[Mark Tigher PI + Tight Marking OI interactions]

I see, then I was wrong... I must say that the description and terminology is really confusing:

Mark tighter implies that somehow there are different levels of marking - tight marking, tighter marking, the tightest marking or whatever... which is not the case. It should be called something like "mark tight natural zone of defense".

"to their assigned opponent" - this seems that this instruction will only happen if I assign something in the first place. It should paraphrased to "particularly tight to any opponent entering his zone in defensive situations so..."

[Mark Tigher PI + Tight Marking OI interactions]

I am not sure that's the case Os, but I might be wrong... There is another PI called "mark specific position" and it does what you said - whoever will enter that zone, the player will tight mark anyone there.

My English interpretation of "mark tighter" is that they will stick extremely close to them but only if "tight marking" duty is assigned to opposition's player. 

[Mark Tigher PI + Tight Marking OI interactions]

Hello,

I am not really sure I understand how "mark tighter" player instruction interacts with "tight marking" opposition instruction in different scenarios.

Let's consider I have a player A on my team who plays in AM position and the opponent has player B who plays in DM position:

1) I instruct "mark tighter" PI and "tight marking" OI on player B - this means that once player B enters the zone of player A, player A will be extremely tight to player B?

2) I instruct "mark tighter" PI, but nothing on "tight marking" OI - this means that my player is not going to tight mark at all player B even if he enters his zone.

3) I do not instruct "mark tighter" PI, but instruct "tight marking" through OI on player B - this means that once player B enters the zone of player A, player A will be tight to player B?

Essentially "mark tighter" PI is only active when OI is instructed on that player, otherwise, it doesn't do anything. This is my understanding so a proper clarification would be really appreciated.

 

[5312 short/quick vertical tiki-taka build-up issues]

I think I found a solution thought, tried to experiment different combinations, simulate match and produce average with ball plots. Here is the one which seems to work nicely:

 

Added player traits for both CMs to 'drop deeper to get ball' and changed from CWB(SU) to WB(SU) since this role doesn't have permanent 'stay wider' instruction I think they are more involved in possession while still maintaining that width.

[5312 short/quick vertical tiki-taka build-up issues]

@Tsuruthanks for the advices. The thing is that apart from strikers I want to keep at least 2 aggressive runners from deep centrally which means if I put DLP(SU) or BWM(su) it won't happen :/ What is MO-At? I think Libero on attack could be very interesting to experiment - I will see how much further up the field he is willing to go. You are right also on striker partners, but AM(su) being behind helps a lot and provides nice link up, otherwise I would have one striker dropping deeper.

[5312 short/quick vertical tiki-taka build-up issues]

Hello guys,

I have build a quite successful tactic that is based around short/quick vertical tiki-taka. The idea behind is two attack with intensity through the middle where we have numbers while also trying to preserve possession and pick our moments for through balls.

 

 

The reason for extremely wide pitch here is to make opposition's channels bigger, move into them, and then penetrate with a killer ball. Those CM(A) boys are getting loads of highlights and I really like how we attack. However, the issue I am facing is in a build-up phase where I cannot connect well my defense to midfield and our build-up play is not as good.

 

 

This is average position with ball and you can see that no-one from CM's drops to link up with defense. Of course the solution would be to change CM(A) to something like box-to-box but then I am loosing one deep runner and they are key in penetrating those channels. Any ideas in how I could improve my build-up play here? I want to have at least 2 deep aggressive runners and 3 people pressing at the top. Some of my ideas:

- Add 'come deep to get the ball' as player trait to CMs

- Change CWB to WB or IWB. I would imagine that IWB would tend to tuck in more and offer more passing options for my defenders, but the downside is that I will be loosing width.

- Change AM to AP, maybe he would come a bit deeper to get the ball?

- Change one of CMs to a box-to-box and add 'Get Further forward'/'move into channels' PIs.

- Change one of CMs to a box-to-box and then AM to a Shadow Striker, but then we would become too predictable for opposition as we attack with all 3 our most forward players?

Any ideas are welcomed.

[Improving my 5-3-2]

Hello,

Currently playing with a 5212. First thoughts on your tactic:

- Defensively you are not applying enough pressure to the opposition. You are neither counter-pressing, countering or trigger pressing with also bottom heavy set-up (most players are below half-line) which means that the opposition is just having a free-day against your team.

