Tactics The Black Hawk (... or a quest to make IFs to work) [4123]

[MarkD]

1 minute ago, gamkinnkristian said:

Do you guys use the original version of the tactic, like in the op? I'm nowhere near the goals scored you get, defensively I concede about the same amount. 

Let me know 😁

Yeah mate I use the original, there is alot to read but make sure you read it all and try to follow all the tips.

Best tactic I've used by far, going to try a more challenging team/save next

[DanEnglish]

1 hour ago, gamkinnkristian said:

Do you guys use the original version of the tactic, like in the op? I'm nowhere near the goals scored you get, defensively I concede about the same amount. 

Let me know 😁

Agreed - I only got 1.5 goals scored / league game in my first half-season 

So here are a couple of key questions / key points to this tactic - all taken from my “testing tactics” thread … hope this helps!

————————

1) GREAT CROSSING: 

• WBs - will often be in space + cross - so assume needs good crossing, dribbling, + decision making.
• Image - My WBs aren’t great, so only 15% of my crosses were completed (85% wasted!)

2) GREAT HEADING:

• ST - he will receive a lot of crosses from out wide - so the central ST (and preferably both IFs) will score more if they have very high aerial / strength.
• Image - My front three had low aerial - so won very few headers.

3) TIME:

• IFs - I found the IFs weren’t that involved in the game initially - see image fir stats over 23 (!) games.
• … but others (inc. @black hawk) say they get more effective as your teams’ relationships + IFs attributes further develop. Apparently, this last one just takes time.

Edited March 2, 2023 by DanEnglish

[gamkinnkristian]

1 hour ago, MarkD said:

Yeah mate I use the original, there is alot to read but make sure you read it all and try to follow all the tips.

Best tactic I've used by far, going to try a more challenging team/save next

Yes, thanks 😊 I've used Angers in France, and Schalke 04 (Schalke have a decent amount of money, but bad team)

And I usually win the league in two seasons. 

I've just never been able to get 90+ goals in the league. 

I'll read through it again 😁

[gamkinnkristian]

16 minutes ago, DanEnglish said:

Agreed - I only got 1.5 goals scored / league game in my first half-season 

So here are a couple of key questions / key points to this tactic - all taken from my “testing tactics” thread … hope this helps!

————————

1) GREAT CROSSING: 

• WBs - will often be in space + cross - so assume needs good crossing, dribbling, + decision making.
• Image - My WBs aren’t great, so only 15% of my crosses were completed (85% wasted!)

2) GREAT HEADING:

• ST - he will receive a lot of crosses from out wide - so the central ST (and preferably both IFs) will score more if they have very high aerial / strength.
• Image - My front three had low aerial - so won very few headers.

3) TIME:

• IFs - I found the IFs weren’t that involved in the game initially - see image fir stats over 23 (!) games.
• … but others (inc. @black hawk) say they get more effective as your teams’ relationships + IFs attributes further develop. Apparently, this last one just takes time.

Thanks man! I'm following your thread, so I've seen your analysis (it's great 👍). 

I'll try implementing some of the things you suggest 😁

[MarkD]

7 minutes ago, gamkinnkristian said:

Yes, thanks 😊 I've used Angers in France, and Schalke 04 (Schalke have a decent amount of money, but bad team)

And I usually win the league in two seasons. 

I've just never been able to get 90+ goals in the league. 

I'll read through it again 😁

I'm in the Scottish league so it's probably abit easier 🤣

[MarkD]

Season 4 (1st season in prem)

[Black Hawk]

23 hours ago, Melv98 said:

@MarkD The goals against is fantastic (as well as goals scored) I do like tactics that are very solid in defence.

Are your midfielders scoring many goals?

That's something I always try to create. I like to score goals, but I love not conceding them. Sometimes I'm winning 3-0, 4-0, we suffer a goal late in the game when our team has already switched off, I get frustrated and can't even properly appreciate the victory 😶

In some of my tests (previously to this tactic) I got some tactics where we scored more, but we conceded more too. I don't like that. If a team suffers regularly, all it takes to lose is one of those days where we shoot a lot and nothing finds the net. If we suffer less, sometimes all it takes to win is a single goal. I prefer this last option.

7 hours ago, gamkinnkristian said:

Do you guys use the original version of the tactic, like in the op? I'm nowhere near the goals scored you get, defensively I concede about the same amount. 

Let me know 😁

It depends. I had tests where I scored less, others where I scored more. For example, the same exact tactic scored more than 2,5 goals per game with Man City, but less than 2,0 per game with Wolves. I believe this is down to players quality and/or attributes.

For example, with Man City and Man Utd I had B2B scoring close to 20 goals per season (De Bruyne and Bruno Fernandes), but with BVB my B2B are not even close to that.

A guy more experienced may find how to tweak this tactic to adjust to their players strengths. I'm still figuring out new things at every new test I do, I'm a noob and it shows 😅

Anyway, I'm working on a tweaked version with BVB and I will post feedback as soon as I end the season with it. The goal is to reduce the amount of crosses and how the team relies on headers from the strikers, forcing our players to play more down the middle.

I am very glad from the feedback of last posts, if people are having fun with this then I'm happy!

[Legend288]

Did you test after update?

 

I had in 2 saves not so good results. 

[Schwantz34]

1 hour ago, Legend288 said:

Did you test after update?

 

I had in 2 saves not so good results. 

Working for me at Notts County.

New save.

[MarkD]

1 hour ago, Legend288 said:

Did you test after update?

 

I had in 2 saves not so good results. 

I've started with Buxton (conference North) and finished season unbeaten in the league

[Black Hawk]

5 hours ago, Legend288 said:

Did you test after update?

 

I had in 2 saves not so good results. 

Still playing in that one save with BVB, don't know if the match engine is changed by this update in save games.

But I'll finish this today, will post the feedback of the tweaked version I've been testing and will do a new save.

[gamkinnkristian]

5 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

Still playing in that one save with BVB, don't know if the match engine is changed by this update in save games.

But I'll finish this today, will post the feedback of the tweaked version I've been testing and will do a new save.

My suggestion: Try one of the worse teams in one of the top divisions 😁

I just started one with Salernitana!

[Black Hawk]

Here's my usual wall of text, this time with the feedback from the test I did with a tweaked version of my The Black Hawk.

Firstly, let me say that this is still the same save I started with Man Utd. This is the 7th season on it, the 3rd with BVB. I didn't posted the 2nd season with BVB because I did so many tests along the season that I thought it wasn't relevant enough to do it.

I brought João Félix on a bargain (he was unsettled at Atlético Madrid and got transfer listed for 30M, I retrained him to be my left B2B, something of a bootleg of Bruno Fernandes at Man Utd ahah), Armel Bella-Kotchap and Ibrahima Bamba (both centre backs to play with the ones I already had, Gabriel and Evan N'Dicka), and five regens that played in BVB II on my 1st season here and are now in the first team.

Just to contextualise, we won the Bundesliga (scoring a lot less than usual, some of my tests were a flop) and went to the Champions League final where I lost to... Man Utd. Yeah, I lost to the very team I constructed and the guy who scored was none other than my boy Sanchito that I so proudly developed...

 

This is a printscreen of 2nd season, not from the test with the tweaked version!

Anyway, let's go to more interesting things. This tweaked version tries to force the players to play more by the center of the pitch. The goal is:

 

1) to make the three midfielders to pass the ball between them and to progress more in combinations between them, reducing the amount of times we progress by runs with the ball from our WBs;

2) to reduce the amount of chances and goals from crosses by our WBs to our Pressing Forward (PF from now on); this is mainly to find a more balanced tactic which can be viable to all teams and not only to ones who have attackers with high Aerial;

3) to guarantee a more active role to our Inside Forwards (IFs from now on); with the main tactic they are not useless, they score and assist, but sometimes they are more in a role to open gaps to their teammates than taking an active part on our plays.

