I decided to split the thread in two as the original one become too big.
Part V. Reading the match engine.
V.1 What you will not find watching your games and where to find it. The game creators insist you can easily understand from watching a game what moves your oposition deploys. Well, its not exactly like that, this statement is a bit misleading. No matter how keen football maniac you are you will no be able to read everything by just watching the game. After all computer technologies hasnt got that far, right? The match engine is trying as hard as possible to emulate real life football, but you should understand there are certain limits.
V.1.1 So I would say the wide play of oposition attacking players is only obvious when wide players are given the "hug touchline" instructions-just like in real life it is obvious when a player is doing this.Cut inside from deeper positions is also obvious, but you can rarely tell the difference between normal and move into channels.How an attacking player performs between two depends a lot on his physical attributes-balance and agility(how evasive he can be and how stable he is).
V.1.2. The passing style is something AI's tend to change at least once per game. Yet it is very important for you to understand how exactly the oposition want to break your defense. The depth of your D-line, the OI and whether you counter-attack or not may be altered successfuly if you understand what you see on the screen.Some tips on this
-if you see the oposition players recieving the ball at feet with back to the goal it shows they are trying to waste time while still keeping possesion.
-if you see oposition fullbacks pump the ball for the wingers it means the oposition has a "play down the flanks" instruction, probably combined with counter-attack instruction
V.1.3. The D-line is one of the most powerfuful weapons in AI's arsenal. The AI calculates your closing down with mechanical precision the strenght of your closing down and builds its counter-attacks from here. I think you will comfortably recognize when the opposition is dropping deepr in order to lure your players away from their preset positions. Still remember you will have to react to this most of the time.
V.1.4. Swapping players is another very dangerous trick the AI's love to use. A good, agile stricker when played on the "wrong side"(oposite to his preferred foot) and been given a show onto weaker foot OI can do a lot of damage. This is not that easy to spot before the damage is done, as you see only 1 name of a player at a time.That's why i strongly recommend during in-game you keep you oposition formation tab open all the time and keeping a firm eye on it.
V.1.5. Who has man marking insturction given is easy to see-those players will stick to a certain one of yours like glue. If you struggle to break through such blockade you might consider issuing a roaming instructions to some of the targeted players or reducing their attacking mentality in order to lure the marker away from his position. In every such case increasing the fluidity always helps.
V.1.5. Where the oposition starts to close you down is also visible at a glance-especialy if only team closing down instructions are issued.In this case your players will be attacked when recieving the ball at a certain line of the pitch. This is extremely useful in determening whether you need to change your D-line, who plays through balls(when put under pressure even the best passer makes mistakes) and who runs with the ball(players with low first touch are having hard times dribbling when closed down).
V.1.6. Emulating the AI's tricks.Many people here speak about emulating Barcelona or other top team tactics. This often proves to be inefficient as we already discussed, or if effective it is not quite an emulation.In fact, the best emulations with perfectly and thoroughly prepared instructions I've tried dont work at all. So what is an intersting tip: i emulate the AI. I watch carefully the way they attack or counter-attack and the settings in there set-pieces as well. Here you can watch 2 examles:
http://youtu.be/S5KfVdUjiIo This is something I've noted as soon as FM 10. When the defense pays special attention to the oposition strikers-assigning personal markers, tight marking, hard tackling and show onto weaker foot instructions it is very destroying for such defense if there 2 similarly footed striker, swapping their positions. If the strickers are inteligent and agile enough that special attention backfires badly as you can see in the linked video.
http://youtu.be/AtOmRDdWsX0 This is my attempt to emulate the notorious set pieces goals that two ofthen AI teams would score in 12.0.4. I noticed there bigger players are lined up with the defense therefore attacking the ball at the edge of the offside line and having small advantage from playing face to goal in this situation. My idea was that to transition this in attacking free kicks instructions will be assigning the 3 haviest players to "disrupt wall" and setting free kicks to far post and long. You can see the result here and i can also tell i got 4 goals in 12 games with those instructions.
