'Booey's Guide To Comeback Victory - Analyzing Opposition - Making Changes

[bababooey]

*Slight disclaimer: I'm playing exclusively on FMC mode, so, tactical familiarity does not matter in my saves. Feel free to take my advice and apply it to a regular career game, but just know that tactical familiarity may cause issues for you

Why Are You Writing This?

Basically, I just recently played a match where I was losing, and came back. Obviously not unheard of, but it has inspired this post and hopefully I can show people some things that will really help them turn scorelines around, or plan better for their matches.

The Set Up

I am managing Man Utd in the first year of an FMC save. I've selected international player as my experience, and haven't used any mods or whatever.

My tactical approach for Man Utd is to play a direct game. Sort of similar to how they played years ago. I want fast transitions, taking advantage of wingers, aggression, and ruthless attacks.

However, this isn't 1999. Utd have a squad that is far from perfect, and I've opted to try and adapt as best I can. To work with the players we've got, while only bringing in one new face (Utd's transfer budget in the first season is not that large, relative to the other top clubs).

So the basic shape is a 4-4-1-1. Very simple. We defend in 2 banks of 4, sometimes 1 as 4 + 1 as 5 depending on the AMC.

The idea here is that United are not particularly well suited to a traditional 4-5-1 setup, given the problems at CM. United do have a lot of depth out wide, so I wanted to make sure our formation took advantage of that. Also, plenty of AMC's so, go figure.

Potential Issues

So like any good manager should do, you've got to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your team. In Utd's case, it's clear they lack a nasty CM / DM. So I bought Lars Bender. He's absolutely fantastic. But that really drained my transfer funds, even with the sale of Chicharito to Spurs. I didn't need 4 strikers.

We will likely struggle against narrow formations. So, any sort of 4-1-2-2-1, 4-3-1-2, 4-3-2-1, etc. etc.

Any sort of formation where the middle of the pitch is packed will give us problems. This is because, while our wide play is solid, we rely on playmakers who are centrally positioned. Carrick, Mata, Rooney, Kagawa, etc.

The Match

Right so, we're away to Stoke. We're on a fantastic run, and looking to smash them in the face. Unfortunately for us, Stoke like to play a christmas tree sort of formation. Which ends up as a 4-3-2-1. 2 AMC's, 3 CM's, 1 striker. Simple back 4. Let's have a look:

The key here for me, is that both teams lack anyone in the DM strata. This is SOOOO important for a number of reasons:

- Stoke are not a technically capable team. I don't mind them trying to pass the ball around as if they were

- Stoke do not use a DM, and in my experience so far in this save, that is a good way to get spanked by my team

- We don't use a DM but we're quite happy with conceding that space to Stoke. Why? Because think of it this way. If I were to use a DM, not only would I lose my advantage elsewhere on the pitch, I would also still be outnumbered there. I don't want to use two DM's, as this is a very winnable match ( we're not playing Real Madrid! ) so sometimes the best options is to just literally give that space away. If they're not very dangerous, then it wont be a huge problem

- Keeping our advantage elsewhere is critical. Kagawa finished the match with a 7.2 rating and a key chance created. He was dangerous. He was partly responsible for Danny Welbeck running all over the Stoke defense. The back line had to make a choice. Either they stop Kagawa or they stop Danny. But then we also had Fellaini that gave them issues, and our wide men. Stoke's formation is so incredibly lopsided, it's hard for them to keep a solid defensive shape. 5 of their players are sitting in between the halfway line and my box! It's so silly.

What happened and why?

So, Stoke actually started the game with a bang and went up 2-0. First goal was a dumb set piece thing, and the other was a brilliant cross to Peter Crouch. We were playing with the wrong strategy. We tried to control the game, and it wasn't working.

Rather than freaking out and drastically changing everything, I sat and thought about this for a second. There was plenty of time left. There is clearly a huge gap in their shape, and we've got a lot of talent on our side. So what did I do? I told the team to play on the counter. We hit them with direct passing, and drew them out onto us even further. The spaces were immense, and Danny Welbeck just destroyed them.

Common sense may say that when you go down, you need to up your game and be all "gung ho" about it. But that's not always wise. We decided to tone things DOWN, recognizing that Stoke were crowding the hell out of midfield, and that we needed to try and hit them on the break. If the space isn't available that you need, then you need to find a way to get that space, or find new space you can use. We couldn't tell Stoke to change formation, so we made our own adjustments, and it worked.

