Quiet Defence + Leaky Defence: How can I improve my tactic based on what the Data Hub tells me?

[Fantasista10]

As the title suggests, I am having a hard time keeping clean sheets at the moment. However, I'm struggling to understand why, since we lead the league in almost every metric (including expected goals against). Yet, despite only giving up a few chances per game, the AI seem to score with almost every opportunity they get, and are in fact consistently outperforming their XG against me. 

I have been managing SC Braga in Portugal, and had won the league for five years on the bounce - so I'm not doing too bad. However, this season we lost the league by a single point, and conceded the most goals in a single campaign of my six seasons thus far. Last season, we only one the league by a couple points thanks to Porto bottling the title towards the end. There was a similar pattern last season, which I did nothing to address as I thought it might have been an anomaly (and also my old goalkeeper made a load of costly errors).

This season I signed a top goalkeeper, for a Portuguese record at the time, hoping it would change my fortunes. It did not. 

The tactic I have been using for the past season and a half, is largely inspired by the great @Ö-zil to the Arsenal! and his Attacking + Very Fluid approach. In fact his recent twitter thread caught my eye, and I have been rocking a similar system since. It produces some of the best football I've seen from a 4-3-3 in this year's game, and we score lots of goals. It suits my players too, they are technically superb and hard working. 

Some Tis are situational, I often lower the Tempo, remove Pass Into Space, Counter and Be More Expressive as I don't want to gift possession away. 

I don't believe there is anything glaringly wrong with the tactical system. As you can see by the stats, on paper, we are a really strong side defensively. However, in reality, we are conceding far more than we should. Is it just bad luck, or is there more to it?

Despite having the lowest XGa in the league, 17.32 from 34 games, we actually conceded 26.

What I also find amazing, is that we conceded the fewest shots against in the league. 

Lastly, here is how my 'world class' goalkeeper performed in terms of Save Percentage. I didn't notice him make too many errors, maybe just one or two leading to a goal. But a 68% save percentage, from 31 league games, is pretty shocking.

However, the fact my other goalkeeper performed poorly last season too, makes me think there could be a deeper, underlying issue. 

Can anyone see anything wrong here? When I look at the stats I am encouraged. We often dominate games too, it tends to be the AI's only highlight which turns into a goal. 

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you! 

[Cloud9]

15 hours ago, Fantasista10 said:

As the title suggests, I am having a hard time keeping clean sheets at the moment. However, I'm struggling to understand why, since we lead the league in almost every metric (including expected goals against). Yet, despite only giving up a few chances per game, the AI seem to score with almost every opportunity they get, and are in fact consistently outperforming their XG against me. 

I have been managing SC Braga in Portugal, and had won the league for five years on the bounce - so I'm not doing too bad. However, this season we lost the league by a single point, and conceded the most goals in a single campaign of my six seasons thus far. Last season, we only one the league by a couple points thanks to Porto bottling the title towards the end. There was a similar pattern last season, which I did nothing to address as I thought it might have been an anomaly (and also my old goalkeeper made a load of costly errors).

This season I signed a top goalkeeper, for a Portuguese record at the time, hoping it would change my fortunes. It did not. 

The tactic I have been using for the past season and a half, is largely inspired by the great @Ö-zil to the Arsenal! and his Attacking + Very Fluid approach. In fact his recent twitter thread caught my eye, and I have been rocking a similar system since. It produces some of the best football I've seen from a 4-3-3 in this year's game, and we score lots of goals. It suits my players too, they are technically superb and hard working. 

Some Tis are situational, I often lower the Tempo, remove Pass Into Space, Counter and Be More Expressive as I don't want to gift possession away. 

I don't believe there is anything glaringly wrong with the tactical system. As you can see by the stats, on paper, we are a really strong side defensively. However, in reality, we are conceding far more than we should. Is it just bad luck, or is there more to it?

Despite having the lowest XGa in the league, 17.32 from 34 games, we actually conceded 26.

What I also find amazing, is that we conceded the fewest shots against in the league. 

Lastly, here is how my 'world class' goalkeeper performed in terms of Save Percentage. I didn't notice him make too many errors, maybe just one or two leading to a goal. But a 68% save percentage, from 31 league games, is pretty shocking.

However, the fact my other goalkeeper performed poorly last season too, makes me think there could be a deeper, underlying issue. 

Can anyone see anything wrong here? When I look at the stats I am encouraged. We often dominate games too, it tends to be the AI's only highlight which turns into a goal. 

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you! 

My guess is that after so many seasons of success, teams are counter attacking against you and getting in behind your higher defensive line. Not sure on that CB partnership, would give to defend duties or one stopper one cover. Try swapping out one of them for a normal CD if there's questions at the back. 

[Fantasista10]

7 hours ago, Cloud9 said:

My guess is that after so many seasons of success, teams are counter attacking against you and getting in behind your higher defensive line. Not sure on that CB partnership, would give to defend duties or one stopper one cover. Try swapping out one of them for a normal CD if there's questions at the back. 

It could well be because of that. I’m going into the next season with the aim of dominating possession even more, so we reduce the amount of counter attack opportunities for the AI. 
 

Thanks for the suggestion on the centre backs. I used one on Cover due to one of my CB’s (Enzo Boyomo) being more suited to that role. I haven’t really noticed the Cover defender doing any ‘covering’ or sweeping up balls in behind, or anything that a Defend duty wouldn’t do. So maybe reverting to both on Defend is a good idea. 
 

Appreciate the feedback  

[fc.cadoni]

https://dictatethegame.com/improving-your-fm22-tactic-using-the-data-hub/