What to do During Matches

[Dewar]

I'm a fairly recent player, having started with FM17, and also a stubborn one. Rather than playing all the flashy clubs out there, I insist on trying to take a team from the Sky Bet League 2 up through the ranks to the Premier Division. My first couple of attempts have gone somewhat poorly, so I'm trying to improve my game one bit at a time. For today's question, what coaching work do you veterans typically do during a game? My interaction with the team mid-game is often limited to selecting subs, pumping up the mentality if I'm behind, and clicking "yes" on most of those green prompts that pop up.

Should I be adjusting my tactics more mid-game? Should I be using individual player shouts a lot? How involved should I be in general? I'm a bit scared of giving too many instructions and just confusing everyone.

[Vribo FC]

I sometimes change to a much more intense tactic with high pressing and all that at times (5-15 minutes at a time) during the game. That can change the tempo of the game and make the other team make changes and sometimes that gives me the opportunity to score in tight games. Maybe i choose to start second half with that, then I go back to my less intense default tactic. 

[Finners]

In my experience, the more you tinker, both in match and out, the worse off you'll be. The game rewards a certain degree of consistency and familiarity and every version trends that way more and more. 

I do make tactical changes in matches if things aren't working but I try and keep them simple. 

If I'm getting over run through the middle, maybe just drop an attacking player and play an anchor. If there's a lot of space out wide, maybe push my narrow AMs to the wings. Smaller changes to try and either close down or utilise space as needed but without completely overhauling the philosophy or mentality of the team. 

Wholesale changing everything is likely to blow up on you. 

It's worth remembering that tactics aren't everything in FM though, psychology, form, morale, team talks, it all adds up and a game can be won and lost before the first ball is kicked. 

One quirk of the game that's been in for years is defensive players having a real slide and mistakes snowballing in to goals quite quickly. It's probably more important that you're watchful of a full back becoming "anxious" and dropping from a 6.8 to a 6.5 to just haul him off before you concede than you actually take note of changing your tactics. 

[Rashidi]

You should not have to tinker much if your tactic is well thought out. If you do plan on changing something its to achieve a certain effect. Here combining a sequence of team instructions to achieve something is an example. If you know your tactical system well enough you could potentially see one way where you could control the match and another way you could of hitting a team by giving them space. Personally sometimes after taking a lead I like to drop my line of engagement and play pass into space with hit early cross. Here I change because I am setting myself to hit another side hard if they choose to become more aggressive in trying to get an equaliser.
 

I may make tweaks to a system if its not performing, but once I know what my side is capable of I hardly ever make changes.  

[Dewar]

Thanks everyone, I was wondering if I was missing an important part of the game, but it sounds like I might be correct to mostly let my guys play.

[scratchmonkey]

To give an example of how this works for me:

I always watch the first 10-15 minutes of a match on Full Match, so that I can get an idea of how my tactic is working against theirs.

I had an away game in the CL knockouts as Bayern Munich on the road against l'OM. I typically play a 41221 DM Wide (4-3-3 classic as I think of it) on an Attacking mentality and a High Tempo. I watched the game and noticed that we were consistently giving away possession in the final third, they were playing a defensive 451 Flat, and my players were either trying to dribble through/hit a hopeful ball through the massed two banks of defenders.

The changes that I made, in order of import:

• Mentality from Attacking to Positive
• Tempo went from High to Normal
• DLP(S) in CM went to AP(A)
• IF(A) changed to RMD(A)
• AF(A) changed to CF(A)
• Anchorman changed to DM(S)

With the opposition playing a such a conservative, massed defense, I felt that what I needed to do was slow things down, get more players involved in the attack, and try and move their defenders out of position with clever movement (there are multiple ways to approach this problem, this just happened to be the one that appealed to me most at the time). By reducing both Mentality and Tempo, I reduced the chances of my attackers trying to dribble through the whole l'OM team or trying low-percentage passes and instead increasing the chance of them checking the ball back, allowing us more of a chance to build up play.

As part of that, I need to have players moving into the opposition zone. So I modify the roles for 2 out of my 3 central midfielders -- the DLP(S) to AP(A) is the biggest change here because I'm changing him from sitting back and distributing the ball to somebody who's looking to move into attacking positions in the final third. Since l'OM is playing so defensively, I don't really need the Anchor, so he can move higher upfield and take up more of the role that the DLP was taking on initially. My IF on the right is also a converted striker, so his ball skills aren't the greatest, good enough against smaller German sides or in an open game, in situations where he doesn't have space or is up against great defenders (and both are the case here), he'll be coughing up the ball a lot so instead he'll act as a RMD, keep things simple and try and move into dangerous positions. And finally, my lone striker changes from a role where he's mainly playing off the shoulder to one where he's going to drop a bit lower and become more involved in the build up.

So all told, a half-dozen changes and some of them that I would classify as fairly major, although we didn't really change shape -- I would say that this is close to the most changes I would make, barring injury/having a similarly extreme situation.

(It also worked a treat, I made these changes and we scored 8 minutes later and came out of it with a 2-1 away win and 56% of possession.)

[sporadicsmiles]

I plan to make a post about this in my thread tomorrow on how I play the game. The advice I can give briefly is to only change things when you have a good reason based on what you see. You do not need to change things against every team. For example, if I am battering a team and creating a bunch of chances without a goal, I likely will change nothing. What is the point. We are creating chances and either my players are letting me down, or the AI keeper is having a great game. It happens. I may make substitutions if I think it will help, but only if I think a player is missing because he lacks form.

If you are seeing something happening a lot that makes you question one aspect of your tactic, however, you can change it. I often stop playing out of defence if we are under pressure and my defenders look like they will give the ball away, for instance. As Rashidi says, if you are set up well from the start you in general will not need to make changes. On occasion you can, based on what you observe on the pitch. I do this mostly in games against big teams where I do not think I can impose my usual style of play.

[yolixeya]

Only suggestions I take from AM is to ease off tackles when a player has a yellow card. Nothing else.

I am also fairly new player, and I don't change things that much. I'm just changing those things that I find ovious. Like sporadicsmiles , when they pressed me high in CL, I removed play out of defence, told my GK to distribute to playmaker instead of centre-backs. My playmaker is in AMC strata but GK was delivering the ball over the press to BWM. Not what I expected but it was working well so I left it like that.  Or if the opposition is playing trough balls behind my defensive line I will drop the line. When I protect the lead in last 10 minutes I add play for set pieces to kill the flow of the game, potentially waste time, and dribble less so that players rather look for a pass and try to keep the ball. I used to switch to lower tempo also but that was maybe a overkill cause it backfired few times. I switch time wasting to frequently in 88th, 89th minute because I'm affraid to use it earlier. In FM18 I used to switch mentality to very defensive also in injury time, worked well but that also backfired in FM19 so I don't touch that.

When I'm losing and time is running out I'll play more risky and up the mentality and counter-press because I don't want to wait to win ball back. But mostly I don't touch anything, especially if my team is playing well. When they're not playing well, I'll try to spot what is wrong to try to fix it but i need to get better at that. In general, I'm having more trouble to fix attacking issues then defensive ones. But I got better then I was on FM18.

BTW, how do I mention someone in a post? I see that it didn't work well up there.