[Inside forwards with stronger foot on the same side they play.]

Good stuff in this thread :-)

My L (IF) and R (IW) starters were both opposite footers, but because I like keeping my starting Mez/AP on the pitch, I'd move him to one of those slots when I started making subs and having a right-footer on the right (as an IF or W) definitely helped out in transition. Either as a:

• runner with the ball to shoot or pass
• runner without to latch onto crosses or short passes and shoot
• with the ball wide to cross or layoff to a BBM or cross opposite side

I can see with possession-based passing, working it into the box, etc... staying opposite foot/same-side foot less of a thing, but moving quickly with the ball and not having to open up the body to shoot or pass with your strong foot, just makes sense.

This coming season I am going to start him as my IF on his strong foot and see how it goes!

[I need to learn, I keep failing.]

I'm a newb, so take my suggestion for what it's worth, but I've found the Player Analysis screen available from the main Analysis screen useful. In the "Analysis Tab" section on the linked page, I am referring to the screen you get when you click "Player Analysis>":

https://www.footballmanager.com/the-byline/spotting-problem-wednesday-wisdom

I find the player position, heat map, and various passing views helpful to see if my guys are generally about where I expect them to be and passing channels are opening up where I expect them. You can use the minutes slider to focus in on particular passages of play where you may have taken a bit of a kicking or had a cluster of scoring chances to see beyond the 45-90 second highlights. YMMV, but give it a look if you haven't yet.

[Using the Director of Football]

Does anyone have any experience of knock-on effects to get good priced resignings? I'm only 3 seasons in and have operated without a DOF so far and even my TD does nothing on the staff side, as I'm being a bit of a pedant micromanager.

For example, I'm Johnny Pushover and give one of my guys 75K/week with an international caps potential raise to 90K/week and he's largely happy with that for the first 3.5/4 years of his 5 year contract.

DOF plays bad cop to my good cop and gives him 60K/week and 75K/week with the international caps, while initially accepting the deal could the player get the hump in year 2.5/3 instead?

[Ridiculous ground share . 580 mile round trip?]

Now that is funny, in an annoying way for you OP.

I thought it was odd Bournemouth were using the Majeski, when they have Southampton and Portsmouth relatively next door, but apparently it could be much much worse. 

[Four Players "Starting to consider wether he should be looking to move to a bigger club" be]

After just completing my 3rd season with Brighton - and actually having some success, after scraping bye the first two - it seems half my starting 11 is looking out the window of their fancy Kemp Town Victorian terraces, wondering if maybe there isn't a better place to be.

It's understandable a 4-ish star national rep side, with a 31k capacity ground isn't going to be able to compete if/when big clubs come calling and will pay the buyout clauses; however, would it be a mitigating factor to have a UK and Ireland heavy squad? Leaning on the cliche that they don't travel well, as compared to players from the ROTW who will go wherever?

Typically my starting 11 has 2 or 3, with 4 or 5 usually being named in the matchday squad. So if I start getting my continental and international players plucked, I could segue to being more home nations bias.

[Choose Brexit outcome?]

I had totally forgot about it until it zapped me with a hard Brexit during the Boxing Day/NYs cluster of matches.

The inelegant fix, I had to go back to a previous save point (have auto-save off) and go through the run up to the decision day again.

IIRC I needed to go back a fortnight - and replay/relose a handful of games - to get different decisions (of course that just could have been me). I think I needed to do it 3 times to get the no-Brexit I wanted. I'm playing FM to have a break from reality, if they have a Covid19 patch, I'm out ;-)

[Celebs/Footballers who play Football Manager]

10 hours ago, karanhsingh said:

Diogo Jota plays and is bloody amazing at it 

Came here to add that :-)

Jota should be on here - if he isn't already. Think he was/is doing a Salford City IIRC?

[Brighton Wandering Seagulls - now with some Cityzens style? 4-3-3/4-1-2-3]

30 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

Okay, but you don't need to go from one extreme to the other. Standard DL coupled with just lower LOE (instead of much lower) should suffice. You also need to keep in mind that the selection of the LOE is a critical decision relative to your intended style of play. 

Good stuff! I'll give that a go and thanks for highlighting LOE importance, I'll do some more reading on that topic.

[Brighton Wandering Seagulls - now with some Cityzens style? 4-3-3/4-1-2-3]

Had a chance to have a bit of a play last evening and took your point @Experienced Defender about doing too much defensively and looked to see what I could do with the aggressive instructions, so what I think I now have is their low block close down by:

• dropping the LOE from high to much lower, while maintaining the standard D line
• Retaining the urgency, so within than tighter low block they are still trying to win the ball back
• punting the counter-press and GK harassing entirely

The short kicks and play out of defence are likely counter to the quick counter, but in Davies, Reyna, and Gouiri I have 3 sprightly players at 3 different levels - both x & y axis - to turn and try and peg it down to the other end when possession is won. Using a DLF instead of a lazy CF seems to have helped link the front 4 better overall.

I guess more match play will help see if it's needed or not, but with Davies on WB-A and the IF-SU to tuck in, I am thinking adding a left overlap instruction is unnecessary white noise.

