[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

Just now, crusadertsar said:

Structured does make a difference when you use specific roles that are hardcoded to drop deep like false 9 or DLF. In my experience playing on fluid makes all the roles act more like Jacks-of-all-trade. So poacher will just act like complete forward trying to go back and help in transition while dlf will spend as much time near penalty as he will in midfield. Which is what I don't want from them. I want players to stick to their roles only

 

Fluid will do that yes, but my take on structured was players were more likely to stick to their positional role, for example "Forwards are only responsible for the attacking phase" Not saying they wont drop deep, but I would imagine flexible would be the one to choose.

 

[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

28 minutes ago, Saris said:

With "at least", do you mean either structured or highly structured or do you mean: structured or higher shapes?

 

Personally, I think that advice is wrong. Structured would make the striker less likely to drop back (imo) As the players enter less phases of play. I have been using structured, and my defensive forward definitely stays forwards, more than he drops back, not saying he never does, but not like I expected. For the maximum effect, if we are talking team shapes, I would say Flexible is your best bet, but... I wouldn't expect it to make that much difference.

 

As said above, nothing wrong with using the AMC slot if it gives you what you want/need.

[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

5 minutes ago, Saris said:

I also just switched to a 442 with a poacher upfront based on the limitations of my best striker. However, the F9 is absolutely not behaving as described in the tactics screen. I often find him almost on par with my poacher despite him having the PPM "Comes Deep to Get the Ball". So I decided to move him back into the AMC as a Trequartista.

Has anybody else had the same issue with his F9 or DLF(s)?

 

Yes, defensive forward is much the same, they don't drop as deep, as often as I'd like, it's still workable, and creates space in a different way, but I think you need to make the change you already have, if you want a player who plays in a deeper position.

[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

1 hour ago, PequenoGenio said:

Could this set-up work?

Can you give some advice to improve it?

 

I'm not saying those roles and duties can't work, but they are interesting.  It's basically a 4-4-2 set up in shape, I feel you are going to get awfully exposed with such attacking duties.  It would be helpful if you could explain your reasoning behind choosing what you have,  so we know what you are trying to achieve. 

I'm confused by the team instructions, it doesn't look a set up to play a low tempo short passing game to me, but only you can know what you are trying to do.

[Tactical Challenges #1: The Poacher]

The above 4-4-2 with West Brom, is almost a carbon copy of one I was using,  other than I used a DLF rather than the F9, well initially it was a Defensive Forward, but when I had money to get a decent support striker I ditched the DF, he did a good job but didn't link as nicely.  I did have to change my  Wide Playmaker to attack duty at times, I love the overlap having him on support gave, but at times I found the Poacher a little isolated, especially if the attacking full back was having a poor game. I liked this set up, it is very easy to spot things when you keep it so simple. I found having battlers in the middle of the pitch helped a lot too. 2nd with West Brom is some feat,  I've noticed Man United rack up some tidy points totals in most of my saves, 88 is one of the lower ones, where as I have won the league in previous years with 80 ish sometimes. Nice job.

[How to achieve a solid defence?]

Basically, your defence has no protection. A DLP isn't going to hold it all together, especially Control Mentality on Very fluid.  Every player you have bar two center backs and the DLP joins the transition when you win the ball back, then I guess you are being left totally exposed. 

[What Makes A Goalscorer?!]

Great stuff. Even though I have set up my current system, I’ve learned a lot. Especially from incoherent setups posts and Rashid1’s spreadsheet.

Can you give me an insight. If I am to have a player, who is too greedy to be a F9(a role I often use now), but perfectly suits TQ role (ST position), what roles for attackers might fit in a 4-1-2-2-1 formation to make him effective. Now I play IF(A)-F9-RMD and it works perfectly, but have a chance to get a quality TQ, so I’m thinking, should I buy him or not?

Thanks

I think the easy answer here is, don't sign him. There is little point in signing a player who doesn't fit in with what you want to do. I don't get why a player who is too greedy to be a F9 is going to be a perfect TQ.

[Pairs & Combinations FM2015 - UPDATED]

Hey Llama,

This is my team at the moment:

I am very close to getting the style of play I want, but I am not happy with 2 things:

1. The Wilshere / Ramsey role in the midfield.
   
2. The Cazorla role on the left.
   

Frustratingly, these were the two things I was happiest with the season before when I played this:

Could I use Wilshere in as a DMC set to Regista (S) as my holding role?

I'd also like to set Ramsey in a more attacking role but that's suicide without more defensive cover, which I don't see how I can achieve without losing either a wide player, or my focal point in attack. Suggestions welcome.

Hi, I read your thread about this, and took some ideas from it for my Liverpool tactic. I have a slightly different set up, and I play a balanced philosophy, but interestingly using your midfield trio set up, it almost makes your team set up almost like a 4-2-3-1. I'm not to sure how good defensively Wilshere is (I understand that isn't his real purpose in your set up) but a few games when I was losing, needed a goal etc, I lined up with the Regista in the DM position, an APS on the left side center, and a CM (a) on the right. Worked really nicely, would probably be suicide v a decent team and not ideal for a main tactic. I also have a little more cover down the right side as I have my wide man as a WM (s) As an overall tactic if you want to more attacking type roles in center midfield then you would have to sacrifice the regista for a more defensive role, possibly a DLP (d) is the closest thing to a regista you could get away with. I'm not all to sure how Very Fluid works in real time, as I have never used to, but in theory with a good side, players should cover holes when other players step forward ?

