CARRERA

Nice Thread for everyone looking to use a Moneyball approach or just someone who really is into analyzing the teams data / effectiveness

Does holidaying the season even uses the same match engine as actually playing the game? Or does it use the Quick match engine?

Some who’s making runs, like a shadow striker or AMC(a). Well, that could have different reasons. It could be the distance between players (passing options in general), but also vertically (width is horizontally), passing could be too direct, tempo too high or the opposition simply too good. I would look after what kind of passes are intercepted.

Did you try without the Overlap Instruction? It makes your wide attacker to hold up play and act on a lower mentality. The WB will overlap anyway.

Yes, 35% should be alarming, especially if your team is stacked with star players. I could imagine, that it’s very hard for your team to win the battle for central midfield as it’s set up right now. At least against stronger teams. For those matches I would properbly change the formation to a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. Being one of the leading teams in your league, a balanced mentality seems a bit conservative to me. But that might be down to personal preference - at least to some extend.

Current ability is always related to your team. 3 (good) equals the average regular starter for your team. For other teams that specific player could be a superstar, or not even of quality for the league that team plays in. If the quality of your team changes, so will the scouting assignment. I mean it doesn’t really change the assignment, but the players to be scouted will change as their current ability does change compared to your team. It doesn’t, it’s always related to your current situation. If you want to scout for a potential promotion, I would look for at least 3.5 Star players. To the max of the Range, I think

@axelmuller Sorry Mate, I can’t spot anything inherently wrong. Neither in the Reports, nor your Tactic. The only valid point would be to increase the play familiarity. But sometimes it’s just bad luck that makes you end up in a loosing streak. Keep up the motivation by talking to your players and maybe the problem will solve itself after some time. Another idea would be of course to try another style of football, but if I understood you correctly you want to stay with a rather conservative 4-4-2

Did you try your tactic without the Overlap Instructions? What they basicly do is to increase the Fullbacks mentality at the cost of a lower mentality for your wide attacking players. That could lead to less creative and goal scoring events for those players. The movement of your wide attackers also will be less direct. Your Fullbacks will still overlap occasionally. You could further increase that by using a more progressive role like a WB or CWB. Using Fullbacks on an attack duty is also viable.

Thats correct, its a fluid process. Its like do more or less of something compared to what you would have done anyways (depending on mentality, role and duty) Here again, you have to understand it as a fluid process of whatever your player is doing. Standard passing basicly means to find a blance between keeping the ball and progressing it. Of course, that will give your player some directional flexibility (compared to a more direct approach) as well as more range (compared to a short approach) to look for a passing option.

Thanks mate Yes, they will always look for a safe (the goal is to keep the ball) pass forward to a nearby person. If noone is available, they will recycle possession by playing backwards or sideways Yes, thats correct. There is no rule to play a long ball. Which doesnt make sense anyway, because if you are in the final third, there are no far passing options to boot the ball to Yes. Z and Rashidi are not wrong on this. They just explain what faster decisions lead to. As you remember, the goal of a player is always to progress the ball if possible. By making faster decisions, the oppositions defence has harder times to set up and therefore its easier for your team to progress the ball - if they make the right decision and have the technical skills :-). Its more intense, because faster progression needs players to move more quickly and be available for a pass. I don't think its particular effective. Your goal of playing direct is to progress the ball quickly and use every bit of space thats offered by the oppositions defence and a lower tempo is completely against it. You also have to understand, that a direct pass is more easily to defend against if there is time to prepare for it. A vertical pass is one of the most used pressing triggers in football, so you need to be quick by passing on the ball. However, you may try it out and make your own observations.

Are there more players that need a rest on a regular basis? Tired players do perform pretty bad. Don't you train your players in their roles and duty? If they are fully familar with your tactic, they will usually perform better. You can set that up on the Individual Training Tab. If you hover over a player, the game will tell you that a familiarity negatively affects the teams overall tactical cohesion

Roles and Duties look fine to me. Can you post a Team Report and tell us something about your Boards and Media Expectations? Also I was wondering, why your team isn't familar with the tactic yet, eventhough its half way through the season. An whats the litte "!" indicating at your central defender. Are there some PPM's conflicting with the Roles instructions?

