I mentioned another collaboration with Rashidi earlier where Daljit more or less twisted my arm to play a conventional tactic, as in one that contained strikers. England versus Lithuania. Shit, that sounds like an easy game, right? Let’s just say that Harry Kane was the man responsible for the result.
Harry Kane looking fatigued from making a difference for England
Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.
Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.
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.
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 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.
1 Comment
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.