Freakiie

I would probably go for C, have him still push the line, get the ball from deep and then make passes from inside the box. Can't say I've had much success with players dropping in the hole and spraying passes from where you generally expect a 10 to operate, seems to be a bit of a dead zone in this ME (really not a fan of drop deep on him or any player in the attacking strata for that reason as well). Not sure about your TIs with exploiting the flanks though. you'd want Manassero on the ball as much as possible. I'd also test it without WBIB to see if it's really necessary for getting the tactic to work how you want it to.

@_mxrky As a SS he's going to push the line in your set up, as he's your most aggressive player. Add to that, only the IF will make aggressive runs into the box (while having his mentality lowered due to the overlap instruction), so his passing options are pretty limited and if he sits deeper he'll have an actual playmaker right next to him that will attract the ball, as the DLP plays quite high up the pitch on Support duty (despite having hold position hardcoded). I also feel that your formation overall is pretty passive. Assuming that you've turned Southampton into a solid club seeing how you can keep hold of a player like that, I would definitely up the aggression overall. That right flank is incredibly passive (and has a CM(De) covering it on top of that?) and you only have 2 roles attacking the box. No idea how many goals you score in general, but perhaps increasing the aggressiveness of your team overall might give your guy a bit more room and options to truly shine?

At this point your question has basically turned into "good enough vs the best you can do". Tinkering with your tactics (assuming you make correct choices) and adjusting them on a match by match basis depending on your opposition will definitely give you better results than just setting up a solid base tactic and leaving it alone. For me, setting up my tactic and leaving it alone is good enough. For you? Considering you've easily avoided relegation so far, it seems good enough as well. Could you do better by tinkering? Almost certainly yes. Whether that is what you want to do though, that is up to you in the end and how you want to play. Personally, I like player development much more than getting really nitty-gritty with tactics, so I rather play fast than slow. Does that mean I probably missed out on a lot of trophies that some tactical tinkering could have gotten me over the years? Definitely! But, I've also achieved pretty much everything a club can achieve so to me, my tactical approach is good enough. As for your board, they're probably a bit hesitant as your reputation will be lagging behind due to your rapid promotions, so they'll think you'll go back down any time. Your 800k/w are not that far off from what the bottom 5 in the PL have currently. Considering the board should really love you and you have a solid balance you could try to force the board into giving you some extra funds.

It means **** happened and there's nothing you can do about it and no, SI did not write a whole bunch of stories about how someone's life got ruined.

You can definitely be successful with a single tactic without having to tinker with it. There's no such thing as the AI figuring out your tactic. However, one of the things that a lot of people will run into as their club improves is that clubs will start playing more cautious against them and certain tactics will start struggling quite a bit when the opposition doesn't give away as much space any more, which is the cause of at least some of the "AI figuring out tactics" and "same old mid season slump" issues people have. I've pretty much been a one tactic guy for as long as I've played FM. Unless I start a new save where I specifically want to try something new (and then tinker for a while as I fine tune my new tactic), I generally stick to the same tactic for everything. Once I'm happy with my tactical set up I mostly leave it as is, for seasons at a time. As for the slumps issue. You said yourself you have a very poor squad by PL standards. Sometimes you just have that scheduling where you meet multiple top teams in a row and that's just one of those months you're gonna have a bad time because your players simply aren't good enough. Considering that so far it seems you've relatively easily avoided relegation it seems to me that you're doing just fine overall. As for the fans complaining, they're fans, they complain (and honestly so does the board), but as long as you're meeting your season expectations (which I guess you are if you're staying far away from relegation), you generally won't be sacked. Until the board actually throws an ultimatum at you, fans complaining isn't an issue. Just make sure you win the games you're supposed to win and focus on keeping morale up after games you're expected to lose.

Everything is possible. Question is just how much time it's going to take. Trying to win an EL season 1 is highly unlikely (especially with some of the absurd names that drop in from the CL), a couple seasons in though? Pretty easy to build a squad good enough to compete without having to be an absolute tactical guru by that point. As long as you continue reaching the group stages the financial gain from that alone will generally skyrocket the budget of these smaller clubs and once you have some budget you just gotta go on a shopping trip to Brazil.

Well initially I just wanted to try something different for once so I went for 3 at the back, then you realize it's actually busted in this ME, so you win a lot, you like it and you keep using 3 at the back.

I don't think the roles are that big of an issue. Focusing play through the middle and WBIB, definitely aren't helping though. Two aggressive wing backs and a target man and then you're telling your team to avoid the flanks and crosses? One change role wise you could consider is swapping the BWM and the Mezzala, On attack duty the Mezzala will make aggressive runs into the box, but he has the poacher in front of him doing the same, swapping him to the left would allow him to run beyond the more passive TM (and give the TM more options for flick ons as well).

