Powermonger

Having been playing FM08 over the last few weeks I've come to realise that there is something missing from FM and that is a separate engine for match analysis.

As FM has evolved from release to release, tactics seem to be getting more involved and complex and it is starting to get too difficult on working out what you and your players are doing wrong when things go bad.

There have been a lot of posts since the official patch about poor one on ones which have been either blamed on a bug or poor tactics, us as players though can't know for certain what it is.

I also see alot of posts in the T&TT forum from frustrated players trying to work out the sliders or the various tactical settings and there is seems to be only a handful of players who are 'clued on' (Cleon, Rashidi, wwfan etc). The rest of us struggle on hoping what we see on screen and how we are interpretting the tactical settings is correct, often feeling more like work then enjoyment.

This is where the 'Match Analysis' engine comes into it, if FM is going to retain it's complexity in future versions then us as players need another tool to help organise our team and our tactics. Modern football managers have access to such tools (ProZone, Tango etc) and I think it's is a natural progress for something similar for FM.

Things I see the match analysis tools is more indepth possession statistics down to the positions, who keeps loosing the ball and why, ball distribution and passing patterns, attacking runs, attack & defence set play analysis, ability to highlight a single players and analyse their runs and input to the match etc. I'm sure there is many other things that could be added too.

At the moment we have tactics and we have training, but there is nothing us players have at our disposal to more methodically tie these two together which as it should be. A good match analysis engine would help with this and not make them seem so disjointed all the time.

The current match engine gives us basic statistics and for those dedicated enough we can sit and watch a whole match but even then it's very easy to miss things when so much can be happening on the screen.

I hope SI will seriously think about including such a feature because it's the only thing I can see missing from the game which would add to the complete manager experience.

spoonguardreturns

Brilliant idea, and one which I would certainly like to see implemented.

Even just some feedback on tactics would be nice. When you lose 10-0 to Arsenal, it would be nice to get a reaction on the end-of-match report, saying why you lost - if they were, for example, attacking down the right a lot, and you have a poor right back, or you were too attacking and they got behind your defence. It would be good to be able to see where we are going wrong.

buzzing_hornet

I disagree it would make it the complete manager experience but i t would certainly add a great deal to the game. The addition of something like prozone would enhance the already high detail level that you as a manager can go into and would certainly add to the "manager" feel of the game.

Perhaps you could ask your assistant or coach to view it as well and then get feedback from them.

I think i'm right in saying a certain CM has prozone on it's latest release. I can only hope that SI haven't missed a trick with this one and that Eidos haven't got a deal in place that stops anyone else using it :o

ajcardall

Hi folks,

I believe that this would be a really good addition to Football Manager in the future. I enjoy FM08 as I see it as a good and testing challenge, where as older games were a little too "easy", in my opinion.

However, FM08 can also be somewhat frustrating, especially if you're only a part-time player and don't have the time or know-how to devote to fine tuning tactics, which seems to be required at this level.

This proposed feature, I believe, would be beneficial to all players of all calibre as it provide, as stated, a chance for managers to see where things are coming undone. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to spot this with the 2D match engine. You may see a centre-back completely out of position for one of the opponent's goals, but is this a regular thing, or a one-off mistake? IE, will we need to alter the tactics, or not?

I, personally, do not have the time nor the patience to watch the game in "full", and currently only use Key events. As I said above, this may be misleading.

To summarise then, good idea, which, I believe, shouldn't bee too difficult to add...?