Reclaiming the swansea way

[Klfh]

Ok, so this is my first topic on the forums. I've been lurking around for several years and really enjoying the intricate descriptions of how the tactics work and trying to build my understanding of the game. Every version of FM, I tend to go for a Swansea career, trying to create long term success. The ambition is to reach success managing both the on field and off field development in a steady, positive way. Long term objectives are:

- Financial health. No debt, expanded/new stadium and an increasing transfer budget.
- World class facilities. The prerequisites to find and develop home grown talent
- A positive and successful brand of football based on good technique and movement (posession and decent press)
         - I try to buy players with high levels of Passing, First touch, Technique, Composure, Determination, Team work and Work rate
- A professional and determined culture in the dressing room
- A british/welsh core of players with influences primarily from Spain, Holland and Scandinavia

Now, the off field pieces of the puzzle are going great. The club is in a sound financial position, debt free, and several investments in the facilities have been made. So far the success on field have been good as well. I am now in my third season, finishing 7:th and 5:th respectively. My problem is that the board are expecting me to finish in one of the CL places this year. My plan was to aim for Europa leage for one or two more seasons in order to develop the squad i a little bit further. At the moment I find that my players lack some of the attributes to succesfully play the brand I would like.

To make a long story short: in order to avoid the sack and be able to continue this career I would really appreciate if some of the experts on this bord could take a look at my main tactics and provide a second opinion/some pointers on what I can do to improve it. Currently, the results are pretty good - 4:th least conceded in the league and 4:th highest scoring. I do however fear the second half of the season when the opposition starts "parking the bus" and play more defensively. Usually, that is when my scoring dries up. This entire season I have been seing shortages of goals from the strikers, with my wingers and AM being the most prolific in the side. I am also suffering on the possession side of it, sitting just 9:th in the league with an average of 52 %.

The current tactic:
The basic idea is to defend with two compact banks of four, and attack i a rough 4-2-3-1 shape.

PI:s:

GK: Fewer risky passes, Roll it out, Distribute to CB (in order to retain possession)
DL: Stay wider (providing width on the left side)
ML: Sit narrower, cut inside, cross less often (providing space to the DL and linking up with AM and ST)
I am considering if I should add roaming to the CM-S as well, to aid with breaking down the opposition defence, but I havent decided yet.

Before games, I adapt slightly depending on the opposition. If I am facing an inferior side who i suspect will try to park the bus and try to strike on the counter i change the mentality to defensive (to lure them out) and the shape to Very fluid (to add extra creative freedom and break down their defence).

[summatsupeer]

I would go slightly different against park the bus teams and go more structured to add depth and space.  If creativity is important to you add it back in through the PI.  Then maybe add pass into space or work ball into box depending on what I see.

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

Congratulations, sounds like you're doing a great job. Nice to hear about people steadily developing a club and building a successful team.

My observation tactically would be that your playing style - mentality & team shape - is more van Gaal than Swansea. It's conservative possession rather than pro-active, probing possession play.

Does this ring true with what you're seeing on the field?

The reason I say this is that your mentality sets a 'bar' for mentality across your team and then team shape determines how far individuals will deviate from that bar. Counter is a  more conservative mentality than Standard - lower mentality, width, defensive line, closing down, tempo etc - and Fluid means your individual players won't deviate from that much. This means that - in real football terms - you're asking the players to play conservative football as a unit.

Here's a great resource if you're numerically minded - 

You can also see this represented graphically in the Player Instructions section of the tactics creator but it is difficult to compare.

You'll see that you're asking your Support players to be 60/40 in favour of being conservative, or risk averse and your most attacking players are only 60/40 in favour of attacking. Your Support striker is 8 out of 20 so also 60/40 in favour of conservatism.

Higher creative freedom from Fluid would mitigate this slightly and the counter attack would kick in when you have a numerical advantage but I'd expect a lot of conservative play, sideways or backwards passes and it explains why your strikers aren't getting chances.

My preference is to use a 50-50 (or 10 out of 20) mentality as a ball park for my support players. Typically 10-12 if my team can cope with it. For example:

• Control & Flexible.
• Standard & Fluid.
• Control & Fluid.
• or Standard & Flexible so long as my playmaker is in the MC strata rather than DM.

But of course this depends on how you want to play. I like proactive, probing possession play. My interpretation of the Swansea way would be similar. That said, if you're intentionally playing conservatively then you're on the right tracks.

 

[Klfh]

Interesting! I actually started with Standard/Flexible the first season, but almost immediatly changed to fluid since i saw to little movement from the 4 attacking players. I figured that the higher creative freedom should give the attacking play a little more bite. I then reverted to Counter approximately 6 months later since i got better scorelines agains same level teams and higher with that mentality. The defensive/very fluid approach was developed during my second season when I had big problems with a super defensive Watford side (playing a 5-3-2 DM WB). Ighalo and Deeney were ripping my team apart on the counter, but when I lowered the mentality, their defense was inpenetrable.

