retired_jacque90

Encouraged by the good threads and discussions we've had here lately, I set out to try and come up with a tactical system that attempts to put all that information into practice. Specifically, I wanted to incorporate four main ideas into the system. Two tactical ideas and two strategic ideas:

1- Leroy1883's (and Rashidi's) insights into Defensive Line and Closing Down -
http://community.sigames.com/eve/for...7/m/6952099133

2- arteta is god's (and others) experiments with Team and Individual mentalities

3- wwfan's Tactical Design ideas
http://community.sigames.com/eve/for...7/m/9572038913

4- Rashidi's reasoned approach into tactical design
http://community.sigames.com/eve/for...7/m/3332029423


Two tactical ideas

Leroy and Rashidi's input in that thread was phenomenal in the way it radically changed my mindset regarding how to approach the defensive line and closing down sliders. Like many others, I was under the wrong impression for a long time, so I couldn't wait to put their approach into action. arteta's (and others) findings in the workings of the much maligned mentality sliders proved to be quite interesting, and I decided to give it a go as well.

Two strategic ideas

wwfan's thread regarding tactical design ideas is a must read (as is Leroy's thread about d-line and CD, by the way). His approach, the one of having different 'ways of playing' inside one tactical system or formation is right on the money. However, he details five 'flavors' in that thread, and me being the lazy git I am, I wanted to see if I could build a successful system with less flavors. I do hate the clicking.

Similarly, Rashidi's thoughts in his thread encouraged me to sit down before even moving one slider and think what I wanted the team to do. To think seriously beforehand about what kind of football to play.


So, this is Signal

I need to stress that I consider this only a proof of concept. A tactical system in beta, if you will, for the simple reason that I don't have the time to test it properly. However, the initial results have been so encouraging that I felt the need to share what I have so far and to urge you to give it a try and see how it works for different teams and different leagues.

Signal, strangely enough, originated from a 4-5-1 I was trying (it was called Mocha, by the way. I do name them weird). A system of a lone striker backed up with a couple of AMCs and wingers accompanying the play. It wasn't spectacular, but good enough. However, it had its problems. Defensively was very sound, and the striker sure scored his fair lot, but the AMCs that should haven been theoretically backing him up were generally nowhere to be seen other than the midfield. Also, the wingers seemed to have caught whatever disease the AMCs had and they were largely absent from play. It was an aimless system that worked, yes, but barely.

However, the one virtue of Mocha was that I had managed to distill wwfan's five approaches into only three - a normal stance, an attacking one and a defending, set up shop one. It was then that I decided to scrape things and try to find a way to get the AMCs and wingers more involved during matches, as well as fine tune all other areas that needed tuning based on the experience I got from Mocha. So, Signal was born.


What I wanted the team to do

I like football well played. That, to me, translates into a game of short passing and slow buildup of plays, always with an offensive accent. However, I also like my teams to be balanced and try to never be too overbearing in attack or defense. I do like the idea of keeping possession of the ball, moving it around and playing with the opponent's stamina (and nerves), all while waiting for the perfect opportunity to find the opening, stab forward quickly and give them something serious to run back to. That's what I generally wanted them to do. Keep the ball for as long as you can, then strike hard and fast. The idea was not to overload the opposition on attack, only to be left exposed to a counter. Neither it was to constantly bomb balls forward hoping that one goes through.

Also, something I personally dislike, was for my teams to lose protagonism by constantly having to radically change the way of passing or playing depending on the opposition. Now, that might be a valid approach, but I just don't like it. I want, if possible, for the other teams to have to adapt to mine. Not the other way around.

The idea was to impose a way of playing, via possession and good treatment of the ball. And when the ball was lost, to start pressing to recover it. What the opponent did... play short or direct, attacking or counter, etc... that was their problem. Not ours. This doesn't mean I didn't have to adapt, it just means a philosophical difference that I wanted to put into the tactic. Nothing more.


Goalkeeper: I wanted him to stop balls, and come out only as a last resort. No sweeper keeper.

Defense: I wanted two central defenders well-planted on the back, only crossing the middle when it was safe to do so. As for the flanks, I'm not opposed to the idea of wing backs that constantly move forward, but I could never translate it effectively into a tactic. So I just wanted full backs that concentrated on defending, and only went forward when the opposition was pinned down on their end and it was safe to do so. I also wanted a DM to act primarily in support of the defense, but also acting under similar instructions as the full backs; yes, support the attack from the back, but only when it's safe.

