Yesterday and today I got some brand new ideas about tactics. Below are my ramblings about them, so if you have some insights of your own, feel free to share.
The ideas I got is that, when making a tactic, you should make it without team and player instructions first. The idea is to have the core of your tactic operational, and working well, before you add a style of defending and a style of attacking. So, all you need to setup is mentality and philosophy and player roles and test them to see if they work, and then apply the rest of the tweaks.
Mentality: Now you prolly all know what this means. Defend means defend, attack means attack. That's true, but I started thinking how this translates into game match engine.
So, first of all, a change of mentality will change the default automatic duties to attack. In some cases, it means the change of required attributes, and completly different behaviour on the pitch. For example, your cm will have different attributes required for support duty, if you play with counter, standard and control mentality, and will mostly act similar as a box to box player, connecting your offense and defense. With a contain and defend mentality, his duty will be defend, so he will mostly work on breaking up opposition attack. And with attack and overload mentality, he will act as central winger, and dribble wide and cross. That's why it is very important to read description of each role and duty, especially if you don't know squat about football, like me.
So, if you opt for an attack strategy, in your basic 442, your fullbacks will change to attack duty, and your cm to central winger role. This means multiple things. First of all, your wide midfielders duty needs to be changed, if you want them to function properly with the new fullbacks duties. If you don't change their duties to support or defend, both of them will go forward for a cross, and it will make them confused on who is supposed to cross, and it will leave your defence open. Think of it as squeezing a sponge. If you squeeze the sponge on one end, it will grow bigger on the other end. This means you can't simply change mentality in a match in an attempt to equalise or score a lead. You must make all necessary changes, or don't change your mentality no matter what happens. You may want to play more defensively against a team parking the bus, to draw them out, and you may want to attack against a good team in an attempt to get lucky. This is why you should prepare 3 tactics, with different mentalities, and chose the appropriate one based on next opposition report. Or, never change your style against anyone, but your tactic must work against everyone. The latter is what I have always been striving for.
So, back to mentality. Mentality not only changes automatic duties, it means the change of tempo and width. More or less, depending on more or less agressive mentality. So what does this mean? Greater width means the change of passing focus to wider. You can either play with normal, narrow or wide width. To be sure what is selected, you can either go back to fm13, or wait until they give us sliders back. So why is this important? Because if you play wider, your players will pass the ball to your flanks, so you may use attacking duties for your fullbacks, but must be prepared to defend the middle. And if you play things narrow, you will pass the ball to central players, and you must defend the flanks. Playing narrow means playing with a lower tempo because tempo and width are linked, and playing wider means playing a higher tempo, for the same reason. Normal width means using all areas of the pitch. You may know all of this already, but it is important not to change the core of your tactic.
Your players will also behave more agressively when chosing a more agressive mentality, like fight more for the ball and attempt more tackles. It may lead to disciplinary actions like yellow or red cards.
So my point is, if you really want to play wider a notch, for example, you should consider changing to a more agressive strategy instead of choosing the play wider team instruction. It will make your players behave differently, and it may lead to a desired effect better then the tweak team setting. Your players will have an easier time adapting and learning what you want from them, and it might also make their jobs, like marking and pressing and goal scoring easier. If you ask your players to play wider, they will spread out and play wider a notch, but might not be agressive enough to cover the extra space. It might also make them uninterested in playing the match or complacent.
Some of you like to tweak a tactic by lowering tempo and increasing mentality, or by lowering mentality and increasing tempo. I heard explanations like "Why can't I order my team to play slightly slower?"....The answer to this is: you can, but you will confuse your players and get worse results. For example you set control mentality, which increases width and tempo, then you set retain possession that lowers tempo and width, then you set play wider that increases tempo and width, and then you set lower tempo which lowers tempo and width. It's confusing the players and you will never get good constant results tweaking like this. Control will make them more agressive aswell, positioned higher up the pitch, it will change your players passing range to forwards to more direct, and to defenders to shorter, and so on, so they might be to agressive, or have to long or to short passing range for the rest of your tweaks. My advice is to have the core of your tactic ready in your head and if needed, increase or decrease all options at the same time. So, if you want to attack, you should choose attack mentality and if necessary add tweaks like direct or go route passing, more width and higher tempo. This is already explained in detail in description of your chosen mentality in-game. It makes no sense to order your players to attack and have them all in front of the ball and then choose much lower tempo for example.
Another thing I'd like to add to this text, is that you should think how philophy and mentality work together. For example, very fluid philosophy means global mentality, so with attack mentality all of your players will pass the ball forward. With a rigid philosophy, defenders will pass backward, and forwards forward, and with a balanced mentality they will do exactly as their role suggest in conjuction with your mentality, but will probably leave more gaps between the lines.