Your analysis are correct, the posession play have been pretty orthodox since those changes, lots of recycling via the CM-D. The goals have probably mostly been made by countering, probably the reason why Dyer (my first choice RM and the paciest player on the team) are my top scorer and joint top assist player. I guess that I have been to scared of conceding, and that have meant that i have tried to minimize risks - as shown by our good defensive stats. I would however prefer a more determined passing play - probing, as you said.

Said and done - for our next game I changed to Standard/Fluid instead. The game was home against West Brom, sitting 14:th in the table and with one of the best defensive records of the season. We were clear favourites, and they fielded a 4-1-2-3 formation that I, based on their defensive stats, assumed were pretty conservative with regards to the roles and duties. With Sigurdsson recovering from an injury and not fit for more than 45 min and my second choice AM (Louis Schaub) unavailable due to injured knee ligaments, young Liam Cullen, normaly fielded as a ST, got the nod at AM.

The game started quite well, alltough Cork and Lenglet gave away lots of free kicks right on the edge of the area. Luckily, the West Brom players shot high and wide and even though they hade many more shots, none were on target. My attack were not great, even tough we had plenty of support my players often preferred to dribble and therefore lost the ball. Our first shot on goal came after 32 minutes. A deflected cross meant a corner and after some pinballing in the box, the ball landed with Guidetti who hit it first time from the edge of the area. 1 - 0 to Swansea.

This was it as far as the first half was concerned. WBA had one shot on goal - a shot from distance after an indirect free kick. Rulli handled that shot just fine. The posession stats for half time was good as well. After the goal, my teams confidence was sky high and Allen/Cork/Forsberg made neat little passing triangles all over the pitch. As I had suspected, West Brom were very defensive. Their formation looked more like a 4-1-4-1 than 4-1-2-3. Half time stats:

After the break, WBA came on more aggressively. Their wingers pushed further upfield and they actually got som decent posession. Young Cullen hade played good, but 5 minutes into the second half I started to feel he was out of his depth. Sigurdsen came on instead, and immediately made an impact. In the 62:nd minute we had a good spell of posession and Allen found Sigurdsson with a neat pass. Sigursson played a perfect trough ball into Guidetti who had made a sweet diagonal run. First time finish low into the far corner, and we were up by two goals.

Four minutes later West Brom pushed allmost their entire team up for a free kick. Lenglet won the ball and the counter was on. Cork sent a long ball to Guidetti, who dribbled a little bit before giving the ball to Allen who served Dyer with a great through ball. Dyer, being our top scorer and in great form, made no misstakes when he put it low past Pickford. 3 - 0.

After that, West Brom wouldn't even try to attack any more. They subbed on another CD and switched to a super defensive diamond formation with three central defenders. Their posession stat went from ~30 % to allmost 60 %, passing it slowly sideways between their defenders and deep midfielders. Since i had the lead I decided not to apply pressure and risk getting cought in counter attacks, so I changed mentality to defensive. The last 20 minutes of the game was pretty low tempo...

Final stats:

I really liked the possesion play between our first and last goal. Allen (CM-S) and Sigurdsson (AM-A) did some great playmaking, Dyer (RM) and Forsberg (LM) showed good movement, allowing Guidetti space to penetrate. Two of the goals came from penetrating passing, which really is a good Swansea way of attacking! I'll try this tactic for a couple of games now, hopefully the revived attacking play dosen't expose our defence to much. Great tip, Ö-zil - I really appreciate the help!

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

You're welcome 

[Romers]

On 12/03/2017 at 12:57, Ö-zil to the Arsenal! said:

Congratulations, sounds like you're doing a great job. Nice to hear about people steadily developing a club and building a successful team.

My observation tactically would be that your playing style - mentality & team shape - is more van Gaal than Swansea. It's conservative possession rather than pro-active, probing possession play.

Does this ring true with what you're seeing on the field?

The reason I say this is that your mentality sets a 'bar' for mentality across your team and then team shape determines how far individuals will deviate from that bar. Counter is a  more conservative mentality than Standard - lower mentality, width, defensive line, closing down, tempo etc - and Fluid means your individual players won't deviate from that much. This means that - in real football terms - you're asking the players to play conservative football as a unit.

Here's a great resource if you're numerically minded - 

You can also see this represented graphically in the Player Instructions section of the tactics creator but it is difficult to compare.

You'll see that you're asking your Support players to be 60/40 in favour of being conservative, or risk averse and your most attacking players are only 60/40 in favour of attacking. Your Support striker is 8 out of 20 so also 60/40 in favour of conservatism.

Higher creative freedom from Fluid would mitigate this slightly and the counter attack would kick in when you have a numerical advantage but I'd expect a lot of conservative play, sideways or backwards passes and it explains why your strikers aren't getting chances.