V.2. Retrieving data from the match stats.It is actually the better way as per my opinion.
V.2.1 Determine direction of play and transition points. This is quite easy to understand-if there is a playmaker in the oposition tactic you will see somebody in midfield having almost double number of passes then his coleagues. This may become handy as you can exclude him from the game by assigning a personal marker to him, tight marking or both. Same goes for oposition's target man. Also something not that logical that I've found-if the oposition is trying to spread thin your line up in order to counter-attack you, their fullbacks will certainly be the one playing most with the ball.
V.2.2 Players playing very short and simple passes in midfield. This is often used by AI and may become harmful to your possession and closing down style.By adding such player AI attempts to drag away your heavy closing midfielders.These players in the early parts of the match tend to have 100 % of pass completion.Consider tight marking such player with never close down in addition.Show onto weaker foot for CM position also helps.
V.2.3. Ball winners. You can also check out which of the oposition have extremely high ratings of attempted / succuessful tackles and / or headers won.Those players are obviously the once that are assigned to break your attacks and having a good day. You may consider some workaround them after you now exactly where they play.
Part VI. Team talks. So enough said about pre-season, we go straight to the point.
As it was many times discussed, SI tryed to make every player reacting differently to same team talks. So this is one more place where building a squad of approximately same personalities will be extremely useful. As i manage 7 diferrent teams in a single save for 7 years now monitoring very carefully the effects of team talks( well, taking some notes aswell : ) I can say the characters that react best to appropriate team talks are ambitious and the variatons of determined( spriritied, resilien, resolute). If you have those players you can constantly put them under pressure to succeed, taking risky team talks, like constantly telling them to not get complacent at half time and yet get mostly positive results. On the contrary, players with low determination( pay special attention to personalities like sporting, unambitious and loyal) need constant encouraging and usually react bad to criticism and warnings.
VI.1. Specific team talk advise:
Disclaimer-this advise was test in 12.0.4 from everything i read here it may have disastrous effect following it in 12.1.0
I think many people here overlook the Alex Ferguson-like team talks. Actually having a bit more cautious approach you can still follow the hair-dryer routine. Not in the first few games of the season for sure, but if you have a good start in the league I recommend more stict conversations and being more pushy with your players. Remembed that after only a few win you have praised your players are starting to get complacnet! And this will also not always show in your assman advise. So try and follow woolfsongs guide, use have faith(replaced by "you have played well, but there is still room for improvement") and even don't get complacent if not leading by more than 2 goals at half time.Than you can personally praise the once that performed really well(have faith upto 7,5 and very pleased for 8,5 and above)
There are fue changes thou. Like telling a player who played well in the first half you have faith in him is rarely working now.But at least it does not allow him to get complacent.Here you can see how my quite weak and extremely low-reputationed Estroril side reacts.Bref history: this is my 3-th season with them, just got promoted, 10-th in the table, last 5 games 1-2-2 and last one was unpleasant loss to Sporting L :View attachment 215510
The squad personality I am trying to build is professional - determined.As you see they trashed the minnows 5:1, but SI have made things a bit more realistic. Just like in real life you can tell your players : so what's the big deal, next week the
serious busines starts
Also dont forget the "pick up where you left off" to anybody who played well in your last game.It can work wonders for the morale and at least is neve harmful.
VI.1. Player / squad personalities & team talks.
The statistics I've taken:
-ambitious players-while in a good serie they mostly react well to agrresive "expect a win".Even when the odds are approximately the same if such team had several good games you should use same teamtalk and just lower the tone(prefferably assertive).In general such personalities react surprisingly well to agressive tone and being pushed up(for the fans and expect win) even if they are not favourites.For the fans is not working very well, probably because most of these players have low level of loyalty.Even in a bad serie if the odds are on your side use the more neutral "show me what you can do" and rarely have faith and other encouraging stuff.Also if they haven't destroyed the oposition but just won by 1-2 goals, "dont get complacent over next game" seems to always work.
