Player positioning and lack of arrows in the tactics engine

[sjm]

I recently got FM 2011, and haven't really played the series since 2006 (mucked around with the 2010 demo, but never bought it).

The tactics engine in 2011 is obviously somewhat more limited in what you can do than 2006 was, and I'm having a lot of difficulties because of it. My biggest problem is the lack of arrows. In the past, you could use arrows to fix problems with your teams positioning, but the new engine totally lacks this ability. To me this is actually a bit of a step backwards - many teams nowadays play 4-5-1 defending and when 4-3-3 attacking; and in the past, wing backs would become wingers on the offensive in a 5-3-2, becoming a 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2. But maybe there is an alternative solution...

The biggest problems I'm having:

Midfielders won't track back/drop deep. Not that they ever used to be able to track midfielders sensibly, but you could use a back arrow to the DM position to fix this problem in the past. Now I can either have a DM there all the time, or just gift loads of space in front of the defence. Can you fix this? Is there any way to get players to drop back immediately and play an anchor man role when defending, without playing as a DM? Ditto getting a midfielder to move into the hole on the attack, and then pretty much stay there (in the past, no forward runs but an forward arrow to the AM position)?

When defending against single strikers, my 2 central defenders like standing either side of the striker, meaning that the striker is always goal-side when counter-attacking. I've lost count of the number of times my goalie has kicked the ball upfield, the opponent's midfield has won the ball and booted it straight back, and their single striker then has a clear path on goal. In the past, you could use side arrows and the width setting to mitigate this somewhat (to get your centre backs to play closer together), but again, this isn't an option any more. Is there any way to get defenders to not defend like 5 year olds against a single striker? Do I need to switch to a sweeper system or something? Set the team to as narrow as possible, and use the wing play instructions to get players to move wider on the attack?

Now I've tried using opposition instructions (which are also new since 2006) to solve the second problem, but it doesn't make a difference, because the problem is really how the defenders behave when we have the ball. It's like they can't see the opposing striker until it's too late and just let him stand between them. So tight marking actually only kicks in when it's already too late.

On top of this, I'd like to make sure I've understood the OI properly. The way I see it, they basically override any player-specific instruction; i.e. if I set a player to easy tackling, but tell the team to go in hard on an opponent, this overrides the easy tackling for that opponent only. So if I tell a player to mark tightly, but set the opponent's tight marking to "never", my player won't mark him tightly. If I tell my players to never close down an opponent, they won't close him down whatever their closing down settings. So far so good.

But what happens if these instructions contradict each other? For example, what if I set my full back to specifically tight mark an opponent, and then tell the team to never mark that opponent tightly - what will my full back do? And, by extension, if my centre back is set to tight man (not specific) marking with high closing down, and I've told my team to never tight mark the striker he's up against and never close him down? Will the centre back close down all the other players except the one opponent? Who will he mark? Will he mark them tightly?

I've not tried doing the above, but would love to know exactly what takes precedence over what, and whether their are any recommendations on how to go about setting up your defenders. For example, I'm loathe to tell my players to always close down an opponent when I feel that the opponent will be closed down anyway by virtue of my player instructions. What's the advantage of closing down their winger using OI as opposed to telling the full back to close down? I don't want the wrong player closing an opponent down and opening up huge gaps. Likewise, my assistant manager always wants to tight mark all the opponent's midfielders and attackers. Is this really a good idea? Or is it better to try and get the right players to mark the right opponents using the player instructions? I'd actually think it more sense to tell my team to close down the opponent's full backs all the time (pressing) rather than their midfield/attackers. Am I missing something here?

Edit: I should probably add that I don't use the tactics creator at all (as I find some of the settings it generates make no sense and it's a pain to use for this reason if you want to change things).

[bbuullddoogg]

Convert your tactic to "classic" and you can use arrows etc

[sjm]

No you can't, that's just a visualisation of your forward run settings.

[FyB]

I play low leaguer with inferior players.

The best way I've found to be tight at the back and not leave any space in the miiddle is having my CMr and CMl with man marking and non-tight. With low closing down just at the Mid-point. What you'll see is they will rush back to take up the position just infront of the DC tracking back to their D-line. From my testing you need fast CM so they can get into position faster.

I find my inferior player losing too many 50-50 chance in the middle and getting out of position letting their CM play a perfect thru ball so I had to resort to this.

I play 4-3-3, flat midfield and 2 AMl/AMr

I have my ouside midfield set up with the settings above while my MC has zonal non-tight marking with higher closing down. If my MC has no player to mark (against 4-4-2), he falls back slightly behind and sits in the middle like an anchor man this prevents any thru ball between my DC.

If the opponent is playing with Deep lying midfield, my MC close him down. while my outside MC marks the space instead of the man. MAN marking is aggresive zonal marking as in he will follow that guy into ur half until he is picked up by another player in a deeper position then he lets him go.

Of course with this kind of mentality, you let your opponent play their football.

If you have stronger MC, you could probably employ tight marking.

Tracking FBs with wingers. set them to MAN non-tight and they will do their job. My AMl/AMr has man non-tight, they track those FB back if they use attacking full backs. Don't forget mentality, too high and they don't track back.

