What can I improve in my tactic?- Hamburg S1

[BrianBrobbey]

Hi guys, I'm quite new to FM so I'm struggling to make a proper functioning tactic because I don't know the ins and outs of crafting a functioning tactic. I've read quite a few of articles and came to this tactic. I'm playing as Hamburg, first season, no signings made. I didn't really mess with personal instructions but I've put both Mangala (Mezzala) and Holtby (Box to Box) on take more risky passes since they have the best passing stats. Also, I've instructed Arp (Deep Lying Forward) to take more shots on target. Build up play is no problem, I get plenty of possession and plenty of shots, usually 18 shots of which 10 on target and roughly 60/65% possession. However, I struggle to score, what can I improve to make my team score more and why? I'd like to know the underlying dynamics of what I change so I can learn from it and hopefully make these changes on my own later on. Also, are there any general things I should improve tactically or duty-wise? Any help would be appreciated since I really want to get the hang of constructing my own tactics based on what I have. 

 

Cheers. 

[AFCBeer]

You need attack duties! Just somewhere but you definitely need some. 

There’s no point having 65% possession without penetration. Players with attack duties are the ones that take opponents on and make forward runs into the box. I notice you have your midfielders playing more risky passes, but who will those risky passes go to if no one is making positive runs into space to receive them. It doesn’t really matter how high your tempo is if all your passing is in front of the opponent 

Have a check where your shots are being taken from. I suspect most of these are from long range as when a player receives the ball in the attacking third, his only option is to pass sideways or backwards or take a speculative shot. 

Its so important to have width and movement in the final third. There are a number of ways to do this. A wing back on attack, one of the inside forwards on attack, changing an IF to a winger and most certainly a striker on attack. Even the Mez could go on attack. You don’t need to do all of these but at least try something. And since you will be adding attack duties, there is no harm in reducing team mentality or tempo slightly to make the overall play more precise. 

[BrianBrobbey]

5 minutes ago, AFCBeer said:

You need attack duties! Just somewhere but you definitely need some. 

There’s no point having 65% possession without penetration. Players with attack duties are the ones that take opponents on and make forward runs into the box. I notice you have your midfielders playing more risky passes, but who will those risky passes go to if no one is making positive runs into space to receive them. It doesn’t really matter how high your tempo is if all your passing is in front of the opponent 

Have a check where your shots are being taken from. I suspect most of these are from long range as when a player receives the ball in the attacking third, his only option is to pass sideways or backwards or take a speculative shot. 

Its so important to have width and movement in the final third. There are a number of ways to do this. A wing back on attack, one of the inside forwards on attack, changing an IF to a winger and most certainly a striker on attack. Even the Mez could go on attack. You don’t need to do all of these but at least try something. And since you will be adding attack duties, there is no harm in reducing team mentality or tempo slightly to make the overall play more precise. 

Thanks, this will help me out a lot. Also, for approach play I focus on play through the middle, but for the underlap and overlap, when could I potentially use them and in what kind of systems do they belong? I've always found approach play the most difficult part of the tactic.

[sporadicsmiles]

How do you envisage your team scoring goals? Who do you want to be the main goalscorer? Which players are going to provide assists? How and from where? These are the questions you should ask yourself first, and the answers will then guide how you develop this tactic.

Right now I cannot even see the answer. I guess I can see the mez flinging balls into the box for the opposite IF to score. Maybe the BBM breaking past the DLF. The DLP is kinda wasted because he has nobody to pass to. With a DLP on defend, he is going to be a long way behind the attackers. That would suit him spraying long passes, but he has nobody to pass to like that. None of your players are really looking to get behind the defense. If you cannot see how you are going to score, you are probably going to struggle to score.

Personally, I would at least go all out on the overload on the left. An attacking full back to put 3 players in that area. The opposite IF on attack (of the striker, if you prefer). Then at least you can draw the defense towards your left, and create space on your right. Then your DLP can also act as a pivot to quickly switch the ball from the left to the right to exploit this space. This is what the mezzalla is good at though. Creating overloads in wide areas. An advantage of an attacking striker or IF will also be that it gives someone for the DLP to hit long passes over the top of the defense for.

[wixxi]

16 hours ago, AFCBeer said:

You need attack duties! Just somewhere but you definitely need some.

While I agree with your post overall, who is to say you cannot create penetration without attack duties? I believe there have been tactics posted before that don't use any and are still successful

[axelmuller]

build your team around Lewis Holtby. he the boss

[Experienced Defender]

22 hours ago, BrianBrobbey said:

First off, this tactic is needlessly aggressive both in attack and defense.

