retired_lydia shalaby

i actually have gone back to to the 4-4-2 due to an injury also i dont think Gera is the right player for it. He has some great stats, but i might go back to the drawing board. I have tried to do some tinkering with my plays, and have gone back tot he old reliable, of a slow tempo, short passes game on a 4-4-2.

You see the main thing I think in terms of my mids, is they cant swing the ball around fast enough, to not be caught and tied up by the defenders. That is where the breakdown has been. And i have tried using wide. I think it's going to take me a while to really figure out where i am going with this.

In this season, i have only lost 1 game, have drawn about 9 games now, and won about 6. I dont lose many, but i think if i can somehow squeek a few more goals out of my players, i will be sitting pretty.

But then again its still a learning experience for me, still trying to understand how everything interacts.

Also Amaroq, been reading your story...good stuff, been enjoying it.

retired_w0lfpack1

Excellent! and thanks!

So, your point on swinging the ball around fast enough sounds like you might be imagining a *fast* tempo, short-passing game.

Just for fun, you might try a "Team Mentality" lower than middle, "Tempo" several ticks above middle, "Time Wasting" several ticks below middle, and "Passing" set to short .. just to see if that gets the 'swing around the perimeter' look you're hoping for.

retired_lydia shalaby

actually that worked Amaroq. However, am on a two month skid, which has seen me drop from 1st to 11th. I attribute this more to my having experimented with sliders and what not. Gonna go back to what i was using (i hope i can remember what they were, or rather the defaults). I was looking through the tactics thread, and saw somie info on the sliders, so i started experimenting, with some really, really bad results. I wish there was a default button. Ah well out of the frying pan and into the fire.

retired_w0lfpack1

LoL!

Yeah .. tactical experimentation can go very well or very poorly!!

You *may* be able to catch some of your previous tactic(s) out of:

Tactics | Tactics

or

Tactics | Tactics | Archived Tactics

so have a look there and see if you can 'revert'.

Failing that, I typically save off my tactics when they're going well, hopefully with a subtly different name..

I encourage you to invent a naming scheme of your own, but in my little list I have:

253 Kitchen Sink
352 Att NC PM
352 Pat NC PM
4132 Pat NC PM
4132 Con C PM
4321 Con C PM
4231 Con C PM
4231 Def

which if you know where to put the '0' gives you a pretty good idea which base formation I'm running, and then if you map 'PM' to Playmaker, 'C' to Counter, 'NC' to no-counter, 'Def'ensive, 'Con'servative, 'Pat'ient, 'Att'acking, and Kitchen Sink ought to be self explanatory - its even got the 'keeper streaming forwards on corners.

retired_lydia shalaby

well, i basically put all the sliders back to default, and its halted my skid, and at least i havent lost. I have been able to bring myself back up to 5th place.

Basically what i did was tried out a WHOLE bunch of different variations on sliders, and well lesson learned. Do LITTLE variations, not dramatic ones. I think it really messed up team chemistry as well. But I read through the Mark guide thats on the website, and put the sliders at around those approximate positions.

I liked watching the passing game, which you had suggested, and it would seem to me that would be a good thing to have. Simply keep passing till the a great shot opens up. I might have to wait a bit till i get better players to get to that level.

But right now the main experiments i am running is using the quick passing, and the quick tempo, with a higher attacking mentality.

Anyway, yeah, i might have to save some of the tactics. But it's more so I can figure out how each inter-relate to each other and then figuring out which one is best for my team at the moment. I think i found a cozy tactic, which is a notch lower on the tempo, and a notch lower on the passing. That seemed to work well for me.

i think also another main problem for me, and i failed to realize it, was that my goalie was 37 years old, and I had depended on him for so long, that i failed to realize that he is pretty much over the hill. Anyway, at least I have a backup who can step in, and i did substitute him in, and he seems to be doing ok.

I think another thing that might have affected things was that i did a HUGE amount of transfers during the summer season, so that might have unsettled the team a bit.

