HUMBL3B33

Your pressing traps are majorly a combination of TIs to setup line of engagement and width. OIs to setup which players to concentrate on. Then your players individual ability to be at the right position at the right time as well as how good they are at reading the game situation and marking players out while pressing. It's an intricate loop. But generally up front if you have about an average defensive forward you can make it really hard for players to build up from the back. As almost all of the options will be marked. But here's the caveat. Your usual forwards, typically the regens about 10-15 years into the game would start to be on the extremities. They are either top quality forwards or top quality defensive forwards adept at pressing and winning the ball. Not much in between. Having said that, it's not hard to put together a good pressing side. You just have to make a few educated decisions to select the correct players up top and you'll be good to go.

As the 3rd image suggests, you've only recently relegated from the league one. In which case it isnt too hard for you to get promoted. And it's a widely known fact that the jump from league two to league one isnt as hard and hence people often get back to back promotions as well. However, I'd suggest you try signing a couple of worthy players on loan and do so till you reach prem. I havent played a lot in lower english leagues so i cant help much in terms of experience.

Here are my two cents on this: - Be on the cautious side and alter you tactics slightly on that side when you play away - Ensure you have a nice rest defense that covers the centre of the pitch on priority - Utilise opposition instructions to try and stop their buildup play. - Utilise the data hub to understand how they are going to try and score. Whether they are going to try and create from the wide or central areas. - Depending on your style of play. Be clear of what you want to do. If you're deploying a counter attacking tactic be secure at the back with maybe 1-2 extra defensive duties can work as well so that you have a solid base on which you can attack. - If you are trying to control the game and possession try and look for players with high anticipation, composure, decisions, off the ball and passing to ensure you don't lose the ball easily in their half and risk a counter attack. - In short, have a clear plan and avoid something half baked or in between. Nothing's worse than you not having a clear plan and your players getting caught in two minds. That's going to give a clear opportunities to the opposition and them being at home gives them a huge lift in confidence which they are going to use and score more often than not. The better the opposition the more chances there are of a player scoring even without a clear chance. This is how i approach my away matches. Especially in knockout European competition and I've had great success. You can try some of the ideas and see for yourself whether they work or not.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Been playing this game for 4 years now and never looked at it. My tactic still performs well. I win everything possible. Honestly the gain from this is extremely marginal. Not something to lose sleep over. Just to confirm this i asked bustthenet on his stream one day and he kind of resonated to the same. He's been playing since FM was CM back in 2000s. So i think it's good if you have it on course but shouldn't worry much about. However if you want to increase it. Just use tactical shadow play from training do the attacking one. It'll increase entire familiarity for attacking metrices. But it's slow and takes a long time to fill up.

The 3 tactical menu in the game is directly a result of 3 phase tactical play theory in football. There are more school of thoughts as well. But this is one of the most accurate and widely accepted one. You can refer the link to learn more and then maybe learn more by researching about it. https://www.phaseofplay.com/post/phases-of-play-in-football If you're already aware of it, that's basically what the instruction menu refers to. In Possession: Gives your player a blueprint to follow whenever they have won the ball or have sustained possession for a while. In Transition: Gives a blueprint of what they should do just after winning it or losing it. Out of possession: Gives you a blueprint on how to react to the opposition sustaining the possession for a while. Keep in mind that these are just general instructions and there are tons of factors that make count in to decide whether they succeed or fail, just like their attributes(visible/invisible), personality, traits, opposition and etc. Each kind of instruction menu would affect just the way they behave with or without the ball. The "in transition" menu has both options, defensive transitions (Counter press and regroup) and attacking transition (Counter and hold shape). This means you have option to tell your players what to do in both facets of the transition, whether you're with the ball or without. How extreme they do it depends on the mentality. A role and duty with higher individual mentality on a balanced Team mentality may spring more often to counter press or counter and vice versa. A key to understand how the movements work is to notice how individual mentality works and then associate the hardcoded individual instructions a role has. For example, An AP on attack from midfield has a very attacking individual mentality on positive team mentality with hardcoded (More risk, more dribble and less shooting) as a result even on higher mentalities he may not look to become a goalscoring option in the box. Instead he chooses to be the outlet pass to churn the game ahead. Similarly, CM on attack from midfield has a very attacking individual mentality as well on positive team mentality with hardcoded (Get further forward) which will see him become a goalscoring option from a midfield and will always look to join the players in the box. As explained, both roles on attack duty occupies similar areas with similar mentality but one of them looks to become a goalscoring option more often than the other and the other one becomes a passing outlet more than the other. Hence, we can understand how these roles play with and without the ball. If I am not wrong, The "In Transition" menu helps you elevate and delegate the mentality slightly for a temporary time. During which you will see a lot of people burning their asses off to reach opponents goal or back to your own goal. Hence, In reality, it does affect your players moments but not forever, and once you have either lost the ball or sustained the possession. The Out of possession or In possession instruction comes into play.

