Tactic Advice & Development

[boblardo]

I have, many times over many versions, tried to create a tactic myself but for various reasons never manage to fully understand why something works so its really time that I put some effort in

Tactic

Going with a 4-1-4-1 tactic, using very few TI's and PI's

Only PI's are on the three attack duties all with Close Down More

Goal & Observations

This is the first goal I conceded,

1.  De Laet is caught between 2 players and Olsen is unmarked on the edge of my penalty area.  Ahlman only really has one option which is to play it inside to Olsen.  Kristensen (ST) is blocked off by my DLP(d) and my CM(a) 

2.  Olsen receives the ball fairly easily and then has an easy pass to Anderson (aml).

3.  Anderson receives the ball but De Laet is too far away and by the time he gets there he isn't close enough to impact it.  One of my CB's isn't really doing anything but isn't in a terrible position although I wonder if he should be coming across to  close down Anderson

4.  Anderson has time to turn and shoot the ball into the bottom corner with neither De Laet and my CD closing him down.

Comments & Questions

How can I get De Laet to do one or the other, ideally I want him to mark Anderson so would this be a role change?
My CB Batubinskla is double marking one player, would defend wider spread them out more?
My CM(a) Signori has a PI for close down more so think this maybe why he's being dragged out of position. 
Why is my DM - Ghandri wider than my wide midfielder when one of his PI's is hold position, does he need a close down less PI also?

My IW(a) - Mirallis is tracking back so this is fine and has blocked off any passing lane.
My CM(s) Iglebor is on the edge of the area tracking the other opposition CM.

Any tips you can give would be great.  I am hoping this thread will continue along this path to help my learning

 

[boblardo]

The game finished 0-1 despite dominating the game

For the 2nd half I moved to this tactic to hopefully give me a little more umph!

I noticed my winger running at the full back and pretty much getting tackled each time.  

No clear cut chances but all except 4 of my shots were inside the box; 

Again any ideas what i can be looking at

[boblardo]

My next game was a match v Schalke.  It ended in a 3-1 defeat, our goal coming in the last minute or so.  A pretty one sided affair.

Attacking Full Backs

In these 2 pictures you will see Kenny, the Schalke RB run past my IW(a) into the space near my LB. 

Could this be due to me not defending wide enough or maybe my LOE is not high enough?  Having my wide players on attack duties pretty much means they wont track back so changing I tried changing them to a support duty to help with this but it seemed to have little impact.

In this one both full backs, Kenny & Miranda are attacking me, all my players are running towards my goal facing the wrong direction. 

Am I playing too high here?

[Johnny Ace]

57 minutes ago, boblardo said:

Am I playing too high here?

I think it's mentality & a player's duty that will push your players forward sooner whilst you're on the ball, so if you feel your team are getting forward too soon, drop the mentality a notch. If you read the little info piece of Defensive Line in the Tactics screen, it's an out of possession thing when the opponent has the ball in their own half, so I don't think your lines will stop your team going forward

Having both wide midfielders on attack will potentially cause you problems on the flanks, like you say, the attack duty will have them less eager to get back whilst you're defending so it can leave you light out wide. Having them both on Support will see them get back & help defend but then you have to think about when you win the ball back, who's going to be in an advanced position to receive a pass & get your team forward? It's a balancing act

Your PF(S) will drop deep when defending too so you'll be well covered centrally, it could be overkill 

Are these games friendlies? Are you looking to get a tactic in order for the start of the season?

I'm struggling to see how you want to play to be honest. If you've got your striker on Support, arriving late in the box, holding the ball up who'd you want him holding it up for, who's he supporting? I'd want someone punching through the middle. Does the IW(A) do that? You could put that Winger out on the right on Support & have your RCM on attack but not a Mezzalla as he'll want to go down the right wing too, a CM(A) might be a good starting point but he'll need to bust a gut getting up & down the pitch so he'd need to be one of the team's better players 

You've got Dribble Less selected but then have a Mezzalla, Winger, Inverted Winger, Wing Backs, Inverted Wing Backs who all look to run on the ball, so you've picked these roles & want them to run less?

Regarding your marking questions in your opening post against AAB, I've no idea what formation they play but how Anderson is so free is slack, maybe setting up individual marking in the Player Instruction screen to match up against the opponent  to make sure you have no spare men double marking players 

I'll be following pal, be interesting to see how you get on  

Edited December 4, 2019 by Johnny Ace

[Enzo_Francescoli]

It's not easy to judge from a few screenshots, but on defense your problem may be that there is no one player in that first set-up that can will win the ball. The CM(s) contributes on defense, sure, but it's not an aggressive role. The DLP(d) will hold position, but again, that's not a ball winner. I think that is why Schalke simply ran over you. An anchor man at DM or a BWM at CM may help.