When you play on attacking mentality, you really don't need much higher tempo, because it's already high enough (mentality automatically affects a number of instructions - tempo, passing style/risk, width, pressing urgency, DL, LOE, creative freedom). Unless you want to play extremely fast counter-attacking football, but in that case you would need a very different setup than this one.

More urgent pressing and get stuck in are too risky when you play with a higher DL, plus (again) on a high-risk mentality such as attacking. Leave both on default.

Counter-press is always potentially risky, especially when you play against good teams who can exploit the space left by your players rushing forward to press like crazy. I mean. you can use CP, just be careful.

When you select certain instructions, you need to know the exact reason why you want to use them. In that regard, I have a couple of questions:

- why wide attacking width?

- why Work ball into box?

- why focus play through the middle? (bear in mind that it increases the mentality of CBs, DMs and defend-duty CMs)

- why Dribble less?

- why Defend wider?

If you are not an experienced FM tactician, try to use as few instructions as possible (use only those that vaguely define the style of play you want to implement).

In terms of roles and duties, the full green circle does not necessarily mean it's really a player's ideal role, so it can be misleading sometimes. Instead, look at your players' attributes and traits (and in some cases also footedness) when selecting their roles and duties, but also take care that each role makes sense as part of the tactic as a whole (most players are able to successfully play more than just one role, and some can play even as many as 4-5).

 

[Tom8983]

On 06/08/2019 at 02:17, AFCBeer said:

You need attack duties! Just somewhere but you definitely need some. 

There’s no point having 65% possession without penetration. Players with attack duties are the ones that take opponents on and make forward runs into the box.

Sorry but that's not necessarily true. Here's two images, one with a winger on support duty while the team mentality is attacking, and the other one a winger on attack duty while the teams mentality is cautious.

See how the players overall mentality is the same in  both of them? So in both different tactical setups that winger will play with the same risk taking, which includes taking on opponents and getting into the box. 

[AFCBeer]

9 hours ago, Tom8983 said:

Sorry but that's not necessarily true. Here's two images, one with a winger on support duty while the team mentality is attacking, and the other one a winger on attack duty while the teams mentality is cautious.

See how the players overall mentality is the same in  both of them? So in both different tactical setups that winger will play with the same risk taking, which includes taking on opponents and getting into the box. 

Sure but I feel this is an unnecessary complication. After all you can’t play cautious and attacking team mentalities at the same time. The basic premise is an attack duty winger will be more advanced and therefore put more pressure on the opposition back line than the support duty. And if we are struggling for chances, we need to put more pressure on an opponent. 

The attack duty winger is actually my favourite role in the game. In the right set up it can be a 20+ goal a season player. When the ball is on the opposite flank, my attack duty winger regularly sits on the last shoulder between CB and FB and arrives at the far post for tap ins. I just don’t see the same level of penetration from the support duty winger. Even if the player instructions screen suggests they should play the same, I prefer to trust what I see on the pitch. 

[lferreira]

Some things for you to think about:

Support players tend to stick behind the ball or on the same line as the ball, so you have two inside forwards providing passing options, everyone on support, your DLF dropping back to midfield, so what do you do when they're playing narrow?

I'd suggest sticking to a standard mentality, having one fullback on support and the other one in attack behind an IF-su and having a winger on attack on the other side, for starters.

That might give you the opportunity to play your DLP on support against weaker sides. That would be a start and it would provide more variety. I'd suggest using your winger on attack on their more attacking side - if they're playing with a wingback + an IF your winger should have acres of space on the counter, which leads us to the second aspect of your tactic: sometimes camping their third of the pitch can make space very difficult to obtain. 

Maybe drop your line of engagement and go for a middle-press? That could give your players more space to operate when you recover the ball.

[Robson 07]

On 06/08/2019 at 22:23, axelmuller said:

build your team around Lewis Holtby. he the boss

Mmm.

But I can say that Drongelan and Vagnoman turn out very well.

[Tom8983]

On 08/08/2019 at 03:34, AFCBeer said:

The attack duty winger is actually my favourite role in the game.

On that we can definitely agree! Especially combined with the 'gets into opposition area' PPM.

 

On 08/08/2019 at 03:34, AFCBeer said:

The basic premise is an attack duty winger will be more advanced and therefore put more pressure on the opposition back line than the support duty

But that basic premise is incorrect. In the two images I provided, the winger will play in exactly the same way as an individual, it's the rest of the tactic that will change and therefore change the effectiveness of the winger, for better or worse. If I changed the team mentality from cautious to very defensive, the winger on attack duty would be less adventurous than the winger on support with an attacking team mentality. This information and the way it affects your tactic is important when creating a tactic and understanding what affects what, and as the OP says...

