retired_venomm

Good stuff, I'm glad it's working out for someone other than myself

I have currently just gone into March in my save, so I will try and finish the season today if I can and upload all the screenshots and then do a detailed summary of figures and where I feel improvements could be made.

retired_venomm

Here is the huge end of season analysis I promised in my last post. ANOTHER huge post warning – I’m really sorry, a lot of my posts have been super long in this thread, this one is full of info on what the tactic has achieved for me at Watford.

I finally finished my season with Watford. As there are around 20 games I have played since my last update I won’t be doing links to each and every single match stats. I instead have uploaded the whole season in match stats screenshots and pkms here if you really want to view them (if you don’t trust my figures below – all the evidence is in there). I don’t expect many people (if any) to download it as it is in zip format, but if people want to see the details of these games, this is where they are.

Final league table:


Graph:


I achieved my highly ambitious push for a top 8 position. Missing out on the EC by one place. I have been really happy with the season. I lost 11 games, which is far more than I would have liked, but a finish of 7th for a team predicted to come 19th is a considerable achievement in my opinion.

I am now going to present what I feel are tactically important stats from the season, and other things which may have had a factor in my achievement as well as some highly notable points.

[b]The Watford Season In Numbers[B]

[B]Team Stats[B] – using results from all competitions
Matches Player: 43
Matches Won: 17 - 40% (39.53488427%)
Matches Drawn: 13 – 30% (30.23255814%)
Matches Lost: 13 – 30% (30.23255814%)
Goals Scored: 59 (1.4 per match)
Goals Conceded: 58 (1.3 per match)
Average Result: 1-1 (from goals scored/conceded ratio – not most constantly achieved result)
Yellow Cards (Premiership Only): 20 2nd lowest in the league
Red Cards (Premiership Only): 0 Tied lowest in the league with 2 other teams

Possession Stats
Average Possession For (Using all screenshots link at the top): 51% (51.1627907%)
Average Possession Against: 49%
Matches Dominant (Over 50% possession): 27 – 62% (62.79069767%)
Matches Not Dominant (50% or less possession): 16 – 38%
Matches Tied (50% possession each): 6 – 13% (13.95348827%)
Matches Not Outplayed (Even possession or greater): 33 – 76% (76.74418605%)
Matches Outplayed (Less than 50% possession): 24%
Teams That Managed Even Or Dominant Possession Against Me: West Brom (once), Arsenal (twice), Man City (once), West Ham (twice), Portsmouth (twice), Liverpool (twice), Man Utd (twice), Bolton (once), Fulham (once), Chelsea (once), Blackburn (once)

Shot Stats
Total Shots For: 475
Average Shots Per Game: 11 (11.04651163)
Total Of Shots For On Target: 190
Average Shots On Target Per Game: 4 (4.418604651)
Percentage Of Shots On Target: 40% (Exactly)
Total Shots Against: 418
Average Shots Against Per Game: 9 (9.720930233)
Averaging 2 more shots per game than the opponent.

Player Stats
See this screenshot for detail
Average Player Rating: 6.98 (6.986923077) This figure was calculated using only players that had started more than 10 games during the season, players with less than 10 starts and large amounts of substitute appearances were seen as minor players with maybe unfair ratings. Players with few matches total could have inflated/deflated totals, players used as substitutes often only player 15 minutes of the match, usually not allowing them to get more than a 6 rating due to time allowed for making an impact

Potential Factors That Influenced In Some Way
Signings made: The signings obviously gave my side extra quality so I shall do quick demonstrations on how much of an impact they have made on my side.

Eddie Johnson – 42 appearances - 7.29 Average Rating (Team Rating Contribution of 8%) Squad top scorer with 23 goals, also with the most assists with 12)

Jose Sosa – 35 appearances (1 extra sub) – 6.94 Average Rating (Team Rating Contribution of 7%) 2 goals and 1 assist.

Pawel Golanski – 42 appearances (1 extra sub) 7.00 Average Rating (Team Rating Contribution of 7%) 1 assist.

Vincent Enyeama – Not included as only played 5 matches total.