-professional-they tend to react surprisingly bad to criticism and not praising wins.
I would recommend you still don't praise them as often as recommended in other threads. Yes, some of your squad will react angrily, but you can still personally praise the once that had a good rating(7.0 and above).the others...well you maybe should consider there place in the squad.
-loyal-these are the haviest to handle as you need softer approach as they have low ambition and sometimes low determinaton. so pushing them works only if they are heavy favourites.
-determined(driven, resolute)-these are suposedly the best reacting players, but you still have to be warry. Just like ambitious once these need to be pushed forward, but you should remember they react bad when told you expect them to win and the odds are pretty mach equal.Try and use more often "show me what you can do" instead.
-unambitious-those do not hadle well, any team talk.try and be most neutral with them.
-sporting-similar to unambitious, still check there determination level in order to weigh your own decision how will you handle them.
VI.2. Press conference
As per my experience you can not take full use of team talks if you do not implement them with properly handled press conferences. So leave those to your assistant at your own risk. As general recommendation i would advise that you never go over yourselfe praising players and performances. This will often be indicated to have turned them a bit unhappy, but will only benefit your gameplay. Things like saying you're delighted by a recent performance or form can bring a lot of complacency in your squad.
VI.3. Fining players
Private chat where you can tell a player he played well or that he didnt perform is almost not working, but you can still warn your players they have to live up to the tags you've set them in every game. The fines as a general rule work this way-rating from 6.0 to 6.4. you can issue official warning and rating less than 6-you can fine the player.In case you have a player that has really underperformed (rating of less than 5.0) you can fine him 2 week wages. Temperamental players and generally those with less professionalism may react angrilly to such treatment, but i would say you can be hard with them-if they dont accept the rules, those are not players that can bring glory to your team.
Link to previous thread:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...lete-guide-every-newbie-might-interested.html
Part V. Reading the match engine.
V.1 What you will not find watching your games and where to find it. The game creators insist you can easily understand from watching a game what moves your oposition deploys. Well, its not exactly like that, this statement is a bit misleading. No matter how keen football maniac you are you will no be able to read everything by just watching the game. After all computer technologies hasnt got that far, right? The match engine is trying as hard as possible to emulate real life football, but you should understand there are certain limits.
V.1.1 So I would say the wide play of oposition attacking players is only obvious when wide players are given the "hug touchline" instructions-just like in real life it is obvious when a player is doing this.Cut inside from deeper positions is also obvious, but you can rarely tell the difference between normal and move into channels.How an attacking player performs between two depends a lot on his physical attributes-balance and agility(how evasive he can be and how stable he is).
V.1.2. The passing style is something AI's tend to change at least once per game. Yet it is very important for you to understand how exactly the oposition want to break your defense. The depth of your D-line, the OI and whether you counter-attack or not may be altered successfuly if you understand what you see on the screen.Some tips on this
-if you see the oposition players recieving the ball at feet with back to the goal it shows they are trying to waste time while still keeping possesion.
-if you see oposition fullbacks pump the ball for the wingers it means the oposition has a "play down the flanks" instruction, probably combined with counter-attack instruction
V.1.3. The D-line is one of the most powerfuful weapons in AI's arsenal. The AI calculates your closing down with mechanical precision the strenght of your closing down and builds its counter-attacks from here. I think you will comfortably recognize when the opposition is dropping deepr in order to lure your players away from their preset positions. Still remember you will have to react to this most of the time.
V.1.4. Swapping players is another very dangerous trick the AI's love to use. A good, agile stricker when played on the "wrong side"(oposite to his preferred foot) and been given a show onto weaker foot OI can do a lot of damage. This is not that easy to spot before the damage is done, as you see only 1 name of a player at a time.That's why i strongly recommend during in-game you keep you oposition formation tab open all the time and keeping a firm eye on it.
