I have a vision, but it just wont work!

Well the summer was fun, I think I just cannot help myself... When I see an average player over-valued because of the clubs success, I see an opportunity to offload and replace him for very little outlay(sometimes profit).

Reina gone for £25m, Ter Stegen in for £28m, 10 years younger and already better!
Agger and Skrtl out for £20m each, incoming Papadopoulos and Umtiti for £22m each.
Sturridge gone for £20m, Lamela in for £12m.
Got rid of Douglas(£15m), Borini(£19m), Sterling(£18m)and a couple of reserve players that wont make the grade(Wilson, Flanagan etc)

Then the biggie, and the reason I ousted Sturridge and Sterling...

I saw that Neymar was unhappy and having just won the CL theres a chance I might be able to tempt him. But Barca are interested too...

I offer Suarez to clubs for £50m, hes valued at £28m...

Only 1 offer comes in, from Barca, £45m... DONE !! Now they might not be able to afford Neymar...

They bid for him anyway and we both have fees agrees, when it came to contract negotiations, I just offered Neymar £125k/week instead of the £85k he requested, I offered him £1.3m team of the year and top goalscorer clauses.

He joined us !!


Squad...

GK
Ter Stegen
Butland
Andrada

DR
Smith(England U21 RB from Spurs, hes fantastic on my save)
Kelly

DL
Ben Davies
Tagliafico

DC
BPD(Cover)
Umtiti
Chalobah
LD(Stopper)
Papadopoulos
Coates

CM
Pogba
Thiago
Mcarthy
Garmash
Romero

AMR
Rodrigo
Lamela

AMC
Isco
Stanciu

AML
Muniain
Coutinho

ST
Neymar
Lacazette

I spent £32m on Lacazette because with Neymar I have gone back to DLF. So I wanted someone in reserve who can play this role too and Lacazette was by far the best. Money wasnt an issue although I would have liked to get him for less.


I have spent £327m since I took over, I have recouped £277m.

Seriously now, I wont be making any more changes except for upgraded full backs if I feel the need ever. I still have £72m left in my transfer budget, but most of my deals were spread over time so probably best not to spend all that.
 
I think Ive finally cracked it... I continued using the more generic version of the tactic, with more conservative styles in terms of pressing and passing etc. I toned it all back to a more normal approach and upped the tempo, also added IFs instead of playmakers on the wing.

Over the season Ive made a tweak at a time until its finally where I want it AND getting results!

Ive drew 1 and won the rest of my last 22 games or so, and that was 3-3 at Old Trafford. Lamela scored a free kick in off the post on 87 minutes for 3-2 but Utd, as they do, got a goal in Fergie time!

IFs are still IFs, only they are on support and Ive stopped them running with the ball and shooting from distance. I was getting 30+ shots per game and no CCCs. Now they still do dribble and shoot etc, but not like before, before they played so direct and thats not what Im trying to do here.

Ive turned pressing up to max now, for every single player. Turned passing to short, tempo to normal(it plays much slower). My ST is back to DLF, but on attack instead of support so that he runs at people and fashions chances for himself(Ideal for Neymar)

Ive added Adam Maher to the group and will make Stanciu more of a MC/AMC utility man. I wasnt liking how he was playing as AMC, he kept coming too deep, but he worked well in 4231 and DLP in my Dortmund save, so will have him be my spare midfielder to fill in all over the middle 5 positions.

Way clear at the top of the EPL now, QF of CL and 5th round of FA Cup and Final of League Cup. Lost the Euro Super Cup to Ajax(this was pre tactical changes), but won the World Club Championship. Will report back with results at end of current season.


How would I go about uploading this tactic? If I have a successful end to the season I will upload it for others to try.
 
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In both loses(Chelsea and Man City, I played the second string to rest for the next game. I am comfortably top of the league so Im just managing my way to the title and keeping players fresh for the big european games and domestic cup finals etc.
 
Thank you for a very inspirering read :)

Do you use a targetman? I feel my ADF gets a bit lost in this system and cnsider making him TM to get the ball up there.
 
decent read that was of your troubles getting your side to play your perfect tactic! personal and gripping nice one! would have been good to have worked with AP just to prove it works lol
 
have you thought about changing your amc to an inside forward cause I could see that being a great blend with Neymar as dlf(dragging defenders out of position amc then cuts into this space) also do you have a playmaker ticked? because you mentioned in the op that you want to play a barca style yet imo in the barca system everyone (except Busquets) is a maker of play and there is a pre-conceived idea in some parts of these forums (rightly or wrongly) that ticking a playmaker can make your team one-dimensional, anyways these are all just thoughts. This has been a great read particularly as I myself have struggled to create a 4-2-3-1 that is successful and it is great to see someone sticking to their philosophy and not blaming the 'game', anyway I've rambled back to revision I go :S KUTGW (H)
 
Hey guys, thanks for posting, I thought I was talking to myself all this time, lol. Great to hear people are reading and liking this.

