Building my first real tactic

[Repsalty]

So I've been playing FM for a bit now (since 2011 or so) and had some good bit of fun with it, but never have I had a "real" tactic or had in inside look into it. With 2015 I've been playing with a mate and been having reasonable success, but could never get my team to play like I would want it to. Further more I've had rough patches where I didn't understand why I was playing badly/well and overall very inconsistent. I'm hoping by building up a tactic from scratch I get to learn how the tactics work and how I can set them to work for me. I feel like writing this down will make me think more about the decisions I will be making further helping me understand why I make said decisions, so let's get started.

The team I chose is Ajax, I basically always play with them since they're my favourite team and having players you know is always nice (although I often get stuck in thinking how they can and should play). The style of football I like to play is with wingers, I just love how the wingers can get passed their man and give a nice cross for the striker to put in the back of the net. Also I love wing backs (just anything with wings I suppose) rushing up past the wingers and them delivering that fine cross. On a completely different note I want to get the best out of a specific player, namely Klaassen. He's a very talented shadow striker and I want him to become the best player at our club and hopefully our nation.

Since I'm playing with Ajax, one of the best teams in the league, I want to play a more pressing game and pretty much dominate most of the games.

From what I've read, if you want to play with wingers the best approach is to be playing a direct passing kind of game, so let's see if our players are up to that task.

Team comparison

General: 4th in Decisions, 1st in First touch, 5th in Passing

Defense: 1st in Pace, 4th in Acceleration

Midfield: 6th in Passing, 1st in Vision, 1st in Technique, 9th in Decisions

Attack: 6th in Anticipation, 1st in Pace, 2nd in Acceleration

Looks pretty solid, let's move on to our formation.

Formation

So Ajax (in reality) pretty much always runs a 4-3-3, it's pretty much declared sacred, and I don't see any reason to change that.

GK: Goalkeeper - Defend; Pretty much a standard for me, don't think sweeper keeper is going to add all that much. Allthough I do want to push up more, so I might have to reconsider this later.

FBL: Wingback - Support; Like I said before I love wings, so pretty much a given. I gave him a support role because well with wingers it might get too crowded up front.

DCL: Ball Playing Defender - Defend; I was going to set this to default CD, but while I was typing this I looked a little closer at his stats and felt like they were good enough to justify this role. I will keep an eye on this.

DCR: Central Defender - Defend; Just the default setting.

FBR: Wingback - Support; More wings, and don't get too crowded up front.

DMC: Defensive Midfielder - Defend; A little bit more stability at the back, might need it with the backs being up front most of the time. I'll elaborate on this a little more below.

MCL: Advanced Playmaker - Support; We want ourselves a playmaker on the field and I feel the middle of field suits that role the best. Support duty because of Pairs & Combinations

MCR: Central Midfielders - Attack; The spot for my (to be) star player. Also will be elaborated upon.

AML: Winger - Attack; One of the main focal point of my attacks.

AMR: Winger - Attack; The other main focal point of my attacks.

STC: Complete Forward - Support; Since it's a lonely striker it should be a role with a support duty. This might change since I'm not convinced with any of the roles.

In the beginning I said I wanted to make Klaassen, a shadow striker, the best player at my club so it would make sense to put him in the position where he can play that role. However the consequences of putting him in that position would mean that I would have to either play 2 at either the DM or the MC position. I'm not really keen on doing either for a couple of reasons:

2 DMs: I don't have that many DMs and I don't like the gap it leaves in midfield.

2 MCs: I feel I would get exposed too much at the back, because I don't only play in my league (where I'm a top 3 team) I also want to play in the Champions League or at least the Europa League (where I'm mostly inferior). And I would need a really top notch defending midfielder to pull that off.

Plus I feel with the Attack duty on the MC he can still get forward a lot of the times and be of great value to the team.

Mentality, Team Shape & Team Instructions

I could take an attacking mentality to dominate like I said I would like to, but since I also would like to be relevant in Europe I think an attacking mentality would be a little too much. Therefor I will go for a control mentality.

As for shape I will simply follow the guide line stated in the Twelve Step Guide and go for a flexible shape (AP, CF and BPD = 2.5).

Since I proclaimed how I want to play already the team instructions seem rather obvious.