- Defensively all above mixed with a higher defensive line I imagine results in opposition easily coming to your half and exploiting space behind defense. Offside trap can prevent that but in this case you have WCB(S) and other two on defend duties which means in transition they are not in the same line and, thus, offside trap fails. You could remove offside trap and change your CD(D) to CD(C).

- Offensively what type of game style are you trying to achieve? Regardless of more patient or direct approach, I would swap Carrilero to a more vertical runner (box-to-box, mezzala etc.). Once your DLP receives the ball, he needs a runner next to him that can carry the ball into the final third in order to breach the gap between your midfield and strikers.

- Offensively I see the logic here for using Carrilero in order to cover a very aggresive right flank, but what about moving WCB(S) to the left and in-possession have him occupy the space of CM(A) and WCB(D) to the right so he is a bit more protective for your bombing CWB.

[[FM22] [SKIN] #Tato22]

Hi, amazing skin - truly the best with all those additional statistics, thank you so much.

One question: when a player card comes to scouting normally they show recruitment team rating (scouting report + analyst report), is it be possible to change to just show the rating of scouting report? This is what I mean by example:

 

 

You can see above it shows as A- player, however, if I go to scouting report his actual rating is:

 

 

Personally I find it more useful only a scouting report, analytical reports and player stats' may be misleading especially if the player is playing for a dominant team or not such good team in the league.

[Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?]

Hello,

The winter update has made some changes to DYR:

- Tweaks to how Dynamic Youth ratings work, including some rebalancing and allowances for smaller nations to receive boosts within realistic parameters

Could someone elaborate on this more or do some tests? Does it mean that long-term small nations saves' are now viable?

[Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?]

On 16/01/2022 at 23:51, Bojanbbz94 said:

The great contradiction of FM, imho, is between 'realism' and the fact that the actual (unspoken) joy of the game is roleplaying. FM markets itself (correctly) as the most realistic and accurate football simulation on market. But actual saves in the game are are about making your own fun; about the journey that your manager goes on, about imagining press conferences, your relationships with your players or rival managers and all the rest of it to be much more important than they are on a mechanical in-game level.

FM is realistic in the sense that it attempts to accurately simulate football matches (it does this to varying degrees of success depending on the quirks of MEs, but that is the sincere aim). FM is realistic in that all of the SI researchers all around the world try very hard to make the most accurate and objective judgements about the players they research, and they are so successful at this that real life clubs use their database. I could go on about all the realism, and I don't want it to change.

But at the same time, on a fundamental level, it is a roleplaying game. To a certain extent, once you are a few years into a save, what should start happening is that the realism should be in the fact that the internal logic of the game becomes consistent. If a player wants to take a post-Soviet Eastern European nation with a small population and a weak economy, but turn one of its bigger clubs into a genuine and consistent force in the Champions League over the course of a few decades, then that should logically alter the course of football in that nation. I can't really see a strong reason for the game not allowing you to do that in the name of 'realism'; the very premise of the save isn't realistic to begin with, but that's fine because this is a roleplaying game.

India's Game Importance is set to 'Unimportant' and Pakistan's is 'Completely Useless'. Of course this is realistic: cricket and hockey are much more important sports than football there. But these are countries with absolutely gigantic populations. If somebody wanted to a long-term save as the national team manager of one of those countries and (inexplicably) consistently make the knockout stages of World Cups, then this should logically raise the profile of the sport in the nation, even if it was a very slow process of cultural transformation. And in the two examples I have picked, there is definitely the population there to support this imaginary newfound interest in football.
Again, from a roleplaying perspective I don't really see why you shouldn't be able to that. SI would have to decide the criteria for how these changes happen, and how fast they happen, and I appreciate that would have to be a subjective judgement call on the basis of game design. But as long as there were consistent and logical rules that influenced how these things worked, that would be fine.

None of this would damage the integrity of FM's database or the 'realism' of the global situation at the start of a save. For the overwhelming majority of players (myself included) who really only ever manage in major European nations, nothing would ever change anyway. But I don't really see a strong justification for not allowing the option.

In a game where taking no-mark English teams from no-mark English towns with tiny populations and transforming them into top-flight mainstays within the course of decade (sometimes winning consecutive promotions from the National League North/South to the Championship or League One) has been a much publicised and celebrated thing for years, I'm not sure I can understand 'realism' being used as the justification for Game Importance or Economic Factor being set values that can literally never change once you load the database.

