[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

Pass height is driven by Passing. If your team (or Player) is Instructed to Pass Shorter, he will more typically look to pass to feet.

Conversely, a longer passing length will more typically play an aerial ball.

Play Through Defence was effectively much the same as far as I can remember - didn't it just instruct passes along the ground effectively?

Pass to feet/into space was a through ball modifier.

Play through defense/run at defense was a team "run with ball" modifier for encouraging/discouraging dribblings/runs with ball.

What I don't understand is that "pass into space" (more through balls) and "run at defense" ("more runs with the ball") are still in the game, but not their counterparts!?

http://www.footballmanager.com/manual/?id=532

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

What were the reasons to get rid of the following instructions in FM 2014? Anyone?

- pass to feet (opposite instruction to pass into space)

- play through defense (opposite instruction to run at defense)

Both were perfectly legit and had their use, in my opinion.

[Funny Screenshots Thread]

This is from FM 2012: One night in Paris...

Wales progressed a bit luckily past their group (Sweden, Denmark, Belgium) judging by the statistics (full match simulation), after which they defeated all of the following opponents (Russia, Sweden, Ukraine) either after extra time or, well, see above. Admittedly their midfield in the default databse by 2016 looks quite handy with Bale and Ramsey being recognized amongst the world's elite, and Allen or Collison aren't half bad either.

Still, that's quite something.

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

I believe it's the positional sense of players. Do we really just expect 6 players(midfielders + strikers) to attack while the back 4 sit back deep in their own half and watch? It could also be because of their high teamwork that force them to help out teammates.

Probably also depends on the strategy (mentality) and d-line settings linked to it and various shouts. Which is all fine to me, but when I tell a LB to "Defend" (duty), I expect him to still cover, rather than proactively surging into space and getting forward frequently.

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

This is a question related to full backs, their positioning and their duties (or "run from deep instructions", if you will.

I think this has been slightly tweaked in between versions, but why is it that full backs on "defend" duty (runs from deep rarely) still regularly push ahead right up into the opponent's final third and proactively engage in attacking play? No PPMs whatsoever interfering, mind.

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

Never have noticed this before but:

What is the logics behind that on FM 2012 the team passing instruction doesn't actually affect the passing sliders one bit, but rather with and tempo instead? On FM 2013 it sure does, naturally.

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

He'd stick to the AMR if you've chosen specific man marking though.

And like glue, all the time, no matter what. :-) This is traditional man marking, as I have documented in the thread linked to four posts above. It also cost me two games recently, but that is another story. FM's "specific" aka traditional man marking is this rigid, it makes players from about any position rush to their player right from the second the opposition (re)gains possession. No matter what - decision making never comes into play. It is arguably the only move in which FM players can be pulled like puppets on a string.

On a very stupid occassion, I had a DM set to specificly man-mark the opponent's AMC recently. The same DM also acted as one of but two covers during an attacking corner though, during which the AMC dropped back to defend that corner. What happened was this, then:

You'll notice the mechanics kicking in when the first opposing player gets ahold of the ball nicely. As soon as he touches it, the DM makes his run, inviting doom and misery.

I'm ashamed to admit, but I forgot to correct it and suffered the exact same error in the match that followed next. Specific man marking can be dangerous, and arguably as in real-life football, isn't an option across all the team. On FM, even that one player set to man mark specifically needs be choosen wisely. To me, the slight difference between "man" and "zonal" marking, which are both zonal, after all, are almost neglectible in comparison.

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

I've not seen any posts like that around here in all honesty. Can you link me to these threads/posts were you've seen people claim this please so I can take a look please.

Off the top of my hat: On these forums I cannot remember any specific posts right now. However, in our biggest German community over at meistertrainerforum.de confusions regarding the TC are still quite common. Reason being that a lot of people probably won't read a manual, let alone an online manual - and it is only being provided in English. Personally I've got to admit that haven't taken a look at the online manual in ages, since the first edition seemed to pretty much a port job of the printed manual that shipped with FM up until about FM 2008 - with the same glaring error regarding the explanation of the counter attacking tick box for instance still left untouched to this very day.

1) This is explained in here Zonal vs Man marking

I know what you quoted from TT&F, which is the reason I wondered how for instance my defensive midfielder would pick up a man when set to "man marking", but actually lets go of him when the player starts drifting someplace else. If this post is correct, it is probably a better explanation, I guess? I assumed as much, that the player was likely more prone to sticking to his man when man marking until the attacking move was over. I was just confused how players would let go off their players just as well if they roamed, drifted or dropped deep before the move was actually over. In that way, man marking is much the same as zonal.

The real difference between man and zonal in FM to sum it up would then be:

In conclusion, the only difference between zonal marking and man marking comes down to how the players will react when his zone is overloaded.

Assuming a LB is set to man-mark and has picked up the opposition's AMR - due to the man marking he is more likely to stick to that AMR even when the opposition's RB is pushing forward and advancing into the LB's zone, right?

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

Any manual changes overwrite everything. If you change the sliders then the description of what the player is becomes ineffective because you've changed it.

Needs to be prominently documented, ASAP. I've also seen a lot of users that aren't aware what the creator does, that is adjusting the sliders. A lot of people think the creator influences something out of your manual control, and that adjusting the sliders merely modifies what the TC creates a little here and there.

Two questions:

1) What are the exact differences between "man marking" and "zonal marking" - as they are implemented into FM, that is? After all, as both are zonal, the differences can be quite subtle to spot for most of the time. Apparently this is one hard to tackle even for the msot experienced, as I've never had a detailed answer on that. :-)

2) Is there any way to utilize height advantage, more specifically: Is there any specific crossing setting that influences the height of crosses in general, other than crossing to a single specific target man and feeding him "to head"?

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

Now that my copy of FM has arrived, I'm going to bump this over here. Basically, this is all about something written in Tactical Theorems a while back, and it's about man marking and how it is implemented into FM. Basically nothing like it's being described in any official documentation.

In Football Manager, however, man marking tends to be a more aggressive zonal marking system

I always found the differences between man and zonal marking to be rather subtle on FM, unless you pick a specific player to man mark from the drop down list - which does indeed mimic man marking at its most traditional. However, with simply picking "man mark" rather than "zonal" things don't always look that clear to me. If somebody is able to elaborate and maybe even visualize this, that'd be awesome as I'm going to experiment with defensive setups in my first save.