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

[Black Hawk]

On 16/03/2023 at 18:24, 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)?

To put it simple, as my english is limited

With Run at Defence, I found that some of my players take the ball and try to run at the gaps their teammates created on our opponents defensive.

With Through Balls, my players that don't have the ball run to these gaps instead of the one who has the ball. Not necessarily on the box to score, but sometimes they find space between the defense and midfield of our opponents and receive the ball there, creating goal scoring chances.

I have been training Movement on half my squad for that reason. I'm close to finish my second season with Rayito, my midfielders are getting to green numbers at Movement and our results are getting better and better.

I have been using only short passing as that's key to this tactic, don't know how that works with other options.

[BarnDoor]

1 hour ago, Black Hawk said:

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.

Looking forward to it!

I have finally picked up my Man Utd save again this evening and have played a few games. Planing to do a whole season with FBs instead of WBs.

So far, theres definitely less crosses, but its still too early to tell how it impacts our performances. 

[MarkD]

Going to see how far the tweaked version can take me.

Starting in the Vanarama National North with a newly promoted team Buxton.

Lets go!!

[Black Hawk]

On 18/03/2023 at 19:49, ericm544 said:

@BarnDoor@Black Hawk The V2 has now surpassed the V1 in my career and I do like it a lot. I have never used BPDs and offside trap a lot but this tactic has changed my mind. I find it seems the same defensively solid but creates way more goals than V1. I have found in my opinion that the WBs do guarantee much more threat, without overloading low chance cross. The best so far for me has been using BlackHawks V2. If losing or tied 60-70th minute, I change passing to direct and overload. When choosing to protect a lead, I change WBs to FBs, and the RP to DLP, turn on time wasting, balanced defensive line, and turn off offside trap. This varied for me when I activate these changes as sometimes it's a 3+ goal lead in the league or a 1 goal lead in a cup tie. In game I liked it as it creates a dynamic back five to kill off a game but doesn't let up on the main emphasis of attack in the tactic. Also in your Rayo Vallecano career, have you been using V2? Do you notice slow BPDs able to adapt near immediately?

I have been using the tweaked one, almost plug & play. In some rare games I change one thing here and there, but usually only roles in some positions: WBs to FBs and RP to Anchor when I want to secure a difficult game, just like I did in the test save with Wolves. I have to start trying some tweaks more often in some games where we are loosing or against strange formations, things like that just like you are doing.

In this second season (already finished it) I only had one slow defender (Catena), but surprisingly he was much more reliable than in the first season. I believe this is because my midfield is much more effective in possession, we lost the game less times than previously. Funny thing is the midfield is almost the same as before, but the players have grown (specific training and some power ups after good exhibitions). My defense was less exposed because my midfield is more reliable.

But answering to your question, no, not even close. I conceded a lot of goals in first season after lost possession and my slower defenders couldn't deal with the counterattacks that followed.

I will post the feedback of my second season with Rayito soon, but I agree with you, this tweaked version is a lot more fun to use... if we have the right players to use, of course.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Black Hawk

[Black Hawk]

16 hours ago, ericm544 said:

I agree those have been the only positions I have consistently touched throughout my Barca career, occasionally I move the RP to an AP instead of SS below the PF in early spanish cup games or lower spanish league games for example when the entirety of the game is in the opposition half. But, the RP seems so much more varied, especially the dribbling out the back which the AP naturally can't do as much being further up the field. For your defensive tweaks on v2, why do you prefer an A over a DLP? Also have you tried DFBs over FBs when tweaking for defense? I decided to finish my eighth and last season on this Barca one then want to start a new Deportivo La Coruna career with your v2 and return them to the top of european football. The results speak for themself, and I mainly relied on Barcas youth intakes. In eight seasons we at least reached a semi-final or final of every competition. Of the 29 losses and 61 draws most of them we outplayed opposition. You have created a fantastic tactic and I'm excited to start a new save.

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Great results!

I like how the Roaming Playmaker is designed because he plays as a defensive midfielder, but when we are deep on our opponents half of the pitch the guy runs ahead as an attacking midfielder. It's one of the small variations that AI can't deal with.

The changes, that depends. With Wolves I used DFBs instead of FBs when I wanted to give an extra layer of protection to our centre backs late in the games. With Rayito I didn't need a display so defensive, FBs did the trick. But keeping in mind that I did so maybe two, three times in a whole season, didn't need to do it more.

As for Anchor, I believe this role makes the player stay closer to the centre backs than any other, and late in the game trying to defend a narrow lead that's what I want from my defensive midfielder.

Can't wait to hear from Depor!

 

*****

 

I finished the 2nd season with Rayito. I'm having more fun than I should since this is a test save, so much so that I'm thinking in turning this in a long and proper save. I would've created a thread for this if I had known it before, but now I guess that's too late.

So, Rayito. Founded in May 29th of 1924. Why am I saying this? Because this 2023/24 season is the centenary one for this proud people's club. With that in mind, I wanted to get good, historic results for the e-people of Vallecas in this e-world. They deserve that.

May 29th. Remember the date.

As Rayito is a modest club and I wanted to see this tactic perform with an underdog team, I tried my best to reinforce the squad with players that strengthen it while not being too good. Also, I put a restrain to myself to spend less than I got from sales, so most of my new players arrived on free transfers.

 

(As I had fun playing this season, I want to share some things that are not important for the tactic tested ahah. I think you guys can skip the squad formation and go directly for the results if you like, but I will write this anyway to share what I did)

 

Goalkeepers

I brought Michele Di Gregorio on a free transfer to be my new goalkeeper. He is young and his attributes are somewhat close to the ones of Stole Dimitrievski, and for that reason I thought it would be a good idea, but I was surprised with the evolution of Stole Dimitrievski. I didn't expected the guy to turn into a quality goalkeeper at 30yo, but that happened. So now I have two good goalkeepers.

 

Centre Backs

My centre backs were the main weakness of my team. Abdul Mumin was the only fast enough to play regularly. Alejandro Catena is sluggish (never got more than Pace 12 despite training it whole season), but is good enough to be an alternative. I needed two centre backs and as no one showed available on a free transfer (at least no one good enough), I spend the majority of my transfer budget in two new guys, funnily enough both germans: Kevin Vogt and Luca Kilian.

Kevin Vogt was 31yo, but he has experience (playing several seasons with Hoffenheim at Bundesliga), is fast and strong in Aerial (both 15), has strong leadership, passing, tackling, decisions, positioning and strength. Best 6M ever spent in the history of Rayito.

Luca Kilian was only 23yo, arrived from FC Köln and despite not being as good as Vogt, is good enough in most attributes. What convinced me was my scout telling he still had room to improve. He was right. This one cost 9,5M.

 

Wing Backs

I convinced Fran García to keep playing for us one more season (had to promise him I will not reject future bids for him, so I expect him to leave by the end of the season). He and Chavarría are reliable enough to guarantee the left side of my defense.

The right side, that's another story. Balliu and Mario didn't showed the quality I expected. Mario ended his contract and left. As for Balliu, Estrela da Amadora, a small portuguese team (but a proud one, everyone likes them), wanted him and I was happy to let him go. Only 3M, prove that he is really limited. For these two positions, I brought two free agents: Héctor Bellerín and Álvaro Núñez, both from Barcelona.

Bellerín was having a terrible run on loan to my Sporting CP, they let him go, Barcelona too didn't wanted him, I snatched him. He was far from what he once was, but is better than Balliu. Álvaro Núñez is young and I expect him to develop into a quality player in the future.

