"que des 10 dans ma team" - how to play with sh*tloads of playmakers ?

[Fflow]

I have an unfortunate tendancy to buy way too much creative players and I now find myslef with about 10 first team players who either thrive as DLP or as AP.

So my first idea was inspired from what Ancelotti did with Pirlo, Seedorf and Rui Costa/Kakà:

It worked quite well at first (6 wins on my first 6 games including a 2-0 win in San Paolo) but recently, I've been having a hard time scoring goals. I might have spotted the issue but I'm not quite sure how to adress it

As you can see on my team analysis, my mezzala and my AM tend to walk on each other's feet but surely, I need running players on either side of my DLP, don't I ? And as I have kind of the same problem with my carrillero and my shadow striken on the other side I really can't see how to avoid this

 

Ultimately I could play with an extra forward (F9 or DLF) instead of my SS but it didn't work very well and anyway, I think I'd rather have Terrier/Cherki running towards the opponent's GK rather than turning their back on him.

 

So here it is, has anyone tried Ancelotti's "christmas tree" 4-3-2-1 ?

Edited March 28, 2020 by Fflow

[Cruyffsheirs]

To void the "walking on each other" issue I'd say to swap your SS and AM(s). You would still have players in advance of your DLP and you'd create a sort of lopsided formation in attack. The MEZ could move into the space vacated by the SS, and the AM could work in a sort of pocket in between the lines with an overlapping wing back to his left and the attackers to his right.

For epic playmaker levels could even try something like this

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Cruyffsheirs

[Fflow]

Thanks!

I've thought about that but for me the logic was to have 1 player running into the box on each side (the SS and the MEZ) and one staying on the edge of the box. Simply put, an attack and a support duty on each half space. If I swap my AMCs, they might play a bit further apart on average but they will try the same kind of runs

I think I like your second idea better

[BMNJohn]

Because they are players who are technically and mentally good doesn't mean you have to play them as playmakers. If they're fast, you can very well play them as Wingers if you want. They'll pick better crosses than a moron who just hoofs it when he's stuck with his dribbling. I see it as an opportunity to have more options available to you since you have players that are intelligent. A player's "favourite position" is nothing but your AssMan's opinion of what the player should be played as... except that AssMans in FM are right about football about as often as a broken clock... if not less. Their opinion of where and how a player should or shouldn't play is generally irrelevant.

Edited March 28, 2020 by BMNJohn

[Fflow]

4 hours ago, BMNJohn said:

Because they are players who are technically and mentally good doesn't mean you have to play them as playmakers. If they're fast, you can very well play them as Wingers if you want. They'll pick better crosses than a moron who just hoofs it when he's stuck with his dribbling. I see it as an opportunity to have more options available to you since you have players that are intelligent.

Sure! Here's another formation I've been using:

Zaracho and Reine Adelaide make good wingers (even though the latter is rubish at crossing and scoring in any way)

4 hours ago, BMNJohn said:

A player's "favourite position" is nothing but your AssMan's opinion of what the player should be played as... except that AssMans in FM are right about football about as often as a broken clock... if not less. Their opinion of where and how a player should or shouldn't play is generally irrelevant.

Ok I didn't know that. These green circles going red are pretty ominous. Thanks about that

Does the quality of your assistant change anything about this fact ?

Edited March 29, 2020 by Fflow

[Experienced Defender]

7 hours ago, Fflow said:

The key problem here IMHO - besides terribly too many needless team instructions - is distribution - not selection - of roles and duties. Having said that, would you maybe consider a slight rearrangement. More precisely - this:

PO

AMsu     SS

CAR   DLPde   MEZsu

WBat    CDde   BPDde   WBsu

SKsu

However - as I already pointed out - instructions will still be a problem. Not only that you are using way too many, but a lot of them are contradictory (and ultimately confusing).

[Fflow]

1 hour ago, Experienced Defender said:

The key problem here IMHO - besides terribly too many needless team instructions - is distribution - not selection - of roles and duties. Having said that, would you maybe consider a slight rearrangement. More precisely - this:

PO

AMsu     SS

CAR   DLPde   MEZsu

WBat    CDde   BPDde   WBsu

SKsu

Had not thought of that. By "distribution", do you mean that 4 players with attacking duties is too much overall or that my midfield does not necessarly need one ?