Well that’s rather a technical problem then FM related. sounds like this could help you. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-default-programs-in-windows-e5d82cad-17d1-c53b-3505-f10a32e1894d

yep, be careful though of your defensive stability if playing with two support duties, as he got gets forward PPM. If you feel like its getting too fancy, you can switch the DLP to a defend duty.

what does the other look like? This one could be doing well as a DLP(d).

That’s a typical characteristic of a heavy emphasis on possession and ball reternation. In any case it requires movement to support the attack, runs from different angles, tempo, width and passing options to break down a defensive block. Before we get back to your tactic and check if everything is set up correctly, I will tell you something more about passing, passing options and a players demand to receive the ball. This is important to understand, as it helps you to understand why your attack may break down in the final third. The most desirable pass or run for every player, no matter of the teams playstyle, is vertical or diagonal because it’s the only and most dangerous way to progress the ball and score a goal. However, on the downside this is not always possible and may be at the risk of loosing possession. So it Is important to have several vertical or diagonal passing options, to remain unpredictable for the opposition. If there is no clear passing option available the player has to make a decision. Whether to recycle possession and play the ball backwards/sideways or to force the issue and take high risks in passing the ball to a better (distance to the goal) positioned player. That’s where Passing Directness in FM kicks in. A pass is not only about the range, but also about the direction. It may be hard to understand in the first place, but the slider does not indicate short vs long, it indicates short (restricted in range, but not in direction) vs direct (restricted in direction, but not in range). With that said, shorter passing will offer more safe passing options as it’s not restricted in direction and players are willing to play backwards or sideways to keep the ball if there is no clear vertical or diagonal option available, as they are restricted in range. On the other hand more direct passes offer more passing options, as it’s not restricted in range and players are willing to take more risks to progress the ball as they are instructed to focus on playing the ball forward. So as we cleared that up, it’s important to understand the demand of players for a pass. A player that’s instructed to play short demands available passing options around him. The distance between the players has an important role when evaluating the passing options. That’s also why players are moving towards the ball or play with the back to the goal to be available for a short pass. A player that’s instructed to play more direct needs players to run into available space to play these dangerous vertical or diagonal balls. He generally has more passing options available, as he is relatively free in terms of range. But remember the focus primarily is on the direction, not on the range. So if you manage to have a compact attacking shape, your team will looking for a short but direct passing game instead of recycling possession. One last thing on the passing topic. It’s not black or white, not short or direct. There is very much grey in between and you need to find right directness setting for your team. Lets get back to your tactic: A Positive Mentality allows your Team to move up the pitch and support the attack. Check. You got runs from different angles (CM, right IF, both Fullbacks on the flanks and your Striker). Check. The tempo naturally is slightly higher on a positive mentality but due to shorter passing it got lowered a little bit. You may want to increase the tempo by one notch. Eventhough your left Fullback is instructed to move further forward, he will (at least to my experience) not provide enough width to stretch the play. Either use a Winger or switch the Fullback role to Wingback or Complete Wingback (maybe even with an attack duty to create even more runs from deeper Positions). If you go for the WB/CWB Option you may need to make some adjustments to your midfielders to remain defensively solid. The 4-1-2-3 Formation is well staggered and your striker is dropping deep to link up with the midfield. That offers close passing options vertically. Horizontally however, your players are naturally stretched wide by the positive mentality. You may want to narrow that down a bit to have more options accessible for short passes, no matter of your teams passing directness. You could further remove shorter passing (Standard passing directness on a positive mentality still tends to be slightly shorter) to increase the number of available options or if players are averse of making runs to receive a vertical or diagonal pass. So after the basics are set up, you could further increase the pressure, if you desperately need a goal, by encouraging your players to Run at Defence and beat the opposition on a dribbling or sending more players forward by assigning more attack duties or switching the formation into a 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-4

So lets have a look at the provided data I think your defence is working perfectly fine less xG and actual goals against you than the average Bundesliga team low foul ratio your team plays out form the back, low amount of clearances good tackling / interception stats (the low amout of attempted tacklings is characteristic for dominant teams) However, as you mentioned already anyway, there are some problems with your attacking play low amount of xG and Goals especially as being the dominant team as we already figured out low quality chances if you have a look at shots per game compared with your xG stats what your team is dooing well however, are crosses at it seems So what happens with your attack? Could you give some further information on whats actually happening? Are your strikers ending up isolated without many passing options and have to shoot from anywhere or does your attack gets too flat with many players creating a line against the others team defensive line without being able to play through? How is the opposition behaving defensively? Do they defend aggressively, trying to challange your team or they vautiously protect the space in front of their goal?

