retired_Hwells34

First disclamer: i'm totally responsible for my stupidity and managerial inexperience. I'm dutch and have just finished my last nightshift. This post is about my take on sliders and formations after reading every post in this forum, getting lots of help and advice but also reading too many contradictions.

Formations:
When playing at home or weaker sides it's best to play to your strengths as the opposition will adapt to you, so annalize your side and play your best 11 possible in an attacking formation. Away or vs better sides you'd be probably better of adapting to them. Play a DM to mark their playmaker, defensive FB vs fast wingers etc.
(pretty obvious right?)

Sliders:

Mentality - i've read a lot of stuff about this. About being a positional tool (a cd with higher ment. would play higher up field positional wise than his fellow cd with lower ment.) I've tested this with a 442 with all left sided players on 20 ment. and the right sided on 1 ment. I just don't see it, there was a slight difference in positions when in posession (1mm on my screen)......
KISS: defenders defend, attackers attack, midfielders do both.
Attacking teams play with attacking team mentality, Defending/Countering teams play defensive.

Creative Freedom - I don't see why this is a team slider. I go with the pundits here, only set your most creative player (probably your AM's in an attacking formation) on high, the rest on low. Individual settings overide team settings here. I've read a theory called Radius Theory that says that high cf gives a player a larger radius to wonder of their position - an option?

Passing - Team passing should work in conjunction with tempo,time wasting and mirror width,defline and closing down ???? Attacking teams play slow, short, pressing with a high Dline, Counter-attacking teams play direct, fast non pressing with a deep Dline ???? Brilliant teams (Blyth Spartans ) play short and quick, but then again brilliant teams can play anything. Individual passing is more of interest. There are a few options. In a Counterattacking style shouldn't your whole team be on direct as being the counterattacking style ? In other styles should your CD's be on short not being the best of passers, your midfielders on mixed and the wide players on direct ? Or does the slider represent what it says. Being the range of the pass. So if you have a defender who can give a pass like Frank de Boer played to Bergkamp to score the decider vs Argentina why not put him on long passing ? So, is it an option to give a player with 5 for passing also a 5 on the passing slider and 15-15 etc.? I tend to put my CD on short when playing a DM and on direct in a flat 442,the FBs and midfield on normal and the STs shortish.

Closing down - seems to wear players down not to be used with high cf. Still i read a lot of posts with attackers on high cf and cld. The slider states, own area - own half - whole pitch. What is the definition of own area? Is it the own area of the player, that would suffice for every position. Or is it own 1/3 of the pitch as being the 1/3 of the pitch from the own goal? I suspect the latter. That would mean that it should be in conjunction with mentality (Dline etc.) An attacking side playing further up the pitch (high Dline) should close down (press) higher up the pitch to regain the ball asap otherwise the opposition would have to much time to play a killer ball over the defence to their fast newly aquired nigerian 9.93s 100m running ST.
For this to work it would be a team slider,but prob. not for the defense.
Or do we look at the Radius Theory again. A high Cld enlarges the radius in which the player attacks the opposing player with the ball when he enters this radius ? Help.

Tempo - a higher tempo creates more chances but the quality of those chance is less, a lower tempo creates less but better quality chances. This i kind of understand. A higher tempo would mean less time on the ball, passing it immediately to another player. But, what i don't get is the conjunction with passing. Why would a slow tempo suit short passing? I get the high tempo, direct passing counterattacking part. But i fail to see the short-slow part. Only as being a possesion Dutch national team kind of play, boring passes from CD to FB to CM to CM to DM to FB and back to the CD. Again I understand that they shouldn't be to far apart but why completely equal. Would high tempo lessen the chance of a striker scoring when one-on-one with the GK and therefore increase the chance of scoring when on slow tempo?

Defensive Line - the most obvious to see on the pitch when you alter it. This slider really does the bizz in this game. It completely shapes your team. You can play mega defensive but if your DL is high your team is high up the pitch. Great tool. Play high when attacking, deep when countering. But beware of those killer passes to mr. 9.93s. The scout-report is usefull here.

Width - defensive teams play narrow, attacking teams wide? I think so. So in my book (again) Wide, High Dline. Narrow, Deep Dline. It shapes your formation to a wider rectangle high up the pitch, or a longer narrow rectangle in your own half. Could be used with Focus Passing?

Forward Runs, Run with ball, Try Tballs, Long Shots - are obviously connected to players attributes and the style you play. I normally put players on often when the corresponding attributes are 15+, mixed when 10-15 and rarely if below.

A long post with a simple question: did i miss anything ? am i totally wrong on something?

sleepy....going to bed for hopefully 8 hours