Having consistent success with defensive minded tactics impossible in FM???

[Uygar89]

I have noticed that all the tactics uploaded in this forum are more or less different from each other in terms of formations and positions, but one thing for sure remains always the same: Very high defensive line, high pressing, at least control mentality, some even attacking and all with the same "I outscore the opposition in order to win" thought. I have never faced a tactic, which a solid mid table premier league team can have some success with, without scoring 90 goals and conceding 60. Is it not possible to create a superb tactic with defensive or counter mentality? I myself have made the experience that you can not really rely on defence when it comes to SI's FM, since as soon as you invite the opposition to your half, no matter how solid and how well organized you are, at the end the AI almost always finds a way to nick one, if not then your defender does the job. So is it dumb to work on a defensive minded tactic in order to gain unexpected success? Irl we have Atletico as the best example, we do have Hertha Berlin in Germany, we had Mourinho's Chelsea, or even Ranieries Leicester.
Am looking forward to your comments

 

[The Otter]

Most of the tactics I have used this year have been more defensive than any other year, I think this game is fantastic for counter tactics, in most games I concede possession to the other team mainly using 4141

 

[Uygar89]

Most of the tactics I have used this year have been more defensive than any other year, I think this game is fantastic for counter tactics, in most games I concede possession to the other team mainly using 4141

Ok, show me one successful one from this forum! All control mentality with ultra high defensive line, or attacking mentality. Just that date 442 is at standard with normal d-line, but it hast one bwm on support and one b2b with even get further forward... so the question is, whether this is realistic or not. irl you would get ripped of but in fm nobody cares because if you wanna have success, you must have a tactic, where you can create 4-5 ccc each game and outscore the opposition in goal festival... never seen a screenshot, where someone has won the league with one of those tactics by scoring less than 60 goals...

 

[jonnysnipe]

Literally came on here to ask the same thing, all high lines and every time I am getting done by over the top balls.

So frustrating

 

[The Otter]

Ok, show me one successful one from this forum! All control mentality with ultra high defensive line, or attacking mentality. Just that date 442 is at standard with normal d-line, but it hast one bwm on support and one b2b with even get further forward... so the question is, whether this is realistic or not. irl you would get ripped of but in fm nobody cares because if you wanna have success, you must have a tactic, where you can create 4-5 ccc each game and outscore the opposition in goal festival... never seen a screenshot, where someone has won the league with one of those tactics by scoring less than 60 goals...

People tend to overthink defensive tactics too much if I'm honest. You won't see many on the forums more on blogs where people like to go in depth into tactics, defensive tactics can just be simple tactics without many/if any TI's

 

[domdom10]

i need help with my defensive tactics, leaking goals like mad with spurs and its so frustrating

 

[Uygar89]

i need help with my defensive tactics, leaking goals like mad with spurs and its so frustrating

I had a game with west ham, I player very fluid, defensive, normal tempo, normal d-line, high disciplined, 442 with one cm(d), one bwm(s) and one wide midfielder (s) plus a striker, who was a df(s). in 3 season the best defensive record I achieved was finishing the season with 38 goals conceded. this was the 3rd season, in the first two always 45+. the match engine does not allow you to set up a tactic where you invite the opposition and pressure, keep it tight and solid in the back. it will work for one game, two games, it wont work over 38 games, since the AI always finds a way to score. it is a fact since fm11. all the greatest tactics had very high d-line with high pressure and so on... Just someone shall show me whether he has won the league with 50 goals scored. it wont, because you need at least 70 in order to compensate the high amount of coals conceded...

 

[jee]

In my opinion, it is possible, but...

Not the way defensive football is played in real life.

In real life, defensive football means being packed back and direct passing.

In football manager, defensive football means being packed back and retain possession.

Fm thinks direct passing is attacking, and short passing is defensive. Just the opposite of how i understand football in real life.

Take a look at counter and control mentalities. Choose any tactic and set counter mentality. Then try with control. 99% of the times you will have more possession with counter. In fm terms, you are playing more defensive because your passing is more safe and less direct in the final third.

So, it is possible to have consistent succes using defensive minded tactics, as long as you retain possession.

That's only my opinion and i don't know how to do it. Probably there is someone that knows, althought i think is is not really how you want to play.

 

[duca015]

Jee is right... It is possible to achieve success with defensive minded tactic, as long as you can expect some crashes down the road, as some opponents will be too good to plug all holes, to say it like that... For me, Achilles heal was Tottenham, as I could not find to control Kane, who would kill me on crossing game, and in space...

If you use mentality as way to control aggression level of your team, and think little outside the box, you can have quite different results. Same goes to shape. Do you want your team to be more aggressive with the ball, or without the ball. If you want them to be more aggressive with the ball, then attacking mentality (or control) is better for you, if you wont them to be less aggressive, then chose counter, or defensive. If you want them to be more aggressive without ball, then you chose more fluid shape (more freedom of movement) and vice versa... Also, think about width. Sometimes most of your issues can be solved by just moving from narrow to wide. I know, it is silly, but it is effective...

