For those that like it brief, take a look:
Result Match Stats
I played an attacking 4-1-3-2 to start (more details in detailed post below) and then when I scored a great goal on the counter I reduced the global mentality to normal and lowered my defensive line. The match was a fairly even affair with plenty of shots for each team (which is in itself a victory to start with as clearly Chelsea have superior players) but I created by the far the better quality of chances.
For those of you who shun brief, in favour of concise yet informative (hopefully) read on.
As you can see I lined up with a 4-1-3-2 formation loosely based around the formation that Rashidi highlighted in his
thread
I say loosely because the stuff I borrowed was the closing down for DCs, Fullbacks and DMC. The rest is my own work based on simple things such as if they’re good at dribbling set them to run with the ball, if they’re terrible at long shots set this to rarely etc. One point worth of note is that I’m playing a completely global mentality system governed purely by forward runs and almost entirely global passing system of shortest possible passing (except for the central MC).
It should be said at the start that I’m not really trying to highlight this particular tactic, or indeed any tactical genius on my part. I’m trying to highlight a logical approach, and hopefully, if users hear certain things coming from a nobody, it might actually get through (albeit that Rash et al say these things on a daily basis ad infinitum, ad nausiam and ad rediculum). In all honesty I’m just trying to do a similar thing to what Rash, Cleon and wwfan try to do in trying to help out (although hopefully they won’t think I’m raining on their parade so to speak). The difference being that clearly I’m not a forum legend, a mod or anything like that so hopefully this should mean that all the people who simply claim that Rash et al are either cheating, withholding information, boosting their egos etc can’t say the same things about me, and my thread.
Without being too polemical, I think it’s really really poor form when people come on the forums (esp so–called mature, intelligent people) and slag the mods off for the work they do. As far as I know, all the hours they put into to helping YOU is pro bono, and out of their own time. In my mind, this means that the very worst that anyone can say against them is that they don’t agree with their theories/their theories don’t work. How people dare to continue in the vain of accusing them of cheating, colluding, conspiring etc is beyond me and beyond ungrateful. Anyway there is my polemical paragraph and my two penneth for what it’s worth.
A Brief History Lesson (please do correct me if I’m wrong for those older than myself as I only started to play on Champ Italia):
It seems to me that their can be observed four paradigms or stages in the evolution of the game. For our purposes I’d like to draw some (not entirely perfect) simple analogies:
Paradigm One: Genesis of the Game
Unfortunately I’m not really old enough (at 22) to comment on this accurately but if a mod could edit my post and just write a sentence here that would be grand. The only point that I’d like to make is that as this represents the very beginnings of the game, and thus finding it’s feet, this first paradigm will not feature very heavily in the analysis to follow.
Paradigm Two: The Classical Age where Logical Thought Rules All
Super-tactics and glitches in the engine aside; post-Genesis, the game starts to be refined and the fun really starts. For the purposes of tactics, and indeed of this post, the point is that you could apply simple, well-informed, REAL WORLD football knowledge to the game, and although at this stage you could not SEE that your instructions had the desired effect, in my experience they did just that. There is no room here for a more general debate on whether it was too easy, the point I’m making is that it was logical and playable. This age lasted in my mind up to CM 03/04.
Paradigm Three: The Dark Ages
The title Dark Ages does not sit too happily here really in that from CM 03/04 onwards there was progression not regression in terms of new features, and not least the welcome addition of a visual representation of the match. However, where the title of ‘Dark Age’ is appropriate is in relation to this whole article i.e. logical thought. In this period (the nadir was obviously FM 2007) it seems that some of the focus on logical thought in terms of tactics and engine was put aside in favour of other ‘sexier’ ‘cosmetic’ developments. Obviously, I’m mainly talking about FM2007 which was I think it’s fair to say a challenge. That said, in my opinion, the only real ‘challenge’ of FM2007 was getting through the first season. After that your team has gelled etc and all love it eachother and it’s fine.
Paradigm Four: A Third Way - The Renaissance and the Rebirth of the Classical (Logical) Age
From what I’ve seen of the demo so far, FM2008 should sign signal a ‘third way’ in the game’s development. It has kept, and developed new ‘sexy features’, whilst returning to a simple, logic based approach where to put it simply, your instructions work. Obviously closing down and some other things on the demo have been highlighted and are being sorted out. But in general the match engine is logical and does what it says on the tin. Additionally, the attacking side of things looks really slick, and the above pkms of the goals I scored against Chelsea hopefully bear this out.
So what was the point of this trip down memory lane/history lesson?
What I’m trying to say is (as hard as it is) you need to put all the crazy number crunching slider stuff aside. Bin it. Dump it out of your brain. Just think of another notch on the slider as a little bit more/less...[insert relevant slider e.g. attacking or defensive]. The crazy slider number crunching was a response to The Dark Age and the problems it brought. Take a step back, close your eyes, pretend you are 14 again, take your FM Cynic hat off, and replace it with a Football Purist hat, open your eyes and load up a quick start on the demo. Do it. I dare you. I feel like a kid again, and I’ve never been so excited about an FM release before. It’s slick, slick I tell you.
Back to The Game, The Tactic, The Win
As I mentioned briefly at the start of this post, I played a 4-1-3-2 formation with a normal defensive line, normal width, 10 mentality for the defensive, global attacking mentality for the rest, and lower closing down at the back. It was a fairly even game which is all you can hope for really playing Chelsea at the start of your game, but I had by far the better quality of chances
Personally, from my own testing I think that the 4-3-3 and 3-4-3 and generally tactics which play 3 up front are the ones that have the potential to be complete destroyers if set up to be attacking, but really for the purposes of the demo, I just wanted a fairly solid tactic that I could tweak and get going to start me off and give me something to work with when the full game and patch is released.
The points that Rash and countless others have made about
: pre-season, getting good coaches, buying the right players, using their strengths (by e.g. turning run with the ball on) and mitigating their weaknesses (by e.g. turning run with the ball off), are absolutely key, as is team morale and how well the team is gelling. Before I beat Chelsea I drew my first two games, both of which I probably just about should have won, so morale was good and we were unbeaten.
If you’ve got this far then well done, I’m at a point now as I write where there isn’t anything else that is screaming out to me to be said so I’ll stop. If anyone has any thoughts or questions then you’re welcome to state them/ask.
FM 2008 Demo - It Can Be Done - Chelsea 0 – 2 Man City with screenies and thoughts in general 
Although I don't think it's particularly useful in terms of helping to build tactics, hopefully I got my point across.
Thanks
Linear Mode
