We've all suffered those extremely frustrating matches, where you just can't break down the opposition defence. Sometimes it's because the opposition defence are well organised, such as Arsenal and Manchester United tend to have. Their defences work very well as a unit, and tend to get support from at least one midfielder. This tends to be top quality defending, but because these teams will try to attack, you will usually get opportunities at some point.
Far more frustrating is when the opposition have "Parked the Bus." What this really means is, they defend very deep, which pulls their midfield back, making it very hard to find space. Some of these teams show little ambition of trying to go forward, and are just waiting to try and catch you on the break. Some teams will be trying to claim a draw from the outset, which is very annoying. There are also those teams who if they manage to score, then just "Park the Bus" quite often making a substitution to bolster the defence even more. Often any shots you do get are half chances, under pressure, or long shots.
What Can We Do To Create More Chances Against An Organised Defence?
When faced with a well organised defence, you're largely at the mercy of the quality of your attacking players. This is largely aimed at the situations where you feel confident that your team can take on a side of similar or better quality than your own. If you feel the need to set up for counter attacking, most of your opportunities are likely to come on the break, but the following may still apply. All these little ideas can still apply to playing any weaker team as well.
There is no sure-fire way of breaking them down, but you're hoping that your strikers and wingers are causing problems for the defence, which will hopefully open gaps up. What you're trying to do is actually open up one of those gaps, we were trying to close in my previous post about defending tactics. Having a midfielder, either central or attacking, who likes to move forward into the area to act as an extra man can help to open up opportunities. Wingers that like to cut inside can also help to cause problems.
Teams like Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool tend to allow you some time and space on the ball, which gives your players more chance of spotting good options. It can be worth looking at the defenders to see if there are any weaknesses you might be able to exploit. It's rare with good teams to find something like this, but if you spot a central defender who's slow or low concentration, it could be worth attacking through the centre.
If the opposition full backs are slow, or you have exceptionally good wingers, you can try attacking down the flanks. Sometimes this can draw the defence out of position. Another option if you're coping well at the back, is to look for the overlap, which basically means your full backs look to move forward and help out on the wings. This can cause huge chaos in the defence, and might allow your wingers to get in behind the defence. Anything that can create panic in the defence has a good chance of creating opportunities. Looking for the overlap works especially well against teams with any weakness in their full back positions.
Pumping the ball into the box, is one option you can try if you have a good targetman to seek out. This might not be as pretty as playing silky football, but if that isn't working, it's well worth giving it a try. If that target man can play with their back to goal, it can be even better, because they have the option of holding the ball up and laying it off to teammates, or even turning their marker and trying a shot of their own. Asking the players to get the ball forward is a similar option. It pretty much does what it says on the tin, so the speak, in that the ball is moved forward quickly, which can be good way to put more pressure on the opposition defence. Just bear in mind that these increase the passing length, so can reduce the accuracy of passes. This is pretty much route one football, and much derided, but sometimes needs must.
If it's wet and or windy and you have players with decent long shot attributes, it might be worth asking them to shoot on sight, but to be honest I don't like this option much at all. If your long shots are getting nowhere near the target, asking the players to work the ball into the box will tend to cut down the number of long shots your team will try.
If your passing is looking good, but those gaps still aren't opening up, asking the players to pass into space can sometimes work wonders. Your team needs to be tactically good and be able to pass well to really take advantage of this though. If you have a speed advantage over the opposition this has even better chance of working, because it's not a nice prospect for a defender to have to try and tackle a player who is dribbling at speed towards them, or trying to track players who are running into space.
Playing wider or narrower can also change the game. Going wider could give you more space on the wings, or narrower will put more pressure in the centre. If you can see gaps in the centre of the opposition defence, but you're not taking advantage of them, then playing narrower could be just the thing you need. Remember this will have an effect on your own defending.
The main thing is, keep mixing things up and hopefully the chances will come. Whether the players who get the chances will put them away is another thing, but if you aren't creating shots you can't score. Watch for players who are struggling in key positions, such as the wings or the strikers. You might want to make some change, either through a substitution or a slight change in role or duty. If you have an AMC they can sometimes become isolated, and if they're your main playermaker, it can cut down your attacking options a lot. Try to be aware of what's happening with different players, because it's easy to sit their totally oblivious until the end that one of your players hardly had any impact in the match.
I can give you a case where I was playing Chelsea, with Hogan Ephraim on the left wing, who even with good pace and dribbling was doing okay, but not really managing to create many opportunities. I replaced him with Balazs Dzsudzsak, and within 10 minutes he managed to get to the byeline and produced a cross allowing my target man, Oscar Cardozo to head us into the lead, late in the match, grabbing us a winner.
If you have two strikers and they're being marked consistently well, try setting them up to swap positions with each other. They will swap regularly throughout the match, and this may cause enough confusion to allow them to get space. If you have a pair of wingers that can play well on both sides, it can also be worth having them swap regularly for much the same reason.
Sometimes you get really lucky, where your players look inspired, and you hardly have to do anything at all and goals are flying in all over the place. If you're creating lots of chances, there is a lot less you have to do, but if those shots seem to always be under pressure, and saved with ease or fired wide, you probably do need to think about a change.
The Opposition Have "Parked The Bus"
We've all suffered this, where a team comes to just defend and take a bore draw, or if they get really lucky, snatch an undeserved win. I'm not even going to mention the infamous teams that do this, as most people already know exactly who they are. Teams that also like to try and counter attack can pose many of the same problems, especially if they are very hard working and try to close down you players a lot. They will usually present opportunities though, because eventually they are sure to tire, or commit fouls that might give a free kick in a useful position, or even have a player sent off.
A lot of what's been mentioned in the previous section can be used, but the biggest problem here is the lack of space available, due to players defending deep and largely getting everyone behind the ball. A awful 0-0 draw or even worse a narrow defeat in these matches are infuriating. It might be annoying to lose 1-0 to a team like Arsenal in a tight match, but at least you know they always look to try and win the match.
The major problem when playing a team that has "Parked the Bus" is that there is a lot less space to work with, so you can find your team are moving the ball around in the opposition half, but not actually getting anywhere, and showing little sign of penetrating the defence. This lack of space tends to cause the match to slow down, which makes it a lot easy for defenders to sit tight on your strikers, or position themselves so they don't have shooting opportunities. That also makes it harder for players with good dribbling skills to get through as well.
What you're looking to try and do is to open some space up. The only way to open more space up, is to try and draw the opposition out further. Setting an attacking strategy can look really inviting, but it could be playing right into the hands of the opposition. There will be even less space to work in, and they will most likely have more counter attacking chances. Sometimes this will work, but usually requires strikers who are tall and strong who can challenge for balls in the area, but even that doesn't always work.
There are ways to try and draw the opposition out though. One is to set the control strategy, which sets your team up to try and control possession and frustrate the opposition. There seems to be nothing worse than seeing the other team stroking the ball about with esae, which can lead to frustration. They will often start to try and close you down, trying to win the ball back, which can lead to gaps opening up, or fouls conceded.
Shoot on Sight is a call that is suggested in these situations, but it rarely seems to achieve the desired effect. It may be worth trying for a while though, and if you're firing off enough long shots, it might draw their players out to try and stifle the opportunities.
Asking your team to drop deeper is a useful thing to try as it will hopefully open a few more spaces up for you to work the ball into. Stand-off opponents is another call that will hopefully create more space to work with, by decreasing the closing down your players do, and decreasing the tempo of the game.
Hopefully some space will be created, through one of these options, that your players can exploit. If you get space to use, then some of the stuff from the previous section can come into play, and hopefully you can avoid one of those hideously boring matches, where you control the ball, but can never achieve anything, and the crowd dies of boredom.
Conclusion
I think the overriding theme here is that if you're struggling to create any chances, is to start mixing things up to see if anything will work. By making changes when you struggling to create chances, will usually allow spaces to open up. By presenting different problems to the opposition you will hopefully find a weakness. The backroom staff and scout report might actually highlight something, such as slow defenders, or you have a height advantage. If there's a height advantage, it can be good to go with pump ball into box, and attack down the flanks, or even look for the overlap, to try and get the ball to your strikers as much as possible. I'm lucky in having Oscar Cardozo and Alberto Gilardino, both tall and good at heading, who can terrorise most defenders.
It has to be remembered there are pros and cons to everything you do. Calls like pass into space, will tend to see more passes go astray, so it's only sensible if your passing is looking good. Hopefully at some point you'll work a chance leading to a goal, which tends to open the game up more, especially if you've taken the lead.
