retired_roshawnda82

Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes

Discuss the truth of this statement with respect to both real life and FM.

(God that sounds like an exam question but it wasn't meant to be....honest )

{I've seen a lot of discussion touching on this issue in various different threads on different topics that have all generally descended into the proverbial 'train wrecks' so I thought this thread might give the opportunity for some genuine discussion on this. And, well, I'm a massive fan of Ole Big Head.)

retired_dellydoolittle

defenetly players. manager manages and tactics is (just) one of his aspects. in my opinoum tactical influence is too big in FM. and confusing a little.

retired_alma33

I dont agree with Mitja.
I think tactic plays only a 50% role maximum on your team performance. Morale, weather, form, stats plays a big role here.
Ppl complain because they dont know that a worse stat player can be on a better form and play better, or they cant accept that a worse team can actually defend against them. And they cant accept that team talk is veeeery important.

I think they did a great job on this game to show this, but they could give us players more info, since i learned much on forums around the net and not on the manual

retired_roshawnda82

To kick off the discussion my view lends itself to an automotive analogy in terms of what you get out od the show room, and then modifcations you can make to improve and upgrade your car.

Take the example of a BMW M3 and a Ford Mondeo. All other things being equal, out of the showroom, a BMW M3 costs more and out-performs the Ford Mondeo. Here price and power/technical superiority is directly proportional to performance. Now, lets just say that I'm driving the BMW in a race against the Mondeo. But the Mondeo has been tweaked to improve performance AND is being driven by The Stig, well then it might be a much closer race.

The point being that players in FM as in real life should be the main focus, your bread and butter, and then tactics, training, media etc should add to (or indeed if done badly take-away from) the baseline that is the quality of yours players. Many a modern day manager when interviewed has rightly asserted that football is essentially a very simple game, with no big secret other than having the best players. FM rightly introduces other factors such as training, media and tactics, but with regard to media and tactics arguably just over-cooks a little for my liking.

Now, back to the cars again. This time let's take our humble Ford Mondeo and compare it to lets say a Mercedes SLR or a Ferrari or better still a Bugatti Veyron. This time, in my race, it doesn't really matter that the Stig is driving the Mondeo and that it has been tuned to improve its performance, I'm driving a Bugatti Veyron and I basically just need to keep it on the road and press the accelerator and turn occasionally. The point being that the Bugatti is SO far superior to the Mondeo that it would really be for the Bugatti to lose the race for itself, for example by crashing, rather than the Mondeo having any hope of winning on its own accord.

This is the general position as I see it in real life, but this isn't accurately replicated in FM in my opinion. Now that's not to say that the Bugatti can never be driven badly and crash and the Mondeo can never be driven well and win, but that those circumstances should be the exception to the rule, rather than (due to the extra emphasis FM places on tactics and media) a more regular occurence.

retired_roshawnda82

This is my viewpoint in terms of how matches are decided in real life and thus perhaps how they should be decided in FM i.e. with slightly less emphasis on tactics, especially given the complexity of the tactical interface.

HOWEVER, I personally (like many thousands of others no doubt) absolutely love the tactical side of FM, and for me, the enjoyment I get out of signing good players is at most equal to (and in reality probably slightly less than) the enjoyment I get out of spending time on a tactic and seeing my ideas being replicated on the pitch.

The question in my therefore is, how to successfully marry the two?

The answer I hope will come from SI and be short and sweet: patch 8.02

retired_hope

FA Cup last 16
6 Premier Teams
8 Championship Teams
2 League One Teams

Why not 16 Premier league sides?

If Havant can score two at Anfield then anything is possible.

Bristol Rovers 2-2 Fulham at Craven Cottage
Bristol Rovers 0-0 Fulham at Memorial Stadium
Rovers with 5-3 on pens

Okay so playing the 2nd leg in a mud bath helped.

I think a lot of the problems with top teams is the amount of balloons there fans bring to matches.

Back to the original question

It's a combination of the two. That's why you can't simply download a super tactic and thats why the the best team doesn't always consist of the best 11 players.