The key here is that Stoke did not change their ways. They were up 2-0 against the Champions of England, at home, and kept their shape instead of trying to go more defensive. This allowed us to counter attack beautifully well, and exploit their weaknesses. Silly Stoke! Winning is for United

So What Does This Have To Do With Anything?

What I'm getting at with this post, is you need to take a look at the other team. It's very easy to just think the same formation / instructions will work against anyone, but that isn't true. There are no wondertactics, and if there were, I would hate it. The best part of the game, IMO is doing the actually managing on the pitch.

Here's a little troubleshooting guide for you:

- Use tools! Look at their formation, compare it to yours. Draw them out (on another site, or in MS paint or whatever), and look to see where they can hurt you, and where you can hurt them. You dont even need to draw it out, but it helps if you do.

- Understand how certain formations work. For instance, a 4-4-2 cannot possibly work if the 2 CM's are being overwhelmed. They're vitally important, because if they're being beaten, the other team will basically just go straight down the middle and mess up their day.

- You don't always need to be more attacking to get more goals. It's counter-intuitive, but the key is not always doing MORE, but doing the right things. In the above example in my match, we could have gone gung-ho, but it wouldn't have helped. It probably would have played into their hands even more so, and we would have maybe lost 4-1 or 5-1. Not good.

Hopefully this helps a few people!

Cheers.

[Deego619]

Great guide, used it in a game I just played vs Arsenal.

Managed by Van Basten in 2016, he prefers to play Direct 4-5-1 football with a very technical side. I play a standard pressing 442 and aimed to keep things solid in the middle by playing physical players to close down Arsenal's midfield before they played the ball direct to their front men. I played a natural CB at RB (accomplished) too. A speedy winger (think Walcott/Lennon type) at RM to try and exploit a slower LB and try get crosses in to my 2 Strikers. Defensive winger on the other side (Oviedo) because I felt their RB (Micah Richards) offered very little attacking threat from crosses so he can do that all day long if he likes and we can double up on Carzola.

Unfortunately things didn't go to plan. At home Van Basten thought he'd play a more balanced passing game than I had envisioned. Not quite big Sam, not quite Guardiola, and thus we were failing to cope with the numbers in midfield. By the half hour mark, Arsenal had 8 shots on target and 3 CCCs with 2 goals (Set Piece and Ozil cutting in behind my natural CB at RB).

Changed things around at half time. Brought on my usual wing back at RB, a more speedy technical type. Decided to sit back further and try and frustrate Giroud by forcing him to contest headers on his own and force Arsenal's short passing out wide, where our speedy full backs could intercept and begin counter attacking.

Suddenly we saw a lot more chances coming our way, like Booey's Stoke, Arsenal 2-0 up at home didn't want to change their system, and very nearly paid for it. My Strikers began missing some easy CCCs and Arsenal were very fortunate to escape with a 2-1 victory. Arsenal only had 2 shots on target in the 2nd half and we ended up with more CCCs and nearly as many shots on target. I perhaps should of changed things around earlier but hey, that's an error on my own part and thus lost us the game.

Thanks again!

P.S: Forgot to mention what team I am. I'm QPR and have an upper mid-table squad.

[Guest]

Love your threads bababooey, I said this already. Did anything get thrown when Stoke went 2-0 up?

I wanted to add that there are a lot of people who are not getting that the game has become so realistic, that micro-managing is a must during the game. The plug and play glory hunters are fed up essentially but to be fair how things are at the moment is how it should be.

[bababooey]

Glad this has helped already!

@Crazy_Ivan nothing thrown at that time. I was multi-tasking during the match, watching netflix. So, I was distracted (which is NOT the best way to play FM..)

@JDeegguain it sounds like you guys almost did it. The 4-4-2 vs 4-5-1 variants is a really interesting thing and it sounds like they took advantage of the midfield situation right away. Good job picking up on that and making changes.

[agentvinz]

Great post but I always struggling to make a counter attacking tactic, I'm sure it's not as simple to change your mentality to 'counter' and use 'pass into space' right? Whenever I use 'counter' away from home I just invite too much pressure and barely create any chances.

[Cleon]

Another good thread baba

Love your threads bababooey, I said this already. Did anything get thrown when Stoke went 2-0 up?

