Possession football project

[robot_skeleton]

 

Introduction

Ever since I read Cleon’s Art of Possession Football post I started looking at the game differently. Always wanted to recreate something along the lines of those principles and I thought if I shared some of my failures or successes it would prove educational to me and even you guys might find value in it. The foundations will not be mine, everything that I know about FM I learned from him, but I want to put my own spin on it and create something that I can call mine. I haven’t done anything like this before, but when it comes to specifics I plan on writing about every six months I simulate and I also want to be clear in the guidelines I want to follow, that way both you guys and I can be on the same page.

But what are those principles? Well, these were laid down by Cleon himself, some of the stuff can be found in the post I have already mentioned, some of it in others, just wanted to get it out of the way as obviously He had a huge influence on me, the way he played the game was something unique and I just sort of want to put it into practice, see if I can use what I learned from him. I haven’t simulated anything yet, and I am fine with that. I want to document my decisions and the stuff that I do along the way and I will be okay with failure if I follow the principles that I laid down. 

 

Principles for playing possession-based football on higher mentality (for the tactic)

• Use higher mentality - ain’t that obvious.
• Have movement and passing options - he regards this as one of the most important elements to this type of football “To build any kind of possession game you always need the players that are on the ball to have passing options. This comes from movement, without this you’d struggle to retain the ball”.
• Low creative freedom for players so space opens up by choosing the simple options available - he achieved this by using the highly structured team shape, I will have to find a solution to that.
• Have variety in attack, let’s not be predictable - this is just a general principle, I wouldn’t want two players doing the same thing on both wings for example, interpreting roles in the same way.

Principles for squad building

• Have different players for each positions.
• Try not to overload the squad with too many new players each window. (maximum of 3-4 departures or arrivals)
• Have a shortlist of 4-5 potential candidates for each positions who could come in and replace the players I have if something happens.

Principles for playing the game

• Always watch the first 15 minutes of the matches.
• Concentrate on my side and less so on the opposition.
• Try to avoid knee-jerk, hasty decisions.
• Try to take risks, have a plan.

The formation that I want to use has given me so much headache, because the possibilities are endless yet I never was successful using it so it should be a challenge. This formation will be the 4-1-4-1. This is sort of an extreme version of what I want, a few things will be changed most definitely but I wanted to write down where it all began. My idea was that if I want my players to choose the simple option it might be a good idea to select the "be more disciplined" TI, but then they wouldn't roam, so I tried to select roles that have hard-coded roaming included. Again this was just an idea, this is a rough starting point 3-4 roles and a few TIs are subject to change.

The setup

GK: I wanted someone who can pass the ball long if it must be, but not in such risky manner as on attack. The sweeper keeper on support seems like a great choice, although I might change it to a simple GK(d) as I don't have a good sweeper keeper in the squad.

RB: I wanted variety in my attack so I thought it would complement the wide midfielder in front of him, I expect the inverted wingback to help me recycle possession and be solid defensively plus offer another body on the ball.

CD: expect nothing fancy from them now. I plan on teaching them a few PPMs to get what I want though.

LB: go forward and overlap the wide playmaker and create an overload. The wide midfielder on the right can exploit it by being in a one-on-one situation - hopefully.

DM: help the defence bring the ball out, be a deeper outlet for advanced players so that they can draw stubborn teams who are defending deep, from deep the regista can pick a pass and coordinate our attacks. Am I being too risky with a regista? Probably, and that's why I am thinking about a deep-lying playmaker plus I don't exactly have a player who can be a perfect regista. We'll see.

LW: this role is probably the one that I'm least confident on. We'll see how much he slows down the attacks or what exactly he offers, I can see this role changed pretty soon.

CML and CMR: I wanted two runners from deep who can sometimes even go beyond the striker and be a goal threat, I expect the B2B midfielder to be less adventurous. (this little video was my inspiration for them)

RB: a wide midfielder either on support or attack, I want him to be the main goal threat, depending on the personnel I might want to change his duty to attack. But for example with Long (who has he PPMs "likes to beat the offside trap, gets further forward") I do not need higher mentality.

CF: I expect him to do a bit of everything, I'm very interested in how he will fit into the whole tactic, right now I just chose a role that is a kind of jack-of-all-trades

 

The questions that I should be asking myself:

• Do I want someone as a goalkeeper who is encouraged to launch risky passes?
• Do I want a more mobile regista in front of the defence instead of a holding player?
• What do I want from my two playmaker?

[robot_skeleton]

Pre-season + first five matches

Results

Managed to simulate ten matches without changing the tactic plus the first five competitive matches of the season and I feel satisfied, more so than than I expected. During the summer we managed to encounter various teams with differing reputations, but this was not the time to make any kind of assumptions about the system so I only paid attention to the fitness levels and cohesion while managing to trim the squad a bit. Let's see how we play in general. I chose this match because it was a real test and United is a quality team, we eventually lost but I was very pleased with how we played because we sticked to our principles and played positive, attacking football.

vs Man Utd (away)

I expected to be dominated and we kind of were, United scored two similar goals, maybe I will have to look at it closely if it happens again. We could have snatched a point but I didn't want to change the tactic, not one bit, so we were punished for it but it's a double edge sword because we also had chances to score before conceding so it was a risk I calculated.

You can see how Redmond, my wide playmaker is asking for the ball from Yoshida and comes slightly deeper. The Mezzala, Armstrong  is ahead of him - so is the B2B midfielder but that's not the point. The mezzala's high position is key to the tactic and so is the left back's willingness to move up the wing. We have a nice base for retaining possession.