Don't be afraid to substitute a player if they are not managing to contribute to the attack, by either getting isolated, even just playing poorly. That's more of an observation thing, because sometimes a player can be doing lots of hard work, but their rating can still be getting steadily lower. The ratings don't necessarilly tell the full story of a player's match.
Showing posts with label Tactics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tactics. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Monday, 22 February 2010
Defending - Defensive Gap Being Exploited
The Issue
This seems to be one of the most common questions being asked. In particular it relates to how often the opposition team seem to be able to exploit a gap between the central defenders. I've seen on forums a lot of complaining about this, with some people saying the Match Engine is broken, because of how often the opposition get through. I don't hold with this idea, even though SI have apparently admitted there are a few too many clear cut chances being created at times, which is why sometimes keepers are occasionally behaving like Superman to compensate for this. I haven't seen an official acknowledgement of that though.
I believe that the right tactical changes, to suit your team can help to reduce the problem. The majority of tactical formations being used, tend to have a flat back four, with two central defenders and two full backs, and is therefore assumed to be so from here on, for the purpose of this post.
One thing you have to remember, is that no matter how good your players are, it is likely at some point they will be beaten, allowing an opposition player to get through with the keeper your last line of defence. Hopefully your keeper will do his job and make the save. What you're trying to do is make sure those opportunities do not happen very often. What I have noticed, is that if your defence is holding the opposition attackers well, they will then start resorting to firing long shots, or attacking down the wings and pumping crosses into the box. The AI will always look to adapt the approach to try and find a way through, and sometimes it can feel overly efficient at doing so. Teams in real life have to try the same thing, which is why sometimes it can take a long time for the first goal to go in, but once scored the flood gates can sometimes open.
What Is Causing This Gap To Appear?
There are many reasons why the central defenders can leave a gap for attacking players to run into. A very common reason is that the central defenders are being pulled out of their standard positions. Now we can investigate why the players are not staying where they should, or being beaten by a player running through onto a great pass.
There are several ways to set the two central defenders up, who you want to work as a pair. Their biggest responsibility is to deal with two furthest forward players from the opposition, often a pair of strikers, or a striker and an attacking midfielder. Sometimes it can be just a single striker, with a midfielder drifting forward to join an attacking. The duties are pretty clear, but there are several reasons why the defenders can get pulled from their position. Tight marking of a player can cause issues, if that player likes to drop deep to get the ball, or moves out wide. This can cause a defender to follow them, leaving a big hole. Asking the team to close down a lot can also have defenders rushing forward, with the same inevitable consequence if they don't win the ball for you team.
An opposition player arriving late in the area, can also cause a lot of problems if they have not been tracked by a midfielder. This can lead to them either having a lot of space, or one of your defenders moving to close them down, but leaves another player free to use the gap this created.
Playing too wide can also leave space between the central defenders, or between them and a full back. Rather than use the gap straight through the middle, this can leave the team more open to a diagonal ball from one flank or the centre into the gap on one side of the area. This tends to be more of an issue if you're playing against a team with a lot of creativity and pace. If you're playing a team with creative midfielders, who are just finding far too much space this gives them the time to make superb passes and throughballs.
The next one is getting caught too far up the pitch. This usually happens when your team is attacking, and compressing the play, which can make it hard for the central defenders to pick up which players are trying to making a run forward at the point your team loses possession. If they fail to pick up the run, it can leave you wide open, with your keeper the only hope of keeping the ball out of the net. This is always a frustrating goal to concede when an attack breaks down. It also looks so obvious as soon as you see the ball being fired over the top. Of course it's brilliant to see if your own team is the beneficiary.
Failure of the off-side trap is a common issue. I've seen goals scored, by both my team and the opposition where your initial reaction is that it had to be offside. Sometimes these are just perfectly time runs, with your defenders standing like statues, which is probably either a lapse of concentration, or poor anticipation. The other is much more frustrating, where the central defenders have stepped to play the runner offside, only to find that one of your full backs is still playing them onside. This appears to be largely down to teamwork and concentration. The aforementioned midfielders with too much space and time are most of the time the root cause, but you do expect your defenders to perform better than this.
What Can Be Done To Improve Things?
Having identified the issue, we now need to decide what can be done to improve the situation. You have to remember though that any changes can have an impact on other areas of the team, such as the attacking ability.
One of the biggest factors determining the positions that individual players maintain is down to the Philosophy you pick. With Standard Philosophy the players have reasonable freedom to move about, join in attacks, and away from the position they've been set. The more fluid the philosophy the more likely the shape of the team is to be lost, often creating huge holes at the back to be exploited. Going more rigid tightens up the shape, meaning players are more likely to stay in their respective positions. The lower the skill level of your players, the more likely you are to want to set the team to be rigid or very rigid. This does however take away from the attacking creativity of the side, which is the trade-off. Aston Villa are one such team that currently play a very rigid philosophy, which is why they can sometimes struggle to create chances. This can look quite negative at times, but when they do get the ball to their forwards, they can be deadly.
The problem of a player arriving late in the area, requires hard work from other players besides the central defenders. In particular you usually want one midfielder, either an MC or DMC to have a defensive role, so that they will track back, and help out more. Most players will track back, anyhow, but specifically setting one up for the role, can tighten things up more. That player does require a lot of stamina and good work rate and defensive skills. Good pace is not essential, but can be a huge bonus.
Playing too wide is not always obvious, but the signs I've taken to looking for are wingers being allowed to run onto far too many diagonal balls in a space between one central defender and a full back. By playing narrower, you can tighten that gap, but it does of course mean the opposition have more opportunity to reach the byeline on the outside and pump crosses in from there. This is where you have to decide which is the better of two possible evils. It comes down to how much of an aerial threat the opposition pose, and how good they are at crossing the ball, and how good your full backs are, and how confident you are that your team can cope with crosses.
Being too far up the pitch can be a tricky thing to resolve. Changing to a more rigid philosophy will tend to stop your defenders joining in attacks, and going too far up the pitch, but cuts attacking options down. Taking one of the defensive strategies will move the backline deeper, but this tends to invite pressure from the other team, and leaves you more open to conceding a goal from a striker who has a lot of strength, waiting for a ball to be played into the area, either looking to set up another player, or an opportunity of their own. If you believe your team can defend against this, then a counter attacking option is available. Another issue with dropping deeper is that you also open up more space for the opposition midfielders to try long shots, which they have an unerring accuracy with at times. A slightly different option, if you're ahead is to try and frustrate the opponents by taking a control strategy, in which you're attempting to hold as much possession as possible. This can make the opposition more desperate, and their throughball attempts get more wild. While this doesn't fix the issue of pushing too far up the pitch, it changes the problem for the opposition, and your defenders are not committing so much to attacking.
There's not much you can do about the failure of the offside trap. I never set my teams up to explicitly try and play it. I think if you have a backline with really good teamwork and work rate, you can enjoy success with it. I don't feel my team are competent enough at playing the offside trap, because if that step forward is not timed right, they don't have much chance of getting back, and it's all down to your keeper to help you out then.
Other options to try and change up the play, are to try touchline shouts to attack down the flanks, or through the centre. These will cause players either in the centre or the flanks to track back, which can make a big difference in how the opposition mounts attacks. Even swapping that in a match can confuse the opposition for a while, and sometimes that's all you need to allow your defenders to regain their composure. It's all about adapting to the changing situation, because the AI will always look to alter things to try and take advantage of any weakness in your setup. If you can be the team making problems for the other side, it can sometimes give your defence a much easier ride.
Midfielders that are finding far too much space can cause a lot of problems, because that gives them time to make decisions on what passing options they have. Fabregas is a prime example of a such a player, that if allowed the space, can punish you severely. This is the type of player that you can often stop by setting his opposition instruction to Always Close Down. If you have a defensive midfielder with excellent marking and tackling attributes you can even try to tackle him hard. There is always the option of using the Hassle Opponents touchline shout, which will cause your team to close down more. Sometimes you only need it for a short while, but it does have a downside, in that you could start to concede a lot more fouls, so use it with caution. On the whole with Arsenal, if you can keep Fabregas quiet, they struggle a lot more to create chances.
Sometimes just slowing the tempo down and asking to retain possession can be what you need, or asking the players to pass to feet. If you're the team pulling the opposition players out of position, you can make it hard for them to attack. Even seemingly silly ideas like, pump ball into box, can give you much more control, because the opposition are then having to move back to defend more.