By January, Valencia took Chavarría from me (they payed the minimum release fee, 13M), so to replace him I bought Nuno Santos from Sporting CP. I don't know why, but he was transfer listed and for only 10M I was able to buy him. We was cheaper than Chavarría and a lot better.

 

Midfielders

I spent the whole 1st season retraining Unai López to be defensive midfielder as he has all the right attributes to be a Roaming Playmaker. Somewhere in 2nd season he finally became a natural there. Santi Comesaña developed a bit and is a very intelligent player, my coaches tell me he has great tactical awareness and I can see it on the match engine.

The problem here were all the other players. Oscar Trejo, our captain, was 35yo and loosing attributes. He decided to finish his career at the end of this season, which is the best for everyone as I didn't wanted to release him as he is the captain and some kind of a legend in the team, but he isn't good enough anymore to be a regular starter. Pathé Ciss and Óscar Valentín didn't convinced me and I wanted to sell them.

I was lucky. Fulham wanted Pathé Ciss and LASK decided to go for Óscar Valentín. Their sells financed not only the arrivals of Kevin Vogt and Luca Kilian and still left some money available. For their places, I promoted two players who were loaned out on 1st season (Andrés Martín and Randy Nteka) and brought two new guys whose contracts were coming to an end on their clubs: Riccardo Saponara and Ángel Algobia.

Saponara is a good player, although not an impressive one. He is more of a winger, but has good attributes to be a B2B and so I retrained him (he was already competent enough as central midfielder). He played in the position previously done by Oscar Trejo (left B2B). My captain played there in a rotation system. Algobia is good-ish, but I expected him to develop along the season (the same could have been said from Martín and Nteka).

So, bottom line: Unai López, Santi Comesaña and Riccardo Saponara were the three main starters; Ángel Algobia, Andrés Martin and Randy Nteka the guys who where my "second lines" which I expected to develop into future starters. Oscar Trejo started the season as the fourth in hierarchy, but he was losing his place along the season.

 

Forwards

I brought only one new guy: Matheus Martins, a 19yo left Inside Forward, on a free transfer. All other guys were the same: Isi Palazón and Álvaro García as right IFs, José Pozo as left IF, Raúl De Tomás and Radamel Falcao as Pressing Forwards.

José Pozo and Radamel Falcao were to be released at the end of 1st season, but I couldn't find anyone good enough on free transfers to replace them. My philosophy on the subject is that if I couldn't find anyone good enough, I don't bring anyone. I don't buy only for the sake of it. José Pozo was terrible on 1st season and Falcao was already 37yo, but oh well, let's give them another season.

Also, this was the last season of Radamel Falcao as a professional footballer, he will finish his career this season, which means this 2nd season will be the year where Rayito will celebrate their 100th anniversary and the last year of our long time captain Oscar Trejo and the legendary Radamel Falcao.

All this got me fired up to get a great season.

 

(Also, I spent the rest of my transfer budget on some youth prospects, the biggest of them Ângelo, I think everyone knows him, and brought some more on free transfers; maybe I will talk of them in the future, but by now they are going on loans and are not relevant this season)

 

Results

 

 

(Spanish Supercup Semi Final)

 

 

 

(Isi Palazón was the 3rd best player of the season)

 

This was a really fun season, I was so addicted! I celebrated some goals as if they were Pedro Gonçalves scoring from the midfielder at Emirates! Muahahahah

Sorry Arsenal friends, but I had to bring this up somewhere, sometime.

 

Anyway, as can be seen, we had a shot at La Liga title until the 37th game. Barcelona did a fantastic season too, it's not usual to see an AI team breaking the 90 points barrier. At least where I played more (England, Germany and Portugal), I actually never saw it. Domestically, we also won the Spanish Cup and were runner-ups on Spanish Supercup.

La Liga was incredible. We lost only three times, all of them in games against stronger teams: Atletico Madrid twice and Real Madrid. By the middle of the season we were already taking these big games evenly, we managed to win against Real Madrid and got two draws against Barcelona. We are improving fast!

Also, we finished the season with 16 games in a row without defeats on La Liga.

On the Cup final Sergi Roberto was sent off, the guy committed three fouls on Matheus Martins in 30 minutes and saw two yellow cards. After that we charged, Barcelona managed to delay our goal until extra-time, but this was ours.

Xavi actually made a mistake there. After the sent off, he took Lewandowski out and Barcelona played in a 4122 formation, where these last 2 were Wingers. So, without a striker. What happened is that without a striker, whenever they were able to clear the ball, my centre backs were alone to recover it and start another attack. Barcelona never got a chance to counterattack because there wasn't anyone to win the ball and start an attack of their own as their wingers were always behind covering my WBs movements ahead.

On the Supercup, we won against Atletico Madrid, at the time my first win against one of the big three, but then we were outclassed by Real Madrid in the final. They scored twice early, we managed to reduce later, but they were stronger. It was probably our worst game of the season, everyone was playing below what we can do.

On the Europa League, we won a group stage with Atalanta and Sporting CP. It was painful to win both games against Sporting, felt like daggers in my heart. Don't want to talk about it. It never happened. What was I talking about? Can't remember. Moving on.

Only by Semi Finals we suffered a bit, Lyon got an early advantage on second leg and only in the last half hour we got to draw the game. The game was decided by a late goal in injury time by Raúl De Tomás, but at the time we were suffering to contain their charge.

The final was magical. I was terrified to play against Chelsea and their horrible 4312 formation that I struggled with so many times with Man Utd on the previous test. But after all, we won and dominated the game as can be seen on the print.

Also, the Europa League final was played on May 30th. Remember the date? Yes, the day after the 100th anniversary of Rayito. Oscar Trejo lifting the Europa League cup, the biggest achievement of Rayito history, on his last match on the day after Rayito 100th anniversary. How magical was that? And the goal was scored by Radamel Falcao in his last game of his career.

What a fantastic story this would be if it was real.

 

Performance

 

We are playing good football, the results are clear. Still, we scored less goals than last season on La Liga (65 last season, 61 this season). Why? Because we miss a sh*tload of goals every game. I never saw a team missing so much, sometimes we were creating 4/5 clear cut chances only to get narrow wins. But then again, we don't have world class players. Isi Palazón, Matheus Martins and Raúl De Tomás are good, but only that.

As a team, we are great. We were capable of dominating most games. The problem though is that we lack individual quality to turn those dominating displays in easy wins.

Raúl De Tomás (RDT) performed particularly poorly. The main striker of the 2nd placed team on La Liga and Europa League winner can't score only 17 goals all season. At some point some pundit was saying that if he was me, he would sell RDT. Of course, I will always protect my kiddos and told him that's why I'm the Rayito manager and he was only a pundit ( 😁 ), but he got a point. RDT was not up to the task. Even Falcao scored as much as him despite playing less time. If Falcao had more than Stamina 4 (he is 37yo after all), he would have been the starter. Next season I want a better striker.

Anyway, despite all that we scored 109 goals in 59 games (1,85 goals per game, I can't be mad about that with the players I have). As we scored only a few from corners, most of them were on open plays and the vast majority from shots as we don't have good players on Aerial.

The team has grown a lot on the midfield. Two years of training on the correct roles and on the key attributes made my players much more reliable holding possession. This made my team less prone to opponents counterattacks. All this made us strong at our back. Last season we conceded 39 goals on La Liga, this season we reduced it to only 18!

In all competitions, we conceded 26 goals in 59 games, 0,44 per game, which is a great number for a team like Rayito.

This was what we got playing with a team that is not great individually. My centre backs were Kevin Vogt and Luca Kilian, my midfield Unai López, Santi Comesaña and Riccardo Saponara. All it took was time for these players to develop, to train in the right positions and the right attributes for their roles.

