Tactical frameworks and squad building - an in depth guide to how I approach FM.

[sporadicsmiles]

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu

I have recently been reading “The Art of War” since it is something I see quoted in various guises all the time. While I was reading it, some quotes really caught my attention in relation to football, and how I approach Football Manager. I realised that I had been, subconsciously for the most part, been following some of these rules. The quote above I think is spectacularly revealing in terms of how to approach the game in a successful manner. It boils down to two things; know yourself, and know your opposition. It sounds so simple. Two things to do to be successful (on average) at the game.

Ultimately, this has inspired me to finally write up my approach to the game. I have been doing this in bits and pieces around the forum recently anyway. It is nice to get things in one place. I will try to frame this as a pretty basic approach to the game. How I have ideas, and how I try to get these ideas into the game. I am by no means an expert in football tactics, nor really at the game. I have played the same way for years now. The examples I will be drawing from are all from my main save. So everything I will show you is how I play the game myself, not preparing something specifically for this thread. I hope that this will therefore prove useful for people who are looking at how to play the game, or to develop their own way to play. I will discuss not only the tactical side of things, but how I recruit players and manage my squad, manage the squad happiness, and probably other things.

With that relatively long preamble behind us (well done if you read all that), lets get started with the first thing you must do. Know yourself.

Knowing yourself. How do I want to play?

The first aspect of knowing yourself is to know how you want to play the game. That is not just tactical, but as a general philosophy of running a club. Cleon has discussed these ideas previously (and on his blog), as has Rashidi. So note the things I write here are almost never exclusively my own ideas. I have drawn from these forums, other blogs, youtube, etc. quite extensively.

So, how do I want to play. What are the key aspects of my football philosophy? Let’s break them down point by point.

1.       I want to play attractive positive football, whenever possible. I want to enjoy watching my team play, not just win matches.

2.      I want to make sure every single player who plays for me leaves better than when they arrived. Be that youth players who will never play for me, or first team players who go on to bigger clubs. Player development matters.

3.      I want my players to be determined and hard working. They must give everything for the club.

4.      I want to try to favour youth, and try to avoid spending stupidly high wages on players.

These things give me a few rules by which I can play (more like guidelines, a la the pirate code). I do not have to stick to them religiously. I may sign an older player if he will really make my side better, for instance. This serves as a decent starting point, though, for the following discussion.

We can break these philosophies down into 3 groups, essentially. The first is tactical. I have decided how I want to play, broadly. I have to work out how I want to implement that. We will spend a lot of time discussing that. The second is training. I want to make my players better, so I must train them to as close to their potential as I can. We will spend less time talking about this, since it is a personal thing that perhaps others are uninterested in. The third is squad management; keeping players happy, having players on the correct contracts, and recruitment. I will spend a good deal of time talking about this because it is something that is vital to my long term successes.

I will bring the first post to a close here. I think it is vital to have a good idea what you want to achieve in the game. Especially for tactical style and for recruitment. This can be whatever you want, there is no right or wrong. You could easily just decide to sign mercenary players and have a high turnover of players over time. There is not really a right or wrong way to aim for (there are right and wrong ways to implement ideas). My conclusion for this first post is to understand what manager you will be, and you will find decision making later on becomes much clearer.

[sporadicsmiles]

This post is cannibalised from one I made in a different thread where someone asked me to discuss how I was set up. I will use it because it is a pretty good description of the thought that went into this tactic. I will point out that it was more iterative than it appears here. As I have noted, I have played this way for years now. Hence, I have really worked on how this tactic works, and I have adapted it over time. Also note that this is the basic way I will play, thinking about games where I expect to be able to win. There will be various things that I do in real situations during matches. These I will discuss in a later post. The purpose of this post is to show the thought process behind how to put my vision discussed in the first post into action.

We will start with the shape.

This is the basis of everything I will do. I do not have any player roles yet, no mentality, no instructions, nothing. How did I decide on this shape? Well, I typically play as not quite top sides to start with, so I like to have a DMC to give a bit of defensive cover. I also like to push my fullbacks high up the pitch – attractive attacking football in my head means we have lots of attacking options, including fullbacks. It also may be force of habit. You could easily think of ways to make everything I discuss work in other tactical frameworks.

So, what I need to do next is to work out how I want to score goals. How will I create my attacking attractive football? As I just said, I want lots of attacking options. I want to have many players who could score goals. This should create variety, and variety is attractive in football. So how will I create my space? I will start with my striker. Where is there space around him? It is behind him. I want him to move into this space. So I will pick a DLF(S), who will move into this space.

So what space is going to be created by the DLF and his movement? Hopefully, he is going to drag the central defenders out of position. The aim is to make one of the CBs follow him deeper. Alternatively, if nobody does that, he will be in a position to receive the ball. Imagine I have created a bit of space in the centre of the pitch by dragging a CB with my DLF. Who can I put into the gap I have created? Well, there are two options. I can try to put a wide player into a central position, or I can try to get a central midfielder to overlap the striker. Let’s do both. This gives me two more roles; an IF(A) and a CM(A). I will put them on opposite sides to try to exploit opposite channels (and overload the defence). Note that they could be on either side, here I illustrate how I play when I have right footed wide players.

I now have two methods to score goals. They both rely on the movement of the DLF though. The DLF drops back and gets the ball. A CB either comes with him, or rushes to close him down because he has the ball in a pocket of space in a dangerous area. The DLF can then pass the ball either to the IF or the CM. These two players can then either shoot or they can support each other further in creating a change. This is another good reason to have both players overlapping. They can support each other after the DLF has done his job, with a scrabbling defence. On paper, this looks very nice.

Okay, we still have many players who do not have roles yet. What shall we do with them? Let us start with the other midfielder. He needs to be a more holding type of player since we have a movement based player next to him. What do I actually want him to do? One thing is to feed the ball to the DLF. He also needs to be able to take advantage of the space the DLF creates without passing him the ball. Or to recycle the ball if there is no chance. I have just described a playmaker to you. I usually use a DLP(S), but there is no reason an AP(S) would not work. I typically want him slightly deeper because I am always nervous about too many players being forward. This adds another way to score goals. The DLP can pass to the CM(A) or IF(A) as they run into space created by the DLF. There is also no reason the DLF cannot also make his own forward movement to get on one of these passes.

What other space have we created? Well, the IF(A) is cutting off his wing, so we have space on the left flank. Let’s put someone in that space too. That means we need an attack minding fullback, typically I use a FB(A).

This is creating an overload on the left of my attack. The defence will hopefully have to commit players to their right to deal with this threat. If my striker drifts towards the left too, even better. More overloading, more defenders required. Why is this good? Well, if I can force the defence to drift to my left, I have created space on my right flank. Space, incidentally, which I want to put my CM(A) into. So what about the right midfielder? You could have another IF to exploit this space, but this is typically not how I play. If I flood the right of the defence as well, the opposition may not over commit to defending their right flank. So lets keep the width with a winger. On support, because I want him in space to start with (not pressed against the defensive line, he will be less dangerous there.

This creates another way to score goals straight up. Two ways, really. The first would be a cross from the left flank to the right, with the winger (who will drift in for such things), CM(A) or DLF all potentially available for a cross. Equally, a cross from the right wing to the left will find an IF(A), and possible the DLF. Sometimes even the left back gets super adventurous.

Who shall I pair the winger with? Well, actually, this role depends a lot on the situation. A FB(A) can also work here if I want to really overload the defence. This makes it very hard for a defending team to commit enough men to any one area. I could also use a more defensive role if I want to have additional defensive cover, a FB(D) for example. With the CM(A) bombing forward there is even scope for using an IWB to give me another body in the middle of the park (I do not do this a lot).

There are 4 more roles to assign, only one of which is interesting. What do I want the DMC to do? Well, a little of everything. He needs to be a bit of a destroyer, not letting anyone get easily past him. At the same time, he needs to hold his position to provide defensive cover at all times, because I am set up very aggressive. Finally, I want him to act as a pivot to help recycle the ball from left to right, and vice versa (in combination with the DLP). So I usually play a simple DM(S) here, and make sure a have (or buy) a player who is capable of doing all these things. It is a very demanding role.

Finally, the CBs are simple CD(S), and the goalkeeper a GK(D). I do not need them to do anything fancy. Just stop goals from being scored.

This is a long, involved post, probably the longest I will make. The conclusions to take are:

1.       I have created a tactic based only one what I want to see happen, using common sense.

2.      I have created at least 4 common ways I should score a goal. This is only counting what I do with possession, not set plays or counter attacks.

3.      You will notice I have no talked about any team instructions, player instructions, mentality, etc. I feel this is secondary to me. I will discuss it in the next post.  

[sporadicsmiles]

So we can finally start to talk about team, player and opposition instructions. They are important to my tactical setup, but when designing a play style I typically add them afterwards to generate the football I want. There will be situations where you will know some instructions you want in advanced based on your own ideas of how you want to play, so do not take these posts as the only way to do thing. They are just the way I like to think about problems. Also please note these are “default” settings that I will use when I think I can enforce my own style. I do make changes for specific matches, and I will detail some of that later.

Team instructions

So, how am I going to decide what team instructions I want to use? I can go back the first post, and think about what I want to do. My goal is to play attractive football. This is pretty airy and for good reason. I have not yet defined what I think of as attractive football. In the previous post I did mention that I want to create many different types of chances to be as attractive as possible. Let’s dig deeper into what I like.

Which teams do I enjoy watching play currently? As much as it pains me to say as a Mancunian (albeit a Huddersfield fan, please pour pity on me for this season), I really enjoy watching Liverpool play. Klopp in general. High intensity, relatively direct. I also love watching slick counter attacking goals. None of this tiki taka nonsense for me, give me a move with 4 incisive passes over one with 40.

How does this translate into FM? I can think of 3 things I will select immediately based on what I said: higher tempo and counter-press (elements of Klopp’s style that I like), and counter (I like counter attacks).

There will be some supplementary things to add on here. If I want to play a pressing game, I will set my line of engagement to higher, to put pressure on teams in their own half. I will also use a higher defensive line, to put more players into a position to press more players without getting too far out of position. Now, I realise this is going to leave me open to balls over the top, and counter attacking. This is a risk I take willingly. I want to play attacking positive football. Sometimes it is going to go wrong, and we may concede. As long as this is not happening all the time, the risk is acceptable.

