Can't do this on my own anymore, please help!

[Wwarrddy]

I've been battling to get my Northampton side into the Champions league but after 13 seasons in charge there, I'm struggling big time. I just don't have the nouse tactically to have a good season, I always drop off somewhere and don't know how to rectify it. For example at the start of the season this year, my striker had 12 goals in 12 league games, but after that he probably scored another 4 goals all season.Can you please help me pick a formation and tactic that will help me get more consistency and do well against higher rated opposition. For some reason, I play at home against weaker sides, attacking mentality and won't get a shot on target. I've tried keeping the same tacticts throughout and also tried "tweaking" for each individual game.

This is my basic tactic for at home.

[summatsupeer]

Just take a step back and look what you're asking of your team:

• Attacking mentality, very high risk taking with a very fast tempo, high-ish line + high-ish closing down.
• Auto roles on Attacking mentality are an Attack duty, so all 4 wide players are on attack duty.  It's more a 244/226 without the ball, thats very open to counter attacks.
• 2x FB-A + 2x W-A is very one dimensional
• TM will attract long balls to him, its built into the role, do you want this?
• AP will also attract the ball, do you want to play through him or over him to the TM?
• LD + BPD... both will play more direct, why have a LD launching the ball long if you have a BPD beside him who can do it more accurate with passes into space?
• This is all before looking at your TI's.  Your asking players to dribble more, the W-A's and CF already dribble often so do you really want the other players to dribble more? Can they do it well?  Your increasing the tempo on top of the high starting tempo.  Pushing higher than the high default, if it works your going to be pinning in opponents, so why early cross? How are your runners going to run in behind opponents?

Hopefully what i've said above will make you realize what you've told your team to do.  I would simplify it, add a bit of variety and a bit of patience.  Currently your throwing the kitchen sink at opponents and trying to brute force it.  Look at where opponents give you space, if they're sitting deep this is unlikely to be behind them, if you exploit the space it can draw them out and create space behind.  Try plain old centrebacks, set duties on the FBs, maybe change the TM to a DLF and change a winger (role or duty) to add variety.  Drop the TI's and just see how they play on attacking, are they still brute forcing it?  Then consider changes and I wouldn't just chuck the rest of the kitchen at them

Since they're regens its hard to say if your players suit this tactic, your central midfield need to be able to put a foot in, which is expected of a BWM but can your AP?  I recommend watching @Rashidi on YouTube, he has done a lot of 442 videos that should help you understand what you need to make it work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWUCWx5HNWSuzwGxwVczGPQ

[Wwarrddy]

This is great advice thank you. To be honest I was using this tactic more towards the end of the campaign in a bid to get some home wins, I can see how it was a bit forced now. Say if I dropped the 2 wingers to support and had a complete forward on support, rather than a TM, would that be better? I didn't have dribble more as a TI to begin with.

I also sometimes play a CM on Attack rather than AP.

How about this, can I use the same tactic an formation every week at home? Will the AI get used to it? I really don't know how much or little I should be tweaking as it never seems to pay off.

[summatsupeer]

32 minutes ago, Wwarrddy said:

This is great advice thank you. To be honest I was using this tactic more towards the end of the campaign in a bid to get some home wins, I can see how it was a bit forced now. Say if I dropped the 2 wingers to support and had a complete forward on support, rather than a TM, would that be better? I didn't have dribble more as a TI to begin with.

I also sometimes play a CM on Attack rather than AP.

How about this, can I use the same tactic an formation every week at home? Will the AI get used to it? I really don't know how much or little I should be tweaking as it never seems to pay off.

Don't look at the roles+duties in isolation.  Do you want a front pair of CF-A and CF-S?  If they go roaming who's the presence in the box? Especially if you have wingers?  If they're both driving forward with the ball and looking for through balls all the time, how will that combine with deeper players?

CM-A can work, but how will he combine with players around him? Again there's lots of combinations so i'll just defer to @Rashidi videos that will explain better than I can, especially in just text.

I start with the same basic tactic every game, the AI doesn't "learn it", "get used to it" or "counter it".  All it does is adjust depending on reputation and how the game is going, which is what I do.  If things aren't going to plan I watch closely at what is happening and adjust.  I might make adjustments before the game.  Don't just change things for the sake of it, don't just increase mentality because you aren't creating chances, don't just change everything because you conceded, change because you need a player to get forward sooner or stay back more or you need to team to be more patient or to be more dynamic in there movement etc.

[Wwarrddy]

Ok thank you. I really didn't want to have to get help on this, I wanted to figure it out myself but I was getting nowhere! 

[Rashidi]

On 20/08/2017 at 22:47, Wwarrddy said:

Ok thank you. I really didn't want to have to get help on this, I wanted to figure it out myself but I was getting nowhere! 

We all did the same and if you want to figure things out on your own, there is a way, but you won't like it. Take a good side like Juventus and try everything with them on FM touch. That way you will learn how tactical changes affect your side, and Juv have a good side, so if you make mistakes its role.duty mistakes, you learn better that way.