I would like to bump this comment, I think it explains well the desires of our community and the logic behind the desired DYI and how we want it to work. Someone should make this as a thread in the feature request so it reaches the decisions makers of SI.

[Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?]

On 17/12/2021 at 19:22, Platinum said:

I've only read parts of this thread but I just want to say that I think its important that the 'unrealistic' occurs in a 'realistic' manner. And as you say winning a world cup or an AFCON shouldn't, in isolation, lead to a dramatic increase in newgens in that nation. In my opinion sustained success (where success is relative so could mean making a quarter final) in both continental club competitions and national team tournaments in a 5 to 10 year period would be needed to have a any type of significant impact on a complete minnow nation. And even then it depends what other sports are played in the country and how big they are.

I would like to bump this comment. Completely agree on the idea of that sustained International success should lead to a higher NYR. The current real-life examples that we have are only one-off:

Greece 2004 EURO was a one-off event and we haven't seen a new Golden Greek generation (maybe yet to come!)

Croatia is a good example, a small country that participated in 1998 world cup and finished 3rd and 20 years later in 2018 they reached the finals with clearly many footballers being inspired by that 1998 performance. Now imagine Croatia constantly reaching semi-finals in each world cup, shouldn't this drive incredibly their NYR?

[Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?]

I can't help but wonder, maybe there is some business decision here made by SI... At the end of the day the more people are playing very long career saves, the less they are likely to buy the next year's game since those saves can turn into 2-3 actual years for people.

[FM22 - struggling with tactics in lower leagues. Any ideas?]

Are you also struggling with tactics in lower leagues this year? Do you have any tips that you found are working for FM22?

In the past years lower league football was pretty simple - direct play, counter-attacking high tempo, intense pressing, simple formations that play numbers' games (superior numbers on defense and attack, doesn't really matter what players do cuz they are all so bad)

This year I have found that the most effective gamestyle is control possesion/tiki-taka which just doesn't make sense to play in lower leagues...

[FM 22.2 - only posession based tactis are working in low leagues]

Hello all,

After the FM22.2 update, in the lower leagues only possesion-based tactis are working for me. Do other people share the same experience? If yes, I would like to collect some data and report it as a bug on the forum.

I have tried high tempo-direct play (wing play, direct route, counterattack, gegenpress etc.) and was massively underperforming compared to a control possesion or tiki-taka one and I can assure that nobody in my team has good mentals or technicals to perform that.

Also, watching other teams' highlights in the league seems like everyone is able to pass and move like best Guardiola's team when in reality there is no way players could do that in lower leagues, in fact direct play almost always should be preferred...

My worry is that they have tweaked possesion stats in this patch because people were complaining about too low numbers and now it incorrectly imbalanced the games in lower leagues.

[Coaching badges]

Hi guys,

So I do understand about the differences between coaching badges and past experience in terms of coaching attributes and player dynamic (basically, the lower your past experience and reputation is - the more players are going to get upset about things).

But what about a general day-to-day footballing things, do they also become more difficult? Like transfers, tactics, injury proness etc.?

I don't know if this is fake perception but feels that it is much harder to win, especially tactically since I get punished very easily for any inbalancement.

 

[Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?]

On 27/11/2021 at 17:52, duesouth said:

Excellent posts above.  Of course, if SI are producing a 100% realistic game - then there's no question that this has to be the way forward.  However, in game, it is difficult - but possible to win the Champions League with a San Marino League team.  People have done it as part of the San Marino Challenge (I won the Europa League with San Giovanni),  In game, it is difficult - but possible to win the World Cup with San Marino - I've done it.  So, given that, I think the dynamic youth ratings are something to make the youth element a lot less than it has been.

I've just gone into my old FM19 save, with the old San Marino Calcio Serie A title winners 13 years in a row.  Facilities all maxed out, top HOYD and youth intake after youth intake which is garbage.  Now, I do know this is probably more realistic - but my point is that San Marino Calcio winning Serie A 13 times in a row is not realistic at all.  It's "gamey" - and therefore, for me, Dynamic Youth Rankings at least needs to have some element of "gamey" otherwise a long term save like this (and tons of people do them) become way less enjoyable if your youth intakes aren't "connected" to what you are achieving as a club side/nation.  There were so many poor youth intakes in this save, I nearly gave it up - but kept going because I didn't click with FM20 and went back to the save.  I'm not saying every single intake should be full of 5* PA players - but something needed to change given the long term dominance of the club and growth of the nation from a game standpoint.