You will also note that I want to use players close to the area to play the ball to players running past them into the box. For this reason, I select “work ball into box”. I really do not want my striker getting the ball in space, turning and shooting. Ditto any other player. I want to probe, and I want to give chance for all the things I described previously to happen.

Finally, I typically do not play with strong aerial threats up front. So I am against lobbing the ball high from my ‘keeper. Better to try to build from the back. As such, I will use “play out of defence”, and tell the ‘keeper to distribute to the CBs or FBs. To summarize the entire second and third post thus far.

See how simple that feels? I have selected only things I know that I want. I have tried to avoid making this complicated, and I know exactly why every instruction is there.

Player instructions.

Player instructions are very simple in my case. I rarely use them. I will tell my front 3 to close down more, as well as the CM(A). The latter because he will often find himself high up the pitch when we lose the ball, so he may as well help try to force a long pass. Why do I not have more? Well, simply because I do not have a reason to select any more. If I add more, it will be situational because I spotted something during a match.

Opposition instructions.

Finally, a word about opposition instructions. I get the feeling these are not very popular here. Indeed, I remember reading one of the people here (I forget who) saying that OIs are for people who do not know what their tactic is doing. I am going to make a counter argument for this, based on creating pressing zones.

Currently, in the game, you cannot create zones of the pitch where you press, and others where you do not. I try to mimic this with opposition instructions, targeting specific positions. This means that my team will close down players in specific areas of the field. Which is quite nice.

I do this by selection higher pressing intensity on any player playing in the DMC strata or DC strata (and the ‘keeper). I also instruct my team to tackle these players harder. This is to really put pressure on those players. Press them hard, get a foot in, make a tackle. Instead of the unfocused pressing you get from TIs, I have created something that should only happen in specific areas. I will also close down wingers, who I really do not want to give the time to cross if I can avoid it. In addition, I show on to their weaker foot.

Those players I do not close down, I set to be tightly marked. Why? The players who are being pressed are going to want to get the ball away quickly. They will try to make the ball go forward. If I take away as many of those passes forward away as possible, we increase the chances of winning the ball back. That is the point of pressing. Either win the ball back with a tackle, or force the other side to give you the ball back with a bad pass or just aimless clearance to relieve the pressure. I hope I you can see why using OIs can also achieve this, and here are the settings pictorially, to make it clearer.

 

That deals with the basics of my tactical setup. It took 3 posts, which makes it seem a lot more difficult that it is. When you think about what I have actually done, though, it is quite simple. I have just written a lot of words to explain things in a much detail as I can. I do make tactical changes during matches quite often, and I will deal with this in a future post. Next, however, I am going to talk to you about the players. What players do I want, how do I pick them, etc. This is something just as important as making a tactic.

[sporadicsmiles]

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster” 
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

More Sun Tzu. I feel like an intellectual by adding these quotes, but honestly so many of the things I read have resonated with me (I will quote more before I am through). It helps in Total War games too! In this case, I am interested in knowing myself again. In particular, knowing my squad.

There are two aspects to deal with here. Knowing the players you have, and knowing the players you want. Both are important to building a team (not just a tactic here). Since I am writing this based on my current save, it is difficult to show precise examples for knowing the squad you start with, because I have had 2.5 seasons at my current side to mould them how I want. So I will start with knowing the players I want.

How players fit into my squad.

In the previous posts I have written in detail about what I want the players to do. Now I need to ensure they can actually do these things. This means selecting the correct players in the correct positions. Not every player will be able to do what you are looking for, and for that reason the first few transfer windows at a club are all about buying players to fit by squad. I will discuss transfer targets, and management of the squad in another post. Here, I focus on understand what attributes I want from my players. I will take what I want them to do, and translate it into what attributes they need to have.

The things I look for in all players.

Before I dive into position specific traits I look for, there are some things I want in all my players.

Determination, teamwork, and work rate. I want a hard working and determined squad, because in my head these attributes will create a resilient side who will always give their best, and will not get too dispirited if they fall behind. I am not interested in players with determination below 13 (for top levels, this can scale with the league you play in and I am to be in the top 3 for determination in the league). Any player below 13 determination is not interesting to me, unless they are spectacular. Likewise, I usually aim for over 15. This is all because I want my players to care, to fight, to not give up. I think (although never tested) that if you have a bunch of players identical in all attributes except the one has 15 for determination and the other 5, the group with 15 would be more successful.

For teamwork and work rate, it boils down to similar things. I want players to work as part of a whole that can be greater than the sum of its parts. Equally, I am asking a lot for many players in the tactic I described, so they will need to be able to work hard. I am less stringent about players below 13 in these attributes, but again I would avoid them if I can.

Position specific things.

Let’s start with the easiest positions. The goalkeeper and central defenders. I just need them to be as good as possible. My ‘keeper needs to be able to save shots (which my aggressive stance will likely give the opposition not infrequently). There is nothing special here. The central defenders likewise. They need to have the best possible attributes for defenders. Since I am playing from the back, it will help if they have composure and are not terrible at passing. I do not want them to panic and give the ball away under pressure. Since I am playing with a high line, a bit of pace will not hurt. I am not really bothered about PPMs for these guys. Just be aware of them, so you know what to expect from a player. Here are my current first team goalkeeper and defenders (Maguire and Schmeichel were already at the club).

We can stick with the defence, and look at fullbacks. They need to be good all round fullbacks. Stamina is very useful, because I want them shuttling up and down the flanks all game. They also need to be able to cross pretty well, because I am going to be asking them to cross the ball. The better they can cross, the more dangerous they will be. It goes without saying that decent defensive stats will always be useful for a defender. In addition, decent passing (they need to be able to link with the wide player in front of them and the midfield to recycle the ball due to “work ball into box”) and vision (spot a possible ball to play to split a defence) is good.

This covers pretty much any full back in the game, so there is not much special here. Here are the players I am currently using. They were both at the club when I took over, and I have not seen the need to replace them (and we have good rotation options too).

I will move on to the striker now. Mostly because it is again quite simple. I am looking for an archetypal DLF, or CF to play here. The attributes that go with that are obviously important. In addition, I find the PPMs “plays with back to goal” and “comes deep to get ball” are quite useful, given the description of how I will use the striker to create chances for others. He must be a creator as much as a finisher. As such, passing and vision are also very good attributes to have. For this reason, you could even convert an AMC to this role, if he is strong enough to hold the ball. He is almost like an advanced playmaker.

The current player I have here actually does not fit this mould…yet. He was someone my scouts found who looks to have incredible potential (and he was on a free). So I am playing the long game with him and hoping he gets better. His PPMs are perfectly suited to what I said above, but his passing and vision are not really good enough yet. Note I also broke my rule on teamwork for this guy. An important note, you can break your own guidelines if you think the player is worth it. Worst case scenario here is I sell him for a huge profit at some point.

The two wide players are next. Here we have to pay attention first to footedness. When I took over Leicester, their wide players were all right footed. So I will stick with that. It make sense for how I play. A right footed player cuts in from the left and a right footed player crosses from the right. This means I am simply not interested in left footed wingers right now, unless they can use both feet well. Another thing to pay attention to.

There is again nothing too special here, I am using these roles as the game describes them. So I use the game as a guide for what is good for each role. I like my IF to have good anticipation, dribbling, pace, vision, passing and finishing. A good long shot doesn’t hurt either. PPM wise cuts in from the left is useful  to have. And Flair is lovely. Never underestimate how good it can be to have a player do something unexpected. This is my IF, who I signed in my first full season specifically to play in this role. He is my leading scorer in my current season, with 19 goals (which means my ideas are working, by the way!).

The same goes for the winger, I use the game as a guide. Pace, dribbling, crossing, are important. Again, Flair is nice to have. There is not really that much to say about picking a good winger that people do not already know or is not already in the game. The player I have here was signed in my first full season too, and has turned out to be a steal. He is not an ideal player (and I have a youngster I am grooming who I will talk about later to take over), but he has been spectacular at times. One thing I do want to point out is that his combination of flair and long shots lead to some of the most insanely wonderful goals where he cuts in off the right after some sublime bit of skill. Do not underestimate how nice it can be to have a player do something unexpected. He is also two footed, which is always nice.

So, we now get to the really interesting part for me. My midfield. The midfield is utterly critical to everything I do, and I do not always want to stick to the default attributes the game says are important here.

Firstly, I would prefer all my midfielders to be decent tacklers. Or at worse not absolutely awful in defence. I need them to be able to break up play, and all of them to be good at this. I do not have room for luxury players in my squad – I would not play an Ozil type player, for example. Let’s now look at each position one by one and see where I depart from standard ideas of attributes.

The DMC is probably the most important but least appreciated (definitely by rating) members of my squad. He has to be a dual function player. Firstly, he is there to shield the defence, break up counters, make tackles, etc. So he need to be a good DM(S) or DM(D). Secondly, he is my pivot. I use him to move attacks from left to right, and act as someone who is always free for a pass, and then to give it on to someone else. He does not need to do fancy things, but he needs to also act like an auxiliary DLP. So he needs to be a really good all round player. You can get away with a regular DM, but the dynamism of the tactic is aided so much by having a versatile player. Here is the guy I play. Another new signing specifically bought for this role. He even has the “tries killer balls” PPM, which will make him act like a play maker more often. He is exactly what I want.

The DLP in midfield is kinda the opposite to the DMC. I want him to be primarily a playmaker who can also defend very well. I basically want the same player as I have for the DMC role, but I put more weight on passing, vision, etc. when picking this player. I want the DLP and DM to basically be interchangeable. This is again critical to making my midfield work. I have selected a DM(S) and DLP(S), but they are performing very similar roles in my tactic. Again, I could playmaker here who is not good at defending, but I feel my team would suffer defensively. I was lucky enough to take over Leicester not long after they had bought Tonali, so I had a readymade player in this position.

Finally, the CM(A). He is my favourite player actually. Think about what I want him to do. He needs to act like a SS sometimes (get beyond the striker and score), an AP other times (get the ball in the AM strata and create chances for others. He needs to be able to press. He needs to be able to defend. I am asking a huge amount from this player. There are not many players who will be able to do all this, so you may have to prioritize. I usually make defending less important as he is the most advanced of the midfield, and his main job is to create and score.