@TheFalseNine I'd appreciate if you could share your possession numbers from data analysis tab also the profiles for your best fb's According to you.

Agreed. There's no clear and obvious answer to this. But my previous answer above would take in consideration 3 of the most important components needed to understand and exaplain it in a way that you can replicate and test it for yourself. These are some concepts which is explained by @Rashidi on his stream as well as a lot of other youtubers, bloggers echo too as well. Again, there's no one claiming they are correct. But a lot of people echo to this and in my experience it feels pretty close to what they explain. I can to some extent change the behaviour of my team and see those actions on the pitch as well.

To me it seems like it's pretty easy if you avoid any noise and isolate 3 components to understand directness and tempo. 1. Directness: This is the distance you are allowing your players to pass the ball. Whether it be from back to front or from side to side. 2. Tempo: This is the speed at which they have to play during a sustained possession. A quicker tempo will as the players to look not to keep the ball for more than a few seconds. 3. Mentality: This is probably the most important in order to master the passing. On higher mentalities you are asking your players to just put the ball and players forward as soon as possible. With lower passing directness players will do so but less regularly and would more often look for a pass closer to them. With low tempo that is exaggerated as the player looks to take their time on the ball and not look to force a pass super soon. And the opposite spectrums work in the exact opposite way. On lower mentalities they'll avoid making too many mistakes and if there's not a clear opening they'll opt recycle possession instead. However if you do that against teams with compact defense you're just recycling the possession without any real threat because they wont give you enough room and clear opportunities. Hence it's important to look at the directness and tempo as 2 isolated instructions and then pair each one up with mentality and then check the ingame stats and situation to alter them accordingly. For e.g: if you have a tall and strong player up front and you don't want to loose points in this match against a relegation threatened team with compact defense. Try to be cautious and try direct passing with normal tempo. This will ask the players to try and find the tall player and if he's good at trapping the ball ball and passing it to the teammate and provided you have a runner attacking the space behind the defense. You might have a solid chance of scoring. On the other spectrum if this is a must win match against the same team. You can play on a positive or attacking mentality with the same kind of instructions to score at any cost. Mind you, this is also going to make you more vulnerable. Hope this helps.

Try these: 1. Change one of the roles in CM strata to defend role. This will help you retain the ball longer. 2. Since you're looking to play shorter passes i assume you want to keep the possession. I think you should keep one of your FB to defend duty. Preferably the one on the opposite flank than the role you are going to change to defend in midfield. These changes will give you a easier outlet to retain the ball on each flank and center in case your attacking players run into a cult-de-sac. Additionally you'll have enough players in the midfield strata to keep your defenders safe. Giving your attacking players the confidence to attack without too much of an issue. This is known as your rest defence. Used by a lot of top teams. 3. Change your defensive line according to the opposition team, see if they're going to play a counter attacking game then lower it. If they're not so fast and is probably playing with a single striker you might get away with a high backline. But more often than not, a high backline is going to burn you at least once in a game. Maybe giving up a crucial goal. Hence, be cautious with it. Try these and share the results.

I think i would echo with @CARRERA. It would be much better for us to understand if you can share screenshots or images for things to better understand them as due to our smaller attention span it is hard for us to read the entire forum. However, noticing the issue, I think it looks like you are having issues with unmarked runs from the middle. Which has been an issue since last years FM. If you can sustain the ball long enough, and have a runner through the middle, you can potentially have a free runner. Tbh, a solution could be to drop your defensive line deeper but if you have a higher line of engagement this will leave a massive opening in between your attack and defense, essentially allowing them to recycle the possession and retain it for long enough to score. The only possibility in my head for this issue is to play in a low block and have fast players to play on transition and try to score on the break. Your simple counter attacking football. Hope to see more in order to help you better.