On attack, most of your midfield will bomb forward, but on a balanced mentality, passing is relatively short and tempo is not very high. You ask your team to dribble less, which means they will try to pass around the ball, but what options do your DLP have for example.? Those roles and duties are not bad for a direct style of football, but then you gotta speed up the transition, so the opponent doesn't have time to get into their defensive shape. By that I mean you could go with direct passing, higher tempo. Lose dribble less, try run at defence instead. You'll need someone in the box, so change the striker's duty to attack, all the while add one more support duty to your midfield, the winger, for example.

[Experienced Defender]

On 03/12/2019 at 22:17, boblardo said:

The most obvious problem with this first tactic is your midfield - 3 of 4 midfielders from the central strata are on attack duty, and all these attack duties are given to roles that are already attack-minded by default (mezzala, winger and IW). That obviously makes you more vulnerable defensively than your players can handle, despite having a DM and using a bottom-heavy formation. When all these attack-duty mids surge forward in attacking transition, if you lose the ball - they are leaving a considerable gap for the opposition to exploit. And given the attack-minded nature of their roles, you cannot expect them to track back and help the defense in a sufficiently effective manner.

When it comes to your defensive TIs, the combination of higher DL and lower LOE gives you good vertical compactness, but at the same time risks both leaving too much space behind your back-line and allowing the opposition enough space and time to build their attacks up unobstructed. In order to mitigate this problem, my suggestion for you is to move up the LOE just a notch (to standard), which would still provide a good level of compactness while also making you less passive when engaging the opposition. Another possible combos you may want to consider are: standard DL/lower LOE or standard DL/standard LOE. You can experiment and see which combo suits your players best.

Tighter marking is a double-edged sword as well when playing on a high D-line and with such an adventurous midfield setup. Therefore, I would remove it. 

An instruction that makes little (if any) sense in this setup is - dribble less. What's your reasoning behind this particular TI? If you want them to dribble less because they are poor dribblers, then why do you use 3 roles in the midfield that are all hard-coded to dribble more and generally require players who are good at dribbling? If you want to discourage dribbling for some other reason, then please explain it. 

Distribution to playmaker is both unnecessary and potentially risky. When you use a PM, your players (including the keeper) will generally look to pass the ball to him pretty much often. And even if you want to further increase that rate, the "Play out of defence" is definitely a safer option than the GK distribution TI. 

On 03/12/2019 at 23:10, boblardo said:

This other tactic has a bit more conservative (and thus defensively safer) midfield setup (one attack duty less), but on the other hand your defensive TIs are now considerably more aggressive (due to both higher LOE and higher team mentality). On top of this, Prevent short GKD instruction is basically pointless in this system with only 1 player up front (for the instruction to make sense, you need at least 3, ideally 4, players up front). 

In terms of roles and duties, your central area should now be better protected, but the flanks could be problematic, as you have attack-minded roles in both wide midfield positions with fairly conservative fullbacks behind them (the potential risk of leaving too big a gap on the flanks when defending). Advice; mix it up a bit. For example:

IWat      DLPsu     MEZat     WMsu

A/DMde

WBsu         CD        CD         FBat

Dribble less is still there, but now you have 4 new TIs as well: short pass, work into box, counter and distribution to FBs. While there is nothing wrong with any of these TIs, the question is again - what's your exact idea (reason) behind adding them? In other words, what (exact) style of football do you want to play and why? 

Edited December 5, 2019 by Experienced Defender

[boblardo]

Thanks for the replies, its given me points to consider. 

In terms of style of play, I like the 4-1-4-1 formation.  It looks on paper to be a solid bottom heavy formation that can easily, with the right roles & duties, morph into something a little more attacking!  I'm not hugely possession focused but ideally want to play efficient football which basically means not giving away possession unnecessarily and getting forward to our goal scorers quickly.  Ideally our goal scorers should be one of the wide midfielders and a central midfielder supported by the striker although on reflection in the tactics above its not really clear who is going to be our goal threat.  Other players may score goals via free kicks or long shots which is an added bonus.

In my head this is how I see it

I was thinking about making the RM sit narrower and hold position to get him acting like an extra CM and giving the DR room overlap too

I used something similar in FM15 and had the LM setup as a WM with PIs to make him play like a deep Inside Forward but ive not really been able to reproduce it since.  

Edited December 5, 2019 by boblardo

[Johnny Ace]

4 hours ago, boblardo said:

I was thinking about making the RM sit narrower and hold position to get him acting like an extra CM and giving the DR room overlap too

I used something similar in FM15 and had the LM setup as a WM with PIs to make him play like a deep Inside Forward but ive not really been able to reproduce it since.  