 

This tweaked version is very much alike the main one, but I changed the four things:

 

 

My centre backs are now "Ball Playing Defenders".

This is because I found that sometimes when our opponents clear the ball from their box and my centre backs recover it, they would wait for my Roaming Playmaker (RP) or WBs to run behind to pass it to them.

With the new role they run ahead with it, which enables our team to charge again with all players still close to final third of the pitch.

 

 

This time I ticked on the "Offside Trap".

I noticed a lot of our conceded goals are from through balls to our backs (that's why I strongly recommend faster centre backs when possible). If that's the case, why not try to catch them on offside positions?

I believe this only works if our defenders have good Positioning and Decisions. I may be wrong about this one tough, as my centre backs aren't that good on those and it still somewhat worked.

If anyone can add some input about this, that would be much appreciated.

 

 

On the attack instructions, i changed the "Run at Defence" to "Through Balls" and the Passing Focus from "Mixed" to "Centre".

The latter is obvious after what I wrote before in this post. The latter is because I saw some plays wasted when my opponents parked their bus, their private cars and the jet that brought them to Manchester or Dortmund, all those in their box, and my players (mainly my IFs) just run against two or three opponents waiting for them.

What I want now is the ball running around. The ball, not the player who have it. It's down to the guys who don't have it to give options to the guy who has the ball. They have to run without the ball to give options. The guy with the ball just has to hold it and choose the best option that his teammates give him.

It was my assumption that "Through Balls" would ensure this better than "Run at Defence", so I tried it.

So, how did it performed?

Before showing the results, let me just say that one of the goals failed spectacularly. It's not that it failed in a way that was bad to our team, it's actually a good thing, but I couldn't stop my team from scoring goals from crosses LOL

We crossed less. Depending on the game, we went from around 10 to around 40, but the average was something like 20/25 per game. Funnily enough, we scored 26 goals from crosses during the season (22 from crosses by WBs, 4 from IFs), which is not that different from previous tests.

Taking this in account, I give up on this task. By now I'm just convinced the match engine favours the crosses and the Aerial attribute. It's easier to score that way than any other option. I'll go with it.

Also because I got pretty good results with this tweaked version. We scored more, so the percentage of goals from crosses is actually lower than any previous test, which makes it acceptable.

 

(from this point onwards I played with the winter update, I don't honestly know if it affects the match engine of saved games in any way, but as you guys can see below, if it does, it helped even more)

 

 

This is the best result of any test so far. We won 33 of our 34 games (we draw away against Bayern), scoring 106 goals (3,11 goals per game!!!) while conceding only 6 times (0,17 goals per game, or a goal only in every 5 or 6 games). This was unreal. I remind this is a control tactic, not an overload or even attacking one.

Also, most of my players are not what one would call world class. My keeper is good-ish (a regen who was already here when I arrived), my best centre back is Gabriel, my WBs are Sergio Gómez and Dumfries. My IFs are Malen, Pedro Neto, Rodrygo and Adeyemi (as I showed before, both Rodrygo and Adeyemi are far from what they could have become, I got them at 5th season of this save in worse conditions than those they started the save). My strikers are Beto (the one from Udinese) and a young regen that at this point I'm convinced is the new Cristiano Ronaldo, I can't know for sure but the guy, while young and inconsistent, is very good.

What I have is Jude Bellingham who is fantastic, João Félix was a bit far from what he could be, but once properly developed is a top player, and Tom Bischof is also very good. Most of other players are young ones, some performed good, some didn't.

So, I wasn't quite expecting these numbers. One could argue that Bundesliga is not Premier League, that I could see on the match engine, but the numbers we got in Champions League were close to the Bundesliga ones.

 

 

We won the League Phase winning all 8 games (including Real Madrid, Inter, Barcelona and Arsenal). Then we dispatched Bayern (4-2), Barcelona (6-0) and Real Madrid (4-2) and beat Man Utd with a clear 4-1.

In 15 games, we won 13 times, while conceding a draw against Bayern (we had a 3-1 advantage from first leg) and losing with Real Madrid (after a 4-1 win at first leg). We scored 45 goals (3 per game) and conceded 9 times (0,6 per game). 

 

 

The other two competitions were won with the Bayern being our closest competitor. We played 6 Der Klassiker this season, winning 4 times and conceding 2 draws. It was a good season to be a BVB supporter ahah

Overall, we played 56 games all season with a result of 53W-2D-1L, scoring 177 goals and conceding only 16. That's an average of 3,16 goals scored per game and 0,28 goals conceded per game. Unreal.

Now, an enormous amount of goals were from corners. If I counted it right, we scored 25 goals that way. I don't know what happened, I used the same instructions as before, but we scored more from corners than previous season. We did had more corners, as the ball was more time closer to our opponents box than before, but still...

(the instructions I use is to put a centre back marking the keeper, the other centre back attacking far post and the PF attacking near post; two players lurk outside the box; two are in go forward; the corner taker doesn't have any instructions)

Anyway, even taking these 25 goals from the results, it would result in a total of 152 goals (2,71 goals per game) which would still be awesome.

Let's go to the players stats.

 

(my preferred starting eleven)

(my "second lines")

 

Before anyone gets too excited by the IFs number of assists, they were the corner takers, so 25 assists come from there. Adeyemi got 9 from corners (so 10 assists from open plays), Pedro Neto 8 (11 assists from open plays), Rodrygo 4 (11 from open plays) and Malen 4 (12 from open plays). Together, they did 44 assists that weren't from corners.

Still good numbers after the nerf they got in this years game!

Let's start breaking down the numbers by positions to give you guys a clear view of what happened.

Beggining with our WBs.

They still did a good amount of assists. Funny thing here is that some of those weren't from crosses. As we played with "Through Balls" and the passing focus on the center, the players were more ahead on the pitch than before, so the WBs had more passing options other than crossing the ball.

As previously stated, we scored 26 goals from headers (not taking into account the ones from corners). My WBs assisted to 22 of those, but they did 39 assists, so 17 assists were from passing, not crossing. Mainly to the closest IF or B2B, but I've also saw they assisting the PF or the RP inside the pitch.

This is a win, because if we do the math, it means only about 12% of our 177 goals were from crossings, which is far lower than previously. Even taking out the goals from corners, it would make it about only 14% of a total 152 goals.

Just for the record, both my PFs scored 9 of those 22 headers from crossings by my WBs. The other 4 were from Adeyemi, who managed do do it playing as right IF and with only 10 of Aerial.

RPs and B2B

Both my RPs are key for this tactic to work and it shows on their stats. I used them in a heavily rotation system, as it can be seen in their appearances, and they still have strong numbers of goals and assists. They often appear even ahead of my B2B, especially when my B2B are the ones holding the ball, and that means they would roam to just ahead of the box or even inside it.

Speaking of my B2B, all of them have about the same numbers apart João Félix, who unsurprisingly is the one more prone to score. He scored 12 goals in 48 appearances, which is very good (1 goal in every 4 games), and gets better if I tell that in some of these appearances he played only 15/20 minutes. He did about 35 games as a starter in a rotation system with Gio Reyna (who did the other 21).

PF and IFs

My PFs scored 60 goals between them. I already stated that they scored 18 from crossings from my WBs, but they scored 3 more from my IFs. So, only 21 of 60 goals from crosses, which is less than in other tests and I'm happy with these numbers.

My IFs were glorious! All four of them scored more than 10 goals, Adeyemi even broke the 20 goals limit that Rashford couldn't! They together scored 54 goals in 56 games, that's virtually 1 goals per game by my IFs! 54 goals in 152 (taking corners from this count) means 35% of our goals were scored by them.

