Making forward runs is a very difficult area
Firstly i'll go with you through the Player Roles & Forward Runs (FWRs)
When assigning forward runs to your players, it is important that you are very clear as to their role in the team. Player roles are defined in the following way:
Defend: The player will focus heavily on defensive duties
Support: The player will perform both defensive and attacking duties
Attack: The player will focus heavily on attacking duties
Asking your players to make forward runs defines how often and by how far they will deviate from the assigned formation position. If a player is told to make Forward Runs Rarely, this translates into the match engine as an instruction to hold his formation position and be ready to cover any counter-attacks. Assigning Forward Runs Mixed translates as instructing him to help out with attacks but not to stray too far from his formation position so he can quickly get back and help out the defence as and when needed. Forward Runs Often tells the player to move into attacking positions as soon as the team has the ball. With the above in mind, forward runs should be applied in the following manner:
• Defend: FWRs Rarely
• Support: FWRs Mixed
• Attack: FWRs Often
To keep things simple, we will restrict early discussion of player roles to the three most basic match strategies, Defensive, Standard and Attacking (see pages 32-33). Every tactic requires enough people defending and enough people attacking to be stable, but attacking flavours require more attackers and, conversely, defensive tactics need more bodies in defence. Hence, roles are assigned in the following manner:
• Defensive: 5 defend, 2 support, 3 attack
• Standard: 3 defend, 4 support, 3 attack
• Attacking: 3 defend, 2 support, 5 attack
Such a system assigns player roles into a basic configuration of 3 Defend, 2 Support and 3 Attack, which repeats through all the match strategies. The manager then decides on which two players he wishes to ‘float’ between the three. These ‘floaters’ will be classed as Defends in Defensive match strategies, Supports in Standard match strategies and Attackers in Attacking match strategies. For most formations (including 5-3-2, 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1 etc.) the likelihood is that these players will be the full backs or wing backs. For systems without full backs, the manager needs to be more creative. Once you’ve identified which players you are going to ‘float’ it becomes simple to scale the instructions and create all three strategic flavours of any tactic.
When assigning these roles, it is important to recognise the forward positions as being attacking by nature. As such, they do not require having FWRs Often/Mixed to be classified as an Attacker/Support. Indeed, assigning FWRs Often to both FCs in a two-forward formation will often lead to their being isolated from the midfield and uninvolved with play. As specified earlier, one FC (FCd) will need to operate in a deeper, support role to link the attack with the midfield, whereas the other (FCa) should be looking to play on the shoulder of the last defender. Correctly assigning their forward runs is fundamental to having your attack operate as a unit:
• The FCd can be classed as attack/support with no/mixed FWRs
• The FCa can be classed as attack with mixed/often FWRs
To evaluate whether you have the correct FWRs instruction assigned to your FCs, use the Match Stats to check on the offside count and FC involvement in play. If the offside count is high, then it is likely that your FCa is making runs too early and his FWRs should be Mixed. If the FCd isn’t seeing much ball, it is for one of two reasons. He may not be dropping into space to pick up easy passes from midfield, or the pitch might be so small that this space is being squeezed and he can’t get into the game. For the former, you will need to reduce FWRs from Mixed to Rarely. For the latter, you will need to have him operating higher up the pitch, so increase FWRs from Rarely to Mixed.
The Arrowless Match Engine
With the removal of arrows, the Forward Runs slider has become significantly more important. In combination with mentality, it is now the major method of instructing a player to advance from his formation position and move into attacking areas of the pitch. It is important to clarify the benefits of this change.
There is a common misperception as to the functionality of arrows. Arrows were not player runs. Nor did they specify exactly where a player should be running, either with or without the ball. What they did was specify two possession-related static positions. As soon as a team won possession, a player would robotically follow his arrow to move into his assigned attacking position. Once there, he would make a play related move. When the team lost the ball the same would happen in reverse. During this movement, the player was following a pre-set instruction that kicked in no matter what was happening on the pitch, taking the player out of the game and impairing his ability to react to the action.
Replacing arrows with forward runs ensures that player movement is far more dynamic and directly related to on-pitch events. Despite a seeming loss of lateral control, which, as with most arrow-related moves, was largely illusory, the new system ensures dynamic player movement, fluid football and realistic transitions from defence to attack. A well thought-through forward runs pattern will lead to some truly excellent passing combinations and quality attacking play.