Vergilius

Has anyone experimented with controlling which of the opposition players in the two central chains get to have the ball?

The idea would be to identify the CD and CM with lowest passing/creativity and then close down/tight mark the one or two players next to him with the use of opposition instructions. Possibly this could really pull the teeth out of the opposition's build-up play (ie. let Hyppia bring up the ball, but close down Agger, when Sissoko gets the ball you pull away, but if Alonso has it close him down fast).

I'm going to try it now anyway. Any other stats to look for than passing/creativity?

Vergilius

Ok tried it for one game, it seemed to work somewhat... the player I figured as the weak link in the opposition midfield (pass/crea/decisions around 10 in La Primera) certainly saw a lot of the ball and made far more passes than his more talented partner... Unfortunately he seemed to play a bit of a blinder: of 34 passes made, 33 were completed with 2 resulting in chances (his skilled partner by comparison made 24 passes with 19 completed and no chances created). The end result was a disappointing home draw for my team against supposedly average opposition.

I'll have to try it out a few times more to see if this was a one off or a general tendency.

Vergilius

To elabotrate a tiny bit on my initial post:

The idea is to leave the "bad" opposition players "open". That is; they are unmarked, or not as closely marked as the better players and thus the opposing team would be more inclined to give them the ball. -This, then, would result in weak build-up play from your opponents and hopefully a high number of incomplete/risky passes from the "bad" players that could be intercepted -perhaps leading to counterattacks.

Leastwise, that's how it would concievably work in real life, I'm not sure it translates into the game engine. I'll try some more tomorrow.

gunners4eva

sounds interesting...I would not think it would work because the less talented player would have more time and space on the ball, enabling him to make better passes and have an overall better game. Just because he's "less talented" does not mean he has no talent, meaning given the right conditions (time and space, for example), he could potentially cause you more trouble than you would like.
I am interested in your findings, please keep posting

ezamudin

Try to do that to the top 4 teams in EPL and see you got slaughtered ^.^

rashidi1

Its not a bad idea at all. There have been times when I've had to shut down players, but thats all I do. Forcing them to channel to another player is sometimes only possible if you know they are going to be close together.

Vergilius

Well my funelling does seem to be somewhat succesful:

Since I've got the day off, I decided to go ahead and try to build a whole team around an "intelligent pressing/funelling" idea. There's more to it than just opposition instructions but they do play an important part. It seemed to work during preseason but the opposition was admittedly poor. Now I've played a few games and these are my observations:

Against West Ham (I play Everton, their players suit this tactic) at home I decided to let Hayden Mullins be the "free man" he ended up making 56 passes during the game with only 38 being completed and creating a sole chance - he made almost two times as many passes as any other West Ham player, many of which where incomplete (which is the point of this strategem). Furthermore the midfielder next to him whom my players "harassed" got sent off. This happened twice during pre-season as well, which is promising.

The second game was away vs. Middlesborough in which I left Boateng as the "free man". He made 29 passes with 20 on target and 3 creating chances. -Less telling than the first game, but still 30% incomplete passes for me to hopefully exploit with quick breaks. Furthermore he was the player in his team to make the second most passes with their right-back making a few more. Finally, and interestingly, his partner whom I harrassed got booked and then lightly injured.

Its still too early to draw any massive conclusions, but I will compile more data during the day. I should mention that both games resulted in narrow wins for me (1-0 and 2-0) though this may have more to do with my general tactical lay-out.