There is no right or wrong way on how to create tactic, and there is no ideal way that will work against all opposition. You just have to figure it out along the way...

I had real hard time finding right way to create real blitzing counter attacks in this years FM 16, but I did find way to create solid defensive unit whit which I could win more often then not. I also could not find way to use Poacher in right way, as most of time this role is ineffective when I use it. But sometimes, I find it useful to change it to Poacher role during games...

 

[tesseraeikosi7]

jee is absolutely right. im using the testing leagues to create a good counter tactic and when i put more like shorter passing/play out of defense/retain instructions i get more points to the final standings, which is unrealistic. low mentality with retain possession/shorter instructions is something like tiki-taka, the players look to move the ball around not forcing the issue and attack all the time, until somebody exploits some space. but its like barcelona, not like leicester.. in fm the team that has more possession, mostly wins. in real football, leicester had the lowest average of successful passes in the premier league, you cant win a league in fm like this. you wont find the right places to exploit upfront and your players wont successfully defend for 70 minutes of the game. in fm , the more you keep the ball on your feet, the less you will concede. maybe because even good strikers miss a lot of chances, and if they just counter you 5-6 times per game you will be lucky and not concede or score more.

 

[razielioux]

Just being consistent with the starting eleven, that's the key.

 

[vanTiggelen]

you wont find the right places to exploit upfront and your players wont successfully defend for 70 minutes of the game.

That's because if you look at play rather than numbers you will see that AI managers very readily against any successfully sides have multiple players on defend duty and defend off a deep line. That's one two midfielders never running forward in open play plus both wide backs sitting back next to the centre backs, what are you aiming to counter into there? If you're lucky you will score first and then they might open up, they might. You're part of a dynamic football world, and won't change that. You can go into the editor and level club reputations so that AI managers are tricked initially into thinking Norwich against City was an even tie, which rubbs off on tactical decisions and play and space available and goals. However things will change throughout the save again. I would say they play too cautiously on average, as somebody has found out here more recently too. That's Barcelona trying to frustrate Liverpoodle. http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...barcelona-playing-defensively-against-me.html

Whilst I agree defending needs some lovin', it's bad to gauge from tactical plug&play&hitcontinue downloads what's going on. A tactics build around primarily punishing teams pushing up can't be plug&play as not every side is going to play that way. Consequently overloading&exploiting marking and defensive weaknessess is what it's all about. There is no exploit that would cause average defenses to concede little, and the OPs record of like 1 goal against in the EPL with West Ham is none to shabby. Bad place to gauge such things here thus either way, as whilst there's lots of "download experts", tactical experts are few and far between. Far better one would be the SI tactical forums. Personally countered Villa ino the top third on previoius, but from experience this would have lacked oomph a couple weeks further into things, as outside the top dogs everybody would have just shut up shop.

 

[Meffisto]

Hmmm... I just don't get why are you using "Defensive" TM instead of "Standard" TM?

 

[tesseraeikosi7]

Hmmm... I just don't get why are you using "Defensive" TM instead of "Standard" TM?

because the counter game, defenders playing direct after winning the ball, and forwards/high mentality wide players playing short to supporting players running upfront (like a b2b for example) and then continue to run upfront, is described in the counter/defensive mentalities. a standard mentality with manual direct passing to defenders/shorter to the players upfront could overcomplicate things. also, you need "less than the average" personal mentalities to fall back and restrict your opponent's space to attack. leicester's forwards vardy and okazaki where pressing the opponent's dmcs, not dcs, but the higher your TM is, the higher your players will be on the field.

That's because if you look at play rather than numbers you will see that AI managers very readily against any successfully sides have multiple players on defend duty and defend off a deep line. That's one two midfielders never running forward in open play plus both wide backs sitting back next to the centre backs, what are you aiming to counter into there?

in real football, good counter-attacking sides create their chances even if the opponent is retaining the possession deep at the back. the will anticipate the mistake and then steal, maybe hold the ball for the others to bomb forward and create the chance. thats the use of the high workrated forwards in counter based systems, like vardy okazaki for leicster, zozulya and seleznyov for dnipro, gudjohnsen and joe cole as IF for old chelsea, etc. mourinho used to let opponents to retain possession in defence and not tackling aggresively, so they make a mistake in a bad position that can be exploited. It seems like, in FM, the only good use of these forwards with high work rate, is press like crazy, forcing the opponent to a long ball. if you use close down more, the players will just press higher up the field and not defend an area further than their positions (like a striker marking a dm), and if you use close down less they will just sit upfront doing nothing

