FM17 - Rediscovering Tactics & Tweaking the Leicester Style

[chrisw]

12 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

Fuming at that goal to be honest, but what can we take from it:

1) The initial starting points are just wierd. I will check if this is related to my set piece instructions, and if not perhaps raise over in the bugs forum. 

!!!

I've noticed this on countless occasions in both FM16 and now '17. It's so incredibly frustrating. I've never raised it as a bug through sheer laziness ("Oh well, it's happened, I'll move on... again") / ("it probably only happens to me"). Seeing it happen to someone else really opens my eyes.

If you're not inclined to raise it just yet, keep an eye on the marking for those deeper free-kicks - especially central ones - because I genuinely think it's a real issue.

Fantastic analysis too, btw

[Ceching You Out]

Good to see another one of these from you @Jambo98! Love the thorough analysis.

Interesting observation regarding the DC closing down. In the situations at the edge of the box, the CD are behaving how I'd want them to in my team. I can see how in the context of your system it exposes gaps though, especially with Morgan, Huth, and Wasilewski. It's a matter of style and fit. More nimbly athletic, less man-mountain defenders are more likely to "get there" when stepping out and better able to recover. Of course we're also more vulnerable to crosses to big, strong forwards so it makes sense to harry before opponents can put in a pinpoint cross.

Have a pretty good idea how you'll solve the DC (as do you I think) but I won't jump ahead . As for the  getting exposed on the left flank, I'm curious how/whether you'll adjust; there's always the balancing act between being defensively solid and neutering your offense. Some of the gaps on your left are "by design" given your tactics (like Okazaki's behavior) so there's always the possibility of deciding you're okay with the risks there even if you occasional get caught out there.

[callamity]

Interesting to see the goal analysis you have done here jambo, it actually made me look back at the goals I have conceded over my last 5 matches at the time of reading, i conceded 8 in 5 matches, 3 wins 2 losses. I actually only conceded 2 goals of those 8 from open play. 6 were from indirect free kicks including 3 in one match against bournemouth which I lost 3-2.

 

my next 5 matches I conceded 2 goals, an own goal from a corner against chelsea at stamford bridge and a direct free kick against man u. All I have changed is my defensive free kick settings so i am quite happy at this point. 

[Jambo98]

Sorry have not had time to reply to the comments or add further analysis, i have played on a bit - tried one tweak to solve my already identified problem, which i felt would fail, and it did, resulting in 3 loses on the bounce. Then tried the more likely solution, which is looking better so far, however i continue to be plagued to an incredible degree by Set pieces and luck. This pic tells its own story. 

11 goals from Corners, DFK or IFK. Now, we have also conceded 2 goals via Pen, and scored 3 OG's so far. So of 26 goals conceded in the league, 16 of them are either set piece or OG. That is slightly insane. Will just ignore them for now and focus on how the system looks during games rather than some of the end results. Can be tricky as of course morale has an impact, and when we lose 2 v 1 against the league leaders, to a Pen and Corner goal, morale takes a hit! 

Shall get back to some more analysis and details of how i think i might solve the problems tomorrow at some point

[Jyuan83]

I must say that i am loving the newly added animations to the ME. Some of the attacking moves you have shown in the thread are just breathtaking. The one i liked the best was the goal scored by callejon in the gif you posted. To me, that really brings back memories of the vintage 2007/2008 ronaldo because that type of goal used to be his bread and butter back with Man Utd. Really loving this thread Jambo.

[Jambo98]

Just getting time to pay a bit more, and before i reply to some of the great feedback and do more analysis, i just had to link this......

For the first time in ages i made the mistake of starting a game then not watching any of the first half (phone rang, got caught up in a work thing). I returned to find it was HT, and palace had 27 shots on goal in 45mins, to our zero. I have no explanation for this. IT was the same team and formation as had narrowly been robbed by Liverpool days earlier. However, minutes into the second half...

Alan Pardew is off to start a thread in GD about the horrors of this game

[kandersson]

Great read!

I'm particularly interested in Saponara's stats and performances (dribbles per game and areas of successful dribbles, assists, key passes)  as I'm a fan of both the player and the role (AP at AMC) though personally tend to struggle to achieve great performances from that type of player/position (i.e. central dribblers supposed to make plays running through the centre).

[Fosse]

Normally I start a save with Leicester but I get bored quickly so this year I've started with Nantes, I saw Mendy was listed and I had him scouted and he looked quite good however his positioning stat of 10 had the alarm bells ringing. You've elected to drop deeper because of the type of central defenders available which is valid however when transitioning from defence to attack Mendy has got a fair bit of space to cover and as established he's not particularly good at it! Obviously this is all conjecture but have you noticed Mendy being overran/poor positioning? It may explain the strange difference in closing down between Mendy and Drinky

[ianscousemac]

5 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

Just getting time to pay a bit more, and before i reply to some of the great feedback and do more analysis, i just had to link this......

For the first time in ages i made the mistake of starting a game then not watching any of the first half (phone rang, got caught up in a work thing). I returned to find it was HT, and palace had 27 shots on goal in 45mins, to our zero. I have no explanation for this. IT was the same team and formation as had narrowly been robbed by Liverpool days earlier. However, minutes into the second half...

Alan Pardew is off to start a thread in GD about the horrors of this game

Do you think there is too many shots in FM 17.  I have noticed certainly noticed a lot more and to be honest them stats for one half of football is completely  ridiculous. 

[Jambo98]

Right, back to the business of trying to create and tweak a successful system. 

Reviewing the issues

My  review of the defensive side of our game revealed a number of issues, ranging from major to minor. The issues that i identified, in order of magnitude in my mind, are:
 

Issue 1- Set Pieces

We are clearly a disaster, particularly at IFK and Corners. The DFK all came in one game and probably just down to Beta tweaking. IFK goals range from the annoying and now several year old issue of deep to the back post where a player runs in unchallenged to volley home, to near post runners not marked, and pretty much everything in between. 

Solution 

 In this case, there is little i can do. I will tweak my settings for defending corners and free kicks, although most of them do not seem to directly relate to this, but i will try to be thorough and make sure tall players are doing things best suited to them, and so on. Beyond that, there is just a bit of acceptance that bad runs in this area can happen (Liverpool and Arsenal both know this IRL over the last few years) and also again, its Beta, set pieces tend to be one of the areas which undergo most tweaking as it heads to release. 

Issue 2 - The charging out DC's

I could swear i had a thread about this in FM13 or FM14....... Its clearly an issue. The causes could be multiple. The 2 obvious ones are closing down instructions, and formation. There are also player attributes, and general level of ability. 

Solution 1 - Closing Down Instructions

The first thing i consider, is that the core of the issue is my DC's are closing down to much. In previous years, the obvious solution was to adjust the closing down instructions to help moderate this. The problem now is that the CD role is hard coded with "close down much less" so i cannot even change that. The only option would be to reduce the closing down instructions at a team level. I had not tweaked them from the standard "sometimes" (although the drop deeper also reduced closing down slightly IIRC. 