So what attributes do I want? Well, to start he needs good finishing, off the ball, passing, vision, decisions, first touch. Which is probably not even an exhaustive list. The PPM “gets forward whenever possible” is great here. So is “plays one-twos” which encourages nice interactions with the striker. These players are hard to come by. I actually tend to try to convert AMCs or even strikers to this role. I also prioritize scoring over creating over defending when looking at attributes. I used Maddison in this role (already at the club), or Hojbjerg (who was signed for pittance from Southampton because they did not think he was good enough). Again, you can see how his attributes fit the mould of the player I need perfectly.

Conclusions

There you are. I am not sure this will be as clear as previous posts, because I have gotten very good at unconsciously picking players after doing it for several years. This means it can be difficult to articulate exactly what I look for. The point I want to get across is that you have to think about what the players need to do in your tactic. Not just what attributes the roles you select require. For me, this is most important in the midfield, where I want to have lots of versatility. Feel free to ask about things here, so I can try to explain things that are not so clear!

In the next post, I want to expand on how I manage my squad. This will move away from the tactical side of things to discuss how to build for long term success (hopefully) and stability.

[baggi0]

Great topic, with your choices very well explained. The trick is to keep it simple, which is easy and hard at the same time. Looking forward to your following post.

[ericstpeter]

Love this.

[sporadicsmiles]

On 22/04/2019 at 08:36, baggi0 said:

Great topic, with your choices very well explained. The trick is to keep it simple, which is easy and hard at the same time. Looking forward to your following post.

Thanks! I find it is easy to keep things simple, it is just hard to do it in the face of what feels like overwhelming complexity. I am a scientist, and when we have complexity (which is all the time) we try to break it down in manageable simpler problems that we can understand individually and then put together to understand the whole. That is pretty much what I have been doing here. I think also just having a plan helps.

[sporadicsmiles]

 

“Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

More Sun Tzu to start this post. This one is slightly over dramatic I think, but it serves my purpose to make my first point. This post is going to deal with how I handle my players, and in particular their contracts, and how/when I will make transfer offers. This deals with several issues I see cropping up on the board time and again. Unhappy players. Low transfer offers. Unable to sign the players you want. I will try to show you how I attempt to avoid each of these pitfalls. A word of warning. This is a text heavy, picture light post.

All of this eventually comes back to my philosophy as well. I want to build a well-run club. I want them to be able to continue their success for some time after I am gone (until an AI manager dismantles everything I created). I want every player to improve while at my club. To leave a better player. This is as fundamental to me as how I play football games. FM is a total package for me. I want to win matches, and I want to be at a well-run club. The two go hand-in-hand. I also want to make sure I always have the players available to me to achieve what I want. Let’s start with this, then. There is little point talking about my players until I tell you who these players should be.

Building my first team.

Squad building is one of the fundamental things in FM you should master. That does not just mean buying the very best players – although that is a part of it. It is about having the right players. The right number of players in each position. With the correct expectation of their playing time. So first I will talk about the composition of my squad.

Goalkeepers. I will typically keep a single first choice ‘keeper who plays the majority of my games. The only time I rotate the goalkeeper is when I am in a transition season between an old first choice and a new, young player coming through. I also have one back up. This can be either a regular backup ‘keeper, who can be as good or crap as you like. I prefer to have a younger player though, who I can groom to replace a current player in the future.

Right/Left backs. I want 4 players in these positions. Each needs to follow the rules I gave in the last post. Since my full backs get through an awful lot of work, I do rotate here. That means I really need to have 4 players who are able to start at any given game. You can of course have a first choice, but the backup needs to be good.

Center backs. I do not rotate CBs more than I have to due to fatigue or injury. I like a solid partnership to develop. I am old-fashioned that way. So I will always have to first choice CBs who play most games. The backup here will have to be good enough to step in when required, but he can be a bit worse than the main players. The better he is, the more he will have to play (this is a general rule to remember) to stay happy. I also typically have one younger CB who can play the odd game. If he is good enough, he can move to number 3 CB over time.

Striker. Sorry, orderly progression of positions disrupted. As always, my central midfield is the most complex area of my team. I play with a single striker, so I will typically have two main strikers. One may be first choice, or you can freely rotate them. Depends on the players I have. I also keep a young backup incase of an injury crisis and to get some experience. If he impresses, he can move up in the rankings.

Wide players. This is like fullbacks but with an extra caveat. They have to be all right (or left, it does not matter so long as they are all the same) footed, or very good with both feet. I rotate these positions a lot, because they also get through a lot of work. So all should be able to start.

Midfield. Well, I discussed last post how my midfielders need to be somewhat interchangeable. I have 3 midfield slots, and typically have 6 players who can play there. These players will also see a fair bit of rotation (they get tired a lot), so I need 6 good players, but you can sneak by with 5. Typically the backup for DM will also be able to be a backup for the DLP. The backup for CM(A) can likely also play as a DLP (if you are lucky). So I can rotate 2/3 players in all situations. You can always have a like-for-like replacement too.

So how many players do I have in my first team? I have mentioned 23 players, including the younger players. This gives me a lot of wiggle room to include additional players, or deal with home grown registration issues. I honestly do not think you need much more than 23 players in a first team squad.

Player priority and the 18 month rule.

How do I go about managing this squad of players? For me, there are 4 different types of players. Key players, rotation options, emergency backups, and youngsters. I treat each of these very differently, as you will see. What is the 18 month rule I mention here? This is my own personal rule for handling contracts and transfers. I do everything on a sliding 18 month basis. What that means is I know exactly what I expect my squad to look like in a year and half. Always. I plan my contracts around this, I plan my scouting around this, my shortlists, my transfer offers. I will explain how I apply this to my players.

Key players are exactly what they sound like. They are the best players in my team, who will start most matches and who I really do not want to lose. Aside from playing a lot, and being great, they get long contracts. As long as possible. I want them at my club long term. So get them tied down, and keep them tied down. I try to keep them on contracts of at least 3 years. This makes them a lot more expensive to buy, so either you get no offers, or very big ones. It also means if a player gets unsettled, you never have to worry about them running out of contract. Only when they start to approach the end of the careers to I keep these players on shorter contracts.

Rotation players are again exactly what they sound like. They are the players who are not first choice, but can do a job. These guys are fluid. There are a bunch of rotation options at every level. So you can almost certainly replace these guys. If you think you cannot, they are key players already. Treat them like it. Contractually, this means I will assess them every 6 months to see if I want them in my next 18 month plan. Can I get someone better? Has a youngster taken their place? I rarely have them on contracts longer than 3 years. I want to be able to get rid of them easily when the time comes. Bids for these players are always negotiable and a fair price is always accepted.

Backup players are for emergency cover, for mentoring, or for influence. I am loyal when I play, so older club legends usually end up here. They do not get to play a lot unless there is an injury crisis. They are never on contracts longer than 2 years, because if I want to get rid of them I can do so easier. Transfer offers will almost always be accepted for these guys.

Youngsters are again obvious. You can break it down further into players who may one day play for the first team, and players who will not. Players who I think can play for the first team will get long contracts and first team exposure as much as possible. Players who will not get short contracts that end when they are between 18 and 20. At that point, we release them to the wider world and wish them the best. If I am really not sure, I will offer players short contract extensions.

Conclusion

There are two things to take away from this. The first is that you should plan for how your team will look at some point in the future. For me it is 18 months. Plan your contracts around this. Offer them ahead of time for players you really want to keep. Do not have backups on long contracts so you cannot ditch them easily. There is a whole element to planning transfers around this too, but this post will already be long, so I will save that for another time.

The second thing to take away is that if your player does not fit into this scheme, you do not need them. If you have a player who is good enough to be a first team player, but you want to use him as a backup, sell them. If you have a rotation option you do not trust to play, sell them. I will try to make all my players better footballers, but they have to give something back in return. I think a lot of people have problems with happiness because they do not follow this rule of thumb. I very rarely get issues with player unhappiness.

Again, this is a long post full of my rambling ideas. I think that properly assembling a squad is absolutely critical to success though. As much as designing a tactic is.

[Frostberg]

On 19/04/2019 at 22:43, sporadicsmiles said:

Opposition instructions.

Finally, a word about opposition instructions. I get the feeling these are not very popular here. Indeed, I remember reading one of the people here (I forget who) saying that OIs are for people who do not know what their tactic is doing. I am going to make a counter argument for this, based on creating pressing zones.

Currently, in the game, you cannot create zones of the pitch where you press, and others where you do not. I try to mimic this with opposition instructions, targeting specific positions. This means that my team will close down players in specific areas of the field. Which is quite nice.

Great input. Like your postings a lot. But one question: Are OIs really the only way to let your tactic work? I play FM Touch, because no time for the full experience at the moment. With Touch It is not possible to save OIs for special positions. So I think there is no way to try out your ideas for my own tactic.

[sporadicsmiles]

5 minutes ago, Frostberg said:

Great input. Like your postings a lot. But one question: Are OIs really the only way to let your tactic work? I play FM Touch, because no time for the full experience at the moment. With Touch It is not possible to save OIs for special positions. So I think there is no way to try out your ideas for my own tactic.

Almost certainly not. I do not think many people actually use OIs like this (or they do not post about it) and are able to achieve similar things. I use OIs because it seemed like the obvious way to create zones where we press and zones where we don't. I started to do this before the concept of line of engagement, so it was harder to define when and where to press. I think you could achieve very similar effects using player instructions for closing down. They way I have presented it, I actually look at a global picture for closing down. I do not necessarily tell certain players to close down, but trust that they will not do anything too stupid from my instructions. You can approach it from the polar opposite, and focus on exactly how you want specific players to press. Players are still more likely to close down the players around them; my striker will rarely find himself in the position to close down a left winger for example. So individual instructions will be able to replicate this. I just find them a little bit too unspecific, but that is personal.

The most important thing is to have an idea of what you want the players to do when they press (this is pretty much true always, know what players should do and it is so much easier to set them up). If you look at my OIs, you can see that I want my front three to be closing down like demons (everyone in their area is closed down more in the OIs). They harry the defense to force mistakes/aimless clearances. I want this because I like how Klopp's teams look when they do this. I want my midfield to close down less, but I do want them to try to stop the other team having too much time on the ball. They have to balance closing down and holding shape. I'd actually have the CM(A) closing down more than the DLP(S) actually, since he should be further forward when we lose the ball typically. So very high pressing for forwards, high pressing for the CM(A) would be where I would start. You can adapt this for any tactic really, just think what each player should be doing and add the corresponding instruction. And do not forget to check they are doing what you want!

