Changing your tactics and formation according to scout reports etc.

[philwood]

Looking at some of the threads written on this forum and the advice offered by members and reading TT&F I believe that there is obviously a move towards the FM player to play the game without one tactic or even one tactic for home and one away. We now need to look at the oppositions formation, style of play, key personnel etc and adapt our tactics accordingly.

I believe this is the way the makers of the FM series would like us to play the game and i'm sure most players would be happy to put the time in and play the game this way as it gives you a feel for management and your not just relying on super tactics.

The problem is it doesn't work!

I have tried this over and over again and I have adjusted my team and tactics according to scout reports, pitch size, weather conditions, assistant manager feedback and pre match advice meetings (after all what else do we have to go on).

How come every scout report is practically the same? Nearly every team you play like to sit back and then counter and it's important to defend deep as the pace of the strikers will cause us problems. Defending deep when playing an attacking formation contradicts itself.

How come in a pre match advice meeting the backroom staff tell you that the opposition struggle against teams who play a 451 formation, teams that play a narrow width, teams that play a slow tempo. so you set your team up with these instructions go out for the game and at half time your 2-0 down and thinking WTF! You ask you assistant manager and he tells you your tackling is terrible (don't think I have played one game yet were my tackling has been acceptable let alone good). Then you go to backroom advice and wait! they have now changed their minds and are telling you that the opposition now play well against teams who play a 451 formation, play well against a narrow width and do well against teams that play a slow tempo. No wonder your 2-0 down as you have set your team up exactly the way the opposition wanted you to. You change it around to what you now believe is the best way to play against this lot and go out for the second half. If your lucky you may drag it back to 2 -2 which is a good result under the circumstances but not when your favourites at home.

You could change the players maybe drop a couple, but deep down we all know that it won't make any difference because in the next game if we manage to hit the sweet spot, call the correct rock, paper scissor or guess correctly (to use phrases from Thunda) we will win 3 - 0 with exactly the same lineup as we put out in the previous match.

i know it's a game and I don't want to just sit back and watch my team ripping everyone apart but if were going to have scout reports, pre match advice etc then lets make it useful and people will read it and use it and set up their tactics according to the reports. That is what happens IRL! For this to be an enjoyable game then it must work. Unless it is a bug that is going to be fixed with the next patch then in my opinion it doesn't work, I really wish it did and i have put numerous nights of FM trying to get it to work but it doesn't.

I don't want this to be a moan and have a go at the makers as I really do love the game and I will continue playing it and buying it because I love it, but I think myself and others could get so much more enjoyment out of it if things were changed and a lot less frustration when your trying to do things correctly and it still doesn't work.

[MAtt2310]

I actually agree with you, I've played and bought every installment of this series from Championship Manager 03/04 and will continue doing so, however I think the series really needs better documentation/learning tools. Every year I try and pick a a mid-low table premier league and have had some success (not astounding by any means but some moderate ) this year I chose Wigan and in my first 2 seasons placed 10th and 9th in the league and had some decent wins over UTD and Liverpool.

Now the thing is, and it's starting to really have an impact on my enjoyment of the game, is that I generally have little to no idea as to why my tactics worked or what went wrong. I wouldn't consider myself totally inept to the tactics used in modern day football but I'm definatley no mastermind. I read scout reports and try to adjust my team accordingly and its so hit and miss it's unreal and despite the report I still have no clue on what might be the right move to make.

It seems to me there a 3 groups of people that play this game :

1) People that are satisfyed to take over a team, buy players, download a tactic and away they go

2) People who understand the match engine and tactics and have at least a good idea which change to implement most of the time for good effect

3) People that want to fall under group 2 but currently lack the tactical knowlege to do so.

Now, I unashamdly admit to being and that 3rd group and by god is it frustrating. I'll go 1-0 up with 10 minutes left and decide to drop deeper and go narrower to contain the other team only to concede a 93rd minute to a hoofed clearance from their keeper. I'll be dominating a game for 70 minutes, score, leave things as they are as they seem to be going well, only to be overrun and lose 4-1.

I'm not asking to be spoonfed insta-win tactics, I download and read through TT+F and lurk the forums picking up littles tidbits here and there trying to see how they relate to my team. I feel that the FM series is severly lacking in some sort of tutorial or at the very least a decent manual, I long for the day when I can load up FM and playthroguh a tutorial under the guise of "gaining your coaching badges" or my assistant manager would tell me more than our tackling has been poor.

Losing is the most frustrating experience in the world when you don't know what went wrong and winning doesn't feel as good when it could as well have been luck than judgemnt.

[philwood]

Thats right Matt2310 and I think frustration is a large part of the game now, like i said i will never stop playing or buying the game as it provides me with hours and hours of entertainment for 30 quid, I can spend that in an hour down the pub. The problem i'm having is that The hours I used to play were enjoyable now more and more of those hours are frustration, and occasionally i will just stick a DVD on instead.

An example of the frustration:

Playing a game and you are at home and favourites, you take the lead and go 1-0 up so so far so good, now there is a huge dilemma whether you change things or leave them as they are. You wait and leave it (if it's not broke don't fix it you think) you see the opposition having more possession and working their way back into the game so you ask your players through touchline shouts to play narrower and retain possession, and then Bang! the opposition score straight away. I should have just left it alone as we were doing fine you think. Next time your in that scenario you don't change anything because you remember what happened last time.

What this means is that players are just choosing a tactic, hoping to go 1-0 up and then hoping that they can hold on. There is no system or pattern behind what happens, it just seems totally random and asking your players to play slightly narrower can often lead to a goal because it effects the mentality.

Even though you have taken the time to set your team up how your backroom staff inform you to. It is a case of guessing and hoping that you have the right tactic to begin with and then guessing and hoping that you make the right decisions ingame.

Another example is the match stats.

I keep an eye on them and look to change areas of the game according to the stats, if im down on possession i will ask my players to pass to feet etc, if im having lots of long shots i will ask my players to work the ball into the box, surely this is what the creators had in mind when setting up these instructions. Sounds good but recently I read a thread where Cleon talks about match stats and he states that they can be misleading so you need to view the individual stats of each player instead.

Now my question is why are the match stats misleading? Surely they should assist you to decide what action to take ingame.

If the game is going to provide us with stats and information to make choices on the way we play then it needs to be correct so we can then make the correct decisions. At the moment this information isn't correct and were making the wrong decisions which means were struggling for results, not enjoying the game and getting frustrated. Many people think that the reason people are struggling is that they are lazy and they just want a diablo tactic or whatever, this is rubbish, most FM players welcome the new style and the changing of tactics game to game but without the correct information thay can't do it succesfully which is the major problem.

[Cleon]

Now my question is why are the match stats misleading? Surely they should assist you to decide what action to take ingame.

Because people judge a tactic and game on the match stats alone. When realistically you need to look at the match stats and individual ones to determine things and not only look at half the picture. The individual ones give you a better idea of how each position is playing for you. Were as the match stats only show you the overall stats. By looking at the individual page you might see it's just 1 player or position letting you down. How can you make changes to the right players if you only look at match stats? they don't show you who's not performing.