Rashidi

I think is the basic crux of the issue. Some read “Defensive Mentality” and assume it’s meant to reflect a defensive style of football. Others read mentality and only see risk affecting decisions taken on the pitch. And this inherently has been a issue with how mentality has been presented over various versions of the game. I really hope that SI consider a fundamental UI shift. Remove the word “mentality” and just change it to a colour that reflects risk. As long as the word “defensive” stays there people will make assumptions. Styles of football - defensive or offensive come from a combination of sliders like defensive line, line of engagement and pressing intensity. That fundamentally defines your style of football. The choice of roles and duties then allow you to define how a team uses and controls the space that will be played on. It’s time SI ditch the words attacking, defensive etc.

Yes that is correct

What you are seeing is a UI bug that has been in there for a long time.

Well the keeper fluffed his very first shot against in the Serie A so I guess it was nerves because he produced some outstanding matches in the next few. He was rated 7.6 even when we lost one game. Overall though he was solid between the sticks against Atalanta whom we destroyed 3-0. Really happy with our keeper signing. Stands tall when needed, Loads of solid reflex saves and is already just behind Mike Maignan and Onana as the most effective keepers in Serie A. And, no you cant access previous season chalkboard stats from within the game. If you want to keep them you need to export them before Jun 23 out to an excel spreadsheet. Personally i am > 50 years and my days of using excel sheets for playing FM died in the days of CM. I don't want to play FM with an excel spreadsheet. Its actually pretty easy to export and keep them in an excel spreadsheet.

And if people feel that a feature in the game isn't working as intended, please raise it as a bug in the appropriate forum. Then SI can investigate, and if its the case, it will be addressed. As far as I am aware it isn't.

That's not proof. And we don't encourage people to post videos on the training and tactics forums. Why is it wrong? 1. Each player/roles closing down zone can be different and defensive lines and lines of engagement can affect these. 2. Opposition instructions tight marking only kick in when a player enters the zone of the player. Whether he picks the player up depends on the marking, positioning, anticipation, concentration attributes plus other factors - will the player pick him up because it will lead to breaking of the team shape? 3. Opposition players do get tight marked within zones, otherwise I wouldnt be able to consistently get certain kinds of fullbacks intercepting the ball before it gets to the winger. If you want someone tracked across the pitch it can't be done via OI tightmarking or team tight marking since this is zonally based. Players can also decide in game not to do it, if for example: a player is tired, complacent. Players will sometimes not adhere to instructions, which is why you could have different matches using the same team. And then you have hidden attributes that can affect a player, how he handles pressure for example. Even if someone were to give every player 15 for all attributes, you will still find that some players will behave differently from others. In future, if its a discussion you want to have, then do it without posting videos as a point.

OUR SEARCH FOR A KEEPER I just finished the stream spent the first 5 minutes muted which is a normal thing for me..erm The search for a keeper was focused on looking at several metrics 1. Conceded/90 v Expected goals conceded per 90 2. Expected goals Prevented vs Save ratio The first metric depends on your team and you need to do a deeper dive. The second metric is faster but less accurate but at least you get a picture of whether a keeper is reliant. We whittled it down to a couple of keepers. There were several contenders, one was Russo who happened to have some crazy numbers in Serie B and we decided to bring him on as a backup. For less than 1m that was a no brainer. When you scout players depending on your skin you can get detailed scattergroups and polygons. With tato these are found within a tab. A young brazilian keeper caught our eye. By 18 he had had two full seasons of football with a top flight brazilian club. His expected goals prevented vs save ratio indicated he was good. | The media description of him was "Commanding Goalkeeper" we signed him for 17million which is the most I have ever paid for a player ( i never scrooge on keepers btw), and then once he joined the club his description changed to Wonderkid and his value went from 17million to around 70million.

I like to have players with a mix. And yeah it is one of the filters from Scouts opinion of players style.

I am not trying to convert people to it, I still think people should play the game the way they want to play it. And if people feel attributes are the way to go, I am all for it. I am just doing this so people don't forget that stats can be just as important. And I think people who can incorporate both an understanding of attributes and statistical discovery will have a lot more fun playing the game.

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Stop linking videos please you can do them in the fansites section I am hiding posts with videos inside them.