1 hour ago, Experienced Defender said:

However - as I already pointed out - instructions will still be a problem. Not only that you are using way too many, but a lot of them are contradictory (and ultimately confusing).

Yes, as I told you in another topic, I don't really get team instructions

More precisely, I get which players will benefit frome instructions like "get stuck in" or "run at defense" but what I don't get is the influence it will have on your playing style. (ok, "get stuck in" is easy, it benefits an intense pressing). Same thing with creative freedom

And there are other instructions I just don't get. Why in hell would you not want your defenders to use tighter marking ?

Edited March 29, 2020 by Fflow

[Experienced Defender]

16 minutes ago, Fflow said:

By "distribution", do you mean that 4 players with attacking duties is too much overall or that my midfield does not necessarly need one ?

By distribution (of duties) I primarily mean how you arrange them (duties) throughout the setup. And yes - your (central) midfield does not need an attack duty in this particular (type of) formation. A big number of attack duties does not make you more dangerous in the attacking phase of play. Good balance - as well as variety in how you create and use space - does. 

 

20 minutes ago, Fflow said:

Yes, as I told you in another topic, I don't really get team instructions

If you don't get instructions, it's all the more reason to use as few as possible and keep it simple. When you start with just a couple of basic instructions (or even no instructions at all), you can easily add a couple more if/when needed. But if you start with so many, you cannot know what you need to change when things go wrong, because you cannot figure out where the problem - or rather problems - actually is. 

 

23 minutes ago, Fflow said:

More precisely, I get which players will benefit frome instructions like "get stuck in" or "run at defense" but what I don't get is the influence it will have on your playing style. (ok, "get stuck in" is easy, it benefits an intense pressing). Same thing with creative freedom

If you want to encourage certain players to do (more of) something, you can do it via player instructions. It's at least safer. 

 

25 minutes ago, Fflow said:

And there are other instructions I just don't get. Why in hell would you not want your defenders to use tighter marking ?

If you are talking about the team instruction "use tighter marking", you need to understand that it applies to all players, not just defenders. But even if it applied only to defenders, it still does not mean you should use it. Because nothing within a tactic works in isolation. When it comes specifically to the tight marking instruction, it makes sense only when you play a tight and compact defensive style of football and - preferably - in a bottom-heavy formation. Otherwise, it's likely to cause more harm than good. And the same basically applies to other aggressive defensive instructions (get stuck in/hard tacklling and/or more urgent pressing).

[Fflow]

21 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

By distribution (of duties) I primarily mean how you arrange them (duties) throughout the setup. And yes - your (central) midfield does not need an attack duty in this particular (type of) formation. A big number of attack duties does not make you more dangerous in the attacking phase of play. Good balance - as well as variety in how you create and use space - does.

In this case, giving my MEZ an attack duty was a way to make up for the lack of goal scoring abilities in my front 3, Dembélé isn't scoring as much as he did during the first half of the season and I only have 1 SS who's acceptable at scoring goal, and he's rubish overall

21 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

If you don't get instructions, it's all the more reason to use as few as possible and keep it simple. When you start with just a couple of basic instructions (or even no instructions at all), you can easily add a couple more if/when needed. But if you start with so many, you cannot know what you need to change when things go wrong, because you cannot figure out where the problem - or rather problems - actually is.

That's what I ended up doing

21 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

If you are talking about the team instruction "use tighter marking", you need to understand that it applies to all players, not just defenders. But even if it applied only to defenders, it still does not mean you should use it. Because nothing within a tactic works in isolation. When it comes specifically to the tight marking instruction, it makes sense only when you play a tight and compact defensive style of football and - preferably - in a bottom-heavy formation. Otherwise, it's likely to cause more harm than good. And the same basically applies to other aggressive defensive instructions (get stuck in/hard tacklling and/or more urgent pressing).

