Man City - touches to goals ratio

[galanopoul]

I have been playing as Manchester City and trying to play possession and entertaining football as the board asked.

In the beginning I used a 4-1-4-1 DM Tiki Taka tactic, using mostly the default team instructions for Tiki Taka. First season went well and I won the league.

But in the following seasons, I had issues with scoring and winning against weaker teams. I had many unexpected defeats or 0-0 draws with much weaker teams in the league and for that reason I finished 3rd.

In the middle of 3rd season, I decided to play a bit more direct and changed to 4-1-4-1 vertical Tiki Taka as shown below.

Vertical Tiki Taka tactic helped a little bit, but shortly after I had poor results and the same issues again.

In every game, I have about 20 shoots with 10-12 of them on target. I create chances, but I cannot score. I keep getting "Touches to goal ratio" in the comments and I do not know how I can improve that. I see people with similar tactics scoring 100 goals per season and I do not get how!! 

Funny enough, my tactics  work very well against bigger teams and I have won the Champions League twice so far.

Just to say, I have used De Bruyne as AP-S for a long time in the past, but it did not help much. I just tried RPM role hoping that it will make him less static.

 

Any ideas or suggestions?

Edited August 26, 2020 by galanopoul

[Sarriball14]

Being a big team in your second season is hard especially when you’ve dominated first season. The smaller teams you come up against tend to sit even deeper and  With your high line and LOE you are pushing them back even more and therefor finding it harder to breakdown smaller teams. 
 

What I also notice is that every keeper becomes world class against you and your players miss absolute sitters in your second season, lots of people will disagree with this and blame it all on the tactic but it’s just something I’ve noticed in a lot of my second season saves 

[Experienced Defender]

7 hours ago, galanopoul said:

The problem with most presets - and tiki-taka(s) in particular - is that they contain a lot of tactical overkill, primarily in terms of instructions. So more often than not, they need to be tweaked in order to suit a specific team.

In your tactic specifically, I would remove a majority of instructions and tweak roles and duties in order for them to give you better balance both in terms of defensive solidity and space creation/utilization when attacking.

An example:

DLFsu

IFat                                   IWsu

APsu    MEZat

HB

WBsu   CDde   BPDde   WBsu

SKsu

The only instructions I would start with are:

- Positive

- play out of defence, shorter passing, run at defence, work ball into box & be more expressive

- counter-press & distribute quickly

- higher D-line, standard LOE, offside trap & split block for the front 3 + mezzala

Quite simple.

[galanopoul]

@Experienced Defender, thanks very much for the suggestions, here is my new tactic:

My last season did not go well due to injuries and bad form, but your tactics gave some positive results. Attack worked better, I scored more goals and created more chances.

The new season started with a couple more signings and a stronger squad overall. I started with two impressive victories over Everton and Man Utd. But then the same old story...


 

Especially the 0-0 draw against Leicester was so frustrating, that I went back to my last save and chose "Go on holidays" and asked my assistant to manage the game as I wanted to see what he would do. I did that 4-5 times and all of them he managed an easy victory with 3-0, 4-0 or so. He used the same players with a 4-2-3-1 Wide, but I cannot think I can find anything more about his team instructions.

Do you guys think that using different formations during the season (e.g 4-1-4-1 and 4-2-3-1) is really necessary? Any other ideas for those games where I have 30+ shots but I can't score?

 

[Experienced Defender]

1 hour ago, galanopoul said:

My last season did not go well due to injuries and bad form, but your tactics gave some positive results

"My tactic" uses a DLF on support duty, not attack. Also, my BPD is on the right, not left.

And last but not least, it's not a plug'n'play tactic, which means it may need to be slightly tweaked on occasion 

[galanopoul]

I used DLF-su in the beginning. But Kane did not score a goal for 7 or 8 matches and his avg rating was around 6.5. Sterling, despite his good finishing, was missing a ton of chances in every game. When I changed it to DLF-at Kane scored a lot more and he finished as top goalscorer in the league. I might give another try to DLF-su.

I put the BPD on the left as Laporte is my best BPD and he is left-footed. Is it because you want the BPD to try long passes to the IF on the left? I can easily change that anyway.

[Experienced Defender]

4 hours ago, galanopoul said:

I put the BPD on the left as Laporte is my best BPD and he is left-footed. Is it because you want the BPD to try long passes to the IF on the left?

No, I just stressed it as another difference between the tactic I sketched out and the one you posted and labeled it "mine". Nothing particularly wrong with a BPD on any side, although I personally prefer to have him on the side opposite to the playmaker. That's why I put him on the right (as "my" AP was in MCL). 

 

4 hours ago, galanopoul said:

I used DLF-su in the beginning. But Kane did not score a goal for 7 or 8 matches and his avg rating was around 6.5. Sterling, despite his good finishing, was missing a ton of chances in every game. When I changed it to DLF-at Kane scored a lot more and he finished as top goalscorer in the league. I might give another try to DLF-su

If playing him on attack duty proved better for you (i.e. him and your tactic in general), then do not change it. 

After all, have the tactic been successful overall or not? That's the most important question. I got the impression from your post that it had initially worked nicely and then suddenly stopped working. 

[galanopoul]

48 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

After all, have the tactic been successful overall or not? That's the most important question. I got the impression from your post that it had initially worked nicely and then suddenly stopped working. 

With this tactic my team scores more goals and creates more chances than before. In that sense it has been very successful.

I just said that the team is still quite inconsistent and I had some bad results against weaker teams. I know that this is not necessarily related to tactics; it might be related to team morale or player personality. Or some tweaks might be needed on occasion as you said.

I will keep using this tactic and I might get back with more comments or questions. Thanks anyway!

[Experienced Defender]

@Karlo Sorry mate, but you'll have to start your own separate thread topic if you want tactical help or advice on your own tactic and team. This thread is exclusively about the OP's tactic. 

If you want advice from me specifically, you can tag me there again 

[galanopoul]

I finished another season and I won the Premier League and Champions League 

But I want to perfect this tactic and there are some points that can be improved:

1. I had the best defence in the league, but only the 4th best attack. Runners-up, Liverpool, scored 20+ goals more. I want to score more, maybe at the cost of defence (not too much though).
2. Most of my attacks are crosses from the wing backs. For that reason my wing backs had the most assists in the season. The most common attack scenario is: midfielders pass to wing backs, then wing backs dribble and cross to ST or AML-IF. I would like to see more from my central midfielders, like through balls to the front 3 or more goals from them (from the Mez-At for example).

Generally speaking, I would like to replicate Pep's tactics at Man City and have a team with the highest ball possession, most completed passes and most goals scored in the season. Possession and attacking football at the same time.

I thought I can enable "Focus play through the middle" and set LOE at Much Higher. Do these sound like a good idea?

Also, how Attacking width can work with these changes? Some people say that "Focus play through the middle" works well with "Extremely Wide" attacking width, some others say the exact opposite and prefer "Narrow". Playing wider sounds reasonable for more attacking football. Am I wrong?

Edited September 7, 2020 by galanopoul