For that, a WM on the right on support (defend?) with sit narrower & a fullback/ wingback on support/attack or the use of overlap on the right is probably the closest thing but then you'd need to re-balance the duties throughout 

I think @Experienced Defender's set-up look more like how you've got it sketched out  Have you given a DLF-S/A a try? 

I had a look at the Antwerp squad after reading this last night, they've got some Premier League blasts from the blast! Defour, De Laet, Mariallas & Mbokani! 

[boblardo]

2 hours ago, Johnny Ace said:

For that, a WM on the right on support (defend?) with sit narrower & a fullback/ wingback on support/attack or the use of overlap on the right is probably the closest thing but then you'd need to re-balance the duties throughout 

I think @Experienced Defender's set-up look more like how you've got it sketched out  Have you given a DLF-S/A a try? 

I had a look at the Antwerp squad after reading this last night, they've got some Premier League blasts from the blast! Defour, De Laet, Mariallas & Mbokani! 

thanks for the reply,

i almost always play in england so wanted to go elsewhere

I have no connection to Antwerp it was just a random pick as an exercise to learn the game. 

[boblardo]

I rage quit, as usual as I just couldn't figure out why I was so bad at this game even though I see lots of posts about how "easy" the game is.  I loaded up my Antwerp save created the following tactic

My defenders are a bit slow so I don't want to push up, and I move the LoE depending on the opposition.  If I am expected to win and want to force them out i play a lower LoE, if its pretty level i start with it on standard and push it up if I am the underdog.  I usually start on Balanced and move to positive if I need to create more and may play wider also.

3 wins from 3 in the league but i got beat in Europe v Braga drawing 1-1 at home then losing 2-0 away.  They were favorites in both games, I dont really want to drop down to cautious as i am already quite defensive.  I didn't know what to do to stop the onslaught here are the stats

 

If anyone can give me some pointers at what I need to looking for that would be helpful. i am also thinking of adding an attack duty from defence and am considering a Mez(a) rather than a CM(a)

 

[Experienced Defender]

57 minutes ago, boblardo said:

 

58 minutes ago, boblardo said:

If anyone can give me some pointers at what I need to looking for that would be helpful

Your formation is (very much) bottom-heavy and you have only 1 player on attack duty overall, which combined means you have very little (i.e. insufficient penetration). 

Is there a specific reason why you opted to use the flat 4141 formation? Is it because your team is too weak, so you want to make sure you are defensively solid by putting so many bodies in deeper strata of your setup? Or something else maybe?

[Experienced Defender]

1 hour ago, boblardo said:

3 wins from 3 in the league but i got beat in Europe v Braga drawing 1-1 at home then losing 2-0 away.  They were favorites in both games

What's the problem then?

[HanziZoloman]

Reading with interest as I am having similar problems as boblardo are you still trying to solve the problem with Antwerpen?

maybe a 442 would suit you more. It seems to me that you play the 4141 on a possession style and maybe it’s more consequent to sit solid and play counters or switch to a formation with more players up the pitch to control possession?

[boblardo]

My next game was a decent 2-1 win, 2-0 up at half time and despite them scoring in the 81st minute after a goalkeeping error it was fairly comfortable.  My 5th game was 4th v 3rd where I faced Standard Liege who are predicted to finish above me.  It was fairly even in terms of odds with no real standout favorite so decided as I was home I would start with a positive mentality.

The first half was pretty one way in favour of Standard without any real chances being created.  the biggest problem was the full backs which you will see from picture below they are quite attacking.  The two players Gavory & Vojvoda are the Standard FB's

To try and push them back I raised the LoE to high but it didn't seem to make much difference so my next plan was to raise the DL to higher but again the full backs just kept pressing me.  Next change was to adjust my team slightly changing my WM(s) to a winger on attack.   At half time I wasn't creating all that much so moved my mentality to Attacking and we started to dominate the game a little, eventually scoring in the 68th minute.

However, Standard then changed to attacking so I did nothing for a few minutes as we were still doing ok but then they went very attacking and started to force me back.  I made some small changes reducing the mentality to positive, clicking hit early crosses and pass into space, the idea here was to get the ball forward as quickly as possible to try and exploit space.  as we approached the 90th minute i reduced mentality to cautious but eventually conceded an equaliser after we failed to clear a corner.

I have a game against Brugge soon who are high favorites so any tips/advice on things I could have done better

[boblardo]

SO the game v Brugge starts, they are top and favorite so i start with Balanced.  I can't get a foothold in the game so try pushing my LoE up, try pushing my DL up, up the mentality etc etc.  here are the half time stats

No idea what to change to turn this round, ive thought about sitting deeper to soak up pressure and hit on the counter but as they've already had 15 shots i think it will just lead to a drubbing!