Ok thanks. So you want to only use instructions that are really useful to you

Edited March 29, 2020 by Fflow

[Fflow]

5 hours ago, BMNJohn said:

Because they are players who are technically and mentally good doesn't mean you have to play them as playmakers. If they're fast, you can very well play them as Wingers if you want. They'll pick better crosses than a moron who just hoofs it when he's stuck with his dribbling. I see it as an opportunity to have more options available to you since you have players that are intelligent.

Follow up question: Do they really need to be fast ? I can't seem to get anything from James Rodriguez as an AM or as an EG and he has every quality to play as IF or IW with either duty except pace.

[BMNJohn]

11 hours ago, Fflow said:

Ok I didn't know that. These green circles going red are pretty ominous. Thanks about that

Does the quality of your assistant change anything about this fact ?

It's their opinion, but it's not based on hogwash either. Positional ability is an attribute that each player possesses; playing  a player out of position see them take a hit to their Decisions. It's not that bad: if a player has the attributes to perform somewhere else and you need them there even if he has a red circle forthe role/position, just do it. What your AssMan says about it is irrelevant.

6 hours ago, Fflow said:

Follow up question: Do they really need to be fast ? I can't seem to get anything from James Rodriguez as an AM or as an EG and he has every quality to play as IF or IW with either duty except pace.

A winger is a role that creates differences and opportunity with their speed and dribbling. You need them to be somewhat smart in order not to do stupid things with the ball, but they still need to be fast. That said, you don't have to play a fast player on the wings if you ask them to do something else. Physical attributes are really important: a player can have all the technique and intelligence in the world, if they're too slow or weak for the job, they can't do the job. That's why old players retire: that's not because they have worse technique or are dumber than when they were young; it's because they can't keep up physically.

But as I said, you can very well play them as another role than Winger. There are other roles available, and some rely more on the ability to be at the right place at the right time (Off The Ball offensively, Positioning defensively) rather than just being fast. Back in FM17, I had played Lo Celso as a right Wide Midfielder and sometimes Wide Playmaker in a flat 4-1-4-1. He wasn't outright slow, but his pace was very unimpressive for an elite winger (14-15 Pace/Acceleration) and he had an horrible 6 in Stamina for some reason. For a good year and an half, he decided that he would be pretty much unstoppable and won Ballon d'Or.
Since he's naturally a playmaker, he was incredibly intelligent with and without the ball, allowing him to score and deliver lots of assists despite being played with a role (Wide Midfielder) and position (MR, not even AMR) that in theory his not where he plays the best. But I needed a good left-footed right winger, so that's where I played him. And you can bet your ass that my AssMan complained about it every day, but I didn't care and neither did Lo Celso.

EDIT: Also, EG is IMO a poor attempt to reproduce the way a player like Riquelme used to play. EGs are way too static, and now that they're on Support they have pretty poor Mentality (how risky they play) on top of that. Even if I had a slow AMC, I'd rather play them as AP or Treq than EG. At least they try to move.

Edited March 29, 2020 by BMNJohn

[Fflow]

6 hours ago, BMNJohn said:

It's their opinion, but it's not based on hogwash either. Positional ability is an attribute that each player possesses; playing  a player out of position see them take a hit to their Decisions. It's not that bad: if a player has the attributes to perform somewhere else and you need them there even if he has a red circle forthe role/position, just do it. What your AssMan says about it is irrelevant.

ok thanks

6 hours ago, BMNJohn said:

A WInger is a role that creates differences and opportunity with their speed and dribbling. You need them to be somewhat smart in order not to do stupid things with the ball, but they still need to be fast. That said, you don't have to play a fast player on the wings if you ask them to do something else. Physical attributes are really important: a player can have all the technique and intelligence in the world, if they're too slow or weak for the job, they can't do the job. That's why old players retire: that's not because they have worse technique or are dumber than when they were young; it's because they can't keep up physically.

