Understanding the new tactics system and developing a system

[wardog]

Ok so after being sacked in 2 previous saves, I've finally bitten the bullet and decided to ask for some help.

I've decided to start as Chelsea this time. Previous saves where with Morton and Southampton.

Anyways, contract requirements for possession and attacking football. Other than that i want to exploit our strengths. I will be making some play changes but none confirmed as of yet.

I've came up with this base based on what I used with Southampton. Obviously Southampton isn't quite as strong as Chelsea, but i was sacked before Christmas of the first season.

I want to play a solid attacking, flair football, but still reasonably solid at the back.

Thanks,

Wardog.

[afailed10]

Imo there's too much instructions and you shouldn't play fluid with such roles. More importantly, that formation setup leaves a gap in the midfield and it's more suitable for counter. You should tie your whole formation up as a whole unit if you want possession.

[tennisball]

Read the 12 steps guide, it'll assist a lot in the process of creating a coherent tactic for your team.

One more thing, I wouldn't pick the same formation just because it worked with another team. You need to look at your new team's strengths and weaknesses as well.

[WayneRomney]

Hi Wardog,

A lot of people seem to think that in order to play attacking football you need 'Attacking' and 'Fluid' set. It's simply not the case. You can construct a very solid attacking formation simply by applying the right type of instructions.

Have a look at this from my latest save with Stuttgart.

http://bildr.no/view/R0VpT3Vq

This is from a 4-2-3-1 with 'Standard' and 'Balanced'.

You have way too many instructions for this tactic to work. Conflicting instructions too.

[Seule]

Yeah hopefully, someone with some really good tactical nous will help you out too.

My first impression is way too many instructions, I personally like to start my formations with no instructions whatsoever and see how it plays and then add instructions as required. I work from the philosophy that the instructions are meant to augment an already good structural tactic.

The other thing I would say is, that front 4. Shadow striker and poacher will likely be looking for the same holes, and the inside forwards will be tucking in and congesting things as well. If you intend to have the fullbacks overlapping on the outside, that's great, but there seems to be a lot of "put the ball in the net" and not so much "set a guy up to put the ball in the net."

[Cleon]

I'd lose all the instructions and the read these 3 threads in this order;

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/366111-How-to-Play-FM14-A-Twelve-Step-Guide

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/375632-Pairs-amp-Combinations-The-Complete-Series

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/377489-Creating-A-Tactic-Design-Create-and-Maintain

Then you should have a good understanding of how things work or at the very least a reference point to keep going back if needed.

The set up above doesn't make much sense as you use far too many shouts. Not only that but you used a poacher up top without much real thought imo. Who is going to provide him with the ball to score the important goals? I can't see where the supply will come from because a poacher as the lone striker doesn't really work unless he has someone behind him to connect him with the ball. He'd be easily marked out of the game. Especially when the IF's are supportive too, I fail to see where the support or link up play would come. And don't even get me started on the midfield and how misjointed it is. I'm not sure how you expect to get the ball from defence to attack?

[yaşar]

Hi Wardog,

A lot of people seem to think that in order to play attacking football you need 'Attacking' and 'Fluid' set. It's simply not the case. You can construct a very solid attacking formation simply by applying the right type of instructions.

Have a look at this from my latest save with Stuttgart.

http://bildr.no/view/R0VpT3Vq

This is from a 4-2-3-1 with 'Standard' and 'Balanced'.

You have way too many instructions for this tactic to work. Conflicting instructions too.

Could you tell us how did you achive this ?

[wardog]

Yeah if i'm honest back to my Morton save i used just attacking and direct shout and that didn't work so kind of over compensated when i went to Southampton.

the 4231 i thought would allow me to use the best of Chelsea's attacking mid options. I also have a spare 4-2-3-1 tactic that might be better.

all instructions are the same as the wider version above as i haven't played since posting.

