Duracellio
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SENSIBLE APPROACH TO A MATCH (PART II)
1. PREVIOUSLY ON "SENSIBLE APPROACH TO A MATCH"
On the first article of this Sensible Approach to a Match, I’ve approached the entire match cycle, against one of the best teams in the league. Although it was a wonderful win, in the end it turned out to have a bittersweet taste, not only because it was a league cup game, and the teams tend to ease a bit on those, but also because FC Porto ended up rotating a few key players for that game.
The good news is, we have another game against them, this time for the championship!
*Quick recap*, in my approach to our first clash, I chose to adapt the team in the way we defend, to face those two dangerous forwards, transforming our usual shape of a 433 (commonly called 4231) with an offensive midfielder into a 433 with a defensive midfielder when in possession and a 541 when defending. However, despite these defensive changes, we kept the offensive phase the same, short, patient passes and tempo, keeping it simple on the majority of the phases and areas, leaving the creativity to 2 players, always supported by a solid defensive shape, cohesion and hard workers behind them (I can’t emphasize this enough since it’s the key for success, in my point of view) which ended up being compatible with our defensive shape. It would be way harder for everyone to play a high-octane tempo, with direct passes, since it is not the way we usually play and the fact that we were defending with a lot of people behind the ball, would make it very hard to find enough legs upfront to kick it long and rush things out.
2. THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
This introduction is important to explain that, although we’ve adapted to face our opponent, we haven’t changed that much as it may seem at first glance. The way I see it, keeping it plain and simple for you, my fellow football manager reader, there’s 4 ways of approaching a match: Adapting offensively, adapting defensively, both, or not adapting at all imposing our football with the confidence that the quality available is enough to master any strategy that the opponent throws at us.
At the moment, in this Portuguese league, after the anual pre-season analysis of all the teams we’re competing against, I’ve estimated that we’ll have to adapt our way of defending against 4/5 teams (either because of the offensive power they have at their disposal or because they play with a system that requires us to be cautious and guarantee defensive superiority, as is the case with Unai Emery’s FC Porto and their 442), adapting offensively against 3/4, in most cases because they’re a though side to break, which leaves us with 9/10 teams that we are expected to win with more or less difficulty without having to adapt considerably (this considering that we always do our homework and use our “sensible approach” to the matches, obviously).
3. THE MATCH
We already went through most of the match cycle for this very opponent in an extensive way, so I’m not going to bore you with the environment, the coach, the data hub, the opposition instructions, etc. (If you haven’t read the PART I of this thread, I highly advise you to scroll up this page and start from the beginning so this PART II can make more sense).
Something that kept ringing in my head was the fact that in our previous match against FC Porto, we’ve adapted heavily defensively. What would have happened if we hadn’t adapted so much, in terms of positioning, but rather in terms of defensive behaviour, maintaining the same offensive positions (our usual 4231)? The funny part about FM being a game is, we can try it out and have an answer! That’s exactly what I did.
It would be obviously a risky attempt of taking on the title contender without the due care, so we very welcome every detail, as little as it could be, where we could take some kind of advantage. A first glance into the 442 strategies with the two wide offensive midfielders in the AM strata, allows us to immediately notice the lack of players in the middle of the pitch. That’s it! That’s where the GOLD is. I thought about turning the focus down the middle instruction on, but since I have 3 creative players in the midfield (regista, advanced playmaker and attacking midfielder) they're already a ball magnet, so there's no need for it, the team will play it naturally narrow at times.
Resorting to our roles, leaving our 4231 untouched, we aim to morph into a 343 in possession, keeping the principles we talked about in the first article, building up with 3 defender agaisnt 2 forwards, to face the initial pressure without hoofing the ball; 4 midfielders in the middle of the pitch to outplay their 2 midfielders, and 3 upfront, to stretch the pitch with two “wingers” (one natural winger on the left and one right wingback) and the tip of the spear, fast and hard-working striker. These are the roles we’ve used to achieve that.
We went with our usual 4231
Offensive Phase
During some moments in the game, you could clearly see the advantage we went for, by overwhelming them and focusing our build up through the middle:
You can see FC Porto trying to counter this and trying to even the numbers in the middle of the pitch by narrowing the right winger and the leftback, this last one probably has a man mark instruction on our AP, Alex Mendez because it's not a common defensive behaviour. These man marking is leaving our wingback Rodrigo Gomes with hectares of space since their left winger can't always track back in time to close down on him!