 

[vanTiggelen]

That's a different thing, and yeah, pressing highly up the pitch needs some work. When this version was released, even poor sides could retain the ball at the back, thus "statistically" you had matches where you dominated everything against lower league opposition, except for that you were outpassed (statistically) as the poorly sides were able to waste time by playing keep ball deep without much getting pushed. Not that that helped them much going anywhere, as higher up the pitch they would drop the ball asap. Even so, it is completely illogical to expect there to be anything doing as well as some of the (illogical/highly risk) downloads, or use them as a general yardstick to judge things. Half of them tested and doing miracle things they should be raped on the counter, in particular with average sides. That's oft at best one anchor type covering two attacking wing backs flying highly all match, plus the players in front of his advancing too. Lots of them this year have nobody holding position whatsoever. It's a viable way to play the game, and the effort gone into testing this has to be admired, throwing (****) until some of it sticks. However footie logics typically don't apply. It's oft a combination of bugs/lack of intelligence in AI tactical decision making and exploits of marking bugs. Obviously advancing a load of players plus creating wildly movement schemes is more likely to expose such bugs. I personally find that boring as you would win additionally matches before they have kicked off, things never to rarely being a contest anymore, which draws a lot of the stuff in the game obsolete, but that is me.

If the AI managers were able to spot this they would sit multiple forwards up top to which the ball can be immediately cleared upon intercepting, triggering a counter attack immediately rather than when one of their preferred formations involves such and they happen to have it enabled currently. Plus SI have been en route to improve counters for a while now. No wonders that players find they would play a new game with each iteration. The logics rewarded have been the same since like a decade. What is not rewarded and was never the intend was like 8 players running into the box as obviously that's how no team plays in football outside of perhaps desperately overloads lately in a match when there's no time and a goal needed or else they'd be relegated or anything.

 

[Uygar89]

Still working on it, its clear that the classic counter attacking system wont work that well against deeper sitting sides, but klopp, simeone and ranieri's leicester have shown that modern counter attacking football doesnt necessarily need oppositions sitting deeper. You use the forwards and wingers to put pressure on oppositions defenders and defensive midfielders in order to force them to make mistakes. This is where the game lacks. Every single opposition can outpass my pressing easily, even though I am sitting very tight and high and even using a defensive forward with a work rate of 18 its just not working. And if that is not working, you will always have problems with a defensive TM against lower sides and this is what I am facing currently...

 

[tesseraeikosi7]

Still working on it, its clear that the classic counter attacking system wont work that well against deeper sitting sides, but klopp, simeone and ranieri's leicester have shown that modern counter attacking football doesnt necessarily need oppositions sitting deeper. You use the forwards and wingers to put pressure on oppositions defenders and defensive midfielders in order to force them to make mistakes. This is where the game lacks. Every single opposition can outpass my pressing easily, even though I am sitting very tight and high and even using a defensive forward with a work rate of 18 its just not working. And if that is not working, you will always have problems with a defensive TM against lower sides and this is what I am facing currently...

im trying to get them to protect the space (like last year's dnipro, leicester - counter mentality) and not restrict the space (like klopp, roger schmidt - attacking mentalities) as if i press them i will probably force a long ball forward and earn the ball back, which is not what i want for a counter system that isnt based on build up play from the back.It is a bit useless, when the opponents are not attacking. but that cant be done on the current ME. This ME can emulate klopp's style of defensive forwards high pressing, but cant emulate okazaki/vardy partnership of dropping deep to the dmc area and defend the space (and not tight mark the dmc)..

 

[Uygar89]

Almost got it... so frustrating, 3 games left, I am leading by one point and having one game in hand, rest of the story is being told by screenshots... Used a 442 with two dmcs and counter team mentality and OI's to replicate simeone's atletico. was running so well and I am pretty sure, the last 3 games were due to probably my players have the arsenal-loser-mentality, since I was totally dominant in the two games against southampton and stoke city also last goal of stoke city was a typical short fallen backpass by my defender... am gonna test the tactic in the scnd season and if I can repeat the success, I will upload it in order to get feedbacks and ideas for improvement View attachment 150374View attachment 150373View attachment 150372View attachment 150371

 

[Duggy]

http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/shar...cs/358268-lets-all-overachieave-together.html try this mate you will never look back

 

[England66]

I've been playing with a tactic that I have made personally and I am currently in 1st with Aston Villa. Most games are 1-0 wins with the occasional draw. I need to work on it a bit further but I would be more than happy to link it to you if you want. I can upload some screenshots later, if you want to that is. It is hard to make a defensive tactic and it often involves a more direct approach and very pacey players to make up the space behind. However, like any tactic with the right signings it is possible to be successful. You create less CCC's but so do they. I have games where I will create 1 and they have 0 just a lot of longshots.