If you can give indepth problems of what formation againt what formation, we could help you out on a case by case scenerio.

I'm also testing this 4-3-3 formation of mine. At the moment my quality of players is impeding the expansion of my tactic.

[sjm]

Thanks for the tips on getting players to track back - I'll give it a go.

My problem against a single striker is when playing a flat 4 against the 4-5-1 or 4-3-3, depending on how you see it. Although it really applies to any odd vs even match up. It's no worse or better without side arrows than on FM2006, but those side arrows really gave you options. FM's defenders have always had problems defending against these match ups.

I just tried switching to a flat 3 + sweeper and specific marking, and it actually worked quite well (as it did in some cases in FM 2006 against the same formation). The player positioning is much better. A flat 3 + anchor man was a disaster though.

But my real question remains: is there any way to get the two central players to play closer together (i.e. as you could do with side arrows in earlier versions)? I'm in my first season, my players are rubbish and haven't got the right positional combinations for me to really be able to make the sort of in-match changes I'd be making with players I'd bought in myself (in particular no DC/SW, but also no ball winner MC/DM, no MLR/AMLR) - I never like playing players out of position if I don't have to. I know I can retrain my players, but 90% of them will not be having their contracts renewed at the end of the season, so there's no point

Btw, I'm aware that the marking settings don't really make sense, but it's been this way for ages (i.e. that man marking is really just what I know as zonal marking, and zonal marking is more just holding position), so I can work with it.

Edit: Any input on the OI and my question about conflicting instructions?

[FyB]

To make your player play closer together, its the width settings. Narrower will make your player close to one another but on a wide pitch, your wings will be wide open. If you're worried that playing narrow will make you play narrow in attack and thus not being able to stretch out your opponent defense, have your wingers set to hug touch line.

So what formation do you play with? How you set up ur midfield will have effect on how you get attacked.

For example, the 4-5-1. If your talking about the ingame 4-5-1 where theres is a 4 flat back, 1 DMC, 2MC and 2 AML/R and 1 FC. The AML/R will never track your wingers. They will only track and harrass the full backs. Passing to wings is ideal in this situation cuz of the DMC not letting you play though the middle.

Let say you're playing 4-4-2. In this situation, you can line up with tall strikers and just feed them crosses. But if you don't have tall stikers or good crossers, have them cut in side. This sometimes drag the Full back along with him to the middle and he might be able to see an opening for a thru ball. If the FB don't follow him, depending on your settings of your MCs, you could create a chance out of it. since you are pretty much having 3 in the middle vs 3. So indiviual skills come into play here. This can also drag the DMC out of position since he is looking to mark one of the players in the middle. If your striker sees the space left behind and falls abit deeper, he will have a half chance at goal. The settings for wingers to do these have to be on support as in forward runs set to sometimes, other instruction varies with the player you have on hand.

Ideally I would play 4-4-1-1 as it makes defensive duties easier or 4-2-3-1 with AML/AMR.

Against lone striker, playing narrow and and have 1 DC specific mark the lone striker is also a viable tactic. Make sure the DC marking the striker has decent marking ability and physically better than the striker.(as in higher speed, jumping and strength than the striker) Just have them play normal defend setting. So you are essentially playing with 3 defenders and 1 defender just follow that lone striker like a shadow. Playing narrow will offset the space left behind by the DC following the striker.

I don't really like to use OI as they tend to drag you player out of position and give away chances.

Rule of thumb OI overwrites all.

Hope that helps.

[sjm]

I'm playing a (flat) 4-4-2, but that's not really the issue, as it's more about how to (in general terms) implement certain things using the new tactic engine. In 2006 I knew how to do these things, it's just about translating it to the new engine (in particular the lack of side arrows with regard to width and forward/back arrows with regard to attacking and defending behaviour).

I'll try setting my full backs to hug the touchline and play narrow, and see if that does what I'm looking for with the spread of my defenders (when I have the ball, which is the real issue). I'm not that worried about my midfield at the moment, as I've only got one left winger who can actually cross, so he's the only one set to hug the touchline. My other wingers are just wide midfielders helping out in attack and defence.

I think I'm slowly getting the hang of the OI now though, and it does indeed appear that my assistant manager's suggestions are useless (I've no idea why I hoped they wouldn't be). Of course they only apply to the defensive side of things too.

BTW, last night I had a bit more success getting my midfielders to drop back by messing around with their closing down, mentality and marking settings. Not perfect, but definitely getting there, so thanks for your input (turning off tight marking seemed to help). Since mucking around with the CMs and using the OI without paying attention to my ass man, I've gone on a 6 match unbeaten run, with 4 wins on the bounce now, which has seen the team climb to the dizzy heights of 13th!

[FyB]

Thats good news. Seems like your making progress.