We went to explore that gap numerous times. Once I noticed this behaviour I've changed the focus to attack through the right flank. By doing this and using these roles in this particular shape, we ended up drawing FOUR PLAYERS out of position, which 2 of them were the centre midfielders! This happened because their left winger can't track back fast enough, leaving gaps, which are filled by the midfielders, trying to cover for their winger. Due to their high press strategy to get the ball back as fast as possible, they expose a lot of defensive positions, we've managed to get a 3v3 agaisnt FC Porto defenders, inside their own penalty box, at times:
I have to tell you, I’m a big fan of the way the Wingback and the Advanced Playmaker on the wing behave, the synergy between them and the way they keep interchanging their positioning inside/ouside between them, confusing the opposition instructions, it’s exactly the way I like to see the teams play.
Here’s an example of these movements:
Due to our quality (or lack of it) this specific play didn’t end up in a goal for us but it would pay off in a very similar play between those two:
GOAL
GD CHAVES 1 - 0 FC PORTO
Defensive Phase
Defensively we kept our 451 shape, giving FC Porto a though time to break our 2 low defensive lines. That’s how our team is used to play agaisnt biggest opponents and has the cohesion and tactical knowledge at the maximum, it translates in moments where we are under pressure for some periods of time but are perfectly comfortable without the ball. After scoring the first goal and being ahead 1-0, it’s inevitable that we’re going to be overwhelmed by them, they’re going to throw the numbers at us, they have to, so we might as well embrace that and change what can be viewed as a possible hard time for us, into an advantage. I've lowered the lines together and uped the tempo a bit, by inviting our opponent into our own half, the goal here, after scoring and being ahead 1-0, is to hit them in the counter, we have the “weapons” to do that.
In the image below we se Otávio (the left centreback) bringing the ball forward, due to the lack of passing options available, that's exactly what we want from them:
Transition Phase
We completely changed our strategy as soon as the score was in our favour, and started to hit our opponent with these counters, over and over:
In this first example the counter didn't exactly work out, but the strategy ended up paying off, giving us what we were looking for, the safety of a second GOAL, in the shape of an amazing counter attack!
GOAL
GD CHAVES 2 - 0 FC PORTO
As they kept exposing their defense in the last 15/20minutes, that led to a final result of 3-0. We ended up with 40% posession, when we had almost 55% in the first 30minutes of the game, which translates perfectly the way we morphed during the match.
I highlight two key moments about this match. The first was definitely the preparation of the game, exploiting their weaknesses and the second was reacting during the game. As soon as we got the first goal, I went for counter, lowering the lines and inviting them to our own half. This could end up in the 1-1 for them, but it was worth the gamble, in the end it is a probability game, sometimes they fall for you, sometimes for your opponent.
Note: During the game, I noticed they were going all in through their right flank, were we have our left explosive winger, Jair, that is a very hard-working and aggressive, for the better and the worse.
He had a yellow card already and had “aggressive” body language. Adding that to the fact that we were already 1-0 and our starting midfield trio had 1 defensive midfielder, 1 all-round and 1 creative, we’ve slided the creative midfielder to the wing, replacing Jair, moved our captain, the all-round midfielder, Samu, up into the AM strata and subbed in Moses, the perfect “Kante” role to help our defensive midfielder. By changing the players and the roles we completely changed our midfield and our strategy (as we lowered lines, and upped the tempo a notch to hit them in the counter) and gave our team the tools to give what the game was asking from us by opting for an aggressive and more defensive midfield.
With 1 sub we change the entire strategy
4. MATCH FACTS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
In the end it was another great win for us, against an awesome opponent, this time for the championship!
Hope you guys enjoyed reading the chapter two of this Sensible Approach to a Match series, more is expected to come, next time we’ll have a conference league qualifying round against Newcastle where we can dive into the pros and cons of a two-legged match and the differences of approach between a league match and a two-legged knockout match and (spoiler alert) a big loss agaisnt another title contender, we'll dive together into what we could have done diferently.
Cheers everyone, be safe.
LAST UPDATED 18 MAY 2024
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Em 25/04/2024 em 15:56, billmatic disse:
Brilliant write up, definitely taught me a lot, but I want to ask how you would categorise each team? What would you look for to determine a low difficulty team from a medium difficulty team?