So, I did actually try this. I was sceptical but wanted to see if it helped. It did somewhat, although not totally with the DCs and worse, it wrecked the way the team played. We somehow got a draw in a very poor performance against Lyon with it, then got wrecked 5 v 1 by Spurs in a game where we just looked as though we couldn't get a foothold. We then lost to Boro on pens in the league cup in a similiarly limp performance and i abandoned this solution. I would normally say you have to go on analysis, but with this i had enough of a "feel" from watching how we played that it just was not the right solution. I also still saw Morgan charge out a couple of times. 

Solution 2 - The Formation Change

So this was probably the most predictable solution. The only other obvious way to stop DC's charging out, is to put a DM in front of them. Part of the cause of the issue could be that we have a gap between the defensive line and our midfield. We play no DM, we play a deeper line and a structured team shape which only increases the distance between the lines. I dont want to mess with team shape at this point, but i am willing to consider making the fairly obvious move of dragging my CM(d) back into a DM slot. Given that its DM types who play there, it should not be a tricky transition. It might also, of course, help solve the next problem of my weak left hand side. A DM in the DMLC slot is better equipted to cover for a rampaging left back. 

Part of my hesitancy in doing this early, was my thread last year where i had a somewhat similar formation (although totally different system) where i had DMC / MC / AMC in an offset pattern. I struggled and there was some feedback that part of the issue might be that i am leaving space in front of the DM for them (I admit, at the time i wanted to say "yeah but if i move him to MC, i am leaving the same volume of space behind him.......but i lacked the confidence!) . There is a risk here that Drinkwater and Amartey / Mendy are easy to "pass around" in the new formation, but it is a risk that, for now, i am willing to take. 

The next question, of course, becomes the role and Duty to give the DM. I dont want someone closing down a lot (as this would destroy the point of puting him there to cover the space in front of a DC), so that rules out BWM. My playmaker is the AMC, and we are not a tiki-taki side, so a DLP doesnt really fit (although there might be merit in considering the impact of good distribution from deep at a later date).  Half Back is also not really what i am after (and some indications are the role is not quite working properly at the moment). 

That essentially leaves a normal "DM" or an "anchor". Here is where it gets somewhat amusing. I decided that Anchor was just a bit too static for me, and i would go for a DM with defend duty. I dragged the role back, creating the following:

Now, the eagle eyed will notice that infact, there is an Anchor in there. I noticed this after playing 3 games I really liked how it played out though, and in those 3 games i noted that my DC's very much "stay home" and dont charge out. I also did not notice any specific issues thus far in the midfield balance. So, since the Anchor sort of works, staying with that for now! I might still try a DM(d) in some games just to try and pick up on the main differences. 

 

Problem 3 - The Left Side

 This was always going to be a risk with how i set up. I am very aggresive down the left flank and in attacking side, it is really effective and has brought me lots of goals and chances. As always in football, there is a payback for that.........which is that occasional teams can get in behind me down the left. 

The Solution - Do Nothing

 Sometimes the best solution is no solution. I considered some options here, but ultimately i am willing to accept the trade off here. I will take the attacking potency and accept that we might get the odd goal down that side. 

I also think that adding the DM as a solution to problem 2 might knock on to this - one to be carefully watched. 

 

So overall, that is the change i decided to make at this point. I have played a few games since and will write up and do some pics etc of how it plays out with the changes

[ianscousemac]

I like what you have done there to protect your central defenders.   

[callamity]

defending set pieces is fine if you set it up right mate,

 

 I have reduced the numbers drastically and in my last 10 matches have only conceded 5 goals, none of which have come from either corners or indirect free kicks,

[cregan]

Having a DM there makes a huge difference to DC behaviour. I can't remember if it was this marked or not in FM16 but it's really noticeable in this year's. How has that affected Mendy and Drinkwater when defending as a unit? Does Mendy hold more while Drinkwater presses?

[warlock]

2 hours ago, callamity said:

defending set pieces is fine if you set it up right mate,

 

 I have reduced the numbers drastically and in my last 10 matches have only conceded 5 goals, none of which have come from either corners or indirect free kicks,

Do share! I'm pretty happy with my corner routines (attacking and defending) but free kicks from wide areas - where the AI just lofts a ball into the penalty area - almost always results in a goal unless the free kick is overhit and my keeper can collect. It's one of the few remaining ME issues that drives me nuts. I mean, the defenders can see the ball coming from a mile away, but they just stand and watch while an AI player runs on to the ball and scores.

[callamity]

6 minutes ago, warlock said:

Do share! I'm pretty happy with my corner routines (attacking and defending) but free kicks from wide areas - where the AI just lofts a ball into the penalty area - almost always results in a goal unless the free kick is overhit and my keeper can collect. It's one of the few remaining ME issues that drives me nuts. I mean, the defenders can see the ball coming from a mile away, but they just stand and watch while an AI player runs on to the ball and scores.

this is what Im using for free kicks, its the set up i normally use ever since I heard Glenn Hoddle analysing set piece goals on sky sports a few years back.

[warlock]

Thanks! I'll definitely give that a go.

[chrisw]

3 hours ago, callamity said:

this is what Im using for free kicks, its the set up i normally use ever since I heard Glenn Hoddle analysing set piece goals on sky sports a few years back.

Do you not worry that the two players on the posts keep everyone onside? This just seems really flawed to me.

[callamity]

3 hours ago, chrisw said:

Do you not worry that the two players on the posts keep everyone onside? This just seems really flawed to me.

No I don't worry about that at all. I'm happy that before this I was conceding up to 3 goals from indirect free kicks every other game to conceding 1 in 24 games 

[Iwabik]

Are you playing with higher or deeper defensive line?

[CarltonBanks]

12 hours ago, chrisw said:

Do you not worry that the two players on the posts keep everyone onside? This just seems really flawed to me.

Plenty of clubs IRL do this for set pieces. 

[herne79]

Keep it on topic please.

[callamity]

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

Keep it on topic please.

sorry Jambo

[yipster1986]

How are things going with the formation change @Jambo98

[Jambo98]

On 10/26/2016 at 17:31, kandersson said:

Great read!

I'm particularly interested in Saponara's stats and performances (dribbles per game and areas of successful dribbles, assists, key passes)  as I'm a fan of both the player and the role (AP at AMC) though personally tend to struggle to achieve great performances from that type of player/position (i.e. central dribblers supposed to make plays running through the centre).

Sorry i have not had much time to play or reply the last few days. That is a great question though, Saponara was a player i specifically identified when i started out, and also was a role i specifically selected to help create things. His basic stats are below - the headline figures are nothing to write home about - 3gls / 4 assist. 

Watching games though, he does play an important part for us in getting the ball and playing it wide. If we could get stats on "second assists" (eg the pass before the assist) then he would be up there. He often sets it wide to Mahrez, who sets up Vardy. 

He also frequently has the most passes in the team, which i would expect as he is our only playmaker. We look for him when we have the ball and he does not give it away much. I would love to try and get more out of him, possibly could look at his PI but i have not been bold enough to experiment yet. Always good to hear other's thoughts around this. 

