retired_kellyk

Fair enough.

Technical skills outweigh other skills in the premiership. Knowing what kind of skills you need to invest in for LLM play is winning half the match before you start.

You need to focus on pace and physical fitness. Pace is by far the most important attribute imho.

Whether you're in the conference or in the premiership you need to assess your teams attributes relative to the league you're playing in.

For example. I know that for my side, my average pace for my frontmen is around 16, which is high. Because decisions,passing and tackling are important in the premiership, I make sure that I at least have 15 or higher for passing in my midfield room. Unfortunately for me my left MC has only got 11 for decisions which is low compared to the top 5 sides. So against them I sub him for another player who has higher decisions and average passing. I hope you get the idea.

In LLM if you find that your side is better relative to other teams you can still adopt the same approach. You can still adopt an attacking mentality, if passing as a whole is not good at the back then you may want to reduce TTB.

Reducing TTB means you get less misplaced passes, but it does reduce your attacking passes as well.
Remember this, if you have pace upfront, use it. In LLM football this often wins the day. The formation I'm using now will bang in goals for me in LLM as well, i have no doubt about it. Playing with DLine and width should give you enough to tweak whether you wanna sit back and soak or you want to set up camp. Finally, choose the right players for the right job.

retired_heidi-grashel

Sorry to go a touch off topic rashidi, but Im hoping you can help me.

I'm playing a 4-3-3 at the moment, with the AMR and AML farrowed into the box either side of the ST. Playing slow, short and wide I am experiencing great success at home, however my away record is dreadful (which is bad news, cos I'm Man Utd and should be winning leagues), basically, that short-farrowed 4-4-2 is decimating me, be it Spurs, Arsenal, WBA or Bolton, not cool.

SO my question is this, what would you recommend I do to try to make this same 4-3-3 (I don't want wholesale changes for fear of confusing my team) effective away from home against this 4-4-2. Ive tried almost everything (I say almost as I assume I'm missing something) and am really reaching the end of my tether.

Cheers,

Jim

retired_kellyk

What are your closing down instructions for your players? What kind of D-line is set up for your team? The short farrowed 442 is easy to counter. Just make sure the ball does not make it to the fullbacks or the wingers don't have time to cross.

retired_explosivechic

Rashidi, how do you approach the game when your team is playing away and in your experience in playing the game, do you think offside is of any use? Because I don't think offside ticked or not ticked would make a difference

retired_heidi-grashel

What are your closing down instructions for your players? What kind of D-line is set up for your team? The short farrowed 442 is easy to counter. Just make sure the ball does not make it to the fullbacks or the wingers don't have time to cross. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Playing a normal D-line, to avoid inviting too much pressure, while at the same time not getting caught behind. My DM is my main ball-winning player and has "often" closing down, with everyone else on mixed. Thinking of pushing up the CD on my AMR\AML to make sure they track back, as well as on my full backs to deny the AI wide men space. Sound like the right idea?

Also, you say you play with global mentalities, do you drop this away from home, or always play an attacking style?

Thanks.

Jim

retired_kellyk

Hmm try this.. I'm assuming you're playing an attacking brand of football.

You want to anchor your MC so he stays in the centre. So set his CD to 10. Set the AML/AMR/FC all on 18-20. This way the AM goes to close down fullbacks or wingers. The MC stays in the centre and looks to close down players that try and come through him.

The fullbacks can have cd instructions of up to 12, and not more than that. They will track to the wingers, however if you find that they are doing this too early, reduce it slightly.


Your DM in the centre should be the main ball winning and ball distributing person, however that should not prevent you from sticking TTB all over the place. To be safe I'd have it on normal for all expect for perhaps the 3 MCs.

Having freeroles on the AMs and FC will also see them drop back into defensive holes if needed.

Right now I'm playing with global mentalities for the whole team, they seem to gel better than on split mentalities. The jury hasn't come in with a verdict yet, so only time will tell.

I have on some occassions dropped team mentality to defensive when faced against a really good side and ticked on counterattack. I haven't done very much to change other elements of the instructions.

Currently I have 2 sets of players for the Midfield roles. One set are bonecrunching ball winners, these I use against good sides, and the other are more creativity "hoddle-like" players who I use against stubborn defenses.

Personally and like in real life I find it much harder to play against a defensive team, that hardly comes out to attack. I find that having more players on TTB and having an attacking mentality helps.

retired_kellyk

Van persie:

I'm going to begin part 2 of this simple approach. There have been a few threads on the forums that have dealt with what follows but its important to understand that in any game you play you will need to make some tactical variations. These can vary from simple subsitutions that can make a decisive impact on a game, like a strong ball winner, changing the attacking/defensive posture of your side...or switching from one formation to the next.

