Help before 2021 - Rubbish with LL Teams

[JD23]

Hi,

I’ve bought FM the last 4 years and every year say it’s my last, not because the game isn’t very good, it’s definitely me that’s not very good.

Every lower league save I try I fail miserably, whether it’s with a team expected to challenge for promotion or a relegation battle.

I know it’s down to tactics, I’m only really familiar with gegenpress but I know this needs high energy/work-rate players. I switch to something else when gegenpress doesn’t work but with very little logic involved and continue to lose.

I appreciate the number of tactical options doesn’t lend itself to one tactic being recommended, but is there a good starting point for most lower league teams tactical wise.

All I end up doing is managing Liverpool, gegenpress tactic, winning most things but it’s not much of an achievement and gets boring quickly.

Any advice appreciated.

[GianniM]

We're currently having an interesting discussion on what to look for when building a tactic: 

 

There are lots of general guides in the tactics forum as well: 

 

If you have any tactic in particular that you'd like feedback on, you can always start a new thread in the tactics section with a screen shot of your tactics. 

[Blah_1123]

Most people say long ball/counter attacking is the only tactic that works in lower leagues but from my experience this is far from true. Lower league players are rubbish at converting chances so they need to create a lot in order to do so, I find controlling possession and just playing the opposition out of the game works very well. Short slow passing with a few players set to roles that will suddenly burst into the box, think IF-A CM-A sort of roles. Worked very well for me.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Blah_1123

[Johnny Ace]

5 hours ago, Blah_1123 said:

Most people say long ball/counter attacking is the only tactic that works in lower leagues but from my experience this is far from true. Lower league players are rubbish at converting chances so they need to create a lot in order to do so, I find controlling possession and just playing the opposition out of the game works very well. Short slow passing with a few players set to roles that will suddenly burst into the box, think IF-A CM-A sort of roles. Worked very well for me.

Totally agree, all this you must play direct with a Target Man up top is tosh, the teams you're playing's rubbish too so just manage them like you would a Premiership team & play how you want to 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Johnny Ace

[GianniM]

43 minutes ago, Blah_1123 said:

Most people say long ball/counter attacking is the only tactic that works in lower leagues but from my experience this is far from true. Lower league players are rubbish at converting chances so they need to create a lot in order to do so, I find controlling possession and just playing the opposition out of the game works very well. Short slow passing with a few players set to roles that will suddenly burst into the box, think IF-A CM-A sort of roles. Worked very well for me.

Everything is dependent on your players, their strengths and weaknesses compared to other teams in the league. 

For example I started with Dynamo Dresden in German 3rd level. My players were relatively quite proficient technically so I made some kind of possession tactic with shorter passing and work ball into box. After a few issues in the beginning of the season, I finished first comfortably. 

When I got promoted to the 2nd level, my players were relatively average compared to the rest of the league. But my strikers are fast. So instead of keeping the possession tactic, I implemented a more direct style of play to exploit the pace of my strikers. Again I'm sitting first halfway in the season. 

Both tactics work. You just have to play to your strengths relative to the other teams in the league. 

[DementedHammer]

I exclusively play in the lower leagues. (I think I'm currently in the ninth tier.)

I personally don't think that FM scales that well to the lowest divisions. I've found that it is possible to play most styles even in the lowest leagues possible with 1CA players in the first team. 

Theres two things to keep in mind:

1. The ratings are relative to professional footballers, so even a low score for an attribute doesn't mean the player can't execute that skill to some degree. In FM19 I was able to play successful possession football in a team where the average passing ability in the team was probably around 6 or 7 out of 20.

2. The biggest difference between lower league players and upper league players (in my opinion) is that the upper league players are better all-rounders. At the lower league level, some players are still pretty good but only in one or two areas. The trick is to come up with a system that gets the best out of each player's strengths, but is still a cohesive system overall. 

[warlock]

7 hours ago, JD23 said:

Any advice appreciated

The Dafuge Challenge (over in the challenges sub-forum) is the gold standard for non-league saves. There's a lot of reading but it's worth it to see how other managers approach the problem. In particular, you might find this post from a couple of years ago helpful:

 

[IrrelevantLion]

Three up front, hoof the ball up... 

[GianniM]

6 minutes ago, IrrelevantLion said:

Three up front, hoof the ball up... 

Using this one against much better teams that go attacking

[Johnny Ace]

I went through 9 promotions in 13 seasons playing every minute of every game on Attacking, it was a sort "last FM20" save thing, something I wanted to try. No gen-gen pressing or anything OP, I just put together a logical tactic & went for it

Playing that tactic with the National team now