Midfield: This was the problem area of Mocha. I wanted, first of all, for my AMCs to become problematic for the opposition. To be constantly involved in plays. Unfortunately, I couldn't solve this with two AMCs starting on the MC position, nor with two AMCs in the hole. I just could not make it work with two AMCs at all, so only one had to do it. The sacrificed AMC would have to turn into a decidedly attacking player, since I already had the defensive side covered. As far as the wingers, I wanted them to receive the ball and build from there. What to build was up to them, but it was imperative that they received the ball, something that didn't happen very often with Mocha. After thinking it for a while, I realized the only way to make absolutely sure they would be involved in plays would be to make them the first (or only!) safe avenue of passing for plays coming from the defense. The best way I could think of doing this was to play them both as MCs, sidearrowed wide, standing right in front of the DMC as first natural passing option.

Attack: From the get go, I knew I didn't want a typical setup of Target Man + Striker. However, the idea of having a sort of staggered attack backed up by a pure AMC in the hole was attractive. The solution was then to involve the AMC more with the midfield, and to select one of the strikers to 'come back' a little to get involved in plays. The other striker remaining normal.

The only way to make all this work, was to begin from a 4-1-2-1-2 formation, and that's what Signal is. Usually I tended to discount such vertical formations from the get go, since I could never make them play anywhere near attractive. But I thought with the right combination of instructions, it might work. So, after starting from that strategic premise, and keeping in mind I wanted to have as little variation as possible to cope with as many situations as possible, I managed to distill Signal once again into three flavors: Normal, Attacking and Defending.

(more follows)

retired_jacque90

Signal Normal

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...nal_normal.jpg

A vanilla 4-1-2-1-2, with the wingers on sidearrowed MC positions. Nothing more. This is the normal flavor or 'stance' we would use at the beginning of every game. A balanced one, to measure the opponent. Whether the opposition attacked or defended, the team was balanced to try and handle it. Normally, most plays would start with the DMC distributing the ball as he saw fit, or many other times it could be one of the full backs that caught a rebound or a back pass, saw he had room to move the ball forward and went ahead with it. The two strikers remain up front, while the AMC in the hole comes back to get involved in the play and offer an additional passing option. Only if the DMC or the full backs could not find the wingers or the AMC to deliver the ball, it would be bombed upstairs to catch a forward run from the strikers.

Team Instructions

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...ormal_inst.jpg

The width is a smidge wider than normal, to try and offset the sheer verticality of the default formation, also to give it a slight accent of offense. Time wasting is set to rarely because at this stage of the game we need to concentrate on getting a good result, and not dwell on the ball unnecessarily. The difference between the Defensive Line and Closing Down sliders is my 'pressure zone' on the pitch, which will remain constant in size, but not in position as the game develops. We defend deep by default, first because it's quite nice against fast strikers, and second because the presence of a DMC that focuses on defense means we're not leaving that much space in front of the back four for the opposition to use. In other words, a DMC allowed me to defend deeper and still maintain cover in that crucial quarter of the pitch. Marking is zonal all across the board.

We would use Signal Normal for the whole first half, unless there's catastrophic evidence that it's not working for some reason (which, honestly, happened extremely rarely). At the end of the first half, I quickly evaluate the performance so far, considering not just the scoreline so far, but also the amount of possession and shots on goal. If we have not achieved a satisfactory result (which, to me personally is a difference of two goals in my favor), we will switch to the attacking flavor at half time and hope to take the game to them to get the result. If instead we're just disarming the opposition, or I know it's extremely unlikely for them to mount a comeback, we switch to the defensive flavor and start to kill the game. Simple as that.


Signal Attacking

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...signal_att.jpg

This is what we use to go get a result. As I have observed, Signal Normal can fail when either the opposition 'chokes' the midfield (say, a 4-5-1 or a 3-5-2) or when they start putting lots of pressure on our ball receivers. Those are the two scenarios I've most commonly observed that necessitated the switch to an attacking flavor. If that's the case, and we're down or tying the game, it's time to take it up to them.

First thing we do is to move the wingers into MR and ML positions proper, short farrowed. This forces their midfield to widen, and in the case of a 4-5-1, keeps their full backs on defense by giving them proper wingers to worry about. Since this essentially creates a 4-4-2 Diamond, we now tell our DMC to step it up and start operating higher up the pitch, in an attempt to cover the midfield hole left by the wingers. Since we're also pushing up the D-Line higher, there's not much space left behind the DMC, so he can safely move up quite a bit. Net result: we gain yards. I also accentuate this 'moving up the pitch' with individual and team mentality adjustments, turning the team into a more offensively-minded one. This has the added result of taking the AMC and turning him into a third striker of sorts, supporting the front two more often and getting into the box most of the time.

This formation does tend to score. But, even when it doesn't score, it wrestles control of the game from the opposition and forces them pretty much to rely on counters.