If im honest last year was the first year i came away from the sliders so still understanding the player roles, and then they changed it again, will defo have a read of the links given and have a quick experiment.

[Auqakuh]

From your instructions it looks like you want to play a high pressing game with creativity in attack.

Unfortunately, you've got a lot of conflicting instructions.

You're asking your team to play wide, but you also asking them to close down the opposition; this will be incredibly tiring when out of possession. Then, when in possession, you're asking them, again, to play wide, which means lots of space between individuals and does mean more attacking options... but also means that, in combination with roaming, it will take a lot of stamina over ninety minutes to transition back to defense again over and over, and then go and press for the ball...

You're going to get pulled out of shape, a lot, and you're going to see a huge number of turnovers because of that very high tempo. Players will consistently be out of position.

On the upside, being set to "Fluid" does mean that you'll be a more compact unit vertically - less space between defence, midfield, and attack will lessen the impact of those stamina-sapping transitions.

But what I think you really want to do is play in your opponents' half, keep the ball, and retain enough creativity to be able to break down difficult defences.

You have two options, how I see it. Your first option is to take this tactic and effectively cut it in half: create two tactics; one focused on ball retention, on sitting deep in possession and forcing your opponent out, with a slow tempo - probably balanced philosophy and standard or control mentality, depending how high up the pitch you prefer to keep the ball - further up = control, deeper = standard.

Instructions would probably be shorter passing (slower tempo, retain the ball), work ball into box (cut down turnovers from silly long shots and the like), play out of defence, use tighter marking (to manage defensive transitions, since you're primarily playing in the middle third with this tactic - players need to be near their markers to quickly win the ball back without tiring pressing), and maybe lower tempo or even much lower tempo (if your mentality is control). Depending on how dirty your players are, you'll want to moderate their tackling with either get stuck in (if they're not dirty/not aggressive/lack bravery) or stay on feet (if they are dirty/aggressive). You might want to do that with specific player instructions, as of course, it varies from player to player.

Your other tactic would be focused on tearing into the opposition - high energy pressing and passing, doing what Mourinho calls "breaking the lines". This one would be very fluid, with the counter mentality (for quick transitions; you'll be playing far higher up the pitch than "counter" suggests). The philosophy is because you want players with similar mentalities - a tight, compact unit, high up the pitch, playing "direct" football. It's never really direct though, because the playing area is squeezed as small as possible, meaning opposition players have no choice but to press or be passed around by the high tempo. This one is a high press, requiring lots of stamina, so is best used sparingly, in bursts through a match.

Essentially that would be with the instructions shorter passing (we still want to keep the ball as much as possible), much higher tempo (to make the transition from the transitional phase to the attacking phase faster and catch opposition players out of position, as well as "forcing" the play in an effort to "break the lines"), work ball into box (we still don't want to waste opportunities; patience is valuable), play narrower (enabling the quick short passing style that will break the lines, as well as ensuring that our defensive transition will be very fast), much higher defensive line (to squeeze the play vertically and reduce the distance any single player has to move to press an opponent), use tighter marking (again, to stay close, to reduce the time it takes to transition to defence), but also roam from positions (to enable creative players to find pockets of space outside of the system's instruction and make us more dangerous).

Your other option is to try to make that one tactic just that, one tactic, and pick exactly what you want to do with a mind to balancing between attack and defence better - do you want to play wide so you can exploit all that lovely space, or do you want to press hard? You honestly can't do both; it'll far too tiring and you'll concede lots of late goals as a result.

Oh hell.

I just looked at your roles.

Firstly, do away with that Poacher; poachers are useless, outmoded, and pointless. I can't really be scathing enough on the role. All they do is wander around looking for space, isolated and not involved; might as well be down to 10 men for most of the match, then. If you're insisting on using a shadow striker, then you should probably do what the tooltip for that says and play a DLF - a Complete Forward on support is another option. But not a poacher. The SS depends on interplay with the front man, and poachers don't do interplay at all.

