Duracellio

Thank you, let me know what you think once you finished reading. Regarding all the reactions I feel thankful and inspired to continue the tread!! I am cooking a few more articles, lighter reading since the heavy one (because it’s introductory, etc) is already out of the way. How to prepare for a Europe game, taking into account it’s a two game elimination, another game against this very FC Porto, but this time a championship game, since I got the idea they’ve rotated a lot for this cup game and weren’t full force, (that left me with a bitter taste) and finally a heavy defeat against another title contender on the Portuguese championship. Diving into the “whys” and “hows” of it. What we could’ve made differently to change the outcome! Big plans, little time

Once you get used to it, it's just routine, it looks more complicated than it actually is. It really depends on who you’re facing and how good your team is, you probably don’t need to do the whole match cycle for every opponent. It can help a lot if you organize the opponents into 3 categories: 1-low difficulty, 2-medium difficulty, 3 high difficulty opponents, then according to those levels you can adapt your preparation detail. Regarding the pictures, I have no idea, probably something to do with your anti-virus and false positives in your laptop? Let me know if you have this issue in other platform, because more people might have the same problem. I could change the images bank I've used. The .gifs work correctly in your laptop ?

Thanks. It's an interesting idea aswell. Feel free to share some tips if you think of something. Thank you for the kind words. I feel the same @Fox-7-. It's the first game I play that, no matter for how long you play, you can always learn something new. That's why I think communities like this one are so important to share. @vrig I felt the same “weirdness”. I wrote this article for about a week or so, putting together all the gifs and images, etc and during the process I saw the other thread asking exactly about this one I was writing and I thought “wow, perfect timing! It’s on the way”. I hope it helps in some way in your new save

You’re absolutely right! It was supposed to be on the chapter 7. Must have missed it during the copy/paste of the article! Will update it as soon as I can. EDIT: Just updated the article. Thanks for the heads up Thanks mate. Glad you like it

Hi everyone, just wrote an article about this. Maybe you can find something usefull there.

SENSIBLE APPROACH TO A MATCH 1. INTRODUCTION Hi everyone, Over the last few years I’ve been diving on the wonderful arts of managing, prepare and adapt to a certain match. The importance of that particular part of the game became obvious to me with the addition of the data hub a few years ago. Micro managing teams and tactics for a specific scenario is one of the things I enjoy the most in Football Manager and it is definitely one of the most satisfying things about the game. When you see everything, you anticipated and prepared, taking shape into the game, it's absolutely wonderful, and even when it doesn’t work exactly has you intended, it's nice to know why it didn’t work out as planned, so you can do better next time. Everyone has its own way of playing the game and it's perfectly fine to do so, but personally it's been a game changer for me, in the recent years, to play the game and understand what's going on "under the hood", to learn, to research and to improve on a try and error basis, adapting (that has been going on for years since the good old days back in the 90's) and lately this SI forum has been my main source to improve and learn something new about the game every day. That being said, it’s not fair that I only take from this community, so I wanted to give back some of that knowledge and contribute by sharing a bit of my experiences and results. At the very least it could generate some good discussions and, once more, I can learn something new from your inputs. 2. THE ENVIRONMENT Instead of posting updates from an entire save throughout the time, because not only we already have some really good ones on the forum but mostly, because time is becoming a precious currency nowadays as I am getting into my 50s and I can’t really afford that luxury. I am going to write how I prepare for games, what do I do to adapt to the opponent, how I counter their strengths and how does that translate into the game itself. I intend to share not only the successful ones, where the strategy works and we get the win, but the losses as well, as I consider we learn the most with those, and most of all, so that I can still feed on all the knowledge of the brilliant strategist minds that are on this forum. I'll try to keep the "hypotheticals" as low as possible and keep it as simple as it can be. What do I translate from the analytical point of view of the next opponent, what do I think we can do to counter those strong points, which "buttons do I have to press to make it happen" and most important, and something that I don’t see much on the internet, the why (Oh yeah! I’m all the way on the "WW" [Why Wagon]) and not just because "it's a trend everywhere and apparently it works", I want to understand the “why” behind every decision and outcome! Before taking you into an entire match cycle, here goes some context: The year is 2024, as current as it gets. we are managing GD Chaves, a team from the Portuguese top tier that is expected to finish last on the league table, and we are going to play against