In Game Changes

[KingCanary]

I'm really struggling to influence games mid-match in my current save.

I play a 4-2-3-1 with a control mentality and results have been pretty good. However on occasion when I fall behind I'm struggling to change things. 

My usual plan is to switch to a 4-4-2 and bring on a target man to play with my advanced forward but that doesn't seem to help. I've tried upping tempo, moving from control to attacking and going more direct but it feels like whatever I do I can't get my team creating more chances.

[difran8]

When I play weaker teams at home, sometimes they hold both fullbacks behind and play very conservatively. 

Let's  say you want to stick to control/attack. So, give the opposite a go and bring the tempo down. You will find yourself camped in their half and attack them without rushing against their deep defense

[Jorsin]

It will depend on what is happening in the match.

If they are swarming all over you, I will sometimes have success with pushing my d-line up and playing the offside trap - this reduces the amount of space they have to play in.

I agree with difran8 - if your opponents are sitting deep, you need to try to draw them out. Sitting a little deeper, maybe pull your AM back into the CM strata and set a couple of them to CM(a) to create more runners from deeper positions. This might create some space your players need to create decent shooting opportunities.

Unfortunately, I don't think there is one single answer to this - it comes down to why your standard set-up isn't working & that's what you need to adjust.

[KingCanary]

Thanks for the pointers.

I think my frustration has stemmed from the fact that if I ever try and shift formation a bit- even going from 4-2-3-1 to more of a 4-2-4 (taking out the AM and putting on a striker) then it just seems to lead to 10-15 minutes of dead time with no highlights to even give me an idea of what is and isn't working.

[Jorsin]

You need to watch either a full match or at least comprehensive - that will allow you to watch much more of the movement of your players. It takes longer but, until you have a good idea of how your players move in a given formation, it can be invaluable.

[difran8]

Slightly highjacking the thread, but what can we do to alter things without changing mentality, formation, or shape?

Is it worthwhile to try it that way or do you guys go and change everything if things aren't working out?

[KingCanary]

15 hours ago, Jorsin said:

You need to watch either a full match or at least comprehensive - that will allow you to watch much more of the movement of your players. It takes longer but, until you have a good idea of how your players move in a given formation, it can be invaluable.

I don't have the time or patience to watch matches on full- if you need to do that then I think that is a problem with the game.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, KingCanary said:

I don't have the time or patience to watch matches on full- if you need to do that then I think that is a problem with the game.

Then watch a part of a match in full. It really helps to spot issues.

[noikeee]

I was going to reply watch more highlights too. But watching full match is a bit extreme and unnecessary, I only really do that at the very beginning when I'm starting to build a tactic and just want to make sure I don't have anything horribly wrong with my base. You can just simply move to comprehensive in the matches that aren't going well until you figure out what's wrong, and then return to extended or whatever you use normally.

You also get better with time at making changes too. In FM16 I got a bit paranoid and super-micromanagement and started watching every single match on comprehensive to be able to switch things and control every phase of the match, and I felt I might miss something whenever I switched to extended. But by FM17 I'm now more experienced with the ME and can read a game better on extended already, and only switch to comprehensive when I find something's going seriously wrong and I've ran out of ideas.

[KingCanary]

2 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

Then watch a part of a match in full. It really helps to spot issues.

For me if you need to start watching matches on full (or even chunks of them) then it speaks to a problem in the feedback you get.

This is one area of the game that could be massively improved by SI- feedback from assistants during the game is pretty generic and easy to ignore.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, noikeee said:

I was going to reply watch more highlights too. But watching full match is a bit extreme and unnecessary, I only really do that at the very beginning when I'm starting to build a tactic and just want to make sure I don't have anything horribly wrong with my base. You can just simply move to comprehensive in the matches that aren't going well until you figure out what's wrong, and then return to extended or whatever you use normally.

You also get better with time at making changes too. In FM16 I got a bit paranoid and super-micromanagement and started watching every single match on comprehensive to be able to switch things and control every phase of the match, and I felt I might miss something whenever I switched to extended. But by FM17 I'm now more experienced with the ME and can read a game better on extended already, and only switch to comprehensive when I find something's going seriously wrong and I've ran out of ideas.

I watch all my matches on Comprehensive and a lot of times I find I cannot spot it even then. 10 minutes of watching in full and I have a much better picture than watching an entire match on Comprehensive.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, KingCanary said:

For me if you need to start watching matches on full (or even chunks of them) then it speaks to a problem in the feedback you get.

This is one area of the game that could be massively improved by SI- feedback from assistants during the game is pretty generic and easy to ignore.

There's plenty of feedback already. If you want more and you know of something specific, add it as a feature request. It doesn't help you now though.

 

 IMO, nothing is better or clearer than watching a part of a match in full to see exactly what's going on.