 

 

As can be seen, RDT scored only 17 goals, this must be the worst from a striker of mine in any test I did.

My IFs got good numbers. Palazón scored less than previous season too, but he still performed well enough, Álvaro García played with him in a rotation system and scored 11 goals. My left IFs scored less. Matheus Martins started to score later in the season but still got respectable numbers for a young player in his first season here. And even Pozo, that last season was rubbish, this time scored some goals! 

This means my right IFs managed to score 26 times and assisted 16 times, while my left IFs scores 14 times and assisted 14 times. This is a total of 40 goals and 30 assists, 64% of direct contributions to all team goals!

Saponara also scored some goals, Unai López was fantastic as Roaming Playmaker as I expected, that's why I took so much time retraining him to play there. My "second lines" were less impressive, but that was to be expected. I believe they will perform better next season after a year improving.

So, in conclusion, I believe this tweaked version to be at least as good as the main tactic, if not better. It performed in an underdog team with "normal" players that usually would be overlooked in bigger teams.

But this tweak is very demanding and it requires some work. I had to retrain some players to fit in different positions (Unai López as an example here) and spend time training some specific attributes (movement in midfielders, for example). Had to find centre backs that fit in this tactic, but it didn't had to be top, world class ones, I managed to find two that cost only 15M between them and with them build a team that only conceded 18 goals in 38 league games.

This was mainly plug & play too, so there's that. Different teams may perform better with some minor chances, for example on 1st season with Rayito I could have change the defensive line to balanced to compensate for the lack of Pace of my defense. I decided not to do it because I wanted to test this tweaked version as it is, and despite all this it still worked very well.

You guys want my honest opinion about this? I believe these tactics (both of them, the main one and this tweaked version) are able to provide wins most of the times and don't require many tweaks to work. Heck, most times they don't require tweaks at all. I've tested it now in several countries, with several teams from different backgrounds, some teams with great players, others with terrible ones, and had good results everywhere. More people have tested it and gave feedback saying they got good results with it too.

Now, there's always room for improvement, that's why I designed this tweaked version in first place, but I confidently believe these tactics provide a good layout for any team. Starting from there is up to any player to find the correct players for the roles, retraining them if necessary and improving their key attributes, and of course change some minor instructions that are not working in a specific context, which may happen because every team is different.

Anyway, I believe that even with the tactic plug & play most times it will be successful.

The only recommendations I give are the ones I have said before:

 

- the centre backs should be fast enough as the defensive line will be very high on the pitch and must be comfortable with the ball on their feet;

 

- the Wing Backs must have Pace and Movement; if they have Crossing, the better;

 

- the Roaming Playmaker is the key of this tactic, they must have Movement and Positioning, good Technique, Passing and Decisions; other traits, although optional, include Stamina (as they will roam the pitch a lot, if they don't have it they will tire themselves fast) and Shooting (as they will have plenty of opportunities to shoot from outside the box);

 

- the B2Bs are much like the Roaming Playmaker, they should have Movement, Technique, Passing, Decisions, bonus points if they have Creativity, Stamina, Shooting and Positioning; with every test I did, I came to the conclusion that they should be more of an attacking midfielder kind of a player, guys like Bruno Fernandes and Kevin De Bruyne perform like crazy, and I think that if they play with the "wrong foot" (left footed by the right, right footed by the left), the better;

 

- the IFs should be pacy, so Pace, Movement, Dribbling and Shooting; bonus if they have Creativity, Teamwork and Passing; they should play by the right if left footed and by the left if right footed;

 

- the Pressing Forwards are tricky, I had good results with different kinds of players but I believe some traits are key to them, such as Teamwork, Passing, Movement and Agression; with the main tactic they must have Aerial, with the tweaked one it's not a requirement although it would be a great bonus; Shooting is a requirement to any forward, so it shouldn't be needed to be said, but Stamina is really necessary as a Pressing Forward will run a lot all game; Osimhen, Scamacca, Borja Iglesias or Beto (Udinese) are all examples of players I tested that are good examples of the kind of striker that thrived on this.

 

- the training should be on the roles they will play and the focus on any key attribute that isn't green yet.

 

Don't know what to say more, which is funny as I've wrote a lot... again! I'm happy with both versions of this tactic. I've been testing tactics, different versions and tweaks since this game was released. I found the layout for the first version of The Black Hawk late December and created this thread in January. Since then I've been testing, and testing, and testing this in different teams and countries.

I guess it's time to call it a day and start properly enjoying the game without being compiling data, numbers and stats. No need to test much more as the results are very good. Even IFs are being very effective, depending on the team they are scoring 30+ to 50 goals per season and making a lot of assists too, which are great numbers.

I will continue this save with Rayito and my tweaked version. Want to give Vallecas a much deserved spanish title. If I find anything worthwhile, some new tweak or anything like that, I will share it here, of course, but by now I want to just play.

[BarnDoor]

Spent the last 20mins reading this and I loved every bit of it! Great post, as always!

If you continue with the save, give us updates @Black Hawk. I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in hearing the rest of Rayito's story 😁

[MarkD]

Thought I'd have a go with my beloved Nottingham Forest, proper challenge in my opinion.....

First 8 games.....

Looking like its going to be fun 👍

[Reshetnikov]

On 20/03/2023 at 21:15, Black Hawk said:

Great results!

I like how the Roaming Playmaker is designed because he plays as a defensive midfielder, but when we are deep on our opponents half of the pitch the guy runs ahead as an attacking midfielder. It's one of the small variations that AI can't deal with.

The changes, that depends. With Wolves I used DFBs instead of FBs when I wanted to give an extra layer of protection to our centre backs late in the games. With Rayito I didn't need a display so defensive, FBs did the trick. But keeping in mind that I did so maybe two, three times in a whole season, didn't need to do it more.

As for Anchor, I believe this role makes the player stay closer to the centre backs than any other, and late in the game trying to defend a narrow lead that's what I want from my defensive midfielder.

Can't wait to hear from Depor!

 

*****

 

I finished the 2nd season with Rayito. I'm having more fun than I should since this is a test save, so much so that I'm thinking in turning this in a long and proper save. I would've created a thread for this if I had known it before, but now I guess that's too late.

So, Rayito. Founded in May 29th of 1924. Why am I saying this? Because this 2023/24 season is the centenary one for this proud people's club. With that in mind, I wanted to get good, historic results for the e-people of Vallecas in this e-world. They deserve that.

May 29th. Remember the date.

As Rayito is a modest club and I wanted to see this tactic perform with an underdog team, I tried my best to reinforce the squad with players that strengthen it while not being too good. Also, I put a restrain to myself to spend less than I got from sales, so most of my new players arrived on free transfers.

 

(As I had fun playing this season, I want to share some things that are not important for the tactic tested ahah. I think you guys can skip the squad formation and go directly for the results if you like, but I will write this anyway to share what I did)

 

Goalkeepers

I brought Michele Di Gregorio on a free transfer to be my new goalkeeper. He is young and his attributes are somewhat close to the ones of Stole Dimitrievski, and for that reason I thought it would be a good idea, but I was surprised with the evolution of Stole Dimitrievski. I didn't expected the guy to turn into a quality goalkeeper at 30yo, but that happened. So now I have two good goalkeepers.

 

Centre Backs

My centre backs were the main weakness of my team. Abdul Mumin was the only fast enough to play regularly. Alejandro Catena is sluggish (never got more than Pace 12 despite training it whole season), but is good enough to be an alternative. I needed two centre backs and as no one showed available on a free transfer (at least no one good enough), I spend the majority of my transfer budget in two new guys, funnily enough both germans: Kevin Vogt and Luca Kilian.