Finding a blend is key.

retired_roshawnda82

Haha balloons indeed

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying that on FM the FA Cup last 16 should be all premiership sides, or indeed that that would reflect real life, or indeed that upsets (especially in the FA Cup - what a competition ) never happen, hence:

I just think that the importance of tactics is perhaps over-stated. I'd go as far as to say in certain positions, such as SC and GK, form should be far more important than tactics.

Re supertactics: the fact that in previous versions of FM and CM you could download supertactics goes to substantiate my argument that too much weight seems to be afforded to tactics and not to players. Thankfully SI have managed to so far remove the phenomenon of 'super-tactics'(in their traditional sense) and now if you don't get the media right, the training right, the form selection right, then you won't be as successful. This is to be welcomed in my opinion, I just think that say if those other factors are currently collectively worth about 50% and players are worth 50%, it should be more like 25% and 75%.

retired_dellydoolittle

lol I don't think so many changes could be made with patch and I don't expext so radical changes. I would be more then glad to get sorted defensive (SOT/G) bug, confidence and other major problems.

also I don't think you can compare football with cars. football is a team sport and one of most unpredictable, so on that metter I would say that even mondeo could beat that bugati. best players/managers isn't allways the winning combination.

I think the most important thing in any team sport is SPIRIT. and that's smth that is completly ignored in FM, in my opinoum. but heck, of course it is. it's spirit the only thing that computor can't have, never. :p

retired_aries

Very true in "Old Big 'Ed's" era, but certainly not the case in the modern game. Though that's not a criticism, but an observation of football today.

In one sense though, I think this applies more to the continental game than the game in the UK - in real-life that is.

As an English expat in Spain now for a number of years, it might sound daft, but I'm viewing English football in a different light. The opportunity to discuss football with people here in Spain, not just Spaniards, but a few Germans, Portuguese, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc, I don't believe that English football is anywhere near as tactically gifted as we believed we were. The only real exceptions I would make are Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, plus now perhaps, Man City and Aston Villa.

My Spanish friends are keen to point out, and the coverage of the Premiership games is actually better than in the UK here , is that apart from these teams, they believe the game is played faster and more direct. They all agree that they like the "directness" and speed of English football though. Funnily enough, alot of them dislike "boring" Italian football as it's too slow and too "technical" heh!

Now for me, cup games, certainly in the FA Cup, can't be fairly factored into this sort of discussion to claim tactics make a difference hugely. On a one-off day, it's the spirit of the players that plays a bigger part, as another poster mentioned. That's the beuty of the FA Cup - the interest my Spanish friends show for it here, clearly shows there's just something special about the English FA Cup.

Overall though, in the modern game, I firmly belive that tactics play a bigger part than the players, although it may not be as clearly obvious to those of us watching the games. Alot more preparation and analysis goes into gameplans now.

This brings me to the opinion that the Football Manager series has kept pace with this line of thinking, hence more detailed tactical fine-tuning incorporated in the game. It's a very good simulation of football, but in fairness, a game can never completely emulate the "real" football world perfectly, but as a computer game, I think it's been a sterling effort by the SI team.

As for problems and bugs, this is steering away from the OP's topic of discussion and best left to the GQ forum or Bugs forum. :thup:

retired_krissyski

IRL, all the talented players in the world won't help you if you can't figure out a way to blend then together, and that's what tactics do. At the professional level, you still need that framework, but it's different than at the youth level, where the coach is much more of a controlling figure. The opposite is true, too - if the players are lacking, tactics will only help you just so much. However, when a weaker team beats a stronger team, tactics are often a major part of the reason, as is psychological preparation.

In FM, because the gaming experience is emjoyed only by the person in the role of the coach/manager, the design by definition will be based on a model that is more controlling than would be the case IRL. So, the tactical interface requires you to instruct players on mundane matters that a professional coach/manager would not, such has how tightly to mark an opponent or how quickly to close him down.

It is also very difficult to recreate the psychological impact a coach/manager can have on a team, because the opportunities for interaction are very limited and those opportunities carry painfully few real options. Player interaction therefore becomes formulaic, as does the approach to tactics.

Understanding these limitations on design might help some of our FM-ing brethren turn down the heat a bit on FM when a feature doesn't pan out quite as we'd hoped it would.