It's Down To Your Players
How well your team can defend ultimately comes do to the quality and attributes your players have. Once your signings are confirmed, all you can do is then work out how to get the best from the players you have. In the lower leagues the quality of the players will be lower, so don't expect miracles from them. If necessary make the philosophy more rigid, so the shape of the team is maintained. Even some premiership teams go with a rigid philosophy, understanding the limitations that some of the squad members have. If you can get away with playing beautiful football and still keep tight at the back, then you've really achieved something great.
Even the best players make mistakes sometimes, but you hope those don't prove to be important ones. All you do is try and build up the best squad you can with the transfer budget and wages allowed, and then hope to get them motivated come matchday.
Conclusion
There is no magic setup that will give you a cleansheet every game, while always maintaining a powerful goal scoring ability. It's one of our natural instincts to want to create a setup that fits all situations, and leave it alone. The bad news is, that if you keep that one tactic, and never make any changes during a match, the likelihood is you start to lose matches. It seems that the longer you maintain a tactic the quicker teams will work out what to do against you. However you can maintain the same formation and strategy, but what you must do is keep the opposition guessing about what changes you will make during a match.
Be prepared sometimes to change the formation. If you have a 2 goal lead and the opposition start pressing hard, think about whether removing a striker and putting a DMC on is a possible solution. Don't just sit there thinking, "How can they suddenly be playing this well?" I've done that in the past, and not reacted sensibly, and suffered draws or even losses because of it. If the game didn't make it challenging, it wouldn't be half the fun it is to play, even if at times it's frustrating causing you to shout at the screen, even swearing at times. If you can react very early to any changes the AI makes, and spot the signs, it can make a huge difference, or just changing the problem you give the opposition, can be the right thing to do. Don't be frightened to experiment when the opposition is showing signs of being on the rampage. Not doing anything could be an even worse choice.
This may sound crazy, but if you team are looking complacent, it can sometimes to be good for them to concede a goal. It can sometimes help bring them to their senses.
Just remember that most teams in real life are going to still play for pride even if they're being thrashed. Grabbing a consolation goal can make a big difference to how a team bounces back from a big defeat, and sometimes can change a match completely. The African Nations Cup threw up an example of just what can happen in football, when Mali came back from 4-0 down against Angola, with 4 goals in 15 minutes right at the end of the game, with 2 of those in injury time. I also remember a QPR match against Newcastle in the 80's where QPR were 4-0 down at Loftus Road at half time. The match finished 5-5, so all sorts of astonishing things can happen in football. I'm sure there must have been even bigger comebacks than these.
If anyone spots something that isn't correct, or any additional things they feel could be added, please leave a comment.
This seems to be one of the most common questions being asked. In particular it relates to how often the opposition team seem to be able to exploit a gap between the central defenders. I've seen on forums a lot of complaining about this, with some people saying the Match Engine is broken, because of how often the opposition get through. I don't hold with this idea, even though SI have apparently admitted there are a few too many clear cut chances being created at times, which is why sometimes keepers are occasionally behaving like Superman to compensate for this. I haven't seen an official acknowledgement of that though.
I believe that the right tactical changes, to suit your team can help to reduce the problem. The majority of tactical formations being used, tend to have a flat back four, with two central defenders and two full backs, and is therefore assumed to be so from here on, for the purpose of this post.
One thing you have to remember, is that no matter how good your players are, it is likely at some point they will be beaten, allowing an opposition player to get through with the keeper your last line of defence. Hopefully your keeper will do his job and make the save. What you're trying to do is make sure those opportunities do not happen very often. What I have noticed, is that if your defence is holding the opposition attackers well, they will then start resorting to firing long shots, or attacking down the wings and pumping crosses into the box. The AI will always look to adapt the approach to try and find a way through, and sometimes it can feel overly efficient at doing so. Teams in real life have to try the same thing, which is why sometimes it can take a long time for the first goal to go in, but once scored the flood gates can sometimes open.
What Is Causing This Gap To Appear?
There are many reasons why the central defenders can leave a gap for attacking players to run into. A very common reason is that the central defenders are being pulled out of their standard positions. Now we can investigate why the players are not staying where they should, or being beaten by a player running through onto a great pass.
There are several ways to set the two central defenders up, who you want to work as a pair. Their biggest responsibility is to deal with two furthest forward players from the opposition, often a pair of strikers, or a striker and an attacking midfielder. Sometimes it can be just a single striker, with a midfielder drifting forward to join an attacking. The duties are pretty clear, but there are several reasons why the defenders can get pulled from their position. Tight marking of a player can cause issues, if that player likes to drop deep to get the ball, or moves out wide. This can cause a defender to follow them, leaving a big hole. Asking the team to close down a lot can also have defenders rushing forward, with the same inevitable consequence if they don't win the ball for you team.
An opposition player arriving late in the area, can also cause a lot of problems if they have not been tracked by a midfielder. This can lead to them either having a lot of space, or one of your defenders moving to close them down, but leaves another player free to use the gap this created.
Playing too wide can also leave space between the central defenders, or between them and a full back. Rather than use the gap straight through the middle, this can leave the team more open to a diagonal ball from one flank or the centre into the gap on one side of the area. This tends to be more of an issue if you're playing against a team with a lot of creativity and pace. If you're playing a team with creative midfielders, who are just finding far too much space this gives them the time to make superb passes and throughballs.
The next one is getting caught too far up the pitch. This usually happens when your team is attacking, and compressing the play, which can make it hard for the central defenders to pick up which players are trying to making a run forward at the point your team loses possession. If they fail to pick up the run, it can leave you wide open, with your keeper the only hope of keeping the ball out of the net. This is always a frustrating goal to concede when an attack breaks down. It also looks so obvious as soon as you see the ball being fired over the top. Of course it's brilliant to see if your own team is the beneficiary.
Failure of the off-side trap is a common issue. I've seen goals scored, by both my team and the opposition where your initial reaction is that it had to be offside. Sometimes these are just perfectly time runs, with your defenders standing like statues, which is probably either a lapse of concentration, or poor anticipation. The other is much more frustrating, where the central defenders have stepped to play the runner offside, only to find that one of your full backs is still playing them onside. This appears to be largely down to teamwork and concentration. The aforementioned midfielders with too much space and time are most of the time the root cause, but you do expect your defenders to perform better than this.
The picture above shows a situation where we conceded against Sheffield United. Evans one of two strikers fed the ball through to the other striker to get clear. Nasuti has been drawn to Evans, which in itself wasn't a bad thing, however our other central defender, Puygrenier, had stepped up, to try and play the other striker offside, rather than move towards him. That would have worked if the two full backs had been paying attention, and also moved forward, but unfortunately they didn't, so played the striker onside. Fortunately this was the only serious mistake our defence made in that match.
What Can Be Done To Improve Things?
Having identified the issue, we now need to decide what can be done to improve the situation. You have to remember though that any changes can have an impact on other areas of the team, such as the attacking ability.
One of the biggest factors determining the positions that individual players maintain is down to the Philosophy you pick. With Standard Philosophy the players have reasonable freedom to move about, join in attacks, and away from the position they've been set. The more fluid the philosophy the more likely the shape of the team is to be lost, often creating huge holes at the back to be exploited. Going more rigid tightens up the shape, meaning players are more likely to stay in their respective positions. The lower the skill level of your players, the more likely you are to want to set the team to be rigid or very rigid. This does however take away from the attacking creativity of the side, which is the trade-off. Aston Villa are one such team that currently play a very rigid philosophy, which is why they can sometimes struggle to create chances. This can look quite negative at times, but when they do get the ball to their forwards, they can be deadly.
The problem of a player arriving late in the area, requires hard work from other players besides the central defenders. In particular you usually want one midfielder, either an MC or DMC to have a defensive role, so that they will track back, and help out more. Most players will track back, anyhow, but specifically setting one up for the role, can tighten things up more. That player does require a lot of stamina and good work rate and defensive skills. Good pace is not essential, but can be a huge bonus.
Playing too wide is not always obvious, but the signs I've taken to looking for are wingers being allowed to run onto far too many diagonal balls in a space between one central defender and a full back. By playing narrower, you can tighten that gap, but it does of course mean the opposition have more opportunity to reach the byeline on the outside and pump crosses in from there. This is where you have to decide which is the better of two possible evils. It comes down to how much of an aerial threat the opposition pose, and how good they are at crossing the ball, and how good your full backs are, and how confident you are that your team can cope with crosses.
