bababooey

My advice is to not get sucked into thinking you have to do things a certain way. My approach in this thread was highly tailored to the squad I had at my disposal at the time. Plus, it was FM23, which didnt have positional play, and that's a huge difference. I've been going back and forth about the ideal way to handle a gegenpressing opponent. I'm starting to lean more towards trying to slow everything down, especially if you are a weaker team. This way, it gives your players more time to make a decision. The higher the tempo, the more prone your players are to making a mistake. And the whole point of gegenpressing is to win the ball back quickly and a huge part of how they do this, is by your team making a mistake. On the other hand, by playing slowly, it allows the other team to regain their defensive shape more easily... So you can see how there are no concrete answers, because everything comes with its own risk v reward.

Very detailed analysis here! I think you're spot on, as evidenced by City smashing us when they had a full strength lineup out there in the Champions League quarterfinal

I see what you're saying. So, maybe the reason why I found tight marking to be effective was because the opponent did not have an advantage in pace/acceleration. That makes sense to me. Interesting point about using the team instructions as a safer choice. I definitely agree with you on that.

I've always believed that "trigger press more often" would be far more disruptive to defensive shape because it should, in theory, increase the likelihood that a defender will decide to close down. I mean I can understand where "mark tighter" would cause some disruption, but if you're combining this with a compact defensive shape, you are limiting the space the opposition has significantly, no?