Hi Bill, sorry for the delay in replying. It's been crazy lately.
I'd say there's a few tools the game provide you. The average values of your team compared to the league, that would give you an idea where you stand, the media expectation, or season preview is also a good indicator, the reports you'll get from scouting your next opponents will reveal a lot of the players stats, you can compare by position for example or to keep it simply by starting 11 vs starting 11.
I think once you get emerged into your "world" you get to know every team in your league and end up knowing their players, who's better than you, who's not, and who's at your level.
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2 horas atrás, HanziZoloman disse:
A M A Z I N G
Just stumbled over this one and read the introduction. It’s brilliant and I will dive into it in the days to come. Great one!
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
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1 hora atrás, Los_Culés disse:
Great, now I will study all my opponents and play like 3 matches per month
.
On a serious note, awesome post Durecellio.
P.S. The png/jpeg pictures in this thread are not displaying for me when browsing with my laptop but they all display correctly in my phone, what can be the cause?
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 ?
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Em 21/04/2024 em 12:48, gmanthos96 disse:
Nice! It would be interesting to make an approach on training too!
Thanks. It's an interesting idea aswell. Feel free to share some tips if you think of something.
18 horas atrás, Fox-7- disse:Remarkable write up, lots of valuable information here, even for experienced players!
For example, in many years of playing FM, I have never thought of looking at the opposing manager's profile to obtain useful information...even though I love doing micromanagement in my saves for some time now, there is always a further aspect that has never been considered thanks to which I can go even deeper
7 horas atrás, vrig disse:Excellent read, thanks for that.
So weird that this thread and that other one popped up about a week after I decided to do a 'horses for courses' save. Also that you started with a match against Uni Emery's 424, which has been the bane of my existence in this version of FM
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
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Em 19/04/2024 em 21:42, TheMartello disse:
Will read the whole piece tomorrow, but on first sight I miss the Team Instructions/Player instructions.
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
19 horas atrás, naufal husain disse:Always amaze with people can manage micro tactics every match and get the result, amazing article!
Thanks mate. Glad you like it
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Hi everyone, just wrote an article about this. Maybe you can find something usefull there.
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- Popular Post
- Popular Post
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.
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"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;
Spoiler
- 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);
Spoiler
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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.
Spoiler
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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.
Spoiler
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.
Spoiler
- 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.
Spoiler
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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:
Spoiler
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):
Spoiler
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.
Spoiler
- 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.
Spoiler
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
Spoiler
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
Spoiler
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
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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.
Spoiler
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
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Em 12/03/2024 em 08:38, Novem9 disse:
Season 2, 4231
My manager for this save has a good reputation, so after 1st season I moved to Sampdoria (10st place in season 23/24). Sampdoria had some good players, but there is a difficult budget situation. So no chance for a good transfers. Team lose some key players, like GK which rate was 4 starts and Serie A player rank.
As I said, 100% the same TIs. I used a clear DM in this formation because we have just 2CBs and right WB support attacks.
AM still has no playmaker role. Btw, I forgot to mention, AM(s) mentality in FM24 is not cautious:
It's positive! And this is amazing! I really like to see how SI rethink PI mentality in FM24.
I really like pair of WB(a) + Ap(s) and this formation is no exception. Also I noticed Wingers are not just a runners. IW started to be more specific roles, but Wingers more universal.
28 goals against. Despite the fact that my CBs were far from the best in the league. I also critically lacked a striker who could to decide a clear moments.
xG:
Chances:
Shots against:
Player stats:
Conclusions: the team is able to be competitive with a cautious mentality and without pressure in FM24. The goal was to get into the top 4. Although in terms of the level of players, I would say about the top 8. Sampdoria was even the first, I can complain about the injury of our main goalkeeper.
Also I used plan B without CAM:
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.
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1 hora atrás, crusadertsar disse:
It can work but its not ideal. You will get best results from "prevent short" instruction when using gegenpress type tactics and formation. For example a top heavy formation like 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-4 coupled with high defensive line and high line of engagement. Not to say that it wont block with "midblock", just wont get the best results from it.
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?
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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?
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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...
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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.
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8 horas atrás, crusadertsar disse:
That's one of the reasons I instruct Mendez to stay narrower, for his defensive positioning. At the same time as a WM he is more likely to cover the flank. Especially with "close down more" instruction active. Think of WM role as a wider BBM role. Adding "roam from position" instruction might also be a good idea.