But as I said, you can very well play them as another role than Winger. There are other roles available, and some rely more on the ability to be at the right place at the right time (Off The Ball offensively, Positioning defensively) rather than just being fast. Back in FM17, I had played Lo Celso as a right Wide Midfielder and sometimes Wide Playmaker in a flat 4-1-4-1. He wasn't outright slow, but his pace was very unimpressive for an elite winger (14-15 Pace/Acceleration) and he had an horrible 6 in Stamina for some reason. For a good year and an half, he decided that he would be pretty much unstoppable and won Ballon d'Or.
Since he's naturally a playmaker, he was incredibly intelligent with and without the ball, allowing him to score and deliver lots of assists despite being played with a role (Wide Midfielder) and position (MR, not even AMR) that in theory his not where he plays the best. But I needed a good left-footed right winger, so that's where I played him. And you can bet your ass that my AssMan complained about it every day, but I didn't care and neither did Lo Celso.

When I said "as a winger" I ment "as an AM L/R" obiously, I know pure wingers need to be fast. I intended to play him as an IF/A but 11-12 is not just "very unimpressive", he's the slowest player in my team (and that includes several 16 y.o.).

6 hours ago, BMNJohn said:

EDIT: Also, EG is IMO a poor attempt to reproduce the way a player like Riquelme used to play. EGs are way too static, and now that they're on Support they have pretty poor Mentality (how risky they play) on top of that. Even if I had a slow AMC, I'd rather play them as AP or Treq than EG. At least they try to move.

again, James is very slow anyway so I'd rather have him focus on something else than just "moving"

Besides, he's not that good in outright dribbling or passing so I'd say it disqualifies him as an AP but he's awesome at every secondary trait that will improve your drbbling or your passing, so I thought using him as a pivot would work

[BMNJohn]

8 minutes ago, Fflow said:

Besides, he's not that good in outright dribbling or passing so I'd say it disqualifies him as an AP but he's awesome at every secondary trait that will improve your drbbling or your passing, so I thought using him as a pivot would work

The problem with EG is that the role will make him not move at ALL, which means he'll be very easily marked out of the game. You're removing his freedom to move, and therefore removing his freedom to lose his markers. If you don't want him to dribble, use AP(S) at the very least, but he's not that bad of a dribbler: his Flair is excellent as well as his Technique, Agility and Balance. He's just not as good as Hazard at dribbling, but there's no reason to remove his freedom. And you did notice he wasn't performing as EG or AM(S): those are very mild roles who don't do much and are easy to mark out of the game, especially since they don't move much.

That's the problem with EG: it's supposed to mimic Riquelme, but Riquelme was very good at dribbling and retaining possession of the ball under pressure; he just was very slow so he couldn't get past 4 or 5 players. But if he had to, he definitively would dribble his way out of tricky situations instead of standing there doing nothing like the EG role. On top of that, putting a playmaker from Attack to Support duty also lowers their Mentality. It means that they will be risk adverse on top of that and won't try tough plays. That's why I think it wasn't a good idea from SI to shift the EG role from Attack to Support: not only it doesn't move at all, it also tries risky plays less often too. And if that wasn't enough, EG also doesn't help much with defending too.

Edited March 29, 2020 by BMNJohn

[Experienced Defender]

12 hours ago, Fflow said:

In this case, giving my MEZ an attack duty was a way to make up for the lack of goal scoring abilities in my front 3, Dembélé isn't scoring as much as he did during the first half of the season and I only have 1 SS who's acceptable at scoring goal, and he's rubish overall

As I said, giving a player/role an attack duty does not makes your attacking play more effective, nor does it solve goal-scoring problems. You also need to keep in mind the formation you use. Different formations have different "rules" in terms of setting up roles and duties. 

[Fflow]

20 minutes ago, BMNJohn said:

The problem with EG is that the role will make him not move at ALL, which means he'll be very easily marked out of the game. You're removing his freedom to move, and therefore removing his freedom to lose his markers. If you don't want him to dribble, use AP(S) at the very least, but he's not that bad of a dribbler: his Flair is excellent as well as his Technique, Agility and Balance. He's just not as good as Hazard at dribbling, but there's no reason to remove his freedom. And you did notice he wasn't performing as EG or AM(S): those are very mild roles who don't do much and are easy to mark out of the game, especially since they don't move much.

that's what I call "every secondary trait that will improve your dribbling" (+first touch)

