Help me to improve on my weak points

[Taktiker]

After a first unsuccessful year at the second division in France I managed to get hired by Aston Villa for the new season. The recently relegated club wants to make it to the play offs. After selling a few players to competitors in the same league (as they don't want to play at my club anymore because we got relegated ) and buying some new faces I went straight to tactics.

First thought: my squad is pretty strong and we can make it to the playoffs with ease (or so I thought) and I'd like to incorporate that in my style of play: be a bit more aggressive. But actually I focus more on the material on hand when making play style decisions. I believe I understand the roles better than team instructions which often remain a mystery for me, especially since I struggle to see any changes when watching matches. Roles and positioning on the pitch is way more obvious. I also struggle to understand shape and mentality 100%. Thus, I made a simple rule for me which I believe works more or less: the more attacking the mentality the riskier and faster we play. Also, we tend to gift more rooms to the opponent if we go more attacking. Shape determines how spread out the players are and if they interact as a collective unit or not.

My tactic:

Mentality: Control

Shape: Structured

Team Instructions: None

Play Instructions: Push higher up for the BBM

Idea behind the system:

-Defensively solid due to a rather conservative positioning of the players on the field

-Control Mentality and BWM should reflect a more aggressive style of play

-WM(su) is supposed to cut inside and act as a goal thread as players used on this position have the ppm cut inside often

-T(At) should be the creator in the system

-WB (Su) and W(Su) should offer width in order to create space in the final third

Results:

Problems (at least what I think):

-at some point in our attacking play I reach a point where the highest player up the pitch faces 5 defenders but none of his teammates is positioned high enough to be the next threat -> I added push higher up for the BBM to encourage forward runs

-I really struggle to create nice chances -> a lot of blocked shots -> sometimes the box is really crowded

-I struggle to generate shots anyway

-I concede the most against aggressive wing play 4-2-3-1 wide -> maybe in general an aggressive tactic

-the majority of the assists of my opponents come from the right side (21) from very deep (14) and from the left (13) -> maybe my D-Line is too high?

-I concede early on in matches

Solution:

I have literally no clue. I think I was able to identify problems but ...

For fun I downloaded a tactic presented on the forums. I thought I might learn something when I look at another working tactic. Well, that failed. At least the learning experience. My team is playing wonderful football with the tactic but I fail to understand how. The tactic had 6 attack duties and 17 team instructions. Let's say it is a bit against what I think I learned from various guides.

Feedback and help appreciated. Cheers!

[Rigga89]

With regard your attacking difficulties, finding your striker isolated and getting crowded out either means your players aren't trying to get forward to join the attack or perhaps that you're playing too direct, meaning players simply can't run up the field to offer assistance fast enough.

Countering wing play by the opposition is difficult on fm. Setting your WM and W to close down more and tighter mark may help them drop deeper and stop an opponent's attacking full back from double team your own. Alternatively you could concede the wings and play narrow if you felt your CBs strong enough to deal with the incoming crosses.

You can also look to exploit sides who play aggressively on the wings by instructing your team to clear balls to flanks, therefore playing into the space that the opposition vacates either side of their CBs.

In terms of your actual tactic I have a couple of points you may want to consider. A BWM is an aggressive role that will lead to the player vacating their position to chase down opponents in position. Paired with a BBM that pushes on you may find holes open up in the midfield. A fluid mentality may help other players fill vacant positions to guard against this.

You may also want to look at an attacking role on one of your wide men to make sure they're getting forward to support the play early enough.

Whatever changes you try, give your team long enough to become fluid with the new tactic. Things that will work well can appear disjointed at first until players know the tactic.

Secondly, keep in mind it's all about risk and reward. You can't possibly shut down the opposition entirely and still remain dangerous on the attack. Sometimes you will need to risk a little more space opening up at the back to give you a chance of breaking down the opposition.

[s1111]

Gil and Veretout are better suited to each other's roles (unless they're just like that for the screenshot). Germain (if its Valere Germain) is a great support striker, a superb DLF for Championship level, but doesn't have anywhere near the speed or dribbling ability to play as an AF. McClean as a winger is playing on his wrong foot, this can work but his crossing opportunities are going to be limited as he'll have to check back onto his left foot every time.

A lack of attack duties is a problem as well. Nobody is making forward runs consistently from deep. I guess your idea with this is to emulate Cleon's possession set up, but that works as it dominates possession in midfield and allows time and creates space for support players to move up. With a Control mentality and no TIs you're just trying to move the ball forward quickly to an isolated striker who isn't individually skilled enough to do anything with it.

[Kieran87]

First thing I see is 2 strikers will be so far forward that you will have a huge hole for when play shifts phases.

A b2b will drop deep and then go with the flow, and the BWM will chase the ball, that hole in the centre paired with your attack role will make your middle look like a diamond almost with no movement. who is taking the ball from 1 phase to the other? if its the b2b , then who is making a run into the box? not the Treq as he sits in the hole and not the Af as he is static there. see the issue?

