Sven · September 20, 2017 at 1:21 pm

Just in case I didn’t get this confused, Rash was playing Lithuania, as I can’t see him struggling tactically? Because England suffers offthe same thing here that’s been pretty much standard fanfare for any of such matches in FM most of the time: take a look at those corner stats, go through the shots individually. You will see very few of them will be from open play. Dominating sides in football don’t struggle to create shots from play, as sources such as Whoscored.com made public.

England is barely stretching the pitch and opposition positionally, playing so narrow, which coupled with a defensive AI, er, Lithuania is the cause of this. They get a foot into every attacking move fairly easily in one way or other. This isn’t just “one of those matches” as argued by Rashidi, and I’ve been trying to forward this to SI for added feedback for a very long now, because the post match reports make it appear such also. This is a side struggling to create much quality openings, typically.

Maybe you remember the “cheating AI” accusations of players throughout the years. wwfan was one of the earliest to truly pick up on the cause of this — it’s always been possible to dominate FM’s too simplistic stats to kingdom come however with barely creating much openings, the dreaded CCCs included (which aren’t much more oftenly converted than your average on target shot). And such players used to get this semi-regularly, moreso than any team in football. With the typically (narrow) tactics shared as of FM 2017 that try to game the engine’s weaknesses of this iteration, you’ll also get a few additionally funny matches thus — up to 60 shots and no scoring every time the AI drops deep, plays a back five with a couple DMS and manages to hang on in there.