- More Direct Passing

- Push Higher Up (Not much higher up, because again.. Europe)

- Close Down More (Same as above)

Player Instructions

Personally I never really want to fiddle too much with the Player Instructions, basically because I don't know what I'm doing, so this is no exception. However there is one Player Instruction I do want to fiddle with and that is Move Into Channels on my MCR this just feels like exactly what I would want him to do. The fact he has rating of 16 on Off The Ball makes this look even better.

Let the games begin!

To be perfectly clear, I expect complete disaster. In my mind: Direct Passing = Lots of failed passes resulting in low possession resulting in being pressed hard and only a handful of (half) chances.

Friendly vs SC Bastia Away 0-2 Win

Ok wow, that was seriously nice. The team played like you would expect on the wings and crossing in. My right winger got 2 assists and we won the game (they were the favourites). Especially the 2nd assist was beautiful; with a cross from right all the way to far post where my left winger could put it away. My possession was quite nice (52%) and shockingly to me my pass completion was also really nice (78%).

Ok now to the not so great points. We gave away quite a few chances (3 CCCs to them vs 4 CCCs to us) and it was mainly thanks to my goalkeeper that we kept a cleansheet. Not sure what's going on here, will have to keep a close eye on that in the following matches. Also sometimes the play seemed to be quite slow so we might want to add a higher tempo to the TIs, will also keep an eye out on this.

I actually played this game with the Fluid Shape because I forgot to check the mentality and shape beforehand.

Friendly vs Levekusen Away 2-5 Win

Before match thougths: A friendly vs a calibre of team I expect to be facing against in Europe, this should be very interesting.

The game started really wild with them scoring in the 2nd and 6th minute (both from corners), while we scored in the 3rd (corner) and 16th (badly handled free kick). The rest of the game was a very good learning experience and a really fun one to watch (from my perspective).

So let's start with the learning experiences. Actually, now that I look back on all the screenshots I made it seems like it's all the same 1 issue: Defenders being drawn out of position. Let's look at the screenshots:

My CD gets dragged all the way from the mid to the side, seems a bit excessive. That's something I feel my DM should do.

Their RB has come to help them out and my LB wants to go hunt him, that's not good since he's leaving the Winger unmarked (this caused the 2nd corner-goal). My AML should be marking their back. I quickly put on the mark tightly PI on both my AML and AMR after this.

It seems like my RB is going to go up and close down their LB (Actually the front one is my back and the one in the back is my AMR). Again leaving the Winger unmarked.

The closest one to the opposing player is my DC, the player in the back is my DM. Again my DC being too aggressive, leaving space for their midfielder to run into unmarked. My DM should be the one challenging this ball.

Some good positioning!

A few seconds later this happened. My poor right back had the odds well stacked against him. The problem is the DM moved up to challenge for the ball, unnecessarily since there was already someone there and my AML refused to defend back, which is basically a problem with wingers so far up the field I guess (even though I had Mark Tightly on already from earlier).

Here both my DM and DC are moving towards the unmarked midfielder, which is a good thing if you are the DM. My DC is again leaving space and a man behind, we certainly don't want that.

Last one, again 2 man (Right Back and DM) are going to challenge for the ball leaving a man with all the space in the world.

Conclusion: I'm pretty sure this is caused by the TI Close Down More, let's get rid of it and see if we still encounter these problems.

A few more little things I noted during this match:

- CD is clearing the ball too fast, we don't want him to do that (Possible solution: Add Shorter Passing PI)

- CMA is a little eager to shoot (Possible solution: Add Shoot Less Often PI)

- Playmaker seems to be dwelling on the ball sometimes (Possible solution: Not a clue)

Positive notes: 7 CCCs to only 1, Pass Completion Rate 83%, Possession 57% and this:

Klaassen finding the space and then finished it perfectly for the 2-3.

Ok I just want to post this now, hopefully you guys will provide me with some feedback. I'll update when I have some more things that I feel would be useful.

PS: This is made possible thanks to the awesome Building A Tactic thread!

[peleJunior]

Fantastic start OP, you could drop the wingers to the CM stratta to give you more solidity., I'm not a fan of marking tight or specific with wingers in the AM stratta as they can get pulled way way too deep by attacking fullbacks. I've seen pressing issues with DMd in heavy pressing tactics, they tend to step too high into midfield leaving you exposed to counters.

[Cleon]

This is a fantastic opening post, I always appreciate when someone puts effort and time into a post as it isn't easy . Well done on a brilliant well thought out post mate Oh, excellent choice of team too. I've avoided Ajax this year as I've had long term saves with them since FM12. Although I do miss the Ajax Project thread I did last year.