Same thing, 15 passing could be considered a weakness for an AP of this quality but 19 vision and 18 flair is a pretty good way to compensate that

23 minutes ago, BMNJohn said:

That's the problem with EG: it's supposed to mimic Riquelme, but Riquelme was very good at dribbling and retaining possession of the ball under pressure; he just was very slow so he couldn't get past 4 or 5 players. But if he had to, he definitively would dribble his way out of tricky situations instead of standing there doing nothing like the EG role. On top of that, putting a playmaker from Attack to Support duty also lowers their Mentality. It means that they will be risk adverse on top of that and won't try tough plays. That's why I think it wasn't a good idea from SI to shift the EG role from Attack to Support: not only it doesn't move at all, it also tries risky plays less often too. And if that wasn't enough, EG also doesn't help much with defending too.

Thing is I have other players who were gery good as EG (Thiago Almada, F. Da Silva) even though they are both still very young (Da Silva is 16) and with them I was able to play a CL's final on my first year with Lyon so they must be good at something

14 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

As I said, giving a player/role an attack duty does not makes your attacking play more effective, nor does it solve goal-scoring problems. You also need to keep in mind the formation you use. Different formations have different "rules" in terms of setting up roles and duties. 

No but if it doesn't upset the overall balance of your tactic (which I didn't know it did), it will give that particular player a preponderant role in your attacking game

But anyway, discussing why I did a particular mistake is a bit off-topic

[sherifdinn_]

Looking at heat map I can't help but think if a real life team. Barcelona. They field so many ball hogging players but place little emphasis on penetration. 

The case seems th same here. There's no problem in fielding 5 technicians on the pitch the problem is just providing balance between possession and penetration.

That being said you should know that when you play a 4 or 5 midfield to shouldn't play a Mez-At its a peudo-10 role and he will only come in the way of the actual #10. I'd drop him down to support (or maybe use BBM that way he can arrive late and join the attack) this will give you a solid possession base and now all you need is to Balance the front 3. I'd switch it slightly to this:

      DLF(s)           Or                 P

   Treq - SS.                   Am(s) - SS

 

 

      

[Fflow]

1 hour ago, sherifdinn_ said:

Looking at heat map I can't help but think if a real life team. Barcelona. They field so many ball hogging players but place little emphasis on penetration. 

The case seems th same here. There's no problem in fielding 5 technicians on the pitch the problem is just providing balance between possession and penetration.

That being said you should know that when you play a 4 or 5 midfield to shouldn't play a Mez-At its a peudo-10 role and he will only come in the way of the actual #10. I'd drop him down to support (or maybe use BBM that way he can arrive late and join the attack) this will give you a solid possession base and now all you need is to Balance the front 3. I'd switch it slightly to this:

      DLF(s)           Or                 P

   Treq - SS.                   Am(s) - SS

 

 

      

went for the secont option

[Britrock]

Why not go the whole hog and play the front 6 all as playmakers?

          Treq

        EG  APa

RPM DLPd DPLs

[Fflow]

On 29/03/2020 at 03:57, Fflow said:

Follow up question: Do they really need to be fast ? I can't seem to get anything from James Rodriguez as an AM or as an EG and he has every quality to play as IF or IW with either duty except pace.

@BMNJohn Update : no they don't

The bottom line is from when he mostly played AM/S or EG, the top line now that I use him as an AP or IF in AMR position

Edited April 4, 2020 by Fflow

[BMNJohn]

20 minutes ago, Fflow said:

@BMNJohn Update : no they don't

The bottom line is from when he mostly played AM/S or EG, the top line now that I use him as an AP or IF in AMR position

He's not playing as a Winger or Inverted Winger, he doesn't have to take on players consistently even if he has "Dribble More" tacked on. IF and AP focus more on his positional awareness, making the right run for goal at the right time (IF) and/or being available for his teammates (AP). Being fast is a bonus. That's why I'd rather use AP(S) than EG: if I'm using a playmaker, that means I trust the player to be smart, therefore I don't need to limit his movement.

Edited April 4, 2020 by BMNJohn