the title contender, FC Porto, currently managed by the ex-Aston Villa, Unai Emery. For this first example, I'll try to keep it short and ignore some pre-match stuff (as equally important) like training, resting, calendar congestion and set pieces preparation focusing more on the tactical side of the game. 3. THE COACH First thing I always do is looking into the opponents coaching preferences to see if we can gather some useful information. Although Unai is a renowned coach and his game plans are well known and famous, for practical purposes I am doing the match cycle anyways. Let's see what can we find by looking into his profile: With the addition of the data hub to Football Manager, the preferred formations and tactical style page is not that relevant anymore, but old habits die hard. The "tends to" section has some good information for us, lets dive into them first, with no particular order: "Sit back and protect a lead" was the first thing that caught my eye. That tells me that if we concede first, most probably keeping a counter attacking style, passing into the space won’t work that well, since his teams are going to protect that space behind the defence and closing the gaps between the lines, Here's something to remind during the course of this game (mental note to self). "Uses counter-pressing" tells me that they will not sit back and let us control the game, taking our time with the ball, they are definitely going to bring the game at us. Taking into consideration that our players are technically inferior, they can't receive and protect the ball and turn around, all while being under huge pressure, like an elite player would be able to do so we'll probably have to set the tempo a bit higher than normal to cope with them pressing us all over when we have the ball, giving us no time to think. Since we are going to rush things a little bit and our players first touch and passing range is not the greatest (considering first touch, passing, technique, vision, composure and decision) we'll have to get them closer to each other. We're not expected to have a lot of the ball, due to to all we've mentioned already, so we have to make the best out of the little time we have on the ball, decreasing the turnovers we concede, by narrowing our attacking width we will decrease the chances of making mistakes due to that higher tempo. "Plays out of defence" is expected to be used in a team like FC Porto with quality players. Regarding the formations Unai tends to play with, he always uses a back 4 so he will probably play something between an inverted fullback or a half-back to create a back 3 when transitioning. If this isn’t the case, we could consider using 2 hardworking strikers to press the 2 centre backs into a mistake but considering our team, even having those hardworking strikers (we'll see the chess pieces we have at our display in a bit) I don't think pressing high some quality ball playing defenders will helps us much, besides, once they surpass our initial press, we would be in big trouble. Pressing high is a big no no. "Delegates to a set piece coach" just tells me that the next window of information, the "set piece preferences" under "Coaching", is not useful in this match and we'll have to rely on our data analysts but I’ll leave it here anyway for educational purposes: We could take advantage of this information to tweak our set pieces accordingly. 4. DATA HUB Now the fun part begins, the data hub! That confusing monster consisting on a bunch of numbers and graphics. Let’s make things simple and easier on this first match approach. We'll look only at the Summary and Expected tactical style. According to our analysts, FC Porto will play in a tiki-taka style short passes, extreme pressing and trying to lure us out of position with lots and lots of movement into spaces without the ball. It also report that they tend to play a bit cautious when playing away, although I think this might be related to some champions league games they've had recently, I don't believe they'll be cautious against us, honestly. In short, FC Porto are a dangerous side and our life will be very hard, like our encouraging analyst reports. Now we know what to expect. As for the Set Pieces preparation, we went for the throw ins and offensive corners to make the most out of every chance we have, since we won't have a lot. 5. OPPOSITION INSTRUCTIONS Considering the above information, we now need to setup how we’re going to deal with the opposition, individually: Getting into detail: GOALKEEPER: we don't want to press Diogo Costa, not only because he's really talented playing the ball with his feet (14 passing; 14 vision; 17 kicking; 14 throwing; 15 decisions; 16 composure) but most importantly because my strategy for this game is not to press high in any case; FULLBACKS: Since they use a back 4 formation, our approach to this will be not adding any kind of trigger pressure to ensure we don't stretch our team press, since I don't intend to place a lot of players upfront, when we’re out of possession. That will allow us to only press those fullbacks once/if they reach our line of engagement, keeping the structural shape of our defensive unit sound and compact. By tackling them hard, we make sure they don't have much time on the ball and it tells our players to really go for it, and do everything in their power to stop those crosses from coming into the box (even over the expense of a few cards). And finally, showing the left fullback to his left foot and the right fullback