Jack722

P3 - Tactics For this match we are going to use a Cautious mentality. The key reasoning for this is that in our gameplan we want to let Leciester have the ball, but aim to be dangerous on the counter attack. As per the description, we expect to lose the battle for possession, but feel we can break with some regularity. We want a mentality that can allow us to keep men behind the ball, but also let us get forward quickly when the situation demands it. For the rest of the tactic, most of the instructions are fairly self explanotory - and fit in well with a standard counter attacking tactic. Whipped Crosses -> selected due to the profile of our striker Run at Defence -> two of our most dangerous players are our very quick and tricky wingers (also fits well in a counter attacking tactic) Drop off more -> to mitigate the threat of their quick and tricky front three from getting in behind and beating defenders 1 v 1 For our formation and roles, not too much thought went into them. We kept a formation we are already familiar with in the 4-2-3-1, and the players are mostly playing in roles that suit they are used to and that suit their abilities

Thanks! I believe it’s called tacticalboard.com No, I think that the opposition instructions are labelled wrong. The players will still close him down if they really have to. Otherwise the instruction is pointless, because the centre backs could dribble all the way forward and take a shot as well. It’s the same sort of thing with man marking, the player doing the marking will focus on his man for most of the match, but will help out elsewhere if absolutely needed. Yeah I suppose that would also be a good option, I imagine they will stay on their feet more and be easier to recover.

P2 - Gameplan (2/2)(Cont.) After focusing on Leicester's defenders and midfielders, we needed to look at their front three, who pose a different set of problems. Since his title winning days, Jamie Vardy has lost a little bit of pace - but has still retained enough to be very dangerous runnning in behind. Interestingly though, he seems to have matured into a bit of an all-rounder and has no particular strengths or weaknesses. These players are always difficult to plan for, and if you shut down one part of their game, they will punish you with another. We can stay tight but he may beat his defender for pace, or we can stand off and let him pick out a pass or shot. However, their two wingers both have the same sort of profile. They have very good pace and dribbling, but arguably lack a bit of end product. You can see in the image that Vision and Mentals are weaker areas of their game. I have also noticed that their passing and crossing aren't very dangerous - particuarly with them both playing as the lone widemen and on the opposite side to their strong feet. The most important thing to worry about here is 1v1 duels and balls in behind. In terms of strategy we cannot let our fullbacks be beaten 1v1 by Leiester's wingers. If we can stay in front of them and shuttle them out wide onto their weaker foot, they will offer very little threat. To do this we can set the closing down instructions on the wingers to never, as well as show onto weaker foot for both. Due to Jamie Vardy's all round ability, all we can really do is trust our two centrebacks to deal with him and for our overall strategy to limit supply towards him. Since Leciester are going to try to exploit the 1v1 duels down the flanks, we need to make sure our fullbacks are up to the task. Unfortunately due to an injury crisis, we only have one player who can play right back. But Luckily our right side should get a bit more support from our right winger, who should have light defensive duties due to his opposite fullback inverting into the defensive line. The biggest problem is certainly our left-hand side, since our left winger will follow his man and defend the centre so The 1v1 between Fatawu (RW) and our LB will be a key battle in this match. I have some concerns about our first choice LB, Ryan Manning. He only has 11 pace, and since all the space will be out wide, all Fatawu would need to do is knock the ball past him to be in loads of space for a cutback. Our normal backup, Juan Larios, is only 19, and slightly worse than Manning at almost everything. However, Larios is much faster and actually matches Fatawu for speed. Larios clearly is the better option to shut down a winger of Fatawu's profile.