On 10/26/2016 at 20:12, Fosse said:

Normally I start a save with Leicester but I get bored quickly so this year I've started with Nantes, I saw Mendy was listed and I had him scouted and he looked quite good however his positioning stat of 10 had the alarm bells ringing. You've elected to drop deeper because of the type of central defenders available which is valid however when transitioning from defence to attack Mendy has got a fair bit of space to cover and as established he's not particularly good at it! Obviously this is all conjecture but have you noticed Mendy being overran/poor positioning? It may explain the strange difference in closing down between Mendy and Drinky

That is a really good spot. Because i focussed so much on tactics, i didnt quite look carefully enough at each player in attribute terms. I looked at broad brush in terms of Mendy / Amartey being suited to a defensive type midfield role, but that positioning is a bit of a red flag. I have rotated Mendy and Amartey, and Amartey is currently getting the lion share. I had not noted specific issues with Mendy, but there is no doubt that our defensive record overall is not great, and a few goals i highlighted showed we were not great at marking / being in the right position on a ball into the box. I might well look to sell Mendy. 

On 10/27/2016 at 11:51, Iwabik said:

Are you playing with higher or deeper defensive line?

This was covered earlier, but i play with "drop deeper" TI, on a basic "standard mentality" 

18 hours ago, yipster1986 said:

How are things going with the formation change @Jambo98

I have not had a chance to play as much as i hoped, but thinks are going well on the whole, with a few interesting things starting to happen. Here are the results since i changed formation: 

The Liverpool game was a hard luck story i think i mentioned earlier in the thread. Penalty and corner goal against me, same old story. Lyon are really hard to play against, they have really passed me to death in both games and we barely deserved the draw. 

We then picked up 2 good wins using our approach of let the other team have lots of shots from distance. Then the Napoli win was nice, similar approach worked - quality chances over quantity. The Hull game was annoying. We did not play well, resting some regulars, conceded yet another corner goal and 2 others despite them having no CCC and only 1 half chance the entire game. Meanwhile we convered 2 CCC and 5 HC into only 1 goal. 

The hull and palace games also stuck out, as away games, where we spent lots of time really pinned back (i showed the palace stats above - insane). I am not sure how the formation change has caused this, but it seems like we just cannot get out away from home. I am considering whether removing "drop deeper" would help in away games only - seems like we might get enough space anyway by virtue of home teams being more likely to come out to us. 

The Watford game, the offence did what we do best, scored quick deadly counters (i will try and put up some clips of goals tomorrow to show how it works). Not happy at conceding 2. The first was just us not getting close enough to attackers in the box, and the second was, shock horror, a corner. 

i hope to get more time to write up some detail on how the revised shape works. Moving the CM(d) back to A(d) has also had a knock on as to how Saponara plays - when we do not have the ball, he drops in much closer to Drinkwater, which helps us defensively but i think might also be part of why we struggle to get out more often, he is too deep. Tricky one. I might try changing the Anchor to DM to compromise. 

[kandersson]

12 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

Watching games though, he does play an important part for us in getting the ball and playing it wide. If we could get stats on "second assists" (eg the pass before the assist) then he would be up there. He often sets it wide to Mahrez, who sets up Vardy. 

He also frequently has the most passes in the team, which i would expect as he is our only playmaker. We look for him when we have the ball and he does not give it away much. I would love to try and get more out of him, possibly could look at his PI but i have not been bold enough to experiment yet. Always good to hear other's thoughts around this. 

Yeah the 'hockey assist' is equally important for a playmaker! Sometimes stats don't tell the whole story, the eye test matters too.

The idea of AP I'm trying to achieve is probably slightly different than yours, personally I'm looking for lots of running with the ball through the centre, creating numbers and then unlock the defence with the killer ball. Think the young Kakà in his Milan days. When it works as planned it makes me warm inside and it looks like this:

Using Alejandro 'Papu' Gomez in a traditional 4-3-1-2 as AP/a at AMC, in a world of false 9's and shadow strikers I just love having my classic No.10 feeding an out and out striker... The 'knocks ball past opponent' PPM (now PT) probably helps achieving this movement from Gomez.

Very interested in the development of your tactic and Saponara in particular!

[Jambo98]

Very nice bit of play there, although if i was Atlanta I would be worried by the lack of closing down! I suspect, and i could be wrong, that in Italy you will phase a fair few tactics without a DM, which really means a player can play in that role and run with the ball a lot. 

In my system, when Saponara gets the ball i dont want him doing too much dribbling. That would slow down our attack, and the front 3 in my side are all about pacey attacks and using space. I clipped 3 bits during my last game which i think show perfectly how he plays the role and the pleasing parts of it. 

First up, a nice bit of example of how he works with Mahrez. Notice how quickly he takes the ball, and plays the pace into Mahrez who is drifting into space. However what i also like in this clip is that Sap keeps his run going, and it is him in the end who is there to get on the end of the cutback from Mahrez. He doesnt score, but a nice bit of play:

 

Then this goal from the same game. This is basically exactly how i want my team to work. We have the ball deep, Amartey, to Sap, to Mahrez, to Vardy, to the net. All within about 5 touches of the ball. This also shows that Sap drops in nicely to pockets where he can pick the ball up. He is on attack duty, so you might not always expect him to be in those deep positions, but with the natural "space" behind him created by the formations, 

Finally this clip, again just showing how Sap is key to getting the ball to our fast guys when they get into that space that we work to develop. Again Vardy doesnt finish, but shows the "tries killer balls" PT that Sap has perfectly. 

[actorrr2001]

I guess I read your topic well too late to comment but I loved the way it began and developed till it seems You are bored of trying or that You have no time at all.

I wanna know the famiarity of your team to your tactic.  So far with my team, I played 12 friendlies, 8 CL games (including 2 qualifying phases), and 10 league fixtures but my team's familiarity with the tactics are not 100%.  I can understand if you only have 1 tactic as I have 3 but I havent touched any aspect of the tactics ever from the first game on.  As far as I remember, you started tweaking the tactic from the 5-6th competitive game.  You didnt show us the friendlies but I believe it was impossible your team got fluid with the tactic when you started to tweak it.  The downfalls you experienced may have occured because of not being able to play the tactic eyes shut and also even because the new players had not yet gel with the team.

I am neither an expert of the tactics nor an expert of the game as you are even though I play the game from the CM series on so I am asking just to learn.  Is it feasible to tweak a tactic that is not yet feasible itself?

[Jambo98]

18 minutes ago, actorrr2001 said:

I guess I read your topic well too late to comment but I loved the way it began and developed till it seems You are bored of trying or that You have no time at all.

I wanna know the famiarity of your team to your tactic.  So far with my team, I played 12 friendlies, 8 CL games (including 2 qualifying phases), and 10 league fixtures but my team's familiarity with the tactics are not 100%.  I can understand if you only have 1 tactic as I have 3 but I havent touched any aspect of the tactics ever from the first game on.  As far as I remember, you started tweaking the tactic from the 5-6th competitive game.  You didnt show us the friendlies but I believe it was impossible your team got fluid with the tactic when you started to tweak it.  The downfalls you experienced may have occured because of not being able to play the tactic eyes shut and also even because the new players had not yet gel with the team.

I am neither an expert of the tactics nor an expert of the game as you are even though I play the game from the CM series on so I am asking just to learn.  Is it feasible to tweak a tactic that is not yet feasible itself?

Never too late to comment I have had less time, but also to be fair there is not a lot of interest in this from others (one or two very kind and encouraging people aside). 

