retired_kellyk

Fundamental Football Manager - The Cambridge Story LLM includes Tactics

I wanted to do a few more threads covering what I consider the fundamentals of football manager, I guess we'll see if those are needed. On hindsight, I think the FAQ was a mistake, far too much information leaving so little to discussion.

Well I decided to approach LLM football with Cambridge, this will be a short adventure, the goal is to get them promoted and while I await my full-boxed game to arrive this is based on the patches we were able to use during testing.

Game preparation

I decided to start a challenge with Cambridge United a team that was expected to finish in midtable in the conference. Naturally I like over-achievement so my first act as manager was to tell the board we're a contender, unfortunately that didn't come with extra dosh.

First things first:-

Evaluating the squad
I hate this part as I like to get off to a quick start, so I went through my squad and looked for players who matched:

Determination
Pace
Workrate
Teamwork

For these stats I was gunning for at least 12 for determination, 10 for the rest.
The good news was that this club was determined, so I started hunting for some extra players..the defenders were poor and they really didn't have quality in midfield or upfront. An aggressive programme was started, inviting as many to trial as possible. With little time on the clock, I managed to bring in 7 more players: 3 strikers, 1 midfielder, 2 defenders and 1 keeper, no one else wanted to join. Not ideal. The next step was to tell the board I needed a parent club. This should help and it did 5 weeks later W.Ham became my parent club and offered my 2 players whom I gladly grabbed, a midfielder and a striker.

Preparing the squad
Its now time to set off and do some pre-season training, for this I moved the entire team to a customised preseason routine which emphasised aerobics and stamina. While I was doing this I looked at my backroom and managed to convince 4 more staff to join me, lucky me. I now have 5 stars in Aerobic, 4 in the rest sans Setpieces(2) and stamina (1). This will have to do for now.

For preseason I decided to try a 4132 tactic. I haven't really given this a name yet. It was a tactic I was going to use to prevent myself from getting hammered. Against Bolton we never got a shot on goal and lost that match 2-0. We used the same tactic again in another match, lost that 1-0 and then used a 451 against Reading and got plastered 3-0, things weren't going well, the match match producing only 1 shot on goal. I decided to get even more crazy, adopting a 4222 tactic which saw me lose the last friendly 1-0. That was it not a goal scored, not even a point won.

Preseason form was hopeless, I knew that the 4132 tactic was basically solid, the competition I faced was much better we didn't get creamed, so I decided to stay with the tactic.

Basics of the 4132
Essentially a very basic strategy it had 3 hardworking midfielders and one late arriving mc with 2 strikers upfront. It was theoretically a difficult tactic to score against. Our next match was a home match against Ebbsfleet. A workmanlike attitude saw us win that match 3-0. It was a result I was happy with.

Away from home I decided to use the same formation deciding this time to narrow the width and play with a normal defensive line. It worked as we won our second match in a row 2-0. A second clean sheet.

Next few matches
The boys happily continued on their merry ways winning a few more matches on the run, by playing around with the tempo I was actually increasing my shots on goal. Our next few matches were nothing short of surprising we managed to keep clean sheets
regularly which was my intention.

Our match against Forest Green saw the introduction of 2 my loanees.. Kyle Reid and Ephraim who managed to both get on the scoresheet on the debut winning that match 2-0. By now getting possession wasn't a problem - averaging 55% and Shots on goal were healthy.

My set-pieces needed some work though as I tend to ignore these, so I set up my strongest player on challenge keeper, another one on near post flick on and the other one on far post. A player with decent heading and scoring was set to far, 2 more were set to lurk, I kept 2 players back and the rest forward. I could see that we were getting more shots on target forcing the keeper into saves. And this was enough. The longer the players do this the better my chances at getting goals from set-pieces. 2 matches later we started scoring from corners and our corner routine was improving. The absence of a good set-piece coach was telling.

In the next couple of matches, my goal was simple, this was a formation that was solid, but I needed one that had more flair, something that would produce more goals, so I started experimenting, creating an Arrowhead which produced the next win. A formation that only had 2 central MCs and 3 AMCS and one lone striker. It produced 9 shots on goal. Enough to secure the win. I was beginning to look like a massive tinkerer when one of the wierdest looking formations made its appearance. It produced a whopping 23 shots on goal and 59% in possession unfortunately it didn't look too solid at the back we won the match3-2.

