What does a mentality automatically do?

[fusershift]

As the title goes I would like to know what a mentality actually does, it would be really helpful if someone could tell me thank you.

[maztheplaya]

If you play Defensive the player will have Defensive mentality, same for Counter. On Standard and Control I think its Support and on Attacking its obviously attacking.

People around here advise you dont use it. Just set the duty you want.

Also for short/simple questions use this topic:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/32160-Stupid-Questions-Thread-(Tactic-and-Training-Questions-Only)

Damn misread what you said. Ignore my post.

http://www.guidetofootballmanager.com/tactics/team-instructions/mentality

Should be an interesting read. Also check the stickies. There is the Mentality ladder.

[jjtile]

When trying to learn about how tactics work, a good starting point is to understand that there are only about 21 player instructions - and that, broadly, Mentality, Fluidity, Roles, Duties and all the other stuff you learn about are just efficient and quick ways of setting those 21 or so instructions up or tweaking them.

The 21 (I may have missed a couple out) are:

SHAPE

* Width (how wide your players spread out across the pitch)

* Depth/defensive line (how far back towards your own goal your players tend to play)

* Formation (the odd one out in this list - as it's not a player instruction - but I'm guessing you know what this is)

WHAT YOUR PLAYERS DO WITH THE BALL:

* Passing style (aka passing length)

* Focus passing (i.e. down middle, flanks, left or right)

* Propensity to try through balls

* Propensity to hold up the ball

* Propensity to cross

* Cross from where

* Cross to where

* Propensity to run with the ball

* Propensity to try long shots

WHAT YOUR PLAYERS DO OFF THE BALL:

* Run from deep

* Roam from position

* Tempo

WHAT YOUR PLAYERS DO WHEN YOUR TEAM IS NOT IN POSSESSION:

* Tackling strength

* Closing down

* Marking

OTHER:

* Creative freedom

* Allow wide players to swap

* Offside trap

Thinking about those above should let you understand which you want to focus on when building a tactic - and give you a mental checklist of things to look out for in the match engine / things to try to fix.

So what is mentality?

As I said, the mentalities, fluidities etc all just affect the 21 attributes I mentioned. They set the basic outline of passing, depth, width etc for you to tweak.

Think if it this way - if you've got 11 players, it would take ages to set up all 21 instructions for them all. Mentalities let you set them all up really quickly - and then you can tweak (both for the whole team and/or for individual players) on top of that using team instructions, player instructions, roles, fluidity etc. to get them to play as you want.

Basically, with the more defensive mentalities, your team:

- play deeper (to leave less space behind the defence)

- stand off the opposition more i.e. close down less (because closing down means your player move forward to hassle opponents, which leaves space behind them)

- tackle lighter (to stop being “skinned”)

- slower tempo (fewer mistakes)

- play narrower (pack the area in front of goal/leave fewer gaps for opposition to run through)

- attackers pass shorter (less risk of losing possession)

- defenders pass longer (to get the ball away from goal asap)

With attacking, the above are the opposite - with "standard" being somewhere in the middle.