In every save on Football Manager, one of the first things I do tactically, is decide on how I want to approach opposition instructions. Generally speaking, this involves two different parts. 1. What type of pressing traps are we trying to create? 2. How and when do we use "tight marking/trigger press/tacking"? To answer the first part, we have to look at where we are strong, and where we are weak. This will help determine how to set up our pressing traps. When I use the term "pressing traps", I am simply referring to where I want to ATTEMPT to win the ball back, and the areas I want to funnel the opposition into. If you plan on using a very narrow formation most of the time, especially if you've only got 2 wide players in something like a 5-3-2 or 4-1-2-1-2, then it probably makes sense to set up your OI's so that the opposition is funneled into the middle where you have a numerical advantage. This means, showing the opposition RB, LB, WBR, WBL, RM, LM, AMR, AML, to the inside/opposite foot. If you are a team that plays in a relatively wide formation, or uses a more traditional set up with 2 wide defenders, and 2 wide mids/wingers (4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, etc.) then I would recommend showing the opposition down the flanks, to the foot that matches the side they're on. The reason for this, is that the opposition players are forced to play down the line, and we all know that the touchline is a perfect defender. So it sort of makes your job of defending a lot easier. The other player doesn't have the same passing options (or movement options) if they're stuck between the touchline and a defender. However, this strategy comes with a risk. Showing players wide, down the flanks, means that you are more likely to see crosses from them. If your team is horrible at defending crosses into the box, then that should factor into this choice, and you should absolutely consider setting the cross engagement to "stop crosses". If your team is good at handling crosses, you might consider using "invite crosses" to keep your defense tight and compact, so they don't look to jump out of line and stop the cross. OR you could use neither, and adjust as you see fit on a per-game basis! Here's what it looks like when I say to show the opposition down the flanks. Pretend my team is in red. Notice the big red box? Yeah, we don't want the blue team to easily make passes into this area. So, as you can see from the dotted lines, there are better passing options for the other team down the flanks. You don't even need to adjust your tactical instructions for the pressing trap if you dont want to. Sometimes I forget to use "trap inside/outside" and it's not a big deal. But it can be a powerful combination if you get this right (or wrong) to use that setting in conjunction with the OI's for show onto foot. You can set this up to occur in every match by simply going to the tactics screen -----> opposition instructions -----> (then change the tab from players) to POSITIONS. See screenshot below. Just remember to engage the OI's before every match! To answer the second part, we need to talk about a couple of things. There are a few general guidelines that I like to stick to here. - The "trigger press" setting for "always" is the most risky one to use liberally, because it involves your players leaving their defense shape earlier, and closing down. This can open up gaps in your defense, and you need to be acutely aware of that. This could be effective in certain situations where you have a lot of cover. Maybe you have a back 3, and you want a wing back to aggressively trigger press on an opposition player, knowing you've got a wide center back behind him at all times. That's just one example. I really think you should only use this setting on 1 player, and certainly no more than 2 at any time. Otherwise, your defense will be all over the place. You should consider using the "never" setting on the trigger press if the opposition has a player who is not a threat on the ball. This will help make your pressing more efficient. Why waste time closing down a player who can't do anything with the ball? For example. If the other team has a center back combination where one player is a great passer, and the other isnt, then you should consider setting the trigger press to "never" on the poor passer. That way, your striker(s) can focus more on the other center back. Same thing can apply to the flanks. - The "tight marking" setting is super powerful, especially when combined with harder tackling. I think sometimes people are afraid to turn this one on because they think their players will get skinned all the time by a faster player. This is not necessarily true. Again, you want to consider how this works with your tactical set-up in general, and I'll talk more about that further down in the post. As a general rule, I would say that tight marking on wide players is a good idea if the opposition plays in a system similar to Guardiola's Manchester City, where the wingers are CRUCIAL to the chance creation phase of play. You may also consider tight marking, a superb DM who is the pivot for the other team. Or you might even consider tight marking an isolated lone striker. There are many options. I also believe you can get away with using this instruction liberally. It will not necessarily ruin your defense shape. But as always, you have to pay attention! - The "tackling" setting is where you can have a lot of fun. But you should understand how it works, and where it will be most effective. For example.. If the other team has players who are very brave, or strong, (or both) then hard tackling those players might not be that effective. But if the players you are targeting happen to be weak, or not brave, then hard tackling them can have a huge impact on the game. Pace is probably the most OP attribute in the game, and one way to nullify the impact of pace, is to hard tackle those pacey wingers and bring them down before they have a chance to do anything with the ball. You might also consider hard tackling an opposition goalkeeper, in an attempt to intimidate the opposition, and force mistakes. Finally, let's look at an example and put all of this together In the following example, I am managing Manchester United in the first season of a new save. We have not made any transfers, other than a minor loan deal for a fringe winger. No funny business here. We are over-performing in the league, but the Manchester Derby is coming, and we are expected to draw or lose. The tactical approach has been to play in a 4-2-3-1 DM, utilizing a mid-block with aggressive pressing, a higher line, and a positive mentality that seeks to get the ball forward quickly. We counter-press, AND hold shape. The idea is that we don't want to be rushed at all times, and I find that hold shape is just a great choice this year for all sorts of tactics. So you can see here what we're trying to do. We want to engage the opposition by being compact and aggressive. We don't try to close down the GK very often, and do not select the pressing trap OR cross engagement by default. Those can be picked on a per-game basis. When the opposition has the ball in their own half, approaching the halfway line, our defensive shape looks like a 4-2-4 that squeezes up and stays compact. Keep in mind, with this set up, the default setting for passing and tempo are linked to the team mentality. So, for positive, this equates to "slightly shorter" passing, and "slightly higher" tempo. That's perfect for what I want. Anyway, we beat Manchester City 2-0 at home, despite being underdogs AND despite being ahead of them in the table in January 2024. So maybe the odds makers haven't caught up yet! But, I digress. The point here is HOW we played, and how OI's impacted the result. I've added the OI's to this screenshot for you to see. They are self-explanatory, I think. City's build up shape of 3-2-5 requires the wingers to be isolated against their markers, and their width is critical for creating chances. If the wingers can't help disrupt the opposition shape, then the whole thing becomes blunted, and possession is kept at the back, cycling between the defenders. This is where they were weak. Grealish and Bobb are great players, but they are not significantly faster than my full backs, Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot. To be honest, even if they were faster, I would still adopt this same approach. Because we play a 4-2-3-1 DM, we can have Bruno Fernandes, our AMC, sit on top of Kovacic, who is also important to City's build up. So, not only did I tight mark him with the OI's, but I also changed Bruno's individual player instructions, adding "mark tighter" and "mark specific player" ----> Kovacic. The only other adjustment that was made, was during the match I added "tackle harder" to the team instructions. Here's our defensive shape against their attacking shape: Notice how they have 5 players and we have 6. Nice. Now I'm gonna show you the post match player analysis for both Jack Grealish and Oscar Bobb's "lost possession" stats. This is significant because it proves that our approach worked perfectly. Both Grealish and Bobb were completely nullified. We didn't hold them to a super low passing percentage, but we did prevent them from doing anything dangerous with the ball. They also struggled to dribble past us. Bobb had 4 dribbles, and Grealish had 1. None of them were impactful at all. Bobb's dribbles were mostly attempting to come into the middle, to find a pass. He wasn't skinning anyone. You can see in the match stats how this played out. City had a ton of the ball. 62% possession, but they did nothing with it. They didnt even have a single shot on target! Again, we didn't look to break up their passing. The percentages were very high. Instead, we looked to directly impact WHERE they could pass. You can also see that we did a much better job tackling, heading, and crossing the ball. 0/7 in crosses, Guardiola had to be livid! One final note... City had 1 corner kick the entire game. That's crazy! But again, this is because of how effective we were at dictating where they could play. The majority of their possession came in their own third, and slightly higher. They did not have much possession in our third, and thus, they had few chances to win a set piece. Closing Thoughts I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to understand how your own tactical approach works against other shapes, and styles. If you don't know what you're doing, then how can you make informed choices about opposition instructions? Keep it simple. Where do you feel comfortable letting the opposition play? Set your tactics up accordingly. If we faced a team that wanted to create overloads down the flanks with flying full backs, then this approach wouldn't work. Or, if we were a team that was unable to press aggressively and tackle well, then this also wouldn't work. You have to know what your team is good at doing. And sometimes, if you're totally outmatched, then you just have to pick your poison. So, don't be afraid to use OI's. They can give you a huge advantage if they're used properly. Start by targeting who you think is the key player for the other team, and then go from there. You don't have to do it all at once. It just takes practice.