It is a fair question - I did play the regular number of friendlies, the tactic was not 100% but was certainly getting into the higher numbers of familiarity. In terms of whether that caused the downfall, well i would not totally rule it out, but what i would say is i did do quite an indepth analysis peace around the issues. They certainly did not have the "feel" of familiarity, but you do make a valid point. I do however think you can still tweak before a tactic is full fluid. You can spot specific issues, with experience (i am no expert) which you will know are just fundamental issues and not relating to familiarity. 

In terms of continuing the thread, i would like to try. Would be great to hear from, and work with others, the minority of us not taken in by tiki taka or gegenpressing

I admit i have hit a bit of a wall with the approach. The tweaks i made did help somewhat, but created the imbalance where other teams were insanely all over us in shot counts. Partly down to effectively a 1 man centre midfield. We are also still very weak defensively, and after going on a 3 game losing streak over xmas , and 4 out of 5 games in the festive period being defeats, i became dis-heartened. I need to refocus, review what i am trying to achieve and think of alternate solutions. 

 

 

[BillHoudini24]

I think you should continue this thread -when time allows that-. I got very encouraged to try my own tactical experiment in the Lower Leagues, not playing possession or pressing football. I'm trying to do a "Leicester" type of thing, with deeper defensive line but with Attacking mentality. It seems to work after a season of tinkering.

[actorrr2001]

19 minutes ago, Jambo98 said:

Never too late to comment I have had less time, but also to be fair there is not a lot of interest in this from others (one or two very kind and encouraging people aside). 

It is a fair question - I did play the regular number of friendlies, the tactic was not 100% but was certainly getting into the higher numbers of familiarity. In terms of whether that caused the downfall, well i would not totally rule it out, but what i would say is i did do quite an indepth analysis peace around the issues. They certainly did not have the "feel" of familiarity, but you do make a valid point. I do however think you can still tweak before a tactic is full fluid. You can spot specific issues, with experience (i am no expert) which you will know are just fundamental issues and not relating to familiarity. 

In terms of continuing the thread, i would like to try. Would be great to hear from, and work with others, the minority of us not taken in by tiki taka or gegenpressing

I admit i have hit a bit of a wall with the approach. The tweaks i made did help somewhat, but created the imbalance where other teams were insanely all over us in shot counts. Partly down to effectively a 1 man centre midfield. We are also still very weak defensively, and after going on a 3 game losing streak over xmas , and 4 out of 5 games in the festive period being defeats, i became dis-heartened. I need to refocus, review what i am trying to achieve and think of alternate solutions. 

 

 

First of all, I think you should keep on.  There is nothing worse than an unfinished experience.  It cannot even be called an experience when unfinished.

Back to the tactics, I feel you lost or forgot how you started.  I remember you talking about the tactic as it would be an all rounder not meaning it will be an att-def-pass kind of tactic but against all kind of teams.  Can it be that where you started was wrong?  You are managing a mid table team and some teams will be just happy to draw 0-0 with you.  You intend to take them off their bus by your unsymmetrical tactical approach but they are happy with 0-0 and to stay back no matter if they will score or not.  It's fine if you can draw them forward and find a gap with a swift attack and score first but if you cannot?

Exemplifying the other edge are the top teams like ManU, Chelsea, City....  They'll find a way to leak in with their creativity, vision, and intelligence when you draw your back line so deep.  It is importanst to keep them at the 2nd area of the game not to keep them at the 1st (your).  Bearing that in mind we can see your midfield neither has the quality nor has the quantity to keep them at the 2nd.

To sum up, I believe you should rethink about your tactic to fit the upper teams or lower teams and tweak 2 ways to create 2 different tactics.  Both can still have the same formation but the tweaks can be done on roles and duties.  You can even tweak regarding your player attributes as we are talking about a specific team not a tactic to fit everybody.  Everybody can tweak the tactic regarding their specific players.

It is better to narrow it down to be more successful.  You could say I am successful against lower teams with tactic A and successful against higher teams with tactic B.  Futhermore, when you create such 2 tactics you can switch between them during a gameplay to get the most out of both tactics as one of these tactics would be more willing to exploit space while waiting at the back and the other even though also providing some space for the opposition will be willing to strangle the opposition in the midfield.  I guess same players can play both of these tactics and it will be a surprise for them to face a new team with the same players say after the 30th min till the end of the half.  I am telling this cause I experienced Diego Simeone changed his play after playing me the first half and came back from a 0-2 deficit to 3-2 at the second half.  I was playing with Fenerbahçe, with 3 midfielders and 3 strikers of different roles.  Then, I changed to 3-1-2 kind of thing (already saved and practiced as a second tactic) without changing players (Van Persie went a little back than his 2 other striker partners) and I scored 2 more to win 3-4.  I guess virtual managers are a little bit more clever this time to counter attack your tactic during a game.

[Jambo98]

Yeah, the wheels came of this in a big way a few games after i made the tweak to bring in a DM. 

We had a couple of nice runs, but then we could not get close to bigger teams at all. They ran over the top of us. Then horrible defeats to Bournemouth and Sunderland. The squad morale of course collapsed after the 3 defeats in a role, and we were also unlucky in that we lost Vardy, who is so crucial to this system, and Drinkwater for months. However, i have run out of tweaks. Towards the end of the run, i was trying to many things at once. I tried replacing the Anchor with a DM(d) to narrow the gap somewhat between him and the Midfield. We were still being walked through, so i tried dragging the AP back into the MCL slot. None of these things worked, and it stopped us playing the lovely quick incisive football that we played to begin with. 

The attacking part of the tactic worked very well on the whole, although we had a huge risk in having no like-for-like when Vardy was out. Slimani is not suited to this system really, and Okazaki isnt either. In the Jan window i snagged Berahino which should, in theory give me 3 pacey players to rotate in the 2 key roles. 

However,  i need to rethink how the system prevents the other team. Our defensive record, is atrocious. The balance of the defence and the midfield just is not right.Defending deep is an artform, and i just do not have it right. Because we sit deep, we invite the opposition to be in and around our box, and i was not able to make us defend that box well enough. Frequently my DC's were exposed and gave strikers 5 yards of space - inside the area. That will not cut it at this level. 

I will requote part of the OP shortly, and look again at narrowing in what i want to achieve, and see if i can find a better way to do that. The attacking play was just too brilliant to give up on. Vardy and Mahrez in this system were brilliant. 

[Jambo98]

4 hours ago, actorrr2001 said:

First of all, I think you should keep on.  There is nothing worse than an unfinished experience.  It cannot even be called an experience when unfinished.

Back to the tactics, I feel you lost or forgot how you started.  I remember you talking about the tactic as it would be an all rounder not meaning it will be an att-def-pass kind of tactic but against all kind of teams.  Can it be that where you started was wrong?  You are managing a mid table team and some teams will be just happy to draw 0-0 with you.  You intend to take them off their bus by your unsymmetrical tactical approach but they are happy with 0-0 and to stay back no matter if they will score or not.  It's fine if you can draw them forward and find a gap with a swift attack and score first but if you cannot?

Exemplifying the other edge are the top teams like ManU, Chelsea, City....  They'll find a way to leak in with their creativity, vision, and intelligence when you draw your back line so deep.  It is importanst to keep them at the 2nd area of the game not to keep them at the 1st (your).  Bearing that in mind we can see your midfield neither has the quality nor has the quantity to keep them at the 2nd.