Being too far up the pitch can be a tricky thing to resolve. Changing to a more rigid philosophy will tend to stop your defenders joining in attacks, and going too far up the pitch, but cuts attacking options down. Taking one of the defensive strategies will move the backline deeper, but this tends to invite pressure from the other team, and leaves you more open to conceding a goal from a striker who has a lot of strength, waiting for a ball to be played into the area, either looking to set up another player, or an opportunity of their own. If you believe your team can defend against this, then a counter attacking option is available. Another issue with dropping deeper is that you also open up more space for the opposition midfielders to try long shots, which they have an unerring accuracy with at times. A slightly different option, if you're ahead is to try and frustrate the opponents by taking a control strategy, in which you're attempting to hold as much possession as possible. This can make the opposition more desperate, and their throughball attempts get more wild. While this doesn't fix the issue of pushing too far up the pitch, it changes the problem for the opposition, and your defenders are not committing so much to attacking.
There's not much you can do about the failure of the offside trap. I never set my teams up to explicitly try and play it. I think if you have a backline with really good teamwork and work rate, you can enjoy success with it. I don't feel my team are competent enough at playing the offside trap, because if that step forward is not timed right, they don't have much chance of getting back, and it's all down to your keeper to help you out then.
Other options to try and change up the play, are to try touchline shouts to attack down the flanks, or through the centre. These will cause players either in the centre or the flanks to track back, which can make a big difference in how the opposition mounts attacks. Even swapping that in a match can confuse the opposition for a while, and sometimes that's all you need to allow your defenders to regain their composure. It's all about adapting to the changing situation, because the AI will always look to alter things to try and take advantage of any weakness in your setup. If you can be the team making problems for the other side, it can sometimes give your defence a much easier ride.
Midfielders that are finding far too much space can cause a lot of problems, because that gives them time to make decisions on what passing options they have. Fabregas is a prime example of a such a player, that if allowed the space, can punish you severely. This is the type of player that you can often stop by setting his opposition instruction to Always Close Down. If you have a defensive midfielder with excellent marking and tackling attributes you can even try to tackle him hard. There is always the option of using the Hassle Opponents touchline shout, which will cause your team to close down more. Sometimes you only need it for a short while, but it does have a downside, in that you could start to concede a lot more fouls, so use it with caution. On the whole with Arsenal, if you can keep Fabregas quiet, they struggle a lot more to create chances.
Sometimes just slowing the tempo down and asking to retain possession can be what you need, or asking the players to pass to feet. If you're the team pulling the opposition players out of position, you can make it hard for them to attack. Even seemingly silly ideas like, pump ball into box, can give you much more control, because the opposition are then having to move back to defend more.
It's Down To Your Players
How well your team can defend ultimately comes do to the quality and attributes your players have. Once your signings are confirmed, all you can do is then work out how to get the best from the players you have. In the lower leagues the quality of the players will be lower, so don't expect miracles from them. If necessary make the philosophy more rigid, so the shape of the team is maintained. Even some premiership teams go with a rigid philosophy, understanding the limitations that some of the squad members have. If you can get away with playing beautiful football and still keep tight at the back, then you've really achieved something great.
Even the best players make mistakes sometimes, but you hope those don't prove to be important ones. All you do is try and build up the best squad you can with the transfer budget and wages allowed, and then hope to get them motivated come matchday.
Conclusion
There is no magic setup that will give you a cleansheet every game, while always maintaining a powerful goal scoring ability. It's one of our natural instincts to want to create a setup that fits all situations, and leave it alone. The bad news is, that if you keep that one tactic, and never make any changes during a match, the likelihood is you start to lose matches. It seems that the longer you maintain a tactic the quicker teams will work out what to do against you. However you can maintain the same formation and strategy, but what you must do is keep the opposition guessing about what changes you will make during a match.
Be prepared sometimes to change the formation. If you have a 2 goal lead and the opposition start pressing hard, think about whether removing a striker and putting a DMC on is a possible solution. Don't just sit there thinking, "How can they suddenly be playing this well?" I've done that in the past, and not reacted sensibly, and suffered draws or even losses because of it. If the game didn't make it challenging, it wouldn't be half the fun it is to play, even if at times it's frustrating causing you to shout at the screen, even swearing at times. If you can react very early to any changes the AI makes, and spot the signs, it can make a huge difference, or just changing the problem you give the opposition, can be the right thing to do. Don't be frightened to experiment when the opposition is showing signs of being on the rampage. Not doing anything could be an even worse choice.
This may sound crazy, but if you team are looking complacent, it can sometimes to be good for them to concede a goal. It can sometimes help bring them to their senses.
Just remember that most teams in real life are going to still play for pride even if they're being thrashed. Grabbing a consolation goal can make a big difference to how a team bounces back from a big defeat, and sometimes can change a match completely. The African Nations Cup threw up an example of just what can happen in football, when Mali came back from 4-0 down against Angola, with 4 goals in 15 minutes right at the end of the game, with 2 of those in injury time. I also remember a QPR match against Newcastle in the 80's where QPR were 4-0 down at Loftus Road at half time. The match finished 5-5, so all sorts of astonishing things can happen in football. I'm sure there must have been even bigger comebacks than these.
If anyone spots something that isn't correct, or any additional things they feel could be added, please leave a comment.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Queens Park Rangers - 4-4-2 Diamond formation 2012
Due to the interest being shown, in particular by Shafique, I have decided to show the latest setup for the formation I will be using for this season.
The formation is known as the 4-4-2 diamond. This really came about because I noticed that my central midfielders I had at the club, seemed to be split into two main groups, natural defensive midfielders, and natural attacking midfielders. It made sense therefore use that tactic in the previous season, especially with the siging of Jimenez.
Our success with this formation, which seemed to give us plenty of attacking options from the wings and through the middle, had been remarkable, which shaped my signings for the new season. One of the things that we'd been lacking was a striker who could take charge of crosses into a crowded area.
My two new strikers are Gilardino and Cardozo, both have superb heading skills. It made sense therefore that they play as a poacher, in particular Cardozo, who has the ability to create a lot of problems for the opposition defence. The other striker position, will largely be set as Advanced Forward, which Fatih Yucel, Scocco and Balanta can all play, as well as Gilardino. This gives me lots of options for which strikers I use as a pairing for any particular match.
The attacking midfielder is set up with the Attacking Midfielder role, with attack duty. In fact Jimenez could play the trequartista role, so I might experiment with this at some point.
My left and right midfielders are now set as wingers, with the attacking duty. They can quite easily be pushed forward to be attacking midfielders if I feel we need to push the opposition even harder, with little danger of conceding.
The defensive midfielder is set with that role, but with support duty, which suits Sunny particularly well. Rafa is more suited to being defensive, and if he's giving the ball away too often, I will change the role so that things are tightened up more.
The backline has not changed, with the fullbacks still set as Full Back, with automatic role, so they can head forward to provide overlap when trying to get crosses into the box. The centre backs are both set as Central Defenders with Defend duty.
The keeper, is still set as a Goalkeeper, as neither of my keepers are properly suited to play as sweeper keepers.
This setup seems to suit the attacking strategy very well against weaker teams, dropping back to standard against the other teams. It should be rare that I will feel the need to go counter attacking, although with the pace we have, this should still work very well.
During a match if I ever feel the need to go defensive to protect a lead, I will usually sacrifice a striker and bring on a 2nd DMC, usually with a defensive duty. This proved to be useful a few times last season, and still gives us good attacking options.
It's well worth spending time to check out all the different options available for each position, to try and make sure you have a player set for the correct role and duty. You could quite easily end up with a very good player appearing to be very mediocre if you don't set them up correctly. It's also important to think about this when you make substitutions during a match as well. In general you seem to be rewarded for tactical consistency, or at least only making changes that will not cause the team confusion, because they get used to being able to find a player in a particular position when looking for passing options.
Our success with this formation, which seemed to give us plenty of attacking options from the wings and through the middle, had been remarkable, which shaped my signings for the new season. One of the things that we'd been lacking was a striker who could take charge of crosses into a crowded area.
My two new strikers are Gilardino and Cardozo, both have superb heading skills. It made sense therefore that they play as a poacher, in particular Cardozo, who has the ability to create a lot of problems for the opposition defence. The other striker position, will largely be set as Advanced Forward, which Fatih Yucel, Scocco and Balanta can all play, as well as Gilardino. This gives me lots of options for which strikers I use as a pairing for any particular match.