It depends on so many things... - What are you trying to do tactically? - What style of football are you trying to play? - What problems are you having? - How do you create chances? - How do you defend? I think you should consider starting with one of the preset tactics available to you in the game.

It's tricky to get this right. It really comes down to the players you have at your disposal and what they're capable of. I've switched to a 4-3-3 DM Wide system, replacing the one that I originally wrote about here. Why? Well, it just fit better. And you know it's funny, because the results are basically just as good. The ideas are the same. One issue I have is matches against Real Madrid. They always make our life miserable. But it's my fault for sticking with a possession approach in every single game :-p

I think it's doable, but you're probably better off trying to take certain aspects of the approach rather than attempting to replicate it entirely. United's gameplan was designed specifically to counter City's attack, and you can see in the second half that City eventually changed their approach and started creating good chances. Why did it take Pep so long to make changes? I dont know. He's known to overthink things in cup finals, and maybe that was the case here.

You've pretty much nailed all the possible frustrations in one succinct post. Did you happen to catch the FA Cup final from Saturday? Manchester City were completely frustrated in the 1st half because of Man United's plan to sit narrow and completely cut off any central attacking options. This can happen quite easily in FM when facing a structured 4-2-3-1 DM where the two 2 dm's hold in front of the center backs. Guardiola did change this at half time, but it was too late. I think every system has strengths and weaknesses, and the 3-2-5 attacking shape is certainly beholden to that as well. I've noticed that the libero will take shots if there aren't better options available, and so then you have to ask, why aren't there any better choices? The striker role is *definitely* tricky in this situation because you could argue for the PF, the AF, the P, the CF, or even the DLF. The only ones I wouldn't use in this set up, are the target forward or the trequartista. I dont believe those last two make enough sense in this style of play. I think having long term success boils down to knowing when to deploy a particular system. It's true that you cannot just load one tactic and play that for an entire season and expect success. The game is so much better now, because the AI managers do a good job of making adjustments, and different styles of play can really clash.