Kevin Vogt was 31yo, but he has experience (playing several seasons with Hoffenheim at Bundesliga), is fast and strong in Aerial (both 15), has strong leadership, passing, tackling, decisions, positioning and strength. Best 6M ever spent in the history of Rayito.

Luca Kilian was only 23yo, arrived from FC Köln and despite not being as good as Vogt, is good enough in most attributes. What convinced me was my scout telling he still had room to improve. He was right. This one cost 9,5M.

 

Wing Backs

I convinced Fran García to keep playing for us one more season (had to promise him I will not reject future bids for him, so I expect him to leave by the end of the season). He and Chavarría are reliable enough to guarantee the left side of my defense.

The right side, that's another story. Balliu and Mario didn't showed the quality I expected. Mario ended his contract and left. As for Balliu, Estrela da Amadora, a small portuguese team (but a proud one, everyone likes them), wanted him and I was happy to let him go. Only 3M, prove that he is really limited. For these two positions, I brought two free agents: Héctor Bellerín and Álvaro Núñez, both from Barcelona.

Bellerín was having a terrible run on loan to my Sporting CP, they let him go, Barcelona too didn't wanted him, I snatched him. He was far from what he once was, but is better than Balliu. Álvaro Núñez is young and I expect him to develop into a quality player in the future.

By January, Valencia took Chavarría from me (they payed the minimum release fee, 13M), so to replace him I bought Nuno Santos from Sporting CP. I don't know why, but he was transfer listed and for only 10M I was able to buy him. We was cheaper than Chavarría and a lot better.

 

Midfielders

I spent the whole 1st season retraining Unai López to be defensive midfielder as he has all the right attributes to be a Roaming Playmaker. Somewhere in 2nd season he finally became a natural there. Santi Comesaña developed a bit and is a very intelligent player, my coaches tell me he has great tactical awareness and I can see it on the match engine.

The problem here were all the other players. Oscar Trejo, our captain, was 35yo and loosing attributes. He decided to finish his career at the end of this season, which is the best for everyone as I didn't wanted to release him as he is the captain and some kind of a legend in the team, but he isn't good enough anymore to be a regular starter. Pathé Ciss and Óscar Valentín didn't convinced me and I wanted to sell them.

I was lucky. Fulham wanted Pathé Ciss and LASK decided to go for Óscar Valentín. Their sells financed not only the arrivals of Kevin Vogt and Luca Kilian and still left some money available. For their places, I promoted two players who were loaned out on 1st season (Andrés Martín and Randy Nteka) and brought two new guys whose contracts were coming to an end on their clubs: Riccardo Saponara and Ángel Algobia.

Saponara is a good player, although not an impressive one. He is more of a winger, but has good attributes to be a B2B and so I retrained him (he was already competent enough as central midfielder). He played in the position previously done by Oscar Trejo (left B2B). My captain played there in a rotation system. Algobia is good-ish, but I expected him to develop along the season (the same could have been said from Martín and Nteka).

So, bottom line: Unai López, Santi Comesaña and Riccardo Saponara were the three main starters; Ángel Algobia, Andrés Martin and Randy Nteka the guys who where my "second lines" which I expected to develop into future starters. Oscar Trejo started the season as the fourth in hierarchy, but he was losing his place along the season.

 

Forwards

I brought only one new guy: Matheus Martins, a 19yo left Inside Forward, on a free transfer. All other guys were the same: Isi Palazón and Álvaro García as right IFs, José Pozo as left IF, Raúl De Tomás and Radamel Falcao as Pressing Forwards.

José Pozo and Radamel Falcao were to be released at the end of 1st season, but I couldn't find anyone good enough on free transfers to replace them. My philosophy on the subject is that if I couldn't find anyone good enough, I don't bring anyone. I don't buy only for the sake of it. José Pozo was terrible on 1st season and Falcao was already 37yo, but oh well, let's give them another season.

Also, this was the last season of Radamel Falcao as a professional footballer, he will finish his career this season, which means this 2nd season will be the year where Rayito will celebrate their 100th anniversary and the last year of our long time captain Oscar Trejo and the legendary Radamel Falcao.

All this got me fired up to get a great season.

 

(Also, I spent the rest of my transfer budget on some youth prospects, the biggest of them Ângelo, I think everyone knows him, and brought some more on free transfers; maybe I will talk of them in the future, but by now they are going on loans and are not relevant this season)

 

Results

 

 

(Spanish Supercup Semi Final)

 

 

 

(Isi Palazón was the 3rd best player of the season)

 

This was a really fun season, I was so addicted! I celebrated some goals as if they were Pedro Gonçalves scoring from the midfielder at Emirates! Muahahahah

Sorry Arsenal friends, but I had to bring this up somewhere, sometime.

 

Anyway, as can be seen, we had a shot at La Liga title until the 37th game. Barcelona did a fantastic season too, it's not usual to see an AI team breaking the 90 points barrier. At least where I played more (England, Germany and Portugal), I actually never saw it. Domestically, we also won the Spanish Cup and were runner-ups on Spanish Supercup.

La Liga was incredible. We lost only three times, all of them in games against stronger teams: Atletico Madrid twice and Real Madrid. By the middle of the season we were already taking these big games evenly, we managed to win against Real Madrid and got two draws against Barcelona. We are improving fast!

Also, we finished the season with 16 games in a row without defeats on La Liga.

On the Cup final Sergi Roberto was sent off, the guy committed three fouls on Matheus Martins in 30 minutes and saw two yellow cards. After that we charged, Barcelona managed to delay our goal until extra-time, but this was ours.

Xavi actually made a mistake there. After the sent off, he took Lewandowski out and Barcelona played in a 4122 formation, where these last 2 were Wingers. So, without a striker. What happened is that without a striker, whenever they were able to clear the ball, my centre backs were alone to recover it and start another attack. Barcelona never got a chance to counterattack because there wasn't anyone to win the ball and start an attack of their own as their wingers were always behind covering my WBs movements ahead.

On the Supercup, we won against Atletico Madrid, at the time my first win against one of the big three, but then we were outclassed by Real Madrid in the final. They scored twice early, we managed to reduce later, but they were stronger. It was probably our worst game of the season, everyone was playing below what we can do.

On the Europa League, we won a group stage with Atalanta and Sporting CP. It was painful to win both games against Sporting, felt like daggers in my heart. Don't want to talk about it. It never happened. What was I talking about? Can't remember. Moving on.

Only by Semi Finals we suffered a bit, Lyon got an early advantage on second leg and only in the last half hour we got to draw the game. The game was decided by a late goal in injury time by Raúl De Tomás, but at the time we were suffering to contain their charge.

The final was magical. I was terrified to play against Chelsea and their horrible 4312 formation that I struggled with so many times with Man Utd on the previous test. But after all, we won and dominated the game as can be seen on the print.

Also, the Europa League final was played on May 30th. Remember the date? Yes, the day after the 100th anniversary of Rayito. Oscar Trejo lifting the Europa League cup, the biggest achievement of Rayito history, on his last match on the day after Rayito 100th anniversary. How magical was that? And the goal was scored by Radamel Falcao in his last game of his career.

What a fantastic story this would be if it was real.

 

Performance

 

We are playing good football, the results are clear. Still, we scored less goals than last season on La Liga (65 last season, 61 this season). Why? Because we miss a sh*tload of goals every game. I never saw a team missing so much, sometimes we were creating 4/5 clear cut chances only to get narrow wins. But then again, we don't have world class players. Isi Palazón, Matheus Martins and Raúl De Tomás are good, but only that.