I can't really offer any advice tactically as that's basically the set up I used when playing as them with the exception I only had 1 winger and the other was a IF as Fischer was better suited to that role.

[Repsalty]

I have played quite some games and it was quite fun and amazing.

Games

Friendly vs FC Libourne Away 3-0 Win

Nothing much to say really, we got 3-0 in the 1st half and we kind of slacked in the 2nd leaving some chances for them.

Friendly vs Ajax CT Away 5-2 Win

Another easy win nothing spectacular, their goals were just mistakes from my defenders but not tactical related.

Friendly vs Cesena Home 1-0 Win

A quality team allthough only 1-0 never had the feeling we weren't going to win.

Friendly vs Udinese Away 2-0 Win

Another Europe quality team a pretty good 2-0 win.

Supercup vs FC Zwolle Neutral 3-0 Win

While Zwolle isn't the biggest club out there it was still a serious test more so since we had lost some first team players due to injuries. It turned out to be another quite easy game.

The best goal out of that game was a beauty.

League vs AZ Away 4-1 Win

This went so much better than expected scoring lovely goals and when we were 2-0 they got a red card and we got a penalty to boot. We ended 3-0 in the 1st half and I felt we let up a bit in the 2nd half cause they were getting more chances and even managed to score after a slip up in defence (defender wasn't marking tightly enough and was too late for the challenge).

League vs Cambuur Home 2-0 Win

This was just one way traffic and it took us a full half before we finally scored (49th minute).

League vs PSV Away 2-2 Draw

So this was an interesting one, and a rather scary one. This match was basically what I am afraid of when I have to play european matches. The first half they dominated us completely they had like 70% possession (not sure, since I can't look it back) and I only got 1 shot off, it was only a miracle that the scoreline was only 1-0 in their advantage. So this is where I could do with some input (please? :o). Anyway after learning those stats during half time, I knew I had to do something. So in desperation I looked for the formations and saw they were playing a 4-4-2 wide diamond. From that I figured that if they are playing like that we should overload the mid, so I put in the Exploit The Middle TI, gave my teamtalk and off we went. To my suprise (this is the first time I tried to counter the AI with knowledge gained from their formation) things looked better right from kickoff. It seemed like we finally got and kept possession on their half and pushed up (first half I primarily saw PSV bashing away at my goal). We didn't dominate as we did in the matches before but it sure as hell was a lot better than the 1st half. Finally walking away with a 2-2 felt like a massive victory to me. Not only did we fight back from 1-0, but it seems I can employ tactical "genius" to counter my opponents now.

Remarks

The removal of the Close Down More TI has done wonders, I have not seen any weird position going on in my defense at all. On top of that we are still closing down rather far up the pitch, just as I wanted from the start, but now the shape stays intact. I'm guessing that's because of the Push Higher Up TI that is still active. Also the Defensive Midfielder with the Defend duty is doing so much more than I imagined him doing. Not only is he hunting for the ball very well (which I thought he'd do), he is also providing extra link up when we are attacking (which I did not expect at all).

So things are going superb, well beyond anything I would've dared to dream. I have one concern though; My tactic looks too simple. All I have is 2 TIs and a total of 3 PIs. I feel that this tactic might get me through the league, but surely Europe can't be conquered with such easy tactics can it?

Fantastic start OP, you could drop the wingers to the CM stratta to give you more solidity., I'm not a fan of marking tight or specific with wingers in the AM stratta as they can get pulled way way too deep by attacking fullbacks. I've seen pressing issues with DMd in heavy pressing tactics, they tend to step too high into midfield leaving you exposed to counters.

Thanks for the kind words. I've actually never given thought about dropping AM to CM mostly because the ones I use don't wanna be wingers on CM also I already feel the STC is so lonely, plus the fact that I'm endoctrinated by the dutch school of 4-3-3. I see your point about that tight marking, but how would you solve the overload issue otherwise? Haven't had to deal with counters yet, but my DM seems to be functioning well right now.

This is a fantastic opening post, I always appreciate when someone puts effort and time into a post as it isn't easy . Well done on a brilliant well thought out post mate Oh, excellent choice of team too. I've avoided Ajax this year as I've had long term saves with them since FM12. Although I do miss the Ajax Project thread I did last year.

I can't really offer any advice tactically as that's basically the set up I used when playing as them with the exception I only had 1 winger and the other was a IF as Fischer was better suited to that role.