My preference is to use a 50-50 (or 10 out of 20) mentality as a ball park for my support players. Typically 10-12 if my team can cope with it. For example:

• Control & Flexible.
• Standard & Fluid.
• Control & Fluid.
• or Standard & Flexible so long as my playmaker is in the MC strata rather than DM.

But of course this depends on how you want to play. I like proactive, probing possession play. My interpretation of the Swansea way would be similar. That said, if you're intentionally playing conservatively then you're on the right tracks.

 

Can you explain this to me please! It's the part of the game I'm struggling with the most. How do the maths work there? And where does that come from?

 

And where you say fluid means the individual players won't deviate much I thought fluid meant the opposite and encouraged the individuals to try things?

[westy8chimp]

16 hours ago, Romers said:

And where you say fluid means the individual players won't deviate much I thought fluid meant the opposite and encouraged the individuals to try things?

possibly a terminology thing? They deviate less than the team but more from their own role?

i.e. overload very fluid will see a CB (d) go attacking mentality [13]. Less deviation from team mentality - but greater deviation from his own specific role/duty

Overload highly structured the CB (d) will still have defensive mentality [6]. more deviation from team mentality - less deviation from his own specific role/duty

I generally go to highly structured if I go overload but then I split my team's duties to have attack/defend duties heavily weighted compared to support. i.e. cbs and gk stay on defend... with 5-6 attack duties and 2-3 support.

[Romers]

33 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

possibly a terminology thing? They deviate less than the team but more from their own role?

i.e. overload very fluid will see a CB (d) go attacking mentality [13]. Less deviation from team mentality - but greater deviation from his own specific role/duty

Overload highly structured the CB (d) will still have defensive mentality [6]. more deviation from team mentality - less deviation from his own specific role/duty

I generally go to highly structured if I go overload but then I split my team's duties to have attack/defend duties heavily weighted compared to support. i.e. cbs and gk stay on defend... with 5-6 attack duties and 2-3 support.

Thank you! So the numbers on the graphic are just how attacking that role is out of 20 with the above "overload / fluid" etc?

[westy8chimp]

Yes exactly ... make of it what you will and what it actually translates to on the pitch... but you can use that numeric graphic to at least understand who in your tactic is attack minded (more likely to move play forward, take risk etc) and who in your tactic is playing with a defensive mind (less risk, less forward momentum) so you can make better decisions about where your goals will come from and who will plug potential gaps.

Sometimes you can have a set of roles and duties you think are attacking or balanced or defensive.. when actually because of some under-the-hood concepts it's quite skewed from your original line of thought.

[Klfh]

After playing the second half of the season with Standard rather than Counter mentality, I would like to give some feedback on the results. I feel that the season exeeded my expectations, and the tactic suddenly made my team perform more on the level you would expect from the squad. I.e., we started to beat the team below us more comfortably, while struggling against top level teams. We finished the season third in the PL, which is clearly a lot higher than I expected, and we also managed to win the Euro Cup (quarter final was the target).

ManU had a crazy season, winning everyting (league cup, FA Cup, Champions league and they hade secured the league title in april).

While the change in mentality brought more bite to our attacking play, I also noticed that it made us concede more. Wierdly, the most prominent rise in goals against came from "Misstakes leading to goals", that increased with approximately 70 % compared to the first half of the season. Is there a reason why the higher mentality makes the players more prone to misstakes, or is it just a case of the misstakes becoming more dangerous when there is less defensive cover?

[Klfh]

Allright. Now I've been using the Standard/fluid tactic for a season, and the results have been really good. I have spent the better part of the season rooted at second place, shadowing a seriously letal Arsenal. My strengths have been the defensive side of the game, conceading the least i the league. There have been a clear pattern in the results during the season. Low league and mid league teams have been beaten pretty easily. In the games with the bigger sides (Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool, ManC, ManU etc.) i mostly drawed or lost. During a match against Liverpool in March i got an idea. All the "big sides" seemed to have pacy, technical players in the AM-strata (Coman, Wilshere, Martial etc.). These players ripped my defence to pieces by using the space between my defensive line and the midfield.

This annoyed me, and at first I did not know how to counter this. First I tried to change the mentality/shape to defensive/structured - but it did not produce the results I were after. Sure, I managed to keep it pretty tight defensively, but my attacking play were completely and utterly destroyed. More often than not, i lost those games by 1-0 due to a lapse in concentration during a corner or something like that. When reviewing the game, I realised that since the problem was to much space between my defence and midfield, why not try to reduce that space? To accomplish this i changed the mentality to Control and added the TIs Slightly higher defensive line and Close down more.

Now when i did these changes I expected to be punished by counter attacks. For some reason though, my team ended up playing a high press counter attack game, winning the ball by decisive tackling in midfield and quickly feeding the ball to my wide midfielders, often resulting in a cross to my AM or ST for a simple finish. An unexpected, but welcome result!