Terrible individual mistakes

[rasmusschaal]

Hi Fm-base.
I am doing a save with Southampton in the BPL, and up until that save of playing FM, I've always gone with tactics I could find in here. I decided enough is enough, and tried to have confidence in my own abilities as a tactician. Oh dear god. I seem to lose nearly every game down to individual mistakes by my defenders, horrible misses by my strikers or terrible defending by my fullbacks - mistakes that I don't think is hinted in their attributes, which I think are decent.

My setup is meant to overload the midfield with players, outnumbering to opposition and then having high workrate wide players in my fullback spots to bomb up and down, providing both in attack and defense. I have one very free and roaming player in Zivkovic up front, partnered with supposed goal-machine in Gabriel Barbosa. Gabriel is on 2 goals in 7 games, Zivkovic is on 1 goal in 5 games. Im predicted to finish 7th, and I am currently sitting 18th!! Another problem is that I seem to get tons of yellow cards, which is evident in that after 7 league games I have four players on who have all individually picked up 4 or more yellow cards!

It seems my tactic just isn't working the way I want it to, and given my inexperience, it's hard for me to spot the problem. If anyone think they can work it out, pointers would be absolutely appreciated. I can post match stats from a few games as well if anyones interested.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

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Hopefully, you guys can help me out! Thank you!

 

[WJ]

You say the tactic isn't working how you want it to. What is the idea here?

The tactic seems extreme. Very attacking mentality. Very attacking roles and duties. A little extreme with the instructions too.

 

[rasmusschaal]

You say the tactic isn't working how you want it to. What is the idea here?

The tactic seems extreme. Very attacking mentality. Very attacking roles and duties. A little extreme with the instructions too.

I want my 3 forwards to do a lot of movement, and intricate play, hence I've gone with 3 very technical players. Good OTB, anticipation and acc on these 3 players should make life very difficult for opposing defenders when having to deal with low crosses from my CWBs.

I need high work rate for my CWB's or my defence would be exposed far too much. They have 15 and 17, which I think could be a bit higher, but will do. My CB's both have fairly good marking and positioning, but they seem to lose their man ALL THE TIME, especially when dealing with early crosses.

 

[WJ]

I want my 3 forwards to do a lot of movement, and intricate play, hence I've gone with 3 very technical players. Good OTB, anticipation and acc on these 3 players should make life very difficult for opposing defenders when having to deal with low crosses from my CWBs.

What does 'do a lot of movement' actually, specifically mean? There doesn't seem to be too much movement? Both strikers will be camped out on the shoulders of the defenders and the AP will be quite aggressive in his positioning as well.

I'm not sure how acceleration is important here. They're not chasing anything. They won't be in space. They'll just wait for crosses.

If you just mean you want the strikers in the box, then they will definitely be there.

As said though, you're extremely attacking and it's leading to very fast, very direct and rushed football.

I need high work rate for my CWB's or my defence would be exposed far too much. They have 15 and 17, which I think could be a bit higher, but will do. My CB's both have fairly good marking and positioning, but they seem to lose their man ALL THE TIME, especially when dealing with early crosses.

I'm not sure why you're mentioning Work Rate here? Who's covering on the flanks when the CWBs bomb forward? Who's putting pressure on the wide players to prevent crosses?

 

[rasmusschaal]

152

So I've tried to switch up some things. I changed mentality to balanced, team shape to structured. I put Zivkovic on CF/s instead of CF/a, since I heard it's good to have both an attack and a support duty in all areas of your tactic. For some reason my goal keeper was a sweeper, which i didn't know, so I changed that. I started out by absolutely dominating Crystal Palace at home in a 3 - 0 win, where I conceded no shots on target and only one shot off target. I created 5 CCC. I couldn't quite believe the change, so I continued forward to the next game, a CL group game against AZ. I am only 19 minutes into that game, but buzzing so hard because im already ahead 3 - 0, with my tactic orking out exactly how i want it. Loads of movement up front, good numbers in midfield and such hard working wing backs, one of whom has scored in both the AZ game and the Crystal Palace game.

Thank you WJ, even your little post there helped loads. I'll give it some time now, and see how it goes.

 

[rasmusschaal]

1015

What does 'do a lot of movement' actually, specifically mean? There doesn't seem to be too much movement? Both strikers will be camped out on the shoulders of the defenders and the AP will be quite aggressive in his positioning as well.

I'm not sure how acceleration is important here. They're not chasing anything. They won't be in space. They'll just wait for crosses.

If you just mean you want the strikers in the box, then they will definitely be there.

As said though, you're extremely attacking and it's leading to very fast, very direct and rushed football.


I'm not sure why you're mentioning Work Rate here? Who's covering on the flanks when the CWBs bomb forward? Who's putting pressure on the wide players to prevent crosses?

I want my strikers to have good acceleration to be able to be first to get to the low crosses provided by the wide players. I imagine my CB's would be covering the flanks, both having decent speed and anticipation to be able to get to the cleared balls first, to prevent counter attacks.

I want my wing backs to both attack and defend, so I was sure that work rate would be very important, as a lot is required of them

 

[WJ]

With an Attacking mentality, even Support duty players will make runs forward fairly often and early, because it's a more risky mentality so players take more risks.

It's good to usually vary the striker duties instead of putting both on Attack, because as I hinted at, both strikers on Attack duties will just sit on top of the defence, That's it. No movement. No defenders pulled. No space created. Nothing.

Glad you found some joy, but don't relax now.

 

[rasmusschaal]

With an Attacking mentality, even Support duty players will make runs forward fairly often and early, because it's a more risky mentality so players take more risks.

It's good to usually vary the striker duties instead of putting both on Attack, because as I hinted at, both strikers on Attack duties will just sit on top of the defence, That's it. No movement. No defenders pulled. No space created. Nothing.

Glad you found some joy, but don't relax now.

Cheers. No believe me, after that amount of frustration, I'll keep very focused. XDXD

 

[SeanFlett]

Why would you exploit the flanks when you in theory only have the Wing backs there?