Help Building a Tactic for a Lone Striker

[MikeF]

This thread needs to be pinned. The best breakdown of stats hands down. 
see how it goes for FMM 20.

[Scratch]

5 hours ago, SirSpankorama said:

Wow, that's a treasure trove of information! Well I guess now I have to check a player's traits before I sign them. Great find.

I'd still use experience to work out which traits might be more important. There are some which don't seem to really make a difference. The main one I watch is Shoots from distance because I do feel like midfielders with that trait actually shoot more and I don't want that in a 1KC. I've also noticed that strikers with likes to play offside or whatever it is, get picked up for being offside a lot more.

[Manjus]

How long do those of you who experiment with building tactics generally test it for? 5 Games? Half a season? All season?

I've actually read through this thread a couple times now and have begun the 'rough' process of building a tactic for myself. If I felt, for example, that shoot on sight was worth adding to my tactics, how long should I leave it to know if it's helping/hindering..? Knowing that no game is ever going to be the same...

 

Case in point - Winning 3-0 against Liverpool, but barely grinding out a 1-0 against a newly promoted Sheffield Wednesday.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Manjus
Added an example

[MikeF]

I think you need at least a few matches for your team to bed into a whole new tactic. But tweaking things like attacking instructions I like to think that once they’re used to your tactic these have a more instant visible effect. A couple of matches maybe and see how the relevant players stats change. In like for like matches if possible. 

The less You change match to match the easier it should be to attribute any pluses to that change. Ie if you change 3 things and your striker gets more shots on goal you don’t know which change made that happen. Small tweaks I prefer.

Would be interested to hear what others think. 

added 0 minutes later

Although sometimes I just want my team to play a certain way so I’ll set up the tactic and get the players to play my way through training, signings or just patience. 

[broodje kip]

I would say play for half a season with one or two tweaks every 3 games will works best

[Ian]

I usually test by playing 12-20 games with as close to the same line up in every game as possible. I’ll look at the amount of goals the main man has got and then make the odd change and go again. I only look at what I’m wanting to achieve which in this case is his goals so not bothered about anything else as long as the results are decent. It can be a very boring process and I have to be in the mood for it. I tend to get times when I’m really keen and enjoy it and put a lot of time in testing and other times like now when I just can’t be arsed and forcing it doesn’t seem to work for me.

You say you’re winning 3-0 against Liverpool and only 1-0 v Sheffield United but that doesn’t say much as the main guy could’ve scored all the goals which would be great.

[Kanegan]

I agree with everyone here. Usually half a season is what I keep my tactics on before I make the change and regarding your varied difficulties against Liverpool and Sheffield, it happens as Liverpool must be playing attacking football so they are exposed and Sheffield may be employing ultra tight defense which you found hard to break. Thats just my two cents

[Manjus]

1 hour ago, MikeF said:

I think you need at least a few matches for your team to bed into a whole new tactic. But tweaking things like attacking instructions I like to think that once they’re used to your tactic these have a more instant visible effect. A couple of matches maybe and see how the relevant players stats change. In like for like matches if possible. 

The less You change match to match the easier it should be to attribute any pluses to that change. Ie if you change 3 things and your striker gets more shots on goal you don’t know which change made that happen. Small tweaks I prefer.

Would be interested to hear what others think. 

added 0 minutes later

Although sometimes I just want my team to play a certain way so I’ll set up the tactic and get the players to play my way through training, signings or just patience. 

I'm definitely talking about one thing at a time, but changing a single setting and waiting 21+ games is going to take a long time. It's not a big deal, but if people can say they've noticed the changes in 5, it's much quicker.

1 hour ago, Lord Danish said:

I would say play for half a season with one or two tweaks every 3 games will works best

So effectively, you're saying that you'll notice the change over 3 games?

1 hour ago, Ian said:

I usually test by playing 12-20 games with as close to the same line up in every game as possible. I’ll look at the amount of goals the main man has got and then make the odd change and go again. I only look at what I’m wanting to achieve which in this case is his goals so not bothered about anything else as long as the results are decent. It can be a very boring process and I have to be in the mood for it. I tend to get times when I’m really keen and enjoy it and put a lot of time in testing and other times like now when I just can’t be arsed and forcing it doesn’t seem to work for me.

You say you’re winning 3-0 against Liverpool and only 1-0 v Sheffield United but that doesn’t say much as the main guy could’ve scored all the goals which would be great.

My striker scored 2 out of the 4, currently he's at 16 goals in 16 games which I guess is okay. Do you record the changes, or are you just looking back at what your striker does only? Cause I'm looking at shoring up the defence at the same time.

28 minutes ago, Kanegan said:

I agree with everyone here. Usually half a season is what I keep my tactics on before I make the change and regarding your varied difficulties against Liverpool and Sheffield, it happens as Liverpool must be playing attacking football so they are exposed and Sheffield may be employing ultra tight defense which you found hard to break. Thats just my two cents

What sort of change are you talking about though? Positional or Final Third/etc? 20+ games is a long time to test "early crosses" or similar...

[Kanegan]

1 hour ago, Manjus said:

I'm definitely talking about one thing at a time, but changing a single setting and waiting 21+ games is going to take a long time. It's not a big deal, but if people can say they've noticed the changes in 5, it's much quicker.

So effectively, you're saying that you'll notice the change over 3 games?

My striker scored 2 out of the 4, currently he's at 16 goals in 16 games which I guess is okay. Do you record the changes, or are you just looking back at what your striker does only? Cause I'm looking at shoring up the defence at the same time.

What sort of change are you talking about though? Positional or Final Third/etc? 20+ games is a long time to test "early crosses" or similar...

I am saying half a season for your formation. Instructions can be tweaked over a period of 3-5 games or so.

