Using the Data Hub to improve your Tactics

[LPQR]

This is something I've written for Dictate the game, thought it might be useful for whoever is looking for the answer to the same question

 

 

So if you’ve already got your hands on FM22 you will have noticed that one of the prominent features of this release is the shiny new Data Hub - a panel that allows you to digest a wealth of statistical information about your team’s performance with a broad range of segmentation and visualization options.

Apart from proving to be a delightful step forward in aligning us as FM players with the modern realities of an ever data-driven footballing world this tool can give you a huge advantage when it comes to squeezing the absolute most of your squad’s abilities and perfecting your tactics.

Diagnose your tactics

A big part of improving the efficiency of your tactics is understanding how and why things went wrong in the first place. Let’s have a look at an example of how the FM22 Data Hub can help you make the correct adjustments using data gathered by your performance analysts. 

 

Quote

 

a key thing to remember is that the quality and range of the data available in the hub is directly linked to the number of performance analysts you employ and the quality of their attributes

 

 

In my 4-3-3 attacking system I place a huge emphasis on winning the ball high up the pitch and counter-attacking by moving the ball forward as fast as possible in order to catch the opposition off-guard. For that to happen I need a few separate phases of play to work well in sequence:

 

1. Midfielders winning the ball high up the pitch via tackles/interceptions

A trip to the data hub>player>midfielders and asking for tackling-midfielders data gives me this panel:

I can see here that most of my central midfielders are efficient in tackling and are attempting a considerably larger number of tackles than the league average. You can also use this screen to provide you a better understanding of a potential team selection - for example Pedro Obiang might be a better choice than Davide Frattesi in the midfield spot if you are playing an opponent against which you want to concede the least amount of possession possible. 

A trip to team performance>possession gained however gives me the following info:

Even though my midfielders are attempting & winning lots of tackles the area of the pitch where we win possession the most is just below our half-way line. Now that is definitely a problem because we aim to win the ball higher up the pitch.

If we look at defensive actions holistically (interceptions + tackles), the same conclusions apply:

Okay, now to help us contextualize this information, here is the system used:

So from what the data above tells us plus the fact that our line of engagement is set to the highest possible level, the conclusion would be that the the front three - the SS, W and DLF are completely inefficient in winning the ball up the pitch, thus we rely exclusively on the midfield 3 to win the ball in the counter-attacking phase of the opponent. This results in winning tackles only after the opponent has passed the midfield line.

This conclusion is also supported by this data panel:

We see here that out of all first-team players in CM & AM positions (Vignato, Harroui are back up options with few matches played) Junior Traore (who only played the SS role so far) is the least efficient in winning the ball.

Okay, so the potential conclusions & and adjustments are:

Conclusion a) The way we occupy space in the opponent’s half just after losing the ball leaves gaps for the opponent to exploit and allows them to by-pass our high press.

Solution? Review player positioning in the early opponent counter phase and adjust player movement settings (roles & instructions) so that we have efficient space coverage high up the pitch

Conclusion b) The front three roles are not properly instructed to press.

Solution? Review player’s pressing and tackling instructions( e.g. tackle harder for front 3, potentially change DLF to PF)

 

 

2. Players efficiently moving the ball forward

Now onto the next phase of play: let’s say we have adjusted the set-up so that we are better at winning the ball higher up the pitch and involving attacking players more in that process. Ok, now that we have won the ball, what do we do with it? What I want is for my players to profit from the opposition being out of their defensive shape in the moment of winning the ball and quickly moving the ball forward to an attacking player to capitalize on their lack of defensive organization in those few seconds.

Looking at the passing stats on a team level our performance is a bit of a ‘jekyll and hyde’, to use some FM dialectics.

We win the ball more than any other team in the league and that by a far margin but at the same time we also lose the ball extremely frequently. 

Let’s also check our passing volumes & efficiency in the midfield strata:

The low passing volume in this scenario is not a bad indicator - it actually is part of the plan because I want my players to attempt forward passes rather than holding on to the ball and passing sideways, which would naturally mean less passes. 

Also, looking at the graph the first, instinctive reaction would be that we are extremely inaccurate in our passing, right?

Well, if I look at the actual percentage numbers, our main midfielders, Maxime Lopez, Frattesi and Matheus Henrique all average more than 88% pass completion ratio which is actually pretty great considering that most of their passes are vertical and not horizontal. That means, basically, that 1 in 10 medium to high risk passes fail, which I would much rather have than 98% pass ratio when all passes are low risk.

So passing-wise we are doing well given our style of play, however the design of the system implies the fact that a lot of final-third entries will be executed via the left wing-back attacking space high up the pitch in the pockets freed up by the central-drifting AM and providing crosses to the attacking players.