The attacking midfielder is set up with the Attacking Midfielder role, with attack duty. In fact Jimenez could play the trequartista role, so I might experiment with this at some point.
My left and right midfielders are now set as wingers, with the attacking duty. They can quite easily be pushed forward to be attacking midfielders if I feel we need to push the opposition even harder, with little danger of conceding.
The defensive midfielder is set with that role, but with support duty, which suits Sunny particularly well. Rafa is more suited to being defensive, and if he's giving the ball away too often, I will change the role so that things are tightened up more.
The backline has not changed, with the fullbacks still set as Full Back, with automatic role, so they can head forward to provide overlap when trying to get crosses into the box. The centre backs are both set as Central Defenders with Defend duty.
The keeper, is still set as a Goalkeeper, as neither of my keepers are properly suited to play as sweeper keepers.
This setup seems to suit the attacking strategy very well against weaker teams, dropping back to standard against the other teams. It should be rare that I will feel the need to go counter attacking, although with the pace we have, this should still work very well.
During a match if I ever feel the need to go defensive to protect a lead, I will usually sacrifice a striker and bring on a 2nd DMC, usually with a defensive duty. This proved to be useful a few times last season, and still gives us good attacking options.
It's well worth spending time to check out all the different options available for each position, to try and make sure you have a player set for the correct role and duty. You could quite easily end up with a very good player appearing to be very mediocre if you don't set them up correctly. It's also important to think about this when you make substitutions during a match as well. In general you seem to be rewarded for tactical consistency, or at least only making changes that will not cause the team confusion, because they get used to being able to find a player in a particular position when looking for passing options.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Defending Corners - Why Am I Conceding So Many
The Problem
I'm sure I am not the only player who has been getting increasingly frustrated at the inability of their side to defend consistently well from corner kicks. Although we've been poor at taking corner kicks, we have leaked far too many goals from corners, and I felt was therefore something that needed to be looked at.
What I saw at first though seemed to be sensible, with our full backs on the posts, and every attacking player in the box marked by one of our players. What I realised though was that Balanta (Heading 6), was one of these markers, and Buzsaky (Heading 8), seemed to often be up against someone with much better heading skills. The attacking team seemed to be mostly targetting the player who was being marked by one of the least capable players in my team, at heading.
When I checked the default settings for defending corners, I found that Fatih Yucel (Heading 18), was set to remain forward, and Balanta to be back. This was bad for a couple of reasons, being that Fatih Yucel is much better at heading the ball, and Balanta has a lot more pace, so better able to take advantage of any counter attack that might come from clearing the corner. Oddly Buzsaky's default was to be forward, but was in fact going back to help out at corners.
A Possible Solution
One thing was obvious, that I needed to have Balanta up front, and Fatih Yucel to come back and help out defending the corner. I was okay with the idea of Buzsaky being back, but he would need to be against someone that would most likely not be a bad mismatch.
The change between my two strikers was simple, changing Balanta to "Stay Forward". Fatih Yucel I changed to "Mark Tall Player" because, although he isn't particularly tall, he has excellent jumping and heading skills, so can challenge most players very well.
What to do with Buzsaky though, as I wanted to keep the wingers with their settings of "Stay Forward." The options available are shown in the above picture. I decided the only sensible idea might be to set him to "Mark Small Player." This way I felt he would have a reasonable chance of challenging such a player. The settings for the team ended up being:
How Well Did It Work?
So far I've only tested it in one match, that being against Tottenham. They have Crouch and Pavlyuchenko up front, both tall and good at heading the ball. Their centre backs are also fairly tall and good at heading too, so felt this would be a decent test of how well this change has worked.
Success for it would be if we are able to get to the majority of the headers first. Conceding will always be a possibility, but the idea is to try and make sure the number of chances created at corners is reduced to as few as possible.
I have to say I am happy with what I've seen. We managed to defend the majority of corners properly by getting to the ball first. The only balls they did get to first, went wide of the goal and never posed any threat. I will only know how well this has worked if we continue to defend corners this well during our next few matches. Hopefully this will reduce the number of goals we concede at corners.
Conclusion
I now realise that I really should have looked at this when I first started, and feel slightly silly for not thinking about this before. I think I'd largely ignored it because against teams that didn't have players with particularly good heading attributes, we'd been defending corners okay, they weren't able to set up the same player mismatch. I wonder how many other players have been doing the same, by being completely ignorant of the causes of this problem.
So as to give a reasonable comparison, I had saved the game under a different name before making the changes. I then played the Tottenham match with the default settings, and we were completely and utterly terrible at defending corners. Tottenham were getting to almost every corner they took and they scored from one. I only played the first half, but they got 7 corners and got a head to 6 of those scoring from one, with our keeper having to save most of the others. It definitely appears from this that the change has made a huge difference, so I encourage everyone else to look closely to see which players they have defending at corners. Such a simple change seems as though it will make a big difference through the season. Something else to bear in mind is what happens after you make a substition, because they may end up being a liability at corners.
I'm sure I am not the only player who has been getting increasingly frustrated at the inability of their side to defend consistently well from corner kicks. Although we've been poor at taking corner kicks, we have leaked far too many goals from corners, and I felt was therefore something that needed to be looked at.
What I saw at first though seemed to be sensible, with our full backs on the posts, and every attacking player in the box marked by one of our players. What I realised though was that Balanta (Heading 6), was one of these markers, and Buzsaky (Heading 8), seemed to often be up against someone with much better heading skills. The attacking team seemed to be mostly targetting the player who was being marked by one of the least capable players in my team, at heading.
When I checked the default settings for defending corners, I found that Fatih Yucel (Heading 18), was set to remain forward, and Balanta to be back. This was bad for a couple of reasons, being that Fatih Yucel is much better at heading the ball, and Balanta has a lot more pace, so better able to take advantage of any counter attack that might come from clearing the corner. Oddly Buzsaky's default was to be forward, but was in fact going back to help out at corners.
A Possible Solution
One thing was obvious, that I needed to have Balanta up front, and Fatih Yucel to come back and help out defending the corner. I was okay with the idea of Buzsaky being back, but he would need to be against someone that would most likely not be a bad mismatch.
The change between my two strikers was simple, changing Balanta to "Stay Forward". Fatih Yucel I changed to "Mark Tall Player" because, although he isn't particularly tall, he has excellent jumping and heading skills, so can challenge most players very well.
What to do with Buzsaky though, as I wanted to keep the wingers with their settings of "Stay Forward." The options available are shown in the above picture. I decided the only sensible idea might be to set him to "Mark Small Player." This way I felt he would have a reasonable chance of challenging such a player. The settings for the team ended up being:
How Well Did It Work?
So far I've only tested it in one match, that being against Tottenham. They have Crouch and Pavlyuchenko up front, both tall and good at heading the ball. Their centre backs are also fairly tall and good at heading too, so felt this would be a decent test of how well this change has worked.
Success for it would be if we are able to get to the majority of the headers first. Conceding will always be a possibility, but the idea is to try and make sure the number of chances created at corners is reduced to as few as possible.
I have to say I am happy with what I've seen. We managed to defend the majority of corners properly by getting to the ball first. The only balls they did get to first, went wide of the goal and never posed any threat. I will only know how well this has worked if we continue to defend corners this well during our next few matches. Hopefully this will reduce the number of goals we concede at corners.
Conclusion
I now realise that I really should have looked at this when I first started, and feel slightly silly for not thinking about this before. I think I'd largely ignored it because against teams that didn't have players with particularly good heading attributes, we'd been defending corners okay, they weren't able to set up the same player mismatch. I wonder how many other players have been doing the same, by being completely ignorant of the causes of this problem.
So as to give a reasonable comparison, I had saved the game under a different name before making the changes. I then played the Tottenham match with the default settings, and we were completely and utterly terrible at defending corners. Tottenham were getting to almost every corner they took and they scored from one. I only played the first half, but they got 7 corners and got a head to 6 of those scoring from one, with our keeper having to save most of the others. It definitely appears from this that the change has made a huge difference, so I encourage everyone else to look closely to see which players they have defending at corners. Such a simple change seems as though it will make a big difference through the season. Something else to bear in mind is what happens after you make a substition, because they may end up being a liability at corners.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Tactics and Strategy - Some Thoughts
Use Common Sense
I do not pretend to be any kind of tactical genius, and have just used what I hope is some basic common sense. In Football Manager 10, this seems to have stood me in good stead, and as requested I will endeavour to explain how I worked out my tactics. All suggestions are welcome, as I'm sure there are some things I could change to make some aspects of the tactic and strategy work even better.