[Cleon]

This is probably one of the best threads I've read on here. 

[Riziger]

Loving this. Your tactic/philosophy is already very similar to how I like to play (no surprise that I'm loving life under Klopp). Your post on squad building definitely has got me thinking. Especially how you deal with contracts. Might do a bit of a clear out after this season. I definitely hang on to players a bit too long hoping to sell them for bigger fees if/when they grow even if I don't quite trust them. Having a tough brexit definitely also doesn't help, with a few English fellas in my squad who are the 'best of the rest' in England for their position.

[sporadicsmiles]

8 hours ago, Cleon said:

This is probably one of the best threads I've read on here. 

Cheers . It is something I have been meaning to do for a long time now. 

4 hours ago, Riziger said:

Loving this. Your tactic/philosophy is already very similar to how I like to play (no surprise that I'm loving life under Klopp). Your post on squad building definitely has got me thinking. Especially how you deal with contracts. Might do a bit of a clear out after this season. I definitely hang on to players a bit too long hoping to sell them for bigger fees if/when they grow even if I don't quite trust them. Having a tough brexit definitely also doesn't help, with a few English fellas in my squad who are the 'best of the rest' in England for their position.

Klopp plays nice football, I really like to watch it. Which is interesting coming from a family of Manchester United fans (I am a Huddersfield fan, so right now I would settle for seeing football). The way I see things, tactics will help me win matches and do as well as I should. Squad building is what will bring me long term success. Whether that is progress up the table, or sustained winning of trophies. I really think that squad building is one of those aspects that is super important but does not get as much coverage as tactics (or they are folded together). I mean, that makes sense, it is a tactical forum. Tactics should and do dominate the discussion. I am about to actually start my summer transfer process in my save this evening, so I will talk about this in the next post, and be able to actually use current examples of what I will try to do.  

[Robson 07]

Lots and lots of practical advice and good sense in here @sporadicsmiles.  Nicely laid out fella, good job.

[poma]

- How did you setup "pressing" for the front three, IF-A, W-S and DLF-S and the CM-A?

- You don't use any other Pi's?

 

Cheers

Edited April 27, 2019 by poma

[TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos]

Just came across this and read from start to finish, thanks for an enjoyable read @sporadicsmiles. It was almost as though I was reading a write up of my own FM style! These, along with real life tactical replications, are among my favourite topics on here.

On 20/04/2019 at 12:13, sporadicsmiles said:

I want the DLP and DM to basically be interchangeable. This is again critical to making my midfield work.

This again is very much my style. In most cases I play the same shape to you and see the midfield trio as key to how the tactic works. In my recent save (taking over a bottom of the table Wolves in December) I have created a very reliable and interchangeable midfield as shown (with the exception of Coady who is one of my two first choice CBs)

Van de Beek and Bazoer brought in for 20 million, and 4.8 million respectively. The rest already at the club. Like you I'm never keen on big transfers and big wages, but van de Beek is pretty much my vision of a perfect midfielder so was worth the 20 million fee.

One question I have though. Whilst my CMa is also my favourite role and set in stone, (young Gibbs-White is a demon here!) I sometimes struggle with the guy beside him. Like you I primarily play with a DLPs, but sometimes feel the (lack of) movement of the role stifles play a bit. Have you tried any other role in that position with any success? I tried both CMs and BBM but wasn't convinced either offered more than the DLPs. Similar with the DM strata, have you tried any other roles? Occasionally, with relative success, I have tried a HB in there when coming up against two strikers to offer my two CBs an extra man. 

Again, thanks for an enjoyable read and look forward to any more updates

[sovy666]

Hi @sporadicsmiles, I wanted to thank you for the interesting reading that you proposed on this forum that pushed me to create a system for my beloved Juventus and that allowed me to exceed expectations with respect to reality, in fact I reached the semifinals of Champion's, won the Italian Cup and the Serie A without ever changing anything throughout the season and often clicking on Instant result (I'm on FM Touch and therefore also nothing OI). It's based on the 4-4-2 because Juve defends like that and also because it's my favorite shape.  I wanted to show it to you and the community to know what you think about it and if you would change something or if you have any suggestions on how to improve it. The TI is the same as yours, on the other hand I was already playing with the preset style Gegenpress and this is a simplified version or if you want purified. The PIs are close down more for wings and forwards.

 

 

[sporadicsmiles]

6 hours ago, poma said:

- How did you setup "pressing" for the front three, IF-A, W-S and DLF-S and the CM-A?

 

I use the OIs for my pressing. If I feel that the players are not getting enough pressure in a particular match, I will ask them to close down more. 

6 hours ago, poma said:

 - You don't use any other Pi's?

 

Not any fixed ones, no. There will be times when I think "damned, we need more bite in midfield" so make them tackle harder. But I do not have any I use religiously. 

 

5 hours ago, TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos said:

Van de Beek and Bazoer brought in for 20 million, and 4.8 million respectively. The rest already at the club. Like you I'm never keen on big transfers and big wages, but van de Beek is pretty much my vision of a perfect midfielder so was worth the 20 million fee.

 

I would not have bought Bazoer though, he does not fit my criteria for determination. I would never have even seen him on my scout reports! I like your midfield though. It is so versatile. Everyone can do a bit of everything. 

5 hours ago, TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos said:

One question I have though. Whilst my CMa is also my favourite role and set in stone, (young Gibbs-White is a demon here!) I sometimes struggle with the guy beside him. Like you I primarily play with a DLPs, but sometimes feel the (lack of) movement of the role stifles play a bit.

I want my DLP to be quite static, though. He is part of a double (maybe 1.5) pivot at the base of my midfield. So I do not really play around with this much. All the movement in the centre of my formation comes from the CM(A) and the DLF. There interaction is what I want to see. The DLP is more like the glue to keep it all together, and keep parts of my teams talking. I want him to be always there for a pass when we have hit a brick wall during an attack. Gibbs-White looks a lovely player too. I have a young regen about to come back from loan who is going to give me selection headaches for sure. 

4 hours ago, sovy666 said:

It's based on the 4-4-2 because Juve defends like that and also because it's my favorite shape.  I wanted to show it to you and the community to know what you think about it and if you would change something or if you have any suggestions on how to improve it.

If it based on what you like, and it is being successful, do not change anything! There isn't really a right way to do things. I think part of this thread is to show that you can build success from a simple set of your own ideas of how football should be played. I'm generally reluctant to give general advice, because I would just end up telling everyone to play like me. I can tell you what I like though. 442 with two attacking wingers, you have chosen to close down with that front four. They will be high up the pitch, and I imagine that can cause all kinds of issues for the opposition. 

[TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos]

53 minutes ago, sporadicsmiles said:

I would not have bought Bazoer though, he does not fit my criteria for determination

Ah the exact same dilemma I had when buying him! But due to his ability to play any of the midfield roles, a host of other very desirable attributes, and the fact he was less than 5 million was enough to see past the lack of determination. Like you I also aim to see a player leave the club a better player than when he came. And despite the determination factor, I reckon this guy will be a far more complete player in a couple of years time. 

1 hour ago, sporadicsmiles said:

The DLP is more like the glue to keep it all together, and keep parts of my teams talking.

I like this way of looking at that role. I think I was expecting too much from this guy, hence trying out a more roaming sort of role. But the reality is there is plenty of movement ahead, and even more coming from the back in the shape of the full back. Sometimes less really is more in this game!

[sporadicsmiles]

43 minutes ago, TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos said:

Ah the exact same dilemma I had when buying him! But due to his ability to play any of the midfield roles, a host of other very desirable attributes, and the fact he was less than 5 million was enough to see past the lack of determination. Like you I also aim to see a player leave the club a better player than when he came. And despite the determination factor, I reckon this guy will be a far more complete player in a couple of years time. 

Rules are more like guidelines anyway! I break my rules all the time in various minor ways. Not very often the determination one, it has to be a really spectacular player. And preferably young enough that the team can have a positive influence on him.

 

44 minutes ago, TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos said:

I like this way of looking at that role. I think I was expecting too much from this guy, hence trying out a more roaming sort of role. But the reality is there is plenty of movement ahead, and even more coming from the back in the shape of the full back. Sometimes less really is more in this game!

Well, if you want him to roam more, I'd make the DMC the lone playmaking pivot to can be open for recycling the ball, and then play around with the newly liberated central midfielder. What role you would give him would entirely depend on what you wanted him to do, of course. That way you will retain most of the things already in place, but change up the dynamic enough to possibly generate something that looks and plays quite different. Since you also treat the DMC and DLP as interchangeable, it should actually not make a huge difference in principal. 

[TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos]

1 hour ago, sporadicsmiles said:

Rules are more like guidelines anyway! I break my rules all the time in various minor ways.

Same! I'm forever breaking my own rules. I had a Rangers save where I promised myself I wouldn't go over 30k a week wages... until my star man was wanted by half the european big dogs. Once I caved with him, they all wanted more! It's a slippery slope. 

On a serious note though, do you ever struggle against certain formations? The counter attacking, direct, long ball, Claudio Ranieri flat 442 has proven to be a nightmare for me. Any suggestions welcome

[sporadicsmiles]

4 hours ago, TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos said:

Same! I'm forever breaking my own rules.

They are "rules. I am currently writing up my next post where I will talk about breaking my transfer policy to buy John Stones. Because the chance was too good to turn down. While you can play with fixed rules, you should not unless you are making a challenge for yourself. 

 

4 hours ago, TheresOnlyTwoFilipSebos said:

On a serious note though, do you ever struggle against certain formations?

I cannot beat Zidane. At all. Ever. He usually absolutely batters me no matter what I try. I typically also would do poorly against teams with 2 DMCs if I do not mix things up. Those posts are coming soon  Where I talk about how I alter my approach to counter specific teams or managers. I actually plan to talk about how I owned Pochetino just by understanding what he was doing with his team. In my second season at Leicester, I played them 4 times (I think) and scored 4 goals in 3 of those games. I won them all. All of them in similar ways. 

