Forcing a Style of Play

[olivermain83]

My last 2 seasons I've finished 6th, which is an achievement to the board and media but i felt we could have done better. Something that's been bothering me is how reactionary do I need to be with my tactics?

I find myself sometimes losing games against teams i really should be beating and starting to fiddle with things to see if it suddenly changes things for the better. Sometimes it does and others it doesn't. Even though i'm almost sure this is a bad thing to do i can't help myself and find myself looking for the 'goldielocks' settings that might turn the game around. This in turn leads me to lose confidence with a tactic once i go 6 games without a win and then I get stuck in a spiral of changing things or trying new tactics, formations, anything to get out of the rut.

My question is can basically any combination of tactical settings be used to create a winning formula assuming the roles and duties are set up right and you have the right players?

I'll give an example...

Suppose I want to play like this:

What are peoples thoughts on this? Is this possible or is it really a must to have am 'attacking tactic' and a 'defensive tactic' etc?

[Shakes]

So long as you have a good tactical setup and the right players for it you don't need multiple tactics, shouts, opposition instructions. You don't even need to watch the games. Go look at dafuge's careers for a classic example, he plays on commentary only so he can power through the seasons and he still wins the league dozens of times in a row.

[Cleon]

I find myself sometimes losing games against teams i really should be beating and starting to fiddle with things to see if it suddenly changes things for the better. Sometimes it does and others it doesn't. Even though i'm almost sure this is a bad thing to do i can't help myself and find myself looking for the 'goldielocks' settings that might turn the game around. This in turn leads me to lose confidence with a tactic once i go 6 games without a win and then I get stuck in a spiral of changing things or trying new tactics, formations, anything to get out of the rut.

How well do you understand the things you are changing? If you don't understand them then its kind of a waste changing things hoping you stumble upon something that works by mistake. You say you change things but what are you changing and what prompts the changes during the game? Are you basing it on possession, number of shots etc. What makes you make changes?

Is this tactic capable of winning Leagues, European Cups, even the World Cup without ever changing a setting assuming I had the right players for the system? Shouts are allowed though.

There is no tactic that can guarantee this and 100% wins unless it takes advantage of some exploit. The example you posted above isn't really a logical tactic either. ignoring the shape and just concentrating on the settings and roles they don't actually match the counter strategy you want to use. Counter relies on winning the ball back and hitting your opposition on the break when you outnumber them. So retaining your shape is vital for this happening as it should keep you tight too.

You can get so far with the use of shouts etc but sometimes you might need a strategy change especially when its heavy rain etc as counter isn't the best strategy for those conditions. In fact 90% of the time a simple change of strategy can be a lot more effective that using shouts.

I guess the real question is are players really the key to winning? Not even the best players but the RIGHT players? Perhaps in the tactical example i'd need defenders who excelled in Positioning, Concentration and Anticipation. Perhaps they need to be strong in the air as they might need to deal with a lot of crosses. Pace would not be a priority for these players. You get the point.

Winning depends on everything and you can't isolate it and say 'Oh it's down to the players or it's down to team talks etc'. You can have good players but if the shape they use and the roles they've been given aren't logical and work together then natural ability can only do so much. You can have a logical tactic but if you have poor players for what you are asking them to do during a game then the tactic can only get you so far.

It all comes down to your own understanding of how the game works. If you don't understand what the shouts change for example then you'll always struggle when using them. When playing FM just apply common sense and logic and you'll do well. If you want to play counter attacking football then make sure the settings you use allow for this and so on.

[olivermain83]

Thanks for the indepth reply Cleon.

Why make changes? - I'd generally dominate possession in the games but not make that count towards creating real scoring chances. As i watch the games i feel like i'm lacking penetration in the final 3rd passing from side to side in the opp half until someone miss-places a pass or gets tackled. I'd start to change roles and/or duties to try and get more men forward. Sometimes i'd up the CF to see if that made players a bit more adventurous with their passing instead of playing keep ball too. Nothing too major and the logic seemed sound enough in my head. Surely there's point in making changes (even if your not sure what will happen) to getting a better understanding of what each change will do no?

I think you maybe misunderstood me slightly or perhaps i was a bit vague. I know no tactic can guarantee success, I just meant that can any team settings in any combination have the potential to win things assuming you have the right players, don't mess up team talks, pick the right roles and duties?

