The New Swansea -- Same as the Old Swansea

[Zoetermeer]

I can't hold it in anymore, so I have to vent. Here's what I did:

I decided to play with the editor and give some poor team a sugar daddy/loads of cash, and conquer Europe with them. So first, I gave Everton a foreground sugar daddy, a wad of cash, and upped their reputation a bit so I could sign some top-drawer players. I signed 7 or 8 top players, and set out thinking I would be at least competitive with the top-four clubs. As it turns out, we were better than that -- ripped off 8 straight wins to start the season, and finished in third. Pretty good for a team basically assembled in July.

Anyway, something went wrong -- once the season ended, we were basically out of money, but the sugar daddy only gave us one $15m infusion, then didn't give us anything as the club continued further and further into the red. After the second season and we still had no money, I decided to start over.

This time, I decided to give Swansea the money. I gave them an FGSD, loads of starting cash, a healthy amount of annual recurring income, and upped their reputation to 8000. Okay, I know it's cheating and it's unrealistic, but I wanted to take a team and lots of money and basically hand-pick a squad to see if I could build a perennial European powerhouse.

Anyway, I signed almost the exact same complement of players I had with the Everton save -- but it was more hastily assembled toward the end of the transfer window, and perhaps my team cohesion was just terrible. The season was an unmitigated disaster, and after only taking 14 points from 14 matches, I got the axe.

So I decided to start again, this time again with Swansea. But this time, I signed all of my players in the first week after starting the game. This way, my newly assembled squad had around a month of frequent friendlies, plus 'very high' match preparation with a focus on teamwork. We started the season strongly, not losing to any of the top sides and dominating a few lower-table squads, but around October, we descended into 'old Swansea' mode again. Nothing works -- we can't defend, we can't hold the ball in midfield, and we can't score despite having a scary front line. It just seems like the game somehow still 'thinks' that my side is still the old Swansea side; the one that, in the game, usually gets relegated after season one.

By now you're thinking, as any FM player would, "it's your tactics!". But I don't believe that's the problem. In my Everton save, the same players were brilliant in my tactical system. I use the same tactics I've used with great success in a number of saves, including an Arsenal save where we won the quadruple, and an Ajax save where we went undefeated in the Eredivisie and only conceded 8 goals all season.

I don't even know what advice to ask for, since I'm not sure what my problem is. I guess I can describe my squad and tactics (though I'm not posting this in the tactics forum because again, I'm not sure tactics are the problem):

[Zoetermeer]

Tactics: 4-3-2-1 with two wingers, three central midfielders.

GK - Marc Andre ter-Stegen

DL (FB - S) - Leighton Baines

DR (FB - S) - Gokhan Gonul / Sime Vrsaljko

DC (LD - C) - Alvaro Dominguez

DC (LD - C) - Jan Vertonghen

MC (AP - S) - Marvin Martin

MC (BWM - D) - Marouane Fellaini

MC (DLP - S) - Joao Moutinho / Tom Huddlestone

AML (AP - A) - Eden Hazard

AMR (IF - A) - Nicolas Gaitan

ST (CF - S) - Giuseppe Rossi

My team instructions:

Attacking/Fluid, shorter passing, more expressive creative freedom, pressing more, zonal marking. Everything else on default.

(This is Darren's Manchelona tactic, unmodified).

Usually this tactic is very solid defensively, leads to good control of possession, and prolific goal scoring -- given the right players, of course. The players I signed have great attributes for their specific roles, and almost all of them have high teamwork and determination (overall they are good mentally). They might be a little on the young side, but this is a world-beating squad. But we are like a sieve defensively, rarely dominate possession even at home, and Rossi (who tore up the Premier League in the Everton save) is just bad. Hazard is consistently great, but he isn't scoring any goals, unlike in my Everton save.

Does anyone see anything obviously wrong with my tactic? Or am I just twisting the database in unnatural ways that FM can't grok? Or is team cohesion just killing me, and if so, why didn't it do so in my Everton game? Any ideas?

