MBarbaric

before you commit to counter attacking strategy, make sure that you will have space to play counter attacks. If you have a dominant side that is expected to challenge for titles, opposition will play rather cautious against you meaning they will sit deep denying you counter attacking opportunities.

an interesting offensive transition you got there, but how do you get a right winger in a box 4-4-2?

i hate when people say "everyone has right to have their own opinion". I mean, indeed, you have, but not all opinions are equally valid. for example, @upthetoon has an opinion, but it is obvious he has no idea what he is talking about. he doesn't know how the sound in the game works but he has an opinion. On the other hand, i'd really like to hear an opinion from somebody at SI.

anco was class... agree the defensive phase is currently more important than attacking (considering the state of the ME). However, once the D is settletd they will have to start improving the attack. horizontal movement of players is virtually non existent in the game.

no doubt there's too little control over tactics in defensive phase and in offensive phase. Most of the movement is integrated into player roles so you can't really tell your team where to overload directly. You can choose roles and hope they will achieve what you hope for. You can't specifically say to your players to pass to one player into space. you can choose players that are near him and instruct them to pass more direct hoping he will pass it more direct towards that striker you told to move into space instead towards somebody else. you can't tell your winger to come inside and deep to pull out the full back, and you can't really tell your striker to run into that space nor can you tell to your center back to pass direct balls there... lots of things you can+t do.

often true have to say that it is well worth putting an effort and reading Svenc's posts.

well, there is an attribute for supporters of each club in the database. how patteint they are, how demanding... however, it isn't tied into game in sense that you get news that fans had enough of you and want you out.

always wanted the replay. I remember how useful it was when playing SWOS you hit that "R" button and the game replayed last 10 seconds of the match. would be a neat addition.

great to see this still being updated. Cheers to TommyHughes and all the people who worked on this over years!

I've been using this colour coding for a few years now (one year SI took out bars for some reason so had to skip a year). as couguar already said, you can already do this by colouring the bars to your liking. As you progress from bottom you just adjust the threshold for colour separation to get better division between attributes. I think that it is fine as it is and am glad it is possible to get rid of the numbers. They still appear on some screens in the game (set pieces setup) and it doesn't work on staff (don't know if in FM16 it does as I don't play that). To make it more interesting, you can replace star rating as well. By default, it is separated in 10 steps (five full stars plus five half stars). You can change that to only 5 stars by copying half stars with full stars so you basically have 5 levels which makes it kind a harder to gauge newgens. However, from my experience it isn't worth the hassle as it is rather easy to spot good newgens regardless. I'd like to see an improvement to the polygon with attribute distribution. It isn't really insightful as it is. If you look at Eden Hazar below, his attacking is rather lame. Don't know how does the polygon calculate that. To "improve" it further, I think the attributes would have to fluctuate and not show real value but a value offset by the form, hype... so they might not show i.e."good" but average or excellent. Top player Average Lower league player

I don't understand arguments such as "people have TV in background so wouldn't use it" or "does FM even have sound"... Lots of people don't use press conferences or play friendly matches but they are still in the game and rightly so. The real question is, is it viable to put an effort into improving something. Judging by SI's efforts in this regard in recent decade (or two) the answer is obvious. Personally, I'd love to hear improvements in this part of the game since I am in minority that always used sounds. It would really be cool to hear the crowd whistle the player they don't like, whistle your team because they think you are rubish..., have this tied in with press conferences and you have little stories that make football narratives and improved immersion.

right, but we don't have control over horizontal compactness of the team in defensive phase as somebody explained earlier. This means players are as wide as they are coded. We didn't discuss vertical compactness but I guess that is somewhat regulated by duty. So, during the defensive phase, players on attacking duty will be higher up the pitch than players on support duty. Now, if you look at the screenshot above, the "clueless" player isn't really high up the pitch, he is in blue defensive third so hardly on attacking duty. Both yellow players on his side drift inside but he stays wide, and if you look at the video, you will see he actually moves even wider. This seems to me like hard coded behaviour as it has zero sense from real football tactics perspective. Here's the first goal in 13th minute. I doubt blue team is on attacking mentality away from home so early in the match and they are still in their original 4-2-3-1 formation. Yellow team does what they did whole game, they move wide players centrally and overload the middle. Look the distance between the blue right winger and two central midfielders. There's a huge gap used by yellow team to create 3v2 overload. There are two problems here; 1) The blue winger is completely out of position, on the outside of his man, mind you 2) Two central midfielders on the blue team are so narrow and deep they can't control the middle even with the help of AM. Normally, this wouldn't be such problem within the ME. However, as both players on the yellow team left side are instructed to cut inside, the AI defensive logic can't cope and allows an overload in half space which results with a goal. If all you want to see is good judgement on your part fine, but to me, it seems the defensive AI doesn't live up to "simulation" label FM likes to pride itself with. the problem is the AI suffers same problem as Ozil since some things are hard coded in the ME. It isn't about you and how you can destroy the AI but about AI being poorly coded to unpredicted situations it comes up from a human player. That is why I took your examples. They show the basic AI logic doesn't work against human. It doesn't work because the offensive AI follows real football tactics (to an extent) while the defensive AI doesn't. indeed, you can't defend whole pitch but you can defend most dangerous zones. but flanks aren't those while according to ME, they are.

choosing roles and duties (in FM sense) to achieve compactness is not how the defensive unit is organized in real football. there's no doubt one can have solid defence in FM even within 4-4-2. The problem is that the, by default, the game has certain triggers that override whatever you do and push that wide player wide instead of tucking him inside. It isn't only a problem with 4-4-2 it is an overall behaviour of the ME. Have you seen your second goal in that video? blue team plays 3-4-3, the ball is in the center and the right wide man in blue team is triggered to stay wide although whole your left side is tuck inside. that is completely wrong behaviour. And the same thing applies to your first goal. A wide man stays wide allowing an overload in the halfspace that results in goal. you keep saying you need certain type of players, certain instructions and i do agree completely. but before all that, you need sound defensive logic. Could you share your view what contributed to those two goals?

no need to get snappy, we are all on the same side. Indeed the topic is about Ozil not being able to defend, however, not the wings but the central area. What I am trying to say is that the ME forces wide players wide to defend wings when there is no need for that. As a result of this, the central area gets overloaded and a team on the ball can dominate the zone when there is no football logic for it. Second goal in video you have posted is really good example. It shows the problem doesn't only occur with a human player but with the AI as well. It also shows it isn't only the 4-4-2 formation that is affected but basically any formation that has less than three central players in the midfield. It also shows how clueless the AI is as the right winger in blue team stays wide although your whole left flank cuts inside. So, while Ozil has problems defending, he has those problems not because he made poor choices, but because the defending AI is poorly coded (in relation to real world tactics). This isn't only affecting the defensive phase but attacking as well since you win/lose games without merit but due to poor defensive AI.

I think we have some problems communicating here ;D when I say overload, I mean it in offensive phase. Don't know what that has to do with how you defend. Same with this. and the above. of course, there are various ways to defend flanks. The problem is the default way in the game is not what is default in football. Two goals you've posted above shows lack of defensive coverage of central area especially if player overloads it. It simply doesn't know how to position wide players in relation to the ball. This, coupled with poor tracking back from forwards creates issues in the ME. And it isn't even an issue with human as one can do things to mitigate these problems. It is AI that is completely clueless how to defend the central zone.