I wanted to add that there are a lot of people who are not getting that the game has become so realistic, that micro-managing is a must during the game. The plug and play glory hunters are fed up essentially but to be fair how things are at the moment is how it should be.

Micro-managing isn't a must at all, that's just spreading misinformation. babooey's way he's written about in this guide is just one way of playing FM, there are many more ways you can play without micro-managing and over focusing.

[Guest]

Another good thread baba

Micro-managing isn't a must at all, that's just spreading misinformation. babooey's way he's written about in this guide is just one way of playing FM, there are many more ways you can play without micro-managing and over focusing.

I put that badly, I meant you need to react to what the opposition are doing.

[aderow]

I put that badly, I meant you need to react to what the opposition are doing.

True but at the same time, it can be bad to react too quickly or too late. I've been guilty of both

[Siron]

I put that badly, I meant you need to react to what the opposition are doing.

You don't NEED to

You can also try to force the opponent to react to your way at any time you wish

Nice read though

::thumbs up::

[Guest]

Ohhh jeez. Ok, clearly my point was badly made, apologies. I meant the days of downloading or making an overpowering tactic and then ignoring the opposition whilst you coasted to victory are gone. I once won the World Cup with Ghana and not once did I have to change a thing or react to the opposition changes other than making a substitution. The point I wanted to make was that would not happen now on FM and I think some people are struggling to grasp or deal with that.

[Siron]

agreed

Plug and Play is (almost) history, which is good.

Yet there are also real life examples on how PnP can work, such as: Guardiola at Bayern

He basicly plays PnP, making Players adapt to his style, without a backup plan, but then again, i never considered him to be in the same league as Mourinho, Ancelotti, Heynckes or Klopp.

[aderow]

agreed

Plug and Play is (almost) history, which is good.

Yet there are also real life examples on how PnP can work, such as: Guardiola at Bayern

He basicly plays PnP, making Players adapt to his style, without a backup plan, but then again, i never considered him to be in the same league as Mourinho, Ancelotti, Heynckes or Klopp.

That's what managers do though.

[bababooey]

The funny thing is, sometimes I don't even take my own advice!

[aderow]

The funny thing is, sometimes I don't even take my own advice!

We are all guilty of that mate

[JD nawrat]

Just spied this thread, which is pretty coincidental considering the result of my latest game. Very good post, this Clear, well-thought and a good example of how a little thought can go a long, long way.

In a 'Booey-esque post, I'm going to do a post similar to the OP here to talk through what I did in my latest game.

So a quick run-down of what's going on. I'm managing Tottenham Hotspur in season 1. Kept the squad the exact same except I brought in a LB, Alberto Moreno of Sevilla. I want to play a 4411 similarly to 'Booey here (exact same shape) in order to experiment with WMs which I've never used on an FM before (I am a 433 lover by nature). We want to be solid in defence, sitting deep and being compact before breaking quickly and trying to punish our opponents with quick and flairy players (Lamela, Chadli, Eriksen).

Line-Ups

Southampton at St. Mary's. They go with a 4231 "Denmark" here. Their advantages are clear - an AMC with no DMC to counter him; 4 clear attackers up against my flat back four. However their advantages are also clear - their two wingers naturally come narrow due to their style of play; they also have no DMC to counter my AMC and the WMs should be able to restrict the ease of passage from LB/RB to AML/AMR.

I was not expecting it to be an easy game - Southampton are a tough side to play on FM - but I wasn't expecting to start so disastrously with the opposition scoring two inside the first 10 minutes and taking a 2-0 lead. It was clear my system wasn't working. Our fullbacks were all over the place (Walker had a 6.3 after 61 minutes then he was subbed; Moreno had a 6.6 after 90 minutes and Naughton had a 6.6 from coming on to replace Walker at the 61st minute) and the lack of any sort of defensive midfielder was punishing us centrally because, as I had predicted but neglected to address, Rodriguez and Lallana were coming inside and exploiting the space there.