P2 - Gameplan (1/2) We already noted that Leciester's main man to facillitate a possession game and dominate the ball is Harry Winks. So the cornerstone of our gameplan is to block off the centre and stop play going through him. Since we are also a strong team, and at home, it may be possible to go man-for-man and press the straight from the goalkeeper in buildup, but this is a tiresome and risky tactic. Firstly, they may have the ability to play through us anyway, and secondly if they decide to go long, they can open up the possiblity for a footrace with Vardy (15 pace) against one of my centrebacks - which I do not like. I think the most sensible option for now would be to sit in a midblock, hold our shape, harrass Harry Winks, and allow their centrebacks to have the ball with no option to go forward. Once they lose the ball, we should break with pace and aim to exploit Vestegaard's poor mobility and Wink's questionable defensive ability. One thing we can do to help create this is by setting the following instructions as per below: Centrebacks: Closing down Never; tight marking Never. Show on to outside foot Keeper: Closing down Never; tight marking Never Winks (DM): Closing down always; tight marking always We have played the whole season so far in a 4231 shape, and I plan to keep the shape due to it suiting my players and keeping up familiarity. Luckily, we have a CAM who is naturally going to be near Winks, allowing the tight marking and closing down on him to be more effective. Unfortunately, as we already discussed earlier, Leicester RB (Justin) is expected to play as an inverted wingback, and likey find himself next to Winks in a double pivot. As you can see, this completely ruins our plan of block play coming in to midfield. Leicester will have a 2v1 in their defensive midfield area, and since we have instructed to mark Winks tightly, James Justin (RB) is going to be wide open for the pass every single time. To fix this without changing our formation, we need to set our left winger to man mark Justin. If we man mark Justin in the centremidfield, Leicester suddenly don't have any easy balls forward. We've allowed them a 3v1 in their defensive third of the pitch, which is fine since we don't want to press the centrebacks anyway. This sacrifice has allowed us to sit close to every other player, hopefully forcing the CB's to pass between each other for large portions of the game before trying something more risky and losing the ball. TBC..

P1 - Scouting & Preparation In my current save I am playing as Southampton in the Championship. We are one of the strongest teams and are expecting to finish in the play-off positions, so naturally we tend to play most games our own way on the front foot. However, my next game is against Leciester - who are huge favourites for the title. Leicester are currently first in the league and are on a very strong run of form. Meanwhile, we are fourth and rightfully labelled slight underdogs for this fixture. In order to get a better idea about how Leicester play, I pulled up the data hub page, and selected four graphs that I thought best illustrated what to expect from them: Here we can essentially deduce that they are en extremely good possession-based team. They complete far and away the most passes in the league according to the Passing Dynamics, and as seen in the Pitch Tilt Most of these passes occur in the opposition final third. Aerially they complete very few headers, meaning they like to keep the ball on the ground and probably work the ball in to the box for chances. And finally, in Team Defending they have a low OpPPDA (Opposition passes per defensive action), meaning they likely press very high. Leciester's expected tactic is a 4-3-3 What's most interesting about this though is that neither of the fullbacks are conventional. Justin on the right will invert into midfield and Doyle on the left will join the centrebacks to form a back 3: This system works quite well for if you want to keep possession, a back three with a double pivot in front is very difficult to press, and it allows for a lot of numbers centrally for progression through the middle. It looks like the two centre mids, especially the right side - will get forward in and around the striker, and the two wingers will likely stay wide, since there is no support from fullback (although the left IF will probably try to come central from time to time). In terms of personnel, Leciester have some very strong players, but there are also a few weaknesses we may be able to exploit. The main player to single out is certainly Harry Winks - who is expected to start at DM. His attribute spread is absolutely perfect for a deep-lying playmaker in a possession-heavy system - which is one of the most important roles for dictating play and assisting playing out the back. I have already highlighted some of the key attributes that he scores high in, and he also has the player trait to dictate tempo. However, it's clear that defensviely, he is not the best. His tacking, jumping reach and strength are all significantly lower than his more on-ball attributes. I won't go in too deep on all the players, but I'll leave below some general notes on the rest of the team: Some things we can note from this: The quick attackers means we need to be very careful about pushing our defensive line too high. Both wingers are very dangerous with high pace and dribbling, but are playing on the opposite side of their strong foot with no support from fullback and no obvious target in the box to aim crosses for. Dewsbury-Hall has very high ability all-round, but no obvious strength or weakness. He needs to be monitored as the game goes on. Vestegaard is a giant with ecellent passing ability, however he is very slow and may be prone to be caught on the break - especially if leciester push high up as we expect. P2 - Gameplan & Tactics to follow..

