SCHOOLBOY ERROR
Right, first up it's time for an admission. As a long-time
player of the series, and not helped by the fact that the advent of digital
delivery has removed the paper manual, I have a habit of assuming that I know
roughly what I’m doing. It seems that’s not always the case.
Thanks go, as usual, to @Cleon81 for some useful
information I discovered whilst reading his excellent piece on player development, as part of his Santos Project.
I’m halfway through my season in the French 3rd
tier, and my team aren’t ‘getting’ my tactical approach. Whilst most elements
are nailed down, their level of familiarity with the Formation itself is still
rated as awkward. Now I appreciate that it is a fairly non-conventional setup,
and also that I have a grand total of two coaches – with Tactics rated at only
2 stars – but I would still expect things to have started bedding in by now.
It was only when reading Cleon’s piece that I realised my
approach of setting General Training to ‘Tactics – High’ was not working, as it’s
apparently Match Training that is used to increase the overall tactical
familiarity. You live and learn. The upshot of this is that, for the remainder
of this season at least, I’ve decided to go for a more familiar formation in
the hope that it’ll give us some consistency.
It’ll still allow me to work on my understanding of
tactics, but I do also need to make sure that we maintain our push for
promotion. However, for much of the below, I was still experimenting a little.
WINTER BREAK
The brief break saw us notch a couple of wins against
lower league/non-league opposition. For the first I’d stuck with the offset
2-3-2-2-1 formation that was proving so difficult to bed in, but switched Noro
(#8) from a Shadow Striker to an Enganche role...
Positives on the attacking front, although we were ultimately reliant on an own goal to give us the 5-4 margin over our hosts.
Experimenting again, I pushed Noro’s AM position up to a
second striker (deep lying) with Ledy and Perrin making a front two.
Essentially this was a 4-4-2, albeit with Genghini still pushed forward to the
AM tier on our right. I know, I should be allowing the side time to settle into
a single formation, but I was keen to try and get a feel for the impact of some
minor tweaks – I wouldn’t expect a DLF-S to be massively different from a
Shadow Striker in terms of average position, although behaviours should be somewhat
altered.
The quality of the opposition didn’t look massively different on paper,
so I took the change as a positive in terms of the creation of chances. That
said, with the players available to me in midfield I wasn’t keen to be going to
a two-striker formation just yet.
That might be seen as a poor decision, bear in mind that
at the time I was still (misguidedly) hoping that the 2-3-2-2-1 Formation was going to ‘click’
soon. So, sticking with it, I prepared to welcome a
mid-table US Dunkerque to our ground.
BACK IN ACTION – QUESTION TIME
Looking at the matchups, and Dunkerque’s league position,
I felt confident that we had what it took to get the points here. Initially I
asked my wingbacks to sit a little deeper, between them and the two DCs – plus Oliveira
in the Anchorman role – I was happy that we could bog down their attacking
lines. Up front the intention was for Sichi to draw a man, to help create space
for Ledy to operate in.
You can see, from the scoreline, that things didn’t go
entirely to plan. Here’s the stats.
Now it feels like we’re moving in the right direction;
from 17 efforts, more than two thirds are within the box, and even two of the
longer efforts drew good saves. Of course we’re still not creating a lot of
genuine scoring opportunities and this is where I’m starting to struggle in my
analysis.
I will stress, once again, that the quality of players is
somewhat lower than I’ve been used to in recent FM saves so I accept that there
will be plenty of poor decisions. That said, I’m going to appeal for feedback
from the community here.
Here we can see Sichi (Shadow Striker-Support) running
with the ball, with Noro (BBM-S) and Ledy (CF-S) making similar runs. Whilst Sichi’s
marker goes with him, the Dunkerque back four moves across to cover – Ledy is
now bearing down on their fullback, whilst Noro cuts inside a little. Out of
shot Genghini is also about to cut in from the right wing.
Sichi’s run has taken him to the edge of the area. Noro,
having varied his pace, has been overtaken by the midfielder who was trailing
him in the first shot – however he is open, should he be needed. Ledy is now sat on
the fullback’s shoulder and Genghini has come into the frame – we’re looking at
a potential overload on the right, which has been one of the things I’ve been
driving towards.
It’s noticeable that there’s not a great deal of support
outside Sichi though. We’re playing without a wide player on the left of
midfield, and whilst Sabo does get forward as a wingback (he’s just in shot),
he only tends to get all the way into the top strata when on the ball.
Granted the options are limited for Sichi here,
particularly with his momentum, but it's not his decision that interests me in this move. He does look to cut back inside, possibly looking
for Genghini to continue his run although I’m more inclined to think that he
was winding up for a shot when Huysman puts the tackle in.
What I’m trying to understand here is actually how to
influence Noro’s mindset.
As the ball comes to him, I’m seeing Sichi as a decent
option (Huysman has left him to chase the ball, and neither the right fullback,
not the DCR, have closed him down. Granted that Genghini and Ledy are now
outnumbered on the right, and Noro is looking forwards, but it’s frustrating
just how often players will hit a speculative effort when there do seem to be
options. Whilst the removal of sliders has largely been a non-issue for me, I
really would like the Long Shots option back on a variable scale (or
just on a player instruction!)
Here’s the move in full, from a tighter angle. Granted we
get lucky and the ball falls to Genghini anyway, but I’d appreciate any
thoughts on ways to combat this sort of thing. Bear in mind that I often play
with ‘Retain Possession’ and ‘Work Ball into the Box’ shouts, and yet still see
this happening.
STABILISING AND ADAPTING A TACTIC
It was following the Dunkerque game, and with Ledy
picking up an injury late in it, that I set about picking a more stable
formation and sticking with it – not least as I was about to face the second
and third placed sides. The decision was to revert to what I’m calling a 4-4-2
Shadow.
Against Le Poire-sur-Vie this saw an abundance of long
shots from Noro in the SS-S role, although I guess the presence of a DMC in the
opposing line-up is a factor here – restricting Noro’s options for passes when
looking for the lone striker.
SRT Colmar play with a similar DMC role, this time Noro
barely got a sight of goal having spent most of the time looking for sideways
passes either to Lienard on the left flank, or Sichi as the BBM.
So here’s my second question of the day, the 4-4-2 Shadow
seems viable when playing against a flat back four with no DM presence, but
when a DM effectively nullifies my Shadow Striker then the lone forward is left
ploughing a tough furrow against the defence. Aside from trying a few more
direct passes, in an attempt to use Perrin’s 'pace', what approach would people take to
try and counteract a 4-1-x-x formation?
Dropping Perrin deeper doesn’t seem to be the answer to
me – I don’t see it drawing their defence out as we’re not exactly going to be
overloading them. It feels like pushing my left wing higher – to mirror
Genghini’s instructions on the right – might have some impact, by stretching
their back four.
The other option would be to really push on and go for
something like a 4-2-3-1 but, whilst I’ve had success with that formation with
higher rated teams, I’m not sure that this one has the wherewithal to pull it
off in attack at present; I also think it would leave us too thin at the back –
although I know that defence is an area that I’ll need to start to look further
at soon.
One point from those two games isn’t great, but does leave
us top by a single point...
...18th (A) 12th (H) and 17th (A) in our next three matches, and I'm targeting 6 points from those three as a minimum.
I’ll continue to play on, making notes and ideas for next time, but any feedback on the above questions would be welcome either in the comments, by way of links to interesting articles (FM based or otherwise), or via Twitter: @flipsix3_FM
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