Anyway, going back to ole reliable, and just claw my way back up to the top. Hoepfully the streak is over. I just HOPE i can figure out how to get the most productive goal scoring out of my guys. Since that seems to be the biggest problem. Doesnt help when one striker who i got last year, is out for two months on injury. And in my last match one of my pair of strikers just went out on a red car. So now, i am down to really 1 striker (i have one in reserve). And am going to use a 4-1-2-2-1 (i think that's right. But the end result is a pyramid looking thing.

retired_myu94070

OMG, I must play exactly the same way as you. In the another thread I mentioned doing a similar thing to you with rotation and now it looks like you've outed my tactics.

Except this bit -
-my tactic has an MC with farrow to AMC.

retired_w0lfpack1

Well, there's plenty more detailed over in T&TT, we might be way off each other on some settings.

-my tactic has an MC with farrow to AMC. </BLOCKQUOTE>

OMG! Huge difference!

Yeah - and step just one or two at a time .. going whole-hog at once, you can't tell if maybe change A was working but change B was a step backwards, or what.

It feels to me like a "my team are better than their opposition" tactic - the opposition sits back to defend, so you work it around the perimeter until you can distort their shape, then you whip a "through ball" into the space, and hope you have a guy with acceleration who can get there before the space closes back up. But it is fun to watch!

Up to you to judge, definitely, but goalie is a position which peaks late - 31 to 35, maybe - so as long as his physical skills aren't deteriorating, a 37-year-old can perform quite well .. and he's a lot less prone to good-morale/bad-morale moodiness the way a 20-year-old goalkeeper is.

Sometimes it just takes changing .. to ANYbody else .. to snap a GK out of a rut of bad form, though.

Chemistry is a huge part of F.M., definitely - you might not 'write off' all of your tactical changes from earlier, if this is the case .. I'd say its more likely that your team's chemistry was off due to the transfers than that you'd completely lost the plot on your tactical changes.

Here's some advice from a previous post: Halting a Poor Run of Form - you might glean something you haven't sussed out, yet.

darreng

You ask the board and they will eventually give you a feeder club in belgium but they initially will only offer you local ones. The only other way to absolutely guarantee 100% that you get a feeder club of your choice is to cheat and use the editor.

retired_lydia shalaby

well the new keeper is not as eccentric as my 37 yr old. However I was watching one game, and the 37year old threw the ball about 20 yards directly to an opposing player, which not surprisingly led to a goal. He got switched about 5 minutes later. I did a player comparison. And the new goalies reflexes arent as good (14) vs. 17, however that was the main tradeoff. But, i also gained better handling, and throwing as well (old one had about 6 7 8 respectively). So i think I will be better off. He is below the topline stats of my 37 year old. But i think the switch was needed. He seems to be doing ok.

Also a peculiar thing is that my bad run began when one of my MR went down on injury for 2 months. In the press i said that it was a blow. am wondering if that also had an effect.

Good read on team morale. I looked through that and picked Gera as my capt. influence of 11 but...he has high composure, and high determination rates. Also he is pretty much my star.

Its also amusing, i looked under team chemistry and it says the players will die for each other.

Also, how do you do rotations of players...after X amount of games. Or just by feel in terms of morale and condition. I think i am going to start rotating players more often. Also in games I usually go with the same 11 the whole way through, only if i am comfortably leading will i switch or if i am behind, and i think i can add to the group.

Also the farrow/barrow/darrow things.

Am assuming that f = forward ARROW
B= side arrow
D = defense arrow

I was looking at those and realized if you take the first letter away you get arrow...and then i thought, hmm i wonder if that is the case (my above question). I think i can turn it around this season though. We are bleeding money, which is not good. I think they were depending on more ticket sales, since I had like 4 games in a row in away stadiums.

retired_lydia shalaby

and thanks trekman. funny enough, the feeder club was my main worry when i started this thread...now it's trying to stop this bad streak, and dominate the rest of the season.