I decided to stick with the system we had in place for another 10 minutes because I was not sure why we were doing so badly - the system had worked against similar styles in pre-season and we did very well across the board, only losing one game (to Real Madrid, no less). After 10 minutes it became clear that there was a few issues with the tactics I had. Here were the shouts I started the game with:

The immediate problem being caused was Pass Into Space. My players were winning the ball back then throwing possession away cheaply by playing massive through balls that weren't working. We weren't taking advantage of Eriksen in the hole, Chadli on LM was anonymous when we got the ball and there was no service into Adebayor up front. My first instinct was to remove Pass Into Space in order to try and encourage the team to play decent passes to the feet of their teammates. At the time of making the changes, Southampton had had over 5 shots in 20 minutes to our 0. We were clearly struggling to piece together any sort of attack. After 10 minutes without Pass Into Space, we had found the net. A well created chance came from Kaboul launching a big through ball from the centre of the pitch, allowing Adebayor to get between the LB and LCB and find his way onto goal. It was an easy chance. We did well to score but at 2-1 down we still had a lot of work to do.

We went into HT at 2-1 and I took it upon to let the team know in no uncertain terms that the first half display was beyond unacceptable. Assertively I told the team that their performance wasn't good enough. All but two reacted with a fired up reaction. The two who didn't react were Chadli (6.3 at HT) and Moreno (6.3 at HT also). I targeted both and told them they weren't doing enough. Moreno responded with a motivated reaction but Chadli had nothing to say for himself. Despite the positive reactions, I felt some changes were still needed. Paulinho wasn't able to get far forward enough with the BBM role I had assigned him. He was a little off the pace (playing a 6.6) but he wasn't doing badly, he just had to get more involved. Instead of asking him to play box to box I asked him to play as a BWM/S because this required less running and allowed him to be more involved defensively also. Second half begun and immediately we looked dangerous. The team pieced together a couple of decent moves that finally culminated in Paulinho winning the ball back from Wanyama, playing in Lamela and then Lamela laid off for a tap-in for Adebayor. The team talk paid off. But we wanted the win, not a draw.

I removed Chadli quickly because of his further anonymity and poor reaction to the team talk and I brought on Lennon for him. More changes were required, though. I was still unhappy with the way the team was playing. I changed Christian Eriksen from an AM/A to an AP/A in order to try and further exploit the space in the hole. I felt the team weren't looking to find Eriksen as much as I had hoped they would. I also made changes to the system based on this...

Very narrow. Both wide men were switching but that wasn't an issue. Southampton had been creating little so I was more than happy for them to do that but it highlighted one very obvious issue for Southampton...they were weak down the flanks. I kept the base of my tactics in order but added two more shouts - Play Wider and Look For Overlap. The idea here was that because the AML/R weren't tracking back and were narrow anyway, the passage for the FBs was wide open and they could bomb forward with ease. Playing wider also allowed us to exploit the gaps that had been left by both the defenders and the attackers. I made another small change and decided to go from a Standard Mentality to a Control Mentality, knowing that this encouraged a bit more attacking impetus.

The team responded very positively to the changes and we began to ramp up the pressure. We had around 12 shots in the second half (as many as Southampton did in the entire game). We also created around 5 CCCs in this time. Eriksen came off for Sigurdsson because he was having a poor game. Even with players now finding him he was off the pace and misplacing passes and even at times missing sitters (he missed one of the CCCs we created). With the fullbacks bombing on we stretched the defence much wider which allowed Sigurdsson and Adebayor to take advantage of the space. It was simple stuff but it worked. Eventually we won a corner and a poor clearance allowed us to work it down the right to Sigurdsson who played in Adebayor to net his hattrick and the winner.

Final match stats/goal times:

Safe to say we tactically outclassed Southampton after the 20th minute Just had to assess what Southampton were doing and what we were failing to do. Simple stuff in the end. Take your time, assess the match and there's no reason you can't come back against any side

[llama3]

Excellent comeback there. Like it when people show their decision making as it happened so help other people.

[bababooey]

That's the idea. The best way to teach is to actually SHOW what is going on, IMO.

It's really hard to "show" what your thinking is, but I suppose doing these threads can achieve that goal, to a degree.

[JOSEPH!]

Good stuff Baba! Definitely better to sit, think and the act as oppose to acting out of turn.

'Do the right things righter' is the key for me. Plan, do, check and act - used in business I think but the same logic applies. As you say: Plan (write it down, draw the formations out, think about your approach), Do (implement it), Check (review changes and how they are affecting the match) and Act (further refine from your 'check' stage).

This is a cyclical process - it doesn't just stop and end - something I think you highlight well.