Looking at your tactic it looks like you want your (lb) to be involved a lot? why not play a wp(s) on the left ahead of him or even push him up higher into a rmd or If(s) role?

Your right side looks fine , but i still feel like your middle and top needs work so its not static and just a bank of 2 and 2 in effect.

I understand the idea of the Treq you are trying, but why not try the AP(s) there instead , alternatively go with a DLF (s) so they come and join play ? couple that with a cm(s) instead of a B2B so you have someone behind him to play the ball back in, it might help shift play from defence into attack phase more efficiently. you might find that with a less adventurous midfield cm pairing , you don't concede early as you have a foot in there already?

good luck

[Taktiker]

Thanks for the feedback so far, I really appreciate it!

@Rigga89:

you said "players simply can't run up the field to offer assistance fast enough". I think that might be very true. After a couple of passes the ballcarrier finds himself in the most offensive position. The only options I have then is pass back to the players. What could solve this problem? Taking into account what s1111 said I might reduce mentality to standard or even counter? A lower mentality should lead to a shorter and less risky pass game. This in turn should allow player to catch up and offer options? Could I alternatively set the TI shorter passing or retain posession while mainting the control mentality?

@s1111:

Gil and Veretout are indeed switched around normally. McClean is playing on his wrong foot indeed I need to change that quickly since I wanted him to beat his man quickly and deliver a nice cross. Beginner mistake I guess. The striker is Valere Germain! I originally set him as an AF to have always one man up top and to prevent that I run out of attacking options, but I understand where you are coming from. Just out of interest: why would you say he is lacking dribbling abilities? I thought a value of dribbling 13 and technique 13 should be sufficient. I am not aware of an option where I can compare dribbling attributes among the divisons attack players. Am I missing something here?

Concerning the duties I actually thought support duties would do the trick and do enough runs. Is it save to assume that attacking duties should be distributed more among players originally positioned defensively? That could mean they tend to run forward more often. A striker is naturally positioned high up the pitch, thus it is more important that he works back and can therefore be set on an support duty. Also thanks for the mentality tip. I didn't knew passing would be so aggressive with the control mentality.

@Kieran87:

I have trouble seeing the issue of no one moving into the box. I actually thought the B2B midfielder would do that for me. The role itself sounds like a lot of movement. Same for the Treq since he has roam from position enabled by default. Could you elaborate please?

Yes I want my lb to get involded due to the WM on the right side cutting inside and acting as more of an inside forward. I just positioned him there to have a solid defensive shape.

All in all: I start working some changes out and will review the player roles in midfield since a lot of people don't like my BWM. If you have suggestions and answers based on my response keep it coming. Keen to get the tactical side of the game right. Thanks.

[Rigga89]

As is always the case with FM, there's a number of solutions you could apply.

Firstly, I would look at who was making those passes into the striker and how far the ball is travelling. If your passes are going straight from centre back to striker you can adjust individual player instructions on the centre backs to reduce their passing to shorter. This should feed play more slowly through your midfield line and allow wingers and fullbacks to advance with/ahead of the ball.

If the source of the pass is less obviously from a single man that you can correct with individual player instructions you may want to adjust your overall team instruction pass directness down a notch and see how that plays. Adjusting one of your wide men to an attacking mentality should help them get forward earlier at the expense of some defensive work (an inevitable trade off in creating good goal scoring chances.)

When I build a tactic I tend to limit my players' creative freedom through team instructions (be more disciplined) and then offer more creative freedom to the few key creative men in my side through their roles and player instructions. This tends to ensure we maintain sensible possession and those most able to create chances with more ambitious passes will do so. The trade-off with this approach is the risk that if your key men have poor games or get individually marked making you struggle to create the quality of chances you require, at which point it becomes necessary to make changes mid-match to replace under performers or increase the freedom to your team to give the opposition more to think about at once.

[Rashidi]

Several things defending the wings is very possible. You just need to understand how your players are pulled out of position and why. I daresay you have a few issues on your left flank. If you are going to play with a wingback there, I would suggest thinking about several things:

a. Is your dc supporting the wingback the best in your team? He needs to be cos the wingback will always step out.

b. When playing structured, the gaps across your team appear to be a bit more pronounced, this isn't helped by playing with an isolated AF and a TQ who is running around with few other attacking options from midfield.

c. Because of (b) you will have no thrust in midfield.

d. to solve (b) you may want to consider either getting better players who can penetrate sides either through good OTB and crosses or running with the ball through the middle. Another alternative is to use a more deep lying orientated forward, they tend to drift off to the flanks which allows players to attack the channels. For this to happen please check if your players have good off the ball. If they don't then there could be an issue there too cos they don't attack space.