Thanks I tried to put the effort into because I really want to try and make a working tactic and understand what the various tactics do. What makes you avoid Ajax this year? Just want to try something different? I expect to put Fischer in once his injury is done, both him and the current winger I got in place now (Kishna) can play IF. I'm really curious how that will affect the team dynamic I'm guessing I'd have to call more on the Left Back to put some more crosses in, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

[Repsalty]

I've been playing some other save recently, so I didn't have time or information to update but after I read the update on the How to build your own tactic thread by Cleon I felt like digging into it again.

First off all I did have some games played with a mixture of results. After the draw against PSV we had another 3 draws in the league, which really got me quite desperate.

League vs Groningen Home 2-2 Draw: Could have gone either way, we were definitely not in controle seeing as they had as many chances as we did and we had to come back twice.

League vs Twente Home 0-0 Draw: We definitely had the better game, but I never felt like we were going to score (the 1 CCC underlines that).

League vs Willem II Away 1-1 Draw: I felt like we were dominating the game until somewhere mid 2nd half where they out of nowhere seemed to step up the game and dominate me and fully deserved their equalizer. In the end we actually had 0 CCCs (5 half chances though).

We then had to play our first match in the Champions League vs Manchester City at home. With the 4 past draws I wasn't very hopeful, but I went into it anyway.

ECC vs Manchester City Home 1-0 Win

I adjusted our tactics a little bit based upon their formation and we did very well in the 1st half getting the 1-0 lead. The 2nd half they changed to a flat 4-4-2 and pushed us back but we held up. A fantastic result.

League vs Heracles Away 3-0 Win: A weird match where we were awarded 3 penalties (we only scored 2).

Cup vs Panningen Away 4-1 Win: It took us a long while before we really broke through.

League vs Utrecht Away 4-3 Win

League vs Excelsior Home 1-1 Draw

League vs ADO Den Haag Home 2-0 Draw

Ok, so that was all boring and not very interesting tactically speaking, that starts here. Our next match is vs Bayern in the ECC at home. As said I had just read the added piece by Cleon and I wanted to try and analyse my play against Bayern. I started up the match didn't set any Opposition Instructions, since I have no idea how that will affect my players and their behaviour on the field. I watched the match for the full 90 minutes and tried everything (changing duties, mentality, TIs and PIs) I thought would help and be an improvement to my team. In the end it didn't really matter we lost 1-0, here are the full time stats.

Normally I would be really pleased losing to Bayern with only 1-0, but these stats are just horrendous. Since I feel I just made things worse with changing too many things I decided I would go back and reload and see what would happen if I didn't change a thing.

A couple of things I did notice though:

1 - Bayern is not playing gung-ho, even in attack they mostly keep their defense in order and don't overcommit. Which makes me believe they still see me as somewhat of a threat.

2 - Our direct play seems to be causing a lot of loss in possession.

3 - My AP/S midfielder seems to not use space very well and seems to stay back a lot while we are on the attack.

4 - Sometimes my wingers do crazy stuff. Like not pass and keep dribbling to close a large space. This tends to happen in some of my other games as well. As a side note: you can see my AP/S midfielder (Schone) be right besides my DM/D for the entire time, what's up with that?!

So I loaded the game again and watched the entire 90 minutes again (I said I wouldn't change anything but I did swap the duties on my Right back and Winger making the back a WB/A and the Winger a W/S, it didn't feel like it did anything). The full time stats again.

So I lost 2-0 this time and basically the goals weren't tactical errors (same as in the first match), it was simply their better players doing what they do best (Or as far as I can judge anyway). The stats look a little bit better but I still feel we never really posed a threat. Ok so what did we learn?

1 - Bayern played the same 4-1-4-1 again not gung-ho and being responsible in the back.

2 - Our direct play once again seemed to be intercepted a lot, making our attacks a lot weaker.

3 - The AP/S midfielder still is staying back way more than we'd like which is also making me believe our STC is dropping way too deep.

4 - I feel like I have seen this move before.

5 - This guy felt like dribbling, instead of passing along the drawn lines. I don't want you to dribble there it's pointless!

6 - All that wasted space. My AP/S really doesn't like going forward/into spaces at all.

So those are the problems, funny how both games had the similar problems, but how do we fix them?

1 - Bayern is not attacking all too crazy, our control mentality seems to be fine also the Push Higher Up TI doesn't seem to cause too many problems for us. So we'll leave that intact.