Somewhat on point. But i think OP can understand it by understanding the core philosophy of how FM is supposed to work. Consider it like this: You're a player who's trying to get good at football from a mental perspective. What do you need? Ability to read the game? That's Anticipation for you. Ability to stay focused on the game for 90 minutes? That's concentration for you. Ability to be aware of your surroundings and hence be composed on the ball. That's composure for you. Ability to make good choices on and off the ball? That's decisions for you. Ability to be available for your teammates to pass (for attacking only)? That's Off the ball. Ability to pick up free spaces so that you can break any kind of counters or intercept a line breaking pass (for defending only)? That's positioning. You have other mentals as well but these are something that's known as a bare minimum so that you don't keep making obvious mistake. How much of them do you need? Look at the comparison screen pick up the best that you have there and strive to get someone closer to that. However you need to understand one key thing. These are just averages of the squad for that particular attribute. As a result you'll have outliers that has like a god level attribute stack and they may win a match for your opposition sine handedly. However, that's not very common as long as you have a player who themselves are good enough and able to mark that player out of the game. Football is complex. Stick to the game learn what each attribute means from multiple sources. Match them with your ingame understanding and you'll be good to go. Refer this SI manual for more info:

All good. It seems like most of the issues is with your man management, which can be fixed. I was able to get rid of a couple of players which allowed me to get the morale back up to a good enough level, and the team is now performing at the level you expect them to. The keeper is making critical saves, defenders arent just allowing the opposition to walk past them, midfielders are chipping in as well. I think it would be better if you start concentrating on what kind of system would you like to play in? You're suffering majorly because of the fact that you have an imbalance in your squad. The defense was neglected majorly. Although it would have been fine in the previous versions, FM 23 has made it difficult to win anything without a sound defensive setup. So you need to be clear with what you want to play with. You'll still suffer and ship loads of goals because you dont have a good enough defensive setup. But, I think you should concentrate on out scoring the opposition in most cases. Try and learn about how to utilize space in football in general. Here is the most important things to master in football. "The more time and space you give your players on the ball, the better they'll perform." This as per @Rashidiis the final frontier and I highly resonate with it. Learn how you can get your players into free space or a 1 on 1 and let them shine. Also, I key issue I noticed through the squad was most of them did not have the general footballing intelligence required at this level. Try and recruit players that are intelligent first, and then athletics enough to reach where they need to and at the last look for technique. This is at best a EFL side and might just survive in some cases and every player i see lack intelligence but are either good athlete or good technically. Additionally, because the imbalance b/w your attack and defense, where you have overspent on attack but underspent in defense will definitely make it much harder for you. I have played almost half of a season in the save but could not retain a lead and ended up getting outscored because of a loose defense. I made tons of tweaks to the tactics but could not make it work with a back 4 since both of the defenders have mistakes in them. A back 5 however makes it much better and solid. I believe a better morale can however change things and maybe a 433 can work as well. I think you should also learn how to set up your scouts to get good players. I'd recommend BTN, Zealand and FMScout's Video to understand things better. Especially @Rashidiat BTN. He's clearly one of the best educational content creators in FM community. I'll try to finish up a season or two before i post the results.

