Direct Free Kicks; Defending

Has this ever happened to you? You concede a free kick in a semi-dangerous position and the opposition rifles the ball in. The ball seems utterly stoppable for your goalie, but instead of just holding it or punching it clear, he releases the ball and some completely unmarked forward blazes past your defenders, who have turned into biblical Sodommian salt pillars, and taps the ball into an empty net, because of course your goalkeeper isn’t back on his feet in time to make even a semblance of an effort to stop the ball. Just to re-fresh your memory, here’s a wee visual aide.

Infuriating, isn’t it? Your players just freeze up and remain static, not moving forward or backwards at all, thus leaving any onrushing opponent with an easy rebound to tap past a helpless goalkeeper. If only there were some way to remedy this problem. Oh wait, there is!

I’ll gladly admit to nicking this idea off someone from the Facebookgroup FMCentral, it has reduced the amount of free-kick goals I conceded from direct free kicks to absolutely zero. No cheeky rebounds, no shots ricochetting in, none at all. The best part of it all is that it’s a fairly simple fix as well.

I know, it’s rather unrealistic, but it works very well. Let’s see it in action.

We can see the goal-line is packed, there is quite an extensive wall and one player guarding the edge of the area somewhat. If you’re like me, you are already looking at potential moments to abuse this setup and let’s face it, they are not hard to find.

There are plenty of players left wide, wide open inside the penalty area, available for a pass, at which point they can control the ball and just pick a corner to slot the ball into. That’s what would happen if this were real life. This isn’t real life though, this is FM15 and by FM15 logic, this happens in such a situation.

Apparently, this form of defence only applies to defending direct free kicks, so the AI obviously does not recognise the immense potential for scoring easy goals here, so this quite clearly preposterous set piece defence is quite effective at stopping the direct free kicks rebound problem, without sacrificing shots on target by wide open opponents. Indirect free kicks are defended by the corner settings somehow.

Table of Contents

Guido

Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.

Strikerless

TLDR; Download-links

I have debated whether or not to post this article. Should I offer a downloadable version of my tactics, just for people to generally ignore why they work in a specific way and complain to yours truly about their perceived lack of progress or success? Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to approach things with FM. If you're getting more success from downloadable tactics and that feels fulfilling enough, then crack on. This article contains links to the latest formation of my "Riders (on the storm)" series of tactics, using both a deep and middle block in defence.

Strikerless

A Tactical Roadmap To Evolution

As my tactics setup evolved and developed, I noticed my build-up from the back was far too easily disrupted by high-intensity pressing sides. They targeted my deep-lying playmaker and, at times, my ball-playing defender. Players Read more…

Set Pieces

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Set pieces in football, and thus in Football Manager, have received much attention and study. But what about the innocuous throw-in? Apart from when a team develops a long throw-in programme (see Delap, Rory, or last year’s trebuchet-styled throw-ins), it is largely ignored. This doesn’t do the humble throw-in justice, as they are essential to your Football Manager game. Just throwing the ball somewhere willy-nilly not only robs you of a potential goalscoring opportunity (depending on your location, of course), but it also increases your risk of losing the ball and ending up on the wrong side of a devastating counter-attack. So again, throw-ins are far more important than you might think.