retired_missalee

Good topic, and having just read "Damned United" which is all about Brian Clough and his days at Leeds and Derby I can concur that he really focused on the players themselves and pretty much left tactics down to them. First thing he did when he went to Leeds was to rip up the carefully prepared dossiers on the opposition !

So to put this in context of FM2008, he would probably say that there is far too much emphasis on tactics and that the player ability, morale and temperament should be the most important factors.

As already stated in another post, do we really want a game which allows us to blitz through the season unbeaten just because we have bought the best players ? I for one don't. I find the task of countering other teams tactics constantly challenging, occasionally fustrating, but on the whole addictive fun. We have the (admittedly fairly limited) ability to man manage through team talks, media interaction and these should not be underestimated in FM2008 just as IRL.

IRL of course it is a blend, the Havant players were told to pressure the box, not to sit back and it reaped a sort of result for them. On player ability alone, they should never score two goals against Liverpool. However mix in the very high morale (I think they would all without exception have been on "superb" !), tactics and team talk (probably told "no pressure - go out and enjoy the game")they pulled off the highly unlikely feat of going in front twice. Rafa would have tweaked at half time, given a good team talk and bingo, the game changed 2nd half.

So to summarise, in todays game and in FM2008 I believe players (and I'm including all aspects of the players, not just ability) AND tactics win you games and we have to carefully manage the two to get the best results. In Brians day, tactics (and I really mean in depth tactical preparation) certainly played a lesser part.

retired_elpata

A good post

retired_roshawnda82

A good post </BLOCKQUOTE>

pauljo24 I completely agree that in FM and in real life you ideally need both the right tactics (or at least a basic grasp of tactics) AND good players What I'm saying is that perhaps its its 55% players alone and 45% tactics, man-management training etc in real life. This is perhaps portrayed less accurately in FM where sometimes it can seem that you need to score 100% on your fictional 'tactics exam for coaches' as a pre-requisite to then be able to move onto getting the right players in, training, man-management etc. But in fact, I don't actually think this is the case, I just think that given how overwhelming to some users the tactical interface is or can seem, that alone adds additional weight to the importance of tactics within the game.

That said, I think it is very very very difficult (nay impossible) to properly translate the tactical side of real life football into football manager. Or rather, that statement is predicated on the fact that FM aims to (and should) be: not a walk in the back, challenging, and in depth. The simpler (and arguably more intuitive) the tactical interface is, the easier and less in-depth the game becomes.

I think the right balance needs to be struck by SI between:

(a) Tactical dominance: previous versions i.e. 'super-tactics' and other 'exploitative tactics' that allowed a poor side to massively over-achieve.
(b) Player dominance: which would completely alienate most fans who (like myself) really enjoy the tactical side of things.
(c) Tactical simplicity: not rewarding the users who want to go in-dept and really implement their clever strategies
(d) Tactical ambiguity and uncertainty: which often causes frustration among the masses whether it be actual or perceived.

Arguably, FM2008 avoids the first three pitfalls and hopefully with patch 8.02 then (d) will also be sorted so that we can really see certain things happening or not happening that we perhaps can't currently see.

Cleon oh wow cheers for adding it to the tactical bible, nice one!

retired_FaultyFate

Lots of good posts here :thup: Here are my thoughts.

The main difference between real life football and the game is that in real life you cannot really say which player is better, because you don't have attributes scale etc. We could argue forever who is the best DC IRL - Terry, Ferdinand, Gallas or anybody else. On the other hand, IRL a manager can watch player, talk to him, listen to opinions of other players, etc. to conclude whether player will fit to the team and tactic. Hence, IRL players seem to be more important than tactic due to the fact that in most cases people are chosen to fit tactic. Some attempts to create a team from "star" players without clear understanding how to blend them together have not been really successful in most cases (the most recent ones that come to mind are Real Madrid a few years ago and Inter Milan up to this season). Oh, btw both Real and Inter stayed on top or close to it but fans were still not happy at all. Chelsea could have been another example, but Mourinho had tactic in mind in most cases, they just tried to buy the best who suit the tactic. And those who don't really fit to it (Shevchenko, Ballack) have never played as good as someone would expect by simply looking at the players' stats.

In FM you rely on a few characteristics provided by scout and players' attributes. You may try to conclude something about player performance by watching matches in 2D, but it's not nearly comparable with RL. Making players dominate over tactic would convert the game into Football Agent game but it's not what we want. If players were made more important than tactic in the game, the game would become boring as well as if "Diablo" type tactics still existed. Thanks to SI that's not the case. There is no unique path to win an that's what makes FM enjoyable - you can simply start with new team in new league and unlike other games it will be a new challenge. The price we pay is that game sometimes seems illogical, sometimes too random and sometimes frustrating. I guess technically it's the only way to avoid unique path scenario which most of the computers games have. Each new release improves the game but it will never be perfect. But isn't it real life?

retired_kellyk

In terms of degree, succeeding in this game requires you
to be equally good in handling teamtalks, setting up the right tactic and finally finding the right player. When it comes to training, I don't really feel its a pivotal part of the game, because once you set it up right you're off and running.

When people tell me there's far too much emphasis on tactics, I can't see anything further from the truth; I take far longer to decide on the right players, then I do on making a tactic.

If you understand all 3 pillars of success, then the game becomes fundamentally easy the higher up the league you play. I have often felt that people over-complicate the game with their obsession on looking at a slider in terms of 20 notches. You don't need to do that when there are usually only 3 descriptions on the slider. Understanding what each description means is all that is needed. Perhaps I'll reopen the Fundamental Football Manager thread in due course, where I did deal with the simplicity of the game, once the dust settles.