And as they did 44 assists (again not counting the ones from corners), that means that they had 98 direct contributions to these 152 non-corner goalsgoals. That's 64% of direct contributions to goals.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really excited by these numbers!

 

Finally, let's put these numbers by position to give a clear number of the stats:

 

Right WB (Dumfries+Alisson): 0 goals / 19 assists

Left WB (Gómez+Guilherme): 0 / 20

(not worth counting centre backs)

RP (Bellingham+Latre): 11 / 14

Right B2B (Bischof+Werner): 9 / 11

Left B2B (Félix+Reyna): 18 / 12

Right IF (Adeyemi+Neto): 33 / 38 (33 / 21 without corners)

Left IF (Rodrygo+Malen): 21 / 31 (21 / 23 without corners)

PF (Beto+Gamboa): 60 / 11

 

Overall, I think these are good numbers. Everyone is scoring and making assists, the team is working together to create chances and everyone can score at any given time. My IFs are the ones who seem to benefit more from this tweaked version.

I don't know if I can explain this well in english, but when I count the goals and assists per position, what I want to show is what it could be the number of a player that is in starting eleven all season. For example, in reality Salah is in the starting eleven almost all games, he is not used in a rotation system as I do with my players, so what I do is an example of what could be a guy like Salah (or Rashford, Saka or Vinicius Jr) playing almost all games in this tactic. More than 20 or 30 goals seems pretty acceptable after the nerf IFs got this year.

As for this tweaked version, I'm already a fan. I loved every game I saw. Of course, it requires a PF with good technique, teamwork, passing and shooting and demands midfielders with a lot of technique, passing and everything that is important for a possession tactic, so it remains to be seen if this is viable on smaller teams, but in top teams I believe it could be used regularly or even as an alternative to the main The Black Hawk version.

I ended this save test with this BVB season. Did the Club World Cup and won it, beating again Man Utd in the final (after knocking out Real Madrid and Man City too).

 

 

And resigned from BVB.

 

 

Ended this 7 year testing (4 with Man Utd and 3 with BVB) with almost 91% of wins.

I don't know where I will play after this, but probably will do as @gamkinnkristian suggested and start a new save to see if there's any change on the match engine on new games. Also probably in a smaller team with the tweaked version.

As a gift to all that had the patience to read all this, I leave some gifs (I hope this forum supports gifs) with examples of some of the movements of the team during this season.

 

 

Here Hannover made the mistake of playing against us in a plain 442. Our movements without the ball killed their defensive organisation and created gaps all over the place.

My RP (Latre, #4) went close to the WB to receive the ball and start our play, which attracted one of their two central midfielders. My B2Bs (Bischof, #14; Reyna, #7) are in numerical superiority, Bischof rapidly took it in our advantage, and then my PF (Beto, #9) created a huge gap in front of the goal that my right IF (Pedro Beto, #17) explored to score.

 

 

Here another example of Pedro Neto scoring after the team created a gap to explore. Also, an example of something I said earlier in this post about my WBs.

My right WB (Alisson, #15) had options inside and passed the ball instead of crossing. Pedro Neto did a quick one-two with my right B2B (Werner, #8) and scored.

Notice here how my RP (Latre, #4) is ahead of both my B2B, as I said before in this post it happens a lot. Here it was key to open the space to Pedro Neto, just look at how Augsburg defensive midfielder (#2) went to man mark Latre which left a huuuuge gap for Pedro Neto to run into.

 

 

Now a Champions League goal against Inter. What I want to show here is not only the team work in the build up, but especially what my right B2B (Bischof, #14) did.

Bischof actually started all this, then just went ahead without anyone noticing it and ended up scoring after running through the gap left by the wide movement of my right IF (Adeyemi, #17). Adeyemi didn't actively participate in anything, but he attracted their full back opening the space for Bischof.

 

 

Not saying anything about this one, just wanted to share this one because was against Real Madrid and my three forwards destroyed their defense in an attack so quick they didn't even knew what happened.

This was so satisfying to see happening.

 

 

Here in a Der Klassiker, a movement that I've talked a lot about my RP (Bellingham, #22). Again, he was ahead of my B2B and gave my left IF (Rodrygo, #11) an valid option to assist in a clear shot just ahead of the goal.

Sometimes this shot may be a bit behind (outside of the box), other times it's my B2B who is there while the RP was behind, but at least one teammate should be in that space to give this passing option to the IF in every play we build.

Speaking of this one...

 

 

Here's an example where it's my B2B who appears there. Rodrygo actually didn't try to assist him, he did try to cross, but he could have (and should have) passed the ball to Félix. But the ball ended there anyway and he did score.

Also, noticed how in these two gifs my left WB (Gómez, #3) took an active part on the build up to the goal while not crossing?

Finally, two gifs of movements of my IFs (both times Adeyemi) that appeared far from their starting position being assisted by my PF.

 

 

 

This was my main source of goals in last years FMM2022. This year it happens a lot less, so when this happens in this version I cannot describe just how happy I became.

I won't lie, it happens a handful of times, some of them my IFs miss anyway, but it's the closest to 2022 IFs I can get in this years game.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Black Hawk

[Black Hawk]

3 hours ago, ericm544 said:

Incredible post, such great details and some things on the match engine I hadn't known or considered before. I have been using your original tactic with great success, is this new version considered "better" or is it based on your team? Also, have you considered switching the center mids to BWMs and A to defend a 2 or 3+ goal lead, or other defensive changes in game?

I'm not too keen in changing the roles of my midfielders because that would go against the philosophy behind this tactic. I like to have the ball, changing to BWMs would mean we are going to be running behind the ball instead of having it. I agree that sometimes that would came in clutch to defend a close advantage, but I prefer to suffer sometimes than change our entire ideas and identity. Tried to do it with Wolves at times, but rapidly return to not doing it.

I don't know it yet (if it is better or not). Have to test it more, but one thing I can say is that it is more demanding to both centre backs and midfielders.

I say this because looking at the match stats, the team has something like 40 or 50 more passing attempts than the main tactic. This means that a lot of the game that is not shown in the match engine is taking place in the center of the pitch, and of course is that game not shown who determines the highlights. If our midfielders are not good at key attributes like technique, passing, decisions, creativity, things like that, we are going to lose possession and allow attacking highlights to our opponents.

I've seen on previous tests on smaller teams (Amora, Paços de Ferreira and Wolves) that the midfielders will play it simple and give the ball to our WBs because they don't have quality to find ways down the middle, so this teams often have a lot of their progress on the pitch by runs from WBs. If we are forcing them to play down the middle in this tweaked version, I can only assume smaller teams are going to struggle a bit to build up chances and will suffer counterattacks that would mean goals conceded.

Also, the centre backs with the Ball Playing Defender role require some quality with the ball. Smaller teams with guys that should be essentially No-Nonsense Defenders (or something like that) playing as Ball Playing Defenders may loose possession early in the build up, which will result in goals conceded too.

By now I would only recommend this tweaked version in top teams or as a variant to the main tactic to mix things up a bit during the season. I'll have to test it in a smaller team, I'm thinking of doing it in Spain.

I like to play with teams that I have some affinity with (that's why I choose Sporting CP, Amora, Wolves, Man Utd or BVB). In Spain that's not easy because as any good portuguese there's not a lot of love there ( 😁 ). We actually like our galician brothers, but Celta is too good to be an underdog. I think I'll go with Rayito, that's a team with a strong club culture, one that I can identify with.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Black Hawk

[BarnDoor]

For no real reason other than boredom and having extreme surplus of funds, I went crazy in one of my saves and splashed 260m on Mbappe to play him exclusively as an IF in this tactic.