Incidently, i'm not using this tactic, but I have to admit i thought it made sense to me. Could you explain to me why it isn't logical and wont retain shape? Is it too many Attacking Duties? What changes would you suggest that would make it logical? I assumed the 'stand off more setting' would help it to keep shape and the roaming would ensure players further forward looked to be in space. FB's. DLP, AP and W would be the players that would link the play.

[Svenc]

So long as you have a good tactical setup and the right players for it you don't need multiple tactics, shouts, opposition instructions. You don't even need to watch the games. Go look at dafuge's careers for a classic example, he plays on commentary only so he can power through the seasons and he still wins the league dozens of times in a row.

They're arguably also good examples that boards on FM are perhaps a tad too forgiving, and that as long as you have patience, eventually you'll win promotions anyways, in particular if you look long enough out for the talent available (player search, scouts or else). Time isn't a factor in these careers, it's only a matter of when and how success is due, and that goes for the team as well as the human player alike - he's unlikely to lose interest in the job as weeks (in this case rather seasons) quickly go by, and the team usually is getting better and better and better and better anyway. In such very quick saves, much quicker than with someone who tries to get the best out of each match individually. The longer you stay at a club, the easier it usually becomes, as players develop, and so does their understanding amongst each other as well as your standing within the club as well as with the team.

In real-life there are many things barely considered by FM: entire squads falling out of "love" with their manager, very impatient boards considering it's time for a change out of the blue or even modest boards considering the club to be stalling even though expectations are roughly met, and so on. In real-life managers would do everything they can that such would never happen. I know they say FM is like a second job. But obviously in FM such a level of commitment isn't required any. By and large, if you're good enough at spotting talent and players you know will make your sider stronger in borth short and long-run (not that hard in FM for a couple of reasons) and your base tactics is both somewhat sound in defense and attack, and you have enough patience, you can arguably make any side go from strength to strength as long as you stay in the job, which, as argued, is a tad easier than it would be in real-life. I don't mean this as a critique at all, mind, but it's apparent in the first transfer windows of each of his saves how he's playing and what he's aiming for, which is a perfectly viable play of playing FM - in real-life, most boards (And the press! And the fans! And the players!) would likely object to a newbie going overboard in such a way here too. FM can be a matter of brute force and patience (at least on club level, internationally not so much, and in online leagues not that much either), yes, but it doesn't have to be.

I've always argued that for all the care that is put into balancing the ME for various styles, player types and tactics, alongside trying to ape something increasingly approaching a footie match, it's occasionally majorly let-down by what's actually going on off the pitch. Not everybody would agree with me, naturally.

[olivermain83]

I've just read through his career thread. It seems a boring way to play to me but then he says his enjoyment comes through the buying and selling of players so each to his own.

The way I want to play the game is by having a team of underdogs but a team that is well designed to play in a certain style. So therefore, the key to success for me would be having the right formation, settings and roles for a style and then buying or developing players that fit the mould perfectly. At the minute I find myself just looking for better versions of players I have. I'm sure this will eventually see me climb further up the table but it's not how I want to play. I'd rather buy a player who is over 'worse' but does the job he needs to do better.

The whole point of my thread is basically, If you should tailor your tactics to suit the players at your disposal then surely you can reverse engineer this process and start with the tactics and work on getting the right players.

[Svenc]

The whole point of my thread is basically, If you should tailor your tactics to suit the players at your disposal then surely you can reverse engineer this process and start with the tactics and work on getting the right players.

Ah, okay. I'm doing so actually, having taken over Frigg in the third tier in Norway. They've already had a couple physical players, but all my signings are physical (big lump types) so far, which works well, in particular with a very very direct style not keen on holding much possession any and additionally getting lots of crosses into dangerous areas (the shouts and team modifiers make for lots of tweaks in style even without touching any of the sliders any). Be aware that you'll not always stay underdogs, which means eventually you might face what appears to be historically this forum's biggest challenge (and starting point for lots of myths): AI teams eventually parking the bus/playing more cautiously against you on average, in which case your counter strategy might struggle to break them down.

[olivermain83]

Would you not be able to use shouts to counter teams that parked the bus? That way you wouldn't change any settings and would stick with the 'ethos' of your team. The shouts would just give you that edge you need for those games?

[Blancos]

My last 2 seasons I've finished 6th, which is an achievement to the board and media but i felt we could have done better. Something that's been bothering me is how reactionary do I need to be with my tactics?

