Different approach to FM09

[Dako81]

Hi everybody

Dako81 here

This is my first post on the forum.

I would like to share my opinions about FM09 and talk about different approach to the game.

I am a fan of CM/FM for long time since 01 and I enjoyed every release since then. It used to be pure fun, one tactic your favourite team that wins everything, buys whoever you want did not care about stats, weather, finance, morale etc. But when I play fm09 I got frustrated, angry, irritated with the game because although I manage Barca (fan) they play rubbish, players don’t do what they suppose to do, don’t create enough chances make stupid mistakes and bad judgments.

I have read numerous posts about how realistic this game is and so on. I asked myself how you can implement realism in to a computer game and if it is even possible.

I stared thinking about football in general and what makes a team a successful team.

Is it a manager, individual players or what else? What makes Hull City beat Arsenal at Emirates?

What makes Arsenal beat Chelsea at Stamford what makes Getafe beat Real Madrid etc.

These are my observation about football.

Football is game which the main objective is to score more goals then your opponent. You have a team of 11 individual players whom you have to bring together to work cooperatively to achieve this objective. Manager’s job is to apply specific tactical approach to each opponent therefore utilize players’ strengths and minimize their weaknesses (Manager evaluates their skills, physical attributes, behavioural attributes) that he has currently at his disposal. Therefore his job is to create a strategy which will help his players make right decisions on pitch that ultimately will lead to main objective.

The most important part of this is decision making process of manager and individual players.

Manager tries to find an optimal strategy (in specific conditions), that would implement each player decision making process on pitch and guide players to form a chain of right decisions leading to main objective.

Players will try to use their own abilities and make decisions to help the team to win. Each player has specific physical attributes, mental attributes and technical attributes and he will make a decision using these attributes depending on the specific situation on the pitch.

E.G.

After watching Barca and Valencia on Saturday I was trying find reasons of such outcome of the game. What made Barca win over Valencia. Was it team’s overall strategy or individual effort of players? What made Toure pass to Henry and him to lob the goalkeeper, why Daniel Alves did not pass to other players but he attempted to shot and scored why Bojan run to touch line overtook 3 defenders and then assisted Henry.

I think it was both. The strategy let the players use their abilities to certain extent; make the correct decisions depending on circumstances. E.g. Toure knew that Henry will be there in the position in that exactly spot in that time. Toure assessed the situation; his options (either pass to Henry, risky, back pass safe, run with the ball, etc) took his chance and made the decision. Same with Bojan, he assessed the situation and made a choice.

Therefore I think each player or group of players are told what kind of decisions they can make during a game what degree of free decision making or creativity they have on the pitch whether decisions are defensive, neutral or attracting in other words how risky they are.

This is evaluated by the manager who uses individual creativity in decisions to make them act in certain way, make correct decision. (They can also make wrong decisions if they have too much freedom in deciding what to do or make irrational).

I think this is they way you can make game realistic but to the certain extent.

I have tried to apply this observations to FM09 and find out what factors affects the decision making process of every player in a particular game.

I was frustrated why Alves makes poor decisions, why he runs with the ball to the touchline and the tries to cross and in 99% chances it is deflected from the defender even if i don’t want him to run and cross.

My assumption

I have played around 30 games Sevilla vs. Barcelona reloading them each time and observing one player Daniel Alves particularly but also looking on Puyol and Piqué and how they reacts to certain changes in their individual orders.

I have looked at mentality and creativity freedom slide bars and how they influence the decision making of Daniel Alves and both defenders.

I have assumed following:

Mentality, creativity and tempo, are correlated and influence the decision making process in specific situation.

Passing, run with ball, through balls, crossing, forward runs, long shots are decision options for a player in specific situations.

Team setting are set on 12, tempo is slow (more time to make a decision) and players are set for team settings.

Only settings Daniel Alves, Puyol and Piqué were changed and observed.

What I have observed so far.

Mentality the higher the bar the more risky decision player will make.

Creativity freedom the higher the bar the more options he will consider.

E.g. Daniel Alves

At the beginning he was doing his usual stuff running with ball and wasting the crosses.

When I increased his mentality and creativity I stared to create chances, nice crossing or even rounding defenders on touchline and trying to score or pass. He was intercepting balls from oppositions and forcing them to do stupid errors.

Puyol and Piqué

In their case I was interested why they don’t intercept long balls played to the forwards why they retreat and not try to tackle the forward. I just increased their mentality and they were sweeping very thought ball played not giving them any chance.

Conclusion

I just want to stress that everything is in testing phase and these are just my observations. This is not a strategy theory, these are just my observations I have not tested how other factors such as closing down, tackling, marking influence decisions making process. Moreover there are many other factors to consider: morale, confidence, press, condition, training, free role hold the ball etc.

Last word:

I think you cannot force a player to make specific decision because in certain situations he will not have an option to do what you want him to do (short pass, shot etc.) but you can make him consider more options (by stressing what you would like him to consider first or find opportunity to do so) or make him do some risky decisions. Everything depends on individual player’s attributes.

This maybe different approach to the game.

Football is a game of taking chances.

These are just my observation about FM09.

Thanks for your attention.

Looking forward to suggestions and opinions.

Cheers.

[dave safc]

Good post

[kolobok]

Excellent post.

I think you could either go very deep into each and every slider interaction (e.g. high mentality - high closing down - hard tackling vs everything low) or simply play with changing one setting at a time to see some effects. And you are absolutely right - this testing outcome won't be applicable to every single player/team situation but it's a great way to better understand the system.

[Trebby]

Quite interesting and refreshing look into the game!

[Nitewalk]

Football is game which the main objective is to score more goals then your opponent.

Jose Mourinho will beg to differ

[Cityull]

great post keep your testing and observations coming!

[amirko]

I want to thank you.This is the best text I read here.I have read many of them but this is so good that I had to write this.Also if you have time please can you do same thing for closing down?

[Mitja]

nice first post mate.

[tobogan]

Jose Mourinho will beg to differ

He will not beg

[Nitewalk]

He will not beg

Lmao! Yea i missed that, he will just disagree because he is "the special one".

[andre347]

Nice first post! If I'm right to say that Mentality and Creative Freedom are linked to each other? And what about passing, with and tempo? Are they also linked?