I'm about half way through the season and so far he's been banging over a goal per game on average. If I ever finish the season, I might consider posting his stats.

So, I guess we've found a way to "make IFs work"... Just sign Mbappe 😅 funny enough, he doesn't even have "cuts inside" trait which I considered to be the staple of a good IF.

On a more serious note, I've hardly been playing lately so that's why I haven't posted any updates to my careers with this tactic. Regardless, as @Black Hawk has said, he's done plenty of tests, there's been a couple of others (including myself) testing as well so I guess there's no real reason for me to post updates anymore.

It's obvious the tactic works and it's definitely my favorite one for this year's version of the game.

[Black Hawk]

14 hours ago, ericm544 said:

Okay thank you for that, at my first glance your tweaked one seems more demanding of good technical and tactical players with the forcing through center and offside trap etc. I will keep it in saved then as another tactic to switch it up. I also will admit not being a huge fan of ball playing defenders as I feel even when world class the risk sometimes can backfire heavily.

With BVB I didn't had any issue with BPDs, but my centre backs were good enough with the ball. Now I'm testing with Rayito Vallecano, should give a better understanding of that.

By now, some games into the save (most friendlies), it's Dimitrievski (the goalkeeper) who is giving me nightmares with his distribution.

14 hours ago, BarnDoor said:

For no real reason other than boredom and having extreme surplus of funds, I went crazy in one of my saves and splashed 260m on Mbappe to play him exclusively as an IF in this tactic.

I'm about half way through the season and so far he's been banging over a goal per game on average. If I ever finish the season, I might consider posting his stats.

So, I guess we've found a way to "make IFs work"... Just sign Mbappe 😅 funny enough, he doesn't even have "cuts inside" trait which I considered to be the staple of a good IF.

On a more serious note, I've hardly been playing lately so that's why I haven't posted any updates to my careers with this tactic. Regardless, as @Black Hawk has said, he's done plenty of tests, there's been a couple of others (including myself) testing as well so I guess there's no real reason for me to post updates anymore.

It's obvious the tactic works and it's definitely my favorite one for this year's version of the game.

Completely forgot about Mbappe! Here I was talking about Salah, Rashford, Saka or Vinicius Jr when the obvious one should be that guy ahah

Glad you like it. That's why I posted this thread in first place

[MarkD]

Just a quick game test of @Black Hawk tweaked version with Forest....

Pure control

WOW

going to start a new save with it, not sure with who yet though.

 

[Legend288]

With tweak version i win all cups with man utd.

Rashford is not good for me. But midfield is banging goals ) 

[DanEnglish]

1 hour ago, Legend288 said:

Rashford is not good for me.

Huh. I’ve found Rashford to be pretty good  in the PF role with this Black Hawk tactic. However if you play him as an IF, then I think most IFs will struggle initially.

Rashford as a PF / central striker:

• ✅  good at finishing - with 17 non-penalty goals in 22 games (0.8 per game)
• ❌  not involved in build-up play - with ~10 passes completed each game.
• ❌  doesn’t win headers from crosses - gets 5 attempts each game, only wins <1 (15%)
   

[Schwantz34]

On 05/03/2023 at 15:01, Black Hawk said:

Here's my usual wall of text, this time with the feedback from the test I did with a tweaked version of my The Black Hawk.

Firstly, let me say that this is still the same save I started with Man Utd. This is the 7th season on it, the 3rd with BVB. I didn't posted the 2nd season with BVB because I did so many tests along the season that I thought it wasn't relevant enough to do it.

I brought João Félix on a bargain (he was unsettled at Atlético Madrid and got transfer listed for 30M, I retrained him to be my left B2B, something of a bootleg of Bruno Fernandes at Man Utd ahah), Armel Bella-Kotchap and Ibrahima Bamba (both centre backs to play with the ones I already had, Gabriel and Evan N'Dicka), and five regens that played in BVB II on my 1st season here and are now in the first team.

Just to contextualise, we won the Bundesliga (scoring a lot less than usual, some of my tests were a flop) and went to the Champions League final where I lost to... Man Utd. Yeah, I lost to the very team I constructed and the guy who scored was none other than my boy Sanchito that I so proudly developed...

 

This is a printscreen of 2nd season, not from the test with the tweaked version!

Anyway, let's go to more interesting things. This tweaked version tries to force the players to play more by the center of the pitch. The goal is:

 

1) to make the three midfielders to pass the ball between them and to progress more in combinations between them, reducing the amount of times we progress by runs with the ball from our WBs;

2) to reduce the amount of chances and goals from crosses by our WBs to our Pressing Forward (PF from now on); this is mainly to find a more balanced tactic which can be viable to all teams and not only to ones who have attackers with high Aerial;

3) to guarantee a more active role to our Inside Forwards (IFs from now on); with the main tactic they are not useless, they score and assist, but sometimes they are more in a role to open gaps to their teammates than taking an active part on our plays.

 

This tweaked version is very much alike the main one, but I changed the four things:

 

 

My centre backs are now "Ball Playing Defenders".

This is because I found that sometimes when our opponents clear the ball from their box and my centre backs recover it, they would wait for my Roaming Playmaker (RP) or WBs to run behind to pass it to them.

With the new role they run ahead with it, which enables our team to charge again with all players still close to final third of the pitch.

 

 

This time I ticked on the "Offside Trap".

I noticed a lot of our conceded goals are from through balls to our backs (that's why I strongly recommend faster centre backs when possible). If that's the case, why not try to catch them on offside positions?

I believe this only works if our defenders have good Positioning and Decisions. I may be wrong about this one tough, as my centre backs aren't that good on those and it still somewhat worked.

If anyone can add some input about this, that would be much appreciated.

 

 

On the attack instructions, i changed the "Run at Defence" to "Through Balls" and the Passing Focus from "Mixed" to "Centre".

The latter is obvious after what I wrote before in this post. The latter is because I saw some plays wasted when my opponents parked their bus, their private cars and the jet that brought them to Manchester or Dortmund, all those in their box, and my players (mainly my IFs) just run against two or three opponents waiting for them.

What I want now is the ball running around. The ball, not the player who have it. It's down to the guys who don't have it to give options to the guy who has the ball. They have to run without the ball to give options. The guy with the ball just has to hold it and choose the best option that his teammates give him.

It was my assumption that "Through Balls" would ensure this better than "Run at Defence", so I tried it.

So, how did it performed?

Before showing the results, let me just say that one of the goals failed spectacularly. It's not that it failed in a way that was bad to our team, it's actually a good thing, but I couldn't stop my team from scoring goals from crosses LOL

We crossed less. Depending on the game, we went from around 10 to around 40, but the average was something like 20/25 per game. Funnily enough, we scored 26 goals from crosses during the season (22 from crosses by WBs, 4 from IFs), which is not that different from previous tests.

Taking this in account, I give up on this task. By now I'm just convinced the match engine favours the crosses and the Aerial attribute. It's easier to score that way than any other option. I'll go with it.

Also because I got pretty good results with this tweaked version. We scored more, so the percentage of goals from crosses is actually lower than any previous test, which makes it acceptable.

 

(from this point onwards I played with the winter update, I don't honestly know if it affects the match engine of saved games in any way, but as you guys can see below, if it does, it helped even more)

 

 

This is the best result of any test so far. We won 33 of our 34 games (we draw away against Bayern), scoring 106 goals (3,11 goals per game!!!) while conceding only 6 times (0,17 goals per game, or a goal only in every 5 or 6 games). This was unreal. I remind this is a control tactic, not an overload or even attacking one.