Regarding the AMC, I am comfortable playing him on Attack duty just because it's Oyarzabal due to his high Workrate. He works his socks off in every single game. If it was any other player then I would probably switch to Support duty with more aggressive individual instructions to get forward when in possession.
@Cloud9 I know right! He is a tremendous player
I take it "evasive" is a good thing? Nice!
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
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20 minutos atrás, crusadertsar disse:
Regarding the WM, the narrower positioning and roaming is exactly why I love the role and prefer it over DW. I need him to play as a sort of wide box to box midfielder with more liberty to go forward and support th AM in the middle. And that's exactly what Mendez does for me. He alone adds so much much to the system, I am kind of worried what will happen when I lose him next summer as his contract will expire. But luckily I acquired Aimar on relatively cheap (for 30 million when Pamplona got relegated last season). He is even more technical than Mendez. But unfortunately his Work Rate is not quite as good.
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?
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1 hora atrás, crusadertsar disse:
Haha, I like SV a lot but I needed a solid double pivot in midfield and SV wouldn't do that for me, especially with new changes to it's behavior in FM24. With the BWM and DLP I get what I am looking for. The tactic is far from perfect. Still tweaking it. As a matter of fact I'm wondering whether I might need to change WM to attack duty or maybe add "get further forward" instruction. To better achieve 4-2-3-1 in attack.
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?
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2 minutos atrás, crusadertsar disse:
Well I wouldn't say 180 turn. Did you even read the update? It plays the same as 4-2-3-1 in attacking phase due to mentalities and roles. But has the added benefit of a more solid defensive shape. That's the point of this thread afterall
I experimented with both 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-1-1 over the length of the season and gotta say 4-4-1-1 version is way better. It leaks less goals and performs way better against elite teams in Champions League. 4-2-3-1 almost got me sacked in fact. Why don't yoy try it for yourself?
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.
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@RDF Tactics In your tests, before you get to those 2 AM's combo, did you tried the defensive winger?
How does your AM's track back with the opponents FB?
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@crusadertsarI'm a bit confused, is this an update to the 4231 Athletic by Valverde? It looks like a 180º turn from what you had
I was excited about that build you had...you were onto something
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9 minutos atrás, RDF Tactics disse:
exactly that. We did manage to get confirmation that especially against a back 3, your winger will look to mark the opposition wing-back. So regardless of me trying to be narrow etc, my winger will always mark the wing-back.
So this might actually be help for people creating a defensive tactic here. Can see against Napoli who playing a back 3, my two wingers are so wide marking their wing-backs. So we can't be narrow and compact to force play wide as my wingers are already wide so Napoli will look to play through the middle instead which I want the opposite
Others may have a solution against a back 4, but even against a back 4, my wingers we're never narrow soon enough. It got to a point I was tweaking so much that I was removing stuff that I did like just to be able to achieve a very narrow two-banks of 4 block. Against Fiorentina, my RB and RM are doubling up on their winger when it's exactly who we want them to play it to so we can trap them. But, we can't trap them wide when we're defending in that area. MY RB and RM should be closer to their RCB and RCM - then once the ball is played to the winger, that would be our trigger to press.
This has left a huge space in my right channels. Both though the RM and RCM and the RB and RCB.
In this image as well, we're covering the whole width of the pitch when we're supposed to be narrow
Of course, these things were repeated time and time rather than just being a moment of concentration loss. The 4222 box gives me also various defensive shapes, depending on the situation. When opposition build from the goalkeeper, it's a 4-2-2-2 which naturally narrow and forces wide. As we start to drop, we start falling into a 4-4-2
Got it!
This post just called my attention because I found myself in the same very predicament when using a 442 (aside the poor defensive performance that the 2 strikers provide, defensively, but we'll come to that).
I got to a point, and here I just see myself in your "frustration", that It wasn't about winning anymore, I just wanted to see "real" defensive positional football. So I can relate really well to this post.
I find your solution to populate the center of the pitch more like a last resort, if you allow me to say. By abandoning the 2 wide players, for the sake of defending narrow, you'll loose what the wide players gave you in this system, on the attack. I get it though, in the end you loose some to win some.
