect tactic that works in all situations, the perspective of being adaptative seems a new and fun way to play it.

Hi @Rashidi, I have been using your 4231 with two MCs in my Serbia YC and I really like the results and the way the team plays. I have been experimenting with a Poacher using "Drible Less" instead of a Target Forward, as my strikers here are almost all Poachers, and it seems to work very well. However something is happening during the second half/end of the matches. Usually my team gets into a lead, we score and hold the lead until late in the match, and then the other team starts dominating us. On a game we opened 3-0 and won 3-2, on another one we opened 4-0 but were completely dominated, on a third one we suffered a very late goal at the end of the match and on a fourth one we scored 1-0, went to 1-1 and won due to a penalty. I know that the team needs more time to become familiar with the tactic etc. but, speaking on a more generical way, which tactical changes would you suggest for us when we need to hold onto a lead? It seems that this is very important in FM 24, much more than it was on FM 23 for example. Thank you!

Yeah last season I used a WB-S, however in this version I would only have 1 attack duty which I don't like. However I also don't like the FB At in this system so I need to reconsider. You are absolutely right about keeping the tactic. However we lost our Half Back and I couldn't find another HB to replace him. In the previous version we had a HB-DlP Su-Mez At midfield behind a Poacher. The Mez was not very involved in the game and we relied in long balls from the DLP to the strikers to score, or on a crossing from the Winger. It worked on a lower division, but to move things up and beyond we need more variety, that's why I have been working in this improvement. I will test some other options from this point and I will come back as soon as I complete the adjustments. Thank you. I am absolutely in love with this save, this team and this league. I am not using any PIs right now. I used them when I tested a CM At instead of the Mezzala but it was for a really short period of time.

Hi @Johnny Ace, I have been working in my 4-3-3 here in Serbia with very good results. Playing with Macva Sabac we were champions of the 2nd division in the first season, in the second one we finished 3rd in the 1st division and we went to Europa League, now I am starting to work on our 3rd season. The current tactic is inspired by one of your versions here: We won the first game 3-1 against Red Star which is one of the country giants, so far so good. However I noticed a difficulty on defensive/midfield transitions, with some key passing mistakes. Maybe it is just the beggining of the season, maybe the other team is too good, but I was wondering if the use of an AP-Su instead of your suggested CM-Su could create this kind of problem. This is Jekovec: In the center of the midfield he is a natural Deep Lying Playmaker. I did some tests with the DLP but it created another problem - he was frequently too deep and the team relied more on long balls and on crossings to score. The AP is much better but maybe it lacks some linking movements with the DM-Su? Maybe I should use Jekovec as a CM-Su with some AP PIs? Do you think that the CM-Su could help more the team on the linking play part? Or maybe I should try the DLP a little bit more? And I have to say thank you again for this amazing topic, it is a fantastic source of inspiration.

Hi everyone. What happened to the Russian League clubs, Russia National Team and club/nation Ukraine in FM 24? Do they start the game out of european competitions but do come back at certain point? Or are they simple banned forever?

I would say a simple CM-S with "Take more risks", "Roam from position" and maybe "Get Further Forward", to mimic the playmaker's behaviour without the burden of being the team's playmaker. CM is very simple to find and with PIs you can have a very nice and balanced role.

After a little consideration I decided to keep and develop a tactic based in this version. As a LLM it will be much easier to find an Anchorman and it can be very difficult to play without a holding DM, especially when teams try to send though balls using the middle of my defence. At the same time, using a Roaming PM in a more advanced position seems less risky and less demanding. My version has some small tweaks, like an IW instead of a normal W and a higher focus on ball control (although it is not a possession tactic). I will bring it here soon and I will let you know how is it going. Thanks again @Johnny Ace!

Sometimes I think I overcomplicate it...why did I fell in love exactly with this one, in a topic with so many options and permutations? Maybe it is part of my prejudice and thoughts that a small team should use very simple tactics, which is not necessarily true. And I have been training different strategies for different kinds of match so I will probably be fine. I will put my scouts to dig out RPMs and Registas around and I will look for them myself too, maybe I can find another good options or maybe a young player to be retrained. I think it will be much easier than trying to tweak and adjust a tactic that is exactly build around these roles.

Hi @Johnny Ace I have been testing some of your creations here in my Brazilian save. I have been absolutely in love with the Roaming Playmaker/Regista possession system. I have here a player that is a natural Roaming Playmaker so he fits it well and the system in general looks very good. It is solid although we don´t have a traditional holding midfielder, the two Fullbacks on Support seem to protect enough the defence and we have been very good at attacking. I decided to start with simple PIs: Balanced mentality, Shorter Passing, Higher Tempo, Distribute to Centre Backs, Hold Shape, Higher Defensive Line and High Block. It is not a classical possession system (aka Barcelona´s Guardiola), I want my team to accelerate the game when necessary and I don´t want to restrict their options: if they need to kick the ball forward to the striker they can do it. And Higher Tempo guarantees we don´t slow the game too much. As we are a small team, in some moments we will need to adopt different strategies, for example against much bigger opponents, at least until we are strong enough to always play the same way. But I like very much what I see in the field. Another issue may be the Roaming PM: it is not so easy to find them in LLM. Do you think that the system would collapse without a Regista/Roaming PM or maybe another role (even with PIs) could do it? Or would you do any other changes without the two main roles of the system?

Hi Johnny, this is very interesting as I have a natural wide Advanced Playmaker in my LLM save in Brazil. I will try this with some tweaks, maybe a Balanced mentality and not all the instructions, a IF S on the other side, but in general I think it suits my team very well, thank you. I will let you know how is my version going on!

Hi. I am starting a new save in Mexico in FM 23 and I let the game running one season (until 23/24 season) so promotion and relegation to/from Liga MX can start happenning normally. However the rules are not clear to me, how can a team be promoted from Expansion to Liga MX? Do I need an average point during some seasons or just the winner of a game between apertura x clausura champions ("campeon de campeones") is automatically promoted? If I need the average point, how does it works? Thank you!

Hi Johnny. This thread is quality Your ideas will help me on building a playing system, and as we are on Vanarama National League South, I have been considering using your last suggestion, that is, fullbacks instead of wingbacks as on both sides they are not the best players ever Also because my system uses more than one formation and two of them are without a DM, so fullbacks make much more sense. Regarding your last suggestion (Mez-S, CM-S and DM-S), do you think that an Inverted Winger could be a good option on the left instead of the traditional Winger?

This is really, really interesting because I have been considering applying a similar idea here. However, using a different TI package for each game strategy can hurt my tactical familiarity and it seems not to be very good on FM. Changing the mentality and adjusting duties seem to be much easier and logical, considering the game´s way of working. You said that you keep the same TIs and PIs despite the mentality. But in this system change method, how do you select the Tis? Do you choose them for a specific style? Maybe generical TIs? Or you do/did start with no one and then add/added them later?