I did not touch on this yet because I think this is a little bit more advanced. Spotting exactly how to counter something is hard. For me still. I mean, I get battered by Zidane every time I play his teams. I wanted to give general tips anyone can follow before I started to talk about how I deal with matches on a game by game basis. It is more complicated, because I think everything I spoke about so far applies generally. You can use the second post to set up any formation. But the way I counter specific teams is entirely based around my play style. And I find it hard to generalise this. 

[FlairRA]

On 24/04/2019 at 19:48, sporadicsmiles said:

Wide players. This is like fullbacks but with an extra caveat. They have to be all right (or left, it does not matter so long as they are all the same) footed, or very good with both feet. I rotate these positions a lot, because they also get through a lot of work. So all should be able to start.

Key players are exactly what they sound like. They are the best players in my team, who will start most matches and who I really do not want to lose. Aside from playing a lot, and being great, they get long contracts. As long as possible. I want them at my club long term. So get them tied down, and keep them tied down. I try to keep them on contracts of at least 3 years. This makes them a lot more expensive to buy, so either you get no offers, or very big ones. It also means if a player gets unsettled, you never have to worry about them running out of contract. Only when they start to approach the end of the careers to I keep these players on shorter contracts.

Rotation players are again exactly what they sound like. They are the players who are not first choice, but can do a job. These guys are fluid. There are a bunch of rotation options at every level. So you can almost certainly replace these guys. If you think you cannot, they are key players already. Treat them like it. Contractually, this means I will assess them every 6 months to see if I want them in my next 18 month plan. Can I get someone better? Has a youngster taken their place? I rarely have them on contracts longer than 3 years. I want to be able to get rid of them easily when the time comes. Bids for these players are always negotiable and a fair price is always accepted.

Really enjoyed these parts, I notice that squad status is a vital part in the organisation of a team. 

My main issue for myself is philosophy however. I typically want to stay strong defensively, conceding as little as possible, but when I start playing I often ramp up the mentality in order to gain goals. This is due to either going down to wondergoals/flukes that can occur when you defend deep, or I'm only 1-0 up and want to consolidate my lead. It's difficult to maximize the potential of one aspect (defending) without compromising the advantages of another (attacking). How did you go about this?  

I've also been wondering about the Zidane approach, taking previously imbalanced yet world class footballers and fitting them into a dangerous, record breaking team. Any ideas?

Edited April 28, 2019 by FlairRA
Spacing

[sporadicsmiles]

5 hours ago, FlairRA said:

My main issue for myself is philosophy however. I typically want to stay strong defensively, conceding as little as possible, but when I start playing I often ramp up the mentality in order to gain goals.

I had the 3rd best defence in the league in my last season. And the 3rd best attack for that matter. I think a solid defence does not necessarily mean a defensive approach. I would not classify my approach as defensive, but we are still good defensively. Typically, unless I have terrible defenders, I do not concede many goals. Ramping up the mentality does not mean you will concede more (or score more). Everything is interlinked. 

In terms of how I avoid this, I try to play a positive game. My defending starts from the front with the pressing. I try to give teams less time on the ball so they cannot build from the back. Pressuring these players also means they cannot easily take advantage while your team gets back into position. I also do play more conservatively when playing bigger sides. This does not mean lowering mentality though (although sometimes I do). I will usually take off counter press, so players fall back into their positions faster. If I am being more defensive, I will try to be more direct too. Usually, making a DLF(A) so I have an outlet. I will be doing some posts over the next week about countering teams or changes I make in games, so maybe this will help make it clearer exactly how the team plays. I have not really touched on it yet. I will analyse matches, and may put pkms on here too so people can watch as they wish.

6 hours ago, FlairRA said:

I've also been wondering about the Zidane approach, taking previously imbalanced yet world class footballers and fitting them into a dangerous, record breaking team. Any ideas?

It goes against how I usually play, so I did not think much about this. It would entirely depend on the players you had. What I would was assess the players I had, find what they were best at, and try to design something where I could maximise their potential. It is a bit of a hand-wavy answer, I know. If you take the second post, instead of working with a blank slate to start, I would have some positions where I knew what the players would have to do. Then I would design the other roles to best fit around them. 

[sporadicsmiles]

I do not really have a clever quote to open this one. I do not think Sun Tzu had to deal with football transfers in his life. That is okay though, because transfers are a direct extension of my squad management. They are intimately linked. I keep to my 18 month rule, and I go into every transfer window knowing exactly what I need.

Just a note about how I deal with the summer and winter windows. Summer transfer windows are where I try to sign all the players I need to keep the squad balance the way I want it. All my main signings are done in this window. It gives me preseason to bed them in as well. In the winter transfer window, I will either sign nobody, or I will keep my eye open for young players who I can bring in. The only exception is when the first window you have at a club is the winter window. They I will try to fix the squad the best I can.

Knowing exactly what I need to do in a transfer window.

Here is a picture of my current first team squad (conveniently with ratings from the last season). By the way, I love how almost every single first team player has an assist or a goal in the previous season. This gives you an immediate idea of how I trust my squad to play. Of the players I know I will keep, only Murillo and Josias have less than 10 games started. Murillo is a young prospect in a competitive midfield, so his games were all about experience. Josias arrived in January so only had half a season, and needed to be settled into the squad. He is also a young prospect who will eventually inherit the right wing.

You will notice I have highlighted some players. Those in red are players I know will be leaving. Evans and Vardy are retiring. Benkovic is unhappy with his playing time, and his contract is expiring. I do not need him, so he can leave. Actually, he was in my plans, but last summer Stones was available for 17.5 million, and this was too good a chance to pass up. More on that later. These are players I will need to replace. I definitely need to sign a backup defender. A young striker would also be nice. Finally, Bereszcnski and Doherty are approaching 30, so if I can find a young right back good enough to play, I will look to bring him in and possibly sell one of these players.

The players in orange are those who either will be phased out this season, or who I really can afford to lose. Schmeichel is 35 now, and probably does not have that much time left. I have a really capable backup (Garcia) who will be transitioned into the first team this season. This is part of the 18 month plan. Pearson just is not as good as the other players in my team. I keep him because he is English, and helps with registration rules. However, as I will discuss later, I have a midfield pileup problem incoming, so he probably needs to move on.

So my transfer window is very simple. I know exactly what I need going in. I will not be scrambling around at the end looking for players. I plan to get the main business done early.

Identifying Players. Using the shortlist.

I typically operate two shortlists. One is the general shortlist. Here players I am interested in from scout reports get added. They are not necessarily immediate targets, but they are players to keep an eye on for the future. I curate this list a few times a year to weed out players who I probably am not going to sign ever (either they moved to a big club, got too good for me, did not develop well). Here is a snapshot of this list right now. I have several positions covered, so I always have targets.

The second shortlist is my transfer window shortlist. This is for the players I am seriously considering signing in the current window. This allows me to focus myself on those players. I will typically add way more players than I will sign, to keep my options open.

Here is my current shortlist. There is actually a player missing who I did sign. You can see it has CBs, DR and a striker. On this list I do not expect to be able to sign the two players from Real Madrid. They are wonderful young players. I put them here just to test the waters about a possible move. The RBs are also not really urgent yet. I will test the waters here, see what I can do. Carson is a player I have had my eyes on for two years now. Watford were relegated, so I am going to try to unsettle him to see if I can get his as a replacement to Vardy.

Using the transfer list.

While I like to plan ahead, you cannot always do this. I will always keep a close eye on the transfer list. You never know who will be listed. As I mentioned above, last season when John Stones was listed, I was not looking for a CB. It was such a good deal though (17.5 million for an international defender who is home grown in nation) that I snapped him up immediately. Do not be afraid to change you plans and sign a player who is too good to turn down. Even if it messes with the long term plan, signing Stones was absolutely the correct thing to do.

Picking the CB to sign.

Since I just did this, I can show you an example. I had two players I was keeping my eye on for CB as a backup. One is Mepham, who played for Watford and is listed after relegation. He is young, an international, and has decent stats.

The over id Hoedt (who you can see I signed). He was a player I looked at last season too, but decided against buying because I did not need him. He moved to Liverpool, never played, and was listed by them. He is slightly older, but again has excellent stats to be a solid backup or rotation option in my defence.

Why did I end up choosing Hoedt? It was actually mostly a wage issue. I made offers for both, and decided to see who I preferred. Mepham wanted 92k per week, which is too much for a backup player who will start 4^th choice on the depth chart. Hoedt I could sign on 51k, and managed to get Liverpool to pay 10k wages too. He was also much cheaper (10 million versus 22 million). Simple thought process again. I did this right at the start of the window. My defence is optimal again.

The midfield crisis of the future.

Just to show you that even the best planning can go awry, I will soon have an issue in my midfield. I currently have 7 players in my midfield. Which is already one more than optimal, although Pearson is entirely a backup. The problem comes in the form of another player I signed last season.

This kid is awesome. He will be perfect for the CM(A). I signed him for 2.3 million from Sheffield United, and loaned him back for the season. I did this partly because they forced it on me, and partly because he needed significant playing time. He is back from loan, which makes 8 midfielders. Too many. However, I am happy with my midfield, and there is nobody I immediately would cut from the first team picture. I could loan this guy out again, but he is good enough to start games for me this year. As a hot prospect, I can get away with it this season, but if he gets better I will have to decide how I am going to rebalance my squad. I have not decided how I will deal with this. I fear Hojbjerg may lose out.

Unsettling players to make them easier to sign.

This is something I will touch upon, because I see many threads where people are irritated by the AI doing this, but do not try to do it themselves. You want to sign a player but the club is not interesting in selling? What do you do? I have this situation with Carson.

Great young English striker. Perfect as a replacement for Vardy. Especially the English part, as you will see my side has a South American flavour at the moment, and eventually I will hit registration problems. Watford do not want to sell, and right now he does not want to leave. What I do is make sure to declare interest, to scout the player often, and to make a crappy transfer bid that I know will be rejected. All of these are to try to force the “player wants to leave” conversation. Unsettle him, making him unhappy, make him ask to leave, and bam. The player is available and may be cheaper.

The AI does this all the time to your players. You should also do it to them. It does not always work, I have to say. I did not have success with Carson yet. It is not urgent, however, because I have backup for the striker position anyway. I will keep working on him until I can turn his head. Or find another signing.

