Direct Tactics

[KingCanary]

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but I can never get direct tactics working well. I find that as soon as my passing is anything higher than 'mixed' that I end up struggling to get even 40% possession. I know by going longer I'm not going to dominate possession but I thought a direct game with a good target man to hold the ball up and midfielders to get forward and support him I would be able to get a bit more of the ball? It always ends up feeling like I'm under the cosh the entire game and if I do get a win it's smash and grab.

Has anyone had decent success with a more direct game?

[alinp]

Claudio Ranieri

[OrientTillIDie]

The best direct football in my opinion doesn't have much possession at all. I started a York City save to test out an idea I had and it worked a treat. I probably averaged about 35-40% possession but I was so effective with the ball. Set out with a Defensive mentality, Target Man and Advanced Forward up front with wingers down the sides and combative midfielders in the middle. I played nice and narrow to force everything the opposition did out wide. My defenders were great big lumps so they dealt with any aerial threats and then my speedy wingers would tear through the back line and set up my strikers.

Personally I don't think you can expect lots of possession because you are essentially hoofing the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best. 40% is a good achievement if you ask me.

[OLLMEISTER1]

The best direct football in my opinion doesn't have much possession at all. I started a York City save to test out an idea I had and it worked a treat. I probably averaged about 35-40% possession but I was so effective with the ball. Set out with a Defensive mentality, Target Man and Advanced Forward up front with wingers down the sides and combative midfielders in the middle. I played nice and narrow to force everything the opposition did out wide. My defenders were great big lumps so they dealt with any aerial threats and then my speedy wingers would tear through the back line and set up my strikers.

Personally I don't think you can expect lots of possession because you are essentially hoofing the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best. 40% is a good achievement if you ask me.

Reminds me of Wimbledon without the violence

[OrientTillIDie]

Reminds me of Wimbledon without the violence

Haha funny you should say that, I kind of took inspiration from them and Stoke under Pulis. I made sure I had everyone who needed to tackle going in hard (i.e. Full backs tackling wingers and central midfielders tackling whoever was nearest). I was sitting 2 points off the top at Christmas. I've not carried on with that save though since the patch came out.

[phnompenhandy]

As a lower league manager with players useless at passing and all other skills, but with decent workrate and teamwork attributes, my style is purely direct. Yes, possession is low but it gets me results and a lot of pleasing play. Nothing purer than seeing your full back lumping a 50 yard percentage ball and your striker catching the centre back out of position and bursting through on goal.

[Jean0987654321]

Claudio Ranieri

Or Tony Pulis...or Diego Simeone

Not too sure what OP wants. Are you asking that a Route One/Direct tactic can work? Yes, but you have to get the roles and the players right in order to execute such...

[Gianni Brera]

Direct football means you play the ball fast and you play it vertical (forward). This makes it incompatible with retaining posession, not because it's inferior or anything, its just the nature of it. You launc an attack quickly. And then the attack ends as a missed shot, a shot on goal, a corner, a free kick, a penalty, or as a goal. If its not a corner, penalty or free kick, the attack ends with your team losing ball posession. The opponent can then build up their play (and if theyre smart, they slow the game down, so they don't get attack wave after wave, inviting pressure). You'll have to regain posession often, in order to fire another fast attack, lose the ball, and regain the ball again. This results in the opponent having spent most of the time in ball posession, even if your team is much better and creating all the scoring chances.

[KingCanary]

The best direct football in my opinion doesn't have much possession at all. I started a York City save to test out an idea I had and it worked a treat. I probably averaged about 35-40% possession but I was so effective with the ball. Set out with a Defensive mentality, Target Man and Advanced Forward up front with wingers down the sides and combative midfielders in the middle. I played nice and narrow to force everything the opposition did out wide. My defenders were great big lumps so they dealt with any aerial threats and then my speedy wingers would tear through the back line and set up my strikers.

Personally I don't think you can expect lots of possession because you are essentially hoofing the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best. 40% is a good achievement if you ask me.

I'm not sure that really stacks up v real life though. For instance the lowest average possession stat of any team in the premier league of championship is 45% (West Brom and Birmingham). I'm not expecting to dominate the ball but I've found it quite easy to develop possession based tactics that with nice short passing but the second I select 'more direct passing' I really struggle.

In my current save I've got Rudy Gestede (who should be a useful target man) but my prayers seem to really struggle to use him. I constantly see attacks break down as someone plays a longer ball that falls about 5-10 years short of him and is not contested.