Has I imagine you've been playing a lot with this 4222 narrow. So how do you see your 2 AM's defending? Don't they neglect the pressure on FB's at times? Specially when those FB are really offensive. I noticed that sometimes they just let the opponent FB go all the way down the line because it wasn't they're natural area to defend/press or mark, they can only press or mark so far so they didn't really cover much the wide areas outside the box? Do you usually see this behavior?
I'll share my temporary solution to this (as I'm still not 100% happy with it). The DW gave that balance between attacking down the flanks and defend really narrow! I don't know if you have tried it in your tests but it really works as i've just wrote. They tend to be way more offensive than one would have thought (as the name is literally "defensive" wingers) and when it comes to defend, they really narrow the pitch for the opponent. It was really a pleasure to see some realistic football.
Now with that out of the way, my current problem is the way the 2 strikers position themselves when the team is defending, they're just terrible, it's impossible to play with 2 strikers currently. In modern football, when playing in a 442 shape, that defends deep or in a middle block, those 2 strikers defend as CM's, pushing the opponent to wide areas of the pitch. I'm trying an assymetric SS PF/CF, but still not sure about it has I don't have enough of a sample to take conclusions out of it.
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15 horas atrás, RDF Tactics disse:
So this post has been a major influence in the tactic I'm creating next. As someone who prefers the more aggressive off-the-ball systems, I made it a mission a have something more reserved (not completely defensive).
I first created a 4-4-1-1 but my team often created weird off-the-ball shapes. As can see in the image below, my RM (Pipa) is in their LWBs world. We sort of know why this happens, least against a 3 atb formation. But this in turn, even against back 4 systems, made our tackle % really bad. Despite being top, dominating games, fewest conceded and few shots against, I just could not ignore this when watching. Talking about winning in the way you set out to, this was just a big bug of mine.
After reading this post when initially creating the tactic, I was also reading some IRL analysis of mid blocks in a 442/4411 and really wanted this narrow 442 shape that guides play nicely out wide. In a unit and shifting across as a team. My guiding play into wider areas whilst keeping the central compact and narrow is what I badly wanted as well as my rest attack idea.
After trying out many different roles and instructions to eliminate this, it just wouldn't happen. I had a theory that the switch I had to make was making a narrow formation so I have switched to a 4-2-2-2 and things are looking a LOT better. We finally have that defensive shape I was looking for. Now we have someone that resembles more of the compact 442. With team shifting across as we guide play out wide.
We now have the highest tackles won ratio in the league! Our OPPDA is top as well (which isn't exactly measure high press in FM). Including a lovely 11-0
I do like that aspect of meticulously watching your defensive patterns. Initially, I started with an Anchor over BWM as well as no counter-press but had counter on. After a few games, I felt the Anchor was actually quite determinantal (in this system, not generally) as he would stay in his position not looking to create space in front of our defence - but it also meant he didn't shift over as well as the BWM which was important in gaining possession. Creating that numerical advantage out in wider areas. But counter-press has also been helpful in this system, especially if we lose possession in the central areas where we're looking to play *for now*. We couldn't regroup into our positions quickly or well enough as their in advanced positions (I guess). Still not sure whether get stuck in or not. So currently using it in away games as I feel we're a bit drop off'ish.
Sorry for the large screenshots and message but was just sharing as the post initially inspired creating this system
Cheers for the share, sounds really interesting
Let me see if I got your post right first, so I can develop more about it.
You were trying to create a realistic way of defending on a 442/4411, which consists in keeping the two blocks of 4 compact either between them and also compact on the field, convering center areas. Having the winger playing an important rule when the opponent shifts the game from one side to the other, since he has to be convering the far center side, instead of just huging the line, Is that it?
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12 horas atrás, crusadertsar disse:
Thanks for reading friend I actually made a few adjustments to the tactic since and some of those roles don't apply to it anymore. Some of those roles were the ones I was experimenting with at the time. It was an earlier, "less-refined" version of the tactic if you will. I intend to put out an update with my thought about the new tactic and roles. You will see it will make more sense and better defensive balance. BWM is great role in a counter-attacking tactic actually. Its a bit a risky true, but you need a bit of risk when absorbing pressure and hitting the opposition on the break. In fact DLP and BWM have been my favourite role pairing in a 4-2-3-1 since FM21 at least.
