How to improve a tactic?

[ReadingFan82]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to improve a tactic? I'm in my 4th season on my Valencia save, were I came 5th, then 1st, then 3rd. Currently I'm 6th 12 games into my new season and have won just one of my last 6 league games and have had the dreaded inbox message of murmurs of discontent amid bad form which is never a good sign. I've been using pretty much the same tactic since the end of my 1st season but have seen a pretty steep drop off at the start of this season. I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to improve a tactic, or make better ones? Is there anything I should be picking up in game highlights, is there ways I could be using the data hub to help, or any other sort of stuff like that? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Argonaut]

If you can't find any means of improvement yourself, it's worth posting your tactic here via screenshot to get a crowdsourced 2nd look.

[branco2511]

The datahub can give you a few tips on how to improve your tactic. If you go to datahub> last 5 matches, you'll find suggestions on specific "flaws" in your tactic. Quick fixes if you like, to address the way you're conceding goals for example.

Maybe start from there, hope it helps!

[glengarry224]

Like @Argonaut wrote, post your tactic, but also your results and league table. 

First, you need to figure out where and why your tactic is underperforming.  Not scoring enough?  Conceding too many? 

High Xg but not enough goals?  Maybe your finishing is poor, or maybe its short-term bad luck. 

Are you losing the ball too often in transition?  Maybe you need more support duties, or maybe shorter passing. 

Hard to say without seeing more.

[ReadingFan82]

This is the tactic I've been using recently which has seen a bit of an improvement in form. I'm now up to 4th in the league after dropping as low as 11th but the leagues pretty congested with 14 games left so a lot could still change. Just wanted to know what people thought of the tactic and what I might be doing right and wrong. 

[Freakiie]

So, a couple of questions I would instantly ask about this tactic.

Attacking mentality: Is it really necessary to go that aggressive? You tone it down a bit with WBIB, but it might still just get a bit too hectic with your players not taking their time. Especially since you up the tempo even further. Not saying you can't play attacking mentality, but as a base mentality positive is plenty aggressive generally.

Every single in possession instructions to be honest.

Run At Defence: Don't have the game open, but fairly certain your front 3 and the Mezzala all have "Dribble more" hardcoded already. Is there really a need for this instruction?

WBIB: You run 2 WBs who want to cross the ball, you tell your team to run at defence and then you tell your team to slow down play and find a gap? Especially without a playmaker up front to dictate play WBIB in this formation feels out of place. Personally, I'd never use it in the first place as I feel it limits my teams attacking options too much (and if your tactic works there's absolutely no need for WBIB, players have long stopped the "I'll shoot whenever I'm 30 yards from goal"), but of course it can work. I just don't feel that your tactic is one that would make proper use of it with the roles you're using. Add to that, Scamacca is a great header (and Lucca isn't bad either I think?), so you should be perfectly fine with your wing backs just pumping crosses into the box instead of trying to go for the precision pass.

Overlaps: Your roles overlap naturally, WBs are very aggressive going forwards and IWs will naturally start cutting inside. Meanwhile, the overlap TI will change a whole bunch of stuff on both your fullbacks and wingers and unless you specifically want those changes, remove the instructions. You will get overlap anyway, simply due to your role selection, without having to worry about the knock on effects of all the other changes from the TI.

Higher Tempo: You're already on an attacking mentality, is higher tempo even necessary? Sure, you slow things down a bit because of WBIB, so in the end those two kinda cancel each other out, which then raises the question why not just remove both?

 

The overall selection of roles looks pretty solid to me. One that might be a bit of a question mark is the DLP(De). If you have a player there that has the defensive ability and work rate to be a proper holding midfielder and also the passing to dictate the game from deep that's fine, otherwise it might be worth considering changing roles to have the DM as a pure holding player and the BBM as a more creative role in midfield. Also, with a DLP right in front of your defence I'd probably use "play out of defence" to get your DLP as much on the ball as possible so he can dictate play (assuming again that he's a good playmaker).

[Argonaut]

It's not a bad tactic. I'm sure if you got a set of excellent players you could win the league again. But some room for improvement.

I agree with the above post, the In Possession instructions are a bit contradictory. You've got aggressive mentality and tempo, but then slam on the brakes with overlap and WBIB. Hard to tell what will actually happen. I might consider removing all of the In Possession instructions, then seeing what you need more of.

