Pre-match report on opponents

[Madbone]

Hi there,

Fairly new to FMC15 (my first season in League 1) and enjoying the game a lot. After some excellent advice regarding tactics I find it fun to work on that as well, and hopefully I will get better over time.

One thing that I have tried without much luck is to use the pre-match report from my scout to plan my match tactic and instructions. Two questions I hope you can help with (sorry one should perhaps go to tac forum but hope it is ok to post both here):

1. I usually play some variant of 4-2-3-1 (WB, short passing, offensive and very fluid) or 4-3-1-2 (FB on offensive, short passing, offensive and very fluid). I usually have my midfielders on support but almost no matter what kind of opponent formation I face I am always told that I am struggling in midfield. My team usually does well enough to win matches (currently 3rd in the league) but no I am having trouble dominating midfield without leaving 5 players there and no attack. I have tried offensive, balanced, high tempo, marking a much more without any luck. Should I just accept that is the way it is when I win the match ?

2. The scout report on my opponent. My latest match I was told that my opponents biggest weakness was heading (actually 24th in the league) and they conceed most goals by deep passes as far as I recall. Based on that I thought it made sense to do high crosses into the box and direct/deep passes. My team played awful and lost the match and I was told that xxxx player from the opponent team won everything in the air during the match. So my questions is - are the pre match reports actually usable and what pointers to look for ? (I tried many matches without much luck, perhaps I am just poor at interpreting them )

Thanks for any help

[HUNT3R]

1. I would pay too much attention to the assistant telling you that. It sounds like you're going to be fairly direct anyway, so it matters little. It might have something to do with your duty selection though. All midfielders on Support? If that's the case, you won't have a holding midfielder and that may cause you problems.

2. Your opponent's weakness was Heading and not Jumping Reach? That's where you went wrong. Heading is basically their header accuracy. Can they place it where they intend to most of the time? Jumping Reach determines how high they can reach, so that's far more influential when trying to win an aerial ball. Heading only comes into effect when/if the ball is reached/contact made.

Anyway, I prefer to look at the likely match-ups. My left winger vs their right fullback. My STCR vs their DCL and my STCL vs their DCR. I'll do that position by position and see where I need to worry or where I can perhaps take advantage of a potential mis-match.