Chapter 1: Mentality and Defensive Line
The mentality slider has two main affects on the way that your team will play.
Positional
Your players will position themselves relative to where the ball is on the pitch. If you use an attacking mentality then your players will position themselves further up the pitch relative to the ball and a defensive mentality will see them play deeper relative to the ball.
The advantages of playing with an attacking mentality is that you will have players in positions to create more chances for your team. The disadvantages are that the space behind your defence will have got bigger, increasing the opportunity of a quick break by the other team. By playing defensively you reduce the space behind your defence, but your players will be unable to create opportunities in attack without first moving the ball up field.
Actions
Mentality also has an effect on the choices that your team will make when passing the ball or attempting to score. An attacking mentality will see your team look for forward passing options, they will generally look to shoot if the opportunity has even a chance of making it into the opponent’s net. Playing defensive will mean that you team will still look to pass the ball forward, but with more patience and only when they consider it to have a high chance of success, if not then they will look to pass side ways or back to a team mate, maintaining possession and allowing the attack to start again.
The defensive line slider allows you to change the positional aspect of your defensive line.
As stated above when playing with an attacking mentality your team will play further up the field relative to the position of the ball. A quick break by the opposition is made even more dangerous if the opposing forwards have good acceleration or pace or your defensive line lacks it.
You can use the defensive line slider to play you back line deeper reducing the space behind the defence for the other team to run into. Your defenders will still act with an attacking mentality and still take up their normal position based on their mentality when your team is in possession of the ball., but will drop deeper in a better position to intercept any attack when possession is lost. Increasing the depth of your line will increase the space between you defence and midfield. This gets worse as your mentality get higher and it will present a problem if the opposition has a creative midfield or strikers who like to dribble the ball from deep as they will be afforded more time on the ball to compose themselves and make a good pass or dribble past a unsupported defensive line. This is where using a player in the defensive midfielder position helps as it fills this gap. If you like to play with a flat midfield as I do then just reduce the individual mentality of either one or both your central midfielders so that they play deeper relative to the ball and fill the space.
If you play short passing then also consider pushing up your defensive line to support your team. You should do this if you consider your defenders to be faster than the opposing team. Pushing up increases the chances of your back line wining the ball back after losing possession . It does however increase the space behind the defenders. Use of the offside trap is an option here as it will stop the break dead in it’s tracks, if not then your back line should still be fast enough to recover in time.
The more direct you play the less useful it is to push up as your passing is longer and so playing either a normal line or a deep line when against pace is preferable. Long ball teams will always benefit from playing a deep line because if you don’t win the header up front expect the ball to be heading back your way over the top.