Another thing is that your right-sided players are all kind of attacking the same space. I would change the Mezzala to CM-A to get more vertical movement.

Also, this isn't based on any football logic, but the PF-A could be changed to AF-A if you feel your striker isn't at his best. The match engine loves the AF-A role.

[ReadingFan82]

14 hours ago, Freakiie said:

So, a couple of questions I would instantly ask about this tactic.

Attacking mentality: Is it really necessary to go that aggressive? You tone it down a bit with WBIB, but it might still just get a bit too hectic with your players not taking their time. Especially since you up the tempo even further. Not saying you can't play attacking mentality, but as a base mentality positive is plenty aggressive generally.

Every single in possession instructions to be honest.

Run At Defence: Don't have the game open, but fairly certain your front 3 and the Mezzala all have "Dribble more" hardcoded already. Is there really a need for this instruction?

WBIB: You run 2 WBs who want to cross the ball, you tell your team to run at defence and then you tell your team to slow down play and find a gap? Especially without a playmaker up front to dictate play WBIB in this formation feels out of place. Personally, I'd never use it in the first place as I feel it limits my teams attacking options too much (and if your tactic works there's absolutely no need for WBIB, players have long stopped the "I'll shoot whenever I'm 30 yards from goal"), but of course it can work. I just don't feel that your tactic is one that would make proper use of it with the roles you're using. Add to that, Scamacca is a great header (and Lucca isn't bad either I think?), so you should be perfectly fine with your wing backs just pumping crosses into the box instead of trying to go for the precision pass.

Overlaps: Your roles overlap naturally, WBs are very aggressive going forwards and IWs will naturally start cutting inside. Meanwhile, the overlap TI will change a whole bunch of stuff on both your fullbacks and wingers and unless you specifically want those changes, remove the instructions. You will get overlap anyway, simply due to your role selection, without having to worry about the knock on effects of all the other changes from the TI.

Higher Tempo: You're already on an attacking mentality, is higher tempo even necessary? Sure, you slow things down a bit because of WBIB, so in the end those two kinda cancel each other out, which then raises the question why not just remove both?

 

The overall selection of roles looks pretty solid to me. One that might be a bit of a question mark is the DLP(De). If you have a player there that has the defensive ability and work rate to be a proper holding midfielder and also the passing to dictate the game from deep that's fine, otherwise it might be worth considering changing roles to have the DM as a pure holding player and the BBM as a more creative role in midfield. Also, with a DLP right in front of your defence I'd probably use "play out of defence" to get your DLP as much on the ball as possible so he can dictate play (assuming again that he's a good playmaker).

Is higher tempo on an attacking mentality actually a higher tempo than higher tempo on a cautious or defensive mentality? I've never been 100% on that and was just curious about it. If putting the mentality down a notch might help as you suggest I'll give it a little go and see how it works out in my save.

The point about run at defence is a good one, I'll take it of as you say considering that the players I would want to be on the ball will likely already be on it.

My logic with WBIB is that it would stop my players from just shooting mindlessly at the goal but I've misunderstood what that instruction means. As you say Scamacca and Lucca are both brilliant in the air so WBIB trying to get the perfect pass into them probably isn't necessary due to how good they are in the air. Could it perhaps be beneficial to put on floated crosses so when the balls put into the box it is often with the intention of getting onto my strikers head or should I just leave it on mixed?

The point about the overlaps is a good one too, I've not quite understood that instruction either. 

As you say having WBIB and a higher tempo doesn't make sense, so probably best to remove at least the WBIB instruction and try different things out with the tempo in my games. 

The 2 DLP's I most often use are Parejo and Grillitsch who are both good on the ball and defending so adding play out of defence to get them on the ball more could be a good idea too. 

Thanks for responding and giving me so much useful in depth feedback on my tactic, I really appreciate it!

[ReadingFan82]

11 hours ago, Argonaut said:

It's not a bad tactic. I'm sure if you got a set of excellent players you could win the league again. But some room for improvement.

I agree with the above post, the In Possession instructions are a bit contradictory. You've got aggressive mentality and tempo, but then slam on the brakes with overlap and WBIB. Hard to tell what will actually happen. I might consider removing all of the In Possession instructions, then seeing what you need more of.

Another thing is that your right-sided players are all kind of attacking the same space. I would change the Mezzala to CM-A to get more vertical movement.