THE GOALKEEPERS DILEMMA Traditionally assessing a keeper through stats has been difficult. We have usually just gone with how many has he conceded. Today we have the xGmodel which doesn't make things easier. What numbers are we supposed to look at, there can be a lot. Do we look at xG against, conceded, shots on target against? That was my recent issue. So our goalkeeper Matteo Pisseri has opted to retire, previously in my games I would just search by attributes it made life easy. Now with this different approach, I have found that keepers can be a lot more annoying to find. in the game from custom views we can only generate these statisitics 1. Clean Sheets 2. Conceded 3. Conceded/90 4. Save Ratio (which doesn't split between shots from outside the box and those from inside the box) 5. Expected Save Percentage (which I assume is the inverse of xG in other words these is the percentage of shots he was expected to save, more on this later) 6. Saves Held, Tipped and Parried 7. Mistakes Leading to goal When you go to player performance reports from coaches you get under Advanced Goalkeeping a scattergroup that plots expected goals prevented vs save percentage which is incredibly helpful if we had expected goals prevented as a searchable option under custom view. Why? Save Ratio by itself can and is usually misleading, it needs other metrics. A goal area is roughly 244cmx732cm and an average goalkeeper is expected to cover 24% of the goals area ( gonna avoid the math here and keep things simple), but if we assume keepers are 1.90 on average and you use those dimensions you will arrive at a similar number using a vitruvian circle to assume the goalkeepers area. On average most keepers save around 69% of shots on target, these ratios will depend on whether the shot is inside the box or outside the box. Therefore since a keeper already covers 24% of the area of a goal, it implies that 45% of his saves (which is basically 69%-24%) will come from..... his attributes :-) I don't think we are too far away since, on average the penalty conversion rate is around 76%. Ideally to evaluate any keeper it would be easier if we had ... Clean sheets per 90 vs Shots on target against per 90 as a statistic by teams which we currently don't. Why would this be helpful, If we plotted that as scattergroup then any keeper who faces a high shots on target against per 90 and has a high number of clean sheets would be extremely valuable. Such keepers are keeping a high number of clean sheets in spite of facing many shots THE SAVE RATIO Save ratios are helpful, but they don't account for how sides defend. Lets say you have a very organised defence and you are giving strikers poor quality chances, then a keepers save ratio could be higher than a keeper who has a poor defence that allows them more shots from within the area. What we need is Expected goals per shot on target against. We also need to add Expected Goals Conceded/90 to the filters as well. The best thing we have at the moment is expected goals prevented and I would hope that is added as an option we can filter. So I have ended up at a crossroads on my save as I decide how to find my keeper with the current tools without having to use an excel spreadsheet, cos I made a promise to myself that I would NEVER use spreadsheets for a game ever again :-) INFORMATION ACCESSIBLE BY LEAGUES Within the league data we can find under Player Detailed several bits of information, and I think I found a workable ratio, Expected Save Percentage: I am assuming this stat calculates the difficulty of the shots a goalkeeper faces, based on variables such as shot placement, velocity, distance, etc, to determine the chance that an average keeper will save the shot. Basically in a nutshell, the chance to save a shot. Expected Goals Prevented - Essentially how many high chance goals a keeper prevented Saves per 90 Expected saves per 90 So this is how I am gonna find my next keeper: A keepers Expected Save Percentage cannot be lower than his save ratio, In our own league we have these keepers who have a decent expected goals prevented. Next My eyes immediately land on Andrei Vlad Now there is a scatter group for advanced goalkeeping stats which is why i recommend you always SAVE before Jun 23, otherwise you could lose the preceding seasons stats. When you go to check Reports>PLayer Performance, you will be able to access the scattergroups. We want our goalkeepers to be in the Quality Shotstopping/saves most shots quadrant. And it clearly shows that I am heading in the right path when I search for a keeper, Andre Vlad is in the same quadrant, his expected goals prevented is slightly better, and if I use this method, who needs attributes! So this keeper is a firm B, in my books. A would be the keepers higher than 80% and >6 prevented.