V.1.5. Who has man marking insturction given is easy to see-those players will stick to a certain one of yours like glue. If you struggle to break through such blockade you might consider issuing a roaming instructions to some of the targeted players or reducing their attacking mentality in order to lure the marker away from his position. In every such case increasing the fluidity always helps.
V.1.5. Where the oposition starts to close you down is also visible at a glance-especialy if only team closing down instructions are issued.In this case your players will be attacked when recieving the ball at a certain line of the pitch. This is extremely useful in determening whether you need to change your D-line, who plays through balls(when put under pressure even the best passer makes mistakes) and who runs with the ball(players with low first touch are having hard times dribbling when closed down).
V.1.6. Emulating the AI's tricks.Many people here speak about emulating Barcelona or other top team tactics. This often proves to be inefficient as we already discussed, or if effective it is not quite an emulation.In fact, the best emulations with perfectly and thoroughly prepared instructions I've tried dont work at all. So what is an intersting tip: i emulate the AI. I watch carefully the way they attack or counter-attack and the settings in there set-pieces as well. Here you can watch 2 examles:
http://youtu.be/S5KfVdUjiIo This is something I've noted as soon as FM 10. When the defense pays special attention to the oposition strikers-assigning personal markers, tight marking, hard tackling and show onto weaker foot instructions it is very destroying for such defense if there 2 similarly footed striker, swapping their positions. If the strickers are inteligent and agile enough that special attention backfires badly as you can see in the linked video.
http://youtu.be/AtOmRDdWsX0 This is my attempt to emulate the notorious set pieces goals that two ofthen AI teams would score in 12.0.4. I noticed there bigger players are lined up with the defense therefore attacking the ball at the edge of the offside line and having small advantage from playing face to goal in this situation. My idea was that to transition this in attacking free kicks instructions will be assigning the 3 haviest players to "disrupt wall" and setting free kicks to far post and long. You can see the result here and i can also tell i got 4 goals in 12 games with those instructions.
V.2. Retrieving data from the match stats.It is actually the better way as per my opinion.
V.2.1 Determine direction of play and transition points. This is quite easy to understand-if there is a playmaker in the oposition tactic you will see somebody in midfield having almost double number of passes then his coleagues. This may become handy as you can exclude him from the game by assigning a personal marker to him, tight marking or both. Same goes for oposition's target man. Also something not that logical that I've found-if the oposition is trying to spread thin your line up in order to counter-attack you, their fullbacks will certainly be the one playing most with the ball.
V.2.2 Players playing very short and simple passes in midfield. This is often used by AI and may become harmful to your possession and closing down style.By adding such player AI attempts to drag away your heavy closing midfielders.These players in the early parts of the match tend to have 100 % of pass completion.Consider tight marking such player with never close down in addition.Show onto weaker foot for CM position also helps.
V.2.3. Ball winners. You can also check out which of the oposition have extremely high ratings of attempted / succuessful tackles and / or headers won.Those players are obviously the once that are assigned to break your attacks and having a good day. You may consider some workaround them after you now exactly where they play.
Part VI. Team talks. So enough said about pre-season, we go straight to the point.
As it was many times discussed, SI tryed to make every player reacting differently to same team talks. So this is one more place where building a squad of approximately same personalities will be extremely useful. As i manage 7 diferrent teams in a single save for 7 years now monitoring very carefully the effects of team talks( well, taking some notes aswell : ) I can say the characters that react best to appropriate team talks are ambitious and the variatons of determined( spriritied, resilien, resolute). If you have those players you can constantly put them under pressure to succeed, taking risky team talks, like constantly telling them to not get complacent at half time and yet get mostly positive results. On the contrary, players with low determination( pay special attention to personalities like sporting, unambitious and loyal) need constant encouraging and usually react bad to criticism and warnings.