Redmond gets the ball and he has some time and space to think about what to do. He decides to wait a bit a run with ball during which the LB moves forward.

Redmond passes the ball to the LB and the ManUtd midfield gets stretched.

When Redmond gets the ball back he is unmarked. More importantly the mezzala, Armstrong moves ahead of him creating space so that he can cut inside.

Redmond has a few passing options, some of which would require a different kind of playmaker than him, he chooses the 3rd option and the highlight ends up with an off-target shot from my striker, but basically this is how we play. I will link our goal that we scored after playing out from the back (apologies for the quality, next time it will be a bit better)

 

[robot_skeleton]

First - and only - change: wide playmaker to inverted winger

The reasons for the change are simple. It was after we had played Crystal Palace that I realized the little things bothering me were not that little in truth. I will link the clip here about the problem. This was the moment I felt that it's time to change that role.

The fact that a playmaker (Elyonnoussy) loses the ball in these advanced situations is very risky, in fact it is more than that, I felt that we were going to get punished even more than we were before for it. We trying to force play through him and it made us predictable and cost us points. What I wanted from the beginning was to have the playmaker coordinate from deep, but here the left back is ignoring him altogether and chooses the WP instead. In this situation I want my players to seeks out the regista. WP also drove into opposition too much and lost the ball too on other occasions (but I did not want to overload the post with videos), and I do know that for one reason or another the wide playmaker as of right now is a liability in this system so I changed it to a non-playmaker role that does similar things but is more of a goal threat and players do not prioritise him and consequently even the regista can have more varied options. This was a change I made early on after 7-8 matches and I wanted to make an update after the winter transfer window but I enjoyed the save too much and decided to simulate the whole first season instead - we even won a trophy in the end. So I'll make a season summary later

So how did this change affect the season and what did we achieve?

We were knocked out of the Carabao Cup in the quarter final, managed to snatch 5th place from Chelsea in the last moment and won the FA CUP against Man Utd.
Let me show you a statistic about the types of goals we scored. I do not think we are the 5th best team in England but other big teams struggled and we were somewhat consistent. I think the true test will be next year, if we can strengthen the squad with quality players we could keep up this form, but otherwise getting into the Europa League places would satisfy me.

I think we played well, but possession-wise we struggled to dominate opponents.

And we scored the fifth most goals.

Let me show you how we played differently in the FA CUP final to that Crystal Palace loss. The regista now is the sole playmaker and as a result the inverted winger (who was the wide playmaker) sees a lot less of the ball - now roughly the inverted  winger recieves half the amount of passes that the regista does. Players tend to choose other passing options and do not force play through him. Here's our winner against United that Targett scored - if I was playing with a wide playmaker I'm not sure Ramsey would have chosen the wing-back but this way his decision wasn't forced.

And here's another one that is a trademark Southamton goal these days

 

 

[robot_skeleton]

reserved

[djpdavey]

On 12/08/2019 at 23:14, robot_skeleton said:

My idea was that if I want my players to choose the simple option it might be a good idea to select the "be more disciplined" TI, but then they wouldn't roam, so I tried to select roles that have hard-coded roaming included

I just posted a thread where I was having a problem with the same formation same mentality where they were rushing play even if i had play shorter and slow pace down. I am going to try the more disciplined approach as this might be what will help.

I feel I also have enough roaming roles so hopefully all goes well. In your loss to Man United were the goals conceded something you could fix going forward?

[robot_skeleton]

@djpdaveygive the TI  a try and tell me how it works out for you! About the United loss, I conceded two goals because of overcommiting men when pressing, it happenned less and less later that season after I could recruit better players, still happens from time to time, but less so; you just have to accept it that sometimes it happens because it is a risk you take by playing on higher mentality with pressing settings set to higher. After all not many teams want to play that way at Old Trafford

But funny you should ask, I played Man Utd in the FA Cup final and it would be an interesting idea if I showed how much we changed from the beginning of the season...

[jc577]

Planning any more updates on this mate? Great read 

[robot_skeleton]

hi @jc577, thanks! I have just updated the thread with a bit of a first-season competion summary

[djpdavey]

On 22/08/2019 at 10:55, robot_skeleton said:

@djpdaveygive the TI  a try and tell me how it works out for you! About the United loss, I conceded two goals because of overcommiting men when pressing, it happenned less and less later that season after I could recruit better players, still happens from time to time, but less so; you just have to accept it that sometimes it happens because it is a risk you take by playing on higher mentality with pressing settings set to higher. After all not many teams want to play that way at Old Trafford

But funny you should ask, I played Man Utd in the FA Cup final and it would be an interesting idea if I showed how much we changed from the beginning of the season...

Made no difference. Someone highlighted that playing a deep formation on positive mentality would encourage long balls whereas it was more suited to possession.

[CARRERA]

11 hours ago, djpdavey said:

Made no difference. Someone highlighted that playing a deep formation on positive mentality would encourage long balls whereas it was more suited to possession.

you have to keep one thing in mind when it comes to passing despite trying the different passing options. You also have to look for what opportunities your opponent is offering to your players. For example if you play with a mid or bottom tier team, you might primarily or at least have a few teams which might look for a more aggressive approach onto you where they migh leave your players up front less marked which leaves you more options for longer and more direct passes.

Which isnt bad at all, because in the end you want to score and nothing is more dangerous then a quick and direct transition from defense to offense which is easily convertible for your striker. Even teams like city, barca or bayern will take these opportunities if they arise.