Awesome! Can't wait to read the update
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Em 31/01/2024 em 02:36, crusadertsar disse:
Master of The Art of Football Pragmatism
Seeing the latest news that Jose Mourinho has been sacked by AS Roma owners, has got me thinking. I don’t think “Pragmatic” managers are as much appreciated in football as they should be. Specifically in Jose’s case he was very much loved by Roma fans because he managed to achieve some pretty great things (winning Europa Conference title in 2022 and becoming runner-up for Europa League in 2023) with a club which previously was going through the biggest slump in its long history. Sure they have had less than great results in Serie A this season (sitting in 8th position as of writing this) but then one must surely take into account that Italian Serie A has been among the most competitive European football leagues with 4 different clubs winning the title in as many years.
And yet Mourinho’s Roma has achieved some pretty interesting statistics such as being amongst the teams with least league goals conceded. Unfortunately, also in his 96 games with AS Roma Mourinho’s team has also become the Roma side with the least points per game ratio (1.61). This just shows what kind of coach Mourinho has always been. Not one who is overly reckless or aggressive in his tactics or one who is too concerned with style. In fact he has always been a very pragmatic manager whose only concern is winning each game (and one goal difference is usually all it takes) and not to create a flashy show. Even the latest European disappointment where Roma came up short in Europa Final was a match that hinged on a single goal! Roma were one penalty goal away from walking away as victors. But that is the fickle nature of football and sports in general. I just wish that club owners were less fickle sometimes.
Where am I going with this you may ask? I guess I wanted to use an example of one pragmatic manager to highlight another Master of The Art of Football Pragmatism. Ernesto Valverde whose management of Athletic Bilbao has been stellar to say the least. The Basque manager has always been very consistent over the last two seasons with Athletic Club. But again due to the nature (or lack of style of you will) of football that he has his team playing he has not been getting the attention and praise that he deserves. It’s also interesting in the context of FM24 because I think it’s a tactical system that can be translated into the game rather well. Especially in this year’s version of FM which had a lot attention given to Positional Play. Athletic is not a side that plays flashy possession football like Man City or Barcelona but instead implements an interesting pragmatic style that blends directness with smart role rotations and gives much-needed purpose to possession. Even more interestingly, Valverde’s tactics change from game to game (as is the case with most pragmatic managers) to adapt to the opposition. Even his often-used 4-2-3-1 formation is a hybrid one that plays differently in possession and looks more like a 433 during attack.
Ernesto Valverde - The perfect image of managerial intensity.
Valverde’s tactical flexibility and willingness to adjust the way his team plays against each opponent is only one side of Football Pragmatism. At Athletic Club this is reflected in how he has his side play with “controlled directness”. Despite using the same 4-2-3-1 for most matches, the team will play very differently depending on the opponent. They tend to take a more possession-dominant approach and try to control the match when faced with weaker opponent who sit back and defend more. On the other hand Athletic Club switch to a more defensive/direct strategy against a superior possession-hungry team like Barcelona. A perfect example was the way Bilbao dismantled the Catalan side during last week’s Copa Del Ray Quarter Finals.
The other side of pragmatism, and what made Valverde so successful not just at Bilbao but at other clubs like Olympiacos, is the manager’s ability to work with and get the best out of limited personnel. At Olympiakos it was making a club from a lower level league competitive in the Champions League. While at Athletic Club this is due to their famous policy to only using players from the Basque country. Furthermore, Ernesto likes to use mostly the same First XI at Athletic Club. Within his smart and flexible tactic, they have been thriving.
Ernesto Valverde’s pragmatism is a perfect fit at Athletic Bilbao. It seems like a match made in heaven and it is. Valverde’s reserved and balanced approach to football as well as his ability to get the best results from rather limited resources is what led him to manage in Bilbao on 4 occasions now. And with him at the helm the club has been reaching Continental football qualification spots more consistently than ever before.
Defend Like A 4-4-2
Out of possession Athletic Club tend to defend in a compact 4-4-2 midblock. Here you have wingers dropping back and the attacking midfielder pushing up alongside the striker. The two banks of four has historically been one of the most reliable defensive strategies. Not only does it provide coverage across the whole width of the pitch but is also very centrally compact (especially with the “play narrow” instruction). Additionally, Athletic Club is perfectly suited to this formation because most of their wide attacking players possess high work rate attributes (at least 14 or more). The 4-4-2 shape allows Athletic Bilbao to have key moments of ball control (in midfield) even in matches where they are not expected to dominate overall possession. It is a perfect basis for fluid counter-attacking. So even if the opponent has more of the ball, it is where they have it that matters more. Athletic Bilbao can win if their opponent cannot create anything centrally and is rather restricted to trying low-percent chances from the wings (that Copa Del Ray game against Barcelona being the perfect example). By tempting the opponents to send the ball out wide, Bilbao’s hard-working wide players can then close them down against the touchline. While Bilbao does not press high, they do tend to win the ball back in advanced wide areas.