It depends on your set up but, yeah my current Barcelona save has us scoring a truckload of goals from near post corners. We have excellent corner takers, but also, in my opinion, two of the most dominant aerial threats in the game. Ronald Araujo and Ousmane Diomande.

Glad to see it's going well. Keep in mind, I am not a tactical expert by any means. I just have been playing the game a long time now, and there are certain things you pick up along the way that make up good, sound, logical advice.

I would first look at your rest defense, or in other words, how the team looks when you have the ball comfortably. In the screenshots you've provided, it's clear that the opposition battered you down the flanks, and you can see why when you look at the rest defense. You've got the two center backs who are positioned fine, but they're not getting much help from anyone else. That's okay if it rarely happens, or if you're desperately chasing a goal, but generally you need to have 3 players back at all times to effectively handle counter attacks. In your system, who is really holding in midfield? The DLP-S? He will have "hold position" as an instruction, but that's not always going to happen, it's more of a tendency. Here's what I would do if I wanted to make this more solid defensively, AND if I wanted to maintain the flank attacks that you've set up here with your wingbacks. - You have a lot of players making forward runs, so I'm curious why you're using the volante, and what purpose that serves here? I would say your system is set up like a flank attack / high press / counter pressing system, which is great. But does it need a volante rotating up into the AM tier? That's a player role that would benefit from slower transitions where they have the time to rotate up (or back down when you lose the ball) - If you change the volante to a halfback, you'd be able to form a back 3 when the team has possession, which would help cover the runs of the wingbacks. And, you'd still have the DLP who can help with the build up phase, PLUS the trequartista will also help if he drops deep. - a trequartista in a heavy pressing system is an interesting choice. How is he doing? - Keep in mind you're using the attacking team mentality, which means that your team is going to heavily emphasize risk taking, and attacking football. So, even players on support duty may be making more forward runs than you'd want. It's something to keep an eye on. Is that what you want to see? If yes, then it's fine, but you still need to watch that. - You might want to change the goalkeeper to a support duty. In your system, I could see that being beneficial because of the high pressing nature of your setup.

I think people are well-intentioned when asking for a download of this tactic, but I promise you that it's not special, and not intended to be a plug-and-play thing at all. To me, this is all about understanding the shapes your team can form in the various phases of play, utilizing the position play mechanics in FM24's match engine. That's really what it boils down to. I wanted to see a 3-2-5 / 3-2-2-3 build up, and a 4-5-1(ish) defensive shape. How you get there is kind of irrelevant because there's a ton of ways to accomplish this. And by the way, there are plenty of other shapes to use! 3-2-5 / 3-2-2-3 is what's popular right now because of managers like Guardiola, but it's not the only way to create an effective structure.

Thanks 04texag! I have tried the halfback, but that was in a 4-3-3 and I didnt like it. IT just felt like it wasn't worth doing unless we had super attacking wingbacks, which is not what I want to see at all. I think people have definitely used it in a 4-2-3-1 DM with good results. IIRC Rashidi has an example tactic in one of his threads that uses a HB in a 4-2-3-1 DM. I've found that the CD-D does stay back the way you'd want without needing to change to a cover duty. However, That could work! I think it depends on how aggressive your pressing trap is. The more aggressive it is, perhaps you'd benefit from the cover duty in that spot. But my system is not gegenpress, and I think we need the CD-D to be willing to step up when needed. YMMV

Keep in mind that positional play does not work in FM23 the way it does in FM24. The change is massive, actually. Not saying you can't use a similar plan, but it will not look the same.