[Improve director of football]

Hi!

 

I've been extensively playing with a director of football model, letting the DOF do as much of my transfer business as possible. I've been hugely impressed with the way this works. DOF seems to recognize the positions needing reinforcements and finds very suitable players, ones that i would most likely never find by myself. He also gets good prices on the players. There's few problems though, fixing these would make the whole experience alot better;

DOF doesn't scout the players. Out of nowhere he just bids on players he haven't scouted at all. With attribute masking this leaves you quessing whether to allow the transfer to go through or not. Most of the time these players are really good and often real hidden gems, the DOF just seems to find them through some invisible AI scouting network, not the one you as a player use.

DOF can't really negotiate contracts. He always seems to bid minimum wage possible and not budge no matter what. I don't think i've ever seen him actually signing a dude because the contract is always rejected. This forces me to take control of the contracct negotiations. Weirdest thing is this doesn't seem to affect AI managers overall, they get the contracts through just fine. DOF doesn't though.

These 2 things feel very gamey and bugged and they shouldn't be hard to fix. Otherwise the DOF has really surprised me, especially when it comes to the quality of players he finds.

Thanks!

[Diamond thoughts]

What do you think about diamond 4-4-2? I like to play it and seems to yeild very good results if you're the dominant team in your league (had decent success with it as RB salzburg and Sogndal), but it always feels like something in missing. It seems to work nicely for fast, direct and hard pressing game in which everyones first idea is to get the ball to forwards asap. If i try to morph it into more controlled, more fluid tactic i tend to create visually very nice plays but it's not very effective, i usually end up with a lot of crosses and long shots. Increasing tempo, directness or mentality seems to fix this but also leads to problems with counter attacks and wasted chances. Actually i often seem to end up with a tactic that essentially bypasses the midfield in the build up but still wins. Here are some questions i've been thinking about:

How do you set your attacking width in a diamond?

Do you use really attacking fullbacks?

Do you think playmaker fits into the system?

Is the system best utilised with more of a direct style?

Is hard pressing the only way to make it defensively solid?

 

Thanks for anyone paying attention to this ramble!

[The Bane of my FM Life - Flat Defensive 541/451 - Advice Needed]

I seem to find success by changing attacking width depending on opposition. If my wide players find themselves so narrow they never have time to cross or pass before getting closed down i go more wide. If i'm so wide my central players stop finding each other with forward passes i go more narrow. Going wider seems to allow my wide players to go around the low block and cross from byline instead of attempting a deeper cross (getting blocked by the first defender).

[Quickfire Questions and Answers Thread (Tactic and Training Questions Only)]

Does using pass into space increase the likelihood of a short through ball getting played between the opposing center backs? I've got a 4-4-1-1 going with a fluidish attack i like very much, the attacking transition is really nice all the way to the final third. My playmaker in cm seems to often dribble with the ball in front of the opponents backline and my striker and AMC seems to do exactly the correct runs to the spaces between opposing defenders, but the AP very often just takes a long shot from the edge of the box instead of playing the easy through ball between the defenders.