To sum up, I believe you should rethink about your tactic to fit the upper teams or lower teams and tweak 2 ways to create 2 different tactics.  Both can still have the same formation but the tweaks can be done on roles and duties.  You can even tweak regarding your player attributes as we are talking about a specific team not a tactic to fit everybody.  Everybody can tweak the tactic regarding their specific players.

It is better to narrow it down to be more successful.  You could say I am successful against lower teams with tactic A and successful against higher teams with tactic B.  Futhermore, when you create such 2 tactics you can switch between them during a gameplay to get the most out of both tactics as one of these tactics would be more willing to exploit space while waiting at the back and the other even though also providing some space for the opposition will be willing to strangle the opposition in the midfield.  I guess same players can play both of these tactics and it will be a surprise for them to face a new team with the same players say after the 30th min till the end of the half.  I am telling this cause I experienced Diego Simeone changed his play after playing me the first half and came back from a 0-2 deficit to 3-2 at the second half.  I was playing with Fenerbahçe, with 3 midfielders and 3 strikers of different roles.  Then, I changed to 3-1-2 kind of thing (already saved and practiced as a second tactic) without changing players (Van Persie went a little back than his 2 other striker partners) and I scored 2 more to win 3-4.  I guess virtual managers are a little bit more clever this time to counter attack your tactic during a game.

Wanted to take the time to reply to this, despite my other post above - Thanks for taking the time to input

i had a look back, your reply prompted me to check whether i really lost how i started. I will be honest, i don't really see that? I dont think i said anything in the OP about it being an "all rounder". I had laid out my ways of attacking, and ways of defending. 

If you have a look through, you will see that in general, teams sitting back was not an issue (I actually expected it to be - i touched on the need for "plan B" with Slimani when i had no space). We created space against even bottom of the league teams. The issue was infact the exact opposite. Crystal Palace having 27 shots in 45mins, to our zero in a game was not even close to what i expected! 

However your next point is very valid- the big teams did break me. They could just play through my deep defence. The solution to this is tricky. I do not particularly want to compromise my attack, but i cannot strengthen the defence without doing that. The obvious change in those games is to drag the AMC in for an extra body in midfield, together with an improvement in quality at DM. I think the challenge for me is how to best keep a deep defensive line working well. I have not seen many threads featuring it all (most people want to gegenpress) but i will look around the forum and read some i think before trying again

[Chip]

This is a really great thread, I've learned a lot of stuff from it and hope to take it into my FM save. 

Do you have a certain DNA for Leicester? Any specific attributes you look for in every player you sign?

[herne79]

I'd like to see you abandon the DM idea and stick to your original principles.  Results seem to be worse than before, and I simply don't like the idea of having to have a DM to help the defence.  Absolutely agree with and understand the thought process, and totally worth going through the experiment, but if results aren't improving don't continue with it.

I think the write up has been excellent so far, and seemingly your only real issue is central defenders charging out.  Have you tried a cover/defend combination?  Or even give both of them the cover duty (perhaps a little extreme).  How much Aggression do your CDs have?  When playing with West Ham and Ogbonna at DCL he was a bit of a nightmare for stepping up because of his high Aggression attribute, and did it much more often than his less aggressive partner.

Stick to your guns, the original plan was good and despite a few leaks was going well overall.  I'm away for a few days, so don't have too much time atm to comment, but stick at it - it's a great thread that many are finding useful .

[Guest]

I agree about the central defenders and aggression, I think my biggest issue with defending in FM was not understanding how the attributes were impacting our defending. Obvious I know but something as trivial as my Full Back having crap concentration was a problem that took me way too long to realise. I got away with it in the Bundesliga II but in the Bundesliga he was exposed time and time again.

These days I take a defenders mental ability above his height, heading or tackling.

[Jambo98]

9 hours ago, Chip said:

This is a really great thread, I've learned a lot of stuff from it and hope to take it into my FM save. 

Do you have a certain DNA for Leicester? Any specific attributes you look for in every player you sign?

Ah the good old DNA.........Its a great question, and I obviously did a huge amount of work on this 2 years ago in my Athletic thread, but I admit that for this, I have not put a huge emphasis on it - or at least not in writing it down. When I set out, I talked about the need to utilise quick attackers and a playmaker who can find them - I applied that when looking for signings, but was only really able to go for Sapoara and Evandro to fit the playmaker mould. The pace, I already had with Vardy / Mahrez and to some extent Schlupp (although he is rubbish). In the Jan window, I applied that approach to find a "Vardy MKII" for when he is out, and went a bit extravagant in getting Berahino.

I suppose in this approach, its almost a "split DNA"

3 Attackers (RMD, AF, W) - Pace, Acceleration, Off the Ball and specific player traits

Playmaker (AP) - Vision, Passing, First Touch, Technique and specific player traits (Tries killer balls a positive, dwells on ball to be avoided)

DM and DC's - Pace less important, as we are playing deep. More keen on strong, big and mentally good players (more on this below)

I do have a sort of inbuilt DNA I look for in all players other than centre backs - I always want first touch, technique, passing and composure to be at least acceptable on any player - Those for me are the fundamentals required to play football at a high level

2 hours ago, herne79 said:

I'd like to see you abandon the DM idea and stick to your original principles.  Results seem to be worse than before, and I simply don't like the idea of having to have a DM to help the defence.  Absolutely agree with and understand the thought process, and totally worth going through the experiment, but if results aren't improving don't continue with it.

I think the write up has been excellent so far, and seemingly your only real issue is central defenders charging out.  Have you tried a cover/defend combination?  Or even give both of them the cover duty (perhaps a little extreme).  How much Aggression do your CDs have?  When playing with West Ham and Ogbonna at DCL he was a bit of a nightmare for stepping up because of his high Aggression attribute, and did it much more often than his less aggressive partner.

Stick to your guns, the original plan was good and despite a few leaks was going well overall.  I'm away for a few days, so don't have too much time atm to comment, but stick at it - it's a great thread that many are finding useful .

Cheers herne, as always. I agree that overall the change did not work and was not the right thing to do. I have abandoned that now (more to follow on the way forward).

Aggression is a good shout. I do not have the game open at the moment but will check when I get home. Thinking of Wes Morgan and Robert Huth IRL, I would expect that the researcher would mark "aggression" as high (wouldn't want to argue with those 2 blokes, would you - sometimes aggression could even be misunderstood by researchers). I will also look back, I think I have slightly less of any issue with Gonzalo doing it, so will look at his aggression. I also just splashed out huge cash on De Vrij as my long term DC, lets hope he isn't over aggressive!

I did not look at cover / defend - that is something I have tended to look at with a high line rather than deep, but absolutely no reason it should not at least get a look here. Will start by looking at the aggression side of things though.

I actually played on 2 more games last night, after revising my approach. I did go with 2 different approaches in the end:

Tactic 1 - the main tactic - Back the OP setup (with a tiny tweak of adding "get further forward" to the MR, which I made ages ago but forgot to talk about)

Tactic 2 - For big teams - Looking back, even when the main tactic was working, we struggled against the bigger sides. I recognised the need to be more pragmatic. I want our approach to the game and our ways of scoring / defending to remain but by adjusting formation / roles / duties I can be more cautious. I moved the CM(d) back to Anchor(d) again, but this time moved the AP to the MC slot, and also crucially adjusted the WB(a) on the left to be FB(s). The idea here is we still rely on our 2 pacey players up top, fed again by Sap and supported by Drinks, but we sacrifice the flying runs of Fuchs and potentially a slight additional threat from Sap around the box. In exchange, we get much more solid defensively.