VI.1. Specific team talk advise:
Disclaimer-this advise was test in 12.0.4 from everything i read here it may have disastrous effect following it in 12.1.0
I think many people here overlook the Alex Ferguson-like team talks. Actually having a bit more cautious approach you can still follow the hair-dryer routine. Not in the first few games of the season for sure, but if you have a good start in the league I recommend more stict conversations and being more pushy with your players. Remembed that after only a few win you have praised your players are starting to get complacnet! And this will also not always show in your assman advise. So try and follow woolfsongs guide, use have faith(replaced by "you have played well, but there is still room for improvement") and even don't get complacent if not leading by more than 2 goals at half time.Than you can personally praise the once that performed really well(have faith upto 7,5 and very pleased for 8,5 and above)
There are fue changes thou. Like telling a player who played well in the first half you have faith in him is rarely working now.But at least it does not allow him to get complacent.Here you can see how my quite weak and extremely low-reputationed Estroril side reacts.Bref history: this is my 3-th season with them, just got promoted, 10-th in the table, last 5 games 1-2-2 and last one was unpleasant loss to Sporting L :View attachment 215510
The squad personality I am trying to build is professional - determined.As you see they trashed the minnows 5:1, but SI have made things a bit more realistic. Just like in real life you can tell your players : so what's the big deal, next week the
serious busines starts
Also dont forget the "pick up where you left off" to anybody who played well in your last game.It can work wonders for the morale and at least is neve harmful.
VI.1. Player / squad personalities & team talks.
The statistics I've taken:
-ambitious players-while in a good serie they mostly react well to agrresive "expect a win".Even when the odds are approximately the same if such team had several good games you should use same teamtalk and just lower the tone(prefferably assertive).In general such personalities react surprisingly well to agressive tone and being pushed up(for the fans and expect win) even if they are not favourites.For the fans is not working very well, probably because most of these players have low level of loyalty.Even in a bad serie if the odds are on your side use the more neutral "show me what you can do" and rarely have faith and other encouraging stuff.Also if they haven't destroyed the oposition but just won by 1-2 goals, "dont get complacent over next game" seems to always work.
-professional-they tend to react surprisingly bad to criticism and not praising wins.
I would recommend you still don't praise them as often as recommended in other threads. Yes, some of your squad will react angrily, but you can still personally praise the once that had a good rating(7.0 and above).the others...well you maybe should consider there place in the squad.
-loyal-these are the haviest to handle as you need softer approach as they have low ambition and sometimes low determinaton. so pushing them works only if they are heavy favourites.
-determined(driven, resolute)-these are suposedly the best reacting players, but you still have to be warry. Just like ambitious once these need to be pushed forward, but you should remember they react bad when told you expect them to win and the odds are pretty mach equal.Try and use more often "show me what you can do" instead.
-unambitious-those do not hadle well, any team talk.try and be most neutral with them.
-sporting-similar to unambitious, still check there determination level in order to weigh your own decision how will you handle them.
VI.2. Press conference
As per my experience you can not take full use of team talks if you do not implement them with properly handled press conferences. So leave those to your assistant at your own risk. As general recommendation i would advise that you never go over yourselfe praising players and performances. This will often be indicated to have turned them a bit unhappy, but will only benefit your gameplay. Things like saying you're delighted by a recent performance or form can bring a lot of complacency in your squad.
VI.3. Fining players
Private chat where you can tell a player he played well or that he didnt perform is almost not working, but you can still warn your players they have to live up to the tags you've set them in every game. The fines as a general rule work this way-rating from 6.0 to 6.4. you can issue official warning and rating less than 6-you can fine the player.In case you have a player that has really underperformed (rating of less than 5.0) you can fine him 2 week wages. Temperamental players and generally those with less professionalism may react angrilly to such treatment, but i would say you can be hard with them-if they dont accept the rules, those are not players that can bring glory to your team.
Link to previous thread:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...lete-guide-every-newbie-might-interested.html
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