The very first thing I will say, is that I set everything up using the Tactics Creator Wizard, and have not changed any of the slider settings on any individual players. The only individual settings I have changed have been for some of the player roles when defending free kicks, and for attacking corners.In the team settings the only slider I've changed sometimes is the tempo setting.
Summary of some Common Basic Formations
4-4-2
This is the most common and adaptable formation in use today. The weakness though of this formation is the gaps that you have between the centre backs, midfielders, and the strikers. This requires the central midfielders to have to work hard to provide support both in defence and attack. With this formation a lot is also expected of the wingers in playing a vital role in supporting the strikers, but should also provide some support for the full backs.
This formation can be adapted to a 4-1-4-1 to play an anchor man at the back, though this leaves the lone striker up front. 4-4-1-1 where an attacking central midfielder plays in the gap behind the striker is another common variation.
4-5-1
A fundamentally defensive formation, which can be tweaked to provide an offensive threat. The main qualities of this formation is the 3 man central midfield. With the midfield packed like this, it can upset a strong passing side, and give you opportunities for a counter attack. The lone striker will normaly be a target man, who is dependent upon the wingers to provide him with support.
4-3-3
This formation is in some respects similar to the 4-5-1 in that it has the 3 central midfielders, but here the wingers are encouraged to move up and act as forwards. This emphasises attack a lot more than the previous formation.
4-3-1-2 (Diamond Formation)
The diamond refers to the shape formed by having an attacking midfielder and an anchor man just in front of the defenders, flanked by the two wingers, who can move in field to shore up gaps in the centre. The full-backs are generally encouraged to move forward to become wing backs to cover for the lack of width.
5-3-2
This formation is purely defensive in attitude, which employs a sweeper playing in behind the central defenders. The three midfielders are generally located around the centre. This gives a gap between midfield and the strikers. The full backs in this formation are expected to provide the wing play and in some cases they can be pushed forward to act as wing backs.
Other Formations
To see a bigger variety of formations and some history to it, a look at this wikipedia entry is informative. Some of the formations from the very early days are quite scary, where it appears all out attack was the order of the day.
What formation should I choose?
There are many possible answers, some that will work well, and most assuredly some that will not suit your team at all well. It is worth noting that any major changes to the team formation can take a number of matches to start working well, as players need time to adjust. For this reason I usually only make a big formation change at the start of the pre-season, and make sure we play at least 6 friendlies, to give a chance for the formation change to work. Some small changes can be made with little risk during the season, but any major change can upset the the team a lot.
In Football Manager 10, the first indication of which formation might work best for your team will be given by going to the backroom staff. You may well be given a selection of tactical formations that the team can apparently play well, and it is now up to you check through your squad members to get a feeling about how well they fit your formation.
When I took charge of Q.P.R. I was recommended the following formations 4-4-2, 4-5-1 and 4-1-3-2. After checking that the 4-1-3-2 formation was in fact a DMC and 3 central midfielders, I discounted it, due to the high number of wide midfielders I have that struggle to play in the centre of the park.
The 4-5-1 was of interest, but needs a proper target man upfront, which is something the team lacked. Wingers are in abundance, and so are strikers, but none of them fit the bill for playing up front alone. Given I desperately needed to sort out my full back situation and find a backup goalkeeper, I felt trying to also get a good target man in time for the start of the season wasn't a good option.
This really left me with 4-4-2 as my only option left. I'm sure if I'd looked through my squad long and hard enough, I could have come up with a few other possible formations they could play after strengthening the full back situation. I did give consideration to a 4-2-3-1 formation, with the central midfielders either as DMC's or MC's depending on the situation, but decided I don't really have enough defensive midfielders to cover this option.
That is the process I went through to make what is an important decision, as this will most likely be the formation you will play for the rest of the season, apart from a few tweaks. Some people I'm sure will be more gung-ho and not worry about making a major change part the way through a season.
I think all this really tells anyone is, that there is no simple answer to which formation you should play. In a way 4-4-2 is the safe and boring bet, and seems to require a lot from the midfield players to work really well. The midfield is something that Q.P.R. are blessed with. having many flair players. The choice you make needs to suit the players you have, otherwise it will most likely struggle. It appears to me, but I could be wrong, but the formation you choose to play depends largely upon your central midfielders, and the qualities your strikers have. Your defenders and wides players, or lack of choice, may force you to look at a particular set of formations as well. If you have wing backs rather than proper full backs, you will probably want them to play in that position.
I've Decided My Formation, Now What?
Once you've spent time looking at your team and deciding which formation you think they will be able to play with the players you have, and/or the players you will be bringing into the squad, you are presented with the options for playing philosophy. This determines how much creative freedom your players have, how rigidly they stick to their own position, and how much they are expected to contribute to other phases of play outside their own role.
Once again you need to understand certain qualities of your players. The reports from you backroom staff can give you some clues, such as tell you a player has fairly poor intelligence, and other information like that. The more creativity and flair you feel your squad has, the more likely you will want to head towards a more fluid playing philosophy. I feel this could be a bit tricky with some sides, as they might have a few flair players, but also some with little creativity. You need to work out the balance between sticking to a rigid strategy, where players keep the formation in a tight fashion, or do you play like Brazil with a very fluid game, but can therefore get pulled way out of position. On the whole, probably the lower down the leagues you are the more likely you are to go towards a rigid philosophy. It could however be, you're managing a Blue Square Premier side with a few players that have reasonable flair and creativity, and you might feel brave enough to go more fluid.
The only way you're going to know if you've gone too fluid with the philosophy is by playing and seeing what happens. If you find your players are giving the ball away by trying too many clever little passes, back heals and other odd little tricks, then you probably need to ease back the philosophy a bit. Also if your formation is being dragged out of shape far too often, that is also a sign that things aren't quite right. Experimenting with this setting is again probably best done when playing friendlies.
For my Q.P.R. side I picked a fluid playing philosophy, as we have a quite a few flair players. Having watched the way the side move the ball about, switching positions and working hard to create a space for a player to get in behind the opposition defence I'm happy that this setting is just about right for the squad I have.
Playing Style
The next tab, brings us to playing style. This covers a number of things, such as Closing Down, Creative Freedom, Roaming, Crosses etc.
I personally did not even change these at this point, and have waited until my team have played a few matches. They can be changed later anyway, and as a base setting I like the idea that they are set as default. These are settings you can change while a match is going on, so you can guage what effect they have. It might be you find that your players only ever seem to connect with crosses if they drilled into the box, in which case you go back and change the setting so that they only drill crosses in.
To be honest, I haven't changed any of these settings even later on. The way the team was playing didn't seem to be improve by changing anything from the default. You will only find this out through experimentation though.
Player Roles
The only setting here I changed from the default settings was to make both wingers have the attack role. There isn't much to say here, as there are limited choices for each position. Again this doesn't give much away about the suitability of a player for a particular position. More about this later though.
Starting Strategy
I have this set as Standard, because this is a safe setting to take, and means if you do forget to change this before starting a match when you meant to, you at least start in a balanced manner.
This really sets how deep you defend, or how agressively you push up the field, the width of play and the tempo of you passing. Defending too deep can make you more vulnerable to a striker who has plenty of strength and good heading ability. However pushing too agressively up the pitch can leave you open to a counter attack if the opposition have fast players that can run past your defenders.
How you set this for an individual match really does depend upon the players your opposition have. When I recently played Manchester United, I had little choice but to play a defensive strategy. If we'd have tried to push any higher up the pitch, we'd have most likely been murdered at the back with Rooney running onto lots of throughballs. This also had the effect of compressing the midfield battle, making it hard for them to create many good chances.
However, in a match which I have played since my previous post, against Bolton, they came with a 4-1-4-1 formation looking to defend. Their lone striker was strong but very slow. Their wingers I was confident could be covered by my full backs. I therefore picked an agressive strategy of attacking. All I'll say is, it proved to be quite successful, and for that particular match was absolutely the right thing to do. You'll have to wait though to find out exactly what happened in the match itself.
For away matches I will be more likely to go with a defensive strategy than for home matches, with a few exceptions of course. The strategy you choose for a match is something you'll get more of a feel for the longer you manage a team. Of course sometimes you can be badly wrong, as I was last season when we visited Cardiff. My backroom staff reckoned we should push up the pitch. By half way through the first half we were 2-0 down, and had to go more defensive to stop their pace from beating us at the back again, and never did find a way through them. I found out the hard way, not to always believe your staff. Check out the team yourself, and make your own judgement, was the lesson I learnt there.