The first game was Chelsea at home, which was what prompted the creation of tactic 2. We had no Vardy (injured), Mahrez (ACON), Drinks (Suspended) or Albrighton (injured). It was a real patch work team but crucially we do now have another pace merchant in Berahino. I started him at ST with Okazaki at RDM. His mentals and work rate hopefully helping. I wanted to watch early for whom out of RDM and AF were getting most space, and deploy Berahino in the most dangerous place.

The plan started ok, but after 15mins we gave a way a pen to go 1 down. Not ideal in a "keep it tight and score with pace on the counter" sort of approach! However we settled down and it worked very well. We restricted them to mainly long shots, we were ver much more able to stem the creativity with the extra body in midfield, and Fuchs staying back stopped them getting round the sides. We scored twice, both Berahino from direct passes on the counter into space in behind Chelsea (Although Courtois helped by making a mess of the second one!). We held on for the win and I feel like this is something that can work against "big teams", and also that it keeps my core principles intact. I sacrifice a bit of variation in attack, but that is ok. The time I need the variation, is against teams who are defending anyway.

Second game was Southampton away. I went with "main tactic" on the basis that I really want the "big team" one to be a fairly rare use tactic. Saints away is a tough fixture, but I felt we could handle it. Unfortunately, we gave away yet another goal to a corner early, then went down to 10men after only 55mins. From there, Austin scored a thunderbolt from 30 yards and although we got one back via a counter, we went on to lose 3 v 1 with 10 men. Hard to judge based on another set piece goal, a red card and a stunner, so wont get to down about that and will still try the "main" tactic for a few more games and assess it.

1 hour ago, Crazy_Ivan said:

I agree about the central defenders and aggression, I think my biggest issue with defending in FM was not understanding how the attributes were impacting our defending. Obvious I know but something as trivial as my Full Back having crap concentration was a problem that took me way too long to realise. I got away with it in the Bundesliga II but in the Bundesliga he was exposed time and time again.

These days I take a defenders mental ability above his height, heading or tackling.

Yup I had that similar learning last year - Having Balanta and thinking that should make me solid at the back because he can tackle, head and mark. Shame he cant make decisions, anticipate or concentrate!
 

I now always look for Anticipation (I like this in all players), decisions, positioning and concentration in my DCs. I wouldn't say I value it above technical, but at least equal.

[Guest]

Balanta was exactly who I was thinking of, he has a big rep on FM so you think it's a no brainer till you find out it's him who has no brains. And the attributes you look for are exactly what I look for as well as composure just because I want them to be measured when playing it out from the back, or at least one of them.

[Becanes]

Don't give up Jambo.  There are plenty of people watching this thread but we just don't have anything to say.  I am one of them.

[Chip]

I need to have a read of that Athletic thread, it sounds like it could be a lot of help!

Also, I'm really interested in the Hearts save you mentioned at the start of this thread. Do you have the tactic you used for that? Or a link to career updates etc? Would be good to see how you went about that save since playing in Scotland with a lack of funds and reputation. 

[Jambo98]

1 hour ago, Becanes said:

Don't give up Jambo.  There are plenty of people watching this thread but we just don't have anything to say.  I am one of them.

Cheers man, yeah i have not given up. This save was only ever a bit of a "scratch pad" for me to try out the ideas and concepts, and with it being in Beta, i never intended it to be a full career. The tactical concept though i am interested in continuing to develop. I might well start a new save as Leicester when the game is released (is it fri?) but the tactical approach will be the same, and so will the thought process and analysis process

1 hour ago, Chip said:

I need to have a read of that Athletic thread, it sounds like it could be a lot of help!

Also, I'm really interested in the Hearts save you mentioned at the start of this thread. Do you have the tactic you used for that? Or a link to career updates etc? Would be good to see how you went about that save since playing in Scotland with a lack of funds and reputation. 

Its coming up for 2 years old, and i suspect a good few of the image links will not work but there is quite a bit of stuff in there around DNA and the things i look at when really going for a club level DNA (for me its more than just targetting one type of player in the transfer market - but the thread talks about all that : )

The hearts thing was FM16 and was an online network game with another Hearts fan. I used a 442 that was basically parts of different tactics on here which worked put together. There was no grand plan about how i wanted to play, i just used it because i could win with it. It exploited the flaws in the FM16 ME, which is why on a tactical level it was not that interesting. 

The approach was pretty simple. Early success, getting to the group stages in the CL brings in huge cash, way above that of other Scottish clubs. From there i targetted young talent (initially through knowing the best players, this was well into the FM16 lifespan, then by lots of youth scouting) and took advantage of the flaws in the transfer system where big clubs sell good players cheap, often taking on huge chunks of wages. Guys like Asensio, Coman, Brandt, Fabianski, Andre Silva, Mertens all were at Hearts within 5 years i think. IT was fun just for the insane parts, Hearts winning the club world cup etc, but on a tactical and pure development level, nothing like the Bilbao one which was really playing the game "properly". 

[Ceching You Out]

10 hours ago, herne79 said:

I think the write up has been excellent so far, and seemingly your only real issue is central defenders charging out.  Have you tried a cover/defend combination?  Or even give both of them the cover duty (perhaps a little extreme).  How much Aggression do your CDs have?  When playing with West Ham and Ogbonna at DCL he was a bit of a nightmare for stepping up because of his high Aggression attribute, and did it much more often than his less aggressive partner.

That was initially my guess at how @Jambo98 would address the issue too. LCD could go cover since he has less support (and so is more likely to step out), or even both. 

Have to say I was surprised that the DM bombed so hard. Don't think it really fits with the outlined ethos anyway.

[howard moon]

Just wanted to add to the voices asking for you to persevere with this thread. I personally find your threads to be amongst the most clear and helpful in this forum @Jambo98, so thank you.

I've actually been trying to do something similar with Athletic Bilbao.  A low-medium block, solid defence and quick counters. All based on the team being solid, working hard.

They don't have a proper no.10 (and nor could I get one either, instead there's Raul Garcia who is more of an attacking midfielder), but they do have incredibly hard working midfielders, a proper no.9 in Aduriz, decent full-backs and good variety out wide with Susaeta, Muniain and Williams. 

I'd ended up with a similar set-up to yours, albeit without the asymmetrical wingers:

Flexible - standard (drop deeper TI, no PIs except short distribution for the GK)

GK 

DR: FB - s

RCB: CB - d 

LCB: CB - d

DL: WB - s

MR: W - s

RCM: CM - s

LCM: CM - d

ML: WPM - a

ACM: AM - a

ST: DLF - a

I have to say it's been a bit of a disaster in pre-season. Against weaker teams we have no penetration and the ball gets stuck in central areas in front of the opposition defence, and against decent teams we get pinned back in our own half and have absolutely nothing on the break. 

So I'd be really interested to see how you've changed things with Leicester as I feel like I'm hitting a wall with Bilbao.

[Jambo98]

 

On 11/2/2016 at 19:02, howard moon said:

Just wanted to add to the voices asking for you to persevere with this thread. I personally find your threads to be amongst the most clear and helpful in this forum @Jambo98, so thank you.