If SI want a 100% realistic game, then make it impossible to win the Champions League with a San Marino League team or a World Cup with San Marino.  If not, for me the dynamic youth ratings need to move beyond what is realistic in real life.

The above produces intakes like this:

In the meantime, my FM22 save is on hold as I don't know if I will need to start a new save to pick up any changes to DYR - so if anyone from SI could confirm this, I would be very, very grateful - as I was really enjoying the save, but don't want to waste time on it until any patch comes out if a new save will be needed.

That's an interesting an argument and I see where are you coming from - I guess if you want to make it more 'gamey', SI has provided you with the in-game editor and the possibility to change Youth Rating based on your own rules/judgement right? At least that's the possibility from this year...

About San Marino, the way to make it more realistic would be that somehow by you winning all those world cups and CLs the San Marino population has started to grow, but then I would start questioning whether we are playing Football Manager or some sort of World's simulation.

I think the deep problem with this dynamic youth rating in the game is that for it to increase a lot - you need to win the biggest competitions and by the time you do that, you may as well loose interest in the save because you have already won everything multiple times. Not sure how interesting it is then to keep playin just for the sake of having insane New Gens, unless, of course you are interested in changing clubs but staying in the same country.

[Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?]

Good thread, very interesting comments and discussion since we all love these kind of long-term/challenging FM saves.

My personal intake:

- As someone mentioned, just because you won the World Cup out of nowhere shouldn't push your youth rating immediately because, realistically, it will inspire the kids age 5-10 to play football and, thus, it would take another 5-10 years to see them coming through youth academy. Also, given that you are sustaining the international/club success (otherwise these kids would loose the interest)

- Some very small nations should just never reach high youth rating due to their limitation in population/economical resources etc. No offence to some of you, but San Marino and Andorra have population of 30k and 78k respectively, it would be considered as a big village in some countries. The population is just not big enough to produce a full squad that is able to compete in World Cup or/and, arguably, even Euro Cup. Your best bet should be the naturalization of foreigners and a 'one-off' decent player/s coming through youth.

- For 'bigger but not so big' countries like, Belarus/Hungary/Latvia, the dynamic youth rating should grow exponentially with every generation and be driven by a sustained international and club success. And the word 'sustained' is very important here. For example, let's say in 2030 you win Champions League or World Cup, the kids get more interested in football and then you win Champions League for another 10 years. The youth intake 2035 (+1 to youth rating), youth intake 2036 (+2), youth intake 2037 (+3) and etc. until you turn a nation into a football-obsessed one. On the other hand, if you are not able to sustain the success the youth rating should only probably grow a little as only some kids will continue playing football since your 2030 win, others will drop and loose the interest, and the new generation won't be interested to try as much.

I think it would be interesting to test whether this exponential growth happens/at what ratio and, if yes, in my eyes SI has correctly implemented the dynamic youth rating.

[5-2-1-2 High pressure pass and move football]

Hey @Louisking1992 , good suggestions and you are right as pointed by @Tsuru also that I need to tone down some of the settings in order bring players closer and control more of the possession. Few points:

• Playing compressed with standard or even low LOE with high DL is a really interesting concept and something that I like, I think that would really open a lot of runs for my forwards. But to implement that I should be playing a more direct style of football or not? Since when the opponents loose the ball, I will want to move it quick to my forwards before they retrieve their DL.
• About the narrowness - as we just discussed with @Tsuru, the reason here for playing wide is because 5-2-1-2 is a narrow formation so we don't want to narrow an already narrow formation and attack with a vertical line basically. Maybe extremely wide is too much, but in our views it should be at least wide to create some space.

 

[5-2-1-2 High pressure pass and move football]

1 hour ago, Tsuru said:

 

Hi @kjarus1. Well, as I said I like to play LLM, so I am kind of skeptical of "playstyle" sometimes. Of course I know that playstyle is important, but at this moment the club is trying to grow and improve and we don´t have very talented players, so we need to win in the best possible way.

Ah I see now, last year I played in Spain's third division and had a lot of success with control possession since Spanish players generally are quite technical but yeah, the tempo was slower. Personally, I am not a fan of playing balanced mentality (unless I am playing a team two divisions above me) as felt that being at least positive was always more rewarding, no matter the strength of the opponent in the league.