So these 3 players contributed to 23% of the teams over all rating of 90.83 (average ratings added up for players starting more than 10 matches) which is quite considerable.

Summary
Throughout my highly successful season, surprisingly I only managed one manager of the month award. Other than that, everything else went exactly to plan, and in most cases, much better than expected – proving this method can work with a smaller team, but will need a new formula method for working out ideals for lower league sides with players having reduced attributes.

Out of the 11 teams that managed to either match my possession or better it., 4 of them are from the big 4 (Arsenal, Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool) with Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd managing to do so in both league matches. The rest we’re pretty random (West Brom was in a League Cup match). This leaves me to believe that if I had a more defensive tactic, maybe a 5-3-2, 5-4-1 or 4-5-1 (as advised elsewhere in this thread by other people) I could most likely put up more of a fight against these sides.

On the whole though it was a very successful (thankfully) that this tactic can work with clubs of lower ability levels, giving them a good chance of taking points they shouldn’t really be getting out of matches.

I hope to see some replies from other people about how successful they are being using this method also, as I feel it has a lot of potential, especially if fine tuned. I do have plans to take this further, but not just yet (the demonstration season took a lot of posting what with screenshots, descriptions etc) and I fancy a bit of a break from it. I might go into greater detail if the thread has enough interest to actually warrant it, if not I shall just let this slip off the radar, only resurrecting it if I find a similar method that works when FM08 is released.

Questions etc all welcome, I will keep the thread on favourites in my profile, so I can see when other posts have appeared and answer everything the best I can.

Thanks again for reading

retired_Honemaster

Hello Paulsgruff,

I´m playing with Man Utd, in my 5th season, and switch to your method.

I played 3 games already, and I have beat West Brom (5-0) at home, and Sporting CP (4-1) at home too. And I lost to Everton (5-3) away.

What team isntructions you give to your team, at home, and away????

Thanks for the help.

retired_mgavlick

For a thread of this quality, you can quote anything of mine you wish.

I played around with your method of linking aggregating individual atttributes with individual instructions a while back, and, although I didn't do it long enough to come to any definitive conclusions, it did show promise. Personally, I am more in favour of Mourinho/Benitezesque total tactical systems into which you fit the player, but I would love to see if you can achieve seriously good performances over a few seasons using this method. It would provide a realistic parallel to real life footbal strategies: the systematic tactician versus the man manager (the first focusing on holistic football strategy in which the system absorbs the player; the second aiming to get the best out of each player, allow them their heads and let the system flow around their individual traits).


The positivist authoritarian and the liberal-minded facilitator. I really like that.

retired_venomm

I'm just going to skim back through the thread a bit and answer a few of the questions that I have missed out (at the moment ignoring the ones about refining the calculations system - I shall come to that at a later time hopefully when I have played around with this a little more). I am going to abandon my Watford game after the first season and try the current bottom team from another division in Europe, possibly Italy. I know the Premier Division inside out on the FM series and want to test this against opponents that I am a little more cloudy on so I can't predict the way the sides will come at me like I can in England without too much effort (whilst still hopefully retaining the interest factor in the thread - as it will still be against recognisable teams in Seria A)

Hi Gustavo BH, sorry I didn't reply to you sooner, I just wanted to get all the stuff about my Watford season finished and posted while I was in the mood for loads. To be totally honest with you I ignored team instructions completely when it came to starting matches. I just used whichever of my 6 presets matched the odds/opponent mentality. The league graph I posted of my final standings was from an intire season of leaving my team instructions sliders bang in the middle for literally every minute of every game, no adjusting - but being extremely strict with always adjusting player instructions for players that come on/replace injured players before kick off.