I've actually been trying to do something similar with Athletic Bilbao.  A low-medium block, solid defence and quick counters. All based on the team being solid, working hard.

They don't have a proper no.10 (and nor could I get one either, instead there's Raul Garcia who is more of an attacking midfielder), but they do have incredibly hard working midfielders, a proper no.9 in Aduriz, decent full-backs and good variety out wide with Susaeta, Muniain and Williams. 

I'd ended up with a similar set-up to yours, albeit without the asymmetrical wingers:

Flexible - standard (drop deeper TI, no PIs except short distribution for the GK)

GK 

DR: FB - s

RCB: CB - d 

LCB: CB - d

DL: WB - s

MR: W - s

RCM: CM - s

LCM: CM - d

ML: WPM - a

ACM: AM - a

ST: DLF - a

I have to say it's been a bit of a disaster in pre-season. Against weaker teams we have no penetration and the ball gets stuck in central areas in front of the opposition defence, and against decent teams we get pinned back in our own half and have absolutely nothing on the break. 

So I'd be really interested to see how you've changed things with Leicester as I feel like I'm hitting a wall with Bilbao.

Ah i must start my yearly Athletic save soon. Love the squad, never known quite how to get the best of it the last 2 years. 

If i was going to play this style with Bilbao, my first thought would be that Inaki is perfect for it, but he is stupidly underated in the game IMO. Might still be something you would want to exploit though, as he has elite pace. Will you get the best out of him in a counter attacking style, playing as a W(s)? I am not so sure (assuming this is where you are playing him?) He would be the key man for me. Aduritz is a brilliant striker and i love him IRL, but is he suited to this style? Has the right PPM but is pretty slow for a striker in La Liga terms. 

Also where and how to use Iker? WPM is a slightly unusual role for him in my eyes - His biggest strength is running at people - how do you find he plays there. 

At the moment, i am struggling badly myself and need to "reboot" this idea a bit, so not in an ideal place to give you advice, but would probably say look at the players you have (even move vital at Athletic since you have little hope of any impact signings in season 1) and consider whether they are well placed for this type of game? Then consider team shape and roles and how they mesh together. That said, i suffer from many of the same problems as you, so not sure where the answer is!

 

WIth my save, i am just plagued by wild inconsistency. I have showed a load of clips and screenshots in the thread of this approach really working. Other games, we look like a pub team. I want to go back to the original idea - i started a new save and did so but if anything things were even worse (There has been a patch in between, which i read a number of people saying has impacted gameplay but SI refuse to reveal a changelist, so cant be certain if that is true or not). our % of long shots has sky rocketed lately, 

Keeper distribution has also made me want to shut the game down plenty times. I have my keeper set to roll it out and pass it shorter. At least half the time, he hoofs it. I appreciate in some counter systems this might be desireable, but it is not what i want and i seem to have no way to control it.........grrrr. Hopefully have a couple of hours tonight to step back and look at it from scratch. 

[enigmatic]

Definitely the Aggression is an issue with Huth and Morgan, especially because they haven't got the speed to dispossess their opponent or recover position after stepping out. Ideally the ME would compensate for it a little because they have good mental stats in other areas so ought to be better at knowing exactly when to press, but Aggression is one of their most marked traits.

Will be interesting to see if De Vrij doesn't have that problem.

[howard moon]

1 hour ago, Jambo98 said:

 

Ah i must start my yearly Athletic save soon. Love the squad, never known quite how to get the best of it the last 2 years. 

If i was going to play this style with Bilbao, my first thought would be that Inaki is perfect for it, but he is stupidly underated in the game IMO. Might still be something you would want to exploit though, as he has elite pace. Will you get the best out of him in a counter attacking style, playing as a W(s)? I am not so sure (assuming this is where you are playing him?) He would be the key man for me. Aduritz is a brilliant striker and i love him IRL, but is he suited to this style? Has the right PPM but is pretty slow for a striker in La Liga terms. 

Also where and how to use Iker? WPM is a slightly unusual role for him in my eyes - His biggest strength is running at people - how do you find he plays there. 

At the moment, i am struggling badly myself and need to "reboot" this idea a bit, so not in an ideal place to give you advice, but would probably say look at the players you have (even move vital at Athletic since you have little hope of any impact signings in season 1) and consider whether they are well placed for this type of game? Then consider team shape and roles and how they mesh together. That said, i suffer from many of the same problems as you, so not sure where the answer is!

 

WIth my save, i am just plagued by wild inconsistency. I have showed a load of clips and screenshots in the thread of this approach really working. Other games, we look like a pub team. I want to go back to the original idea - i started a new save and did so but if anything things were even worse (There has been a patch in between, which i read a number of people saying has impacted gameplay but SI refuse to reveal a changelist, so cant be certain if that is true or not). our % of long shots has sky rocketed lately, 

Keeper distribution has also made me want to shut the game down plenty times. I have my keeper set to roll it out and pass it shorter. At least half the time, he hoofs it. I appreciate in some counter systems this might be desireable, but it is not what i want and i seem to have no way to control it.........grrrr. Hopefully have a couple of hours tonight to step back and look at it from scratch. 

I think you're right about Inaki. I had been playing Susaeta as a winger and Muniain as a wide playmaker, but I'm thinking that Inaki might need to play from the start regularly, perhaps from the wing or even up front. 

Since my last post I played another friendly against a fairly useless team, but we played much better with a couple of changes - LB now a WB attack, left winger now a WM attack, and the AMC now a AP attack. Inaki played on the left and was excellent, scoring two goals. It does leave me with a problem, in that it might mean benching Muniain and either dropping Raul Garcia to CM, or to the bench as he's not really a playmaker. Am going to try Muniain in the AMC role in my final pre-season match to see if he can get the ball in dangerous areas and run at defenders.

The squad analysis says that we don't have a very technically gifted squad, Iker aside. So I felt that a hardworking, counter attacking approach might be best, rather than possession. But on reflection, maybe we need to be more proactive at winning the ball back sooner, rather than sitting deep.

On the goalie distribution, this happens every year before being fixed in a patch. Only for it to be broken again in the next version. It's amazing that it continually gets through testing!

[Jambo98]

1 hour ago, enigmatic said:

Definitely the Aggression is an issue with Huth and Morgan, especially because they haven't got the speed to dispossess their opponent or recover position after stepping out. Ideally the ME would compensate for it a little because they have good mental stats in other areas so ought to be better at knowing exactly when to press, but Aggression is one of their most marked traits.

Will be interesting to see if De Vrij doesn't have that problem.

I think for sure with Huth it is (20) but Morgan is pretty much average, marginally above, for a lot of DC (15). In the reboot save, i have Acerbi (12) and Rodriguez (14) so will monitor it closely. I am not really sure that aggression should be working in that way - e.g. controlling whether they go chasing out after a player like in some of the clips, but it certainly does seem that is how it is working in reality. 

40 minutes ago, howard moon said:

I think you're right about Inaki. I had been playing Susaeta as a winger and Muniain as a wide playmaker, but I'm thinking that Inaki might need to play from the start regularly, perhaps from the wing or even up front. 