2 - Our direct play is losing us a lot of possession and therefor getting us in most of our problems, let's try to get more possession. What do you know, there's a TI for that: Retain Possession it overrides our More Direct Passing TI which is fine.

3 - The AP/S midfielder is not getting forward enough and not using space well enough. Since there is no Get Further Forward PI for this role/duty I feel it neccessary to change the duty from Support to Attack, but that also means that I will have to change the duty on my other midfielder in order to keep the balance on my midfield. The problem with that is that I want my other midfielder (Klaassen) to score a lot of goals (As I explained in my opening post) so he has to get forward a lot and I don't feel that a CM/S would fill that role very well. After some consideration and looking through the roles I feel that a Box to Box midfielder might actually get forward enough. There's also a Get Further Forward PI available on that role/duty if I feel he isn't getting forward enough, so that could come in handy.

4 - I have no idea what is causing this problem of hogging the ball instead of passing it, also the entire cutting inside is mindblowing to me. Could this be because of too much creativity given to the players? Let's see if changing the shape to Structured will help with this.

5 - I honestly have no idea about this one, it's a problem I face with all saves I have. I can't get the strikers to work and I really can't find an explanation. On top of that I can find very little information on this topic since most people seem to use 2 strikers up front and therefor having a totally other dynamic (I guess). For now I'll change the role/duty to a DLP/S (was CF/S).

6 - Hopefully this is solved by #3

So above was all just theory and I put it to the test, the result:

Not quite the super results some FM master tacticians around here couldn't better, but I honestly feel it's the best I can do. Maybe if I played this match a 100 times I would win 1 time but overall I think I'd lose. And there's no shame in it, Bayern is a super team and we are somewhat mediocre. The main point about this game was to analyse my tactics/players and hopefully improve them, so did we improve?

1 - I feel the Push Higher Up might have caused me a goal, since their right back got the cross in for the 1-1. To be honest I'm not quite sure what do against backs because the 2-1 was a penalty which resulted after a foul on their other right back.

2 - Retain possession kinda worked, since we had more possession.

3 - The AP was definitely getting futher forward and the BtB was also still getting forward, so I'd call this a success.

4 - I still saw the weird inside dribbles but also some really good line dribbles, so can't say if this worked really. Any feedback on this point is welcome.

5 - Our DLP/S was getting a 7.7 rating and PoM (he got the assist for the 1-0 own goal) and I did feel he was sticking further forward, but this might be because of the better dynamic on midfield. We need further testing before I call this one solved.

6 - This seems solved.

Some extra's:

- Right back getting outmanned by their wide midfielder, DM and Left Back.

- Scary attacking movement from Bayern that didn't lead to anything.

It took me way longer than I would've hoped and the rewards aren't as nice but I guess it's something. I hope some of you can at least enjoy reading this and/or maybe learn something.

[peleJunior]

Nice update, good to see you analysing the match, it's a start. How are your wingers doing with assists? Is there anybody in the box for them?

[jozza800]

Some extra's:

- Right back getting outmanned by their wide midfielder, DM and Left Back.

- Scary attacking movement from Bayern that didn't lead to anything.

It took me way longer than I would've hoped and the rewards aren't as nice but I guess it's something. I hope some of you can at least enjoy reading this and/or maybe learn something.

Some great analysis going on here.

The bit about the Wingers, FBs and a CM overloading one side is something I haven't been able to stop.

When they overload one side my FB has no chance. I dont play with any wingers (Think Liverpool's diamond last season) but I dont know how to make my Central Midfielders engage the opposition wingers. Liverpool had Henderson and Allen/Coutinho, who would go wide and become a wide midfielder.

It's got to the point where I'm about to ditch the narrow diamond and playe with wingers.

[Repsalty]

Oh man I'm done....

After the 1-2 vs Bayern we played 3 games, first game we won nicely playing really well. Then a cup game where we got behind early 1-0 but we played really well again and got back to 3-1 before the end of half time, they switched to a more attacking style so I switched to a more direct passing game which worked very well ending the game with 6-2. After that another really good game which we won 4-0 without too much effort.

And now we get to the point where it all went downhill and I'm trully frustrated cause I can't seem to analyse what's going wrong or maybe I can but I simply don't know how to solve the problems. Bayern Away.. well ok I knew this was a very hard battle, but I was going to try my best. Well that didn't go well:

I just stand no chance against them, everytime I got the ball on or even close to their half they got it back. Be it because, we simply were passing terribly or they just tackled my player who had the ball. If the tackle was a foul the resulting free kick usually got them the ball anyway and they pretty much never got booked. I changed my mentality from control to counter when I saw them playing more attacking and we had way too many people in front of the ball. But that only kind of slowed em down.