to his right foot to push them outside, where they can only hurt us with crosses (they don’t really pose an aerial threat); THE MIDFIELDERS: is where the battle is going to happen most of the time, or at least I intend to make it that way, with a mid-block. FC Porto will play two midfielders (and some good ones). I am not going to thight mark or press them at the start of the game because I'm looking to understand what roles they're going to play. You don't want to mark or press a mezzala or a roaming playmaker for example, when you're trying to maintain your defensive shape at all costs, those roles tend to roam out from the middle of the pitch, and since our analysts reported “Lots of movement" I am willing to bet in a roaming role on one of those two midfielders. The sole instruction we give is to tackle Stephen Eustáquio harder because he is very susceptible to get injured (I know, it isn't pretty, but if we can make the manager waste a sub with an injury, why not) and he doesn't have that much bravery. We’re aiming to grasp for every 0,1% of success we can; WINGERS: When facing opponents with players on the AMR, AML and/or AMC strata, I always trigger press them, as most of the times these are the main source of creativity and we don't want to give them an inch of space to work their magic. Showing them the outside of the pitch and hitting them hard, same principle as the fullbacks. STRIKERS: This is a tricky one, because it has a lot of variants. For this match, Namaso is expected to play as a false 9, to link up the play between the midfield and the attack. He will try to open up our defensive line and create space to his partner in crime, Evanilson. We don't want to follow him around opening gaps in our back line, so we go with the “never thigh mark” for Mr. Namaso there. Now regarding his partner upfront, I think Toni Martinez is playing instead of Evanilson, because the latter is tired, he's a star player for FC Porto and it is a League Cup game, so I think they will rotate. If Evanilson is the chosen one, there is no way we can tight mark him, press him or tackle him harder, he is just very complete, fast, composed and strong. Such players change games so we can only pray that our defenders step up their game because they are going to need to, when facing such forwards. If we had better defenders, we could consider tight marking him. If Toni Martinez is the chosen one, has I believe it will happen, then we'll mark him tight and press him, since he is slower and taller which makes him more of a target forward. Showing the outside of the pitch as well for both of them. YOUR DEFENSIVE PREPARATION CAN GIVE YOU 1 POINT OFFENSIVE PREPARATION CAN GIVE YOU 3 Doing a good preparation into our defensive strategy is key, every game starts 0-0 so if we don't concede that's 1 point right there, and regarding the two teams quality gap, I’d say 1 point is not too shabby. Now, we've delved into the opposition long enough, it's time to look at what we got and set up our offensive strategy to try and win the game and therefore, the 3 points. Having a transfer market already into this save, we've managed to bring some players that emulate our tactical blueprint. It consists mainly in a bunch of hardworking players, brave, determined, aggressive, tireless machines. We give ourselves the luxury of having 2 spots maximum for technical players, that may or may not be, so keen to get involved in the physical side of the game, or could struggle in that part of it. We can allow that because they're supported by 8/9 hardworking players who aim to cover those specific “weak spots” with they're positions and/or roles. 6. MEET THE BOYS What do we have to work with? GOALKEEPER: Our main GK isn't the best in short distribution although he isn't terrible either. He gives us the oportunity to choose between playing it simple to our centre backs and let them dictate how we transition, or we can use his 16 passing, 13 kicking and 12 throwing to start the counter. Bearing in mind that he has 6 vision and 10 composure, whether it is short or long, it is probably a good idea to tell him where to launch the ball instead of relying on his decision making under pressure. CENTRE BACKS: All of our centre backs fall into the "average category". Most of them have between 12/14 on those important physical and technical attributes for defenders. No one really stands out of the bunch. The opponents aren't taller and stronger than us so we shouldn't have a lot of problems in the physical side of the game. Our defenders range between 1.87m to 1.93m tall, so the aerial side of the game isn't really a concern. Among those 5 CB's we have some decent ball playing defenders (for this level), that tells us we have the flexibility to outline a plan considering the technical features of their strikers and the way they will press our back line. FULLBACKS: Most of the times we aim to stretch the pitch using one of our FBs (usually the right one), relying in the other side to keep our rest defence with, at the very least, 3 at the back. We can play Sandro Cruz or Totti (natural centre back) in that defensive fullback role considering he is strong in the air and we rely on him to win +90% of the aerial duels in those second post crosses, against opposite wingers. This particular role is one that I change the most throughout the season because if we concede a goal, it better not be a defensive mistake in our build up. We change a lot according to the opponent’s offensive line: If we play with