Jack722

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

This should be an option in the opposition instruction section for when you play a team with a strong dribbler on the wing

The fact that most people agree this and that the presets have been left in for multiple years is baffling to me. Especially since they're really shoved in your face when you first start a save. I imagine lots of beginners would choose one of these presets and get immediately battered and therefore not find the game fun. It would be so easy to fix as well. Also it's not just route one, catenaccio is unusable, so are the counter attacking ones, as well as park the bus.

They also qualified for Europe finishing 7th and stayed in the prem multiple seasons on probably the lowest budget before being sacked. Now they’ve got kompany playing attacking football and are looking quite likely to be relegated in their first season

This is just not route one though? The whole basis of route one is to play long ball - that is what this thread is about. You're not even using slightly more direct let alone extremely direct. Youre also playing a higher line and much more often pressing triggers. I would argue this is closer to a gegenpress than a standard routeone tactic.

I am on the side that route one football is at least slightly broken. I remember doing a burnley save back when they were under Sean Dyche and a tailor-made 442 hoofball team. One save I used the out-the-box 442 route one , and the other save I used an out-the-box 433 vertical tikitaka, and kept my involvement as little as possible by leaving most day-to-day management to the assisstant manager... Guess which was better? Well the hoofball got me sacked half a season in and the vertical tikitaka finished mid table... Whatever you say, something is wildly wrong there. Either the match engine or the tactics creator needs to get sorted asap to make hoofball at least a somewhat viable tactic. - also a lot of peole are defending the ME by saying that hoof ball is just really complicated, or you need exactly the right players. But there is no reason why a simple 442 hoofball and mid / low block should be harder to create than a 433 gegenpress. In my opinion, playing out the back and high pressing is much more demanding in terms of attributes and coaching than any route one tactic - but those seem to be easy in the ME. I'll redo the experiment if anyone is interested as i understand that at the moment this is just anecdotal.

Sorry but this is definitely not a defence first tactic. It's just not an overly attacking / possession focused tactic that we see everyone use on Football Manager. It would be interesting to see you use some of the lower mentalities and reduced pressing instructions, as well as some of the more defensive roles like No nonsence centre back.

i read this earlier today and saw a lot of GK injuries in the comments. In my second league game of the season i had 2(!) keepers injured within 10 minutes of each other. I finished the game with my CB in goal and then found out that both my keepers are out for at least 5 weeks. I feel like this is probably turned up too much! I already want to give up on the season.

Any schedule looking like that is nothing to do with tactics. Just poor man management

On the pre match team talk screen, you get this image, and you can see the player's moods. Sometimes, theyre nervous, motivated, complacent, or just composed. Let's say youre coming up against a team that you should easily win against, but everyone is already motivated before the team talk, would you still demand a win? Or would you go for a more neutral team talk , like encouragement or relaxing?

I guarentee this was not because of reputation change or teams changing how they play against you, but the fact that in January, people start talking about the title race and relegation and top 4 etc.. Your players just got nervous and basically sh*t the bed. You probably started reciveing questions about top 4 and the title race. There are two things you should've done at this stage. Take off as much pressure as possible from your players to do with end of seasons goals. Any press question about winning the title say "we're just taking things one at a time", "we have a long way to go before we're on the same level as Barca", "I think Barca / Real will win the league" or something similar Never use the title race in team talks. Once you start getting close to the end of the season you should tell players to "go out there and enjoy yourselves" or something along those lines. The pressure would be immense at that stage to win a potential once in a lifetime title, they already have motivation enough to do well.

This is 100% not true. I used to have the worst mid season slumps, to the point where it ruined many of my saves and had me tearing my hair out. Ever since I stopped listening to this advice, my mid seasons slumps reduced to 2 or 3 games - or dissapeared entirely. There are two main reasons this recalculation theory makes no sense. This doesn't happen in real life - does anyone really massively change how they place against, say, Fulham in the premier league now? not really.. They continue attempting to play their own game against pretty much everyone, apart from the big six and certain scenarios (like winning late on) where they'll be more defensive. Reputation takes years to change signifcantly to the point where teams change the way they play against you. Supposedly teams start playing more defensive against you.. Then why do we start suddenly conceding more goals? and why does barely anyone else ever play defensive and win reguarly playing great football like all these teams are apparently doing to you? People on these forums forget that football in real life, and FM, is massively influenced by factors outside of tactics. What normally happens is a variety of non-tactical factors. Normally players start complaining about new contracts / transfers/ playing time in mid season, and get unhappy. This can lead to huge consequences if not managed properly. Teams can genuinely get a bit unlucky and lose a couple games (no big deal) but then if not managed correctly can lead to frustration / second guessing themselves / nervousness / giving up etc.. Numerous times i've seen my teams play well and lose for a couple games, then suddenly forget how to play football and get badly outplayed against mediocre sides after You can have a genuinely hard fixture list and go 4 or 5 games winless. Players can lose confidence after a run like this and subsequently go on a bad run of form Frustration can occur after a huge 4 / 5-0 loss where every shot the opposition takes basically goes in Strikers are programmed to be able to go on a dry spell and cost your team results, same with keepers losing confidence. An unexpected title race / possible champions league qualification can lead to the pressure getting to your players. And many more... There are methods in game to stop all of these happening. I think one clue to be sure that your problem is non-tactical is by checking morale and dressing room atmosphere. If they're not green then you are guarenteed to be leaving points on the table. It's crazy how powerful those two indicators are.