First things first. Stop promising stuff to your players about everything. The single biggest way to tank your club is to promise players things you cant 100% will be able to deliver. This is because when you make a promise, your players expect them to fulfilled. In case you don't you'll have them lose the confidence in you. Think about Chelsea under mourinho, There are multiple quotes from terry, drogba and others that said they'd happily run through the wall if mourinho asked them to do so. Same with Zlatan, said he'll die for mourinho. That's trust and your breaking it every time you fail to fulfill a promise. The higher the player is in hierarchy the more impact it is going to have. Coming onto your standing in terms of how good your squad is compared to the league. Worst at tackling, heading and strength. Basically, render you useless to defend again nearly any attack in the league. Your only bet is to play a higher line and keep a decent amount of pressure against the opposition team. This tells us we need to play an aggressive pressing defense otherwise, people will score for fun against us in the league. You midfield is basically inexistent in terms of defending and only has a good enough ability to create some chances here and there. Tells us that you cannot rely on your midfielders too much to help defend. This makes me realise that you need a lot of bodies in defense. So a bottom heavy formation is on the cards, something like 5-2-1-2, 5-2-2-1 or maybe a 433 (Triple/Double DM). You need to flood the defense enough, so you dont have leave enough space for people to attack you. Next up, your attack. Non existent, to play wingplay as you basically have 0 targets to be aiming for inside the box. Pace and acceleration means you'd have to rely on the counter to create good opportunities. Hence, gives me the green light to play a cautious mentality and attack with space for people to run into. The lack of mentals across your team makes me believe that the team lacks any ability to play a high possession system as they lack composure which and off the ball which are key to any possession heavy tactic. Something that makes me feel good about the squad is the fact that you have a lot of flair which means in 1 on 1 situation with the opposition players you might up ending trumps on them and might get a good chance to score. However, whether the players are good enough to score is totally uncalled for. But you should get a decent amount of chances. Once all this is sorted, We have narrowed it down to 2 different tactics, a 433 (Triple DM) and a 5-2-1-2 Asymmetric. Both of which are bottom heavy and would aid you in defending in case the opposition team is able to get past your initial press. It should ensure you have enough players deep in your half that you do not concede space for opposition players to create havoc in. It should be noted that your team would need more help in defense than usual. Hence, having as many players on support or defend duty is a plus for us since we would not be looking for players to make runs in behind all the time and should be looking to either maintain the possession or run back to our half to neglect any kind of counters. Both tactics aim to push high up and look to win the ball back asap upon loosing the ball. eliminating the time and space for the opposition to make any moves on the ball. Once the ball is won, we're looking to get up the pitch as soon as possible. This would give us a small but a high quality window to run behind the opposition when they themselves are in transition and trying to get back into their defensive shape. The key is to make sure we do not waste any time getting the ball up to our attackers because we do not have the quality to break a stubborn defense as of yet. If we fail to launch a successful counter attack, our mentality should ensure that we retain the possession of the ball looking for a chance elsewhere. Here, Although i was little confused at first, but i ended up opting for a direct ball method with an emphasis to run at defense so that we can disturb the opposition structure and try to play one clear ball of the top in the space for our attackers to run into. I will now be running some tests to tweak the tactics according to the results and players we have and will keep you posted as i have something to tell.

1 think I'd like to add is to put all of them to support duty. This increases the chance of them behind available to the ball. However, your specific requirements needs your players to have unrealistically good off the ball and anticipation. Without anticipation they wouldn't know when to move, without off the ball they wouldn't know where to move. Hence both of them become do important. On top of that, you need to have a lot of players with good composure and balance so they can keep the ball without falling off in a challange. Additionally good passing and vision to find open players. Hence, I'd recommend you to try this with specific set of teams who are extremely good at retaining possession in real life as well. For e.g: Man City and Barca (under xavi) Hope it helps.

Mid season rot has nothing to do with tactics. Maybe you can tweak a little based on teams but it's more due to fatigue setting in and players finding it hard to finish their chances! This seems more like a morale issues. You can ceiticise them for not finishing their chances. Also maybe buy someone with lots of consistency to mitigate this issue. I purchased 2 strikers from Argentina both newgens. Very similar to each other with both having elite finishing ability. But pastoriza had much better mentals and inconsistency whereas Gonzalez had worse mentals and consistency. Pastoriza does spectacular stuff in a couple of matches buy scoring 2-3 goals and assisting a couple. Gonzalez is a much consistent player with getting at least 1-2 goals every other match, Even against top tier clubs. The key differences is their consistency, the mid season rot doesn't seem to affect Gonzalez to some extent as he would definitely score in at least every 3-4th game. But pastoriza would go 6-7 or sometimes even 10 games without scoring. Another key thing i noticed is their mentality both of them are professional and fairly professional. But that doesn't seem to affect their scoring. And both behave differently on the pitch. To some extent only based on their consistency.