a back 4 and the opponent has 2 strikers upfront we choose a natural center back as an inverted fullback: If we play with a back 4 and the opponent has only 1 striker upfront we play a more natural fullback, choosing between a more offensive approach with the likes of Moustapha Seck or a more defensive one, Sandro Cruz (mainly because of his physical profile): By tweaking it this way ahead of every match, we make sure to always have the advantage in numbers and always give our defensive line a way out of trouble. We aim to remove the chance of mistakes in very dangerous areas where mistakes are punished with goals, as much as possible. On the right side we usually play a natural winger adapted to fullback. MIDFIELDERS: Here is where we have our most hardworking players, the engine room of our team, they're the ones that make sure everything tics. Our captain and best player, Samu, is injured and therefore out of combat for this game. They clearly stand out for their mental and physical capacity as our main concern for this part of the pitch is to fight for every inch, leaving the technical side of the game to the players in front of them (Samu is the exception, he's very technical): THE COOL KIDS aka ATACKING MIDFIELDERS: Since we have two hard workers in our (defensive) midfield strata, and one fullback is going to stretch the field on one side, we aim to play with two creative players (one in the middle and the other cutting inside from the wing) and one explosive disruptor/line breaker/runner, in short, a dribbly boy with pace, aggression, flair, etc Our dribbly boy is usually a right footed player playing on the left side with the Winger role on support The standard to our winger on the right side is to use a left footed technical player as an advanced playmaker, to hit our left side dribbly runner with trough passes on his attempts to break the defensive line. This role is usually reserved for the likes of Xadas and/or Alex Mendez In the middle of the pitch we have 2 similar profiles although Morlaye Sylla is a more agressive and hard working than Alanzinho, but both of them excels in that position STRIKERS: Two hardworking brave and aggressive pressing forwards (how many times have I used these adjectives so far it's our DNA!) but different in style. Depú is a small, good off the ball and fast striker, and Ronaldo Tavares is a tall, strong and good in the air kind of target forward combined with pressing forward. 7. THE STRUCTURE METAMORPHOSIS TO SUCCESS Our standard structure usually falls into a 4231 category, although it can be very flexible (as I think it should always be) and we tweak it on a game-to-game basis to get the most out of the opponent’s weaknesses. For this particular match against Porto (taking into account everything we went so far about the opponents play style with 2 strikers, using a high-octane counter-pressing and tiki-taka short passing style) I went for a 433 that morphs into a 541 when defending. How and why? My string of thought for this is simple: -The "HOW": The key here is to use a Libero that will give us the chance to transmogrify between the defensive phase and the offensive phase, therefore changing from a 541 into a 433 and the other way around when we need to defend, regarding whether we have the ball or not. -The "WHY" is my favourite part. As a "why guy" I believe everything needs a reason: Defensive Phase We're not going to have a lot of the ball, that we’ve already uncovered. They're stronger, faster, smarter and we’re expected to be under pressure for long periods of time during the game. We've already established that we’re average, at the best, at marking, tackling, concentration, etc (defensive duties) so to outplay them when we're under pressure, we need to outnumber them in every part of the field. By defending in a 541 we not only place our 3 CBs against those 2 dangerous strikers as we also have 2 fullbacks and 2 “wingers” (1 WINGER and 1 wide AP) covering the wider areas. In the middle of the pitch we aim to instruct our pressing forward to close the gap behind him and defend deeper, closer to our 2 midfielders, creating a 3 vs 2 battle against the opponent, outnumbering them in the midfield and preventing them from building-up through the middle Offensive Phase we're not going to be able to pass it around and keep the ball a lot because they're going to press the hell out of us and they're good at it. We're not the best at first touch, vision, decisions, etc (offensive duties) so we have to make the most out of every possession we have. We can't just give them the ball every time we get the chance to recover it, if we do that, it will be a matter of time until we concede. Once we get the ball, we go for the safety in numbers and by morphing into a 433 it helps us to make sure we outnumber the opponent everywhere. In the build up our libero will give us that back 3 comfort to overcome the initial aggressive trigger press that they intend to apply and for that matter we'll play with a balanced left back instead of a defensive/inverted one so we can stretch the field over that left side, and on the opposite side we’ll play as usually with the offensive right fullback. Once we surpass the initial pressure, our libero turns into a defensive midfielder. TEAM INSTRUCTIONS During this article I've approached the team instructions numerous times so if you read the piece carefully and pick up the instructions along the way as I dive into them, you’ll end up with this very screen. But to make it