It is an aim of mine to come around to team instructions now I've had a full season of seeing what player instructions alone can do with the the smaller team in my Watford game. So it isn't something I have covered yet (other than to direct you to wwfan's thread which is a great resource for how to go about setting these). The lack of team instructions is probably what is undoing your performances as no players have set ways to pass the ball, it could all be pretty random. Without any major control being put into place on passing/tempo/width, specially with a team potentially on as high a creative freedom bracket that my method would result in like Man Utd, this could lead to players just doing their own thing and not really working together as they should. My Watford save was probably aided by this as all players were on such low creative freedom/runs instructions due to lack of quality that they simply stuck to their standard duties. I will come around to it during my next save game, sometime over the next week... promise

I too would love to play the game in a way where I could fit players into a tactic, but after playing the game since Christmas, FM07 started to really wind me up in this sense. When I started to lose games I was expecting to win (constantly too), I was never really fully aware of what I was doing wrong. I don't know why, but no matter how much effort I put in, how many guides I've followed, I eventually decided once and for all that I couldn't do it that way without getting extremely frustrated, mostly about wondering why it was working well for other people and not for me - looking at it now it was probably down to my lack of enthusiasm for tweaking. I get bored pretty quickly of changing things slightly and leave them as they are for several games in a row, and pay the price.

So I came up with this. To be honest, my approach is alot more un-user friendly to be frank. Alot of people simply won't want to spend the sort of time required on figuring out the player instructions the way I do whenever they want to start a new save - which is very understandable. It would be great if there was some sort of program that could grab the required stats from a profile and do the maths for you, it would save so much time. However focussing around the individual has seemed to leave me far less need to fiddle around whilst still achieving results, which was my main goal.

I am going to start a new save sometime over the next couple of days, as said at the top, which will probably be in Seria A (actually including team instructions this time) - and with your suggestion, maybe make it into a 3 (or if I have the patience - 5) season test, to see how the tactics hold up over a greater distance with a small club than just a single season.

spudnutsncoffee

Looking forward to this. This is a very interesting post. Together with wwfan I really think you have found something good.

retired_FaultyFate

Hi paulsgruff,

Nice results with Watford. I would be very interested to see your progress with some Italian team, since i am playing Sampdoria Btw, I do not think you need to post screenshots every time. It is time consuming, and you are obviously not going to cheat just to prove your point. But it would be great if you could post your thoughts based on the performance.

I have partially employed your method and I think it works very well. Here are a few ideas that might be usefull.

Once I calculated stats for my defenders, I have found that all of them are good at marking (I used almost the same formula as for tackling, except instead of tackling I used marking, and also added pace and acceleration to make sure my defenders can confront pacey strikers). Therefore I decided to go with man marking for my defenders, but zonal marking for the rest of the team (i play 442 diamond). My theory is that in this case once an opposition player is close to the box, he is covered by one of the defenders, and my DM and/or wingers cover zones left by that defender.

I used only two global tactics. In the first I set global team mentality to 6 and defensive line to 6 as well. All my defenders are on team mentality, DM on individual mentality of 8, and my wingers, AMC, and FCs have individual mentality 10 and above. I use counter attack option, focus passing down both flanks, short to mixed (7-8) passing and slow to mixed tempo (7-8). All my attackers (wingers, AMCs and strickers) have very good pace (15+). In everything else I use your method to calculate settings with modification I mentioned in this thread before. This setup works excelent away (at least for me), and very good at home against strong teams (Inter, Milan, Roma, Chelsea and Lyon in CL). For home games against weaker teams, I set my CD's on individual mentalities 8 (so that they stay back most of time), DM on 10, FCs on 16, and the rest of the team on global mentality 13. According to theories such setup may cause some gaps, but since I play against weaker team with this settings, it is not a problem, especially since my CDs mannmark opposition forwards, so that I do not allow fast breaks (In five games I saw only one dangerous counter attack against me). I also do not use counter attack in this case.

With this settings I managed to win Seria A with Sampdoria (beat Inter and Roma by 3 points) and got to CL semi (lost to Chelsea on away goal 1-2h, 1-0a). I saw a significant improvement in my game once I calculated settings using your method (I was 5 points behind after 22 games in Seria A). I should also say, that in most cases I do not have more posession than opponents, but on the other hand most of their posession takes place far from my box, and and most of their chances are shots from distance and set pieces.

