Ok, so I wasn't planning on putting up in depth analysis showing how this method works, but I feel it would help understanding of how simple it really is. So unless people have objections, I would like to add a match by match report for my season at Watford (picked because they are the poorest team in the Premiership in real life).
Pre Season Adjustments
As I said in my guide at the top, my first task is to look at my squad and figure out what I think my strongest starting line up is and where I need to strengthen. I thought that this was my best selection of players:
Line Up.
I didn't think my side had a decent enough right winger or right back, so my first task was to find some players to fit in. I had a £3million budget and loaded up an old shortlist I had and flicked through it. I made
these signings. I felt alot happier now, I didn't actually sign a right midfielder but I felt the quality I brought in would fit into the team from the off. I then determined that I thought my new strongest starting line up was
this one. So that's the formation I decided to use. I let my assistant get through my friendlies (I don't care about these results, it's just for match fitness). I was nearly ready for my first game of the season, away against Aston Villa.
My next important step was to do the time consuming attribute calculations (using the EXACT method stated in my first post, no adjustments or suggestions taken into account during my first save of testing). I filled out the chart I posted in order of starting line up and ended up with the following
Watford Calculations.
The thing I love about these calculations, is that when you look at that chart - it shows perfectly how the side lack in quality. It looks totally unadvernturous, like you would expect from a poor team. Not one player qualifying for 'often', nobody with creativity over 15. The calculations naturally produce the expected from the defence, no forward runs on centre backs, with nobody else in the first 11 having normal tackling other than defenders and my more defensive midfielder. To me that looks a perfect representation of my sides weakness, and also the the best way to stand a chance of living with it.
First Premiership Match
Aston Villa away is not the nicest first fixture of the season, but it could have been worse. My
scout report is totally vague and tells me absolutely nothing... great! The
pre match odds show that I am not expected to win at all. I therefore assume (as my scout hasn't seen a Villa game) that they're going to play very attacking against me. So I need to choose my "Odds to lose, attacking apponents" tactic out of my 6 available. The most defensive.
I choose this and go to the match screen to look at how Villa are going to line up. The
formations screen surprised me. Thanks alot Mr "Scout", that's hardly a 4-4-2. Oh well I wasn't going to change my tactic anyway. I think this might be important so I will bold it:
Coming into matches, I leave my passing style and closing down unticked in every players individual instructions - so the team is playing to their strengths but able to use team instructions to control how they play as a unit - alot of people won't like this but I love this approach. I start with all the team instructions sliders right in the middle, see how the game starts, if I'm playing well I leave them as they are, if I'm struggling I adjust my passing/tempo/closing down slightly to see if it helps. Simple.
The result I got exceeded my expectations by far, not only winning the game 1-0, but actually dominating whilst away from home. Here is the match in screenshots:
Result & Match Stats Player Ratings Player Stats Action Zones
The main problem people have been suggesting, is the use of subsitutes messing up player instructions. I was forced into a change at half time through injury, and it took around 5-10 seconds to adjust the player instructions for the player coming on (due to having them written out on the chart I displayed earlier in this post). I used my second substitute to replace the player with the poorest condition at the time around 75mins - mainly to inject a bit of energy and take off the most tired player. Then I used my final substitution to waste time right at the end (and to give myself an extra defensive player to give me the best chance not to throw away a result that it looked like I deserved.
Summary
A good, and to be honest, suprising start. I don't think this will happen every week, simply because teams will outplay me. But the tactics and the approach seemed to be sound in this game.
If there are any questions, please feel free to ask. If people don't want to read these reports on matches in this save, then I understand, it's alot of extra reading, just let me know. I am planning on saving all the matches this season as pkms and then uploading them as a zip (or maybe if someone can suggest a file that people will trust to open more than a zip, that would be great) somewhere so that everyone who wants to look at how this approach works in game during matches, can do so - picking out situations they find most useful to see from my fixture list (which I will detail with what happened) such as winning and holding on, losing and coming back, parking the bus etc.
Linear Mode