For the remainder of this season, reckon I'll use my modified gegen against the minnows, as seeing you cannot combine the two into one is a good first step for me.

As always, any top tips, pointing out of redundancies, and the like is appreciated :-)

[Brighton Wandering Seagulls - now with some Cityzens style? 4-3-3/4-1-2-3]

1 hour ago, Experienced Defender said:

Apart from a couple of tweaks I would make to roles and duties, your manner of defending looks a bit too aggressive for instructions such as pass into space, higher tempo and counter (plus 3 BPDs on top of all these). And if you don't have top-class players, such manner of defending can also be very risky defensively. 

Thanks for the feedback. Ah ok, interesting. In my back 4 formations as BPDs they had an easier route out...

Where as with the back 3 that is no longer the case? (And yes I may have been in a meeting that didn't require a lot of attention :-)

That would explain some of the cool Ehlers passes to Williams on the 1/2 way line during good highlights, but yes could also be causing those free kicks conceded up there when Williams needs to clawback a bad pass. I should start checking more closely the match passing map, to this point I have been focusing on positions and heatmap.

 

So would it be better to have say, Dunk in the middle, be the conduit to move the ball along to Tonali or more aggressively to Davies or Reyna and have the other two as straight up defenders? Those two with solid enough passing/vision/technique to move the ball along simply as CDs, but won't try and be cute with it?

One wildcard is that Sarr is a green Libero, but I wasn't too keen on having him disappear into the midfield, as I like his pace and back left positioning to cover for Davies when he goes on a wander.

[Brighton Wandering Seagulls - now with some Cityzens style? 4-3-3/4-1-2-3]

7 hours ago, TheGoodRebel said:

Hi there, I think the issue with Zirkzee might be that he's only got low work rate - so he probably isn't suitable to being a lone forward, especially as a CF as he'll be required to work pretty hard. Additionally, it's usually a better idea to have a lone striker with a support duty rather than an attack duty. You could try switching Zirkzee to a support duty but I have a feeling he still won't perform how you want because of his work rate.

Thanks for that, I was looking right past it as he's my only legit option at CF - I am training him on 'Endurance' to try and get work rate up, but of course that's why his link up play is just not there. That would make sense that Maupay in previous seasons and Gouiri this season have had the consistency as PFs/AFs that Zirkzee hasn't as an AF (in my existing 4-1-4-1/4-2-3-1 formations) and trying to use him as a CF (whether A or S) hasn't really come off.

[Brighton Wandering Seagulls - now with some Cityzens style? 4-3-3/4-1-2-3]

Hi folks,

Quickish intro... Football fan, used to play PES in the 2000s, but never played FM before Covid came along and here we are.

I went with Brighton, as I wanted to avoid relegation and then try and build up a 'lesser' Prem club and had a soft spot for Chris Hughton (yes I know he's not there anymore but still).

• 1st season, hovered around 15th-17th most of the season, survived a Boxing Day summons to the chairman's office, won the last three to finish 11th (47pts). Relied on a strength up the middle Ryan-Dunk-Webster-Mooy-Maupay axis.
• 2nd season, got off to a great start, but bar a 5-0 drubbing of Sheff Utd couldn't score and defended well to the point of having 16 GF and 11GA after 19 matches (25pts). Lots of mucky, ugly football second half, ending the season with 31 GF 36 GA for 12th place (43pts).
• 3rd season, I couldn't be having that again, so added largely bog standard fluid counter attack with Attacking mentality to go along with existing modified gegenpress, swap between the two depending on home/away and opponent. Some more tweaks and a better squad and this season we won the League Cup and we're at 44 GF 36 GA for 6th (57pts) with 6 matches to go. But with the option to have a 3rd tactic and being a fan of Nuno and Wolves style of play, I thought I would try and add a 3-4-2-1/5-2-2-1.

With that, I've been reading FM formation theories and musings here and all over the internet and wanted to see what I could put together. Hopefully it is more an 'inspired by Wolves' style of play with good results and not a Wolves tribute band playing the Rose & Crown on a Monday night.

I've gone with this:

GK & Back 3: I want to play out of the back/short kicks when need be and watching highlights of GAs in my first season starting with Shane Duffy punting the ball down the field, I've got all BPDs.

WBs: I'd like Davies to be my Doherty and be the guy to get forward and score some goals, still trying to work that out with Gouiri and whether WB-A or CWB works better.

Midfield: Tonali to be the Neves-type player - although he is pretty much an everything player - and Reyna to be a more active goal orientated version of Moutinho

Wings: Gouiri I'd like to be the Jota cut inside guy who gets a bunch of goals and gets into the box. This is why I am trying IF-AT instead of IF-SU, which I should use to balance out the WB-AT Davies. Del Castillo, this guy just keeps chipping in with goals and assists, so really I may already have the Jota I want Gouiri to be.

CF: Zirkzee as CF is excellent on paper, but seems to go missing in matches, whereas Gouiri up front in my other formations does better.

As far as the Possession/Transition/Out of Possession, I think I may be bunging together Wolves strategy against big teams and smaller teams into one, with the Higher LOE and Standard/Lower DL, but that's still TBD.

 

Anyways thanks for reading, for an quality info source here on this forum, and for any assistance or ideas you have!