Checking the Last-5 match analysis in the Data-Hub, we can see that’s working well in terms of final third entries:

When we look at the crossing stats of our left wing-back, however:

We can see he completed only 50 out of 253 crosses! That means fewer than 20% crosses our left wing-back put in were completed in a tactical style that relies so heavily on this position that around 50% of our total final third entries were performed by him. 

The lack of cross completion in this case could be influenced by a few factors:

1. Player dispatching crosses has poor stats for crossing
2. Poor player positioning / lack of enough runners in the box to connect with crosses
3. Players receiving crosses have low stats for either finishing, first touch if the crosses are low or are simply not tall enough to connect with floating crosses

Taking them one by one:

1. Rogerio has 13 for the crossing attribute which is definitely not bad for a wing-back 
2. In a typical situation involving a cross from the left wing-back we have great player positioning in attack - our front three are in the box and the right-sided CM acts as a late box runner option

3. Our DLF, AM and W have excellent stats for finishing & first touch:

 but shockingly low stats for heading, jumping reach and height. In fact, our main starters in these positions win an average of 2.4 headers per game and a 38% header win ratio average:

Okay, so the conclusion is fairly obvious: we are dispatching floating crosses to players that have virtually no ability to challenge for the ball in the air.

Solution? Ticked ‘low crosses’ in the team instructions for now. We can then further analyse how the cross completion percentages change and if there are no improvements then we might need to rethink the way we attack space on the left side of the pitch completely.

 

3. Players converting chances in the final third

Havin improved the way we first win the ball and then ensure its efficient progression to the players responsible for finishing, we now need to take a look at how efficient they are at converting these chances. In other words, it would be pretty pointless to have the previous two phases of play working efficiently without making it count where it matters the most: in front of goal.

Overall, as a team, it looks like we have a great balance between the number of shots taken and the percentage of those shots that result in goals.

A closer look at the front three tells us the player that both, attempts and converts the most shots is our AMR:

The outlier here is the SS (Traore): he takes as many shots as our DLF but his ratio in terms of goals per shot and shots on target is much worse. 

Conclusion: Right now the front three combine for 1.14 goals/90 mins. If we can get Traore to improve shot conversion to 50% we would have 1.32 goals/90 mins. 0.18 goals per match X 38 matches means an extra 5 goals per season. 

An alternative scenario would be to ‘transfer’ some of the shots Traore is attempting to either Berardi or Raspadori. Given his position just behind the striker we could benefit from him more if he would attempt to pass to the DLF or W rather than going for the shot in situations where shooting is difficult.  Statistically, if we have an 18% shot-to-goal conversion rate for Berardi and Raspadori that means that if they were to attempt 30 more shots we would have an extra 5.4 goals per season from them:

Solution? We have a number of options here that could potentially achieve the same desired result:

1. Restrict the number of shots Traore is taking via player instructions (shoot less often) and instruct the player to attempt more risky passes
2. Train Traore to develop new PPM ‘looks for pass instead of shot’
3. Train Traore to improve long shots, finishing and composure attributes

Now all these would be ‘individual’ solutions to the identified problem. A ‘collective’ solution in this scenario could be to try ‘working the ball into the box’ as a team instruction however that would have large implications on the behaviour of all attacking players by slowing down tempo around the opposition box.

Conclusion

Overall, the FM22 data hub and the general statistical data available in FM can help you dissect and optimize your tactics to great extent. What is important to remember, however, is that stats can be often misleading if not interpreted in context - a 84% pass success ratio is great if 80% of your passes are vertical and high-risk and the same figure is pretty terrible if most of your passes are side-ways and low-risk.

As a consequence, having a vision of what your ideal style of play looks like and working towards achieving it will help you better interpret and digest the huge amount of information available in the wonderfully comprehensive Data Hub.

 

[04texag]

Fantastic data hub primer and examples!

[Matt_1979]

Brilliant 

[jc577]

Really great work, and glad to have you back on the forums @LPQR (still remember your 'Mad Max' thread amongst others from FM17?) Really highlights the importance of having a tactical plan and knowing exactly how you want to play. Great stuff.

[CalumF]

Great work.

[Aoyao]

Great work

[tyro]

Very nice analysis. I really like the data hub this year. Allows one to really get the information and make changes. 

I have been looking for the information that shoes when you score / concede usually. I was not able to find it. 

I noticed that in the last couple of games we are ahead and suddenly the opponent goes on steroids and manages to equalize, whether I'm leading 1 or 2 goals they make it back in min 95+ and i end up drawing. 

Reasons?

1) they play more offensive to get something out of the game. I probably would do the same.