My constant tinkering didn't do me any favours, furthermore one other challenge emerged. We didn't have a reserve league, but I had a reserve team that wasn't playing any matches. It was time to start inviting teams over to play friendly league competitions with us. Cheap money. Within 10 games we had 1 million in the bank.

Money's done and in but no one was going to give me extra funds for players...bloody board.

Roundup

Too much tinkering is not good for you...lost 3 matches because I thought I was god. The league table shows us clearly on top. I've more or less settled on one formation, made a new 32221 formation and will probably need to decide on one other formation. Essentially the basics still apply. With LLM sides, you need to stay consistent with your tactics, choose a solid tactic and base it around players who fit a certain profile. Whatever it is you need players who have good teamwork, workrate and pace.

retired_kellyk

Currently I've decided to settle in on this tactic, I'm calling it RYMagyarFM2008, its very much a WIP tactic and I will be tinkering with it as the season progresses.
RYMagyarFM2009
The shape should look really strange to some, but it makes sense to me.

Defense
I like 3 man defenses, much more challenging than 4 man backlines.. I decided to stick two DMs in with the group and make it into a compact 5 man defense. The 2 DMs are given farrows and are told to make forward runs on normal, this should see them come late into the box and make them an unmarked threat...which is the plan, hope it doesn't work too well.

In midfield 2 AMs with barrows telling em to drop back and defend as midfielders and an AMC to link play up in attack.

Well that's the theory...Mentality well...I wanna use the slider..so I'll set the attacking group on team (normal), one DM to be slightly more defending and the other DM set to team. The defenders are set to manmarking and have a defensive mentality.

Creative freedom is such a curse..it affects flair and is still a mystery. So it'll be low for those who don't need it, normal for those who may have to attack and defend. I'll just play with the normal range since I don't really have too many good players in this squad. No need to go squander the ball.


Passing style: For now it will be mixed for all and direct for the defenders. Eventually I will try and make it either short or direct.

Closing down for the sweeper he will close down the least. Since I'm playing a back 3 the 2 stoppers need to close down in own half. Need quite a few other players to do that too so I will set them to close own half but slightly higher up.

The rest of the instructions are fairly obvious..

The tactic is here: RYMagyarFM2008. Use it at your own peril. Its meant to lead to discussions of other 3 man backlines....hint hint.

retired_kellyk

We just entertained Oxford and dominated proceedings, too many shots were squandered over the bar..methinks more goals should have been scored... 1-0 win

retired_tageisen

Wrong screenie Rashidi, but excellent thread will be following it.

retired_kellyk

Thanks fixed it.

Now our next match was against Rusden and Diamonds..halftime we were 2up, completely dominating the opposition and should have had 3 goals, a perfectly good goal disallowed.

At halftime I decided against my better judgment to tell the players "not to let their performance drop"..what happened next dropped my jaw as I gripped my mouse tight. We went from not allowing a single shot on goal to having our backs to the wall. My halftime talk had backfired. I quickly looked around the squad and decided to bring on a hardtackler to midfield to replace one of the DMs who was now running at 59%.

R&D pulled a goal back, I reduced my dline slowed down tempo and maxed out timewasting as we managed to cling on to a 2-1 win.

We are creating loads of chances, problem is that too many are going over the crossbar from inside the area, looks like I need more focused training and a new coach for shooting 3 straight wins...I want more goals!!!

retired_kellyk

Next match Altrincham
They've just lost a match to Torquay and play a defensive 442. They tend to sit deep and like to play the counterattacking game, which means I don't need to change anything...perhaps I'll go a bit wider and slow down the tempo for this game and try and draw them out.


Incidentally we had a defender get a long term injury so I managed to snag one decent DM on a long term loan from some first division club.
No comment to the prematch media - a standard feature of my humdrum existence

financially we're 971k now..made something like 900k in profits already...yet the old farts don't wanna give me money for extra transfer funds..

retired_kellyk

"I'm surprised the bookies are even taking bets for this one, Altrincham can't get a win for love or money and Cambridge should have this won by half-time"

why do i hate things like this..

retired_kellyk

Ah well we did win that match 2-1...but we're still not hammering in the goals...domination is clear..70% possession this time. It actually peaked at 90% at one point.

retired_sabrnes123

Nice work, have been trying to tweak my own tactic for success in the lower leagues. Every little helps

retired_BrownVanilla

Great thread :thup: