Teamwork and decisions attributes, team shape and pressing [questions and discussion]

[ozilthegunner]

Note: I am still playing FM15, but my hope is my questions and the issue are general enough it shouldn't matter

I have been playing a longer save as Hansa Rostock in Germany. We have now been in the first division for a four years - the first was pretty good, the second worse, and the third great - we finished 5th (predicted 15th) and qualified for the Europa league. Now in our fourth season, things are decaying a bit.

All that is just a prelude to the specific issues I am interested in. I'll start with the most general question:

How should we understand the relationship between players' teamwork/decision attributes and team shape?

A Bit of a Prelude:

At the end of the second season and start of the third I decided I wanted to commit to a counter-pressing/gegen pressing style. I often found that if I tried to play (what I thought was) a more counter-attacking strategy I just got overrun in the end. It seemed to me a major issue was my team, even if holding shape decently well (which maybe there weren't) were just giving the opposition too much time on the ball. So I thought closing down and harassing the players earlier may help.

So my approach to the third season was a very heavy press in a 4-3-3. It took me a bit to get it working right, but once I did it was pretty damn effective. I was dominating Bayern Munich and Dortmund away, winning 4-0 and 3-0 respectively. But there were other games (against bigger teams) where we were put to the sword as well.

But towards the end of the season things started to turn sour. It didn't matter as we were guaranteed 5th by that point (1-4 were way above us on points, and 6th was way below us) but obviously something had changed (the last few games I played more youngsters, but even before that).

So I had a few thoughts: Early on perhaps I was benefiting from the teams giving me no respect. Towards the end of the season (and now into the next, where I am predicted to finish 8th) the AI caught on. My tactics are certainly open to the counterattack (although that isn't how too many of the goals this season are being scored).

My tactic, oddly, included NO support roles. Two standard central defenders, two attacking wing backs, two CMd's and one CMa in mid, attacking inside forwards on either wing and an attacking complete forward (he was support for awhile, but we seemed to score more when he was on attack). We played a control mentality, but I added the TI 'close down much more' and told specific players to close down more or much more (much more for the front 3, more for the CMa and WBs).

This tactic seems to me unbalanced, but it did very well. We played on a 'very fluid' mentality since the closing down would be pulling people out of position all over the place.

Decisions, Teamwork and Team Shape

Okay, so now that this tactic isn't working as well (although it isn't terrible - part of the issue in my fourth season is I tried to temper it a bit by adding support roles and reducing closing down but that didn't seem to work well; and I had an injury crisis) I decided to 'take stock' of my team's real abilities and weaknesses within this general approach (I still want to keep up the pressure and harass the opponent generally).

So, first, I find that my team is pretty poor overall on 'teamwork'. Compared to the rest of the league, we are near the bottom (16th out of 18 teams), but I do have a few players who are pretty high (i.e., 15+). Additionally, our decisions are pretty low (14th) but I do have a few players who are very high on this front (i.e., 15+).

It would seem to me, ignoring last season's performance, that if my team is poor on these two attributes overall, that a 'very fluid' shape would be a poor choice. I am asking players to make too many decisions and they will make poor ones, and I am asking them to cover for each other, etc. when they aren't too keen.

Better, it would seem, to go with structured/flexible and maybe make a player (or 2?) with good decisions into a playmaker (my best player, in terms of attributes, is the CMa and would make for a good advanced playmaker) in order to reduce poor decision-making. Similarly, reducing the team shape should help with the low teamwork issue by reducing the need for players to cover for each other, etc.

What do we think here? Is this the correct way to read the issue? Is it right to think that going structured/flexible (generally, a lower team shape) will be helpful in compensating for poor decisionmaking/teamwork in a team? Am I understanding the role of these attributes properly?

Pressing and Team Shape

This then leads to another issue. I adopted a 'very fluid' shape in order to compensate for the pressing - the fact that players would be pulling out of position in order to close down opponents.

If I were to switch to a less fluid shape, can I still engage in a strong press, and if so how do I do it? Certainly you can allow a bit of closing down while still maintaining your shape, but perhaps not as much as I want?

It would seem, I think, that the idea here would be to ensure a high block (i.e., something like a 'control' mentality or simply pushing the defensive line up) and either a TI to 'close down more' or just the default closing down for the mentality. My worry here is that it won't put enough pressure on the players.

Finally, another possibility here is a 'structured' shape, 'control' mentality and then use roles and PIs to affect closing down. More advanced players should close down more than less advanced players generally, but the whole team should certainly maintain a higher block.

So how should we understand the relationship between pressing and team shape (as well as, it seems, mentality)?

I think this about captures everything I was interested in. I know for some of this I can just test it in the game and see what pans out, which I will be doing, but I am also interested in if others have already done some of the legwork. (no reason to reinvent the wheel!)

[cyoung17]

Yes you are correct with the teamwork issues although you need to be careful that intoducing playmakers etc doesnt upset the overall balance of the team. With regards to pressing, you can very much still press through a structured system. A fluid formation is usually narrower and more compact therefore it arguably takes more to close down and disrupts team shape more than on a structured system where your players are more spread out and can get to a man to close down a bit quicker. On the whole, I dont think the fluid-structered makes a huge difference and tend to be minor changes from what I can see. Just my opinion from what I see happening in my own game.

[pattricb]

I play a very attacking, hard pressing tactic as well although I use control and flexible team shape. One thing about playing this way is it is very demanding on your players and I was going to say that your players may have been burnt out towards the end of the season, hence why the results suffered. I'm not sure if changing your team shape will have any effect on your team the only way to know for sure is if you try it out.

I do think that having players who have great teamwork, anticipation, composure and decision making (just to name a few) are a must for a system like this to work properly.