simple for a pleasant understanding of the overall and avoid making it esoteric, we’ll go through it one by one in this chapter. The mentality is the standard of our team for every game. I see this “slider” (as I call it) as a way of pushing all the 3 team phases behaviour (in possession, out of possession and in offensive/defensive transitions) up or down all at once, influencing all those 3 collective moments. That’s why you see an increase/decrease, for example, in tempo, passing directness, etc, without even touching those when you increase/decrease that mentality “slider”. Since we’re micro-managing everything here, we don’t need to mess with the overall “slider” button, leaving it in the "Balanced" position. We create our own mentality trough the tweaks we make with singular instruction changes in those specific collective behaviours (passing style, quickness, width, etc) on those 3 moments we have available in the game: defensive moments, offensive moments and in between. With that out of the way, lets dive into those 3 moments and why did we choose those tendencies (it will always be just tendencies) for this specific match against FC PORTO: IN POSSESSION “Shorter passing”: As we have seen before in our analyst report, it’s not expected that we have a lot of time on the ball without being pressed all over the pitch, and this issue combined with the lack of quality in placing long passes (regarding vision, technique, passing composure) tells me that we need to keep it simple and short. That doesn’t mean we can’t ping some long passes, it’s just a tendency, besides we still have some players stretching the field like our winger and both our fullbacks, so we’ll still see some long passes when they make sense. NOTE: bare in mind that player traits plays their part, our Advanced Playmaker, Xadas, for example, has the "tries killer balls" trait (we'll dive into that next); “Work ball into the box”: is self-explanatory, we don’t have that much people upfront, adding to that, the fact that we’re going to play with a mid-block with 11 players defending, leaving no one upfront, means that if we rush things too much, we’ll end up messing the few little chances we have during the game. To make the most out of what we grasp during the game, we need to take our time. We have the speed (mainly Jair) and the space behind the opponents defence (FC Porto defensive line will be high), we still want to get the best out of both worlds, speedy counter attacks and quality possession whenever we can. To avoid the complete absence of long shots, we added the individual instruction to our striker to “shoot more”; By being “More Disciplined” we’re telling everyone to be “robust”, “collectively stronger” and “tactically compact” (game’s words) and that’s exactly what we need. No messing around guys, no fancy touches or cool dribbles, keep it simple, play time is in the park; “Standard width”: I thought about starting a bit narrower from the start but decided to see how it goes into the first 15/20min of the match. I believe Unai is going to use some kind of an inverted wing back so I don’t want to narrow things too much; “Play out of defence”: this was a tricky one, if it’s true that with 5 at the back we have a lot of tools to play it out smoothly, it is also true that we’ll face 2 opponent strikers that are going to press us a lot. In other hand, the way we have set up our rest attack means we won’t have a lot of people upfront so I don’t want the team to hoof it long indiscriminately. I’ll see how it pans out, if it gets really hard to play out and we pick a mistake or two, I’ll take it out; We left the “play for set pieces” out because we want those crosses to find our offensive players, instead of hitting our opponents. It’s a good strategy to control the tempo of the game if we need it. We would eventually turn it on once we got in front; We’re not forcing the “passes into space” for the same reason we’re keeping it short and the standard tempo. We’re not going to have a lot of players upfront once we get the ball back so we aim to keep it simple here. Passes will still be mixed between trough passes and passes to feet; IN TRANSITION “Counter-attack”: We still aim to counter our opponents, when possible, the way we’re going to do it is dictated by our tempo, passing directness and by playing it out from defence and working into the box make those counters a bit well thought. “Take short kicks” and “distribute to centre backs”: We have already approached this when we dived into our goalkeeper, Vinicius. He has the passing, throwing and kicking, to make a quality transition but lacks the vision, composure and decision and when under pressure I don’t trust him to make the best decision where to distribute the ball so we’re going to help him in that part of his game by telling him exactly were to place the ball, in sum, short and simple; “Slow pace down”: We need our 3 centre backs to position themselves first and get ready to receive the ball, as well as the fullback are intended to stretch the game. Besides there’s no point in rushing things out since we are defending with 11 bodies behind the ball. We need to give them time to go up on the field to position themselves; OUT OF POSSESSION “Mid-Block” and “Standard defensive line”: We want to keep it tight and compact but we don’t want to invite too much pressure to our box. In this particular match, where we are clearly the underdog, FC Porto is expected to have the ball a lot. This middle block is going to