Since my last post I played another friendly against a fairly useless team, but we played much better with a couple of changes - LB now a WB attack, left winger now a WM attack, and the AMC now a AP attack. Inaki played on the left and was excellent, scoring two goals. It does leave me with a problem, in that it might mean benching Muniain and either dropping Raul Garcia to CM, or to the bench as he's not really a playmaker. Am going to try Muniain in the AMC role in my final pre-season match to see if he can get the ball in dangerous areas and run at defenders.

The squad analysis says that we don't have a very technically gifted squad, Iker aside. So I felt that a hardworking, counter attacking approach might be best, rather than possession. But on reflection, maybe we need to be more proactive at winning the ball back sooner, rather than sitting deep.

On the goalie distribution, this happens every year before being fixed in a patch. Only for it to be broken again in the next version. It's amazing that it continually gets through testing!

The thing i found with Athletic is that you have multiple players who can cover varied positions, and will play them in different ways. Consider the AM slot. You might play a relatively vanilla AM(a) - try Iker there for a game, then Raul Garcia there for a game. They will play it totally differently, and that can be a bonus. In games against a bigger team, where you might be pinned back, you might want a physical pressence at AMC who can hold the ball up when it comes out, rather than a lightweight dribbling type who might just get outnumbered and barged off quickly. In that same type of game, you might want pace and running ability in the wide area as you could have space in there. Inaki or Iker can do that. 

In games against smaller teams, where they are sitting in, then you might want more of the flair type AMC who can unlock a defence with a bit of magic. Iker is your man for that. Raul Garcia could be deployed wide, and rather than be the tricky running type that Iker is, he acts as almost a bit of a battering ram from wide, making direct runs into the box and being a threat at the back post for headers. 

Once you get a nice base tactic working, those selection of players can really be used to give you the variation you need, rather than changes in roles / duties / formation. 

[Jambo98]

I actually just rage quit FM for the first time in a very long time.......... 

I had started a new save, to again try and make this work. This time i made wholesale signings, to get the right players in for the tactic. i accepted it would cost me for a few months in terms of team gelling etc. The first few matches i was still playing around, trying to get things to work. It was mixed, pretty much as i expected. A new patch came out in among it which defo seemed to change things (although there seems to be mixed views on whether there was any ME changes). I had tried the "pragmatic" approach and it worked sometimes exactly as intended, other times we just got run over. We also seemed just to be unable to defend. We conceded lots of types of goal, but i was conscious of team gelling and tactical fluidity issue. 

I took a break for a day, but tonight i spent a bit more time thinking about the original concept, and what the main issues, the real issues (not just DC's charging out) were. I felt that, on reflection, 3 main themes were coming out for me:

 

1) The attack really does work most of the time. Those 3 players (ST, AML, AMC) can be deadly, just like how i intended. 

2) The midfield balance is not correct. We tried a few things here, moving the CM back to DM, moving the AM back, none of these thigns really solve the problem. We had plenty good games with the original setup, so we are not a million miles off

3) We are not solid enough at the back. We just concede way to many overall. 

With that in mind, i decided to keep most things the same, reflecting my point 1) above, but make very small steps to try and address the other points. 

- Change the BBM to a CM(s) - very subtle change, but the BBM sometimes was a little too aggressive and meant we didnt have the right "partnership" with the CM(d). 

- Change the WB(a) to WB(s) - Again, we are just a little too attacking down that side. Fuchs has PPMs which add to his aggressive attacking intent, so this was just to get him to wind his neck in a bit. 

We started with Reading in the cup, at home. A game we were favourites for. A routine 2 nil, the attacking play was nice, and defensively no issues, but i was aware this was not the biggest test. Then came City at home. Always a huge challenge. This was time to see if the sit back / break fast approach worked. It did, we played well, but in very much the way i expected. They had 32 shots, 17 from distance and only 1 CCC. We had 8 shots, and scored 2 lovely goals. Problem is, we conceded from a corner, an IFK and then  very well worked goal by Sane. So we lost, but i felt ok. We were playing back to how i wanted. Not totally run over either. However, we still find ways to concede which is getting oold. 

Next up, Ludogrets away in the CL. Perfect execution. They have 18 shots, not a CCC amognst them. We have 13 shots, 4 CCC and win 4 nil. The balance is there, the attacking thrust is there. 

Liverpool away was next, and this was really the hardest game. They are flying. It was much the same approach as city. We had 13 shots and some good chances, on another day we score 2 or more, we did score 1, but liverpool realy went at us, particularly late in the game when we were holding them 1 v 1. They score 2 really good goals, and a crazy OG but the OG is the last min to make it 3 v 1 so doesnt overly matter. I accept this one again, sometimes the bigger teams will beat you with quality when you play this way. 

Now its Spurs at home. tough games keep coming. We play the same game plan. 35mins in they have had 10 shots, 8 from distance. The other 2 they scored. Nothing wonderful about the goals, we just cant defend. We give men 5 yards of space in our box. Long way back, but we stick the game plan and we score twice on rapid attacking moves to be back level. That great attacking play is still there. 5mins to go, Lamela hist one from distance right at Zieler. It goes through him. I consider switching the game off. 

We lose Acerbi for 8 months. I smile. 

Next up its Leverkusen in the CL. We are 3 nil down in 31mins. They just slice through us. We make very little attempt to defend our goal. We lose 4 v 1 in a game where, again, in an attacking sense we look ok, and the goals done come because we are overly short on numbers or leaving gaps. We just dont seem to bother defending in the box. 

I only keep playing because next is West Brom (19th) at home. I have only really had 2 games against "lower" teams with the new tactic and want to see how viable it is. We play very well, we actually have more shots, and even though they sit in we create. We hit both posts, the bar and ever part of the keepers body. They have nothing of note until 81mins. They cross. Rondon hits a dribbler to the near post. It goes in. I switch off the game and smile. 

I shall now restart on the full game, but by lord this game tries the patience at times. I shall wipe the slate clean, use the new things i learned on a new save

[Chip]

Quite a hard one because most of the games were against hard opposition. Sometimes I refrain from getting angry by accepting that the opposition arenjust sometimes better but I suppose if you're noticing problems in the defence then it's annoying if you can't fix it. 

Maybe an FB-A would be a more stable choice than a WB? Not 100% on that but could be worth a shot! 

Another thing I notice is my CM-D (when I use one) he closes down agressively and that leaves a gap in front of the defence in a 4-4-2 so I ask him to close down much less and this keeps him as a shield in front on the back four. Just some food for thought.

Whatever you decide on I wish you all the best! 

[Jambo98]

Cheers @Chip - Yeah to be honest most of those games i do jsut accept, it was more hilarity at the sequence of things that seemed to happen. 

it is a good point on the CM(d) - i actually found he closed down less than the CM(s) but its true that i need to make sure that pair are keeping a suitable shape. I shall look at that carefully on the next attempt. 

[aditya]

I have a question based on your tactic

I want to emulate Wengers 4-2-3-1 right now at Arsenal, with Sanchez (LW) playing as an inside foward, Ozil on AP and Walcott RW. since Bellerin will be playing on attack as RB, how should I balance my two CMs and LB so it does not overlap with the other position? I want the attack to expose opposition LB (Walcott run), while exposing the opposition center (Sanchez cutting in). Should my striker be moving into channel so the center area will not be crowded with LW,ST, AMC all in there? whats the suitable role for a stiker?