Anyway since it was Bayern, it still was frustrating to watch, but I kind of brushed it off.

Then game a League game vs Vitesse (Away) where the same damn thing happened. Our passes only seemed to be connecting on our half and once they went on to their half it all broke down and my players seemed to think the players from the other team needed to have the ball more. Lost that game 3-1. In all fairness at the end I tried to play an even shorter passing/slower tempo game which kinda seemed to work, but still.

Next up was a League game vs Zwolle (Home) where again the same thing happened. But seeing as this is a considerably less side than either Bayern or Vitesse, I was stunned as to why they were completely dominating us with possession. I tried everything: direct passing, shorter passing, switching duties on my wingers/backs but again nothing seemed to work at all. Because they got an early lead from a penalty it was looking like another loss, but by some miracle we scored a total fluke from a rebound free kick.

After this I was already frustrated very much and dreading to play the next match, which was Manchester City Away for the Champions League. I was hoping my players would show up for this match (as I had some people returning from injuries as well) and we could maybe pull out a tie so we still had an oppurtunity to go through the next round. Anyway it all ended terribly again with us wasting possession somewhere around midfield.

We scored another fluke goal with the only time we got infront of goal with a cross after a throw in.

So what do I think is wrong?

Basically we had no space to play in. Either we played a terrible pass right into the feet of the opponent or we played to someone and there was an opponent right on top of them inmediately challenging/tackling for the ball which we never dodged. I tried a very high tempo style, but that didn't seem to do anything (also it didn't seem to decrease passing completion, which I did expect to happen). So that's it... I guess I'm going to wait for Cleon to post a little bit more and perhaps learn from that, because I'm all out of ideas.

[Repsalty]

Nice update, good to see you analysing the match, it's a start. How are your wingers doing with assists? Is there anybody in the box for them?

Well I've actually been analysing matches from the start as to be seen from the first post, but I feel like I'm just not seeing/understanding the problems. Some of my wingers have been doing outstanding while others are dissapointing. 1 of my wingers (on AML) is a player that from the start of the game is marked as transfer listed and he scored a whole bunch of goals, another winger is just an assist machine (AMR) while 2 others are doing fairly poorly (in the same role/duties).

Some great analysis going on here.

The bit about the Wingers, FBs and a CM overloading one side is something I haven't been able to stop.

When they overload one side my FB has no chance. I dont play with any wingers (Think Liverpool's diamond last season) but I dont know how to make my Central Midfielders engage the opposition wingers. Liverpool had Henderson and Allen/Coutinho, who would go wide and become a wide midfielder.

It's got to the point where I'm about to ditch the narrow diamond and playe with wingers.

Well it might not be about stopping it, but maybe embracing the fact that there are 3 players somewhere means they aren't somewhere else so if you could get the ball there it probably means it's going to be good for you.

I got a major update coming. I cooled down from my rage and am analysing a game now, hopefully I'll update about it later today.

[Repsalty]

This will be a big update, I've analysed 1 game and try and spot what's going wrong but also I wanna show how I feel we should be playing and hopefully come up with some solutions to make that happen. I hope you guys can bare with me and hopefully give me some advice on what I should try to accomplish what I want.

So the game I analysed is one of the biggest games in my League. Feyenoord - Ajax, so I didn't feel very confident ahead of this game, especially seeing how my previous games went. Anyway let's get into it!

Feyenoord is on the attack and we see where we have some space when we get the ball. Especially their right side (our left) is very open with their right back very far up. Since we already play a pretty wide game this should be very good for us more so because of their quite narrow 4-3-1-2 line up.

Here we see our right back being very happy trying to use all that space, I said I would have above. Unfortunately our Right Winger decides to dribble and lose the ball. I'm not happy about that, he should've passed to my right back. I didn't change anything here, because I have no idea how to change this behaviour.

As expected we have a lot of room on the flanks. The problem is I would want either my midfielder (AP/A) or my AML (W/A) to come for the ball. They don't and my back dribbles a bit and then goes for a long ball on my AML, he loses the duel as expected and we lose the ball. Since I don't know how to get my AP/A to get there I decide to change the duty of the winger from Attack to Support.

