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I've had the best luck with either target forward or dlf. Attack usually works better than support, when using those roles, if you want them playing the assisting pass. Support works better for building up in midfield but you'd need a 10 or really advanced midfielder to make the final pass. I find it the PPM "does not move into channels" really helps the DLF unless he happens to have really good crossing. Currently I'm using a raumdeuter at AML, AM(A) at the AMCR, IW(S) at the AMR, and a DLF(A) offset to the right, usually the striker still leads in goals but the RMD is not far behind him in 2nd most goals. Striker is ually 2nd in assists behind the RMD. Really turns those 2 into all stars

Yeah this game was really interesting. Brighton basically played a shape that was at times a 3-1-6, at times a 3-2-5, at times a 3-4-3 and at times their more usual 2-4-4 it was really hard to nail it down to just 1 attacking shape. The only real constants were Baleba dropping back as a Half Back, and Gross playing basically as an Inverted Wingback attack that would overlap at times. Gilmour's role was a bit harder to pin down, maybe just a DM support, or a DLP support. I went with an AP support in the CM strata because he was basically even with Facundo and more than willing to drop back to get on the ball. He lead the team in total passes and was equaled only by Mitoma for key passes so being a play maker in FM terms makes sense. If I was setting it up based just on this game I'd probably try something like this: Which lead to a pass map of this: RDZ has been so flexible and creative in his approach this year with all the injuries, new personal and teams approaching playing against them differently. I think ultimately this is what we as "managers" need to emulate for a true Bright recreation. With the changes to the match engine this year you can be very creative and flexible in your tactics game to game depending on how the opposition is pressing you, how you want to press them, what areas of their defense you think you can exploit etc. More than ever this year there isn't a set it and forget it tactic to emulate what RDZ's club are doing out there.

I also highly recommend this series, I've watched every episode and taken a decent bit of ideas from it.

Okay so I injured my hand at work today so I wont type up too much, but here's what I've been using to find decent success: Pass map I liked the best from recent games: Much more typical pass map: What I like: generally making a 244 type shape in attack that can transition into all the way a 2-1-7 in attack, with lots of variations in between. Mitoma and March/Fati (i play them both in the AMR slot regularly) getting plenty of shots Centerbacks completing a lot of passes (the right sided one ended up with the 3rd most passes completed in the league and the left sided one at 16th with 73 and 61 passes completed per 90, respectively) What I dislike: right fullback getting a bit too high and a bit too wide for me rpm joining the attack a bit too often (may try to tone it down with PPM's) too much play on the flank, not enough in the middle of the pitch generally too little possession - usually finishing between 54 and 56% - though some games we can go as high as 60-65% against other premier league teams or even 75-80% in Cup games against much weaker sides bottom of the league in OPPDA This one i want to expand on a little - obviously the tactic has the lowest pressing intensity so this should be expected - Asking them to press only when a clear opportunity arises and otherwise just keep a nice compact shape works a lot better as seen here: Overall though i think it's doing a decent enough job, most recently we finished 6th on the xg charts despite actually finishing 11th in the league (again I blame Steel's awful save percentage), but we still made the Champion's League thanks to beating Liverpool 3-2 in the Europa League Final! Lots of things to keep testing to fully get the playing style, philosophy and end products where I want them to be.

Brighton is truly awful this year. Like I originally said in almost every save RDZ is fired around Christmas with the team around the relegation zone so it's been hard to get something to work with them. So far I'm still testing but have a few more conventional looking 4231's I've been trying. I've managed to get a 5th and 6th place finish a few times but feel like they were outliers in being good defensively. I've had to sacrifice a bit of my philosophy to get something that works, namely I've found it very hard to finish near the top 3 in possession without completely neutering the attack. With anything that works I've been finishing around 55 percent possession. I'll post some updates tonight with what I've been trying with brighton to hopefully get a discussion up and running again.