[Ajax - When Real Life Meets Football Manager - FM14]

I'd like to hear more about the tactic, as it's very similar to the one I am trying to set up (role wise at least) we have different ideas about what we want to d, but it's still interesting to read. I don't see why being Ajax should be easy when you have people posting that they can't win with Liverpool, Barcelona etc etc, and you are using a lot of youth players too.

[Ajax - When Real Life Meets Football Manager - FM14]

Haha, I can't see what you're not understanding lol.

On my FM14, when you slide the slider further to the left, the days in the calender increase their shading for match prep. So 20% you have half a day on Friday, 30% is all day Friday, then 40 then 50 take up the Thursday. And these shaded days have a drop down menu for Match Prep. Though they are the same list of areas as Match Training, but like I say can be set to different areas.

I guess we'll agree to be confused.

I know what you mean.

The boxes in the day windows on the calender have a drop down box which says Match Prep (I think it is) this will follow what you have set at the top of your page, and should be colour coded to grey if it's Tactics only. However if you want on one of the days to select something different for your match prep, then you can change it on the calender day, without affecting the main setting and all the other days. Does that make any sense?

[Ajax - When Real Life Meets Football Manager - FM14]

Ah I always thought it was 20 mins to get a match rating, I noticed in previous versions if a players scores they get a rating regardless of how long they'd been on, not sure if that's still true, not that, that bit is important.

I've been working on giving them a minimum of 20 mins for years, not sure where I got that figure from now. I find it quite difficult especially in FM214 to get them on in time sometimes, sometimes you need to get the subs booked in for not long after 60 mins to get them on for 70 mins, where as other times it will be instant (when the ball goes out of play quicker obviously)

In the past I have just gone out signed players with the intention of getting promoted, what I want to do with this game is give most of my squad a season, use my youth, and try and work on the tactics side of the game, so hopefully out of the 5 I have an eye on for a potential first team spot a couple can make it in the first team next season.

[Ajax - When Real Life Meets Football Manager - FM14]

Thank you, very helpful.

Final question promise, was just about to edit it in to my original post, but you'd already responded :-)

I have 5 players that I think I can make in to decent to good first team players, they aren't anywhere near first team standard yet for my league, their ages range from 17-19, obviously I will have younger players to work with in the future, but at the start of the game this is what I'm dealt with. So obviously I can't throw them all in willy nilly together in the first team, I'm going to have to carefully select times they can play, come off the bench for 20 minutes etc.

How many games as a minimum would you say they really need to make good progress, obviously more the better, but if I use them all from the off I will almost certainly get the sack :-) I assume the game calculates it in minutes rather than games, but I don't know this for sure. They can all make full first team appearances, just not all together, using them off the bench, and as cover for my first team is what I plan to do.

[Ajax - When Real Life Meets Football Manager - FM14]

Fantastic thread, and an inspiration for me (and many others I'm sure) I have a few questions, if you'd prefer some of them in the Santos thread then by all means move them (or delete and I'll do it again) I thought seeing as this thread was active now, they were better in here.

Regarding Pre-Season

Your posts on this have been so helpful you can't even imagine. I have a few things I'd like help with if at all possible.

I've obviously got the basics down with your help.

You say to use one tactic throughout pre-season, to get it full fluid, I never managed to get it fully fluid but it was close enough by the time the season started. Few problems, this is more about your first pre-season than after that. You can't change your tactic at all during pre-season, or the fluidity takes much longer, this causes problems in itself, because you can't really try anything out. I guess I can live with this to be well prepared at the start of the season. Next problem though, you get to the first game of the season, and you only have one tactic framework anywhere near fluid, I'd like to have 3 (or at least 2) different tactics, even if the same formation with different set ups for different situations. I think it took until six weeks in to the season to get absolute fluidity in my original tactic, do I really have to wait that long before I can add more options? Hope this makes sense.

I noticed with the fluidity, that certain parts of it take much longer than others, I think that your side is set a default set of settings when you start the game, which are more fluid to begin with than others, and the further you stray from those with your set up, the longer those part of the tactics will take. For example I set my tactic in my last save to hassle opponent, and the closing down part of the tactic took much longer than the rest of it to become fluid.

Nurturing youth to do a specific job

I've learned a ton of stuff off you about this topic also (thank you)

Obviously starting as a League 1 club is slightly different to being Ajax, I have a handful of youth players who look like they could play League 1 football with the right work put in to them. I'm guessing being at Walsall not many of them are going to have really high PA, as they will be relative do the division/club and facilities at the club from the start. I really need to focus on specific attributes for certain roles, without wasting to much on other parts of their attribute set up.

Training them with basic roles that don't require a bunch of attributes is my plan for the short term in my project. This could be problematic with some players, as they have unbalanced stats, but I am capable of working out the best roles to train them for (which I can use in my set up)

Do you feel just training them a role is the best way to go with this, or try and do burst of training on different attributes. For example I have a young center back, he looks reasonable in some areas, he needs some of his mental stats to rise (as most of them do) I plan on using Tactics rather than balanced for my general training for this reason (is this something you think is reasonable?) His positioning is awful though, would need to rise a lot. Would you focus on his positioning from the off at the expense of other key attributes which also need quite a bit of work to make him a league 1 worthy center back, or just train the role for the first season, and evaluate at the end of the season?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.