Gestede is up front on his own with tm (s) as his role. I've got talented wingers and some good central midfielders so would ideally like to play a 4-1-2-3 wide with Gestede holding the ball up to bring my wingers/midfielders into play. Instead all I see is the ball falling short of heaters and teams coming straight back at me.

What am I doing wrong?

[johnnyyakuza78]

I'm not sure that really stacks up v real life though. For instance the lowest average possession stat of any team in the premier league of championship is 45% (West Brom and Birmingham). I'm not expecting to dominate the ball but I've found it quite easy to develop possession based tactics that with nice short passing but the second I select 'more direct passing' I really struggle.

In my current save I've got Rudy Gestede (who should be a useful target man) but my prayers seem to really struggle to use him. I constantly see attacks break down as someone plays a longer ball that falls about 5-10 years short of him and is not contested.

Gestede is up front on his own with tm (s) as his role. I've got talented wingers and some good central midfielders so would ideally like to play a 4-1-2-3 wide with Gestede holding the ball up to bring my wingers/midfielders into play. Instead all I see is the ball falling short of heaters and teams coming straight back at me.

What am I doing wrong?

One of the main problems with having a TM up front on his own is that its very easy to combat that sort of style. Basically the vast majority of your play will be going through him, via long balls. He then has to knock the ball down, hold it up and wait for support. In a 41221 there aren't a great many numbers next to him. Both wingers will start out wide, mean they are too far to help him out. A CM will again be quite far away. So generally he will try and hold the ball up, have no options, and then lose it.

For me, a target man works best with a partner, and support who can get to him quickly. So another strike partner who is more attacking is a good option.

I also find a Defensive forward who comes right back into midfield can work really well, makes it easier for longer balls to hit him, he helps out more defensively and it brings him closer to the rest of the team.

Failing that you can just play a lot more attacking, give him a striker partner, push the whole side up so that any long balls are followed with the whole team rushing up.. a bit like at school.

[Bruce Drundrige]

Haha funny you should say that, I kind of took inspiration from them and Stoke under Pulis. I made sure I had everyone who needed to tackle going in hard (i.e. Full backs tackling wingers and central midfielders tackling whoever was nearest). I was sitting 2 points off the top at Christmas. I've not carried on with that save though since the patch came out.

Can I ask what you had your centre-mid partnership as? BWM and B2B?

[OrientTillIDie]

Can I ask what you had your centre-mid partnership as? BWM and B2B?

No I just used CM(d) and CM(s). BWM would ruin my shape because they run all over the place and B2B can get caught up front if the opposition break. I just used a few PIs to mould them into what I wanted (tackle harder, hold position, shoot less often, fewer risky passes etc). I can't remember all of them off the top of my head because I haven't done that save for ages and deleted it the other day to concentrate on my Orient save.

[Bruce Drundrige]

Fair enough, thanks for the reply. Struggling after a promotion and thinking I need to dig in and battle a bit more along these lines

[Bunkerossian]

How to get proper support from the midfield, in a direct tactic? One central MF will obviously hold, but would a BBM work well beside him? I can use either a 4-4-1-1 system (AM (At) + TM (Su) or 4-4-2 (AF + TM (Su)).

[moolochicken]

I separate direct tactics from long balls. They are not necessarily equal. A direct tactic could be passing the ball more directly but it does not have to be long balls with target man.

If you are talking about long balls, it is different depending on your tempo, philosophy and Directness. I have played West Ham with bomber tactic 4-1-2-1-2, won the Europa Cup and coming off as third in the league. I have two settings:

My Slow Bomber- Attacking/Counter, Fluid, Very Low Tempo, Short Passing, Hit early crosses, Pass out of defense and to the flanks.

My Fast Bomber- Attacking, Structured, Very High Tempo, Go route One, Hit early crosses, Pump balls into box.

With Slow bomber tatic I could sometimes acheive close to 60% possession, so that can obviously fulfill your requirement. I will be closer to 40% with Fast Bomber.

I have discovered that when it would not go well with two target man on the pitch. I set them 1 Target man 1 Complete forward so that both of them can dominate by their strength and jumping in the box, while the Complete forward will also offer assistance outside of the box.

I could also observe in the ME, the header won by the target man wont always reach their teammates. You have to set players around the target man, not just midfielders, but also AMCs, wingers or strikers. With dual strikers, sometimes the target man will knock the ball behind him for the other stiker to shoot in the box.

* I just won a fantasy draft 10 mins ago by the combination of these 2 tactic:)

[Midnight Rob]

I have two settings:

My Slow Bomber- Attacking/Counter, Fluid, Very Low Tempo, Short Passing, Hit early crosses, Pass out of defense and to the flanks.