For MC mentality is not a big of a deal. Since in a 4-4-2 vs 4-4-2, they are always in the middle and will pick up the opponent MCs however, you'll be prone to counter attack as the MC will be higher up the field if they have high mentality. Say on a balanced strategy, metality on the middle notch do fine. I always define mentality as which phases of the play you want you player to play. Lower mentality will see your player play simple passes. In the middle will see them build up play. High mentality will see them wait for the final ball. Since you always want your MCs to build up play, they should be in the middle. This has nthing to do with marking defensive issues.

As for closing down which i've explained in the previous post, I set it to the middle notch cuz i want to start closing them down when they are in my half not in their half. This way your MC will not be out of position. This doesn't mean they will not tackle the other MC in their half. They will do that only if they happen to be in close proximity when losing the ball.

The only time closing down seem to be an issue is when you get outmaned in certain area of the pitch where the confusion starts happening. Do I stick with my marker or close down another man entering my zone. This is why you're having trouble with the 4-5-1. When their DMC gets hold of the ball, it drags your MCs out of position. There are 2 ways to take care of this, if they have bad passing and creativity and they mere act like a rock infront of defence, you can use the OI to close down never. Another way is to set you FC with support duty to specific mark the DMC with Man Tight marking with easy tackling so you don't give away free kicks. All you want to do is give that DMC less time on the ball and hopefully makes a poor decision.

Why do you want your DC to play narrower? Remember, Your DCs are set to Man Tight marking, they will play the way the opposing strikers play as in they will quickly close them down and tight mark them when they enter their zone which may seem like there is plenty of space between the DC. If the opposing strikers have good off the ball and work rate, you DC are definitely gonna have a hard time marking him and this will give space for your opponent to exploit.

Unless you want your DC to always stay in their own area, zone non-tight is the answer. But that is something you do not want to use in a 4 flat back.

[sjm]

The problem is with how defenders line up when you have the ball - in particular when you have a goal kick or your keeper has picked up the ball and everyone moves back to their default positions waiting for him to distribute it (watch the behaviour in the match engine at goal kicks to see what I mean - everyone lines up strictly according to their position). They're pretty much blind to the opposition when in this phase. When you're attacking, because of the way they line up, you're very susceptible to opponents that play between your defenders on the counter attack, especially if your keeper boots the ball halfway upfield, one of their defenders wins the header and plays the ball between/over the top of the defence. With the striker in miles of space and goal-side, it's generally a CCC. I'll try and show you this graphically:

O = My defenders

X = Opposition striker

A normal flat 4 looks something like this when you are attacking against a lone striker:

O--O-X-O--O

Now on FM2006 you could use arrows like so in the tactics screen:

O--O-> <-O--O

i.e. side arrows from the DCL/R to the DC position, and now your team lines up like this (more or less):

O---OXO---O

Suddenly the striker isn't always miles goalside when you're attacking. It's not perfect, but much better.

In the past, the following was also highly effective (with either DR/DL or DCR/DCL, depending on how your opponent lines up) against the single central striker AND the 4-3-3:

O----O----O

------O------

As I say, I tried this setup, and it more or less achieves what I want, but I don't actually have anyone who can play as a sweeper. I'm not otherwise actually having great problems with my defence by the way - the team is terrible, but we've still conceded the 8th fewest goals in the league. As I say, I know how most of the settings work (the ones that were there in FM2006), it's more about how to implement a couple of things you used to be able to do with arrows (especially the side arrows on the DCs as above). Do you see the advantage of having your defenders stay central in the attacking phase, especially when lining up initially (from a defensive point of view)? It's less of an issue when the opposition is slowly building up an attack, because that gives your defenders time to implement their defensive instructions and move to pick up their man. Does that make sense?

(I personally think there should be separate width settings for your defence / midfield / attack, but that's a different topic)

[FyB]

From your scenerio, there is a couple of things going on.

Basically during goal kicks, you play will just take up their default position on the field and the opponent will do the same. Against a lone striker, he will sit between the DCs but slightly withdrawn. This is so that in open play your player will spread out as much as your width settings allow. Wider = More likely to be in position to receive the pass but when you lose the ball, u can be prone to counter. Narrower = Less space to receive the pass but safer when you lose the ball.

The problem could be your kicking ability of your GK, he has poor kicking stats and he can't reach distance. I see that happen to me, do your defenders have the speed to match the lone striker? When that happens to me, my defender will chase him down and win the ball. Your DC, could be lacking anticipation. Even playing narrower like you said is not the answer from playing over the head balls. You need DC with better anticipation, and playing deeper will help.

[sjm]

The problem is definitely my keeper's kicking But I'm aware of that. I actually have my keeper set to defender collect etc. etc. but that doesn't mean he never kicks it out. But the real problem is simply that the defenders stand in the "wrong" place because that's what the formation tells them to do. As I say, this has always been an issue in the past as well (there were several threads about 4v1 and 4v3 on here back in 2005). Thankfully there aren't that many teams playing 4-4-1-1/4-3-3/4-5-1 in my league.

Sounds like there's not that much I can do about it apart from using the team width setting then, which does have knock on effects on where other players take up their positions too I'll just have to get a sweeper or something.

Here's hoping we get a revamped tactics engine in the future with a slightly more organic approach to positioning. It's the one tactical aspect that's been made more and more limited over time, which is a shame.