One thing I have noticed, is that the more defensive a Strategy you pick the slower the tempo you pass the ball around, and the narrower you will play. When I do go defensive now, I tend to manually adjust the tempo back to somewhere in the middle. How fast you choose to make the tempo is of course up to you, but was finding that if I didnt change this manually I was really struggling to move the ball forward without getting closed down. So far I've not experimented with changing the width, and not sure exactly what effect it would have.
Tactic Created, Am I Ready To Play Now?
You might be ready and have exactly the right roles for each of your players. If so, then go and see what happens. However you'll most likely need to check just how well suited each player is to the role they've been given. As an example I've picked out Left Winger, Hogan Ephraim. Select the player by clicking on them in the pitch formation on the right hand side, they will be highlighted and the left hand of the screen will show their attributes and allow you to modify their role if you want.
I do not pretend to be any kind of tactical genius, and have just used what I hope is some basic common sense. In Football Manager 10, this seems to have stood me in good stead, and as requested I will endeavour to explain how I worked out my tactics. All suggestions are welcome, as I'm sure there are some things I could change to make some aspects of the tactic and strategy work even better.
The very first thing I will say, is that I set everything up using the Tactics Creator Wizard, and have not changed any of the slider settings on any individual players. The only individual settings I have changed have been for some of the player roles when defending free kicks, and for attacking corners.In the team settings the only slider I've changed sometimes is the tempo setting.
Summary of some Common Basic Formations
4-4-2
This is the most common and adaptable formation in use today. The weakness though of this formation is the gaps that you have between the centre backs, midfielders, and the strikers. This requires the central midfielders to have to work hard to provide support both in defence and attack. With this formation a lot is also expected of the wingers in playing a vital role in supporting the strikers, but should also provide some support for the full backs.
This formation can be adapted to a 4-1-4-1 to play an anchor man at the back, though this leaves the lone striker up front. 4-4-1-1 where an attacking central midfielder plays in the gap behind the striker is another common variation.
4-5-1
A fundamentally defensive formation, which can be tweaked to provide an offensive threat. The main qualities of this formation is the 3 man central midfield. With the midfield packed like this, it can upset a strong passing side, and give you opportunities for a counter attack. The lone striker will normaly be a target man, who is dependent upon the wingers to provide him with support.
4-3-3
This formation is in some respects similar to the 4-5-1 in that it has the 3 central midfielders, but here the wingers are encouraged to move up and act as forwards. This emphasises attack a lot more than the previous formation.
4-3-1-2 (Diamond Formation)
The diamond refers to the shape formed by having an attacking midfielder and an anchor man just in front of the defenders, flanked by the two wingers, who can move in field to shore up gaps in the centre. The full-backs are generally encouraged to move forward to become wing backs to cover for the lack of width.
5-3-2
This formation is purely defensive in attitude, which employs a sweeper playing in behind the central defenders. The three midfielders are generally located around the centre. This gives a gap between midfield and the strikers. The full backs in this formation are expected to provide the wing play and in some cases they can be pushed forward to act as wing backs.
Other Formations
To see a bigger variety of formations and some history to it, a look at this wikipedia entry is informative. Some of the formations from the very early days are quite scary, where it appears all out attack was the order of the day.
What formation should I choose?
There are many possible answers, some that will work well, and most assuredly some that will not suit your team at all well. It is worth noting that any major changes to the team formation can take a number of matches to start working well, as players need time to adjust. For this reason I usually only make a big formation change at the start of the pre-season, and make sure we play at least 6 friendlies, to give a chance for the formation change to work. Some small changes can be made with little risk during the season, but any major change can upset the the team a lot.
In Football Manager 10, the first indication of which formation might work best for your team will be given by going to the backroom staff. You may well be given a selection of tactical formations that the team can apparently play well, and it is now up to you check through your squad members to get a feeling about how well they fit your formation.
When I took charge of Q.P.R. I was recommended the following formations 4-4-2, 4-5-1 and 4-1-3-2. After checking that the 4-1-3-2 formation was in fact a DMC and 3 central midfielders, I discounted it, due to the high number of wide midfielders I have that struggle to play in the centre of the park.
The 4-5-1 was of interest, but needs a proper target man upfront, which is something the team lacked. Wingers are in abundance, and so are strikers, but none of them fit the bill for playing up front alone. Given I desperately needed to sort out my full back situation and find a backup goalkeeper, I felt trying to also get a good target man in time for the start of the season wasn't a good option.
This really left me with 4-4-2 as my only option left. I'm sure if I'd looked through my squad long and hard enough, I could have come up with a few other possible formations they could play after strengthening the full back situation. I did give consideration to a 4-2-3-1 formation, with the central midfielders either as DMC's or MC's depending on the situation, but decided I don't really have enough defensive midfielders to cover this option.
That is the process I went through to make what is an important decision, as this will most likely be the formation you will play for the rest of the season, apart from a few tweaks. Some people I'm sure will be more gung-ho and not worry about making a major change part the way through a season.
I think all this really tells anyone is, that there is no simple answer to which formation you should play. In a way 4-4-2 is the safe and boring bet, and seems to require a lot from the midfield players to work really well. The midfield is something that Q.P.R. are blessed with. having many flair players. The choice you make needs to suit the players you have, otherwise it will most likely struggle. It appears to me, but I could be wrong, but the formation you choose to play depends largely upon your central midfielders, and the qualities your strikers have. Your defenders and wides players, or lack of choice, may force you to look at a particular set of formations as well. If you have wing backs rather than proper full backs, you will probably want them to play in that position.
I've Decided My Formation, Now What?
Once you've spent time looking at your team and deciding which formation you think they will be able to play with the players you have, and/or the players you will be bringing into the squad, you are presented with the options for playing philosophy. This determines how much creative freedom your players have, how rigidly they stick to their own position, and how much they are expected to contribute to other phases of play outside their own role.
Once again you need to understand certain qualities of your players. The reports from you backroom staff can give you some clues, such as tell you a player has fairly poor intelligence, and other information like that. The more creativity and flair you feel your squad has, the more likely you will want to head towards a more fluid playing philosophy. I feel this could be a bit tricky with some sides, as they might have a few flair players, but also some with little creativity. You need to work out the balance between sticking to a rigid strategy, where players keep the formation in a tight fashion, or do you play like Brazil with a very fluid game, but can therefore get pulled way out of position. On the whole, probably the lower down the leagues you are the more likely you are to go towards a rigid philosophy. It could however be, you're managing a Blue Square Premier side with a few players that have reasonable flair and creativity, and you might feel brave enough to go more fluid.
The only way you're going to know if you've gone too fluid with the philosophy is by playing and seeing what happens. If you find your players are giving the ball away by trying too many clever little passes, back heals and other odd little tricks, then you probably need to ease back the philosophy a bit. Also if your formation is being dragged out of shape far too often, that is also a sign that things aren't quite right. Experimenting with this setting is again probably best done when playing friendlies.
For my Q.P.R. side I picked a fluid playing philosophy, as we have a quite a few flair players. Having watched the way the side move the ball about, switching positions and working hard to create a space for a player to get in behind the opposition defence I'm happy that this setting is just about right for the squad I have.
Playing Style
The next tab, brings us to playing style. This covers a number of things, such as Closing Down, Creative Freedom, Roaming, Crosses etc.
I personally did not even change these at this point, and have waited until my team have played a few matches. They can be changed later anyway, and as a base setting I like the idea that they are set as default. These are settings you can change while a match is going on, so you can guage what effect they have. It might be you find that your players only ever seem to connect with crosses if they drilled into the box, in which case you go back and change the setting so that they only drill crosses in.
To be honest, I haven't changed any of these settings even later on. The way the team was playing didn't seem to be improve by changing anything from the default. You will only find this out through experimentation though.
Player Roles
The above shows the roles I picked for each of the players in my 4-4-2 formation. I have both my wide midfielders pushing up as wingers, and set my central midfielders as Ball Winning, and Box To Box. This seems to give a reasonable amount of agression, but with some defensive covering from the midfield. At this point it's hard to be sure how suitable the individual roles are for individual players. Once the tactic is complete, it's worth clicking on each player in the formation, and seeing what are the important attributes for them according to how you change their role.