2) My players get tired, lose concentration towards the end. Solution? Substitute someone else in? Change tactic to something more conservative. Two problems with this. You sub off your main defenders for the backups who are fresh but not that good. With regards to the tactic change, it seems to do more harm then good. I have the momentum and am winning 2-0 and then try to finish the game I'm the last 15 min. Remove attacking roles. Drop my lines. Move players to less advanced positions. Waste time etc. This gives the opponent more chances but usually they have a free kick or corner where they manage the last minute goal.

Any ideas, tips? Continue with the same tactic and replace tired players and hope to score more than they can make up. Or park the bus a bit and hope to prevent some last minute free kicks?

 

[rockpie]

quality overview mate, nice one

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

I need to read this thoroughly. Have just made the jump from FM 2018 to FM 2022 and it's safe to say I am a little lost on some of the analytics! 

[Zemahh]

10 hours ago, tyro said:

With regards to the tactic change, it seems to do more harm then good. I have the momentum and am winning 2-0 and then try to finish the game I'm the last 15 min. Remove attacking roles. Drop my lines. Move players to less advanced positions. Waste time etc. This gives the opponent more chances but usually they have a free kick or corner where they manage the last minute goal.

This is usually only a problem when you make yourself too passive and go from dominating possession in opponent's half, to being packed inside your own box with no forward movement or ability to keep the ball.

Assuming you have a successful tactic that suits your players and gets you in the lead, you don't want to tear it apart completely. When trying to protect the result, you could just make a few tiny changes and perhaps focus on defending with the ball, rather than giving your opposition all the initiative and letting them spam crosses into your box.

A few examples:

• Drop your Mentality to Standard or Cautious (you want to lower the risk-taking threshold, but not to the point your players are straight up Defensive or Very Defensive, which could make them too passive; very risk-averse Mentalities also make your players very risk-averse in defence, meaning they won't be willing to mark tight or tackle as aggressively as they would otherwise)
• Change one or both WBs to FBs to make them a bit more cautious going forward
• Use instructions such as Hold Shape, Waste Time and Slow Pace Down (these aren't drastic enough to change your whole style, but should help you run down the clock/make you a tad more cautious)

In regards to the D-Line and LoE, I'd be very careful dropping them below standard. Standard or Cautious Mentality should suffice, you don't want a super low-block that invites your opposition deep into your half.

Same goes for changing your Roles/Duties. With dropping your Mentality a notch, you're already lowering the risk-taking, changing multiple roles to Defend on top of that could restrict your forward movement severely and make it hard for you to keep the ball.

Apologies for a lengthy reply, hopefully LPQR doesn't mind me hijacking his fantastic thread for a second. 

[nick1408]

Excellent post @LPQR. Excellent examples too.

 

On the crossing example (I could be very wrong here) I think corners are counted as crosses in FM so that may skew the stats. Probably the only caveat is to know what constitutes a cross/pass/shot etc when viewing the stats. 
 

Again, excellent. I’ll be referring to this quite a bit I think. 

[warlock]

6 hours ago, Zemahh said:

This is usually only a problem when you make yourself too passive

Agreed. But...

6 hours ago, Zemahh said:

Drop your Mentality to Standard or Cautious

Disagree here. Mentality changes have too many effects (tempo, passing length, risk) and often do make you too passive. My usual changes when holding a lead late in games are to keep mentality the same (usually 'positive'), to lower tempo (to help us control the ball), add some time-wasting, and to tick "pass into space" to hit them on the counter when they leave too much space behind. If we're really under the cosh, I might add 'play for set-pieces' and 'shoot on sight' (anything to run the clock down, and a wild shot into the top tier of the stand is worth a few seconds!)

I still concede a few late goals over the course of a season but more often score another in added time to increase our lead.

[duesouth]

@LPQR, I have to admit I haven't spent much time with the Data Hub, as there's so much there and I couldn't figure out just what I should be looking at.  Was looking for a guide just like this - so just want to say thank you.  I'll be taking some time over the weekend to really focus on the Data Hub and go through your guide.

[(sic)]

On 03/11/2021 at 20:04, LPQR said:

Okay, so the potential conclusions & and adjustments are:

 

Conclusion a) The way we occupy space in the opponent’s half just after losing the ball leaves gaps for the opponent to exploit and allows them to by-pass our high press.

 

Solution? Review player positioning in the early opponent counter phase and adjust player movement settings (roles & instructions) so that we have efficient space coverage high up the pitch

 

Conclusion b) The front three roles are not properly instructed to press.

 

Solution? Review player’s pressing and tackling instructions( e.g. tackle harder for front 3, potentially change DLF to PF)

 

Great thread.