behave more has a “slightly low block” because our team will naturally go back a little more due to the momentum of the game; “Standard trigger press”: We went into this one already, this feature used in conjunction with the right individual opposition instructions means that we aim to bring the “fight” into the midfield where we are stronger and where we can outnumber our opponent with our out of possession system 5-5-0 (our pressing forward will drop a lot and make a line of 5 in the midfield); “Get stuck in” along with the collective and individual trigger press activated and paired with our midfielders and pressing forward archetype (hardworking, aggressive, tireless machines), will result in a hell of a fight, our opponents won’t even know what hit them; NOTE: Usually, I take a quick peak into the referee in our game. Considering we’re going in hard and aggressive it might be a good idea to understand what’s that specific referee style. Does he tend to show a lot of cards, is he a bit more conservative? In this case the referee is Nelson Pereira. He has shown 3 yellow cards and 0 red cards in 8 games so far. That tells me that we probably can get away with our aggressive style. “Trap outside”: We will be defending in a system that consists of a 5-5-0. Those two lines of 5 will be really close to each other (also due to the standard defensive line and mid-block), that means we will have our 4 wide players (2 fullbacks, 1 winger and 1 wide AP) really close to each other. We can benefit from that, even more if Unai Emery decides to play an Inverted wingback. Besides all that, you don’t really want to give the centre of the pitch, in front of your box to your opponents. Regarding the aerial duels, the average height is not a concern for this game, since our opponent strikers and wingers are not that tall and we have 3 centre backs ready to deal with those crosses, so we should be good on that part of the game; 8. THE SMALL DETAILS MAKE BIG DIFFERENCES To get the best out of our players into this particular shape, we'll give a quick look into the individual traits that our players have and how can we maximize them, creating synergies all across the field. Attacking players Our Advanced Playmaker (S), Xadas, is left footed and has the “cuts inside” and “tries killer balls often” traits, which is perfect to launch those quick counter attacks that we’re looking for long trough passes to the other side where we have our Winger (S), Jair, that "gets into opposition area", runs with the ball and tries to beat offside trap constantly. These two are a perfect combo for this game, aswell as Depú, our Pressing Forward who also has the trait "tries to beat offside trap". So, we can expect a lot of pinged passes from Xadas to these two. Here are some examples: Midfield players We want both our midfields to keep it as simple as possible, no running or dribbling with the ball here. Their primary mission is to win the ball back and play short and simple for the playmaker to work his magic. Once again, these traits fit like a glove on what we need for this particular match. I usually play the double pivot at the defensive midfield strata but for this specific structure, with 5 at the back, with libero making his way up, it makes sense to push them up a notch. The BWM is self-explanatory, he needs to work hard to cover a lot of ground, as the right fullback will be bombing forward the entire game. Moses is our guy. The idea behind the BBM role is my attempt to give a bit more support when in possession and when we find ourselves in front of the penalty box. Since Samu is injured, that role has to be fulfilled by Guzzo. Defence players Here it can get a bit tricky. Down the right side it looks a perfect synergy with the FB bombing forward and therefore, increasing the gap between him and the right centre back, it makes perfect sense to have a RCB that play long passes or switch the ball from one flank to the other, were the left FB is waiting. On other hand, I am not sure about the bringing the ball out…I guess we’ll have to rely on his 10 decision making to choose the right moment to dribble it out or to hoof it long. Our Libero will keep it simple and play short passes when he gets the ball, exactly as we like it in dangerous areas, and our left fullback will run down the left whenever possible. 9. REST DEFENCE If you’re an avid consumer of football and its constantly evolving terms, you have certainly heard of this term. If you haven't, I highly advise you to take a good look at this article from @Rashidi where he dives into the theory of such terms as positional football, rest defence and rest attack and merges them into the game we all know. As little as it is expected from us to attack, we still want to do so, although considering Unai will play with 2 strikers, it can be a tricky situation for us, as we try to stretch forward a little, we might get caught in a conundrum. It was exactly to avoid nasty surprises, that I set up a rest defence of two layers of 3. Confusing? I’ll explain: The image bellow illustrates a situation in which Rodrigo Gomes, our right fullback, was involved in a very common play of our team, where we rely on his quality to run and dribble down the right flank, taking an opponent out of the way and crossing the ball. In that same image you can see 6 players setting up our rest defence divided by two lines: 1st Line of defence: BWM (Moses), Libero (Nogueira), BBM (Guzzo); 2nd Line of defence: Right centre back (Pedrão), Left centre