THE ART OF NUMBERS As some of you are probably aware my livestreams with Palermo, just became a bit more interesting, at least for me. We have done away with displaying attributes in the game entirely. No attributes shown, I will be relying on coach reports. Now its not 100% possible for me to escape attributes unless i get a custom skin mate. So I will just remove the attributes and avoid the training page. It does however make it interesting when it comes to scouting and player assessments. Out goes attributes and in come statistics. Why have I done this? I am not on an ego trip, the goal was to show that sometimes paying too much attention to attributes can be misleading. 2 players with slightly different attributes can still have big swings in performances during games. Sometimes its hard to isolate whether an attribute is causing this or something else. The range of "something else" is pretty big in Football Manager. There are a whole host of hidden stuff that is under the hood that can play a part in causing swings in performance. If there wasn't anything like that in the game then you could give every player 15 for attributes and they would perform identically in every game. And we all know that never happens. And I am not the first to play with attributes, many others have done that including @Cleon. But why? UNDERSTANDING YOUR PLAYERS Whether you play with masked attributes or unmasked as a setting honestly makes little difference. Thats because hidden attributes play a big part in the game. A players mental state can affect him if the team goes down by a goal. No two players will deal with pressure the same way. Playing without ANY attributes forces me to drill into each players performances, it makes me pay more attention to slight nuances in the 3D representation of what happens in game. I spend more time thinking of how the player is reacting to my shouts. And I look at statistics to tell me if a player is working hard enough, or whether he has the football smarts to do what I need him to do. Its challenging playing like this, because playing with attributes makes things easy and misleading at the same time. Its easy to think you may have found the right player for a role, but its also misleading because there is more information out there that can paint a different picture. I am sure many of you have signed a striker and gone on to question the signing when he's failed to do the job. There are numbers in the game that will tell you if a player is a great finisher, whether he spends more time trying create chances for others. Numbers exist within the game that can split the difference between two players and tell you one is better than another simply in terms of how he can read the player before others. Statistics can help you determine which of your players has been performing better over a period of time and numbers don't lie unless of course you have been doing something crazy in the background to make them unreliable and naturally we need to assume that the numbers are accurate. Whats to come So here's a primer. I was out looking for a great striker, we had one in the team but he simply wasn't scoring as many as I would have liked. We went out to search for another. So I created a view and a filter. The custom view gave me access to information about a team, which I now use across multiple saves I also created filters. More on that in a future update. but for now. Lets cut to the chase. I wanted a striker who had a good XG/Goals ratio. I spotted someone called Morten Hansen who had played 12 matches for the senior team and had a 9/4 ratio which is a lot. In other words he had an XG of 4 and goals of 9. We sent a scout out to reveal his hidden qualities. He was spirited, pacey and consistent with good versatility. Without even looking at his attributes we signed him. He is only 18 and he has transformed our attack. pALERMO pROMO.mp4 PLAYING BY STATISTICS ALONE I am not recommending that everyone go out and play without attributes. In fact playing without attributes requires you to do several things: Playable Leagues vs Non Playable Leagues In playable leagues and depending on your detail level you have access to stats and match reports. This makes playing without attributes a possibility, you dont have access to stats from non playable leagues. If you are playing view only then you will have limited access to stats. From what I have gathered its best to play with a combination of playable and view only leagues. My database has 170k players in it and I cant remember how many leagues are loaded. I think there are a lot. A COLD START When you begin a save, invariably your appointment happens in July, by then no statistics are available for the preceding season, which makes playing without attributes almost impossible for someone trying in the lower leagues where we sign players by trialing or picking up free transfers. Most free agents hardly ever play a game. So statistics will be in short supply. So you need to do your scouting my June 23rd. You can go attributeless on any skin all you need to do is go to preferences>Skin Colours> Advanced settings > and set the "A" value for RGBA settings to "0" With a cold start, after taking over a club, well you end up depending on your assistant managers recommendations or just using the role ability algorithm to make judgements on what roles your players can play and once the statistics start to show you make adjustments. This is naturally harder and something I wouldn't recommend to anyone unless they were @Cleon An alternative and probably easier method is to use the first window in preseason to leave attributes on until preseason is over without signing ANY players. Then once you are comfortable with your team you turn attributes off. Funny thing, you do have access to attributes if you go to training and progress. For me this is usually more than enough. TRAINING AND YOUTH DEVELOPMENT Min maxers of training will probably not enjoy this style very much because they are the sort to move a player from one role to another because they want to develop players in a targeted way. And its understandable, because its slower than having all the attributes available at one glance. When training players I spend more time looking at 3d and stats to make my evaluation. I also typically follow a simple plan when it comes to youth players. If I want them to get a crack at the senior team early I use role training that is simple. Young strikers are put on poacher training for example. Or I just assign them into roles that they are expected to play in the tactic. So far I have not seen too much downside to training, since my training is generally balanced anyway. TACTICAL SHENNANIGANS I usually look at stats after a few games to determine who should do what. The stats I am looking at really depends on the system I plan to play, and, its not going to be the same for every team. Some teams may see a bigger focus on defensive and positional awareness. Maybe I am an underdog and I need to make sure my defenders are positionally and physically solid. So I may zoom in on height and interceptions as a requirement for the majority of my players. So a one size fits all is something I want to avoid sharing. This is what I am doing with Palermo in my current livestream. Now please be aware my journey playing attributeless with them only happened this season. Every new player now being added and every match plan I make for my opponents is now being decided without attributes. With Palermo for example Support players need good interceptions, passing completion %, tackling ratios. Some may need good key passes/90. When I go into streams you will notice my match preparation before the Arsenal and Bayern games which we won and you would have seen me checking the stats of the opposing teams and sometimes even watching highlights or their losses. I would do this to prepare my choice of starting 11. My adventures playing like this will continue and I do plan on updating this thread in the near future. It will feel a bit strange trying to recall matches I have played and then trying to capture them all in words now, but I will try and do this for maybe the next one or two matches before the next livestream on youtube. Check that..... after tonights livestream. Got kids now. Feel free to ask questions, meanwhile I want to continue singing songs of Hansen.