Made a couple small changes, really liking this version a lot more. I read through @04texag thread on positional play, lots of good stuff in there and I stole the idea of removing play out of defense and lowering the tempo a lot to get a similar controlled build up from the back and I gotta say the building from the back and transitioning to the mid third looks a lot better with this set of instructions. Overall I'm a lot happier with this version of the tactic. Tactic used: In the screen shot it's shown as a cautious mentality, but really anything between cautious and attacking works, allowing for a lot more flexibility in games. Random Match results (at Luton): Pass Map from that same game: I'm really happy with the general double box midfield you get from this tactic (2 CD's making a box with the 2 midfielders, and the 2 midfielders making a box with the striker and AM) They're not quite perfectly straight boxes like the pass map from Brighton's game against Wolves early in the season seen here: But they're close enough for my liking considering all the rotating players are doing in my version of the tactic. Double midfield boxes from the same Luton Game The full backs play some great stuff too: Generally when the ball is on the left side the IFD will push up a tad higher rather than trying to stay in line with the 2 CD's (he is particularly willing to do this with the overlap left instruction on. with an attacking team mentality and that instruction you can get him all the way up to a balanced mentality), and when the AP pushes up the IFD will tuck in a bit more narrow to provide some cover in that area of the pitch (only when the ball is on his side of the pitch) When the ball is on the right side of the pitch the ride sided CD will push up a bit higher and wider to be an option to recycle the possession through and the IFD will slide back into a CD role to maintain the overall shape and provide defensive cover. If you're losing possession more often than you'd like, especially in the middle 3rd of the pitch i'd either change the right sided centerback to a CD or add the Hold Position PI to the right sided centerback to limit how often he's pushing higher and wider and limit gaps forming in your back line while all the parts are moving around. The FB (S) was chosen over the CWB (s) as he generally looks to get the ball into the midfield a bit more often really helping us use the numerical superiority the double boxes provide in midfield. He will push up a lot more often than the IFD does obviously, and will generally hold the width in the initial build up but will look to stay a tad narrower as we're moving the ball into the middle 3rd of the pitch (stay narrow PI). When the IF ahead of him cuts inside, he'll go back outside to hold the width and will occasionally overlap the IF to keep the opposition back line stretched. Replicating Brighton's fullbacks exactly probably can't be done within the simplicity of the match engine (simple compared to real life anyway where specific triggers to cut inside/outside stay/go can be given) but this is as good as I've been able to get it so far and I'm happy with how they're playing. As for the front 4 it's still a bit of a work in progress. The wide players aren't getting enough shots to be true to life Brighton, but playing with Haaland is probably influencing that aspect a bit. More testing is required. The Mitoma role is especially troublesome for me this year. Trequartista worked great last year, but seems to drop deep much more frequently this year so he's not leading the line as much as I'd like, but the IF in this setup is getting a lot less shots per game then the Treq on the other side is. Ideally the stats they're putting up for me would be swapped the AML Treq (March's role) is getting a lot more shots and the AMR IF (Mitoma's role) is getting a lot more key passes and assists. IRL it's the opposite, but Mitoma is typically the furthest forward player for Brighton and I've only been able to get that our of the IF this year. I am really liking how fluid the front 4 are though, occasionally you'll see the striker getting a lot of space out wide and in response the treq really pushes in narrow and they basically swap positions (you can see just how wide Haaland was pulled in that Luton pass map above and that the Treq is much narrower than usual), occasionally the striker and AMC will swap who's leading the line and who's dropping back, sometimes they'll both drop, sometimes they both push on, sometimes only the striker will drop and they'll be in line with each other etc. I'd love to get the AMC/AMR/striker swapping occasionally as well but i think playing the striker offset to the left is preventing that from happening often if at all. If he's not offset to the left though the double box build up shape is completely broken and to me thats more important to replicate De Zerbi than the fluidity/rotations from half the pitch in the final third. As I mentioned above the philosophy, shape and general playstyle stay the same through the mentality ladder: Cautious and balanced are probably overall my preferred mentalities. Most of the squad seem to hold the shape I'm looking for better on those two mentalities, but I do like how much more willing the IFD is to push up on the higher mentalities. Still needs testing with sides not as strong as City but I'm very happy with how it's playing so far. Give this one a go and let me know what you guys think.

Trust me I get it! It's certainly not what i sought out to make, but after watching a lot of games and tweaking when I didn't like where someone was positioned during build up or transitions this is what I ended up with. I feel like I'll end up going back to the drawing board completely at some point but at least for the beta this shape is giving me more or less what I want out of it. It's a huge credit to the new match engine that the insane looking tactic ends up with a very regular looking pass map though! I'm still tweaking and testing as I go recently changed the CWB to a FB(s), knocked the tempo down 1 notch and took off counter and I think I'm liking the passages of play more, but we aren't creating as many good chances. Still need to play with the roles of the front 4 too. I started with my tactic from last year and have largely been focused on getting the back 6 to play and move a bit more like how RDZ has Brighton playing in their last few games. (Though not sure if he really wants them to play that way or if having Gross drop between the CB's and Dunk play almost as a libero is due to injuries and/or the fact that a lot of teams have been pressing them in a diamond shape these last few games more than a slight change in his philosophy) Regardless I'm happy with the back 6, time to tweak the front 4 and see if that has any knock on effects to the rest of the team. Still needs testing with a team that isn't as dominate in their league as City though, because the tactic screen looks so wacky I'm just assuming it wont be good with a team that isn't quite as favored to win the league.