Its pretty time consuming for me to list out a lot of factors that you can employ to get better penetration but apart from asking you to watch my YT videos which explain all this, you could start with making tactics with these small steps;

1. Make them defensively solid first. Don't use wingbacks unless you know how to defend the flanks

2. Once the backline and the midfield screen is solid, start looking at which players can go attacking, and then decide how you want to score goals.

At the moment your system doesnt' appear to have a plan on how goals are going to be scored.

[Wilesy]

I'll chip in with the first thing I saw. You've got an AMC role that you want as a main creator, what he needs is space to do his thing. You've got your left midfielder and both centre midfielders then trying to occupy the same space (the BWM will move into there when trying to close down, if he wins the ball it'll be very crowded).

If you want that role I would put players in roles that would allow movement ahead of him, no problem in the left sided player becoming a goal threat so maybe move him to the AML strata to make runs ahead of the trequarista so he can play through balls/have an outlet. Same on the right or change him to attack so when your creator has the ball, he has players to pass to and players to stretch the defence to create the space.

[Carles Alena]

Provide a link of your YT Rash please cant find it

[Captain Bob]

Looking at your results and that you say you want to be more solid I would suggest:

Drop from control to standard to give overall more team solidity.

Change wing back to full back as more conservative.

Change treq to attacking mid as I find this role drops in to midfield nicely when defending but also gets forward.

Change wide midfielders to attack duty to support striker and stretch defence.

Change BBM to cm as a link rather than crowd the box.

I would also look closely at your players attributes and ppms as each player will play the position slightly differently and you may need to try players out.

There are other options you could try, attacking fullback on one flank, different role for the striker, etc but I would advocate making one or two changes at a time.

Have you tried pausing, highlighting all your players (hold control and tap left mouse on each player) as I find this great at seeing who is where at different match points. Then if you see a player not where you want him you can think about roles, instructions, ppms,etc.

I still play Fm15 so hope I am not giving awful advice!

[Taktiker]

Thanks to your advice and not so interesting lecturer I made up my mind about tactical changes. All in all, I want to create 3 different tactics for different situations. A universal tactic for matches where the odds are quite close. Once I figure that out I want to build a more attacking tactic and a more defensive tactic. But first things first:

-We have a rather good squad for the league. Or so I think. I always check out the stats of the best opponent relative to my first team players. As I like my shape and I think it suits my players I keep it.

-A lot of people mentioned my CM role combination. I get down to that first. It's a standard tactic. I don't want to commit too many players forward nor do I want to have them all in the back. My CM's need to cover the defence, link the play and be available for a pass or create chances themselves. Thus, I set up an DLP(s). I expect him to cover and to carry the ball forward and start attacking moves. If things don't go well up front he offers a passing option in the back. I still need a player who makes himself available and attacks the room off the ball to create space for himself or others. A CM(s) should hopefully do that or maybe even an CM(a)? Not sure yet!

-Now I focus on my wide players. My ML has awesome dribbling, finishing and flair attributes. He is super fast and agile. He always cuts inside (PPM). I want him to be one of my main goal scorers. He can beat his opponent and cut inside afterwards. I make him an W(a). On the other side I have a really decent player as well. Not so fast but excellent for build up play. I always want him to offer an option and to craft out nice chances every now and then. I make him a WM(a). Since both my wide midfield players are attacking I set up the wide defending players as supporting fullbacks.

-I still have a AMC and a STC. The AMC should be someone who is ready to attack open space as well as create it for himself or for teammates. I believe the AM(At) is a good option. I want my STC to connect to the rest of the team. He shouldn't be far off and be involved in build up play. Thus, DLF(Su).

-As I mentioned before I want a standard tactic to play against evenly matched teams. Thus, I set my mentality to standard. I don't want my team to waste posession easily. I also don't want the ball to fast up the field as I might run out of attacking options again. Therefore, I set the following TIs: shorter passing and lower tempo. I will also tick exploit the middle so the CMs make themselves available further up the pitch. My advanced players are quite good at dribbling: run at defence it is. This could give other players time as well to position themselves accordingly for a nice pass.

The result:

Some further ideas:

-if I face a lot of pressure or need to preserve a lead I can change the DLP(Su) into a DLP(D) or a CM(D).

-If I need more option up the pitch I can change the CM(Su) into a CM(At).

What do you think about my thought process and the result?

---

@all: I tried to incorporate as much of your advice as possible. I won't have much time to play FM during the weekend but I report with a run of games as soon as I have the time.

@rashidi1: will check out for YT channel. Personally, I don't think I have a really huge problem from the other team scoring from down the flanks. I think the location of the assists are fairly even distributed. At least I didn't worry about it for now. After all, assists have to come from somewhere when you concede.

[LEEMOD]

Rashidi's YT channel is the best thing I've ever seen lads, it makes you realise how much time we have all been wasting, the game is so simple really