back (Toti), Left fullback (Sandro Cruz); This is why setting up a good rest defence is really important in modern football. It can be the difference between gaining back a loose ball and scoring or get countered easily and leave your back line vulnerable to fast strikers. He, who control the transitions, will dominate the game! 10. WHAT'S HAPPENING ON THE PITCH THE GAME Sometimes it can be tempting to hit the play button and just go raid the pantry, leaving the game running on its own. The thing is, you need to see what’s up, what changes does the opponent coach operates during the game. All your trouble, setting up the perfect team to face the next match, all the time you spent reading reports and analysis will mean nothing if you don’t adapt to the changes your opponent will be throwing at you. So, go make that delicious sandwich later, as someone said, “I’d rather face the hardest part of the job on an empty stomach”. I went to this game with a few doubts about my set up. One of which was the defensive line. I went with a standard defensive line but was considering going with a lower defensive line until the very last second. During the course of the game FC Porto tried a lot of killer balls over my defensive line and as soon as I saw the first two balls ending in some dangerous chances, I grabbed the mouse and was about to lowering it but…"wait…my defensive line is perfect, every time they’re trying those through balls, they are always getting caught offside". so I didn’t touch it, if it is working, don’t break it right? It kept happening over and over and the outcome was always the same, offside!! We kept the ball way better than I had anticipated, situations like this, where we outnumbered our opposition kept happening throughout the entire match. So I switched the passing range to "shorter": 11. THE GOALS AND FINAL RESULT Now, for the best part of the game. Did our team win? Did the plan work? GD CHAVES 1 - 0 FC PORTO At the beginning of the match, around minute 7’ we had to make a forced sub, our left back picked up an injury. Sandro Cruz went into the tussle. He was on the pitch for 5 minutes, and ventured ahead on the left flank to grab an assist. Even tough we scored a goal, the left back wasn't supposed to risk that run, but in the end it paid off. After this goal I dropped him into Defensive mentality. GD CHAVES 2 - 0 FC PORTO Remember when I said we went for the throw ins and offensive corners in those set pieces preparation? Well, it paid off! Minute 55' Rodrigo Gomes with a cracker!! The Defensive Winger deserves way more credit than we give him, to be honest. By this point, I’ve started to make some changes. The Left Winger, Jair, became a Defensive Winger, defending way deeper, often acting as a left defender, pushing the full-back into the middle, which gave us a line of 6 at the back, every time the ball went on that left side: And acting as a Centre Midfielder every time the ball was on the right side of the pitch, freeing the BWM to better cover the Right full-back. It was time to park the big, red, double decker London BUS. In the video below you can see the Defensive Winger in defensive transition! This play shows really well how much FC PORTO struggle to penetrate into our penalty box and get into shooting range: GD CHAVES 3 - 0 FC PORTO In the final stretch of the game, FC Porto players were really fatigued and were always late to the pressing triggers. We lowered the tempo to keep some fresh legs for the upcoming games and started wasting time. We ended up scoring a 3rd and final goal. Alex Mendez came from the bench and took his chance with a long shot and got lucky with a deflection. 3-0 would be the final score in an immaculate display by our players and a performance to remember! 12. MATCH FACTS AND FINAL THOUGHTS -In the end we’ve managed to win the game, a huge win for us agains’t one of the best teams in the league. -FC Porto ended up rotating a lot more than I was expecting, as we can see for the line up but still, they have some top tier players. -FC Porto had 8 shots total but only 1 on target and 7 long shots. That is a reflexion of how much of a struggle it was for them, to get into finishing positions. Despite that, that sole shot hit the woodwork, and that would be the equalizer so we had a tiny bit of luck on that situation. -We caught them 7 times on the offside trap, even though we played with a mid-block and standard defensive line. Our defensive line was amazing today! -In the beginning of the match cycle, I wrote about how little possession I expected to had, but we’ve managed to share the ball and had similar passes completed. It was a pleasure to write this article to you all. I hope to read your ideas and inputs about this thread and to create good discussions about what I could do differently or what I might have done wrong and by all means, feel free to share your experiences and let me know if this article helped you in any way. Cheers everyone. LAST UPDATED: 20 APRIL 2024

Hi, I've found the 4231 setup very interesting. One thing that got my attention was the fact that you have an AM and an AP in the same "stratta" (have you tested moving the AM next to the winger?). At first I thought, they must be in the same areas a lot, but since you use a cautious mentality they probably do a lot of short passes between them, it could be nice to see. How do they behave, being the two creators behind the forward and being the AP forced to get inside because of the movement of that attacking WB. Cheers.