Player Duties
The only setting here I changed from the default settings was to make both wingers have the attack role. There isn't much to say here, as there are limited choices for each position. Again this doesn't give much away about the suitability of a player for a particular position. More about this later though.
Starting Strategy
I have this set as Standard, because this is a safe setting to take, and means if you do forget to change this before starting a match when you meant to, you at least start in a balanced manner.
This really sets how deep you defend, or how agressively you push up the field, the width of play and the tempo of you passing. Defending too deep can make you more vulnerable to a striker who has plenty of strength and good heading ability. However pushing too agressively up the pitch can leave you open to a counter attack if the opposition have fast players that can run past your defenders.
How you set this for an individual match really does depend upon the players your opposition have. When I recently played Manchester United, I had little choice but to play a defensive strategy. If we'd have tried to push any higher up the pitch, we'd have most likely been murdered at the back with Rooney running onto lots of throughballs. This also had the effect of compressing the midfield battle, making it hard for them to create many good chances.
However, in a match which I have played since my previous post, against Bolton, they came with a 4-1-4-1 formation looking to defend. Their lone striker was strong but very slow. Their wingers I was confident could be covered by my full backs. I therefore picked an agressive strategy of attacking. All I'll say is, it proved to be quite successful, and for that particular match was absolutely the right thing to do. You'll have to wait though to find out exactly what happened in the match itself.
For away matches I will be more likely to go with a defensive strategy than for home matches, with a few exceptions of course. The strategy you choose for a match is something you'll get more of a feel for the longer you manage a team. Of course sometimes you can be badly wrong, as I was last season when we visited Cardiff. My backroom staff reckoned we should push up the pitch. By half way through the first half we were 2-0 down, and had to go more defensive to stop their pace from beating us at the back again, and never did find a way through them. I found out the hard way, not to always believe your staff. Check out the team yourself, and make your own judgement, was the lesson I learnt there.
One thing I have noticed, is that the more defensive a Strategy you pick the slower the tempo you pass the ball around, and the narrower you will play. When I do go defensive now, I tend to manually adjust the tempo back to somewhere in the middle. How fast you choose to make the tempo is of course up to you, but was finding that if I didnt change this manually I was really struggling to move the ball forward without getting closed down. So far I've not experimented with changing the width, and not sure exactly what effect it would have.
Tactic Created, Am I Ready To Play Now?
You might be ready and have exactly the right roles for each of your players. If so, then go and see what happens. However you'll most likely need to check just how well suited each player is to the role they've been given. As an example I've picked out Left Winger, Hogan Ephraim. Select the player by clicking on them in the pitch formation on the right hand side, they will be highlighted and the left hand of the screen will show their attributes and allow you to modify their role if you want.
For each role the important attributes for that position and role are highlighted. Even though his Decisions is only at 7 and his balance at 10, doesn't immediately make him unsuitable. His other attributes are in fact fairly solid, and I've found he plays this role very well. The players preferred moves will also make a difference. Ephraim's preferred moves are "Gets Foward Whenver Possible", "Curls Ball" and "Cuts Inside." This makes for a very interesting combination, because if his route to the byeline is cut off, he will make his way infield, and creating panic there, while looking for someone to offload a pass to. Once you've checked through what seems to be endless combinations, you will finally arrive at your formation. This ability to see what attributes are best for a particular position and role, also mean that if you need to put a different player there who doesn't quite suit that particular role, you can quickly give them a role that is better suited to them.
Remember the players will try to play the role in the way you've told them. This means if you put someone that is poor at tackling as a Ball Winning Midfielder they will most likely commit lots of fouls. For a Box to Box midfielder, playing some with poor long shots attribute will probably see a lot of wasted efforts flying miles over the bar. Be sensible with what you're asking a player to do.
You Are Now Ready
All you can do now, with your wonderfully crafted tactic, is to see how it performs. Don't be too disheartened if it's not quite working right to start with, especially if you've made a big tactical change, or brought in a lot of new players. In fact bringing in too many new players can seriously hurt your performance early in a season, either due to them needing to blend in, or maybe your existing players have got upset by the new introductions. That is however all part of what makes the game fun.
Summary
The Tactics Creator is one of, if not the most important tool that has been added to Football Manager. This has taken the major headache out of setting up the tactic your team uses, and makes the game more realistic. After all in real life the manager will tell a player that he expects him to fullfill a certain role in his position. The manager doesn't have to tell him, every little detail about how to play that position, and if they need to know something the coaching staff will work with the player. That is the feeling that you now get with the game, and sometimes you might gamble on a player taking a role he might not be perfectly suited for, but hope he will still do a good job.
In conclusion, I can't tell you what is the right thing to do, and have told you how I made my own decisions, which I hope have a sound basis. I've done what I feel is right, but if someone sees that I've made a poor decision somewhere along the way, then please tell me. I wouldn't want people to be following some ideas that are not quite correct. I also hope that by explaining things this way it makes people think more about how to set up their own team properly, rather than just blindly copying someone elses tactics, as seems to happen on a lot of the Football Manager forums. If you manage to work out a good tactic yourself, you'll get a lot more satisfaction that way. As far as I can tell there is no magic tactic that will beat everyone, which is good, as football just isn't like that. Even the great teams still have the odd bad day, where for one reason or another they just do not perform. I guess what I'm saying is, one poor match does not necessarily mean a tactic is bad. You can also win or lose matches through little slices of good or back luck as well. If your side look like they're playing good football, and creating plenty of chances, and generally being fairly tight at the back, then you're probably doing something right. If the tactic is working, you can then decided which players you'd like to bring that can do an even better job for you in different positions.
I occasionally look at different forums, largely to see what problems people are having, and complaining about. I've read several threads where people are saying all sorts of bad things about the match engine, where they are having lots of unstoppable throughballs bypassing their defence. I have been caught a few times by throughballs, but so far I haven't seen one where I think the match engine has done some crazy. Apart from a few dodgy offside decisions the match engine seems to pretty good. I can only think those people getting upset by this, are setting up tactics that leave them open to the throughball, and once through the AI rarely shows any mercy. Maybe the role of certain players isn't right for them, but everytime I've noticed us getting caught out by throughballs, it's because we've been pushing too far up the pitch.
In conclusion, I can't tell you what is the right thing to do, and have told you how I made my own decisions, which I hope have a sound basis. I've done what I feel is right, but if someone sees that I've made a poor decision somewhere along the way, then please tell me. I wouldn't want people to be following some ideas that are not quite correct. I also hope that by explaining things this way it makes people think more about how to set up their own team properly, rather than just blindly copying someone elses tactics, as seems to happen on a lot of the Football Manager forums. If you manage to work out a good tactic yourself, you'll get a lot more satisfaction that way. As far as I can tell there is no magic tactic that will beat everyone, which is good, as football just isn't like that. Even the great teams still have the odd bad day, where for one reason or another they just do not perform. I guess what I'm saying is, one poor match does not necessarily mean a tactic is bad. You can also win or lose matches through little slices of good or back luck as well. If your side look like they're playing good football, and creating plenty of chances, and generally being fairly tight at the back, then you're probably doing something right. If the tactic is working, you can then decided which players you'd like to bring that can do an even better job for you in different positions.
I occasionally look at different forums, largely to see what problems people are having, and complaining about. I've read several threads where people are saying all sorts of bad things about the match engine, where they are having lots of unstoppable throughballs bypassing their defence. I have been caught a few times by throughballs, but so far I haven't seen one where I think the match engine has done some crazy. Apart from a few dodgy offside decisions the match engine seems to pretty good. I can only think those people getting upset by this, are setting up tactics that leave them open to the throughball, and once through the AI rarely shows any mercy. Maybe the role of certain players isn't right for them, but everytime I've noticed us getting caught out by throughballs, it's because we've been pushing too far up the pitch.
I am still in the process of working out player positions for set pieces, to see if we can create a few more opportunities. We also seem to concede too many goals from corners, so the settings their might need to be tweaked too. This is something I intend to post about sometime in the future, if I ever work something out that makes us more consistent at these set pieces.
It would also be good to give an insight into what difference the touchline shouts make, but to be honest I've only used a handful of them so far, so I can't say much about them as yet. However near the end of a match, "Retain Possession" can relieve a lot of pressure if the other side allow you get hold of the ball.
It would also be good to give an insight into what difference the touchline shouts make, but to be honest I've only used a handful of them so far, so I can't say much about them as yet. However near the end of a match, "Retain Possession" can relieve a lot of pressure if the other side allow you get hold of the ball.
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