nugatti

Switch to control scouting and make sure scouts only travel to players based within your region. Sett all scouts to each their own ongoing assignments in a certain country.

@wazza

@robot_9x3 Funneling for me at least is simply "where is my formation loaded with players" e.g. 442Diamond vs 442-Flat I want the opposition to play through the center as the diamond442 and I want them out of it and wide as the 442flat. That's what I'm thinking as well in my example above. But as Rashidi explains, there will be gaps in CM, so not sure it will an advantage after all. At least not in every match

Then what would be the essential roles & skills for players to deploy the specific settings successfully as pointed at by wazza 1st post? (My team has hard pressing WMs and FBs and good ball winners at CM)

Does this mean that selection normally should work better if you combine in a certain way? Example: With FBs with good skills for duels, is this a good combination? Make them run wide, then pounce on them when entering defensive third wide on the pitch. Also, what are the effects on midfielders and attackers? Vice versa, with weaker FBs, trap inside and use strong ball winners as DM/CM?

Just a shout out for Poland, Sweden, Croatia as good markets. How do you rate them?

It's explained in detail in the IWB role description in the game

He would most likely pass the ball quickly on to a better placed player as he should consider other more advanced players are more suited to execute the attack. If he considers himself to be the best placed player, he'll go on the counter himself. Decisions are key here. Your short passing, slow tempo team will still go on the counter attack even without the instruction applied, but (much) less often. It's all considerations of risk/reward from situaton to situation.

It makes your team go on counter more often right after winning the ball back. If it's not on, general attacking team instructions kick in. On higher tempo, the ball is moved fast in all phases of play. It demands higher values in mental and technical and stamina/quickness skills (at least towards the end of matches ).

I'd keep it a def duty as you don't have a compressed team (DL vs LOE). But it's a tweak to experiment with should you need it

This looks more thought through imo. TF pressing not sure, guess it depends on where you want to win the ball. I'd give this a go and try to implement even more changes if the team does not perform.

Hi, here are my thoughts I'd look at making more players serve the strikers. Change the DLP to AP-att. MEZ to support duty. Consider changing positions for the BWM and PM. The MEZ is also a creator, so maybe better to push them a bit further away from eachother? Change the WBs to support duties, and the most complete one to CWB to mix up WB pattern. On a positive mentality, 4 att duties is too much. Consider changing the TF to DLF is he's got ok technique, balance, dribbling. Remove focus play in the middle to increase variety of play, I'd only use this if the opposition has weak players in the middle. Remove work ball into box, the strikers should be allowed to shoot at sight if the opportunity is there.

I think you are on to sensible changes, and regarding the WP there are two kinds of slow; Slow speed and slow passing. It should not be a problem with slow speed as long as he gets into position to receive the ball quite often - anticipation and off the ball helps. The most important thing is his ability to get the ball forward at speed. I think this is where anticipation (again), decisions, first touch, technique (and flair?) comes into play.

The guide says give an att role for your most creative player. Is your most creative player the HB or the AM? If it's the HB change him to a PM role and place him in the M strata. Also I'd not go with a slow player on AM-att duty. An AM is a runner/hard worker, so maybe a holding CM role would suit him better and one of the CMs could move up? Also, GK distribution to true playmaker role in the team makes more sense to me, otherwise distribute to player position. An option could also be moving the AM to a WP role in M strata, giving you midfield width defensively and smart combination play with the WB? You would need to re-work the midfield, though... Only do this if your WBs are good at marking and have relatively high work rate, determination and stamina. Set these to shorter/more direct and higher/lower only if your MCs, AMs, FCs have above/below league average in the skills specified in the opening post. (I use Excel for this after exportng my squad skills overview.) Also your mentality has set this to mixed, meaning you trust your players' decisions here. If you do not trust their decisons, you can help them prioritize one way or the other. I'd assume the weight goes from 50-50 (default) to (short passes) 65-35 (direct passes) when set to shorter and vice versa on more direct (but don't use this as a fact, it's only my assumption ). See Midfield I'd say it's overkill. Normally stretching play creates space. Width should complement passing style. Wider normally works better with more direct passing. The specified players and skills as in the opening post should dictate this. ------------ It would be interesting to see if you give your interpretation a run or if you make changes. Currently working on a flat 4-4-2 with Esbjerg myself with a very promising start in the friendlies so far. Cheers

Yes, everything you find here can be used in the same way for many of the last FM versions