Also, most of my players are not what one would call world class. My keeper is good-ish (a regen who was already here when I arrived), my best centre back is Gabriel, my WBs are Sergio Gómez and Dumfries. My IFs are Malen, Pedro Neto, Rodrygo and Adeyemi (as I showed before, both Rodrygo and Adeyemi are far from what they could have become, I got them at 5th season of this save in worse conditions than those they started the save). My strikers are Beto (the one from Udinese) and a young regen that at this point I'm convinced is the new Cristiano Ronaldo, I can't know for sure but the guy, while young and inconsistent, is very good.

What I have is Jude Bellingham who is fantastic, João Félix was a bit far from what he could be, but once properly developed is a top player, and Tom Bischof is also very good. Most of other players are young ones, some performed good, some didn't.

So, I wasn't quite expecting these numbers. One could argue that Bundesliga is not Premier League, that I could see on the match engine, but the numbers we got in Champions League were close to the Bundesliga ones.

 

 

We won the League Phase winning all 8 games (including Real Madrid, Inter, Barcelona and Arsenal). Then we dispatched Bayern (4-2), Barcelona (6-0) and Real Madrid (4-2) and beat Man Utd with a clear 4-1.

In 15 games, we won 13 times, while conceding a draw against Bayern (we had a 3-1 advantage from first leg) and losing with Real Madrid (after a 4-1 win at first leg). We scored 45 goals (3 per game) and conceded 9 times (0,6 per game). 

 

 

The other two competitions were won with the Bayern being our closest competitor. We played 6 Der Klassiker this season, winning 4 times and conceding 2 draws. It was a good season to be a BVB supporter ahah

Overall, we played 56 games all season with a result of 53W-2D-1L, scoring 177 goals and conceding only 16. That's an average of 3,16 goals scored per game and 0,28 goals conceded per game. Unreal.

Now, an enormous amount of goals were from corners. If I counted it right, we scored 25 goals that way. I don't know what happened, I used the same instructions as before, but we scored more from corners than previous season. We did had more corners, as the ball was more time closer to our opponents box than before, but still...

(the instructions I use is to put a centre back marking the keeper, the other centre back attacking far post and the PF attacking near post; two players lurk outside the box; two are in go forward; the corner taker doesn't have any instructions)

Anyway, even taking these 25 goals from the results, it would result in a total of 152 goals (2,71 goals per game) which would still be awesome.

Let's go to the players stats.

 

(my preferred starting eleven)

(my "second lines")

 

Before anyone gets too excited by the IFs number of assists, they were the corner takers, so 25 assists come from there. Adeyemi got 9 from corners (so 10 assists from open plays), Pedro Neto 8 (11 assists from open plays), Rodrygo 4 (11 from open plays) and Malen 4 (12 from open plays). Together, they did 44 assists that weren't from corners.

Still good numbers after the nerf they got in this years game!

Let's start breaking down the numbers by positions to give you guys a clear view of what happened.

Beggining with our WBs.

They still did a good amount of assists. Funny thing here is that some of those weren't from crosses. As we played with "Through Balls" and the passing focus on the center, the players were more ahead on the pitch than before, so the WBs had more passing options other than crossing the ball.

As previously stated, we scored 26 goals from headers (not taking into account the ones from corners). My WBs assisted to 22 of those, but they did 39 assists, so 17 assists were from passing, not crossing. Mainly to the closest IF or B2B, but I've also saw they assisting the PF or the RP inside the pitch.

This is a win, because if we do the math, it means only about 12% of our 177 goals were from crossings, which is far lower than previously. Even taking out the goals from corners, it would make it about only 14% of a total 152 goals.

Just for the record, both my PFs scored 9 of those 22 headers from crossings by my WBs. The other 4 were from Adeyemi, who managed do do it playing as right IF and with only 10 of Aerial.

RPs and B2B

Both my RPs are key for this tactic to work and it shows on their stats. I used them in a heavily rotation system, as it can be seen in their appearances, and they still have strong numbers of goals and assists. They often appear even ahead of my B2B, especially when my B2B are the ones holding the ball, and that means they would roam to just ahead of the box or even inside it.

Speaking of my B2B, all of them have about the same numbers apart João Félix, who unsurprisingly is the one more prone to score. He scored 12 goals in 48 appearances, which is very good (1 goal in every 4 games), and gets better if I tell that in some of these appearances he played only 15/20 minutes. He did about 35 games as a starter in a rotation system with Gio Reyna (who did the other 21).

PF and IFs

My PFs scored 60 goals between them. I already stated that they scored 18 from crossings from my WBs, but they scored 3 more from my IFs. So, only 21 of 60 goals from crosses, which is less than in other tests and I'm happy with these numbers.

My IFs were glorious! All four of them scored more than 10 goals, Adeyemi even broke the 20 goals limit that Rashford couldn't! They together scored 54 goals in 56 games, that's virtually 1 goals per game by my IFs! 54 goals in 152 (taking corners from this count) means 35% of our goals were scored by them.

And as they did 44 assists (again not counting the ones from corners), that means that they had 98 direct contributions to these 152 non-corner goalsgoals. That's 64% of direct contributions to goals.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really excited by these numbers!

 

Finally, let's put these numbers by position to give a clear number of the stats:

 

Right WB (Dumfries+Alisson): 0 goals / 19 assists

Left WB (Gómez+Guilherme): 0 / 20

(not worth counting centre backs)

RP (Bellingham+Latre): 11 / 14

Right B2B (Bischof+Werner): 9 / 11

Left B2B (Félix+Reyna): 18 / 12

Right IF (Adeyemi+Neto): 33 / 38 (33 / 21 without corners)

Left IF (Rodrygo+Malen): 21 / 31 (21 / 23 without corners)

PF (Beto+Gamboa): 60 / 11

 

Overall, I think these are good numbers. Everyone is scoring and making assists, the team is working together to create chances and everyone can score at any given time. My IFs are the ones who seem to benefit more from this tweaked version.

I don't know if I can explain this well in english, but when I count the goals and assists per position, what I want to show is what it could be the number of a player that is in starting eleven all season. For example, in reality Salah is in the starting eleven almost all games, he is not used in a rotation system as I do with my players, so what I do is an example of what could be a guy like Salah (or Rashford, Saka or Vinicius Jr) playing almost all games in this tactic. More than 20 or 30 goals seems pretty acceptable after the nerf IFs got this year.

As for this tweaked version, I'm already a fan. I loved every game I saw. Of course, it requires a PF with good technique, teamwork, passing and shooting and demands midfielders with a lot of technique, passing and everything that is important for a possession tactic, so it remains to be seen if this is viable on smaller teams, but in top teams I believe it could be used regularly or even as an alternative to the main The Black Hawk version.

I ended this save test with this BVB season. Did the Club World Cup and won it, beating again Man Utd in the final (after knocking out Real Madrid and Man City too).

 

 

And resigned from BVB.

 

 

Ended this 7 year testing (4 with Man Utd and 3 with BVB) with almost 91% of wins.

I don't know where I will play after this, but probably will do as @gamkinnkristian suggested and start a new save to see if there's any change on the match engine on new games. Also probably in a smaller team with the tweaked version.

As a gift to all that had the patience to read all this, I leave some gifs (I hope this forum supports gifs) with examples of some of the movements of the team during this season.

 

 

Here Hannover made the mistake of playing against us in a plain 442. Our movements without the ball killed their defensive organisation and created gaps all over the place.

My RP (Latre, #4) went close to the WB to receive the ball and start our play, which attracted one of their two central midfielders. My B2Bs (Bischof, #14; Reyna, #7) are in numerical superiority, Bischof rapidly took it in our advantage, and then my PF (Beto, #9) created a huge gap in front of the goal that my right IF (Pedro Beto, #17) explored to score.

 

 

Here another example of Pedro Neto scoring after the team created a gap to explore. Also, an example of something I said earlier in this post about my WBs.