Okay, just another quick update - I've taken to testing with City until something changes with the Brighton players or I have access to the editor to change it myself; I can't get anything to work with them as is. Messing around with City though I think I'm getting close to getting some pass maps that look pretty good. Two notes - I'd mirror this tactic for Brighton, pushing up on the right works better with City's defenders, pushing up the left would work better for Brighton's defenders & Usually the AML (Foden - 47 - in this case) is pushed up quite a bit higher but against Liverpool he must have had his hands full defending and having to drop back to get on the ball a lot. Results vs Liverpool at home: Pass Map: Before I post this tactic I just want to say that I'm aware it looks absolutely terrible on the tactic screen, and it may be terrible, it could honestly just be a case of City being talented enough to make whatever work. More (lots more) testing will be required but I'm at least seeing some pass maps, positioning and passages of play that I like. Tactic used: Before anyone asks why the AM is in front of the AP like that - I started with the AM in the AMC slot on the right but the AP filled into the left sided AMC slot way to fast in buildup and transition for my liking. as is when the TF starts dropping back the AM slides over to the right, and once he's done sliding over the AP will move up a bit similarly to how Gross plays. I don't love what i get out of the TF on support, if it was anyone other than Haaland it would probably be awful. I'll need to try an AF with plays with back to goal. That combo was the only real striker role I was happy with in this recreation last year.

Okay first update: to establish a baseline if my tactics are helping or hurting I usually sim the first season a few times as an unemployed manager and see how the team does with default manager and their tactics. To put it simply Brighton is awful. In all 10 sims RDZ was sacked by Christmas at most winning 4 games. Usually in or hovering around the relegation zone. (seems weird but it's a beta after all) They usually replace him with someone who plays more counter attacking defensive style and finish around 12 to 15th. Yikes. Initial thoughts are that it may be more of a challenge this year to play a high possession type tactic as a perceived weaker team and/or that Brighton's players or RDZ's under the hood attributes need some tweaking. Will dive into my season tonight to see what I can come up with.

Looking forward to getting stuck into this again for FM24, all the positional play changes, new roles, Libero (D) etc it'll be a fun time. Hoping we can get the play out from the back/baiting the press a bit better this go around.

Just going to leave this here If anyone wants to join in the conversations we have a lot of recreations going on in the above listed thread.

Just to drop a quick note: The below image has the pass map from Brighton's 4-1 victory over Wolves, surrounded by the pass maps from the first 8 games of my FM season. You can see in some of them different players (namely the AM or AML) had to drop back a bit more to get the ball but I'm happy with how similar they are to real life. In general Mitoma isn't as far forward as he was in the wolves match (but with how fluid the front 4 are I'm sure if you plotted it over a year he wouldn't always be the furthest forward person) and there isn't enough passing back to the keeper (but i think that's just a general FM thing)

interesting, any time i try 'dwells on ball' they end up playing like absolute ****. do you notice the plays 1-2's having much of an impact? i've been meaning to try it but haven't gotten around to it yet. i did get around to trying 'dictates tempo' on the more mentally strong CB and liked it in theory, but in practice it's hard to tell how much it's actually doing, if anything.

Okay, I kept up with it until the end of the season and then ran a sim of my original tactic. Watching the games play out I prefer mine for playing teams in the top 6, the strikerless tactic linked above for teams in the bottom 6 and some combination of both for mid tier teams. This makes sense, Brighton typically play a bit more direct against top teams as they don't need to lure them into pressing as most of those teams already want to press. and you'll obviously need to take more risks vs teams better than you, The strikerless tactic is definitely leading to way more control of games against bottom 6 opposition than my high tempo attacking tactic. To validate my eye test I re-ran a season with each tactic and recorded the goals for, goals against and points per game home and away. split into 3 groups of: top 6 teams, mid 7 teams, bottom 6 teams, comparing my tactic to the strikerless one: As you can see my original one did much much better against the top sides, but much worse against bottom sides & mid table sides when facing them at their place. I also want to point out that out of about 25 sims I've done with my tactic this is the worst it has ever performed defensively, but from watching the games I feel like even if I got a much more normal defensive season the general trend shown in the above charts would stay the same. The high tempo, attacking nature of my tactic is obviously leading to much more open end to end football which I think RDZ would hate. Seems like using the more controlling version vs the bottom 6 and mid table sides away while using the more free playing attacking tactic at home vs mid table and against all top 6 sides would be more RDZ approved football.

