I am currently managing Manchester City, on my second season after winning the Community Shield, EPL, Champions Cup and FA Cup. Beating Barcelona, Arsenal and finally Real Madrid in the European competition. All in all, a good season. Ag?ero netted about 27 goals in all competitions, Tevez did about 22, so on. Not the best usage of the strikers (god knows Dzeko could have scored way more than 8), but it got the results, the rest of the team did a great deal of scoring on their own.
Mid-season, I started playing a 4-1-2-3-0 Strikerless game that gave me great results, but I decided to change my tactics for this season because I really needed to take full advantage of the whole roster and not just a few of the players (that tactic didn't enable me to use much of Bale, whom I had bought for a really high price and even bigger wage).
After finally selling Balotelli and Kolarov (Balotelli didn't do much of anything for me in the first season and wasn't going to do much in the second either), I got Alexis S?nchez, Arturo Vidal and Fernando Llorente to sign for me.
I settled on a 4-1-2-2-1 and a 4-3-1-2.
The 4-1-2-2-1 with an Anchorman, a Deep Lying Playmaker and a Ball Winning Midfielder at center, two wingers with support duty (Bale, S?nchez) to feed my poacher (Ag?ero).
The other one, a 4-3-1-2, has a Deep Lying Playmaker (Tour?) with two Ball Winning Midfielders at the sides, one on support duty (Vidal) and the other one in defense. An Advanced playmaker up front (either Silva or the wonderful Isco) and either a Target man and a Poacher or a Deep Lying Playmaker and a Poacher, depending on the game.
Turns out, my squad is on a bad case of the second season syndrome. The passing is awful, often falling short of their man or simply getting intercepted because the ball goes too slow. They often completely ignore their passing chances up front, when they have three players in a good position up front that only need a pass to make a goal play, and instead choose to send it back. More often than not (and this is what bugs me the most) they just walk into the defender or stay put until the defender takes the ball from them without moving an inch to impede it. They almost always see a loose ball and chose to do absolutely nothing about it until the other team has already passed it on (I'm fairly sure this is just a thing with the game, but so far I've never seen the other team do the same, not even the nPower Championship sides).
I manage to get good posession, around 60-65 percent, but the play and the finishing is just awful. And what worries me the most is, no matter what the approach is, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool in particular always get way more posession than my side, always intercepting every pass I make and completely dominating me, even if I end up winning (I just snatched a Community Shield and a Supercup from Man U and Liverpool, respectively).
It utterly confuses me, since I've been using really different tactics, with different passing, different roles, different tempo and different focus on the attack and midfield, yet it gives me just the same problems. That, coupled with the inconsistencies by Ag?ero (who strangely enough has a really high consistency rating), just mind-boggles me.
TL;DR: I'm completely ******* this up, PLEASE HELP.
Mid-season, I started playing a 4-1-2-3-0 Strikerless game that gave me great results, but I decided to change my tactics for this season because I really needed to take full advantage of the whole roster and not just a few of the players (that tactic didn't enable me to use much of Bale, whom I had bought for a really high price and even bigger wage).
After finally selling Balotelli and Kolarov (Balotelli didn't do much of anything for me in the first season and wasn't going to do much in the second either), I got Alexis S?nchez, Arturo Vidal and Fernando Llorente to sign for me.
I settled on a 4-1-2-2-1 and a 4-3-1-2.
The 4-1-2-2-1 with an Anchorman, a Deep Lying Playmaker and a Ball Winning Midfielder at center, two wingers with support duty (Bale, S?nchez) to feed my poacher (Ag?ero).
The other one, a 4-3-1-2, has a Deep Lying Playmaker (Tour?) with two Ball Winning Midfielders at the sides, one on support duty (Vidal) and the other one in defense. An Advanced playmaker up front (either Silva or the wonderful Isco) and either a Target man and a Poacher or a Deep Lying Playmaker and a Poacher, depending on the game.
Turns out, my squad is on a bad case of the second season syndrome. The passing is awful, often falling short of their man or simply getting intercepted because the ball goes too slow. They often completely ignore their passing chances up front, when they have three players in a good position up front that only need a pass to make a goal play, and instead choose to send it back. More often than not (and this is what bugs me the most) they just walk into the defender or stay put until the defender takes the ball from them without moving an inch to impede it. They almost always see a loose ball and chose to do absolutely nothing about it until the other team has already passed it on (I'm fairly sure this is just a thing with the game, but so far I've never seen the other team do the same, not even the nPower Championship sides).
I manage to get good posession, around 60-65 percent, but the play and the finishing is just awful. And what worries me the most is, no matter what the approach is, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool in particular always get way more posession than my side, always intercepting every pass I make and completely dominating me, even if I end up winning (I just snatched a Community Shield and a Supercup from Man U and Liverpool, respectively).
It utterly confuses me, since I've been using really different tactics, with different passing, different roles, different tempo and different focus on the attack and midfield, yet it gives me just the same problems. That, coupled with the inconsistencies by Ag?ero (who strangely enough has a really high consistency rating), just mind-boggles me.
TL;DR: I'm completely ******* this up, PLEASE HELP.