Conclusion

This is not really a ground breaking here. It is common sense, and I guess most people do similar things to this. The main point is that this is fundamentally linked to squad management. You should always go into a transfer window with a plan. Know what you team needs, and know which players you want to bring in. However, do not be afraid to jump on a player you see listed if they are too good to turn down. No point missing out because you were too rigid.

This will be the last post about squad management and building. I am going to get back to the tactical side of things next. I want to look at how I prepare for games against the AI? Scouting them, preparing for them, changing things to counter them. The mystical stuff that can be so baffling. Let’s see if I can explain that simply too.

[dokera]

@sporadicsmiles, could you uncover your approach how to grow youth and transfer/loan policy in relation to it?

[sporadicsmiles]

12 hours ago, dokera said:

@sporadicsmiles, could you uncover your approach how to grow youth and transfer/loan policy in relation to it?

I do not really do anything special with kids. I have not really tackled the new training module yet. It looks complicated and I need to try to understand it better at some point. Right now I leave it to my assistant and he does a great job. I make sure he is a similar coach to how I would be, and let him have free reign. I do set all individual training myself though. 

With young players, the things I proactively do is to give them as much game time as possible. Depends on the player how much. I usually have factored in young players to my long term plans, so their involvement is ramped up over time. Meaningless games are good for this. The league cup (or foreign equivalent). Games in the UCL if you make it out of the group early. Games at the end of the season if you have nothing left to play for. Also give them substitute appearances. Exposure to the first team has a strong positive influence on a player.

In terms of loans, there are only a few times when I use them. My young players who are probably never going to make the first team can be loaned at will. Typically from age 17-20 is when they will be loaned (once they are out of the U18 side. I will not loan out every player. Only if I think there is a reason. Either the player will never make it at my club and may as well go play somewhere else, or will benefit from the loan in terms of progression. As soon as a player is good enough to be involved in my first team, I do not send him on loan. I'd rather he played less games for me than a full season on loan. The exception being when there is no space for a player to rotate in and out of the squad. Goalkeeper, for instance, is not an easy place to rotate. Central midfield is currently another one for me at the moment.

In terms of transfers. If I can rely on my own youth system I will. I actually keep everyone around for as long as possible. Anyone who has a chance to be a decent backup is worth keeping as they are home grown. In terms of scouting players, I just let my scouts get on with it. I will give them assignments to look for youth in areas of the world where good youth tends to be found. This is why I have a bunch of south american kids in my current squad. Talented players from small teams should be signed always, if you can afford it and they get a work permit. They are almost always at a good price. From bigger clubs, it depends on the price. 

[sporadicsmiles]

I thought I would show you how it all this planning comes together to produce the results I want. I am currently managing Leicester, and the results I will show you are after 2.5 years in charge. I took over them midway through a season with them struggling bottom. I chose them over Newcastle, who were doing better in the league at the time, because I felt they had a much better balance to the squad to start. There was less work for me to do at the time. The players I had were also pretty well suited to what I wanted to do. There were two good strikers in the squad. Four quality wing backs. Morrison and Tonali in midfield when I arrived were absolutely perfect for the central midfield duo. I knew I would be able to take this squad to better things with a few signings.

Just a few words on the signings I made. I do not have the screenshots to show you the evolution of the squad from when I took over to now. I never planned to write this thread at the time. So I will do it from memory. In the first January I signed Hojbjerg to give me depth in midfield, and to provide me with the tools I needed there immediately to succeed. It was the weakest area by far. The first summer transfer window I sorted out the AMR and AML position. Here I did not have a lot of money to spend. So I brought in two relatively cheap players. Andre Horta came from the USA to play AML, and has been excellent. Otero came in from Watford, who had just been relegated. He was initially a stop gap, but has played his way into my long term plans. He has the habit of scoring absolute wonder goals in important matches when we really need something. That is absolutely invaluable. I also signed various young players my scouts had found to integrate into the team eventually.

The start of the third season, I signed Stones for 17.5 million, which is an absolute bargain. I did not need a CB at the time, but you do not turn down a chance like that. I had finished in the top four (never really challenged for the title seriously) so I could attract better players. I also signed another DMC who is more creative to complete my midfield (a regen who my scouts rated very highly). Joveljic came in to complete the AMRL complement of my side. I also signed a young right winger to eventually replace Otero, and because again my scouts rated him highly and I agreed. I already detailed my transfers for the third season above. At the same time, I sold players who I did not need or want.

The reason I talk about this is because it is just as important to the results I show you as is the tactical side. As I have said many times in this thread, tactics and squad building are linked. Inextricably. In each window I identified the area of my team I needed to improve, and did it. Now I am at the point where I do not need to make many signings in a transfer window to evolve the team. I am happy.

I will show the stats for the team, which was also in a post above (ignore the boxes now).

What do these tell us? Well, let us link this back to the second post. I had designed the tactic so that the left winger and the right CM would be in a position to score goals. That they are the top scorers over the season shows that this has worked. The striker has also contributed which is nice. Indeed, only one player in the first team rotation did not score a goal. This, to me, suggests that we are creating a lot of varied chances and are not over reliant on any one thing.

Looking at assists, we will see that my DLP (Tonali) and the CM(A) (Morrison) have the most. Both full backs have also contributed a lot. As has the right wing position. Link this back to the original post. I was trying to put the CM(A) into a position where he could score and create. He has clearly done this. I will note that Morrison takes free kicks and penalties, which inflate these statistics a little bit. Again note that assists come from all over the team. We are creating a lot of different types of chances.

So we can be pleased with what we are seeing. Am I actually seeing the type of goals I wanted and expected to see though? I actually watched back all the goals I scored this season and made a note of what caused them. I will not list all of them, just the most important. The main type of goal we scored was on the counter. I counted 10 goals which were counter attacking. This is partly expected since I do have “counter” set in my tactic, and I have a bunch of good fast players. My favourite goal of the year was a counter, against Manchester United.

18 goals resulted in crosses, either from L/RFB or from L/WR. This was something I expected and wanted to see from my tactic. We scored a bunch of goals from overloading one side of the pitch, leaving the over side with space, and finding the opposite winger or striker. I see what I wanted to see.

Most of the rest of the goals that did not come from dead ball situations were from the interactions between the DLP, CM(A) and DLF. This was the use of these players to create and exploit space. I did not see many goals from overlapping of the CM with the DLF, but 6 goals came directly from the CM exploiting the space the DLF left (for the CM I should say). There were 10 goals where the interaction of the DLP and CM(A) create space for a through ball to someone else in the side. Here is an example of the DLF and CM interacting to score a goal (a very important early goal on the last day of the season).

 

And you know how I noted Otero scoring when we really need him. Check out this monstrosity of a goal.

 

Note that this only takes into account the actual goals. Not the chances we create. I see similar trends when looking at chances. We average at least 10 shots per game, almost always good or decent quality. We could probably up the goals easily by having better players than I currently do. In particular my striker and LW blew hot and cold during the season. More consistency would give more goals. So there is definitely room for improvement, but hopefully that comes with success.

To conclude, following my formula definitely works for me. I planned my tactic, and got the players who can implement it. This lead to the attractive football I wanted to see, and results that exceeded my pre season objectives.

[>LJ<]

One of the best threads on here by a long stretch. Excellent and simple (in a good way) explanation of how and why you do things. Kudos to you sir. 

[BadAss88]

This really inspired me!

[Armistice]

Very nice read indeed man.

[sporadicsmiles]

Cheers for the feedback guys. I intend to post some more things as well, but it has been a rather busy couple of weeks which has limited my time. I want to touch on some of the specific changes I make during matches to get the most out of my players, and show you why I do it.

If there is anything else people would be interested in, and it is something I can expand on, feel free to let me know.

[Experienced Defender]

13 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

If there is anything else people would be interested in, and it is something I can expand on, feel free to let me know

For example, how do you handle pep talks in different situations, including pre-match, half-time and post-match? Or press conferences (unless you leave them to your assistant). Also if you possibly use quick shouts during matches.

[sporadicsmiles]

On 11/05/2019 at 02:06, Experienced Defender said:

For example, how do you handle pep talks in different situations, including pre-match, half-time and post-match? Or press conferences (unless you leave them to your assistant). Also if you possibly use quick shouts during matches.

Team talks and press conferences go together for me. They are both there to motivate players, to take off pressure (or add it), and to elicit the correct response from players. As such, it is entirely situational, and it quite difficult to assess every single scenario that may occur. I will try to give an idea of some of the things I do.

Firstly, I always do my own press conferences. I am not sure exactly how much they affect matches, but there is something to it. As I noted, press conferences are about motivation and taking away pressure. It can also be about taking criticism for the team, and giving out praise when it is due. Some questions I almost always do not answer because I do not know what to say. Usually I ignore direct questions about opposition players, why bother motivating them. I am usually neutral about other managers too. Either take the middle ground or say nothing. Do not give free motivation.  Same for the "who will win the league". Unless it is me, and I want to give the players a kick in the arse, I will ignore this question. 

Let's take a couple of examples in full. Firstly, imagine we are playing against a team we should easily beat. It is quite early in the season (i.e. there is no particular pressure on this match). The team has been performing well. How do I handle press conferences and team talks?

Well, in pre match press conferences I will try to praise the team to make them happy that they are playing well. I will keep my eye on their recent performances and body language. If there is no real sign of complacency I will make sure questions such as "any worry about complaceny" are dealt with by saying "no". Mostly because I do not. This is because I do not need to make them worry. If they are playing well, just let them get on with it. No need to make them get nervous about a game when they were not before. There is rarely need to add pressure to a game. On the flip side, if I have noticed some complacency in the side (either from performances - goals from players switching off - or from body language) I will be a bit more harsh. Tell the press I am concerned about complacency and the players need to be too. When we get to the pre match team talk, there are two options. If the team are playing well and won well last time, I use "go out and play like last time" or whatever the option is. Couple it to a "have faith" individual talks because it seems to make players happy if they respect you. If I want to guard against complacency, I will tell them I expect a win. This adds pressure, but I want that to fight complacency. I also often couple this to "have faith" (which is basically saying I expect you to win, but I have faith that you can). I use "expect a performance" for players who are particularly difficult to motivate (although I do not have many players like that now, because of how I built my side). I will deal with half time and full time team talks separately. For a post match press conference, same rules as the pre match. Praise players as appropriate. If I struggled to win a game we should have won, I will often criticise the team. Give them a bit of motivation going forward.