The ideas I got is that, when making a tactic, you should make it without team and player instructions first. The idea is to have the core of your tactic operational, and working well, before you add a style of defending and a style of attacking. So, all you need to setup is mentality and philosophy and player roles and test them to see if they work, and then apply the rest of the tweaks.
Mentality: Now you prolly all know what this means. Defend means defend, attack means attack. That's true, but I started thinking how this translates into game match engine.
So, first of all, a change of mentality will change the default automatic duties to attack. In some cases, it means the change of required attributes, and completly different behaviour on the pitch. For example, your cm will have different attributes required for support duty, if you play with counter, standard and control mentality, and will mostly act similar as a box to box player, connecting your offense and defense. With a contain and defend mentality, his duty will be defend, so he will mostly work on breaking up opposition attack. And with attack and overload mentality, he will act as central winger, and dribble wide and cross. That's why it is very important to read description of each role and duty, especially if you don't know squat about football, like me.
So, if you opt for an attack strategy, in your basic 442, your fullbacks will change to attack duty, and your cm to central winger role. This means multiple things. First of all, your wide midfielders duty needs to be changed, if you want them to function properly with the new fullbacks duties. If you don't change their duties to support or defend, both of them will go forward for a cross, and it will make them confused on who is supposed to cross, and it will leave your defence open. Think of it as squeezing a sponge. If you squeeze the sponge on one end, it will grow bigger on the other end. This means you can't simply change mentality in a match in an attempt to equalise or score a lead. You must make all necessary changes, or don't change your mentality no matter what happens. You may want to play more defensively against a team parking the bus, to draw them out, and you may want to attack against a good team in an attempt to get lucky. This is why you should prepare 3 tactics, with different mentalities, and chose the appropriate one based on next opposition report. Or, never change your style against anyone, but your tactic must work against everyone. The latter is what I have always been striving for.
So, back to mentality. Mentality not only changes automatic duties, it means the change of tempo and width. More or less, depending on more or less agressive mentality. So what does this mean? Greater width means the change of passing focus to wider. You can either play with normal, narrow or wide width. To be sure what is selected, you can either go back to fm13, or wait until they give us sliders back. So why is this important? Because if you play wider, your players will pass the ball to your flanks, so you may use attacking duties for your fullbacks, but must be prepared to defend the middle. And if you play things narrow, you will pass the ball to central players, and you must defend the flanks. Playing narrow means playing with a lower tempo because tempo and width are linked, and playing wider means playing a higher tempo, for the same reason. Normal width means using all areas of the pitch. You may know all of this already, but it is important not to change the core of your tactic.
Your players will also behave more agressively when chosing a more agressive mentality, like fight more for the ball and attempt more tackles. It may lead to disciplinary actions like yellow or red cards.
So my point is, if you really want to play wider a notch, for example, you should consider changing to a more agressive strategy instead of choosing the play wider team instruction. It will make your players behave differently, and it may lead to a desired effect better then the tweak team setting. Your players will have an easier time adapting and learning what you want from them, and it might also make their jobs, like marking and pressing and goal scoring easier. If you ask your players to play wider, they will spread out and play wider a notch, but might not be agressive enough to cover the extra space. It might also make them uninterested in playing the match or complacent.
Some of you like to tweak a tactic by lowering tempo and increasing mentality, or by lowering mentality and increasing tempo. I heard explanations like "Why can't I order my team to play slightly slower?"....The answer to this is: you can, but you will confuse your players and get worse results. For example you set control mentality, which increases width and tempo, then you set retain possession that lowers tempo and width, then you set play wider that increases tempo and width, and then you set lower tempo which lowers tempo and width. It's confusing the players and you will never get good constant results tweaking like this. Control will make them more agressive aswell, positioned higher up the pitch, it will change your players passing range to forwards to more direct, and to defenders to shorter, and so on, so they might be to agressive, or have to long or to short passing range for the rest of your tweaks. My advice is to have the core of your tactic ready in your head and if needed, increase or decrease all options at the same time. So, if you want to attack, you should choose attack mentality and if necessary add tweaks like direct or go route passing, more width and higher tempo. This is already explained in detail in description of your chosen mentality in-game. It makes no sense to order your players to attack and have them all in front of the ball and then choose much lower tempo for example.
Another thing I'd like to add to this text, is that you should think how philophy and mentality work together. For example, very fluid philosophy means global mentality, so with attack mentality all of your players will pass the ball forward. With a rigid philosophy, defenders will pass backward, and forwards forward, and with a balanced mentality they will do exactly as their role suggest in conjuction with your mentality, but will probably leave more gaps between the lines.
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