How to get your box-to-box midfielders to perform better?

[bleventozturk]

The default settings for a box-to-box midfielders has

Long shots: often

Through balls: sometimes

Run with ball: sometimes

Run from deep: sometimes

I have player (Zuculini, a young Argentinian) who has everything needed to be a box-to-box midfielders, except his long shot attribute (only 9). So I still made him one, but I tweaked his long shots to sometimes, and his through balls to often instead (his passing is like 17). He doesn't perform nearly as good as I was expecting.

My experience with the ME so far is that changing the default settings for a specific role doesn't give good results. So I feel like even if his long shot is mediocre, if I want to play him as a box-to-box midfielders I should still keep him at long shots 'often'.

What do you guys suggest?

[Aytumious]

They need to be good at everything really, but mental stats are key. Decisions is extremely important in my opinion because they have so many responsibilities. Creativity is also a big plus since they have high creative freedom and roaming set to on. Then they need the offensive and defensive mental stats to fulfill the rolls on both ends of the pitch. Stamina is also huge or the guy will be worn down every match.

I usually turn long shots down to sometimes and leave others at sometimes. I found he was taking too many long shots and not getting into the box enough. Turning through balls to often is a mistake in my opinion because that will keep him from doing other things as often as he should like getting in the box or moving into a channel so your ST is unmarked so someone else can make the pass. With everything at sometimes, he'll move all around the pitch as he seems fit.

Can you post a screen shot of your player? Is it Franco?

[bleventozturk]

They need to be good at everything really, but mental stats are key. Decisions is extremely important in my opinion because they have so many responsibilities. Creativity is also a big plus since they have high creative freedom and roaming set to on. Then they need the offensive and defensive mental stats to fulfill the rolls on both ends of the pitch. Stamina is also huge or the guy will be worn down every match.

I usually turn long shots down to sometimes and leave others at sometimes. I found he was taking too many long shots and not getting into the box enough. Turning through balls to often is a mistake in my opinion because that will keep him from doing other things as often as he should like getting in the box or moving into a channel so your ST is unmarked so someone else can make the pass. With everything at sometimes, he'll move all around the pitch as he seems fit.

Can you post a screen shot of your player? Is it Franco?

Hmm, thanks for the input. Maybe I should keep his through balls at sometimes then.

I believe his name is Franco. He also has a younger brother somewhere (it's in his favorite personnel list) but that one is not good. I'm at work right now, but will post his screenshot when I get home. I got him to my Fenerbahce team, paid a crazy 37 million dollars to his club. I thought he was going to be perfect for the role, but so far his ratings are below the average of my team.

[Aytumious]

Franco should be a good candidate.

It also depends on your formation. I play a 4-5-1 and the MCr is a box to box who is involved in everything while the MCl is your standard MC support player. My DM is set to defense but he's also an outlet player that the ball can be dumped back to. My MCr kind of plays like an AMC on offense, but with less dribbling.

Box to box can be bad if they have poor mentals on D because they'll roam all over the place on the defensive side of the pitch as well. Sometimes they make awesome plays in the box for you or make a nice interception or tackle, but other times the area they left open trying to do those things gets exploited.

Box to boxers really need to be attribute monsters in certain key stats or they'll burn you.

[bleventozturk]

As a team I'm getting good results, and when I watch the match my box-to-box midfielders are doing great. It's just that their rating somehow stays around 6.7-7.0 whereas the other players all get ratings above 7. That's what's bothering me. Maybe it's just the s..itty rating system that can't really evaluate them correctly, I don't know.

How about the marking? Are your MC's (including the box to box one) on man marking or zonal? In my 4-2-3-1 I play with 2 box-to-box midfielders, and both of them were on man mark by default, but I changed them to zonal marking. Is that a godd thing or should I switch back? Once I tried having everybody (including the 2 CB's) on zonal marking and the opponent strikers were never picked up, they started scoring for fun. I conceeded 7 goals in 3 matches from teams that are weaker than mine, and that was it, I switched back to having my CB's on man mark. Still kept the 2 box-to-box midfielders on zonal though.