My Fast Bomber- Attacking, Structured, Very High Tempo, Go route One, Hit early crosses, Pump balls into box.

Hiya, when would you deploy one setting or the other?

[moolochicken]

Hiya, when would you deploy one setting or the other?

\i always start with slow Bomber to have more possesion and crosses, and then switch to fast bomber when I am chasing the match or when being tactically countered i.e. when opponent plays three center backs.

[Het2]

The best direct football in my opinion doesn't have much possession at all. I started a York City save to test out an idea I had and it worked a treat. I probably averaged about 35-40% possession but I was so effective with the ball. Set out with a Defensive mentality, Target Man and Advanced Forward up front with wingers down the sides and combative midfielders in the middle. I played nice and narrow to force everything the opposition did out wide. My defenders were great big lumps so they dealt with any aerial threats and then my speedy wingers would tear through the back line and set up my strikers.

Personally I don't think you can expect lots of possession because you are essentially hoofing the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best. 40% is a good achievement if you ask me.

Sorry duplicated post

[Het2]

The best direct football in my opinion doesn't have much possession at all. I started a York City save to test out an idea I had and it worked a treat. I probably averaged about 35-40% possession but I was so effective with the ball. Set out with a Defensive mentality, Target Man and Advanced Forward up front with wingers down the sides and combative midfielders in the middle. I played nice and narrow to force everything the opposition did out wide. My defenders were great big lumps so they dealt with any aerial threats and then my speedy wingers would tear through the back line and set up my strikers.

Personally I don't think you can expect lots of possession because you are essentially hoofing the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best. 40% is a good achievement if you ask me.

Hi there, if you don't mind me asking could you share a bit more information of this tactic? I am very interested to hear how you have done this as I have been trying to implement the same way for some time now.

Cheers

[marsh82]

Remember when talking about Possession % that FM works it out different to the companies that provide the Possession stats for real football... So your in game % will naturally be lower than a real life team nowadays.

[KingCanary]

Remember when talking about Possession % that FM works it out different to the companies that provide the Possession stats for real football... So your in game % will naturally be lower than a real life team nowadays.

I didn't know that- how is it calculated differently?

[Cleon]

I didn't know that- how is it calculated differently?

I wrote this on it;

People always throw real life percentages around when talking about Football Manager but don’t realise that how Football Manager and most analysis sites workout possession is very different. So if we start by looking at someone like Opta then we can see how they measure possession.

When you are watching a football match every once in awhile you’ll see flashed up on the screen a statistic showing how much “ball possession” each team has had. Opta explains how this statistic is computed:

There are several data providers out there in the UK and across the world monitoring games, from TV companies themselves for live games, to specialists like Opta. Each has their own method of working out possession. Some use calculations based on the data, but most use a “chess clock” approach where each team has a button which is hit when they are in possession. Some do this in the broadcast truck, others have analysts who call it out and inputters who hit the buttons.

Opta used this method originally, but the problem we found with a chess clock approach for time is that you are reliant on the person logging the data remembering to hit the button and the person doing it usually has other tasks to perform and other data to log.

Missing a couple of switches obviously skews the possession figures and it’s impossible to go back and change it. It may not sound much but one minute where the clock is wrong can affect the possession figures by two to three percentage points. Opta now record possession in a football match by means of an automated calculation based on the number of passes that a team has in a game. We have two analysts, each monitoring one of the teams and they log each event in a game, totalling between 1600 and 2000 events per match.

Each of these events has a timecode plus an xy co-ordinate and the collection system is rigorously monitored by our team of checkers. During the game, the passes for each team are totalled up and then each team’s total is divided by the game total to produce a percentage figure which shows the percentage of the game that each team has accrued in possession of the ball.

For Opta “ball possession” means percentage of completed passes, and is not a measure of time, though Opta does claim that the two are very closely related.

That is how Opta work their possession out which seems reasonable enough. However Football Manager handles it different to how Opta now works.

Football Manager still uses the old method of the ‘chess clock’ to record possession. But what does that mean? Well it means that the difference in methodologies between them and Opta cannot be accounted for. One of the main differences between the two methods but be an example like this;

Team A is under real pressure and the ball is put out of play by Team B. Team A could take a minute or longer to put the ball back into play and all of this would account for possession in Team A’s favor. Because it’s the amount of time that is calculated. Were as for Opta all of this would amount to nothing and is meaningless. But in Football Manager it’s counted as possession. It’s worth remembering that when trying to figure out possession on Football Manager based on real life percentage figures. If you realise this then it’ll save you lots of time that would normally be spent banging your head against the wall.

Taken from http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/445500-The-Art-of-Possession-Football