Cleon

Tactic tweaking is probably the most important thing on the game in terms of tactics and is the main reason why so many people feel their tactic is inconsistent. Its not a simple task tweaking, it is very complex as you need to understand what to change, when to change it and what it actually changes. In this thread I hope we can give you a better understanding and generate a decent discussion about one of the most troubled areas of FM for many users. Not every bit of info will be available from the off, this is more like a work in progress and can always be expanded on. It might also be worth noting that people do things differently and just because one particular person does something a particular way, it doesn't make it a rule and mean it will always work.. These are just peoples ways of doing things and just to give you a better insight of the things you can try.

Hopefully further in the article, I will be able to show you an example match taken from one of my saved games of what I tweaked and what the results where. But this might take a little bit of time as its quite a task writing it all down, but more importantly getting a game where I need to tweak several things. I might be best starting a new game for this actually, but its something I hope to have done at some stage anyway.

Often wonder what I mean when I say tweak to suit your needs? Then read on...

Let's start off by having a look at what determines you need to tweak.

The Basics

Before A Game

Tempo
Mentality
Defensive Line
Man Marking
Counter Attacking
Passing



In Game

You go a goal behind
Opposition getting too much space
A forced injury
A substitution
You see something worrying
Your style just isn't working

These are the most common things I look out for, and is one of the main factors before I tweak something. If something is working and my tactic is doing what I think is good, then I won't change anything. I don't tweak just for the sake of it, I only tweak if its needed. If I am being really dominant in a game, its very rare that I ever change anything, after all I am being dominant. So I must be doing something right?

Before you play your next fixture its quite possible to tweak a few things here and there, before you enter the game to give you what should be a slight advantage hopefully. How I determine what I tweak before a game depends on my scout report on the next opposition says. Most of it is really common knowledge and nothing no-one shouldn't be able to work out by reading what it says. Its nothing too complex or anything and in most cases, really easy to determine what needs to be done. For example my next game is against Newcastle and my scout said ' Newcastle play a defensive 442 and like a quick direct style to hit teams on the break'. Now this tells me I can play quite attacking against them, as they tend to sit deep and hit me on the counter attack. So as long as I don't over commit on the attacking front, I should have quite a few shots if I can break them down. Another thing I can do is play a short slow tempo game and try and limit the possession Newcastle have, because they play on the counter and rather direct, I should dominate possession in this game as at times they will give the ball away. So by playing short and slow I will be making them play a style which does not suit them at this time.

I will probably drop my defensive line slightly too, as i know they got fast strikers just by looking at their probable line up. So I don't want my defence to play too high or they might get caught out here, especially as my defenders lack pace. As you can see, I can change quite a few things here, it might seem a lot of messing about, but really its not. All this should take no longer than 30 seconds to change, it sounds harder than it actually is. Newcastle line up against me defensive as I am one of the better sides in the league now, but you get the drift about what I mean with scout reports hopefully? One more thing I should add, is that if my defenders have good man marking attributes then it might be worth while man marking their fast striker who is likely to cause me trouble, I find this helps keep them at bay most games.

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Thats all I've done so far, hopefully I will have the 2nd part done around the new year time and it will contain the in game tweaking as well. I would have not posted this yet, if it wasn't for me formatting my PC later today. So please bear this in mind, and remember that its a progression thread and not an instant over night help one.

Cleon

Is there a particular aspect of tweaking that people need me to touch on btw?

EB

Excellent post Cleon, thanks for taking the time to do this. :thup:

Regarding your man-marking of a fast striker.
Does your defender need to have good pace and acceleration as well as marking, or is his ability to mark the opponent out of the game good enough?

Jiimies

I´d like to hear your opinion about closing down settings. What is the relation between team closing down and individual settings? Do you tweak closing down according to scout report and how? Team or individual? High closing down against possession football and low against direct style? Thanks for sharing your observations, they are really making FM more enjoyable!

Cleon

A good question...

I tend to go for marking alone, I believe if the player has a good footballing brain then that is generally enough for me. Pace is a nice bonus, but not essential imo. Others might think it is essential though.

I never ever change my closing down at all, for me thats something that can be used the same every game. The only time I will change that is if someone is having too much possession and my players are backing off. But thats about it, hopefully I might be able to touch upon this in the match that I tweak. But as a rule its not something I mess around with game by game.

Oeffel

Nice Post Cleon, I agree it's one of the most important things to make a tactic better suited vs different sides.

I do have a question though:
Is there anything to do about increasing the shots on target in a game?
I'm managing PSV and when I play weaker side away, I tend to use a more dominating tactic with my team controlling the play and having the ball. But I rather seem to get quite a lot of shots in the direction of the opponents goal, but not really on target. I play a 4-1-3-2 or a 4-1-2-2-1 formation with my wingers as an important asset of my team. I'm not playing down both flanks cause it's kind of predictable IMO and I have some creative players in the centre also. No-one on my team is assigned to take long shots often. Should my team be playing more attacking?
This is what annoys me a bit to be honest. the passing completion is about 70-80%, which is OK IMO and the crossing completion is about 25%, rather low, but never seen this to be at 50% or so.

Cleon

Anything above 20% is average for crossing and normal imo.

As for more shots on target, I'm guessing you are struggling to break teams down and are limited to just long range efforts? If so, I struggled with somethign a bit simliar a while back, so I needed to up my tempo slightly and be a bit more attacking. Now I average around 3 goals a game with about 20 shots a game at least and 90% of them on target.

Oeffel

Ok thanks.
I'll give it a go, when playing a match where I dominate but don't seem to break their wall of defense.

Sounds logically to up the tempo.
Noticed that it wasn't players trying long range shots but the two strikers had to do the attacking work mostly with the two of them. So the midfielders arrived late in the box to support the attack. And further more the strikers missed some good chances. So generally an all tactic problem rather than a problem that needs in-game tweaking.

Let's see how this works out now.

Ekholm

First of all, great post as always, Cleon! KUTGW! :thup:

You mean you instruct the other centre-back to man-mark and the other to play zonal, presuming we are talking about back of four? What about tight marking; do you mark that fast striker tightly or not? What about other players, do you employ tight zonal marking? I'm asking because I'm sort of having some trouble with left centre-back man-marking the pacey striker tightly while the right centre-back plays tight zonal marking and would love to hear how you deploy your defense line and especially the two centre-backs.

Cleon

Ahh is a gap of mentality problem? By that I mean are your midfield too far away to support the strikers? If so you could try and make the mentalites simliar for midfield and strikers