My right WB (Alisson, #15) had options inside and passed the ball instead of crossing. Pedro Neto did a quick one-two with my right B2B (Werner, #8) and scored.

Notice here how my RP (Latre, #4) is ahead of both my B2B, as I said before in this post it happens a lot. Here it was key to open the space to Pedro Neto, just look at how Augsburg defensive midfielder (#2) went to man mark Latre which left a huuuuge gap for Pedro Neto to run into.

 

 

Now a Champions League goal against Inter. What I want to show here is not only the team work in the build up, but especially what my right B2B (Bischof, #14) did.

Bischof actually started all this, then just went ahead without anyone noticing it and ended up scoring after running through the gap left by the wide movement of my right IF (Adeyemi, #17). Adeyemi didn't actively participate in anything, but he attracted their full back opening the space for Bischof.

 

 

Not saying anything about this one, just wanted to share this one because was against Real Madrid and my three forwards destroyed their defense in an attack so quick they didn't even knew what happened.

This was so satisfying to see happening.

 

 

Here in a Der Klassiker, a movement that I've talked a lot about my RP (Bellingham, #22). Again, he was ahead of my B2B and gave my left IF (Rodrygo, #11) an valid option to assist in a clear shot just ahead of the goal.

Sometimes this shot may be a bit behind (outside of the box), other times it's my B2B who is there while the RP was behind, but at least one teammate should be in that space to give this passing option to the IF in every play we build.

Speaking of this one...

 

 

Here's an example where it's my B2B who appears there. Rodrygo actually didn't try to assist him, he did try to cross, but he could have (and should have) passed the ball to Félix. But the ball ended there anyway and he did score.

Also, noticed how in these two gifs my left WB (Gómez, #3) took an active part on the build up to the goal while not crossing?

Finally, two gifs of movements of my IFs (both times Adeyemi) that appeared far from their starting position being assisted by my PF.

 

 

 

This was my main source of goals in last years FMM2022. This year it happens a lot less, so when this happens in this version I cannot describe just how happy I became.

I won't lie, it happens a handful of times, some of them my IFs miss anyway, but it's the closest to 2022 IFs I can get in this years game.

A great read as per 👏

 

Using the original version with Notts County on a new save to see if the update affected anything, and it still works well. Might do another new save and try your updated version with Venezia because they're a cool club to be.

[Black Hawk]

On 07/03/2023 at 18:11, Schwantz34 said:

A great read as per 👏

 

Using the original version with Notts County on a new save to see if the update affected anything, and it still works well. Might do another new save and try your updated version with Venezia because they're a cool club to be.

I did that too, completed one season with the tweaked version playing as Rayo Vallecano. Will post the feedback later today.

On 08/03/2023 at 00:48, ericm544 said:

@Black Hawk I'm doing a Barcelona challenge with your tactic where I decided I have to achieve at minimum a treble every season or I resign, only rich benefactor unlockable selected. First season won spanish league by 22 points, spanish cup, and champions league. Beginning second season fantastic as we already have a super cup trophy. Using your original tactic, it just dominates teams regardless of ability and tactical setups. My record is currently 71 Ws, 8 Ds, and 5 Ls. Of the 13 games where we didn't win, 2 games both against Real Madrid were the only times in this entire save where we were completely outmatched on the day. The only tweak of your tactic due to my chosen team is I copied Xavi and have been using Araujo as a defensive right full back, with a BBM on the inside right. On the left it is still a WB with currently Gaya/Balde and a CM on the inside left.

I noticed that some teams are harder to beat. Like, always, in every game. With Man Utd I found Liverpool and Man City to be particularly difficult. With BVB, it was Bayern and Man Utd.

What those teams had in common was that their forwards are fast as f*ck. Liverpool with Darwin, Salah and Diaz; Man City with Haaland; Bayern with Sane, Gnabry, Coman and others; Man Utd with Osimhen, Rashford, Sancho, Vítor Roque (don't forget it was my Man Utd).

My perception about this is that even when their forwards couldn't go to the box and score, they at least would bring the game close of our box, then wait for their teammates and that helps our opponents having possession and attacking highlights. Remember that the idea behind having a high defensive line and almost everyone attacking in our opponents final third is to guarantee that even if they can clear the ball, they will not have anyone to counterattack.

Some teams can bypass this with fast forwards that also have good technique and decisions and do what I've described. Or to put this in other way, despite not being tiki-taka, this tactic tries to dominate the same way Barcelona with Guardiola did: pushing our opponents to their own half and having the ball most of the times. The vast majority of teams will struggle against us, but some teams sometimes could break our system, I clearly remember how Bayern from Heynckes completely outclassed Barcelona that way.

What I also noticed is that this begin to not be an issue by third/fourth season. By then we already rebuild the squad to our preferences, the players have trained key attributes in their positions and starts to happen things like my last update with BVB.

Also, in confidence, I actually like to have a handful of games where we struggle every season. It's nice to celebrate a goal as if it was my club scoring in reality. My third season with BVB became boring at some point because we were winning far too easily. The only thing that was keeping me playing was some great build ups to goals, like some of the gifs I shared in last feedback.

[Black Hawk]

2 hours ago, ericm544 said:

@Black Hawk Looking forward to your Rayo update, they have some quality players as well. So would you say fast forwards from either running onto through balls or dribbling is the most dangerous form of countering the setup?

Yap, players that can advance with the ball either to run behind our defense back or simply gaining metres and bringing the game to our own half. Fast and agressive defenders that can react faster and recover the ball before our opponents can reach it and start running is the best way to cover for this. At least the best way I found until now.

**************"

So, my Rayito.

I really like Rayito. Their values, their close connection with the community, their social programs. That's how every football club should be. How not to like them?

Choosing them to this test was a good one. Not only because I like them, but mainly because almost every position has players that are the exact opposite of what I recommend 😂

Their best centre back is Alejandro Catena. A really good player, but one that has 12 as Pace. The other centre backs have the same or even lower but Abdul Mumin, who has 15. The problem is that other than his speed, he is very limited.

Fran García is their best Wing Back (left WB). He starts with green attributes of Speed and Teamwork, but other than that is a pretty standard guy. I wouldn't think much of him if he hadn't a lot of top teams interested on him, which makes me think he has potential to develop. All others Wing Backs are... well, not that good. I need fast WBs with Pace and Movement to cover a lot of ground, but none of them have it.

My midfielders are actually good, except that I need ones with Movement - remember that I want my players to run without the ball giving passing options to the guy who has the ball. Most of them started the season with values of Movement between 7 and 12. Unai López had 13 and Oscar Trejo 14. I spent the entire season retraining Unai López as defensive midfielder to be the Roaming Playmaker as I need a RP that... well, that roams the field to be what that role implies... because all the others we far off to be in that role (Trejo has 34 yo, no way that guy has Stamina to play there).

My two best IFs, Álvaro García and Isi Palazón, are both left footed, so one of them had to play by the left. As can be guessed, he ended up being more of an winger than an IF. I chose Álvaro García to play by the left because the role traits of Isi Palazón looked better to play by the right. My third IF, José Pozo, is right footed but the guy spent the whole season throwing a fit because I lacked reputation and he didn't believe in me, when I used him he struggled a lot. My fourth IF, Salvi Sánchez, had a nine month injury and never actually played.

My Pressing Forwards... Well, this was actually very funny. Raúl De Tomás (RDT) has good Shooting and that was it, but I now that he is supposed to be good. Radamel Falcao is nowhere near the level he once had, is now 36 yo and played mostly in Spanish Cup or the last minutes in some games when I wanted to rest RDT. I only used Sergio Camello twice or so, he was on loan from Atlético Madrid and was not that good anyway.

What was funny about them, you guys ask? Well, none of them have good Aerial, so this was a good test to see if we scored regularly without the goals from headers.