@OJ403From my experience with 3 at the back systems, creativity up front is pretty pointless. You want pace up front, creativity behind them and you'll score a boatload from your fast players running onto whipped passes from half field. Add some height to your players that arrive later in the box and if you have good wing backs you'll notch up a solid number of goals from headers as well. My system (and roles) look very similar to yours, except that I run a 1-2 instead of a 2-1 up front, with a AF/F9/SS trio. The F9... honestly he's just there because I need 11 players to start the match. Put someone with pace there and he will get his name on the score sheet, but even with someone like Müller in that position I failed to get any assists out of him. Ironically, Lewandowski as the AF though? 17 assists in all competitions, I don't think I ever managed that with Müller in FM21 where the creative 10 was much stronger than it is in FM21! Same story with my strikerless variant where I run AM(A)/SS/AP(A) (Used to be SS/Treq/SS, but that didn't work anywhere near as well as it did in FM21 for me), the AP is just there to fill names on the team sheet and if you put a fast player on that position he will grab his goals simply from running past the defence and receiving long passes from deeper positions. Had a RWB newgen in my journeyman save using that tactic that got 20 assists in 28 La Liga games (without taking corners!), as he was a solid passer and just kept pinging sharp whipped balls from the halfway line that my AM/SS would run onto. Meanwhile, my AP has less assists than my AM and SS, as they get a ton of assists from making those runs, getting pushed too wide to take a shot, so they play a simple cut back or ball across the box for someone else to slot home. Meanwhile, my AP just wanders around in no mans land and wonders what happened to the whole "I'm a playmaker, I should attract the ball" part, as play seems to completely ignore him.

Just play strikerless, guaranteed not to have a striker as your top scorer!

It works because the United researcher gave him a set of insane mentals and stamina that will result in him harassing the opposition for 90 minutes without issues. Considering his rating he didn't really do much, but with 19 Stamina, 16 Work Rate, 15 Teamwork, 18 Aggression you can be certain he pressed every opposition player as if his life depended on it for 90 minutes. So, considering the attributes the United researcher gave him it's not that much of a surprise the AI would actually play him as a BWM. Not sure how Ricci developed in that save, but with the attributes he has he's already a pretty hard working midfielder and with his potential he can be a world class midfielder. Attribute wise in FM that's a pivot that will cover a lot of ground and harass the opposition midfield like crazy. Whether those attributes actually mirror real life properly? Well, that's a different question.

I generally increase a couple punishments from the basic Code of Conduct the game sets and hand out warnings for poor play whenever I can and my manager always is quickly known as a "Strict Disciplinarian", so I guess acting like that should help boost Level of Discipline?

Looking at transfermarkt, he can't even break into the Roma U-17s. 8 sub appearances for a total of 87 minutes this season. Looks like he's there due to his name alone.

You might as well accept traits as permanent and pray that SI takes a good look at PPMs in FM23. It's nearly impossible to get rid of certain traits, even if the game supposedly agrees that the trait is not suited to a player.

Attacking style seems about right, except for defensive/counter inherently being more likely to counter attack. Defense side of things, I don't think mentality influences tackling intensity or your team automatically switching to using the offside trap at higher mentalities? Some of it is perhaps worded a bit too aggressive though, even if you go Very Attacking you can still instruct your team to press even harder (base setting is only "slightly more often", go wider, more direct and so on. So, it's not an instant 100%, unlike what the text suggests.

Your instructions scream classic "best team in the league watch my 4-2-3-1 dominate you", your formation (and team) say completely different things. If you want to play regular aggressive gegenpressing, then just stick with the regular formations for that. If you want to try a 3 at the back because regular 4-2-3-1 gets boring, then you probably should adjust your TIs for that.

I know that in past FMs 23 was the hard cut off where the AI stops paying for potential. Wouldn't be surprised if that is still how things work under the hood and with the more accurate player valuation you know actually see the drop, instead of just realizing that a player the AI bid 60m+ for a week ago is suddenly only receiving 15m bids because he just turned 23.

20 JR seems too much for a 6'4 player, but I doubt the AI is complaining about that. Wonder how "plays with back to goal" works in the AM position, pretty sure a natural AM can't even learn that PPM and he picked up since his main position is as striker?

Some players are greedy. Don't sign them. Problem solved.

Belgium has by far the most tycoon takeovers for me. In my 2042 save there were 5 clubs with a sugar daddy.

I don't enjoy FM until I've holidayed to 2040 and gotten rid of all these tiresome real players that do the same things over and over. Gimme that "unrealistic" FM!

Player interaction sometimes, first wants to explore his options, that gets cancelled by extension clause, then tempted by interest from elsewhere and 2 days later happily signs a year extension. Well, I'm not complaining about Lewandowski sticking around. How I imagine these conversations go:

So, after a lot of attempts to convince them, one of my players finally spoke out in the press! Since then, my other players are perfectly happy to speak out as well, without needing to convince them.... Seems like once one guy speaks up everybody else seems perfectly fine with it, but nobody wants to be that first guy? Definitely can't do this though! For me the option has like a month or so cool down! AI? Yeah, lemme just hype this transfer twice within a week.

Doesn't seem to matter at all. In my future save most of my Barcelona squad absolutely loves me, but they refuse to hype up the transfer of (probably) the best RB in the game at that time. Meanwhile, in my other save Kane and Lloris are happy talking up a Gnabry transfer, and they don't have Mancini as favoured personnel. Not to mention he's only been at Spurs 6 months, yet they were happy to hype that transfer for a long time already.

Sooooooo, anyone knows what actually factors into players being willing to do this for you? Whenever the AI makes one of my players their top target their team seems to turn into Barcelona chasing after Fabregas, with every week a new player encouraging the transfer, but when I try to ask my players they all tell me to sod off. I thought about media handling maybe mattering, but even players that should be happy to talk to the media tell me to sod off, so I'm pretty confused.