I find myself sometimes losing games against teams i really should be beating and starting to fiddle with things to see if it suddenly changes things for the better. Sometimes it does and others it doesn't. Even though i'm almost sure this is a bad thing to do i can't help myself and find myself looking for the 'goldielocks' settings that might turn the game around. This in turn leads me to lose confidence with a tactic once i go 6 games without a win and then I get stuck in a spiral of changing things or trying new tactics, formations, anything to get out of the rut.

My question is can basically any combination of tactical settings be used to create a winning formula assuming the roles and duties are set up right and you have the right players?

I'll give an example...

Suppose I want to play like this:

What are peoples thoughts on this? Is this possible or is it really a must to have am 'attacking tactic' and a 'defensive tactic' etc?

I have a quite similar formation in my Real Madrid's 4-2-3-1, with just slight differences here and there (practically I use only TC+shouts, with very little to none tweak on instruction). To me, there's no good or bad tactic. It really depends on what the tactician wanna achieve first. If he can see what he wants to achieve happens in the field, then it's good tactic, regardless of how much title he gets by it.

I always start from there (what I wanna achieve).

For example:

STEP 1. I want my team attack in shape like this:

The idea is to contain/boxing the OPP in their zone, pushing them with two of my players staggering on each side of play (Left, Center, Right), and covering any clearing balls from their defenders with two flat midfielders guarding the midfield width. I hope it would restricted most of their counter attack capability. In my concept, those two flat midfielders are the key of good recycling of possession.

STEP 2. To achieve that goal, I learn from absolutely better manager than me. Yes, Del Bosque's Madrid way of play . I prefer Del Bosque's approach much more than Mourinho's. With my limitations here and there, I decide to build from the real life football. Madrid plays for years with 4-2-3-1 formation, and I need to replicate their SHORT PASSING, PRESSING MORE, MORE ROAMING, LESS RWB (later from Shouts), MORE RFD (later from Shouts), LESS LONGSHOTS (later from Shouts), etc. I preferred staggering mentality between strata, so I chose RIGID (and default CF will decrease with it also). In the end, my approach product looked like this:

STEP 3. I know that I need to tweak the tactic to combat many situation in the field. As Madrid, it's almost surely that I will find a bus parked in front of OPP's goal, so I will always have to be ready to "crack the bus", or "push the bus". So I have to build at least two sets of general shouts: Speed-based patient build-up (crack the bus with speed perks), and Technical-based patient build-up (push the bus with technical perks). And there are my starting shouts:

STEP 4. I watch every game in at least Comprehensive mode. Only by then I can see how close or how far my team's way of playing from my STEP 1 expectation. I keep everything that comes near to my expectation, and tweak anything that doesn't. I don't know for sure, but FM engine seemed not too kind to my players' great flair, so then I feel the need to restrict them further to MORE DISCIPLINED.

I have to remind you that I'm not talking about my tactic alone, nor endorse it as good tactic. I'm just talking about a process. It's easier to firstly know what kind of something that we love then trying our best to implement it, than trying hard to implement something we're not sure we can love. It's always be more pleasant to start with what we want to watch, so then when we don't get the title, at least we can still be entertained with the beautiful football that we achieve on the field.

[Svenc]

Would you not be able to use shouts to counter teams that parked the bus? That way you wouldn't change any settings and would stick with the 'ethos' of your team. The shouts would just give you that edge you need for those games?

That can prove difficult, as the TCs strategies are what is influencing the mentality sliders. How far they are in general increased and decreased. As it's the most important slider of all, it influences in general how risky or risk-averse a side is, how attacking or defending they are, i.e. how early/late they start their forward runs, how risky their passing is going to be, etc. Though you can modify closing down (heavily) and passing via shouts, for instance, you likely won't get a generally risk-averse side putting a parking bus side under much more pressure just with shouts. Counter is on the risk-averse side of the strategies (mentality levels low across team), is meant to rely on counter attacks for most of its attacking power itself, and is just one strategy above "defend". There won't be many counter opportunities against a side sitting back.

This sounds very gamy and complicated, but just reading the text description of the strategy if you click on it makes this fairly common sense. :-) It is generally adviced to use a "control" strategy and to encourage at least one of the FBs always forward against parking bus AIs, as more attacking strategies might encourage to rush the side too much, causing lots of rushed opportunities and resulting in frustration.