[PPPPPPPPPPPP10]

I think any game as long as it's your tactic and not a plug-and-play is down to how you adapt in that particular match so really you are the only one that should know why your team not performing well enough. As for me though, if you feel you do have a strong team offensively then I'd push for the attacking game and I wouldn't use 2 FB-S, I'd have at least one of them on attacking role FB-A or WB-A and I wouldn't have DLP-BWM as 4 defenders is more than enough in most case, I'd use just one BWM, one AP-A and either use the third mid as a striker or AMC. If you got the strength to attack then do it, don't have a strong attacking team but still be too wary of opposition scoring

[Zoetermeer]

Thanks for the help! I definitely have the attacking firepower to make some of the changes you suggest, but my concern is that we're giving up goals too frequently for me to feel comfortable converting too many players to attacking roles. I tried switching both fullbacks to wing back (attack), however, and I did notice an improvement in my offensive play down the flanks. I can see that my wingers are less frequently isolated far up the pitch, with the fullback now moving further forward to offer a passing outlet.

I just can't seem to get Rossi where I want him. It seems like he always gets the ball with 2 or 3 defenders in front of him, at the top of the box, and ends up just bombing away or losing the ball. I tried changing him to a trequartista and set forward runs to often, but it still doesn't seem to get him in good position to be played in by the playmakers.

[PPPPPPPPPPPP10]

Um since I can't see your player's stats I just use what I can see in my game mmmk, they should be similar anyhow

Rossi is as pure a poacher as you can get. He'd be great on receiving end of pass-through balls but he's not the kind of player that you can expect to receive the ball and beat defenders that's not man-marking him (there's distance between Rossi and the defender) in my game his strength is 9 and his balance is 12 which means any defender that's in front of him and can intercept him is most likely going to knock him off the ball also his bravery is 9 which means if he has no striking partner/passing option his only choice will be either trying to run through the defenders which he won't because of his low bravery or shoot if he's close enough to the goal which according to you is what he usually does xD.

To make the best out of Rossi you'll need either a holding striker partner (a TM or DLF) with a decent finishing so he can either hold the ball and pass it through for rossi or if you play rossi as an Advanced forward the second striker can run behind and receive rossi's crosses. or a strong AMC that can hold the ball but also a creative passer to make those pass through for Rossi. (Huddlestone would fit the bill except according to my game he doesn't play AMC >.<)

I think your biggest problem right now is that you have 4 attacking players that's very talented technically but none of which is strong enough to hold the ball which makes your team more of a run and gun kind of team, dribble up as fast as you can and find an attacking player to get a shot off before a defender get to him and muscle him off the ball which is pretty much not going to work if your opponent back off your players... get a strong player that can hold the ball so you can get your offense set up

Sorry for being wordy... I tend to rant... xD

[Chas (Psyatika)]

Can you clarify the point of this thread? I mean, what exactly are you asking us?

Do you want to know if the game only allows teams who are good in the default database to play well in edited databases?

Do you want to know if the game only allows certain cities to field successful teams?

What information are you trying to gain here?

[Zoetermeer]

I detect a hint of sarcasm in your message, but it's also not clear to me whether you actually read my original post. I want to know if anyone might have any idea why, given all the information I've provided, my team is performing so badly despite having a proven tactic and great players well-suited to that tactic. As I said in the original post, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it is something related to tactics that just hasn't, for whatever reason, surfaced in the 4 other saves in which I've used it to great success. Maybe it is something wrong with the way I edited the default database that's causing weirdness with my team's reputation or performance. Maybe it's team cohesion -- this kind of thing is documented in a very abstract way that makes it difficult to understand whether your team may actually be suffering from it. Maybe somebody has some insight into what might cause a sharp decrease in team cohesion, like 'you signed 10 players in a month, and that makes your team likely to perform very poorly until new players can integrate themselves into the squad better'. It sounds logical, but I don't know if the game works that way.

PPPPPPPPPPP10 has been very helpful so far in answering these questions. Thanks!

[Chas (Psyatika)]

Right.

You did everything exactly the same way, but the only thing you changed was that you replaced Everton with Swansea.

If you're trying to arrive at any conclusion other than "Swansea are somehow pre-programmed to perform worse than Everton," you're not giving any information to suggest it.

You want tips like "signing 10 players all at once is what did you in." Except that you did that with Everton successfully, so that advice shouldn't make sense to you.

[Zoetermeer]

Right.

You did everything exactly the same way, but the only thing you changed was that you replaced Everton with Swansea.

If you're trying to arrive at any conclusion other than "Swansea are somehow pre-programmed to perform worse than Everton," you're not giving any information to suggest it.

You want tips like "signing 10 players all at once is what did you in." Except that you did that with Everton successfully, so that advice shouldn't make sense to you.

I think your time would be better spent helping somebody else.