Team Instructions

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...l_att_inst.jpg

As you can see, the team is wider, and more offensive all around. When this happens, we are putting five men constantly on attack (six, when the DMC steps up from MC and finds the space to support the attack from behind it, acting as a sweeper behind the attack, an extra passing option to keep possession on their half, etc). We also move the 'pressure zone' higher up the field. It remains the same size, but we're now pressing mostly on their own half, to choke their ball delivery and short receivers right there on their half, attempting to kill most of their attempts. What this does is to shorten the amount of options they have to come back at us. Since they are pinned on their half, and we're pressing their exit options, more often than not the only option they have left is to bomb the ball up to their forwards. Since we're pushing the D-Line up, but not that much up, we're still in a good position to deal with those balls most of the time.


Signal Defending

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...signal_def.jpg

Finally, this is our defensive stance. We take the AMC and slot it as MC in a midfield of three, instructing him to try and remain there. We also remove the wide sarrows from the wingers, to reinforce the 'folding' of the whole team into a more narrow formation. The strikers are told to go wide with sarrows, hoping to gain the back from the remaining CDs, or to exploit the holes left by the opposition in the rare case they switch to any formation with 3 in the back. The whole team, except one or maybe two of the strikers (depending on the situation), is pulled back a few notches via team and individual mentalities. This is the only stance in which we change the nature of our game and turn to a more direct, quick passing, though not very heavily into those sliders. This has two aims: one, to be ready for a quick stab forward as a counter. Two, to just get the ball quickly away from our half or box. If we have switched to a decidedly defensive stance, it's not the time to play the beautiful game. It's time to set up shop, if we can, or at least get ready to play them on the counter.


Team Instructions

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...l_def_inst.jpg

What we consider a standard defensive setup (coupled of course by individual changes, as in telling the full back to just stay back, etc). We narrow the formation, and attempt to play the ball quickly up the field to receive as little pressure as possible. Most notably, we move the 'pressing zone' as far back as we can, so we're essentially pressing in our half only and we're not getting out of position in individual, wild pressing attempts. We start wasting time often to play with the clock and the opposition's nerves and because we're bad seeds like that.

We also attempt to move the balls to the flanks, even if we don't have proper wingers, just to avoid playing it right to the oppositions center in case they are packing players there in an attempt to crash and overload our lines. We switch the whole team to man marking, trying not to leave anyone alone.

I have not ticked counter attack because I have observed the team still attempts quite a few counters without it.


Using Signal

This is a summary of the way I've been using it:

- Start with Signal Normal, and maintain it for the first 45 minutes, unless:
----- Clear failure (ex., 0-2 down in the first 15-20 minutes)
----- There's a need to go get goals from the beginning (ex., when down in aggregate on second legs of cup ties, etc.)

If Signal Normal works well, and we're up in the score, maintain it for the second half.
If Signal Normal works well, but we're tied at half-time, switch to Signal Attacking.

Once the scoreline is favorable (personal definitions of 'favorable' differ. Mine is up by 2 goals):

- Switch back to Signal Normal

or

- Switch to Signal Defensive if we just want to kill the game or attempt to force them to expose themselves to counters for whatever reason.

Signal is no different to any tactical system - Sometimes it just doesn't work, and it needs to be adapted. Signal is not a 'super tactic' system. Sometimes we need to adapt it because of the opposition we face. Some other times, we need to adapt it because of the qualities of our own sides and what they can realistically do.


---

Overall I'm quite happy, not just because of Signal delivering results, but also that I was able for the first time to actually put into practice some concepts I had in my head. I've noticed the general team performances tend to get better and better as time passes and if you can manage to keep most of the squad together. Having the reserves and the youth teams playing Signal every time also proved to be a huge boon, since I was able to slot players from those sides into the first team during injury crises with very little adaptation needed: Most players already jumped in knowing what to do, and their adaptation was visibly easy.

I'd be very interested if you can give it a try and see how it works with other teams and leagues. By default, the way I fine tuned it was to the River side, which is quite a good technical side. The front triangle is on short passing most of the time, midfield on mixed and defense on direct, so you will need to adjust to the realities of your chosen side and league. I'm guessing that this is a system that works well on average or better sides, if you can slot very technical players in it. But, I might be surprised and end up eating my words if it works well with a variety of teams. One of the keys is to give it lots of time and let your players get used to it.


Download: http://fmdownloads.net/index.php?action=downloadfile&fi...gnal.zip&direct ory=&

Give it a try and tell me what you think. I'd be specially interested in any changes and adaptations you saw fit to make, and what was the result.

Many thanks to Leroy1883, Rashidi, arteta, wwfan and the rest for the good insight and inspiration.

retired_kellyk

You're after me heart...the lazy git in me salutes you...but you're still using a "tactic system"...well I guess that will work for people. But if I may say so, some of the tactics just need minor tweaks here and there in a game and they will still be defensively solid.