As a team, we are great. We were capable of dominating most games. The problem though is that we lack individual quality to turn those dominating displays in easy wins.

Raúl De Tomás (RDT) performed particularly poorly. The main striker of the 2nd placed team on La Liga and Europa League winner can't score only 17 goals all season. At some point some pundit was saying that if he was me, he would sell RDT. Of course, I will always protect my kiddos and told him that's why I'm the Rayito manager and he was only a pundit ( 😁 ), but he got a point. RDT was not up to the task. Even Falcao scored as much as him despite playing less time. If Falcao had more than Stamina 4 (he is 37yo after all), he would have been the starter. Next season I want a better striker.

Anyway, despite all that we scored 109 goals in 59 games (1,85 goals per game, I can't be mad about that with the players I have). As we scored only a few from corners, most of them were on open plays and the vast majority from shots as we don't have good players on Aerial.

The team has grown a lot on the midfield. Two years of training on the correct roles and on the key attributes made my players much more reliable holding possession. This made my team less prone to opponents counterattacks. All this made us strong at our back. Last season we conceded 39 goals on La Liga, this season we reduced it to only 18!

In all competitions, we conceded 26 goals in 59 games, 0,44 per game, which is a great number for a team like Rayito.

This was what we got playing with a team that is not great individually. My centre backs were Kevin Vogt and Luca Kilian, my midfield Unai López, Santi Comesaña and Riccardo Saponara. All it took was time for these players to develop, to train in the right positions and the right attributes for their roles.

 

 

As can be seen, RDT scored only 17 goals, this must be the worst from a striker of mine in any test I did.

My IFs got good numbers. Palazón scored less than previous season too, but he still performed well enough, Álvaro García played with him in a rotation system and scored 11 goals. My left IFs scored less. Matheus Martins started to score later in the season but still got respectable numbers for a young player in his first season here. And even Pozo, that last season was rubbish, this time scored some goals! 

This means my right IFs managed to score 26 times and assisted 16 times, while my left IFs scores 14 times and assisted 14 times. This is a total of 40 goals and 30 assists, 64% of direct contributions to all team goals!

Saponara also scored some goals, Unai López was fantastic as Roaming Playmaker as I expected, that's why I took so much time retraining him to play there. My "second lines" were less impressive, but that was to be expected. I believe they will perform better next season after a year improving.

So, in conclusion, I believe this tweaked version to be at least as good as the main tactic, if not better. It performed in an underdog team with "normal" players that usually would be overlooked in bigger teams.

But this tweak is very demanding and it requires some work. I had to retrain some players to fit in different positions (Unai López as an example here) and spend time training some specific attributes (movement in midfielders, for example). Had to find centre backs that fit in this tactic, but it didn't had to be top, world class ones, I managed to find two that cost only 15M between them and with them build a team that only conceded 18 goals in 38 league games.

This was mainly plug & play too, so there's that. Different teams may perform better with some minor chances, for example on 1st season with Rayito I could have change the defensive line to balanced to compensate for the lack of Pace of my defense. I decided not to do it because I wanted to test this tweaked version as it is, and despite all this it still worked very well.

You guys want my honest opinion about this? I believe these tactics (both of them, the main one and this tweaked version) are able to provide wins most of the times and don't require many tweaks to work. Heck, most times they don't require tweaks at all. I've tested it now in several countries, with several teams from different backgrounds, some teams with great players, others with terrible ones, and had good results everywhere. More people have tested it and gave feedback saying they got good results with it too.

Now, there's always room for improvement, that's why I designed this tweaked version in first place, but I confidently believe these tactics provide a good layout for any team. Starting from there is up to any player to find the correct players for the roles, retraining them if necessary and improving their key attributes, and of course change some minor instructions that are not working in a specific context, which may happen because every team is different.

Anyway, I believe that even with the tactic plug & play most times it will be successful.

The only recommendations I give are the ones I have said before:

 

- the centre backs should be fast enough as the defensive line will be very high on the pitch and must be comfortable with the ball on their feet;

 

- the Wing Backs must have Pace and Movement; if they have Crossing, the better;

 

- the Roaming Playmaker is the key of this tactic, they must have Movement and Positioning, good Technique, Passing and Decisions; other traits, although optional, include Stamina (as they will roam the pitch a lot, if they don't have it they will tire themselves fast) and Shooting (as they will have plenty of opportunities to shoot from outside the box);

 

- the B2Bs are much like the Roaming Playmaker, they should have Movement, Technique, Passing, Decisions, bonus points if they have Creativity, Stamina, Shooting and Positioning; with every test I did, I came to the conclusion that they should be more of an attacking midfielder kind of a player, guys like Bruno Fernandes and Kevin De Bruyne perform like crazy, and I think that if they play with the "wrong foot" (left footed by the right, right footed by the left), the better;

 

- the IFs should be pacy, so Pace, Movement, Dribbling and Shooting; bonus if they have Creativity, Teamwork and Passing; they should play by the right if left footed and by the left if right footed;

 

- the Pressing Forwards are tricky, I had good results with different kinds of players but I believe some traits are key to them, such as Teamwork, Passing, Movement and Agression; with the main tactic they must have Aerial, with the tweaked one it's not a requirement although it would be a great bonus; Shooting is a requirement to any forward, so it shouldn't be needed to be said, but Stamina is really necessary as a Pressing Forward will run a lot all game; Osimhen, Scamacca, Borja Iglesias or Beto (Udinese) are all examples of players I tested that are good examples of the kind of striker that thrived on this.

 

- the training should be on the roles they will play and the focus on any key attribute that isn't green yet.

 

Don't know what to say more, which is funny as I've wrote a lot... again! I'm happy with both versions of this tactic. I've been testing tactics, different versions and tweaks since this game was released. I found the layout for the first version of The Black Hawk late December and created this thread in January. Since then I've been testing, and testing, and testing this in different teams and countries.

I guess it's time to call it a day and start properly enjoying the game without being compiling data, numbers and stats. No need to test much more as the results are very good. Even IFs are being very effective, depending on the team they are scoring 30+ to 50 goals per season and making a lot of assists too, which are great numbers.

I will continue this save with Rayito and my tweaked version. Want to give Vallecas a much deserved spanish title. If I find anything worthwhile, some new tweak or anything like that, I will share it here, of course, but by now I want to just play.

Let me be clear – I'm in love with your test reviews! 

Thanks for all of that, especially for review on PF role, adore that. 

[Black Hawk]

On 21/03/2023 at 04:18, ericm544 said:

@Black Hawk Wow those results are incredible, both match results and team performance. The UEL and spanish cup finals both look like masterclasses, arguably the spanish cup final was unlucky and on another day Barca could have been smacked. Also interesting your UEL win reminded me of Falcao's hat trick for Atletico Madrid against Chelsea, had to go rewatch those highlights. Was the spanish super cup final unlucky or were Real Madrid better on the day? I had to do a double take on Isi Palazon's statistics. He's doing great this season in real life for Rayo but those are Vinicius Jr. numbers. Not sure what strikers you are looking at, I know you don't want to get too good of strikers. Maybe Fir Nino, Beto, Ivan Toney, or if you are doing South American transfers like Angelo I like Pedro. You upgrade RDT and Falcao you can probably compete for a treble already which is just ridiculous and shows how overwhelmingly strong this tactic is.

Isi Palazón is a strange one. I knew previously that he should be a good player and probably the best of Rayo Vallecano, but his attributes aren't fantastic. He lacks a bit of Pace and Shooting, for example.