[Cleon]

I'm currently writing about Swansea and hopefully will have it all done and posted by this weekend sometime. But if you want to get a little insight into how I played with Swansea while you wait for the thread you might want to check out my saved game with them and see what I achieved.

http://tinyurl.com/7h6jpt3

Then you'll see its something that you are doing whats wrong.

This is the thread it'll be posted in http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/289528-The-SI-Sports-Centre-All-You-Need-To-Know-About-FM

[SCIAG]

One thing is to make sure you set your chairman to have lots of resources and ambition, that way he'll provide more money.

You seem to misunderstand what match preperation does. It will only ever affect your next match, giving your team a boost in certain relevant attributes. Getting your players to work at teamwork won't make them better at team work in the long term. You made the right decision to increase your workload though, because this will improve the competancy of your formations.

Signing 10 players in a month and playing them all at once will affect your team blend. There are a few things you can do to limit that damage:

• Sign players who already speak the language of the country you're managing in
  
• Sign players who are friends with other players at your club
  

PPP10's advice is right on the button, particularly wrt Rossi. Use him as a poacher or advanced forward (probably the latter), and have Hazard, Gaitan and Martin feed him loads of passes. I'd probably change Martin's duty to attack whenever you would like more goals so that he supports Rossi.

As for full backs, the most important attribute for them is probably stamina. It is very easy for a full back to become tired, even with stamina of 16 or 17. When a player is tired they'll make more mistakes. Given that you have Gaitan and Hazard drifting in off the flanks, your attacking play will probably improve a lot if you use attacking full backs, which you seem to have noticed. However, too much pushing forward and not only will you be vulnerable to counter attacks, but your full backs won't defend very well even when they do get back. Do you still have Angel Rangel and Neil Taylor at the club? They are both very good full backs and could be worth bringing on late in the game to help protect a lead. Obviously using two subs like that isn't ideal.

The last thing is your centre backs. I tried to sign Dominiguez once but ultimately missed out on him. I remember that he's a good defender but I can't remember anything about what sort of player he is. Vertonghen, on the other hand, I know a lot about. He is wasted as a limited defender- use him as a ball player. He is suited for the cover duty. However, playing two defenders on the cover duty isn't a wise idea as you'll be backing off too much. Set one of them to defend, or even stopper. The quicker one should be set to cover, the stronger, braver, more aggressive one should be the stopper (or on "defend").

Good luck!

[THOG]

You seem to misunderstand what match preperation does. It will only ever affect your next match, giving your team a boost in certain relevant attributes. Getting your players to work at teamwork won't make them better at team work in the long term. You made the right decision to increase your workload though, because this will improve the competancy of your formations.

I was under the impression that Team Blend was the exception. In other words, it builds "favoured" relationships, helps new players adapt to the squad more quickly and, thus, causes the squad to gel more quickly. So you set Team Blend under Match Prep up until the day before a match when you switch to one of the focus selections that provides a one-match attribute bonus.

EDIT: And here's confirmation of that:

The special focus selection is a separate selection aside from the selected tactics/formations and it will mainly only affect the next match performance. There is no long term cumulative "level" for these focuses like there are for the tactical areas above, so you can change the special focus every week to suit the needs for the next match. The only special focus that has long term effects is the team blend option, which naturally helps your players blend into the squad better over time the longer you keep this focus selected.

[Cleon]

I was under the impression (via Mantralux's training masterclass) that Team Blend was the exception. In other words, it builds "favoured" relationships, helps new players adapt to the squad more quickly and, thus, causes the squad to gel more quickly. So you set Team Blend under Match Prep up until the day before a match when you switch to one of the focus selections that provides a one-match attribute bonus.

It doesn't build favored relationships but it does help the team settle down faster if you've brought new players into the squad or learning a new formation helps them adapt quicker. But once the players are settled and all aspects of a tactic are fluid then Team Blend has no effect at all.

[Zoetermeer]

I'm currently writing about Swansea and hopefully will have it all done and posted by this weekend sometime. But if you want to get a little insight into how I played with Swansea while you wait for the thread you might want to check out my saved game with them and see what I achieved.

http://tinyurl.com/7h6jpt3

Then you'll see its something that you are doing whats wrong.

This is the thread it'll be posted in http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/289528-The-SI-Sports-Centre-All-You-Need-To-Know-About-FM

Thanks Cleon, looking forward to your post.

[Cleon]

Thanks Cleon, looking forward to your post.