This is a scary image. My left back is all the way in the middle but there are still 2 Feyenoord players all the way to the left. I don't feel that my Push Higher Up TI is to blame here, but it might. It definitely isn't my Control mentality since we are pretty much all behind the ball. I decided not make a change here, since I don't feel like I have full grasp on this problem.

Here we are attacking. My problem here is that both my MCs are really close together and we have a lot of space unused. This makes defending pretty easy for my opponent, I did not make a change here yet because well basically didn't know how to solve this.

Look the left side also has a lot of space! Unfortunately my AP/A keeps dribbling and ignores the back that wants to use all the space. So that's a second time (in this game) that we see our backs being ignore. I really need to look into this because not only it's just a lot of space being wasted, it's also against my entire playing philosophy of playing with wings and wingbacks. Yes I'm playing with them, but if I'm not using them that's just useless.

Back to the right side. Again my back is looking to come up in space and again my AMR decides instead to go dribbling and lose the ball. This is getting really old really fast, the problem is I have no idea how to solve this.

Here we see our midfielders again. It basically seems the AP/A and BtB/S are just drawn to the same place over and over while leaving space in other areas, it's really started to annoy me, also because I recall seeing this in previous games as well. The problem is I changed this a few games back and thought it was solved, I even spend a post on it, but as we can see it definitely isn't solved this is pretty much just a bad as the problem we had before.

So let's look at the options we have: My MCR is still doing what we want to do and we definitely don't want him to be a playmaker as he doesn't have good enough passing and vision for that, he can't be a BWM since I want him to be more attack minded.

So that basically means we have to change our AP/A, what are the options here? Deep lying playmaker doesn't come forward enough so that one is out, Central Midfielder could work on a Support duty, Box to Box midfielder is not creative enough for what I want, same goes for BWM, and then there is the Roaming Playmaker which actually sounds pretty good. Since I would like a playmaker role I go for the Roaming Playmaker with Support duty and put my BtB back on CM/A again.

Here I feel like I should get the ball as fast as possible to my right back who is enjoying the space again. Since it's might be a bit too far for a single pass, I feel my RP should play to the CM next to him and he could then pass it on to the right WB. Instead what happens is; the RP dribbles and at the end passes the ball to my AMR who loses the ball. So again too much dribbling not enough passing.

Here my mind kind gets blown. The image shows a pretty easy passingpath from my left back to my left winger but instead of passing it, my back dwells on the ball a bit, plays it back to my DCL, gets it back and proceeds to play a long ball to the AML who subsequently loses another duel and we lose the ball. Why the hell did he not pass it right away and chose to complicate things with a long ball?

Do you see that right back with acres of space? Well my player doesn't! He proceeds to play in the AMR who also choses to ignore my poor right back and starts dribbling to lose the ball. This is annoying me so much and yet I do not have an idea how to fix this, but I feel this is crucial.

On first sight this image doesn't tell you anything, to be honest when I looked at it I was like why the hell did I want to mention this image again. Well I just wanted to show that I noticed that this guy is in a horrible position, but I don't think I can tactically change anything about that. He can't play to anyone and dribbling is probably only going to end in losing the ball. In the end he does dribble and manages to get a throw in out of it, best of a bad situation I guess.

Hey, look who has space and who wants to dribble! Yeah, I think I said more than enough about this, I need to find a solution for this. I don't feel this is a 1 game problem, the space given might be, but the not using it isn't.

He got the ball! So finally my right back has the ball, but now he has no good option to do anything with it because my AMR is standing behind the back and there's no real way he can play it between the back and the DC, so maybe the AMR is playing too far forward?

My CM/A has recognized my right back but unfortunately doesn't anticipate him making a run in to the acres of space.

My right back gets the ball from a throw in and has the possibility (or at least I think so) to make a beautiful cross, instead he starts to dribble which gets challenged all too soon putting the ball back out for another throw in.

The result of the other throw in. My AMR is in a rather weird place and no-one is really wanting the ball. My right back still has the possibility to pass it back to my DM or the RP on the edge of the box, but instead figures that his dribbling has improved so much in the last 5 seconds he's willing to give that another go. He's proven wrong quite fast when the opponent once again puts it out for a throw in.

And here we see him again, our glorious right back. Again has the chance to pass it to either the DM or the RP but he still thinks he can dribble, losing the ball once again.

Full time stats

What have we learned?

