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

[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 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

[ericm544]

@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)?

[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...

 

[ericm544]

@BarnDoor Yes only FBs. I found that WBs will besides going higher both with and without the ball, they roam and dribble in the space from edge of 18 yard box to sideline consistently versus FBs. They also make constant attacking movements where as the FBs will rarely overlap or roam like previously mentioned unless you have well sustained possession. I find that if you are dominating a game they still get plenty involved. However, they usually will take up an early cross position in possession which again I think is perfect to complement the IFs to isolate and go 1v1, and also the BBMs to have space to run into channels. Defensively they also give that solidity of the DFBs but still adds some progression to your wings.

[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.

[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!!

[ericm544]

@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?

Edited March 18 by ericm544

[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 by Black Hawk

[ericm544]

5 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

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.

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.

Spoiler

Edited March 20 by ericm544

[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.

  Hide contents

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.

[ericm544]

@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.

[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.

[ericm544]

@Sloth77@Ctof86 V1 is less demanding technically and mentally on players, especially the CDs instead of BPDs. To describe this further, It uses dribbling, pace, and aerial of the players much more than V2 in my opinion. I feel that at times the gameplay seems like attacking mentality while on control. Defensively, I find that it is more solid on average than V2. V2 is like a tiki-taka/vertical tiki-taka style with in my opinion much more noticeable build up between the midfielders with passing, often one-twos. V2 has given me the highest scoring, most entertaining results, but also has not been as solid as V1. If you were to get a scrappy win for example, V1 would give me a 1-0 performance while V2 would give me a 3-2 performance.

[ericm544]

@Black Hawk Nice analysis, I have been switching between V1 and V2 with Deportivo La Coruna and while V2 is my favorite in terms of entertainment as it reminds me so much of Guardiola's Barca, V1 seems much more solid and easier to build with a middle to lower level club. I still maintain that with a big or super club V2 is the better tactic. I had two consecutive championships in the spanish third and second divisions, and the first la liga season I accepted rich benefactor and won copa del rey, while achieving a top four spot. This was the third season using V1 mainly, but using both V2 against usually lower teams since I noticed it scores much more so I will sometimes take that risk against lower level opposition. I am at the point in the save where my highest wage earners per week are 240k, 190k, 150k, and lower. I can go meta and continue to climb and climb, but I want to only have players on contracts no more than 250k, preferably 200k. This makes it more fun I find and also seems more realistic.

[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 yesterday at 01:27 by DanEnglish

[ericm544]

@DanEnglish What you pointed out in player reflection was my main thought, I would for sure have had Kovacic the RP and Kante one of the BBMs. That is also I believe just a really unfortunate RNG roll for Lukaku in your save, not even a single goal contribution is almost comedic. I found that even with lower quality wide defenders, I like to start with WBs and use FBs if necessary when controlling leads. The two main things are WBs are so much better progressing out the back like RPs instead of FBs which seem to try and force a pass most often. In the attacking third FBs mainly will just do early crosses and the WBs have so much more dynamic movements both inverted and wide.

[Resurgam]

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