Now the opposite extreme. Let's take another game we expect to win, but this time at the end of the season. When we are fighting for a title. We need to win it. This is a very high pressure match. Pressure can be a good thing. Players who have the attribute to handle pressure will often step up for these matches (James Maddison was the player who did that for me at the end of my last season, he was immense). However most players will tend to be negatively affected by pressure. For big games (and the end of the season when fighting for something) press conferences and team talks are all about removing as much pressure as I can. In press conferences, this means avoiding predicting we will win, or that we are favourites. This is okay if you actually are, but if you are not you add a bucket load of pressure onto the players. I struggle for exact example right now, because I would to be in this kind of press conference. You get the idea though. Take the pressure off the team by deflecting questions as much as possible. For team talks, I do much the same. I am a lot less demanding of players in team talks. I avoid things like "do it for the fans" because that is adding pressure. I also avoid "no pressure" because that is clearly a lie. Say whatever you have found will motivate them. I typically will tell play their natural game. Or I have faith. I will almost always use "have faith" individual team talks. This kinda thing is more tricky, it took me a long time to work out how to do it, and it is dependent on the players you have. You have to learn how they will react to know what to say. I do not think there is a correct way that works always. I mean, if I had a team of players who enjoy big matches I might try to ratchet the pressure up, maybe it would work, I never tried but who knows.

There are a bunch of things in between. I cannot cover everything. The main idea is to use common sense, and think of the situation. Oh, and I love the "get revenge" thing, always seems to motivate players. I'm not sure the extent team talks affect matches anyway. 

Regarding half time team talks. These are of course situational. I am much harsher on my team winning only 1-0 at home to Nohope FC (aka Huddersfield, signed a sad Terrier) and playing poorly, than I am when losing 1-0 to RichAsFluff Rovers (aka all my rivals) away. The aim here is to motivate your players to do as best as possible in the second half. Only yell if they really, really deserved it. Like losing to Nohope FC! You can yell at the end, at half time you are motivating your players. A lot of the time if we are comfortable at half time I do not say a thing. If there is nothing to say, say nothing. I will only praise if we have just absolutely flattened a team and played beautifully. I think the last time I did that was when we came from 0-1 down away to Benfica to lead 3-1 at half time after some sensational play. 

Full time team talks are also situational, and you should take some care what you say. If your team has been on a poor run, and you finally scrape a win, be nice. Even if they were actually below what you expect, be nice. Moral and motivation will be gained. Conversely, a team who are in good form but scrape a win can be told they were crap if they were. Otherwise it is again common sense that follows from the situation of the match. I will give overall team talks based around the situation, and individual team talks to address player performances. If a player has done well, do not be afraid to give him a lot of praise. This can be very beneficial sometimes. Equally, do not be afraid to lay into a player who played badly. Also do not criticise too many players if you say "well done" or vice versa. This makes no sense, and upsets the players (which does make sense, "you were good guys, except you 7, you sucked" is not consistent). 

This is not as coherent as the other posts, mostly because I think it is less important so I spent less time thinking about it, but also because this is a huge subject area. As with everything else I have posted, know your players and how they react, and know the situation you are in. From there, common sense pretty much guides your hand fairly well.

[sporadicsmiles]

So here I will deal with how to read a game and make some specific changes. I will typically do this against teams that are better than me, because I can normally impose myself on teams who are worse. I use this example because it was a recent game, and things worked well. Note that sometimes you are just going to get outplayed and will lose even if you make the correct changes. It could be the difference between losing 3-0 and 1-0 only. I am not able to make changes to win all the time. I doubt anyone can. You should not expect to. So use this as a way to see how I read the game.

So this is part 5 of an epic series of games I have played against Arsenal lately (part 6 is actually 2 games later). I think I played them perhaps 5 times in the last 10 games; once in the league, an FA cup semi final, the Champion’s League semi final, and the charity shield. I’m sick to the back teeth of them actually. They knocked me out of both cup competitions. I did get the win in the league, but it was lucky. I struggle against this Arsenal side, they are a bogey team. The advantage I have is that I have played them so much I know what they will do in advance, pretty much. I still will take things as they come.

So match day comes. I make two immediate changes to the way I play based on prior experience. One change is regarding the pressing. I drop the line of engagement to normal, and I stop counter pressing. Why? It is simple. Arsenal are good. Very good. They can play around my counter press and have attackers that can hurt me. I still want to pressure them, but not as much. I want my players to form a more compact defence, and press less immediately after we lose the ball. Dropping the line takes care of the former (my pressing line and defensive line are closer now, so we are more compact). No counter press takes care of the latter. I also put the right full back on defend. He has a CM(A) on his side, and I want to leave more defenders back to cover against the strong attack of Arsenal.

How does it play out? 6 minutes in and this happens.

This is clearly not good. They played around my reduced press (notice how players backed off into defensive positions before pressing, that is what I wanted). That does not bother me though, because we already slowed them down enough to get players into position. The problem is the striker. He gets the ball, performs a wonderful turn and skins both my defenders. This guy is quick. Very quick. Much quicker than my defenders (who are not slow, just slower). He is right in on goal, and probably should score. If I see this after 6 minutes, I will probably see this again. I have spotted a problem and need to fix it. How?

My idea was to just drop my defensive line back too. I really do not mind a ball coming in to their striker in that position. He is isolated without much support. It was the pace that did the damage here. So dropping my defence will mean they are in a much better position to deal with that next time. This is actually very effective, since I do not see anything like this happening again.

However, I did not think this through very well as it turns out. We are getting totally outplayed here. We actually did not have a shot in the first half (which is really a bad sign, but one I was used to against Arsenal). What was going on. I should have picked up on this a lot sooner, but I got this highlight eventually (not much actually was happening in the match, and this showed me why).

 

Here we are trying to play out of defence, and being pressed heavily. In itself this does not bother me. I have players who are calm on the ball. The problem is that we have dropped everyone too deep. We have no way out. The ball is endlessly recycled until we give it away. If we keep playing like that we will eventually make a mistake and Arsenal will get a chance. This is why I am having no shots, but also why Arsenal are doing nothing much either.

How to fix this conundrum? Again, it is simple, but I did a few things that you may not immediately think off. I need to stop this passing. The obvious way is to stop playing out of defence. Let’s remove that TI. However, that does not address how I am going to attack instead. If I just remove it, I probably will just lose the ball faster. I also do not want to discourage the press, because you can get good chances from counters if you beat it (see the above post with the goal against Man Utd).

So my plan was this. I still let the keeper pass the ball to either CBs or FBs. This means we are in control of our restarts (and I lack a strong aerial threat to win long balls anyway). However, now without the need to play from defence, they are freer to pick whatever forward pass is best. Then the more subtle change is to shift form a DLF(S) to DLF(A). The reasoning here is simple. On attack, the striker will in general be more advanced. He provides an outlet and will occupy the defence a bit more. This gives me an outlet that I can hopefully use to bring other players into play.

Does this all work? Actually, it all came together perfectly.

After zero shots in the first half (and a bit of a rollicking at half time), we have the better for the second half. 6 shots to 5. Arsenal never pose a goal threat again (they hit the post from a corner I think is all). They have 7 long shots out of 9 total shots. That is my deeper defence with less pressing working. We have 6 shots, only one long. Which means we are creating better chances than they are.

The winning goal was a think of beauty, where these changes I made did have an effect.

 

First, we just have to acknowledge that Maddison makes a perfect interception. That is not really part of my tactic, just the player being excellent. You can notice that my defence is extremely compact here. We are not giving any free space in or around the box. This is why Arsenal struggled to do anything meaningful with the ball. That was the plan I made with my defence.

After the interception, we see why the striker as a DLF(A) was a good idea. He was already forward, and in position to get the ball from the onrushing Maddison. This is exactly the sort of attacking outlet I needed. From there it is just another ascetically pleasing counter attacking goal (it reminds me of vintage Man Utd under Ferguson. We get a bit lucky with where the ball goes from the tackle, but you need luck sometimes. The DMC (Marcelo) does exactly what he is designed to do; plays a simple pass to a player in a better position. The cross from the LB is perfect. The back post is unmarked, goal for the right winger. I love goals like this.

Here are the stats.

You can see we were pretty even overall, although the first half was Arsenal’s while the second belonged to me. We defended particularly well, and it was a very pleasing victory against a side I hate playing.

I will note, however, that this was not the best example of me being tactically clever. I waited way too long to notice my problems, and hence too long to fix them. We could have been out of the game by then. So these kinda things are hard to do. I spotted the problems and made the correct changes, but I was still quite lucky here. So another message is do not take this post as me being some kind of tactical genius. That you should be able to do this every match. That I can do this every match (these 5 games with Arsenal are now played 5 won 2 lost 3, so I am clearly not doing that great all the time). Just being able to notice things and make positive changes is a good thing. Sometimes you will get a pleasing victory. Sometimes you are too late. Sometimes the other team is just too good. You cannot win them all, do not expect to.

[Experienced Defender]

5 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

Team talks and press conferences go together for me. They are both there to motivate players, to take off pressure (or add it), and to elicit the correct response from players. As such, it is entirely situational, and it quite difficult to assess every single scenario that may occur. I will try to give an idea of some of the things I do.

Firstly, I always do my own press conferences. I am not sure exactly how much they affect matches, but there is something to it. As I noted, press conferences are about motivation and taking away pressure. It can also be about taking criticism for the team, and giving out praise when it is due. Some questions I almost always do not answer because I do not know what to say. Usually I ignore direct questions about opposition players, why bother motivating them. I am usually neutral about other managers too. Either take the middle ground or say nothing. Do not give free motivation.  Same for the "who will win the league". Unless it is me, and I want to give the players a kick in the arse, I will ignore this question. 

Let's take a couple of examples in full. Firstly, imagine we are playing against a team we should easily beat. It is quite early in the season (i.e. there is no particular pressure on this match). The team has been performing well. How do I handle press conferences and team talks?