I'm not a big fan of tactic systems as many will know by now...but they can work. The challenge as always with any style of play that involves multiple tactics is...how do I know when to change?

Knowing what to do just by looking at the 2D screen is very tough; I was just commenting on one thread and made the mistake of not knowing where the Dline was in one formation, that happens when you use multiple systems.

The approach sounds ok, you have now created a base template to work from, I'm very certain you can still maintain defensive, possessive and attacking postures using each tactic in a slightly different way.

Having said that you have kept it rather simple I must say by offering a simple tactic set.

retired_hope

What an excellent thread, well done to you sir.

Like Rashidi, I'm not a fan of tactical sets. If I have more than one tactic it is usually because of a formation change with tactics that are very different from my preffered formation.

I think it would be relatively easy to tweak from all flavour of Signal, which would make your tactics less rigid. Sometimes you don't need to do all changes, perhaps just D-line or click counter-attacking.

Chandaman, this is good stuff and I commend you for expanding other ideas to the next level, this is what everyone should be doing when they have success.

I've never managed in South America so I will bow down to your superiour tactical knowledge of how football is played there.

I might take a holiday and give Signal a go for a season to see how it gets on in the leagues down there.

Thanks again :thup:

retired_skyler900

Well after a great thread like that i would be an idiot not to try it i will report back with how its gone

retired_saltcreek

Ah, the 4-1-2-1-2 formation. I'm using a similar setup myself not that different from your attacking setup except the DMC and AMC have farrows and sarrows respectively, among other things. Your description of it is spot on by the way. Especially the AMC's role.



And it's been a while since I last played a season in South America (Brazil LLM...), but do you come up against the 4-2-2-2 formation a fair bit? With 2 DMCs and 2 MCs with sarrows?

retired_jacque90

Thank you all for the comments.

rashidi:

Yeah, that's the thing. I tried to provide some guidelines, but that's just how I use it. The method will definitely change when used in different teams and against different opposition, so it is a bit of trial and error until you develop your own method of changing. For example, I used the Defensive flavor to contain the usual switch to 4-2-4 with good results, but you do have to monitor the game, even in highlights. And depending on the opposition, some other times I just came out for the second half with Defensive on, trying to kill the game right there, which is a bit early in the game to start with the time wasting, but it works against inferior teams.

That said, the silver lining is its simplicity. If the tactical system works overall, you only have a couple of choices at all times. If the system doesn't work for your team, then it's the system itself, and no amount of choices is going to make it better.

It's a bit of a gamble


Leroy:

Oh, definitely. I like to think of this as just a template. I didn't go completely nuts with individual instructions/roles all over the place, and I didn't go to extremes with team instructions. It should be relatively easy to adapt to different sides and players.

Like you said, if you have faster strikers than me, why not just change the Defensive flavor to be a purely counter-attacking stance? If you have wingers and a DMC whom are really good with the ball, why not shorten their passing? Etc.

In FM at least, most South American teams by far will default to a short passing, possession game. I think the 'switch' to more direct types of football happens even 'lower' in reputation than in other leagues. But I did observe many teams switching to 5-4-1 while trying to contain Signal. Don't know if they changed their passing, though. The switch to the 4-2-4 late in the game is still there and happens really often, as it does elsewhere in other continents I think.

Most popular formations I've come across during trying Signal:

- Flat 4-4-2
- Flat 4-4-2 with short farrowed wingers
- 4-3-1-2 with AMC in the hole and DMC as MC
- Same as above 4-3-1-2 but with wide sarrowed FCs

A couple of times I came up against teams playing 4-4-1-1 and 3-5-2 Attacking, but those are a small minority. Haven't seen any teams starting from the get go standing as 4-5-1, 5-4-1 or 4-3-3 a'la Chelsea with FC, AML and AMR.


Anti-Tactic:

Yeah, we're both probably achieving the same positional results, only that I did it via Team and Individual mentalities.

Yeah, more than a fair bit. Brazilian teams in cups usually came out like that. Internacional, Santos and Sao Paulo come to mind, standing like that. That 4-2-2-2 was the bane of many of my cup escapades in the past, but Signal handled it well. It's still a tough one to crack, particularly when playing away against it. Lost/tied a handful of games facing that one.

Locally, the closest thing I came across was San Lorenzo (with Veira managing), that stands 4-2-2-2 Defensive, but with the wingers in proper ML and MR positions, no arrows. It's just as bad as the Brazilian flavor because you always have the center of their defense packed with 2 DCs and 2 DMCs. Really hard to break through. In fact, now that I think about it, I received one of the biggest defeats against that one, 1-4. It was one of those games in which we kept crashing against a brick wall and no amount of changing anything worked. It was one of those games.

But yeah, Brazilian teams love their weird 4-2-2-2s don't they.