[Manjus]

Yeah, this is what I'm asking. I have my formation that I like, and the positions. Although currently I am playing with IF's, I am going to try a different save with Wingers instead. 

I suppose my main question was regarding instructions (any and all). Looking at the previous messages, it's best to try them one at a time over the course of 5 matches and see which ones (or combination of) grant me the desired results.

Thanks,

Edited January 17, 2020 by Manjus
Punctuation

[Kanegan]

IF's have always worked for me in a lone striker tactic because even though they score more, they also create more chances which eventually leads to more goals for my main striker.

[Ian]

I personally think the more games you test things over the better as you can get good luck or bad luck in any given game so the more games you play the more you are getting a better overall picture.

Why do you want to shore up the defence if you are wanting loads of goals from the main man? This isn’t a criticism, I’m genuinely wondering your answer as I often think similar and see it as a weakness of mine. If you look at a lot of goalscoring careers on here you’ll see a difference in the defensive numbers of different members. I usually keep a decent defence and I think that might be just the way I natural looking at things player wise. I usually go for all round types in midfield so if I had a choice between one midfielder with 14 or 15 right across the board or one with say 20 for passing, creativity and movement but really poor positioning and tackling I’d more than likely gravitate towards the all round guy. My way would more than likely result in a better defence but the other way, we might concede more but score more. I only mention this as often player types are just or even more important in what you are trying to do than tactics imo.

[BatiGoal]

21 hours ago, Manjus said:

I've actually read through this thread a couple times now and have begun the 'rough' process of building a tactic for myself.

This thread is a few months old so I hope I'm not repeating myself here. Good points raised in the above posts already btw. 

If I were to create a brand new formation from scratch today this is generally how I'd go about it. It doesn't differ a great deal what my career objective is, whether I want a tight defence or break goalscoring records with 3 or more strikers. But since this is a lone striker tactics thread this is what I'd do. 

1. Pick any average mid-table team with average players, nothing great nothing terrible. Say Torino. 
2. Try 3-5 unique/random formations with a single man up front and play 20 odd games every time starting a fresh season. 
3. Finish the season with the best formation of the lot and apply mostly player role (combo) tweaks. Say 5-6 games each. 
4. Season 2 I'd be tweaking only match settings, passing, shape etc a couple at a time for 8-10 games each for the entire season. 
5. Season 3 for fine-tuning, a single tweak at a time for 10-ish games often reloading and replaying the same 10 games/opponents and comparing with other single tweaks. This journey is endless. 
6. Start a new season with a team of the caliber of the one I intend to use for the challenge and continue the fine-tuning process where I left off. Rinse and repeat same stuff 10-ish games per 1 tweak. 
7. Once I have a formation I really like I test it in different leagues and with different teams to see if and how well it holds. Sometimes continuing that fine-tuning process since we're then dealing with new players. 

But like I said, there's literally no end to this but eventually you have to end up with a pretty decent and consistent formation. Imo (re)playing the same X number of games vs same opponent essentially comparing the tweaks and results is crucial. 

Edited January 18, 2020 by BatiGoal

[billy2shots]

For me the final tactic has to be consistent and the only way I can prove consistency is by keeping variables as low as possible. 

For new tactic testing I choose a world class team with world class players. Why? Because this is how we want all our teams to look like. This will show you the very best of the tactic that you create. 

Then

- I start the game and play the friendlies. I save just before the first proper match. 

- play the first 10 games. Record team goals for, goals against and goals for my 1k player or TT 3. 

- I quit reload the game and repeat this process another 2 times using exactly the same tactic, same players whilst playing the same opposition for those 10 games. I now have 3 separate figures written down. These figures are averaged out over the 3 trial runs. 

- now I can quit reload and play the same 10 games 3 times but this time I have made 1 tactical tweak. Yes 1. 

1000s of matches played without getting into the 3rd month of season 1!

It is the only true way to test a tactic. Same players in the same condition with the same form playing against the same oppo with the same players using the same tactic  

FMM is so random though that 1 set of 10 games gives a false positive hence the need to repeat the process 3 times (more would be better)  There is always 1 outlier with one set of 10 scoring way more or conceding much more/less  

once I’m happy then I will play the first season. I never reached that far in the last two or three FMM releases.....

 

I have just started my first eme save so this process was invaluable for finding something that works. The match stats , match highlights are irrelevant to me. The only things that matters are written down in my scrap book. The average goals for and against that I work out myself. 

[BatiGoal]

10 hours ago, billy2shots said:

The only things that matters are written down in my scrap book.

And that scrapbook is most commonly referred to as the Billy2shots Bible 🙂

[cakirmertt28]

On 17/01/2020 at 15:25, MikeF said:

I think you need at least a few matches for your team to bed into a whole new tactic. But tweaking things like attacking instructions I like to think that once they’re used to your tactic these have a more instant visible effect. A couple of matches maybe and see how the relevant players stats change. In like for like matches if possible. 

The less You change match to match the easier it should be to attribute any pluses to that change. Ie if you change 3 things and your striker gets more shots on goal you don’t know which change made that happen. Small tweaks I prefer.

Would be interested to hear what others think. 

added 0 minutes later

Although sometimes I just want my team to play a certain way so I’ll set up the tactic and get the players to play my way through training, signings or just patience. 

Hello everybody talks about this post but I tried it like in the photos with both attack and defensive roles, but I did not get any efficiency. Is it my problem or are there places I have to change?

[C21GERMAIN]

I usually use a 4-1-2-2-1 as I find that creating passing triangles all over the pitch is important and easily attainable using the set-up,I like BBMs as they average higher key passes per match and often set up quality chances like the ones in the videos attached

SK,

(L)FB BPD CD WB(R)

         BWM

  BBM          AP

W                      IF

          CF