On 06/08/2019 at 01:26, BrianBrobbey said:

I don't know the ins and outs of crafting a functioning tactic

... this is relevant to learning, and keeping it simple wouldn't be doing him any favours.

[Bradz FM]

What I'd do is remove the symmetry of attack. On the left side change to an IWB(S) and a Winger(S). The BBM isn't a great role, I'd change to CM(S) and tailor the role the way you like.

After that i'd remove a couple of TI's such as play through middle, distribute quickly and much higher tempo. I'd play with much lower tempo for this setup

[wixxi]

11 minutes ago, Trevomac said:

The BBM isn't a great role, I'd change to CM(S) and tailor the role the way you like.

What's the reasoning behind this? Just interested since I've never found the BBM to be worse than just a CM-S when used in the correct manner

[Bradz FM]

38 minutes ago, wixxi said:

What's the reasoning behind this? Just interested since I've never found the BBM to be worse than just a CM-S when used in the correct manner

Just not a fan. Don't feel it offers much, he doesn't get forward enough without PPMs and doesn't defend properly and definitely shouldn't be used beside a mezzala IMO.

Anytime I want something to do what I expect a BBM to do I used a segundo volante on attack

[AFCBeer]

On 11/08/2019 at 12:50, Tom8983 said:

But that basic premise is incorrect. In the two images I provided, the winger will play in exactly the same way as an individual, it's the rest of the tactic that will change and therefore change the effectiveness of the winger, for better or worse. If I changed the team mentality from cautious to very defensive, the winger on attack duty would be less adventurous than the winger on support with an attacking team mentality. This information and the way it affects your tactic is important when creating a tactic and understanding what affects what, and as the OP says...

...

Sorry for late reply and I don’t think we are too far apart here. What I’d like to clarify is understanding how the player will play in relation to the rest of the tactic AND the opposition set up. 

When your overall team mentality is cautious, the likelihood is the AI will push higher up the pitch and leave more space behind. As per your screenshot, the attack duty winger’s mentality might only be ‘positive’ but he has a lot more space to be positive in. Now consider a team playing with an attacking mentality and an AI defending against that. Most of the time they will be restricting space behind. Therefore, the support duty winger with the same positive mentality will be doing a lot of work in front of the AI defence. 

Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing but you do need to consider the other roles and duties around them. If the support winger can drag defenders further up the pitch and wide, it could provide a perfect opportunity for a CM on attack to exploit. Alternatively, if you emphasise early crosses, a striker on attack could work well. 

I’m not trying to argue support duties are bad. As someone posted above, successful tactics have been created this way. However, we have to understand the OP’s dilemma, and that is having plenty of possession and shots but little in terms of clear chances and goals. If this is our struggle we need width, depth, creativity and penetration to our attack. This doesn’t need to be a winger on attack, but I think it’s very difficult to create this without a couple of attack duties somewhere in a front 4 or 5. 

[Dfs]

Some advice regarding your tactic:

- you play with high defensive line and with offside trap, the defenders in your tactic (Bates and van Drongelen) are fairly mobile but have bad mental stats, especially Bates. For me playing such couple with offside trap is too risky so I d drop it.

- you use get stuck in but your defensive midfielder has low aggression and average at best tackling ability. On the other hand your left back, right back and bbm have good stats for this instructions so I d use this instruction selectively. Id start the games without it and use it mostly when the opponent plays slowly, its a draw and you feel like you want to win the ball back even faster. Your defense is aggressive anyway.

- I d definitely get rid of dribble less instruction. Both of your ifs are actually excellent at dribbling and also the formation you play encourages dribbling and also you play wider. So if you wanna play with two attacking midfielders on both flanks and wider it makes no sense at all to restrict your players from dribbling (actually I d probably play with dribble more instead)

- Jairo is right footed playing on the right side and from my experience he d perform better as inside forward on attack where his inability to dribble with his preferred foot by cutting inside is partially offset by him getting into good scoring positions where his right footedness would be a plus. This would also sort out the problem that others mentioned - lack of attacking duties. And btw, Jairo is really good at crossing too so you could play him as winger on attack too.

- I d probably flip some of other tis. You have much higher tempo and wide and yet you use a dlp, a role that for me screams posession footbal, short passing play and max average tempo. If you wanna play posession football I d play on average speed and shorter passing and standard width (narrower formation helps with keeping the ball). But if you wanna continue playing fast and be aggressive (which probably you should cause your best players are your wingers) than there s no point in having a dlp there. Make him an ordinary defensive midfielder. Steinmann s an ok player but he s very slow and nothing special, dont make him a ball magnet.