[noikeee]

1 minute ago, HUNT3R said:

I watch all my matches on Comprehensive and a lot of times I find I cannot spot it even then. 10 minutes of watching in full and I have a much better picture than watching an entire match on Comprehensive.

If that's what works for you, great. I like playing really long careers and don't really have a lot of time for long FM sessions these days, so prefer to sacrifice a bit of information and progress my career a bit quicker. That's the sweet spot I found for myself, for being able to play in a realistically quick time and still be able to do some tactical changes not completely in the dark.

[OCD]

On ‎2‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 10:05, KingCanary said:

I'm really struggling to influence games mid-match in my current save.

I play a 4-2-3-1 with a control mentality and results have been pretty good. However on occasion when I fall behind I'm struggling to change things. 

My usual plan is to switch to a 4-4-2 and bring on a target man to play with my advanced forward but that doesn't seem to help. I've tried upping tempo, moving from control to attacking and going more direct but it feels like whatever I do I can't get my team creating more chances.

Why do you feel that the solution is to change formation?

Also what needs to be done to get a result depends on what is happening in that particular match, and how the opposition are playing. Unfortunately despite what some people believe there aren't "magic" one size fits all tactics that guarantee results all the time. Sometimes you might need to play a slower tempo and find an opening if the opposition are sitting deep and remaining in position, and other times you might need to play more direct and higher tempo against a more attacking team to make the most of the space behind them. One tempo, and one passing style will not always work against all teams.

As others have said a solution to see what is happening in the match is to watch more of the highlights, but if that isn't something you want to do, then simply use the analysis and stat tools at your disposal. For example to see the opposition width without the ball without actually watching the match, you could simply check their average position without the ball in the analysis tab. If they play narrow then perhaps stretch the play and play wider. If they play really wide then perhaps pass into space, and play narrower.

Another solution would be finding out who their main man is, now obviously one way is watching the match, which you don't want to do, but you can also look at the stats to see who on the opposition is making all the key passes, and who they all seem to be passing to (stats show number of received passes for each player), and then mark them out of the game.  Or see the stats and see how many crosses fullbacks are getting in, then close them down.

Or perhaps your passes aren't connecting, look at the stats, and then change it up, if direct passing isn't working, then try to shorten the passes and play narrower, or change the duties to make sure people have support. The analysis tab can display so much information and is a viable alternative to watching a match. But I appreciate that some people will just say ""If you need to analyse stats do that then I think that is a problem with the game"

There are so many ways to find out the solution to a problem. But I think a lot of the time people just want a quick fix, that's why downloaded tactics seem to be so popular, but what tends to happen is when the tactics don't work anymore the person has no idea what to change.

Obviously it's personal preference and people can do as they wish to get enjoyment from the game, but for me personally the fun is watching the matches, analysing what is happening and then reacting to get a result.

For anyone wanting to fly through a season with one tactic, then perhaps playing Touch and instant resulting through a season with the generic game plans e.g play for a win against weaker teams will be a more appropriate option.

[HUNT3R]

18 hours ago, noikeee said:

If that's what works for you, great. I like playing really long careers and don't really have a lot of time for long FM sessions these days, so prefer to sacrifice a bit of information and progress my career a bit quicker. That's the sweet spot I found for myself, for being able to play in a realistically quick time and still be able to do some tactical changes not completely in the dark.

I still didn't say watch all matches in full or even Comprehensive. If you are setting up a tactic or are having issues, watch a part of a match in full and fix what's wrong. Some people can check stats or the analysis/STATS screens - I can't. The point is to do whatever works for you to find out what issues there are and fix them based on that.

 Afterwards, go back to Key Highlights or whatever you want. I could breeze through doing that same thing. I just don't want to. In many (probably most) of my matches, I don't need to change a thing anyway. It's just that I watch quite a bit of it, so I pick up any issues in a specific match quicker.

Reading the OP, for instance, I see "I do this and this" but he doesn't mention any reason for doing so, so it seems like it's just random button clicking or guess work. Now of course it's possible that it was just omitted, but the rest of the thread doesn't give any indication that it was. How can you fix something by upping tempo etc if you don't know what the issue is in the first place?

[Jorsin]

It's fine if you don't want to watch all of the game - but I'm not sure that I agree that needing to suggests a flaw with the game. Watching a few highlights is far less likely to identify the issues you are having in a given game. Not every team will play against you in the same way - in fact, there's no guarantee that the same team will play against you in the same way the second / third / fourth times you meet. Whilst I agree that the feedback could be better, I personally think that expecting to rely on them too heavily is like asking the AI to pick your tactics for you. If that's what you want, I think you can set it up that way and then sit back and watch how your team performs. 

As it stands, I agree with @HUNT3R - there isn't enough here to suggest what the problem is and that will make it hard for anyone to suggest ways of making successful adjustments.