I have philosophy and I needed to find the balance to keep me in my job along the way. I played the 1st season with Modern Warfare 442 with just the regular Liverpool squad and we won league and Europa. To be honest I think that formation is some kind of exploit and my Villa save where Im over 20 years in and won 13 Champions Leagues along with insane amounts of leagues and cups... Well it just got boring. I played it to stay competative with the initial squad but then when I could attract Isco, Muniain and Rodrigo in the same window, it was time to get on with why I started this to begin with. It didnt work initaially so I pull back all the sliders and went with a regular 4231, bit more direct than I wanted, and again, improved the squad further and slowly started to tweak it back to how I want it.

The tactic and squad are now complete IMO. I added Alaba and Carvajal at full back and Man City offered me an incrdible £35.5m for McArthy so I replaced him with Cresiteg. Now my entire squad is aged between 22 and 24, except Garmash who is 25 and Chalobah who is 20/21.

As far as the wide APs are concerned, yea I kind of wanted to make it work just because people told me it wouldnt work, lol. But the IF set to support and with run with ball, cut inside and long shots all turned off, they now play a lot more like playmakers than you would think. Infact I think they are now playing exactly as I envisaged when I started this.

I did have playmaker turned on and set to Isco, this was probably a bad choice since I have Thiago at MCL set to DLP. He would have been a better choice, but I have just taken off playmaker and I will see if it improves anything. To be honest, I never noticed in game that Isco was seeing more of the ball than anyone else, infact I thought he saw less that AML/R.

I use Neymar as DLF, Im thinking of using him as target man set to through balls. I notice the opposition often pushes right up when he drops short, and I yell at my PC, "spin and run, and play him in" lol... I'll experiment him on that and train him to break the offside trap often. Im worried it might be a conflict of interests, first asking him to drop deep and then to look for the ball in behind.

Im ready to upload the tactic but I have no idea how... What rules I have to follow, what I have to include in OP, who has to verify it etc.
 
I posted this in the small questions thread but it doesnt seem to get any traffic...


How do I get my AMC/AMR/AML to track back when the oppositions DMC has the ball for example. Its almost liek once it passes them they give it up, leaving my MC's to press and then leaving a hole behind them.(I play 4231)

Will Tight Marking for my front 4 work for this? If not please help me understand "Tight Marking", both overall and for forwards in particular. Thanks.
 
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Tactic is prone to the occasional harsh defeat, but even in those games we dont get outplayed. I would love to fix this as it is very annoying to have more possession and more shots but lose by 3 goals.

We were by far the better team vs Chelsea in both games, the red card in the 2nd game came at 1-1 IIRC. I am confident we would have gone on to win the match.

Thats another issue, I am getting a lot of red cards, it was at least 8 last season! Already one this season. I dont have hard tackling on any of my players.
 
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Ive made a small tweak thats making a big difference...

I set my IFs wing play from normal(so they dribble inside and outside) to move into channels.

Last season Rodrigo and Muniain got 5 and 7 goals. In the last 3 games theyve got 8 goals between them.
 
This was a really good read!

I'd love to start a Liverpool save and try this tactic, if you can work out how to upload the tactic, I've done it once before but i can't remember how!

When you start a thread there's on option to 'add an attachment' but that option isn't there when replying. I think you may have to start a new thread to upload it. But i'm fairly new to FM Base so i may be completely wrong.
 
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Personally I didnt use it on the original Liverpool squad, I thought I would probably get sacked by the time I had developed the tactic to a decent level.

If I were to use this on the original Liverpool Squad I would just go with this...

Reina

Johnson/Skrtl/Agger/Enrique

Lucas/Allen

Sturridge/Gerrard/Coutinho

Suarez

Kelly, Coates, Hendersen, Downing, Sterling, Shelvey, Borini would all make for good replacements.

I would advise Stanciu for cheap cover as he can play anywhere in the 5 midfield positions, and you will need some cover at LB.
 
Sc00by, I ran across a FM blog that really shed light on creating tactics and combining player roles to accomplish what you want to achieve with that tactic. You might be familiar with it, but the article is at https://fmcoffeehouse.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/tactical-analysis-crooked-4-2-3-1/ . I don't know the protocol, but if a mod deletes the link, PM me and I will send it to you. Very interesting read!
 
just read through all of it mate, well done on finally figuring it out. I tried doing this with southampton, but it didn't work out. any chance u can upload the tactic now or send it to me somehow?

thanks alot
 
I was having similar issues to you with my new Spurs save and had a similar goal to yours albeit with a different play style in mind.
Sold quite a few players upon arrival but tough moving the players already bought for the 2012-13 season (Holtby, Sigurðsson, Vertonghen, Dempsey, Lloris, Dembélé, Adebayor) so my plan had to be two stage.
Anyways, bought all my players for my master plan(pt1) and when taking to the field for the first time 9 of the 11 had never played together before, and it showed. Beaten 1-3.
But 19 games played and noticeable changes happening, we've won the last six games with four clean sheets and the play style (high tempo one touch) is starting to show itself and tbh it looks fekkin awesome until their eighteen yard box but that's another story.

I trained team cohesion and teamwork at every available opportunity (like week long breaks between matches etc)
I guess its a double edged sword being totally fluid in a tactic but with players who cant play together or vice-versa.

As Mr Miyagi said (karate kid)
Must find balance
Click to expand...
 
Loved this read and the tactic but the tactic doesn't seem to play as well anymore are you still tweaking it and updating it? If not please could you try?
 
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