Tactic wise, your in possession tactic looks a bit extreme. First of all, attacking mentality is only for teams that can't score against you even if you are leaving just the CBs to defend on their own with a keeper. And you can score against them anyway even if they park the bus. And given you're playin Valencia I'd say you have plenty of rivals who can beat you with a sucker punch. And playing on an attacking mentality pretty much gives them that. 2nd running at the defence as a TI meand whole of your team will take the ball and run with it. As long as they are on a balanced individual player mentality they'll try to run with it. And coupled with attacking team mentality. Basically apart from your CB and DLP everyone is trying to be prime Ronaldinho. 3rd I can understand your temptation to get both of your FBs into play with overlapping instructions. But that instructions basically asks your widest player to be a little passive. With no playmaker in the team i can only see you making chances with your IW and you're suppressing both of them at the same time. If you want to add both your wingbacks up to. Make sure your wide players leave their spaces first so that WBs have space to run into. Maybe IFs to make the run behind the defence so that they pull the defenders away and make space for your WB. Yes, you can see all of these things in the data hub but you need to know what to look for. For example the dribbling attempts would be a lot. But they wouldn't be successful. Which should reflect in the datahub in possession numbers and dribbling proficiency numbers (available in spider and scatter plots). One thing that i suffered a lot with are PPM/Traits. I never paid much attention to them even after watching a lot of FM youtubers say they are the most important thing to understand. What this generally means if you want your AP to spray passes to your AF/IFs and your AP has runs with the ball often or play simple passes. They'd ignore the PI assigned to them and more likely to play how they want to play which is running with the ball and playing short passes. Which breaks your entire system. Also, even if your player has a high teamwork rating they'd still predominantly look to run with the ball and only sometimes play thr through ball. Rendering their superior attributes of passing, vission anf technique useless. I had the same problem with one of my players named Maleh! Oh for my team at that time he was a 5 star creator with 15 in all 3. But he failed to create any meaningful chances because he had short and simple passes on it. I had to remove that barely in time as he was 25-26 years of age. But as soon as i trained him to play killer balls often. He started making tones and tones of chances. So do pay attention to your player traits.

What are the PPMs/Traits for the players on right flank and McNally?

It looks like you're not very clear with your playing system in your mind. With so many players that high and on attacking duty, i just can't fathom them coming back to get the ball until they habe the trait to do so. And with only 1 player in the mid and 2 WB on the flanks responsible to take the ball upfield it looks more like a necessity for this system to be more direct. How many players do you think would come back to defend in case if you loose the ball and they are able to take the ball right upto your box? With possitive mentality you're basically asking the top 4 to stay up top and wait for your ball to release them. But you don't have anyone playing that ball. You're mezzala will run wide with the ball the DLPd would not have enough tactical freedom to lay those passes off. This is a tactic that'd be fairly hard tp balance while against bad teams they'd create loads of chances with direct runs at the goal. Against good teams you'll suffocate because of frequent possession loss. You need to either go direct passing with cautious mentality to let the players at the back keep the ball for as long as possible and then release it for a runner. For that I'd suggest you to swap mezzala with a DLPs and DLPd to CMd/BWMd. As you have both WBs the only player providing width you can also play double BWMs to try and pressure the flanks up to if you loose the ball. But keep in mind this makes the tactic extremely high in general play. Once they bypass your BWM they're generally just up against your CB. Another way to play is to drop the AM to midfield and give him a AP role. This would make him the fulcrum of the attack and behind him you can have 2 BWMd to balance the tactic and provide the WB adequate defensive cover. With this approach you can play with a short passing as you have a good blend of passing options to progess the ball up the field. A general understanding of your tactic also says you have no business of playing mezzala on the same side of a shadow striker that's just plain too easy to get marked and generally keeping both of them very close to each other. As a result drop him to a more conservative role like a DLP or maybe you can be adventurous with a RPM to allow them to open up defensive. One thing i noticed is your use of stay wide with shadow strikers. Keep in mind these PIs just enhance the role a bit they wouldn't change it. Stay wide doesn't make them play at the flanks. They'd stay in the middle but only a little wider than usual. There could be a lot many things to be done with this tactic. But i think you can build something with these inputs. Keep special eye on the traits your players have. They'd be very important in a direct system. Even if your playmaker does have a lot of vission passing and technique. He might not be as aggressively putting in those killer balls until he has the trait to do so. That's how the game work.