Now I am going to create a simple template in Excel to calculate settings. The reason is that many stats have dropped between seasons, some of my players were injured, I am going to bring a couple new players, and, maybe, try a new tactic with 3 back (SW+2 DCs). Therefore, I do not want to calculate settings every time I change once i rotate squad or change tactic (I believe settings for WB should be slightly different from once for FB).

I would like to know your (and others) thoughts on my approach as well as any new idea.

Thanks

retired_cooliomydear

Hi PaulsGruff,


Well done on the post. I use a similar kind of system, using the player stats to set the individual instructions but with one difference. I will only adjust the sliders for an individual if the value is significantly higer or lower than the teams average. This is to prevent the overall tactic from becoming too incoherent. Significantly higher for me is more than half the average for all fieldplayers.


How do you use your system in combination with "common-sense" tactics, like when you get a high "run-with-ball" value for your center-back?

retired_venomm

Hi kolobok. Great idea on the Excel template! If you create one that is particularly easy to use and edit, maybe you would upload it somewhere for those of us that are crap with Excel - such as myself

About your idea of 3 at the back - I have been trying to create a successful 3 man defence ever since FM07 came out - and have not yet succeeded. However, I think I will always keep trying to make one work because I love the thought of having an position available for a creative player or striker.

The nearest I found to a reliable 3 man defence was to actually use 3 centre backs (tall with good heading/jumping/positioning etc) all playing as central sweepers right in front of the keeper. The nearest players to them were 2 DMs (very strong, fast, high work rates, tackling, positioning etc) that both have 'free roles' to roam around, forward runs on rarely (to prevent them getting caught up field) and no forward or back arrows at all. My idea was to have 1 really good dog-like midfielder (Keane/Gattuso style) with the most defensive mentality, and 1 Carrick style DM, that can tackle but has more use as a quality passer. I set the Keane style DM to play the ball as short as possible (to try and find the Carrick style player as often as he can) and then the Carrick style player set to normal/attacking mentality with mixed/direct passing to get the ball forward using their high passing/decisions ability to get accurately out of my own half.

It was reasonable - but never a league winner, even with a top side. Too much responsibility was on the DMs to break up the play, and it didn't take much for them to get low ratings as their potential of making a mistake was quite a risk due to the defence being literally nearly a quater length of the pitch behind them. So if you find a nice 3 man defence approach I would be very interested to hear your set up.

Hi tancque, good question. I haven't really found a solid centre back that I would consider playing that has a dribbling attribute high enough to get his figures into a high 'run with ball' bracket yet. If one did appear that had a rediculously high 'runs with ball' after doing these calculations, I would actually let him use it, just to see what effects it has. "I haven't tried it" is the honest answer I'm afraid, as I haven't had a player that has got himself such a setting from his attributes. It might be a total disaster, but also you might find that a dribbling defender can get himself out of some nasty situations simply by going by an appoaching player before playing the ball.

No matter how much something seems to go against common sense, I will still use it as it is one of the players strengths - unless they consistantly prove to me that it isn't working, then I would tone it down. So why not try to use it and see what results it has? A high quality dribbling defender could be a hidden gem in extremely awkward situations. I might have to see if I can find one a little later tonight to try this out

retired_cooliomydear

Hi Paulsgruff and Kolobok,

"Magic" centerbacks can be found in lower-league teams, where the star player can play in virtual all positions. Usually an old star player on his return.

If you use an "stats-based" system in lower league teams you will have to compensate for the general lower stats of the players in that league. For expample, a player with a RunWithBall of 11 could be set to often, because the defenders generally have lower stats too.

I have tried your system of using averages instead of using 1 stat for setting the sliders and it shows promise. I do not understand why you use anticipation for throughball and crossbal. It seems to me that anticipation kicks in when you don't have the ball, and throughball and crosses when you do have possession.
But the others averages are responding good. It is a lot of work though, before every game. But Koloboks Excel sheet system saves some time

I'm experimenting at this moment to incorporate opponentstats in my system. For example, if you have a player with a high forward-runs value, like 15, but his direct opponent in the field also has a high value for defending (tackling, speed, acceleration, anticipation), like 17, then I don't set forward-runs to "often". But this still needs a lot of tweaking.

But keep up the good work and keep posting results.