Well, in pre match press conferences I will try to praise the team to make them happy that they are playing well. I will keep my eye on their recent performances and body language. If there is no real sign of complacency I will make sure questions such as "any worry about complaceny" are dealt with by saying "no". Mostly because I do not. This is because I do not need to make them worry. If they are playing well, just let them get on with it. No need to make them get nervous about a game when they were not before. There is rarely need to add pressure to a game. On the flip side, if I have noticed some complacency in the side (either from performances - goals from players switching off - or from body language) I will be a bit more harsh. Tell the press I am concerned about complacency and the players need to be too. When we get to the pre match team talk, there are two options. If the team are playing well and won well last time, I use "go out and play like last time" or whatever the option is. Couple it to a "have faith" individual talks because it seems to make players happy if they respect you. If I want to guard against complacency, I will tell them I expect a win. This adds pressure, but I want that to fight complacency. I also often couple this to "have faith" (which is basically saying I expect you to win, but I have faith that you can). I use "expect a performance" for players who are particularly difficult to motivate (although I do not have many players like that now, because of how I built my side). I will deal with half time and full time team talks separately. For a post match press conference, same rules as the pre match. Praise players as appropriate. If I struggled to win a game we should have won, I will often criticise the team. Give them a bit of motivation going forward.

Now the opposite extreme. Let's take another game we expect to win, but this time at the end of the season. When we are fighting for a title. We need to win it. This is a very high pressure match. Pressure can be a good thing. Players who have the attribute to handle pressure will often step up for these matches (James Maddison was the player who did that for me at the end of my last season, he was immense). However most players will tend to be negatively affected by pressure. For big games (and the end of the season when fighting for something) press conferences and team talks are all about removing as much pressure as I can. In press conferences, this means avoiding predicting we will win, or that we are favourites. This is okay if you actually are, but if you are not you add a bucket load of pressure onto the players. I struggle for exact example right now, because I would to be in this kind of press conference. You get the idea though. Take the pressure off the team by deflecting questions as much as possible. For team talks, I do much the same. I am a lot less demanding of players in team talks. I avoid things like "do it for the fans" because that is adding pressure. I also avoid "no pressure" because that is clearly a lie. Say whatever you have found will motivate them. I typically will tell play their natural game. Or I have faith. I will almost always use "have faith" individual team talks. This kinda thing is more tricky, it took me a long time to work out how to do it, and it is dependent on the players you have. You have to learn how they will react to know what to say. I do not think there is a correct way that works always. I mean, if I had a team of players who enjoy big matches I might try to ratchet the pressure up, maybe it would work, I never tried but who knows.

There are a bunch of things in between. I cannot cover everything. The main idea is to use common sense, and think of the situation. Oh, and I love the "get revenge" thing, always seems to motivate players. I'm not sure the extent team talks affect matches anyway. 

Regarding half time team talks. These are of course situational. I am much harsher on my team winning only 1-0 at home to Nohope FC (aka Huddersfield, signed a sad Terrier) and playing poorly, than I am when losing 1-0 to RichAsFluff Rovers (aka all my rivals) away. The aim here is to motivate your players to do as best as possible in the second half. Only yell if they really, really deserved it. Like losing to Nohope FC! You can yell at the end, at half time you are motivating your players. A lot of the time if we are comfortable at half time I do not say a thing. If there is nothing to say, say nothing. I will only praise if we have just absolutely flattened a team and played beautifully. I think the last time I did that was when we came from 0-1 down away to Benfica to lead 3-1 at half time after some sensational play. 

Full time team talks are also situational, and you should take some care what you say. If your team has been on a poor run, and you finally scrape a win, be nice. Even if they were actually below what you expect, be nice. Moral and motivation will be gained. Conversely, a team who are in good form but scrape a win can be told they were crap if they were. Otherwise it is again common sense that follows from the situation of the match. I will give overall team talks based around the situation, and individual team talks to address player performances. If a player has done well, do not be afraid to give him a lot of praise. This can be very beneficial sometimes. Equally, do not be afraid to lay into a player who played badly. Also do not criticise too many players if you say "well done" or vice versa. This makes no sense, and upsets the players (which does make sense, "you were good guys, except you 7, you sucked" is not consistent). 

This is not as coherent as the other posts, mostly because I think it is less important so I spent less time thinking about it, but also because this is a huge subject area. As with everything else I have posted, know your players and how they react, and know the situation you are in. From there, common sense pretty much guides your hand fairly well.

Great! Thank you mate for such a detailed reply. I enjoyed reading and learning about the side of the game I am not the best at. Keep up the good work 

[warlock]

1 hour ago, Experienced Defender said:

I enjoyed reading and learning about the side of the game I am not the best at

Yeah, me too. I've never quite understood why so many FM players want to roleplay as some kind of psychopath - screaming, abusing their squad, always 'demanding more'. I've always had a great deal of success by just being 'normal': if they play well, I tell them they've played well; if they play badly, I tell them they played badly. And I do every press conference with one thought in mind: how are my players going to react to this?

[sporadicsmiles]

4 hours ago, warlock said:

I've never quite understood why so many FM players want to roleplay as some kind of psychopath

Or rather being confused when there is a dressing room mutiny, all the players want to leave and performances are crap. 

 

4 hours ago, warlock said:

how are my players going to react to this?

Exactly this. I respond in the way I think will get the most out of my players. Or create the least crap. Or not lead to a promise I cannot keep. I think the press conference side is useful and easy to get right, but you do need to think about it a little at times. 

[Hovis Dexter]

Do you give individual team talks to the individuals or the same talk to everybody? In the prematch talk I tend to select all the players and tell them that I have faith. At half time I tell any players with yellow cards to take it easy and then group select the rest and tell them to keep going or play better depending on the score. At full time I praise the best performers, castigate the worst, and explain substitutions. 

[Meneltin II]

Great stuff! The part on teamtalks is one of the best I've ever seen on that topic! I love how you explain your thoughts and actions in very clear and simple way. 

I try to play (and think) in a similar style, but tend to hastily click 'continue' just to get to the next match, until I hit a run of bad form and start to panic. Great posts to pause for a moment and reflect on my own game for a minute.

 

[sporadicsmiles]

1 hour ago, Hovis Dexter said:

Do you give individual team talks to the individuals or the same talk to everybody? In the prematch talk I tend to select all the players and tell them that I have faith. At half time I tell any players with yellow cards to take it easy and then group select the rest and tell them to keep going or play better depending on the score. At full time I praise the best performers, castigate the worst, and explain substitutions.  

At the start of the match I will give team talks broadly. So individual team talks are directed to the defensive/midfield/attacking units using the drop down tab. Usually I use "have faith" unless there is a good reason not to do so. At half time I only really give individual team talks to players who have really deserved it. Either for good or bad performances that stand out compared to the team. Full time I do broadly the same as you. Praise goes to players who stand out significantly above the others. Criticism when it is deserved, or when I think I can get some positive response from a player. I actually do tend to explain all substitutions to players. Either they did not play well enough, were being rested because we were in control, or as a precaution due to yellow card/injury. I do not know if this helps, it is just what I would want to happen if I were a player. It is one of those things that make sense to me on a very basic level of dealing with real people. I like to think it makes the players like me more, but I have no proof that is true. I should also note I will use warnings if a player has had a particularly poor match (less than 6.3). I am extremely harsh on players who get sent off too, I feel there is never an excuse for a straight red.

23 minutes ago, Meneltin II said:

Great stuff! The part on teamtalks is one of the best I've ever seen on that topic! I love how you explain your thoughts and actions in very clear and simple way. 

I try to play (and think) in a similar style, but tend to hastily click 'continue' just to get to the next match, until I hit a run of bad form and start to panic. Great posts to pause for a moment and reflect on my own game for a minute.

I'm glad it was useful. I think the game is quite simple if you think about what you are doing every now and then. Sometimes you can get away with being on autopilot, if things are going well. You just have to get used to spotting the signs that things are going awry. Spotting players who are falling out of form, or spotting complacency and nipping it in the bud before it becomes a big issue, for instance. You do not need to devote your entire attention (I rarely play FM and nothing else), but you have to keep aware of what is going on. That and keeping expectations in check, which is another major cause of frustration I think. Losing games you probably should lose, but expected to win really sucks.

I actually approach FM in much the same way I approach strategy games. I have been playing a lot of Total War (Attila) lately and the same things apply. I plan ahead so my nation is in a good place a few turns down the line. I plan my armies to do what I am good at in a battle, but pause and think before a tough battle. I look ahead for buildings with a long term plan for them. FM is a sports strategy game where you conquer the footballing world.

[Lira95]

That's a very inspiring thread. Do you intend to post more updates?

[sporadicsmiles]

On 26/08/2019 at 19:31, Lira95 said:

That's a very inspiring thread. Do you intend to post more updates?

I'm not really sure there is much more I can say about how I play, beyond starting a career thread so people can follow everything I do. And I am not sure I have the time to do that properly. I have been working recently on using counter attacking with a promoted side to overachieve, which I covered briefly here but have expanded on. I can always write a post about that if people are interested. And I have just moved clubs in my current save, and I am having to deal with a whole bunch of unhappy players and a horrible unbalanced and bloated squad. Which also could be interesting once I have managed to fix it!

[ClaudeJ]

4 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

(...) I have been working recently on using counter attacking with a promoted side to overachieve, which I covered briefly here but have expanded on. I can always write a post about that if people are interested. (...)

I am for one, please do it.
I'm in a similar situation and to read about how you do manage such a case would be very instructive I reckon.

[sporadicsmiles]

23 hours ago, ClaudeJ said:

I am for one, please do it.

I may make a separate thread out of it though, rather than post here. I have been thinking about it but I just need the time to do a proper write up.

[loisvale]

On 03/09/2019 at 10:41, sporadicsmiles said:

I may make a separate thread out of it though, rather than post here. I have been thinking about it but I just need the time to do a proper write up.

Is this still in the pipeline?

[sporadicsmiles]

12 hours ago, loisvale said:

Is this still in the pipeline?

It is, but I have very little time to do a proper write up of this at the moment.

[loisvale]

13 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

It is, but I have very little time to do a proper write up of this at the moment.

No worries. Look forward to it if you manage it. Thanks. 

[vrbrasa]

hi, how have you translade all this in the fm18?  

[sporadicsmiles]

On 27/09/2019 at 18:48, vrbrasa said:

hi, how have you translade all this in the fm18?  

This is all from FM19, and it will apply pretty much to any FM since it is deals with fundamentals.