I've added quite a bit if you fancy having a look

[Zoetermeer]

It doesn't build favored relationships but it does help the team settle down faster if you've brought new players into the squad or learning a new formation helps them adapt quicker. But once the players are settled and all aspects of a tactic are fluid then Team Blend has no effect at all.

Interesting, I was under the same impression as the Hand of God (that match preparation effects don't accumulate, except for teamwork). I didn't realize that it has no effect once your team has complete familiarity with a tactic, however.

By the way, what do favored relationships actually do?

[Zoetermeer]

One thing is to make sure you set your chairman to have lots of resources and ambition, that way he'll provide more money.

You seem to misunderstand what match preperation does. It will only ever affect your next match, giving your team a boost in certain relevant attributes. Getting your players to work at teamwork won't make them better at team work in the long term. You made the right decision to increase your workload though, because this will improve the competancy of your formations.

Signing 10 players in a month and playing them all at once will affect your team blend. There are a few things you can do to limit that damage:

• Sign players who already speak the language of the country you're managing in
  
• Sign players who are friends with other players at your club
  

PPP10's advice is right on the button, particularly wrt Rossi. Use him as a poacher or advanced forward (probably the latter), and have Hazard, Gaitan and Martin feed him loads of passes. I'd probably change Martin's duty to attack whenever you would like more goals so that he supports Rossi.

As for full backs, the most important attribute for them is probably stamina. It is very easy for a full back to become tired, even with stamina of 16 or 17. When a player is tired they'll make more mistakes. Given that you have Gaitan and Hazard drifting in off the flanks, your attacking play will probably improve a lot if you use attacking full backs, which you seem to have noticed. However, too much pushing forward and not only will you be vulnerable to counter attacks, but your full backs won't defend very well even when they do get back. Do you still have Angel Rangel and Neil Taylor at the club? They are both very good full backs and could be worth bringing on late in the game to help protect a lead. Obviously using two subs like that isn't ideal.

The last thing is your centre backs. I tried to sign Dominiguez once but ultimately missed out on him. I remember that he's a good defender but I can't remember anything about what sort of player he is. Vertonghen, on the other hand, I know a lot about. He is wasted as a limited defender- use him as a ball player. He is suited for the cover duty. However, playing two defenders on the cover duty isn't a wise idea as you'll be backing off too much. Set one of them to defend, or even stopper. The quicker one should be set to cover, the stronger, braver, more aggressive one should be the stopper (or on "defend").

Good luck!

Thanks a ton! This is hugely helpful. So when you suggest having Hazard, et al feed passes into Rossi, are you recommending changing any of their roles? I can see Gaitan (or whoever is playing on the right in the inside forward role) runs with the ball a lot and rarely passes it off, though I have always sort of envisioned it this way (the right inside forward is one of the goalscorers).

Edit: by the way, Dominguez is a very nice central defender, I think he's a steal as you can usually get him early in the game for between $6 and $8 million. Ideally suited for the stopper role you describe -- strong, brave, and aggressive, with good all-around mentals and decent physically. He's very well-developed at his age at the start of the game -- I'm surprised that nobody seems to have written about him anywhere.

[THOG]

Interesting, I was under the same impression as the Hand of God (that match preparation effects don't accumulate, except for teamwork). I didn't realize that it has no effect once your team has complete familiarity with a tactic, however.

It will still help, I assume, if the team is fluid but you have one or two new signings that still need to adapt.

By the way, what do favored relationships actually do?

They do have some effects according to in-game tips, but it's not clear if there's an actual effect in terms of the match engine (as in, higher teamwork or such). I know they will increase general loyalty to a club (thus, making players less inclined to seek transfer requests) as players will be happier to stay at the club if their friends are there (you will notice messages on "information" like "Proud to be at the same club as Steven Gerrard"). On the flipside, if you sell a player's friends/heroes or let their contracts expire, it will negatively affect their morale. In my current game, I've noticed Romelu Lukaku is upset with Chelsea because they allowed Drogba to leave on a free transfer.

[Andyprime]

how fast is rossi? if he's explosive i'd play him as a poacher and set as target man run on to ball, lots of through balls from your playmakers breaking though the defense resulting in lots of one on ones, well thats the theory anyway

[BiggusD]

Rossi is a playmaker, not a poacher. Look at his PPM's!

[PPPPPPPPPPPP10]

I can see Gaitan (or whoever is playing on the right in the inside forward role) runs with the ball a lot and rarely passes it off, though I have always sort of envisioned it this way (the right inside forward is one of the goalscorers).

