sc Heerenveen breaking teams down/interpreting prozone

[vanderbonnar]

Hi all, i am new to posting threads, although i am an avid reader of this section of the forum. I read peoples posts about how they are not quite getting the fundamentals of the game/tactics/player roles etc. But they are willing to learn and the community of new and veteran players try to help people get a better understanding of the game, so here i am...

Recently i have started a save with Heerenveen and i have been struggling a lot, as of writing this i'm doing okay in the league after a  shaky start - mainly down to poor strikers that are at the club, my defence has always been top 3 all season so a bit more potency up front and we should be okay - so i strengthened areas in jan mainly through the center of the park. I sold luka zahovic and barbosa for money to bolster the squad as i desperately needed to strengthen, the offers where to good.

My away form has been okay it has been some of the home games that have me befuddled on how i should set up for the  next home game. I know its the first season and from the indication from the the first half we have been better in taking chances and winning games. i brought in will keane from utd as the other options i was scouting just did not impress me. His on the ball skill and link up play has been great as he has 85% pass ratio and has scored 6 goals in 8 games and he can improve. so 1.3 mil well spent. The other singing has been great in the midfield. Guira - not the best technically but that can improve - mentals and physicals are amazing. He's rarely put a foot wrong and always avg about a 7.00 or over.  

 

We have won our last 3 matches but i think we have been lucky, we had to come from 1 down to utrecht as i went with this tactic as it worked against grafshaap on a control mentality. It backed fired against utrecht as i believe we played into their hands because of how deep and defensive they setup. We left ourselves vulnerable at the back.

The picture below is the tactic i started with - attacking was a mistake, they  got through with good chances a lot. and i noticed brasanac was getting caught out far up the pitch and noticed our midfield was getting exposed. I was putting a lot of pressure on guira to mark 3 players.plus the wingbacks at times so i put brasanac to DLP/DF and pulled back thorn to cm attack to offer more support in midfield. Also i put slagveer to support to help the wing back. It seemed to work out better and we created better chances, bossed the game more and got the win. I felt we got away with it however we are still improving. 

 

 

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Alteration made as described above. I am pondering using this as my main tactic. 433, i want to build from the back, and stretch teams, Keane needs to play a vital role as i was him and thern to link up and spread play to the wings. The main problem is i'm still unsure how i want them to play - i am off to frankfurt for a week to see the mrs family so i have time to think on what brand of football i and hopefully when i get back i will finish the season using suggestions from the community. 

Apologies if it seems like a messy post, new to the posting malarkay. Feedback would be brilliant thanks.

 

 

 

 

[vanderbonnar]

Before i forget i'm also starting to use prozone a lot now but still find myself scratching my head on what i'm actually looking for/interpreting the data, some sort of start to get me looking at it with purpose instead of glaring at a screen blankly would me much appreciated.

[Bigpapa42]

Interesting club choice. I enjoy managing in the Eredivisie, and Vitesse is usually my go-to club. Interestingly, I've been eying up Brasanc as well.

 

Pro Zone is a handy tool to help analyze specific issues and sort out potential fixes, but not necessarily ideal in identifying the actual problem itself. That is usually found by watching the matches.

 

I have two questions... One, what issues are you specifically seeing in the way the side performs that gives you concern? And two, what are you trying to build?

 

You aren't laying out real specific issues for anyone to help you find solutions for. And the tactic itself doesn't seem to have real clear intent - its fairly attacking in both mentality and structure, but the Team Instructions seem to be geared toward a slow, controlled possession game. That's not necessarily the same thing as attacking.

 

A few random thoughts/observations....

 

-you want to play out of defense with short passing, but you aren't giving your defenders a ton of options. You have two wide high wingers who won't track back much, so they probably aren't passing options for your FBs, and you CMs don't drop too deep so they won't always be passing options. Do you see your defenders pass it amongst themselves a bunch and hoof it back to the keeper? That's a lack of passing options for the style you want them to play. Moving the CM-DLP to DM might help a bit in that regard.

-do you find your wingers get the ball and get isolated? The fullbacks will support but only so much, two of the three CMs aren't going to bomb forward, and the opposite winger is staying wide. I just picture the winger getting the ball, driving toward the byline, and not having a lot of good options so he either blasts an aimless cross to the one player in the box (who is outnumbered almost every time) or takes a shot from a terrible angle...

-that's a lot of TIs. How does the tactic play without them? I find TIs are best looked at as tweaks to adjust the tactic, rather than the baseline for how you want to set it up.

-you mention your defense has been solid but that looks susceptible to the counter attack. Especially if you push the defensive line very high up and compact the opposition, you would need speedy defenders to deal with balls over the top. And being compressed might be part of the issue if you aren't seeing the kind of attacking penetration you want - you compress teams and push them back but don't actually break them down. Sometimes, giving yourself a bit more space can be effective.