Trying to keep these as simple changes is the key, making wholesale changes to formations is not strongly recommended. So I'll endeavour to try something really simple.

Subsitution Strategy This is the simplest one to adopt, having the right players on the bench allows your team to play differently without having to do too much. They also help you to make changes due to ineffectual performances.

Orientation This is slightly more complex, but it does allow you to keep your original formation and just adjust it for different kind of teams. wwwfan observed that there are a variety of systems that the AI uses which I tend to agree with.

AI Strategies

Please use a scout and get him to scout out the opposition before a game, if you watch some of their highlights its even better. My scout returned after watching United and told me they play a defensive 4222, controlling possession and playing off the break. Just looking at the report suggested that they had pacey strikers to worry about, watching the highlights convinced me there were playing with a formation that could potentially have 6 in attack and 6 in defense. That was not something i liked. I adjusted my formation, reduced the D-line to normal and turned on counterattack. My tempo was defaulted to slow, and because I had to hold them off without inviting too much pressure I did reduce my mentality to normal. My goal was to muzzle the United dogs and it worked. We didn't win either but I got the result I wanted, which wasn't bad considering that my top scorer was out injured.

Whether playing home or away, an AI may never play the same way. Good sides in the game, typically play a defensive controlled style of football which aims to win the battle in midfield draw you out and hit you with a good counterattack. Camping for long periods in their half does sound like a good idea, you may get tonnes of chances, but all the AI needs to do is to hit back with one and you could end up losing. Its in matches like that where I pay close attention to my shape. My side is an average side in the premiership. It overperformed in the first 2 seasons; whenever I play the AI the odds are never one sided. So you expect to see a fair number of cagey matches. When you are a side that is not an outright favourite, playing too far up the field is too dangerous.


An AI can adopt a defensive-counterattacking formation, much like a 442 short farrowed. Both average teams and strong teams use these. The best way to combat them is to have a balanced tactic of your own. If the team is a good team like Liverpool then sitting too deep or sitting too far up will be a problem for yourself, so I tend to adjust my formation to play slightly above normal, and make no attempts to adjust width or tempo. In this scenario I am aiming to win the midfield battle and employ quick breaks of my own. The football may not be pretty but the result will be.



An AI can also use a controlled formation that balances defense and has a pacey formation. These are tougher to beat and I have to admit I prefer playing against defensive ca formations. These balanced formations are a real pain. They require you to be balanced as well. Breaking up the play in the centre of the park is important and having the right players at the back with high anticipation, pace and defensive attributes is vital. Giving up possession easily by hoofing the ball up is not a good idea. The key here would be not to play too deep, have enough players closing down heavily. And have players with good decisions in midfield. Possession and keeping the ball and waiting for the right break would be the key.


AI's have also adopted ultra defensive formations that rely on lone targetmen upfront. Typically these formations sit deep. There are 2 approaches you can take: I do both actually in a game. Use high pressure tactics that park the bus in their half and run them down and play the offside trap. If you don't get the early goal, pull your DL back to deep and switch to counterattack. Use skilful players with good attributes to run at the defense. This is important as it provides you with decent chances.

The anal attacking tactics such as 424 and 235. Now these are usually last ditch tactics. Personally I love it when the AI switches to them in a game as I just maintain my original formation and drop deep, turn on counterattack.


There are loads of threads which deal with AI strategies, but one thing you want to do is to have a scout.

retired_anitarobinson

great thread rashidi, trying this out for the last 4 games in my derby game at the moment, currently scoring for fun, seth johnson is playing out of his skin in the CM position, and smith, barnes and lupoli are ripping defences to shreds.

only thing I've noticed is the lack of goals from the CM positions. do you find that yourself or is it just the players i have? (jones and oakley, both hoddle types )

retired_debbie22

I really like these tactics. I can make tactic changes on the team level and actually see a difference on the field. In my last game gave up a goal within the first five minutes but kept to the normal home attacking formation, and we evened it up 6 minutes later. Later in the game fell behind 1-2, moved up my Def Line, increased the passing to mix and the tempo to normal. Made my width in a little bit wider, and scored 2 goals to make the score 3-2. We eventually gave up the tying goal in the last couple of minutes so it was a draw. But the odds of us getting a draw were (5-2) so I am happy with the result especially with my low skill players.

retired_debbie22

dola

Just wanted to add, that with my current state of just trying to learn more about soccer and how to play this game, I was not looking for tactics to win every game or anything. I just wanted to be able to make tactical changes based on situations and solutions discussed on this forum, and be able to notice a difference in my players and team.