Also, this isn't based on any football logic, but the PF-A could be changed to AF-A if you feel your striker isn't at his best. The match engine loves the AF-A role.

Yeah it does seem when having them explained to me well that it is a bit contradictory so yeah making them a little bit more coherent could help out a little. I have thought about making the Mezzala a CM on attack myself so I'll try that too.

When picking PF-A I did so because I thought that an AF might leave the striker a little isolated upfront by themselves and neither striker is good enough to play as F9 or DLF so I put them as a PF-A to try and get them more involved in play but as you say the AF is quite good so I might give that a go too.

Thanks for getting back to me and giving me some help for my save, I greatly appreciate your help

 

[marionk]

Soler is a godlike central attacking midfielder - a overpowered role this year, so try changing Soler to CM at and Guedes IW sup to give more support. Change team mentality to positive to make more time for CMs running from deep, also change DLP to support 

[Freakiie]

7 hours ago, ReadingFan82 said:

Is higher tempo on an attacking mentality actually a higher tempo than higher tempo on a cautious or defensive mentality? I've never been 100% on that and was just curious about it. If putting the mentality down a notch might help as you suggest I'll give it a little go and see how it works out in my save.

The overall team mentality influences a lot of things. Tempo, width, passing directness, defensive line, line of engagement, individual player mentalities and so on. An attacking mentality will play much faster than a defensive mentality inherently, so higher tempo with an attacking mentality adds more tempo to an already far higher baseline tempo.

[HUMBL3B33]

Tactic wise, your in possession tactic looks a bit extreme. 

First of all, attacking mentality is only for teams that can't score against you even if you are leaving just the CBs to defend on their own with a keeper. And you can score against them anyway even if they park the bus. And given you're playin Valencia I'd say you have plenty of rivals who can beat you with a sucker punch. And playing on an attacking mentality pretty much gives them that. 

2nd running at the defence as a TI meand whole of your team will take the ball and run with it. As long as they are on a balanced individual player mentality they'll try to run with it. And coupled with attacking team mentality. Basically apart from your CB and DLP everyone is trying to be prime Ronaldinho. 

3rd I can understand your temptation to get both of your FBs into play with overlapping instructions. But that instructions basically asks your widest player to be a little passive. With no playmaker in the team i can only see you making chances with your IW and you're suppressing both of them at the same time. If you want to add both your wingbacks up to. Make sure your wide players leave their spaces first so that WBs have space to run into. Maybe IFs to make the run behind the defence so that they pull the defenders away and make space for your WB. 

Yes, you can see all of these things in the data hub but you need to know what to look for. For example the dribbling attempts would be a lot. But they wouldn't be successful. Which should reflect in the datahub in possession numbers and dribbling proficiency numbers (available in spider and scatter plots).

One thing that i suffered a lot with are PPM/Traits. I never paid much attention to them even after watching a lot of FM youtubers say they are the most important thing to understand. What this generally means if you want your AP to spray passes to your AF/IFs and your AP has runs with the ball often or play simple passes. They'd ignore the PI assigned to them and more likely to play how they want to play which is running with the ball and playing short passes. Which breaks your entire system. Also, even if your player has a high teamwork rating they'd still predominantly look to run with the ball and only sometimes play thr through ball. Rendering their superior attributes of passing, vission anf technique useless. I had the same problem with one of my players named Maleh! Oh for my team at that time he was a 5 star creator with 15 in all 3. But he failed to create any meaningful chances because he had short and simple passes on it. I had to remove that barely in time as he was 25-26 years of age. But as soon as i trained him to play killer balls often. He started making tones and tones of chances. So do pay attention to your player traits. 

[Rashidi]

On 01/07/2022 at 03:27, ReadingFan82 said:

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to improve a tactic? I'm in my 4th season on my Valencia save, were I came 5th, then 1st, then 3rd. Currently I'm 6th 12 games into my new season and have won just one of my last 6 league games and have had the dreaded inbox message of murmurs of discontent amid bad form which is never a good sign. I've been using pretty much the same tactic since the end of my 1st season but have seen a pretty steep drop off at the start of this season. I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to improve a tactic, or make better ones? Is there anything I should be picking up in game highlights, is there ways I could be using the data hub to help, or any other sort of stuff like that? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

What kind of improvements do you want your tactic to achieve?