Counter Attacking and Mentality - how do they work?

[davehanson]

Hi all.

Quick question really about counter attacking. In a previous FM (might have been 09 or 10, can't remember), the counter attacking option (under advanced settings in the team instructions panel on the tactics screen) was something like the following:

Your players mentality would be set to maximum if you are attacking a team and the number of attacking players outweighs the defensive players.

I would like to know if that is still the same?

And also is mentality a positioning tool? i.e. if I have 2 central midfielders and I have all their settings exactly the same except I have player 1 on maximum mentality and player 2 on minimum mentality, will player 2 occupy a deeper position than player 1?

[lucatonix]

Mentality is sort of a positioning tool. Player 1 would be a more attacking and aggressive player. He would be more willing to take risks and get forward.

So when defending he is more likely to close down aggressively and will position himself higher up the pitch to press the ball.

When attacking Player 1 will be more assertive and will try to work his way out of trouble perhaps. Player 1 will look for more forward balls and will get forward more often so even with rarely forward runs if he sees a good opportunity Player 1 will make a run forward, whereas Player 2 is more likely to stay back. Player 2 would also be more likely to pass safely, making low risk sideways and backwards passing, only passing forwards if there is a very low risk of the pass going astray.

So mentality positions the players defensively but offensively it is almost a secondary factor on positioning, since having mentality makes the player take more risks and is more attacking so might make more runs into the box or go for a 1-2 despite only having rarely forward runs.