 

On that first issue, it's sadly due to ME not working properly. Currently players just aren't closing down the backline enough, if you combine that with teams playing on more defensive mentalities, you get CBs passing between themselves constantly, having 95% pass completion rate and retaining possession more than expected.

Maxing out pressing, LoE, using OIs doesn't seem to have much effect, and it would just leave you more open.

 

But I completely agree with your approach, and those solutions are very logical.

[sgevolker]

Hi,

I‘ve changed my tactic in the middle of the season and I would like to analyse with the data hub how it‘s going. But I only see the whole season in the data. Is it possible to the see the data only for the last game? Here I can only see some data, but I would like to,stick deeper.

[LPQR]

3 hours ago, sgevolker said:

Hi,

I‘ve changed my tactic in the middle of the season and I would like to analyse with the data hub how it‘s going. But I only see the whole season in the data. Is it possible to the see the data only for the last game? Here I can only see some data, but I would like to,stick deeper.

 

You have the option of seeing data for last match / last 5 matches here:

 

Also, if you click on match > analytical data you can see a lot of data regarding the match itself on a player & team level. The visualizations are not as graphical perhaps as the ones you get for the season performance however it is basically the same data, just not presented in graphs   Hope this helps.

Regarding the other comments - thanks guys, good to hear this is useful. Please do keep in mind that certain technical interpretations might vary depending on how the ME changes throughout future updates and some of the conclusions in the specific scenario I've chosen might actually change as a result. What I wanted to illustrate is rather a framework of interpreting data and the process of transforming it into actionable tactical adjustments. 

 

[sgevolker]

That helps, thank you very much. I like the graphical style, but will stick now into the data. 

[DarJ]

@LPQR I'd like to see how things improved with the changes you made if possible

[Fatkidscantjump]

That is the best advertisement for FM22 I have seen yet, it made me want to buy the game as i'm still on FM21 !

Great thread, thanks !

[LPQR]

20 hours ago, DarJ said:

@LPQR I'd like to see how things improved with the changes you made if possible

Would require another extensive post to describe in detail but the short story for now is:

 

[HurkaDurk69]

This is an amazing thread, this could even be a series where you take an approach(like direct, counter etc) and talk what things you should look for in the data hub

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

Heyyy, mate! I have a couple of questions, as I'm trying to get some value out of the Data Hub:

1. Where do I find the Pass Map during the game? Is it only in the Data Hub and in that case only available for the last game? Is there a way to find Pass Maps for earlier games? Don't see it in the Match Stats section at all.
2. Are you doing anything smart to monitor how effectively your team are pressing? I am finding some useful comparative data on how my team is with the ball and how efficient we are at creating chances, but nothing really to tell me if we're pressing effectively or not.

Cheers! 

[HurkaDurk69]

36 minutes ago, Ö-zil to the Arsenal! said:

Where do I find the Pass Map during the game? Is it only in the Data Hub and in that case only available for the last game? Is there a way to find Pass Maps for earlier games? Don't see it in the Match Stats section at all.

Don't know during the game, but if you go to an old game it is under 'Analytical Data' > Team > Passes > Combinations: All

[Ö-zil to the Arsenal!]

20 minutes ago, HurkaDurk69 said:

Don't know during the game, but if you go to an old game it is under 'Analytical Data' > Team > Passes > Combinations: All

Brilliant. Would never have found that. Thank you! 

[HowzatFM]

I’m really struggling to win the ball higher up the pitch, and defensive actions are mainly in my own half! Any other general changes to consider that would help? 

Edited December 1, 2021 by benhoward12

[(sic)]

6 hours ago, benhoward12 said:

I’m really struggling to win the ball higher up the pitch, and defensive actions are mainly in my own half! Any other general changes to consider that would help? 

Maxing out pressing settings, using tighter marking, tackling harder maybe. Also having a top heavy formation (like 4-2-3-1), and having players with good work rate, aggression, etc.

That would be the normal answer, but in this current ME that still isn't enough. I have checked all of those boxes, yet my Data Hub shows that I usually win possession in front of my goal and in my own half, not in the opponents half.

 

[HowzatFM]

11 hours ago, (sic) said:

Maxing out pressing settings, using tighter marking, tackling harder maybe. Also having a top heavy formation (like 4-2-3-1), and having players with good work rate, aggression, etc.

That would be the normal answer, but in this current ME that still isn't enough. I have checked all of those boxes, yet my Data Hub shows that I usually win possession in front of my goal and in my own half, not in the opponents half.

 

Yeah exactly the same! So frustrating! Hopefully we get an update soon! 

[sgevolker]

Hi Guys,

is there a possibilty to see the efficiency and weakness from standards in the data hub? I don't find anything to this in the data hub.