Nevertheless, he started scoring for fun. He was really fast moving to inside positions to find himself 1X1 against the goalkeeper. Looking at his attributes I never expected that he would score as much as he did.

For my 3rd season I really, really, really... but REALLY wanted Beto, but Udinese wanted a lot of money. I could afford it, my transfer budget grew a lot now that we reached the Champions League, but it would be unrealistic to see Rayo Vallecano spending 50M on a single player.

Instead, I went for Wesley Moraes on a free transfer, he is kind of a bootleg of Beto, or a Beto from Wish - as we say in Portugal 

Ângelo I already have, bought him at the beggining of 2nd season and was on loan.

On 21/03/2023 at 07:14, BarnDoor said:

Spent the last 20mins reading this and I loved every bit of it! Great post, as always!

If you continue with the save, give us updates @Black Hawk. I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in hearing the rest of Rayito's story 😁

Thanks

Will do, probably not so detailed as the previous ones though.

On 21/03/2023 at 19:34, MarkD said:

Thought I'd have a go with my beloved Nottingham Forest, proper challenge in my opinion.....

First 8 games.....

Looking like its going to be fun 👍

Go for it! Keep us informed!

On 22/03/2023 at 00:45, Reshetnikov said:

Let me be clear – I'm in love with your test reviews! 

Thanks for all of that, especially for review on PF role, adore that. 

Thanks

What, the recommendations on the position? I find that there's a lack of analysis on things that should be useful. Things like what the attributes mean on the match engine, what attributes are really important for some roles. I doubt some attributes highlighted on the player profile as important for some roles are really that important, while others should be highlighted and are not.

For example, the Pressing Forward role has highlighted Tackling, Decisions, Movement, Teamwork and Strength. I find it odd that Passing is not there, as the goal of the PF coming back to a support role to the midfielders requires that he is able to pass the ball. Also, Stamina not being highlighted is strange as a PF will be tired pretty fast.

That's why I tried to give my perception of what I think is really important in some positions.

[Sloth77]

i think im going to test this with a chelsea save im using(because they have a lot of players)
im interested to see what other variations i would find to this

 

[Sloth77]

im wondering which version works best the original or the new one??

 

[Ctof86]

Hi guys,

 

I have read through this and cannot see any screenshots of the “tweaked” or “v2” of the tactic. I can only see the one from the 1st post which hasn’t been updated since January. Can someone point me in the right direction please?

[Black Hawk]

On 24/03/2023 at 13:53, Sloth77 said:

i think im going to test this with a chelsea save im using(because they have a lot of players)
im interested to see what other variations i would find to this

 

Good luck!

10 hours ago, Sloth77 said:

im wondering which version works best the original or the new one??

 

It depends. I liked the new version better, but it depends. It's more demanding to the players, particularly the centre backs and the midfielders. The game will be a lot more narrow, so they must play with less space. It could take more time to start performing.

If you have Lukaku with Chelsea, the guy may score for fun with the original one as the team will cross more times than with the tweaked version.

42 minutes ago, Ctof86 said:

Hi guys,

 

I have read through this and cannot see any screenshots of the “tweaked” or “v2” of the tactic. I can only see the one from the 1st post which hasn’t been updated since January. Can someone point me in the right direction please?

You are right, I should have take time to edit the first post. Sorry, will do it soon.

As for the screenshots, they are here:

 

Can you see them? If not, basically, I changed four things:

- Centre Backs now have the role "Ball Playing Defender";

- Offside Trap ticked on;

- Run at Defence changed to Through Balls;

- Passing Focus changed from Mixed to Center.

Some more explanations and why I did it here:

 

Hoping for feedback from the both of you

[Ctof86]

1 minute ago, Black Hawk said:

Good luck!

It depends. I liked the new version better, but it depends. It's more demanding to the players, particularly the centre backs and the midfielders. The game will be a lot more narrow, so they must play with less space. It could take more time to start performing.

If you have Lukaku with Chelsea, the guy may score for fun with the original one as the team will cross more times than with the tweaked version.

You are right, I should have take time to edit the first post. Sorry, will do it soon.

As for the screenshots, they are here:

 

Can you see them? If not, basically, I changed four things:

- Centre Backs now have the role "Ball Playing Defender";

- Offside Trap ticked on;

- Run at Defence changed to Through Balls;

- Passing Focus changed from Mixed to Center.

Some more explanations and why I did it here:

 

Hoping for feedback from the both of you

Thank you sir!!!

Going to test it with Rangers in the Scottish league (big team - small league) with the aim of developing youth!

Will post some feedback once I’ve had some time with it.

[Black Hawk]

I take this opportunity to share some more insight on some goals of this tactic that I have only talked about. Previously I shared some gifs with offensive moves, but I never did it to show how we perform defensively.

And for defensively, I mean when we are attacking and lose possession. It's a funny thing, this tactic has a good defensive record, but the team is not solid in positional defense. We have after all a defensive midfielder that is a Roaming Playmaker and two full backs that are Wing Backs, of course there will be some gaps behind.

So what we want is to guarantee our opponents don't attack. I choose a game that I did today against Barcelona as they are a strong team (they won La Liga last season) to show how this also happens against strong teams.

Also, third season, spoilers ahah! In this game I had two new players: Wesley Moraes as a striker and Carles Pérez as right IF.

 

 

In this gif, we start our attack, passing the ball around and forcing Barcelona to their own box. When Bellerín crosses, all of Barcelona players but Fati are inside their box. Raphinha recovers the ball after the rebound on Marcos Alonso and this is how they were on the pitch.

 

 

Absolutely no one to play with Raphinha. Their wingers (#22 and #11) had to come behind to help. Fati (#10) is their striker and is alone with our two defenders. Raphinha couldn't run with the ball because our own Roaming Playmaker (Unai López, #17) is close by (also, notice how far he is on the pitch, a bit of luck on the rebound and he could had a shooting chance there).

Raphinha had to play a direct ball, that my centre back recovered easily and we started attacking again.

On the second part of this gif we quickly got the ball on their box again. It was a matter of seconds. Four passes (Luca Kilian -> Unai Lopez -> Andrés Martin -> Wesley Moraes -> Bellerín) and we are again in their last third, and Barcelona again with ten players deep in their box.

The cross found someone from Barcelona who headed away and this was what happened.

 

 

Unai López was alone to recover it, Barcelona was unable to break this lock where we put them into.

The rest of the gif shows other thing: the Offside Trap in action. Unai López made a mistake and Barcelona quickly launched Fati. The centre backs caught him offside. It worked very well.

Now a gif from the same game, the very first open play from the second half.

 

 

So, a quick exchange between most of my team and Barcelona was again deep on their box except for Fati. Also, notice how Bellerín tried to find options inside instead of just crossing. The focus passing down the centre working.

Carles Pérez tried to pass it to Wesley Moraes, but "Eric García made an important challenge!", as the subtitles tells us.

The problem (for Barcelona) is that...

 

 

There was nobody from them to recover the ball. Unai López again was there to recover it just outside their box. Notice how this kind of behaviour (the defensive midfielder running behind to recover a ball) is usually performed some 30/40 meters behind what is happening here!

This time, my favourite basque player shot from there and scored. It's true that it was a strange goal, I believe the ball hit somebody and it changed the direction of the shot, but it happened because we suffocate our opponents.

Also, notice how at some point my Pressing Forward came back to play with the midfielders and my right IF Carles Pérez (#7) went inside to explore the gap left by Eric García (who went with Wesley Moraes). Wesley Moraes actually tried to put the ball through to him, but it was blocked by Eric García. If that worked, Carles Pérez would have a clear cut chance to score.