In my game Gaitan has creativity of 14, passing of 15 and 16 for crossing so I'd definitely tick his through-ball and cross ball to often. What it will do is it will make Gaitan more likely to want to pass/cross if the option of passing seems better to him then forcing the issue of dribbling through the defender to get a shot off. The good news is his teamwork of 10 will mean that he will still going for the goal if he thinks he have a chance to score, the bad news is sometimes once he's in the box he'll try to hang on to the ball until a passing lane open up and with his low balance/strength he's likely to lose possession ... that's the theory anyway I never have Gaitan but I do have Kanagawa who is very similar minus the creativity

[Smac]

The remaining missing piece could perhaps be in accounting for morale / performance / luck.

When I was a kid there used to be this amazing pinball type thing at the National Museum of Air and Space (at least I think it was there, could'a been our local science museum). A ball would drop from the top. A black ball in a giant 20ftx 20ft plexiglass window. The ball would hit posts on its trip down the window and it would bounce around. Eventually it would land at the bottom just as the next ball began to drop. The posts were placed evenly and the balls at the bottom fell into stacks that remained until all the balls had been used up. It showed a bell curve, obviously, and I was fascinated and would watch it as long as I could. Even tried to build my own at home one summer.

Point is, you must account for the possibility that your Swans started out on the wrong foot, tripped, then stubbed their toe and never quite got up again. Depressed, they capitulated. It's even possible that the middle of the bell curve is below what you'd expect, but you'd have to run their season 10-20 times to start to get a handle on this. Clearly that isn't something that most FM'ers have the time to do, so instead you have to do whatever you can to tilt the curve in your favor.

I'd be interested to know what kind of team talks, player "chats", and media interactions you've used alongside this glory manchelona tactic (love the name by the way!). But what's more important is: How have your players responded to these?

There's a fair bit of randomness in the game, so you could go into one match and say "Do this for the fans" and get 3 players seemingly motivated, and if you tried it again you might get none. Unless you eek every last ounce of influence you have over your players by carrying on into individual team talks (taking into account individual history to these), post-match chats about "recent performance" or "last game" and "training", etc.., then you're allowing for a wider bell curve than is necessary.

I'll bet that once you get Swansea to start succeeding then it'll be like all your previous domination games. They won't stop. But I think many of us fail to remember or realize how difficult it is to get onto the success snowball in the beginning. No matter what players you sign it is a significant hurdle. Thankfully there is always something you can do to speed up the day arriving when you're on top and happy. If you do nothing at all then there is also always a possibility that that day will not come before you're sacked.

And no, I don't think it's your tactics.

[Slawbawn]

I know you said you don't think its your tactics, but just a thought; what was the familiarity level for the tactic you were using? I don't know how much this affects teams, but I'd have thought that if the team isn't familiar enough with the tactics, they're not gonna play well.

[Zoetermeer]

No, it wasn't familiarity -- I think by the season we started we were almost completely familiar, and were a few games in.

That's interesting, though, about the general decline into a low-morale team that can't beat anyone they should. I'm fairly good at keeping my teams' morale at a high level, mostly because I rarely criticize them after victories (though I do have the occasional mutiny when showing my displeasure upon beating some championship side in the league cup 4-3). But I can't really seem to figure out how to give the right team talk before games -- I can usually only hope for 3 players max to have any positive reaction, and most of them just seem to have no reaction. I've noticed that giving the same pre-game talk too often seems to wear off quickly -- pretty soon they tune you out, I guess.

The biggest problem with my squad, though, is that in this first year I invested heavily in world-class players but am very thin at most positions. Rossi just got injured in January and is out for 3-4 months, effectively leaving me with an unhappy Danny Graham and Scott Sinclair at striker. I have a $38 million transfer budget, but if I use it, my balance will go negative. I guess I could hope my sugar daddy will pump in more money -- but in my Everton game with a SG, he only pumped in $15 million -- and when we went red the next month, he didn't give us anymore. I have no idea how a foreground sugar daddy decides how much money to give you...

[Stephanie McMahon's Secret Lover]

The game is not perfect. For instance, if I hire an assistant and max him out with FMRTE then let him be in charge whilst on holiday, you wouldn't notice the difference. Edit a the same club's manager (from the start of the game) in the same way and Wooooooooossssshhhhhhh! EVERY competition including the Ressies and U18s won with ease.

One rule for humans and one rule for AI