Secondly, you're playing a short passing game, but you have four players who are all out and out attackers - inside forwards, even on support, will play quite high up the pitch all the time, and there's nobody with a defined creative role when it comes to the attacking phase. Granted, correctly you're on fluid, reducing the mentality gap and ensuring that the spaces between the lines won't be as dramatic as it looks, but it's still going to be too big a gap between the lines; the transitional phase is going to be very difficult for your team. The higher creativity and the roaming from positions will also help, but papering over the cracks of a system with individuality is doomed to failure, IMHO.

Your fullbacks are on automatic and that's a mistake; they need to have clearly defined roles. Never use "automatic". Essentially they are now attacking fullbacks, which is not too bad, but with that gap in midfield they'd probably be better suited to being support players, sitting wide and offering an outball for your poor isolated DLP. At least one of your IFs should also probably be a playmaker, unless you're willing to change the formation a fair bit.

Depending who is in goal, you should also consider a sweeper keeper role - on defence if he's not great at the role specifically - because you will get a lot of counter-attacks against you, and you will need a goalkeeper who rushes out and picks off through balls towards the edge of his own area.

[wardog]

Auqakuh thanks for some sick feedback, taking that onboard I think the second formation i showed would be better, although still needs work, changed the instructions to this. Hopefully it should now play similar to a tactic i used in last years game with good success.

Open for all feedback, should this now be a step in the right direction? Should i push the DM's into CM's ? Although again i feel that may make getting from defence to midfield hard?

The last comment i have, alot of you mention this Counter and attacking mentality isnt much different. Its in the contract i have to play Attacking Possession football, would playing on "counter" effect that ?

[PhroX]

Regarding the contract thing, don't worry too much about it. It doesn't literally mean you have to have your tactics set to attacking, just that your general play is mroe towards the "score more than them" attitude rather than the "1-0 is good enough" school of though (which pretty much any mentality can achieve if the team is set up correctly - for example, it's generally considered here that the current Barcelona team si set up with what FM considers a "counter" mentality, and they're definately not lacking in attacking football). And anyway, if you're doing well overall, the chairmen are generally more lenient regarding those things from my experience.

As for the tactics, while I won't claim to be a master or anything, I've a few thoughts that might help. Couple of things from your latest revision:

a - Too many instructions. "Retain possession", "Shorter Passing", "Play out of Defence" and a couple of others all really modifiy the same things (playing short passes), while pass into space is, if anything, the opposite to these (particularly retain possession). And while they might stack, it seems to me to be excessive and risks putting your players into bad situations. Start with a couple of key instructions - say, short passing, more expressive, work ball into box, maybe one more, and see how that goes. You can add more if you feel your team isn't playing quite how you want, but it's a lot easier to start simple.

b - Still not completely happy with the striker. If you really want to play a SS in the central AMC role, you want the striker to be dropping off, creating space. An AF won't do that. DLF(s), Treq, F9(s) are the type of player for this. If you want an AF/Poacher for the lone striker, go with a creative central AMC (AP(s), Treq., AMC(s) Engache(s) etc) and have the wider AMs (whether AMCr/l or AMR/L) look to be making runs around them. As it is, even if your AF is able to create the space for the SS to move into, you've really only got one avenue of attack - straight down the middle.

For the DMCs, I've always been a fan of a staggered approach in the 4231, with one DMC (usually DMC(d)) and an MC (usually DLP(s), but any of the deeper roles fits - avoid things like MC(a), BWM or BBM that will push too far forward). I find it gives a nice balance of defensive solidity while not compromising the ability to get the ball forward without hoofing it.

[wardog]

Thank you guys, took all advice on board and tinkered a little more.

Anyways, i did the whole of pre-season (just pre-season i know) and while rotating managed to score 24 goals, conseading just 1. Annoyingly then the game crashed, unsaved i have decided to start elsewhere, but thanks to your feedback I'm much more confident with the new system.

Thank you