So, what I wanted to show with this is something I talked about some times previously. The goal is to prevent our opponents to attack. That's why this tactic shows a good defensive record, because otherwise we are sitting ducks if we are forced behind as all the players roles are attack-minded - even the defenders and defensive midfielder. That's why the majority of goals I'm suffering in this third season with Rayo Vallecano are when we are already winning by two or more goals, my team stops attacking (against my will, mind you) and our opponents get to our box more times.

Some teams may struggle the first few months because it takes time for the team to create relationships on the pitch. These relationships are key for this kind of fast exchange of ball between all players. Until it start happening, we will lose ball possession early (closer to the midfield line of the pitch) and they will have players to counterattack - and we will suffer goals.

What we want is to reach the point of these gifs, where we force our opponents to their own box and even if they win the ball there, they will be powerless to attack. And this was against Barcelona, so can be guessed what happens against sides like Osasuna and such.

It takes some time to get to this point, but it is worthwhile.

[DanEnglish]

On 24/03/2023 at 21:53, Sloth77 said:

i think im going to test this with a chelsea save im using(because they have a lot of players)
im interested to see what other variations i would find to this

3 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

If you have Lukaku with Chelsea, the guy may score for fun with the original one as the team will cross more times than with the tweaked version.

So I tested this tactic with Chelsea yesterday - first 10 league games (+ cups)🙂 

First team:
recalled Lukaku upfront!

2nd team:
played in Europe + one mid-week league game

League:
4th is ok - but look how FEW goals scored! Just 12 in 10 games 😞 

Player Stats:
Lukaku didn’t score!!!

Sterling did well + Kante isn’t that suitable for the RP role but I wanted to play with him in this version to see how he was 🙂 

 

This shows me how unbalanced the Chelsea squad is + how it’s more of a challenge (short term) than most FMM players may expect + (edit) why isn’t Lukaku scoring?!

Thoughts? 🙂 

Edited March 26, 2023 by DanEnglish

[Resurgam]

Just gave it a go for the toughest game of the season

[Black Hawk]

20 hours ago, DanEnglish said:

So I tested this tactic with Chelsea yesterday - first 10 league games (+ cups)🙂 

First team:
recalled Lukaku upfront!

2nd team:
played in Europe + one mid-week league game

League:
4th is ok - but look how FEW goals scored! Just 12 in 10 games 😞 

Player Stats:
Lukaku didn’t score!!!

Sterling did well + Kante isn’t that suitable for the RP role but I wanted to play with him in this version to see how he was 🙂 

 

This shows me how unbalanced the Chelsea squad is + how it’s more of a challenge (short term) than most FMM players may expect + (edit) why isn’t Lukaku scoring?!

Thoughts? 🙂 

@ericm544 answered for me ahah.

Most of goals from headers on the main tactic (that was what you used, right?) come from WBs crosses - that's why in some tests posted here they have 15 or more assists. Using them as FBs should reduce the amount of crosses, the striker will not have chances to score that way.

This is only theory, I would need to see the games to understand what's not working.

I'm still puzzled by Lukaku not scoring. It didn't happened in any test, even Ronaldo and Martial managed to score some goals. What the hell...?

I don't want this to seem like I'm making excuses, but what could be happening:

- a lot of these players are new playing together, so maybe their relationships onfield are still weak and the team are struggling to exchange the ball fast enough to create scoring chances; I believe the team should be improving as the season go on;

- the FBs, both versions of the tactic need the wide option that both WBs provide;

- don't know the attributes of Kovacic (I didn't even remember him until I saw your printscreen, damn, what happened to the guy?), but I believe he should have a bit more movement to work as a B2B.

Otherwise, I don't know what could be wrong. Lukaku is the perfect example of a striker for this, he has Aerial, Movement, Pace, Agression, Teamwork, Technique... Incredible!

11 hours ago, Resurgam said:

Just gave it a go for the toughest game of the season

I hope you are BVB 😅

[Sloth77]

so i was running a save with tottenham i played up until the knockout stage in the ucl at some point i switch from using a pf to a dlp (with the tweaked version) i sold kane early on for like 180m to city (i robbed them lmao) and brought ferguson because i wanted to test him and i was rotating him with son (moving son from lw to st) and the tactic was working great unbeaten so far except a 2-1 lose against city where we dominated which is disappointing but city have always been very hard to play we also have the best defense in the league conceding only 6 goals in 15 matches whilst also scoring 30

[Sloth77]

yeah the tactic with good cbs is insane i also found that having bbm's with good stamina pace movement and positioning is incredible 
also found that striker with good mental attributes is important more than technical 

[Black Hawk]

21 hours ago, Sloth77 said:

so i was running a save with tottenham i played up until the knockout stage in the ucl at some point i switch from using a pf to a dlp (with the tweaked version) i sold kane early on for like 180m to city (i robbed them lmao) and brought ferguson because i wanted to test him and i was rotating him with son (moving son from lw to st) and the tactic was working great unbeaten so far except a 2-1 lose against city where we dominated which is disappointing but city have always been very hard to play we also have the best defense in the league conceding only 6 goals in 15 matches whilst also scoring 30

Good stats! Hope you are having fun with it!

5 hours ago, ericm544 said:

Just starting the 10th season with Deportivo La Coruna, after finally winning a UCL in the 9th season. I earned a rich benefactor the 4th season but have still been smart with transfers. The most expensive transfers are 57m for Moukoko, and 55m for Colwill. Pedri and Saliba were frees which is incredible. Fermin Balde is a youth intake striker, for me he has become the next Roy McKay while Rafael Mendes is a youth intake midfielder who has become the next Valeron. Used V1 and tweaked the first 5 seasons but have been using only V2 since due to having high ability CDs who can easily play BPDs. Again, fantastic work on creating this tactic, not only is it very entertaining to watch but incredibly effective.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Insane.

Yeah, the thing about the centre backs is what I've told since the test with Wolves: they don't have to be world class, but if they are fast and comfortable with the ball, they are good to go. It's important (really, really important) that they are able to recover the ball fast and deliver it safely to our midfielders.

If not, they will pass the ball poorly and our opponents may create scoring chances in counterattacks.

With Wolves I used St Juste (Sporting CP) and Todibo (Nice) and it was enough to win Premier League with only 23 goals conceded.

1 hour ago, Sloth77 said:

yeah the tactic with good cbs is insane i also found that having bbm's with good stamina pace movement and positioning is incredible 
also found that striker with good mental attributes is important more than technical 

I confess that I often overlook Positioning. I shouldn't, but I do. The others, yes, Stamina and Movement helps a lot.

As for the strikers, I don't give up technical attributes like Aerial, Shooting and Passing, but the mental ones such as Agression, Movement, Teamwork and if possible Decisions, they work great. Also, physical ones like Pace and Stamina.

****

I finished my 3rd season with Rayito a few days ago. The summer was terrible as I have lost some key players such as Isi Palazón, Fran García and Álvaro García.

 

 

Isi Palazón and Fran García were expected to leave as they had clubs interested in them most of 2nd season. I already had options to came in for their place prepared. Both of them went for the amount of their minimum fee release clause, so nothing I could do to avoid it (but losing Isi Palazón to Brighton was harsh, I expected him to leave to a better club).

Álvaro García and José Pozo, that's another story.