I've heard this too, In FM23 I used to assume this and therefore left a lot of the in possession sliders blank if I was trying to play purely on the counter as a weaker team. But in FM24 I have experiented with playing high tempo and direct in possession instructions and I get some lovely counter attacks as well as counter-pressing (gegenpressing) goals. I'm wondering now if it's to do with the instructions or more to do with the different Match engine.

If you want to create a defensive team that mostly plays on the counter, do you have to go direct and high tempo, or does ticking the ‘counter’ button in transition suffice?

I've been playing an Inter save and have had some really nice counter attacks in FM24

For the last 3 years in fm , I have really wanted to get working a 433 that transitions to a 235 in attack, with wingers staying wide, fbs tucking in and 2 CMS bombing forward. in fm22 it wasn’t possible to get the shape, but fm23 up until now I can almost manage the shape but the results are terrible, it’s like the team don’t know how to play together and constantly make the wrong choices - as if the ME can’t handle it.

I don't think I've every really taken any useful information from these scout reports. Take an example here: What does this tell me with respect to how to approach the game? The goalkeepers are good handlers of the ball All of them on average? This means nothing to me.. I want to know about the keeper who's expected to start against me Maybe this tells me to not cross so close to the keeper? Maybe aim corners a bit further out? I'll give you that The goalkeepers are good at throwing the ball out I don't think this tells me anything. Maybe they could start a good counter attack? it's not gonna change how i'm going to set up though. Again, they're not lining up three keepers, I want to know about who is starting There is questionable work rate How does this help me? maybe get stuck in more, play higher tempo to work them harder? Mayeb their midfielders are the outliers and have great workrate though.. If we turn the game into something more effort-based, they may end up winning the midfield battle. Here is some information that may actually be useful.. They consistently play out the back Okay now I can check the keeper and CB attributes to see if it's worth pressing slightly higher Their expected starting wingbacks Fofana and Ashby have great crossing It's worth checking their striker's heaading ability now, I may then decide to prevent crosses and / or change formation to double up on the flanks They are expected to play deep and defensive against teams of our stature Now I can work on an attacking tactic during the week and play more expansive from the start

I took a long break from playing but re-installed fm24 recently and started a new save playing pragmatic football. I think it looks better in 24 tbh, I’ve seen lots of lovely counter attacks and have seen improved defensive solidity when without the ball. my approach has changed slightly too, I may update this post with some new ideas and corrections.

Fewer pressing triggers with a low block and low line makes a lot of sense to hold shape and not have to worry about the ball over the top. the same configuration with a more active pressing triggers also makes sense in situations if you want to force more turnovers and counter. but is there ever a reason to use the setup as per my title? It seems as though you’re going to be prone to balls over the top. Or does the high press aspect of it mean that players are put under enough pressure anyway to stop them getting their head up and playing the ball over the top?

I know what attacking width does , but I don’t have a concrete idea in my head when to use wide and when to use narrow. If anyone can give any examples that would be great . I’ve heard that narrow width can be better for counter pressing since everyone is closer to each other and the ball. ive heard that more width in general is better for breaking down a low block since you can stretch the defence better or go round the side easier. any other examples?

Most times that I properly dive into my youth teams, the squad builidng is horrific. Most these players need to be playing regular games, but a lot of the time I see 3 keepers, 6 CBs (for a 2CB formation) and no RB - as an example. It's a bit of pain to sort the squads out, but just wondering if anyone else tries to do youth team management and sees this? surely the players are going to get nowhere near enough games and even have to play out of position somewhere that they're entirely unsuited to?

Nowadays most teams in top leagues play out of defence at least sometimes. The main difference is that some play out of defence constantly , and others when there’s less risk or when they’re not being pressed. when under no pressure -> from time to time -> every time regardless of pressure