Exactly my thoughts, hence why I find it so odd that people are actually having success with what I would have thought as two "conflicting instructions". Would like to read from anyone who thinks this two instructions could work together have some diferent point of view on that matter that could explain why?

Quickfire question #2 (TACTICS) I see some people having some degree of success using two instructions that I find confusing how they work together. How does the mid block and prevent short goalkeeper distribution work together?

Quickfire question #1 (MENTORING) Does anyone knows if this is a bug, If it has been fixed or if there's even something related to this? I've searched for it but didn't found anything about it. Young players don't appear when you try to choose them to be mentored but If you ask your assistant manager to handle the mentoring group, he might, in some cases, pull those kids, even if they are in U19's, U23's, reserves, etc has long has they are added to the trainning units with senior squad. This make me think that it is either a bug that wasn't supposed to happen or a feature that should work and apparently isn't and I think it is the second case because it makes total sense for those young players to be mentored by older players if they are trainning with them every day right? Either way should be fixed as it is very annoying, but I am not sure if SI is aware of this issue...

I find the IF (either on support or atack) very bad offensively to do this types of movement we're looking for to emulate this system. Although you can make it work at times, I don't think there is really a true role on this version of the game so far, to emulate this kind of behaviour of a second striker, defending on the flanks but positioning himself on central areas, next to the striker, when attacking. The IF does this at times, depending on a lot of other less desirable settings, as for example attacking narrower, but it's not perfect. Using a central player with SS or AM roles works better emulating the offensive movements although doesn't defend the flank as good as intended. I tried it in so many diferent ways because it's the my style of football, using one of the two wingbacks as a winger when the team is attacking, using the other wb as a inverted fullback to creat the 3 at the back shape plus the defensive midfielder, gives you a very good rest defence. It's the perfect setup for me, you keep the width with 2 wingers, you get 2 strikers and 3 midfielders, it's the best way to attack. Athough this kind of system relies a lot on the way your team behave once they loose the ball, but that's another discussion. The only hope for FM25 is that they can emulate a unique role for this type of behaviour or they re-invent the IF playstyle.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It all makes more sense now. There's only this thing that confuses me, when you say you tick the option "stay narrower" doesn't that concern only the attacking phase? I mean "when the team have the ball"? Or does that also translates somehow when he is defending? Because if that's the case, it isn't described as so

Yes I know, from your update you made it clear during the attacking phase, but what about the defensive phase, how does he behave? Does he stay constantly wide? And what about the AM on attack on a positive mentality? Does he support the midfield when you're out of possession?

That's why I said 180º (probably not the best expression, as some fundammentals still translates to the new system) because in the attacking phase it turns out to be quite diferent from the later one, specially because the role of that DLP playing completely diferent in this shape, when compared to the SV. Overall I agree with you, in 4231/4411 structure, you have an AM(A) and one of your FB bombing forward, so you will always need those two midfielders to be more of a pendulum, that supports every run and movement on the attack (FB(a) and sometimes the FB on support aswell, the 2 wingers, the AM and the CF) and you can't afford one of those two CM's to be a SV bombing forward aswell (you can in some desperate situations, but that's a diferent discussion). I'm kind of "obssessed" with transitions as I tend to find them a fundamental part of every game when I look to "modern" football. Regardless of what style you want to play or which fundamentals your team have, more than ever, they play a huge part in every game, and with all the science and data involved in the sport, it's the little details that actually translates to a 1-0 winner sometimes and that's exactly what a "defence first football tactics" means, transitions, transitions and more transitions. A couple of weeks earlier, when you tested a 4231, you played Brais Mendez as a DW. Eventually you end up tweaking him and now he's playing as a WM. Which diferences do you see from a DW to a WM? For me the DW position himself narrower when the team is defending, but he hugs the line and is way more one-dimensional when he's attacking, while the WM defends wider but like to roam a bit more in the middle of the pitch while the team is attacking. Is this correct or am I missing something here?

Of course I did, and it was a pleasant reading as always, congrats. How do you find the DLP playing the same in attacking phase as an SV? That's exactly why I was so curious about that build because I never found a way to make it work properly defensively and maybe you could've found something diferent but I guess you ended up with the same conclusion as I did. I know that's the point of the thread and that's why I enjoy it so much Don't get me wrong, I'm just gathering information since you're testing things out and since I trust your judgment on how things work in the game and translates from the real football from everything that I've been reading from you. I try to learn as much as I can from everyone and yet still testing things on my own, of course. I think the perfect balance is somewhere in the middle.