Álvaro García was my second Right Inside Forward, playing in a rotation system with Isi Palazón. I was planning to promote him to the starting eleven as soon as Isi Palazón was sold while I prepared the field to Ângelo to grow (and I was planning to loan Ângelo one more season). Then Bayern came, dropped 25M (his minimum fee release clause) and took him to Baviera.

Why did Bayern spent 25M on a 31 years old bench player of Rayo Vallecano? Not even God would know.

José Pozo was the exact same thing. My second Left Inside Forward after Matheus Martins, but someone I trusted so little that sometimes I used Álvaro García by the left instead of him. But Salzburg decided to pay his minimum fee release clause. I don't know why.

Anyway, Rayo Vallecano got 112M in a single transfer market, everyone was happy.

 

 

Despite having a lot of money to spend, I decided to keep it low as Rayo would if this was in our real world.

Milos Kerkez is a 20 years old left back from AZ that I expect to grow into a future starter on Rayito (my scouts promised that much). Meanwhile I have Nuno Santos to play on the position, he is a reliable player.

Ben Brereton Díaz came in to be the second option to the left side of our attack, I went for him as soon as José Pozo leave. The former is better and cost half of what I received for the latter.

Carles Pérez was secured since January as I was sure Isi Palazón would leave in the summer, as it happened, and Wesley Moraes too was confirmed since January to replace Radamel Falcao (who retired). José Marques is a youngster from Benfica B that my scouts recommended, not sure if he will be what they said he will, but as he was available on a free transfer I decided to bring him.

Let me just say that both Carles Pérez and Wesley Moraes almost didn't play last season, so I knew they probably needed some time to recover some ability and attributes lost, but I thought that if they already had good attributes despite not playing, they would be better as soon as they started to play regularly.

Funnily enough, Álvaro García and José Pozo weren't the strangest things that happened this 3rd season.

In January we played in the Final Four of the Spanish Supercopa. We won the Semi-Final against Real Madrid and were set to play the Final against Atletico when this happened:

 

 

To this day, I still can't figure out why this happened.

Raúl De Tomás was less than impressive last season, scoring only 17 goals in 58 games. This season he was better, he had 10 goals in 22 games, but still nothing extraordinary enough to justify Real Madrid matching his minimum fee release clause.

Especially since...

 

 

... he went straight to their secondary team, Castilla. The guy didn't played a single second in their first team!

The best guess I have is that they are poor losers and decided to buy my best goalscorer at the time out of spite after we knocked them out of Spanish Supercopa 😏

Anyway, after this I needed a new striker. Sent my scouts to bring me reports on a lot of strikers. I decided I would not spent more than 30M on a new striker to keep my challenge, so the choice was between two players: Sadiq (Real Sociedad) and Beto (Udinese).

They strike me as equals. Ultimately, decided to go for Beto as he is faster than Sadiq while having the same strengths. Also, I already knew from the save with Man Utd and BVB that he is reliable.

 

 

 

 

We won all the Cups, actually. European Supercup, Spanish Supercup and Spanish Cup all to Vallecas neighborhood. That victory against Real Madrid was really special, as I was really salty after what they did us with Raúl De Tomás.

Also, if this was real life that day 19th April would turn into a sacred holiday at Vallecas.

 

 

We played Champions League for the first time and did really good in the League Phase. Finishing 4th despite playing against teams like Man City (1-1 home), PSG (1-1 away), Dortmund (0-0 away) and Leipzig (2-0 home) was better than I expected.

Unfortunately, we had to play again Man City on the Round of 16. We did brilliantly on first leg winning 3-1 at Ettihad, but then everything that could go wrong on the second leg actually happened.

We conceded a late equaliser on extra time with an own goal by Álvaro Núñez at 123 minutes! Then we had three "match points" on the penalty shootout: Kevin De Bruyne scored, Nuno Santos missed and Bernardo Silva scored. Every other outcome on these three penalties and we would have won.

Anyway, nothing to be ashamed of. Man City went on to be English champions again by the end of this season and we did good.

 

 

As for La Liga, we won it! Wooooo!

At the beggining I wanted to do at least 95 points (the amount Barcelona did last season), but missed that by 1 point.

We conceded more goals than last season, but I believe that happened because Stole Dimitrievski got a four months injury. Until that point, we had 12 goals conceded in 30 games; the next 8 games we conceded 8 goals.

On a brighter side, we are scoring a lot more and a lot closer to the big three (Atletico, Barcelona and Real Madrid). We lost away games against Barcelona and Real Madrid, but managed to win once against all three on La Liga, one more time against Atletico (Supercup) and two more against Real Madrid (Cup and Supercup).

 

 

This time we didn't had Isi Palazón, but we had Matheus Martins and Carles Pérez. The former grew a lot since last year and is already a great player, the latter took his time to recover his rhythm but once there he started to do the difference.

Wesley Moraes happened the same I wrote about Carles Pérez. Beto showed what I expected, he was important coming from the bench to score late in the game.

Now I'm worried about my B2Bs, not one of them impressed and maybe they are already short for this. Also, Dimitrievski lost a lot of attributes with his injury and being 31 years old I doubt he will recover them.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Black Hawk

[Schwantz34]

Still the most successful tactic I've seen this season.

[Amtrax]

Where is the tweaked version?

[Ariza8]

9 hours ago, Amtrax said:

Where is the tweaked version?

Experiment and tweak it yourself.

[Black Hawk]

11 hours ago, Amtrax said:

Where is the tweaked version?

I posted the tweaks here:

 

I promised long ago to edit the first post of this thread and I'm still to do it. Sorry! I haven't got time to play recently, also rarely were here. I'll try to do it this weekend.

[lelbeeeee]

Can an af be used instead of pf it's much easier to find af and develope him ,and if you have a good traditional striker it would be a waste to use him as pf

[Mistyeight]

On 16/04/2023 at 23:25, lelbeeeee said:

Can an af be used instead of pf it's much easier to find af and develope him ,and if you have a good traditional striker it would be a waste to use him as pf

My question too. Any ideas?

[iwatobes]

Hi, I have been using these 2 version of the tactics for 15 seasons and like to share a few things:

- The 2nd version with the tweak definitely is more "exciting" and dominant. I absolutely destroyed most competitions. However, I found that there is a particular weakness in the 2nd version. This is very evidence in first 5 seasons whenever my team face AS Roma, their 4-4-2 can exploit the gaps between RP and 2CB very effectively, drawing out the RP and 1 CB and creating multiple 1-1 and absolutely trash me. However, if I switch to 1st version, their team would crumble. 

- Initially I am of the believe that my PF need good Aerial. But gradually as the game progress and I can't find any one satisfied this, I'm forced to use PF with 10,11 in Aerial and they still score the same amount of goals. I find that they will score lots from rebound chances so that's where good Movement likely pay off. 

- BBM and RP with good Shooting is essential. 

[iwatobes]

Another thing I forgot to add:

- You will get red cards. But in case of red, remove the PF and keep the rest of the formation as is. I have even won one CL Final 1 man down after 30 mins like this. 

[Mistyeight]

19 hours ago, ericm544 said:

@Mistyeight@lelbeeeee I find besides a PF, perhaps a TF or DLF would work as their goal is to create space and opportunities for the IFs cutting inside and BBMs making third man runs behind the forwards. I tried a P and it was not useful. A T would come to the ball too much and take possession from your RP in the setup, while also not helping defense at all. Maybe a CF or AF could work if you changed IFs to IWs maybe or put the BBMs on CM so they are more organized and make less runs?

Thanks for the ideas, mate. Idk. Tried the tweaked version with Everton. Its sad to see the attempts by the forward. So little. Idk whats wrong. Maybe just the players are not suited in the role.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Mistyeight