1 hour ago, Tsuru said:

You see, I have a friend that has been using this formation in Germany with Hertha Berlin, and he thinks the opposite - he concentrated and forced all his game on the middle of the pitch. After he complained that the team was not scoring, I argued with him that he was already narrowing a narrow formation and that he should do the opposite, that is, play wider to open more space. He said he didn´t want to, he wanted to play through the middle...and his patience and stubborn ideas gave him some good success, his Hertha is playing very well, focusing everything on the middle in a narrow formation.

That's exactly my thinking as you understood - maybe for your friend setting attacking width to wide but focusing play through the middle would be an interesting approach. Essentially you still would play through the middle complemented by your numerical superiority in that part of the pitch, but at least you wouldn't attack in a vertical line with players a bit spread out.

1 hour ago, Tsuru said:

Back to your Chelsea, maybe just Wide TI is enough, to avoid players being too far away one from the other and allowing them to circulate the ball more, instead of lumping it too long. As you play on a higher mentality the team will be more wide anyway.

Yeah good idea, I will tone it down a bit.

[5-2-1-2 High pressure pass and move football]

Hey @Tsuru thanks for the comment, some really great insights. What type of style do you try to achieve when playing this formation? I think that would help me to better understand your intentions and how it differs from my tactic.

 

• Firstly, you are absolutely right that its so hard to implement correctly 'quick short passing' style in FM. However, I think that makes sense because you need to very carefully balance the spacing on the pitch - you need many players close to a ball for that shot pass option as well as space to make runs and produce movements for that quick tempo.
• You are right that my tactic is too aggressive and needs some rebalancing, that's why I get punished against bigger teams - should favor more keeping control of the possession and match (I will try to reduce tempo from extremely high to high and also lowering the LOE and/or the mentality.
• To my understanding (and I might be wrong), since 5-3-1-2 generally is a narrow shape formation where the width only comes from the wingbacks, that's why you need to attack with an extremely wide or at least wide width. Otherwise your attacking shape is like a one vertical line and it easy to defend against that. The opposite could be said when you play with two wingers, since your formation is so wide that you may want then to instruct narrow width in order to bring players closer together for that shorter passing option. Same principle applies to various PIs. I have tested different widths, but extremely wide produced the best results especially against teams that sit deep (maybe change to only wide against bigger opponents? That also should make the team defensively more sound.)
• I had also tested with WB (s) instructed to stay wide and had quite a bit of success. Out of curiosity, why do you have TIs so focused on wing play? In my view, with this formation the numerical superiority you have usually is in the middle so by doing that you kind of nullify it. Also, just by instructing your WBs to stay wide I think you already greatly open up space because their wide players have to stay with your wingback, even if the play is developing on the other side of the pitch.
• For your tactic, if you are trying to play tiki-taka or control possession I think you set it up quite well - you will definitely keep a lot of possession and there will be plenty of creativity, but if you try to play with quick tempo I think you need to be more aggressive and produce more runs in the final third. In my view, the real threat in the opposition's box is only your Poacher with some occasional DLF runs since your midfield/wing backs are staying quite back and your DLF when he gets the ball and looks to bring a player, most of the times, the only option he has is to give the ball back to midfield. If I were you these are things I would try and see what works:

1. Instruct your wing back(s) to attack
2. AP(s) to AP(a)
3. One of the CM(s) to CM(a) with a potential also to instruct 'move into channels'.

 

Will update whether results have improved after the changes.

[5-2-1-2 High pressure pass and move football]

Hello all Klopp’s and Guardiola’s out there.

Need some help with the tactic. Basically, I am trying to play with Chelsea a 'High pressure pass and move football' which emphasizes on short/quick passing and a lot of movement (read here in case you don’t know what I am talking about (https://www.guidetofm.com/tactics/pass-and-move/)

I do wonders when playing 5-2-2-1 with 2AMs that are instructed to stay wider and the team’s attacking width wide or 5-2-2-1 with LW and RW instructed to stay narrow with the team’s attacking width also being narrow.

Now, out of excitement I bought Mbappe so have to play 5-2-1-2 and the system doesn’t work as well, especially against bigger teams.

My guess that happens because both strikers wait in the top without being involved too much in the build-up play and that weakens my midfield’s short passing game alongside also having one less player defending (strikers are involved less than AMs or Wingers in defence)

The simple solution would be to play more direct but then that would kill the ideology of ‘pass and move football’ and make us a counter-attacking team which I don’t like. Any ideas or it’s impossible with this formation?

Also, in 5-2-1-2 would you instruct your CMs or STs to stay wider in order to support your WBs? Or None?