From my limited testing so far it seems to work really well IF you have better players than the current Brighton squad. With Brighton most of my matches are ending with a very drab boring game of us passing around the back not looking to progress the ball, being very limited offensively when we do end up progressing past the midfield. Most matches end with us having around 9 shots and somewhere between 48 - 52% possession. At Brentford At Chelsea Vs Manchester United Mitoma is completely non-existent is most of these matches. Ferguson to March is the only link up that's working well. By January Ferguson is leading my team in assists and March is leading in goals. When you're playing against sides you're clearly better than though it can do some really impressive things. Vs Forest It's a great idea, but doesn't seem to over achieve with the team it's looking to emulate. Could be something to switch over to when you have better players in the future of your saves though, or something to use against weaker sides to control games more. I'll keep playing with it to the end of the season though and see if any of my thoughts change.

2 answers: 1) I'm not good at watching the off ball stuff IRL so honestly I have no idea how they actually press. I was able to find this https://theathletic.com/4520415/2023/05/15/arsenal-brighton-tactics-breakdown/ saying they pressed in a 442 with the LCB man marking the free midfielder in Arsenals 433 shape. I'd imagine you'd try to set this up by asking the striker to mark the LCB, the AMC to mark the RCB, the T to mark the RFB, and the IW to mark the LFB. Combine this with asking the 2 DM's to mark tighter and either putting your LCB to man mark the right side #8 or maybe just putting him on CB (Stopper) to get him to step up more. But this all leads me to point number 2... 2) I've long since given up getting a realistic pressing structure in FM and just kind of let them do what they want defensively. Whenever I start tweaking PI's and/or OI's to get what i think should be realistic it just makes the defense awful lol Let me know if you find a good solution. I'm sure it's possible. I've seen The Cult of FM on youtube do some great defensive tweaking but I am not good at it.

Applying the changes in my original post helps out with baiting the press but it does tend to lead to the ball sticking in the middle defensive 3rd. Chances are too rare. I'm still trying to work it out better too. I've found putting the mentality on cautious to help a bit without overly gutting the press like defensive mentality does still trying to find a better solution though. It's the main thing I'm not happy with and am close to saying it's just a match engine limitation, but not quite ready to give it up yet. One thing I've been interested in trying but haven't yet is using the editor to give Dunk the dictates tempo trait to see if that'll cause him to slow down the game a bit more often. I'll try that out soon to see if it does anything.

Funnily enough that was the first setup I tried! I loved the link up between the front 4 playing with that setup. It's probably a better RDZ replication, but maybe not a better Brighton under RDZ replication, at less for the previous season. Ferguson & Welbeck lead the frequent starters in shots per 90 and as a PF(S) they just weren't getting the amount of shots to replicate that how I wanted. I haven't tried it lately though, last I tried I was on a balanced mentality I'll have to give it a few games to see it. I also really loved how PF(D) played both offensively and defensively, just not enough end product from the striker outside of trying a ball behind the defense for one of the other front 3. Glad things are working for you.

Yeah I've noticed the same. CF on support dropped way too deep and CF on attack tried too many risky passes or dribbles and both ended up on the flanks trying to ping in a cross to no one for too often for my liking. The only real success I was able to find is an AF. Absolutely has to have 'plays with back to goal' to get any sort of dropping deep, hold up play out of an AF though. Without counter ticked you definitely get more RDZ type passing but I've found my squad unable to get nearly enough shots off to be a real Brighton recreation. I'll have to give it another try though, I don't think I've given it a real try after switching the tactic to an attacking mentality. On the topic of mentality - I love the passing i get out of this tactic when it's on defensive or cautious but it makes the press far too passive. See the image below from my recent game against Man City: Yes you could argue that we got a tad lucky. They had more shots, a higher XG and a higher XG per shot, but a fairly large number of their shots came from pretty far outside the box. They scored a screamer sure, but what can you do? One of those goals you just kinda tip your hat & their other goal came from a corner. What I'm really happy about is the complete lack of involvement from Haaland. He finished the game on a 6.3. Yes he had a few decent chances, but nothing so crazy. Glad to hear that you like how to plays! Keep us updated on how your tweaks and playthrough goes!