I did not bought anyone, this was to play with the actual Rayito. Before I started this, I did a save test without club to see how they perform with the AI managing them.

 

 

They were 15th, 47-63 in goals and only 40 points. Yikes!

So, the team has good players, but good at different things that I need in this tweaked version of The Black Hawk. My faster CB is also the worst of them, my WBs and midfielders didn't have Movement, my left IF is left footed, my PFs didn't have Aerial. Ah, I already forgot, my GK has all the goalkeeping attributes blue, not one of them green.

Looking at their attributes, I believe the team is build to play with a deeper defense and to explore the speed of players like Álvaro García and Isi Palazón upfront, launched by guys like Oscar Trejo, Unai López or Pathé Ciss that don't have a lot of Movement but have technique, creativity and/or passing.

Some things that I anticipated happened here. My midfielders struggled at times to find what to do with the ball because no one gave them an passing option. That caused some lost possession and counterattacks that my CBs struggled with, considering one has 12 of Pace and the other who is fast don't has overall quality in anything else.

Sometimes we scored one or two goals only to suffer later because we lack individual quality in our defence. Our first game in La Liga was my first clue of what was about to happen: we were beating Valencia 2-0, but they managed to get to a 2-2 draw. Individual errors in both games. That happened a lot all season.

Anyway, I found that the tactic put the team playing well above their league, but felt that sometimes bad decisions and individual errors hampered the team and our results. There was a game, don't remember which one, we were winning, playing well and missing goals for fun, then in injury time Mumin (the fast CB one) let one guy run against him and actually dodged him, letting him go to score an late equaliser. Never saw anything like that before in how many save tests I did until now. I was this close to throw my phone against the wall.

A lot of games where we were better overall ended up in draws or defeats that way. It was something that I couldn't do anything about it, there was a lack of quality behind and we had to play what we had. It didn't help that 1 in every 3 shots against us resulted in goals conceded. Every game was a battle.

Enough talk. Here's the results.

 

 

 

 

 

I believe you guys must not see that coming 😂 After everything I've said, we performed really well in the end. We ended up 5th in La Liga and won the Spanish Cup. It was a good season.

The thing is... We really did struggled in a lot of games. Most of wins shown with conceded goals were like battles to keep it, most of them we conceded goals when already winning too. Our defense was a setback. Even when we were winning by two or threes goals, I was never relaxed.

There was a period that I was in panic, between January and early March, we played every 3 or 4 days with several players out injured, had to play with guys starting those games with less than 90% of fitness, it was CHAOS! It was the period where we played most rounds of Spanish Cup and is clear how we struggled in some of these games, two of them we won after the 90 minutes (one in extra time, the other on penalty shootout).

After that, we lost against Girona (this was one of those games where one conceded a stupid goal and then missed a lot of goals ourselves) and Real Madrid. After those two games, we recovered the ones injured, everyone had time to breathe and started out best period of the season. Only one defeat against Atlético (the result is deceiving, it was an even game), three draws where we were the best team overall and a lot of victories. We ended the season playing really well.

We scored 88 goals overall in 46 games (1,91 per game) and conceded 45 goals, which makes virtually 1,00 per game. In La Liga, we were both the 4th best attack and defense. With what Rayito has, I believe it was really good.

On Spanish Cup, we were really lucky. We played all games against lower division teams (mainly from second league, the tier 2) and only played against someone from our level in the final. All big teams were knocked out early. I don't complain. It was the first big trophy to our Rayito.

 

 

My right IF Isi Palazón was a beast all season. He scored as much as Rashford or Adeyemi did in previous tests, but in believe in less games.

Most stats are somewhat similar to the ones of BVB with this tweaked version, but with less goals from midfielders as they are worst overall, lacking Movement or Shooting or both.

Raúl De Tomás scored 22 times, most of them from shooting as he doesn't have good Aerial, so this shows how a striker can score without it. It helps (A LOT), but is not a requirement anymore.

Oh, my WBs were awful. Even when they were close to the box, they were passing the ball to no one or crossing... how to say this... in Portugal we call it "chuveirinho", that is a crossing that is not strong enough, like the ball is chipped and reaches the striker from above. I don't know if I can make myself understood in this one, but the thing is their crossings were useless because even if the striker would won it, they couldn't strike the ball with enough strength to score.

So, final considerations.

The tactic surprised me. It put Rayito playing good football at times, well above what I expected. This makes me believe it would work even with underdogs.

The thing is that even with underdogs, one should have players that have the right attributes. It's not needed Varanes, but as an example, in a previous test I won the Premier League in first season with Wolves with the main tactic of this thread using Jean-Clair Todibo and Jerry St Juste as centre backs. They are not what one would call world class, but are good with the ball and fast, so they enabled this tactic to work well.

In this test, I had a lot of wrong players for what this tactic needs. We still performed nonetheless, but we could have done more. I have the clear perception that our overall results were hampered by the lack of key attributes in some positions.

I'll try to find players that are more suited for this tactic and play a second season. Also, players that are somewhat near the same level of the ones I had here, only with better attributes for the roles they will play. Then I'll see how it goes.

PS: uhhh... Some spelling errors, sorry, I'll edit this post and correct them tomorrow 

Edited March 12, 2023 by Black Hawk

[StuartM]

Great post as usual and a truly great season with no transfers!

[BarnDoor]

So, @Black Hawk, what exactly is this "tweaked version"? Do you have a final verison of it? I was thinking of going back to my ManUtd save and testing it for a season or two.

What was the goal of that version? Less crosses and no aerial striker? 

[oskarsson81]

Quick test of tweaked version with new (shit) update in italian third division. In season two I managed a really underdog team coming by fourth division (Cavese) with few players, rating of assistant manager for them from 1 to 2,5 stars. I catch only free player, low wage requests due to limited economic resources. Until january 24, i don't ask any loan from higher divisione to not alterate the test (in january I only pick a CM from other team of third division and some youngers from serie B, but using it only in the case of injuries).

I finished first and promoted in serie B, with 8-9 draws and only 4 matches losts (+ 1 early lost in italian C Cup where I use only second lines). I had a a very solid defense (only 22 goals conceded), even if my best defenders had a 60k value at the end of season (the other two central defenders most used had 30k and 8k). Most wins was 1-0 or 0-1. I had a "plug and play" approach (no tweak to the tactic during the match).

Of course, I scored less than I can do with this tactic in other stronger teams (63 or 65 goals, I don't mind), but in the last ten matches I start to score more (average 2 goals for match) when I tweak final third (setting simply "run at defense" instead of "through ball").

The top scorer was the PF (19 goals), but only after the tweak, folllowed by the two IF (both of them 10 goals).

[Black Hawk]

On 12/03/2023 at 07:37, BarnDoor said:

So, @Black Hawk, what exactly is this "tweaked version"? Do you have a final verison of it? I was thinking of going back to my ManUtd save and testing it for a season or two.

What was the goal of that version? Less crosses and no aerial striker? 

By now, this is the only version.

The goal is to reduce the number of crosses from the WBs and "force" our team to play more down the middle, which causes the IFs to be more in game.

On 12/03/2023 at 17:53, ericm544 said:

@Black Hawk, Similar to @BarnDoor, curious if your Rayo Vallecano tactics were any different from your original and the tweaked Borussia Dortmund one. I am currently entering my 25/26 or fifth season after we just squeaked by Roma in the UEFA Super Cup 3-2, out shooting them 17 to 2... I am still quite set on your original with tweaks as I have told you earlier I am not a huge fan of the tactical changes of the tweaked one. I have taken your original, with FBs instead of WBs and CDs instead of BPDs. For the midfield it is still two BBMs but I have removed the RP. I have instead added a SS and changed the PF to P. I left both IFs the same and also on the higher forward line instead of the winger line. I have found especially being a bigger team that without the RP the team still retains the ball but more often starts attacks from middle to final third, instead of the RP picking up the ball in our own third. The ONLY trophy I have currently not won is the 22/23 or first spanish supercup against Real Madrid. The only in-game change I have been making throughout the save is when we are tied or losing around the 70th minute I will change mentality to overload and passing to direct.