The Fast Transition Phase
Winning the ball high up the field is one thing, but it is of no use if such advanced turnovers don’t lead to quality chances created during transition phase. Bilbao’s 4-4-2 defensive shape acts as an important springboard which makes Valverde’s Basque side so dangerous in attacking transitions. Basically as soon as Bilbao lose possession, their wingers run forward through the channels between the opposition fullback and the centreback. In turn, the central striker attempts to run in behind the defence. At the same time, the attacking midfielder (usually the club icon Munian) looks to find pockets of space between the lines to receive the ball. Munian’s off the ball, quickness, passing and vision are key here. For as soon as he gets on the ball, at least three attacking outlets, via the striker and the two wingers, become open as his passing options. The speed and, even more importantly, off the ball movement ability of these attackers, is what makes the tactic so dangerous during the transition phase. Their movement also helps in dragging the defenders apart and create more open spaces for Bibao players to exploit.
Bilbao During Possession
Although Athletic Club’s formation is usually a type of 4-2-3-1 on paper, the team essentially turns into a 4-3-3 while in possession. When playing against inferior or equal strength sides, Bilbao tend to dominate possession. But it’s not all about higher possession numbers. What allows them to break down even the most staunch defensive sides is the sweet combination of attacking movements and wingplay afforded by their hybrid shape. The strength of Valverde’s tactic is really in creating and exploiting space smartly through both wide and half-space channel movements. The two midfielders (the AMC and right DM Volante) are both instrumental in this. These two attack-focused midfielders are granted the most positional freedom, to push forward, and generally roam around and pop up in areas where they are least expected.
In an above video, you can clearly see how Bilbao can rapidly create an overload on one flank while at the same time flooding the opposition box with bodies to finish off any resulting chances. The RCM (or DM really because Bilbao’s midfielders tend to sit rather deep) Oihan Sancet is also very capable of exploiting the gaps that appear due to his good off the ball ability and acceleration. The combination of advanced and deep runners is utilized very well in Bilbao’s formation.
Thanks to the positional play rotation changes in FM24, the movements of AMC, SV are much more intelligent and complimentary. As the Segundo Volante makes his late forward run, the AMC will move aside to open a channel. This behavior will free up SV to push up alongside AMC and essentially become a second number 10 role. Because of this Bilbao’s hybrid 4-3-3 (or 4-1-4-1 to be more precise) in possession and attack can be recreated in the game.
The two fullbacks are encourages to run forward (both have “gets forward” trait in the game) but they usually do this via late timed runs rather than then aggressive overlapping movements. Instead you see the wingers acting as the main width generators by staying high and wide. They do so in a rather free, open fashion and are not constrained by typical winger behavior of only dribbling and crossing. Rather when the ball is on his side the near-side winger will hug the touchline while his far-side partner will move a little inwards to become better available to passes from the midfield. This only happens in the final third though. Such behavior is a bit more tricky to recreate in-game but perhaps an IW or WM roles could work. I believe that these two roles are better suited to represent such complex movement than either the standard Winger or Inside Forward (which might start cutting in too early).
The central striker behavior is a bit harder to narrow down as we often see Inaki Williams (who is often the main striker) drifting wide or even dropping deep. I think either a simple Pressing Forward (A) or perhaps DLF (A) with added roam more instruction would be a good way to represent such movements. The reason we see the natural winger Inaki Williams selected as the primary striker is probably due to his key attribute strengths – Acceleration, Pace and Workrate which would indeed make him into a great Pressing Forward.