The biggest thing for me is that my team was not really playing like I want them, at least in this game, and that is a serious problem. We will have to see about this and how to fix this with some broken down points, because for now this is far too big to be tackled as 1 problem.

The other big thing was that our midfield problem we thought we had fixed before wasn't fixed. We did some changes during the match and we have to make them to our normal strategy. Furthermore I definitely need to keep an eye on these changes, because last time I changed this I thought the problems were gone while in reality they simply shifted.

On the plus side; Defensively our team tactically looks pretty solid.

To handle the playing philosophy problems I'm going to a few things:

1 - Remove the Retain Possession TI, I added that because we were passing way too many long balls into nothingness, somehow I suspect that is because we didn't have the right options open for our players. So instead of fixing that with this TI let's fix the actual problems. hopefully by analysing games better than we were doing before.

2 - Put back the More Direct Passing TI back on. See 1.

3 - Put the Higher Tempo TI on. I want to pass faster and more and dribble and dwell on the ball less. We have to keep a close eye on this to make sure we are not moving faster than we can.

4 - As a radical change I change the duties of my Wingers from Attack to Support and switch my Wing Backs with Support duties to Complete Wingbacks with the Attack duties. This might be a complete disaster but let's just see what happens.

As an added point I will add the Pass Into Space TI to my list. This is also something to keep a close eye on concerning my passing game.

With all that said, it now looks like:

That's it for this long post, hopefully I can get some suggestions back on the problems I faced so I have something to think about.

[Repsalty]

I'm getting no closer to understanding how my team works and how i can improve it, allow me to elaborate.

After the changes of the last post I first played vs M. Tel-Aviv for the CL at home. There was nothing left to play for, we would end up 3rd and they would end up 4th no matter what. They played a 3-2-3-2 formation (3 DC, 2 CWB, 3 MC, 2 STC) so the flanks would be wide open.

Allthough we won 3-0 I didn't really feel we had too many real opportunities and the match stats do show that. We had plenty of crosses but I feel the crosses aren't really all that dangerous (allthough we scored 2 of our goals from them), as you can see we had plenty of crosses 71 (11 corners)!

Also I noticed this that went on until here. Nothing too troubling as it only happened once so I don't think this should be looked at too much.

Then I had to go up against AZ (home) in the League, quite a tough match I would say but since the previous match went quite well I was pretty hopeful. They started with a 4-4-2 and we got going.

I noticed we were playing a lot of long balls (here, here, here and here). This is definitely not the way I want to be playing because my forwards aren't that sturdy and even if we were winning the duels in this game this wasn't something I'm expecting to do in most matches. I wanted to drop More Direct Passing, but I felt that would be a little too much so instead I opted for Play Out Of Defence since most of the long balls were coming out of defence. It seemed to do the trick at first but I still saw the occassional long ball later on so I still dropped the More Direct Passing TI.

The second half they changed from a 4-4-2 to a 4-5-1 (something I found out some where later in the 2nd half), but they didn't get much done towards my goal.

Fulltime stats:

So we ended up a disappointing 0-0 seeing as we had 3 clear cut chances allthough I still didn't feel as if we created many chances. This feels more so because I only remember 1 chance we had and the other 2 went by pretty unnoticed.

After that it was time for another relatively easy game vs FC Emmen Away for the Cup. A game that frustrated me a whole lot, because they were simply playing around the ball and we were chasing it around mostly. We won it 4-0 but as you can see from the chances, we again didn't really create that much. Our first goal was a free kick which went in, the 2nd was a beautiful shot from my DM from way out because their GK was too far off his line, the 3rd was a beautiful cross that got tucked in by my STC and the 4th one was a nice shot from within the box. That all was within 30 minutes, but after that we didn't do anything else on their half anymore (not that we needed to).

What I did also see in that match though was my undynamic duo. Since we were doing pretty well in this game I didn't give it much more thought, but it is troubling to see again.

So I was happy that we won the game, but I didn't like the way we got the win.

Moving on! We were going to play the last game for the year against another not great team Go Ahead at Home, they are playing above expectactions but they shouldn't cause too many problems. Or at least that's what I expected.

Ye we lost 1-0. They played a pretty offensive 4-2-3-1 and got rewarded for it. I felt again we didn't create much and I can see us not creating/using space well enough to hurt them which frustrates me since I'm still lackluster for ideas on how to solve this.

On even more troubling notes though, look who are back: The undynamic duo

I feel that if I can solve the problem in midfield I probably am in a far better spot, so let's focus everything on that for now.