Doesn't look too bad. Creative players are well distributed around the pitch. Holding Player in Midfield and a FB(s) for defensive stability. However, I would want to make use of the space on the left flank, thats created by the IW cutting inside. A FB(s) seems a bit too conservative. The Problem is though, a 4-4-2 isn't really made for both FB's being aggressive on the wings and you alread have a more attacking WB on the right as the WP also cuts inside and looks for space more centrally. So I'd suggest to keep the FB(s) and make the IW a Winger(a) instead. I would also question the BWM as you don't really look for a more aggressive defensive style with a lowered LoE. Properbly a B2B or CM(s) your natural choice here.

If you hover over the Heart, you will get this Overview. Light green arrow is at 80% or more. Yellow / Orange is like 70%+x or even lower. The direction of the arrow is insignificants, it just indicates whether the matchfitness is growing or getting lower.

When it turns green it should be fine. You can see the exact number if hovering over the heart. There is a circle for Condition and Matchfitness. I usually use that thread for less complex topics or topics with low amount of content which can be easily answered. I would for example create a new thread if I would like other people to review my tactic, or my training plan. Or if I'd create some sort of content that i would ike to share with the community.

The main goal of Pre-Season is to get Matchfitness, Tactical Familarity and good Team Cohesion. I usually use high intense Training upon an average matchfitness of around 85% (will be 100% by the end of Pre-Season) and then start to build on Familiarity and Chohesion. That always worked fine for me and I never really had excessive problems with jaded players throught the season. If you didn't notice yet, there is a whole thread for quick questions which may not deserve a whole thread to not spam the forums.

Unfortunately its different. Almost all roles do have certain behaviors hardcoded. Playmakers for example will try to make themselves available for a pass and players will look to find their playmaker more often.

To be honest, I never thought about this, but leaving transfers (sales) to the DoF sounds quite fun. What I occasionally do is to just buy players that my scouts come up with. It helps to not buy every wonderkid that’s alive and leads from time to time to situations where I need to buy „older“ players to keep up the quality. I also like to look at the typical nations that players have in my team and will only scout these nations / regions. So if there are no South American players, I won’t buy any.

In case you didn't know, you can hover over the attributes ingame to get an exact explanation of what they are doing.

I wouldn't go too deep at the beginning and rather focus on the basic structures of your game. Most importantly, eventhough this is not a straight up ingame analysis, look at your teams general performance. Do your results match the boards and media expecations? Don't get fancy with tactics if you totally match expectations. Everything is fine to some extend. Does your selected formation match your general gameplan? For example, if you are looking for a high pressing / attacking style of football, your formation should be rather top-heavy with 3-4 players in the AM/ST strata and one or two players from deeper positions (central midfield or defence) should be assigned with an attack duty to join the attack. Fokus on general player movements, like does my fullback overlap as I wanted him to do. Does my striker fall back to link up play or does he stay up, waiting for the vertical pass. Do all players join the final third / box that I wanted to do and do the players who were supposed to stay behind, do so. Is your Team capable of creating high quality chances or does it get stuck and becoming too flat in the final third? Thats the case if your attacking shape turns into a flat line in front of the oppositions defensive line and will most likely result in a desperate cross, long shot or a loss of possession. In that case you should consider to become more direct with your playstyle. Good options to fight this are to remove instructions that lower your overall directness like work ball into box e.g. or to add instructions that help you to become more direct like run at defence, increased passing directness or a higher tempo to circulate the ball more quickly and therefore possibly open up more gaps in the oppositions defensive line. Is your defence capable of protecting your goal without conceding too many chances? Balls over the top -> lowering Defensive Line. Players can run or past through central areas -> narrow defensive width. Does the distance how far the opposition can move up the pitch without being challanged by your players, match your expectations -> adjust LoE / pressing triggers. I hope that could help you to watch out for easiely recognizable things on and off the pitch. By the way, only make adjustments if things happen repeatedly. Nothing is wrong if your attack is getting too flat once in a while or if your defence has been played over the top once a game or if a players doesnt move as expected for a few sequences. Only make changes if there is visable pattern over a longer period (like a few matches).