3@theback Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 Firstly let me introduce myself, I am a long time CM/FM'er but have not played the last few releases mainly due to a painfully slow pc which has now been replaced with a shiny new laptop. I've never been a hugely successful player, but have always managed to get the odd promotion here and there and generally had a good time along the way. Now, onto FM2013, and to be honest, my first impression was that the difficulty level appeared to have been ramped up to an almost unplayable level. I think I must have started about 30 different saves with various teams all over the globe, all of which ended with what has been called the 'rage quit'. I'm thinking what a waste of £25 that was, and then one lunchtime at work I decide to visit this forum and start to read a few posts, and I get to thinking, you know what? I refuse to let this game beat me, i'm gonna put a little effort in and actually try and learn the correct way to set my team up, im gonna actually watch more of the game and try and react to what the opposition does instead of just telling my team what to do and letting them carry on regardless of how the game develops. This is the story of, in my opinion, a very successful first 18 months in charge of Wolverhamton Wanderers, and how my tactic developed over that time. After looking at my squad, I decided on a 4-1-2-2-1 to start. Now this worked pretty well up until Christmas, and then the bad run started, my defenders seemed to be getting isolated in a lot of 1 on 1's with no player covering and results started to suffer, so time to sit down and think about what I should do next. I think to myself that the Roaming : Stick to Position instruction can't be helping matters, so I change that back to default and see an immediate improvement in defence, but then the goals begin to dry up in attack. Whilst watching the games, there just wasn't the attacking movement that I wanted, ideally I wanted one of my midfielders to be getting forward a lot to help out the lone striker but it just wasn't happening. Back to read a few more threads on here and I come up with a plan, I change the Style to Fluid and also change the AP-A in the middle to CM-A. The rest as they say was history and we won the Championship quite easily in the end, indeed the change to a Fluid style seemed to help out just as much in defence as it did in attack and we finished with the best defence in the league! Onto out 1st season in the Premier league and due to our close season signings I decided to change the AP-A on the right to a W-A. My W-A on the left hand side has a PPM of Cuts Inside, so although I have 2 wingers, the one on the left does cut inside a lot which gives me some variety in attack. Having said that, our start to the new season was not impressive. We just weren't looking like we would score, chances were at a premium, and although we were looking pretty solid at the back, I needed to do something about our attack. The AF-A was looking quite isolated up front and we were struggling to get him involved in games, so I decided to change him to a DLF-A and this made us much more threatening straight away. My tactic now has evolved into and I have to say we have started to play some really nice looking stuff, we are currently sitting in 5th place after 14 games and after making the AF-A to DLF-A change we have taken 19 points from the last 7 games! Now I appreciate that i'm no tactical expert, and I fully expect some on here could perhaps pick holes in my current setup (any suggestions or comments welcome!) but what I am hoping to get across to people is that a little bit of reading up on here and a bit of trial and error whilst watching the games and it's not that hard to get your setup working pretty well. As you can all see, I haven't really made any drastic changes to my original tactic that I started the first season with, but we look so much better now, and i'm even starting to think we may mount a challenge for europe next season! Finally a big thank you to all who take the time to post the really good articles on here especially Cleon and Shrewnaldo who's articles both on here and their blogs have been really helpful. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleon Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 If something is working for you then no-one can pick holes at all because it's working and getting you results and that is all that matters I'm glad you stuck with the game though and decided to learn more about it, especially with watching games to try and pinpoint the issues and then try and find a solution to them. I think more people who struggle with the game need to do this. Some users will come back and say 'I don't understand the ME blah blah' but you don't need to understand it to be able to see if your striker is isolated, defenders out of position and so on. That's just basic observations and using your eyes ffs Good luck for the rest of your season Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Loco7 Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 A success story to rival them all! Granted not a heaving trophy cabinet (yet) but a real warm and fuzzy story which shows exactly what people need to do to really fall in love with this game. A bit of hard work and effort can get you a long way, and I hop many people read this thread and learn something! Kudos 3@theback (who plays with 4 at the back )! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shrewnaldo Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Nice one 3@theback (who is playing with 4@theback). Always nice to hear about people trying to overcome their problems with the match engine in a sensible manner rather than vitriol, ignorance and good old-fashioned whining. Also, thanks for the plug. Nice to hear that people enjoy my blog. I can't really see the screenshots that well on my computer - is your defence WB(A) - CD© - LD(X) - FB(S)? I notice that you've manually implemented an offside trap with that. Do you have many issues with your offside trap failing due to the staggered defensive line you are using? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
3@theback Posted August 11, 2013 Author Share Posted August 11, 2013 My defence lines up FB-A---LD-C---LD-X---FB-S. The offside trap was one of the things I experimented with around christmas time during my first season, and seemed to work pretty well so I stuck with it. From watching the games (comprehensive highlights) it doesn't seem to cause any problems, the LD-C doesn't look like he drops deeper to cover, rather he seems to move across slightly when the LD-X moves forward to close down. First season in the Prem has now been completed and we managed to finish in 5th place! Finished with the 4th best defence in the league, and managed to qualify for europe. Our home record was brilliant, and included victories over Chelsea (5-0), Tottenham (3-0) and Manchester United (6-0). Kevin Doyle finished with 20 goals from 37 appearances. A few things to think about for next season, firstly i'm not sure that i'm currently getting the best out of Will Hughes. Am currently playing him in the CM-A position, and he does well there, but really I think he would be better as a DLP. Experimented with changing my CM-S to a DLP-S and playing him there for a few games, but didn't really seem to work, he kept getting caught in possession and losing the ball, so changed back to CM-S. Also, towards the end of the season, I noticed that teams were playing differently against me, sitting deeper and trying to hit me on the counter, i'm guessing that this is because our reputation has increased and they are giving us more respect, a change of mentality form Attacking to Control seemed to help with this, but would be interested to hear how other people have handled this in their games. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shrewnaldo Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 How did you only manage to score 50 goals in the other 35 games if you scored 14 in those 3?! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
3@theback Posted August 11, 2013 Author Share Posted August 11, 2013 Well looking back, we did struggle for goals from the start of February, which i think was when our reputation must have changed and teams started playing differently against us. It took me a couple of months to get us scoring again :o Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hdefte Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 Sounds like the things I was struggeling with to. I was also about to give up the game, and have made around 20 diffenrent saves, that only made it until christmas, and then i delete the game, because it's not going as I planned out. Really impressive results you have gotten, hopefully you will be able to follow up on them for the next season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleon Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 In those games you lost what was the weather like on those days? You can change it on the fixtures screen so it shows so you can do a quick overview. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
davehibb Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Good stuff 3@theback. I'm no expert either and in the recent past I've always gone with downloaded tactics and training schedules but with the help of fantastic threads by Cleon and others on here, I now set up and develop my own youngsters with a great deal more care and specialisation and also create and tweak my own tactics to suite the players at my disposal or the 'way' I want to play, which means I have a bit more fun playing different formations, rather than just playing the same formation on every save. It was a lot of hard work at first and a steep learning curve but also a nice sense of accomplishment when things work out. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
3@theback Posted August 12, 2013 Author Share Posted August 12, 2013 The weather was mostly drizzle / wet when I went through my bad patch of results. I have my passing set at default normally, should I perhaps be looking at playing more direct when the weather is bad, got to be honest and say I never even considered looking at the conditions before the game. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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