No, with Rayito I used the exact same tweaked version I posted with BVB.

Have you seen it working well with those changes late in the game?

14 hours ago, oskarsson81 said:

Quick test of tweaked version with new (shit) update in italian third division. In season two I managed a really underdog team coming by fourth division (Cavese) with few players, rating of assistant manager for them from 1 to 2,5 stars. I catch only free player, low wage requests due to limited economic resources. Until january 24, i don't ask any loan from higher divisione to not alterate the test (in january I only pick a CM from other team of third division and some youngers from serie B, but using it only in the case of injuries).

I finished first and promoted in serie B, with 8-9 draws and only 4 matches losts (+ 1 early lost in italian C Cup where I use only second lines). I had a a very solid defense (only 22 goals conceded), even if my best defenders had a 60k value at the end of season (the other two central defenders most used had 30k and 8k). Most wins was 1-0 or 0-1. I had a "plug and play" approach (no tweak to the tactic during the match).

Of course, I scored less than I can do with this tactic in other stronger teams (63 or 65 goals, I don't mind), but in the last ten matches I start to score more (average 2 goals for match) when I tweak final third (setting simply "run at defense" instead of "through ball").

The top scorer was the PF (19 goals), but only after the tweak, folllowed by the two IF (both of them 10 goals).

Good results

I didn't had good results with the passing focus on the center and run at defense, but that can be down to the players I had.

***************

So, I was not convinced by the results I had with Rayito. Or to put it another way, I found the team managing to totally dominate a game only to struggle next week, and then dominating again. Going from one extreme to another.

I decided to do a quick run with Betis until the World Cup break, the reasoning being that Betis is a better team than Rayito while not at the level of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid.

Betis has two problems:

1) their whole defence is somewhat slow, this include their WBs; only Luiz Felipe is a bit fast, with 13 or 14 of Pace;

2) their IFs are strange; Joaquin (right footed) is not natural at the left, Fekir (left footed) is more an Advanced Playmaker than an IF (and lacks the usual role traits of them), Juanmi is good and Luiz Henrique seems to need some training to start to work.

Anyway, their midfielders are really, really good! Having a midfield with Guido Rodriguez (or Andrés Guardado), William Carvalho and Sérgio Canales is fantastic.

The results:

 

 

In 16 games, we got 11W-4D-1L, 44-12 in goals (2,75 per game scored, 0,85 per game conceded).

This time I didn't gave any instructions for set pieces. Only one goal was from a corner (and I kid you not, was an own goal).

We lost against Real Madrid, there was two draws in away games with Barcelona and Arsenal. Meanwhile, we beat Arsenal 3-0 home.

 

 

From the look of it, we were en route to discuss La Liga with Real Madrid... should I keep playing (which I won't, I just wanted to see this tweaked version in a slightly better team than Rayito).

Also, Rayito with AI was only 14th.

 

 

My IFs are not performing a lot, at least not scoring as much, but that was to be expected from what I've said before. Still, 23 goals/assists in 44, more than half of direct contributions.

I had a lot of injuries, it can be seen as some of them still are while others have less games than expected (Guido Rodriguez, Youssouf Sabaly, Abner Montoya and Luiz Henrique as examples), still we managed to keep going.

Surprisingly, we didn't had issues at the back despite the slow pace of our defenders. That's because our midfielders are so good, they could hold the ball and the lack of lose possession meant our opponents couldn't explore the counterattack.

I liked what I saw, the team was dominating all games except the Real Madrid one. We could (and should) have won at Camp Nou. And this with Betis, which is a good team but not world class.

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Black Hawk

[BarnDoor]

30 minutes ago, Black Hawk said:

By now, this is the only version.

The goal is to reduce the number of crosses from the WBs and "force" our team to play more down the middle, which causes the IFs to be more in game.

Ok, then I guess I could try that BVB version and maybe make some of my own tweaks to it 😁

Btw, @Black Hawk, I think I saw you over there in another topic about making IFs work... It uses a similar formation to yours, but roles are very different. You should check it out and maybe it will give you some ideas.

Another reason why I'm bringing it up - we ran some tests and also had the goal to reduce the number of crosses. I personally tested it for a whole season with IWBs and FBs. I'll leave you a link to my analysis (shameless self promotion 😂), or if you're to lazy to read all that here's a short version - FBs and IWBs delivered almost the same (low) amount of crosses, but FBs did offer width, unlike IWBs. I didn't test regular WBs, but I assume both of the tested roles cross a lot less than WBs. So, maybe that's whay you're looking for - FBs! 🤔

https://fmmvibe.com/forums/topic/48421-4-1-2-1-2-mufc-test-ifs-on-fire/?do=findComment&comment=482054

[BarnDoor]

20 minutes ago, ericm544 said:

@BarnDoor@Black Hawk I really enjoyed that thread on FBs, that was one of the first tweaks I did to BlackHawks 1st tactic. I also found IWBs carry the ball too much for my liking. I think I am almost done with where I like it, I have been more attacking/direct versus control/possession in my tweaks. What differences have you two noticed with Through Balls versus Run At Defence? Also what differences in terms of Through Balls with the style of Passing(short,mixed, and direct, assuming almost no one uses long)?

Thanks! That was one of the most detailed tests I've done.

So, you have used this tactic with FBs? How do they perform compared to WBs? I still haven't tried it out. After a week or so of only running tests I wanted to play for fun now 😂

I haven't used Black Hawks tactic in a long time... I keep wanting to go back to my Man Utd save where I used it, but I keep getting distracted. So, yeah, I can't really say much about through balls / different type of passing right now...

 

[BarnDoor]

Sounds great! Im really looking forward to trying them out.

As long as they support the attack enough I think they will be the answer to our problems when it comes to wasted crosses.

When/if I end up testing them and some other tweaks, I'll make sure to share my thoughts here.

[Black Hawk]

On 13/03/2023 at 20:29, BarnDoor said:

Ok, then I guess I could try that BVB version and maybe make some of my own tweaks to it 😁

Btw, @Black Hawk, I think I saw you over there in another topic about making IFs work... It uses a similar formation to yours, but roles are very different. You should check it out and maybe it will give you some ideas.

Another reason why I'm bringing it up - we ran some tests and also had the goal to reduce the number of crosses. I personally tested it for a whole season with IWBs and FBs. I'll leave you a link to my analysis (shameless self promotion 😂), or if you're to lazy to read all that here's a short version - FBs and IWBs delivered almost the same (low) amount of crosses, but FBs did offer width, unlike IWBs. I didn't test regular WBs, but I assume both of the tested roles cross a lot less than WBs. So, maybe that's whay you're looking for - FBs! 🤔

https://fmmvibe.com/forums/topic/48421-4-1-2-1-2-mufc-test-ifs-on-fire/?do=findComment&comment=482054

I didn't reply before because I haven't tested your idea. I want to reply after I test it.

The thing is... with IWBs the team was predictable. It reduced the amount of crosses to a point where if our midfielders were having a bad day, we couldn't create scoring chances. With WBs, we have an alternative to get there. Playing with the focus passing on the center and through balls instead of running at defense (the tweaked version) reduced the amount of crossings to an acceptable number for any attacking team and I am satisfied with it.

I'm afraid with FBs happens the same. But I'll test it after I finish the second season with Rayito, which I must say is being very addictive and I don't know if I won't keep playing this save for a long time.