Chat Contain strategy

[Lillywhite Dean]

What is everyone's understanding of the Contain strategy?

I just played a Champions League quarter final match away to Manchester United. They raced into a first half 3-1 lead so I switched my strategy to contain so to minimise the damage. I ended up drawing the match 3-3.

I played my next fixture, which was a home Serie A tie to Inter. They took an early one goal lead and had a second goal disallowed for offside. I switched my strategy to Contain and ended up winning 4-2. I scored 4 goals by playing the most negative and ultra defensive tactic possible on FMM.

I thought Contain was a strategy where the idea was to do everything to keep the opposition from scoring. So retain possession, don't try anything fancy, don't even look to score unless there is zero risk of conceding. However, in two matches I have scored 7 goals playing with Contain.

What do people think?

[Nucleus]

Agreed it’s overpowered, but counter attacks are automatically triggered regardless of mentality. My understanding of what happens when a counter attack is initiated is that all of your team instructions go out the window and are replaced by ultra attacking instructions for the duration of the counter attack (overload, fast tempo, direct passing etc) 

I won a few games last year with a lower league side against a top team by using contain throughout the match and packing the midfield

[Ian]

I’ve started using it at times recently. I never used to ever go below counter and I’d use that in a bid to draw the opposition onto me to try and create more counter attack opportunities. 

I just recently tried contain during games in this weeks VPL challenge and felt it worked at times. I’d just cycle it during games which you may think is strange when I’m often moaning about rotation but I love anything tactical and have no problems with in game tweaking.

I wouldn’t want to use it for the whole match unless I was a totally great team as with a shit team I think the opposition would eventually swarm all over me but it would be interesting how it would work with a beast of a team. 

[Lillywhite Dean]

I remember using the Contain strategy when I was in charge of Torino back in FMM18. I managed to win several Serie A titles with it.

I even raised this as a potential bug/issue in the official SI forums because it seemed to act more like an aggressive counter attack strategy than a proper containment strategy. 

 

[Neddy]

Also just saying but Overload is broken as well (in my experience) I had an invincible season with Liverpool (which I made a post about, that's right shameless self promotion) and I started using Overload near the end of the season since I had already win the league. Result was a 5-2 smashing of Man UTD, 8-0 destruction of Leicester, 3-0 win against the Spurs where I had 28 shots and lastly 5-0 humiliation of Dortmund in the UCL final

However, it did deplete my players' stamina very quickly.

[Lillywhite Dean]

15 minutes ago, Neddy said:

Also just saying but Overload is broken as well (in my experience) I had an invincible season with Liverpool (which I made a post about, that's right shameless self promotion) and I started using Overload near the end of the season since I had already win the league. Result was a 5-2 smashing of Man UTD, 8-0 destruction of Leicester, 3-0 win against the Spurs where I had 28 shots and lastly 5-0 humiliation of Dortmund in the UCL final

However, it did deplete my players' stamina very quickly.

It sounds like the AI was not being smart in knowing how to counter your Overload strategy. If anyone plays Overload against me, I switch to Counter, Fast, Wide and long passes. 

[Neddy]

9 hours ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

It sounds like the AI was not being smart in knowing how to counter your Overload strategy. If anyone plays Overload against me, I switch to Counter, Fast, Wide and long passes. 

Still, 28 shots vs a team of Spurs caliber. 

And 5-0 against a Dortmund side which best Barcelona and Bayern Munich to get to the Final

[Lillywhite Dean]

9 hours ago, Neddy said:

Still, 28 shots vs a team of Spurs caliber. 

And 5-0 against a Dortmund side which best Barcelona and Bayern Munich to get to the Final

It's unreal, absolutely. You shouldn't be having so many attacking opportunities with a contain strategy. I really wonder whether this is a bug.