The roles are still the same as they were in FM21

I am playing the game like this, its exhilarating. I almost had a heart attack on today's stream when my young upstart Palermo side came back from two goals down to defeat Arsenal in the Europa cup knockouts. I love playing off statistics and then scouting them via stats as well.

Wanted to add something but @herne79covered everything leaving me with nought to say! Maybe he said this already :-) When they are 18 and if they are good enough to play in the main team, gradually bring them through and manage their game time so they don’t get jaded. It’s really easy for them to develop bad hidden attributes if you overplay them in matches or they end up on the losing end too many times. I normally play give most of them around 10-15 appearances as substitutes, in fact I am known to keep doing this till they are at least 20, that’s when I play the regularly in full games. Jadedness is your enemy. Oh and I have stopped using attributes ie I play with them completely hidden so I focus on how these players do in games via statistics and improve them via targeted training. It’s fun and scary at the same time.

I would strongly suggest becoming good at looking at statistics during the course of a season. For example, in the position you want the player to play is he required to keep the ball moving? Is he supposed to break up play? Has he been doing this? How do you want the team to play? Nail that down and understand what you expect to see then look at the numbers these will usually tell you what to address. I don’t go around swapping tactics I believe that with proper game management and efficient use of players you can get around any slump. That’s assuming you aren’t a David v Goliath, that usually requires a tactical shift.

I have a simple way of playing. 1. Get a very good Head of Sports Science - ensures high player availability, ie helps players recover efficiently between games. 2. If a player has low natural fitness chances are he will always struggle, keep an eye out on him. If during a game he has a sudden drop then I make sure to rest him immediately after the match. 3. Where I am playing 3 games in 7 days all I do is match preparation activities and I ensure that players who played 90mins and are core members of the team(first name on teamsheet), then these players are rested for one day. 4. Having good physios helps too. So far I have yet to encounter a major injury that has sidelined a player after match preparation activities. A major injury is one that keeps a player out for more than 4 weeks.

I go to rest it’s default except for the last condition (90% condition) and higher and set that to double intensity. Then I choose every player and leave the intensity to “auto”, that way intensity adjusts to their physical condition. Whenever core team members end up playing as many as 3 games in 7 days I given them a rest day after a game.

Generally in lower leagues i never max out the budget, because it gives me more room to bring in someone else in the winter transfer window. Plus at lower levels you dont want to be pushing your club to financial ruin so I tend to operate with self imposed wage caps and release players who start asking for too much money

There are more touches on the left side because there are more support duties there, so its easier to build play that way, if you want more central play - play narrower, tell the widers to play "stay wider with a PI" and you could use focus play through the middle which I doubt will be needed

Every training schedule has strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately a balanced training schedule is ideal, finally attributes like Crossing can also be improved through individual focus. In fact in FM21 crossing was identified as an attribute that had issues growing regardless of which session was used, which is why you can find it as an individual focus now. The weights are all assumptions. For one thing: How much weight goes into splitting tactical familiarity elements from individual roles? Can we assume the intensity of each session creates a weighted impact on training? If so how much? Then we have the random modifier which a lot of planners don't even account for. So there are a lot of assumptions people can make, which leads to a variety of possible permutations for training. The training module is meant to be "Idiot proof" its so hard to screw it up. So a lot of schedules will look like they work, which is how the training module is meant to operate. Ultimately a "general training plan" that targets players in broad areas is always going to be easier to achieve and in all likelihood be the best. . And you want to coopt that with specific role training for your youth players within a tactical system that allows them to be ready for the first team. So if your first team is using a 433 you want to be using something similar with the youth team. 16-17 More time training - High intensity 18-20 Training but need game time. Training intensity medium to heavy, but players need to be monitored so they do not become jaded Most of my top youth eventually join first team training, by the time they are 17, but I make sure my squad size does not exceed 25 players, otherwise we get diminishing returns from training as well caused by an overpopulated squad that needs more attention from the same number of coaches.

No they aren't, they work directly on specific roles whilst not being too aggressive. While I agree youth players should be pushed, overplaying them or being too aggressive can also lead to injuries which in turn can cause attributes to spiral downwards.

Ok, when you created this tactic how do you see the goals coming? What kind of movement patterns do you want to see? If you can identify how your tactic is meant to create goals then you should be able to address the smaller bits along the way. How do you see transitions happening from defence to attack involving your players? Who is carrying the ball and drawing players to them? How do you expect to see that run into defence work with pass into space. While I use it a heckuva lot in my tactics I expect to see transitions where specific roles work together with others drawing players away so that space opens up for that team instruction to be effective. Where do you see that happening in your tactic. If you cant tell me what kind of movements you expect to see in the tactic during build up play how will you know what your tactic can and cannot do? So begin first by asking yourself, what do you expect to see in terms of how this tactic is going to create chances. Start from there.

What kind of improvements do you want your tactic to achieve?