Formation Roulette

[kensteidel]

Formation Roulette

 

Hello everyone!

 

While a lot of the challenges here are about achieving certain goals with set league or clubs, this challenge may seem a little different. 

 

The aim

 

Take over a random club you might not be familiar with and make them play a random formation that neither you nor the team might be familiar with.

 

The rules

 

Start a save in any league system.

 

Choose the “let FM pick team” option. 

 

You now make a blind draw of one of the 53 in-game formations. I wrote all 53 out on individual post-it notes and picked one from a bowl without looking.

 

You now have your formation. You have to keep the positions (formation) as it is, but you are allowed to make changes such as player roles, mentality, team shape and team instructions, and I, personally, try to set up variations in the three tactic slots such as a home, away or counter variant.

 

After every finished season, you are allowed to make an optional draw, which is a risk, as you are probably on your way to adapt your team to the current formation. 

 

If you get a new job, either because you get sacked, or if you are offered a new job, you must make a new tactic draw. This hinders you from for example seeking out jobs at teams where your 4-1-3-1-1 DM Narrow would fit perfectly.  

 

The challenges

 

There are several interesting challenges to this, and for me, it is a nice way of getting familiar with tactical systems that you aren’t familiar with, assuming you don’t pick a familiar one. 

Assuming you don’t pick a very rich team, you may also be forced to re-train players for new positions, which require an eye for what attributes are desirable.

 

Playing a “forced” formation will perhaps also make you look at player roles in a new way. Some of you might even tweak the roles and instructions to your given formation to make it behave more like your preferred system. 

 

You might often end up in leagues and clubs where your formation seem hopeless at first. You risk having to use a complicated formation with a Lower league team, or may risk having to use a very defensive formation with a progressive team full of playmakers and trequartistas. 

 

The board, fans and players might hate you for not playing their favoured playing style, and some might not like playing out of position. 

 

You may have to have a huge fire sale of surplus players, as you might for example end up having to play without wide players or fullbacks at a team full of wide players and fullbacks. You may also have to apply a bit of vision and creativity here and see whether some players can fit into new roles. Could your target man be re-trained to a central defender? Can your defensive forward be re-trained to a fullback?

 

This is of course a challenge in the making, so I would be happy to hear suggestions of more rules to the challenge.