As you can see in the set-up of roles and instructions, Bilbao’s attack is focused through the centre of the pitch (due to the concentration of attack duties there) while the wings provide support and work in tandem with fullbacks to create overloads and defend wide. This set-up embodies the “controlled directness” of Valverde’s tactic while staying away from pure Route One “cross and hope for the best” football. When the team is a heavy favourite and the opposition is expected to sit back in a parked bus then adding work into box, slowing down tempo and making passing shorter would be more suited. These instructions would aid in keeping possession away from opposition defenders (who are trying to waste time anyway) as well as generate more chances through carefully working the ball into final third. Some of the roles or duties could also be altered to better control possession. Switching SV from Attack to Support duty for one, or giving the front striker a supporting role.
At the end of the day, to be a good pragmatic Defence-First manager in the vein of Mourinho and Valverde one must not shy away from changing the changing the game plan. It’s rather amazing how a simple 4-2-3-1 can be so flexible so as to play direct forward-moving football in one match and the more patient controlled possession in another. All with a simple change in a few roles and instructions.
I really enjoyed reading this article, has always you are in line with my thoughts about playing FM in a "realistic" way.
Has I was reading the post, some questions poped in my mind about 3 roles. I would like to know a bit more in depth about the idea behind those specific roles instead of another ones.
BWM: Why the BWM? I found myself questioning the chain of thought that led you to this role because if the idea is to ensure a safe mid block, isn't a BWM a bad choice for that matter? As he is way too agressive without the ball, therefore disrupting the lines when you are defending? I would have thought a DM (D) or a build up role like a DLP, on games your opponent won't press much in your third, would be a better choice to maintain that mid 4/5 compact and patient;
AP(A): I think I understand the idea behind the chosen role but would like to make sure. Did you went for the AP instead of, for example an AM, because the AP can ocupy more wide spaces and play more as a second striker in attack than the AM? And therefore make it easier for the SV to claim his space on his right side? I find the AP on attack doesn't defend has well has an AM on support, but at the same time he won't attack those spaces as well as the AP does so....it's a game of wins and losses here, I understand;
PF: Reading your description of the role that Iñaki plays on Athletic, I really thought you'd come up with a Complete forward, playing deep receiving the ball or stretching the defensive line, playing in the middle or down the flanks, a striker that can do it all during the game. What's your thought behind the PF?
Thank you.
PS: Btw, congratulations on that article you wrote on the Byline about how to better defend in FM24, pleasant reading, as always!
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Hi @Cleon,
I was digging in this topic for some answers regarding mentoring has I've noticed what I think it is a bug, and saw that you're kind of experienced on this part of the game.
I noticed something about mentoring and was wondering if anyone else was talking about this but couldn't find anything about it:
25 minutos atrás, Duracellio disse:Those young players indeed 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...
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Em 30/01/2024 em 12:54, CapitalismReimagined disse:
I think this is incorrect. Putting them in training units does not allow them to be mentored by senior players. Instead, selecting them for a senior match would allow them to appear in the mentoring pool... I think
This is half true.
Those young players indeed don't appear on the window 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...
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I take it "evasive" is a good thing? Nice!
I was excited about that build you had...you were onto something
Sensible approach to a match| MATCH PREPARATION |
in Tactics, Training & Strategies Discussion
Posted · Edited by Duracellio
Thank you HanziZoloman for such kind words!
Sometimes a loss isn't exactly a failure, and a win isn't exactly a success, the hard part is acknowledge them. In this particular match, we've won (the goal here isn't exactly about the final result) but at times we were very lucky to keep the 1-0 and we pulled out a second goal in a counter-attack. It was a gamble and it all came down to wether the ball hit the post and go in or go out (they've hit 3 times our posts). I know luck is a part of the game, but when you gamble in some parts of the match, you loose control of the strategic side of it. The same principles apply to a defeat, you can loose a game and do everything perfectly!
Sometimes you do need that small percentage of luck combined with homework and thinkering behind a match, the point I am trying to make is, although we've won, and our strategy worked flawless at times, I can't say for sure that it was a success (the final result 3-0 is a bit misleading) because we depended way too much on some luck and took a gamble, especially after having an advantage. The proof of that is the next game I'm bringing, I got a bit intoxicated by success with this win agaisnt Porto and went with the same strategy agaisnt a similar 442, got careless and it wasn't pretty hehe.
Personally I feel confident preparing and approaching a match, but I feel that I still need to improve a lot in the strategy to adopt in X scenario that my opponent throws at me during the match.
PS: Some images and gifs weren't loading correctly, I think I've resolved the issue, please let me know if someone has trouble in seeing everything, Cheers.