I played around with a lot of combinations but this is what I finally settled on: The distribute to specific team-mate is aimed at dunk, but distribute to CB's works just as well. Was just trying to get Dunk more touches/completed passes per game this way. If the opposition is really trying to push down the wings with aggressively overlapping fullbacks, or just has really skilled wide players I'll typically change the invite crosses instruction to stop crosses, but otherwise invite crosses seems to protect the middle of the pitch better and keep the defense more compact. Against opposition that really doesn't want to press I'll take the more direct passing off the midfielders or even switch it to shorter passing in extreme cases to get a slower buildup to try to really emphasize baiting them to press. If doing this I'll usually also add take less risk to the left centerback and change Dunk to a BPD and give him more direct passing to occasionally get him to try a riskier pass to get through the press we've hopefully baited them into, and give him dribble more so if they're still not pressing he'll break the lines himself and force someone to pick him up. In these cases I'll usually change Gross to a volante (s) to encourage him to drop less and offer more space for dunk to dribble in to and offer a more progressive passing option. I wanted something that gave a fairly accurate Brighton recreation while still working decently enough in the match engine. The main things I wanted to replicate were obviously the way Brighton plays out of the back to try to bait the press before passing through it, a nice 2-4-4 shape in buildup that can morph all the way into a 2-2-6 in camping situations, overall high possession numbers, overall high shot totals, a fairly similar number of shots between the front 4 & Mitoma and March having a high number of progressive carries. IRL Brighton finished first in shots per game, 3rd in possession 5th lowest shots against per game, 4th highest goals for and 10th lowest goals against per game. With the above setup I'm able to get consistently top 5 in shots, possession & goals for. The best I've been able to get shots against wise is around 8th-10th lowest. Not sure how to get that number better while still maintaining the rest but overall this is the setup I've gone with. I'm open to ideas to try and make it more solid defensively if it doesn't take too much away from the recreation aspects listed above. Give it a go and let me know what you think!

There is a tactical recreation thread here I'd note though that all the managers you listed, while all playing a sort of box midfield de zerbi builds with 6 (as a 244 or 2422) where as the others tend to go with a form of 325 usually. I've found the building with 6 easiest to replicate, getting a 4 at the back to play as a true 325 (that isn't very lopsided) I've never really been able to replicate in FM.

As a general rule of thumb most downloaded plug and play type tactics essentially brute force results, while it's effective I often have found that altering them to lower intensity leads to my side playing much more the brand of football I want to see. To answer your question more directly I find you do end up winning the ball back a bit more frequently using the brute force methods but I find I typically have better results overall (in the ways that I personally measure a tactics effectiveness, not necessarily just having the highest point total at the end of the season) by removing tackle harder from anyone in my back line and removing the teamwide get stuck in. I get even better results by selectively applying tackle harder through OIs and PIs as I see fit. This more nuanced style may concede a few more shots on average, but you tend to play more posisitionaly sound defense leading to a worse shot, quality wise.

If you keep getting the "red dot" around your iwbd (and don't like the way play is progressing in that area) I'd try giving the people around him some more progressive roles or instructions (dribble more, more direct passing, take more risks etc) I'd assume with his defend duty he's always a safe option to recycle possesion to while also not really attempting to progress the ball much leading the play to kind of stick in that area. I'd imagine adding some combo of the above PIs would lead to the people around him looking to recycle possession a tad less

If it makes you feel any better at all (not that i think the above person really got you) - I, for one, am really thankful to have a light themed skin available. Dark backgrounds with light text kill my eyes. The fact that this is one of the most innovative skins around and attributeless on top of everything else makes this the perfect skin for me. Thanks for all your hard work.

All the stats available in the league's player stats overview page should be able to be added to squad views or scouting views. In the screenshot i've highlighted open play expected assists but there are others as well. Being able to see these stats for anyone on my team instead of just those that place in the league's top 20 would add a new level of data analysis. Having access to these stats in the player search filter allows for a better data-driven scouting approach.