Tactics The Black Hawk 2026 - Work in Progress

[Lmarco]

Great stuff @blackhawk! I admittedly laughed profusely out loud when you acknowledged the tactical reason for your dreadful start at Cagliari (could have been worse.. am i right Wilfired Nancy?!). 

 

This looks like we could have a winner! Just wondering, if you have different variants of this tactic for when:

A) You're Brighton and you're playing a great powerful side such as Liverpool at Anfield or City at the Etihad? (or just any world class team home or away or do you stick with these tactics right from the off?

B) You're up by a goal with 20-10 mins left and you want to park the bus?

C) You're down by a goal or two in the second half and you decide to throw caution to the wind?

 

LM 

 

 

[Lmarco]

@blackhawk Excuse my oversight I just saw in the comments that you’ll come up with variants once you have the finalized TBH. On all fronts we wait with with vested interest and appreciate the great work you’ve done and continue to do! 

[DanEnglish]

6 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

I fuckin' mistakenly defined my centre backs as Liberos, not Sweepers as it should be!

This genuinely made me laugh 👍 glad you continued with the test as well - nice result 

[Punishxr]

14 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

And here I changed Final Third instructions to only Work Into Box and Run At Defence

Run At Defence? Could you explain it a bit more?
Since this tactic uses two Sweepers, wouldn’t that be an issue? As we know, Sweepers rarely make forward runs.

14 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

a Sweeper Keeper

And about the SK — didn’t you mention before that the SK often makes mistakes that lead to goals conceded, especially risky passing during build-up? After the recent update, is the SK role still prone to those passing errors, or has it improved?

Sorry if I’m asking too much — I’m just curious how it works before I test it out.

[panjalakuruchi]

Just sharing 

The 4 draws was Newcastle away 0-0, Wolves home 0-0, Man Utd home 2-2 and Man City away 2-2

[TazerMan]

I keep replaying the same match against Brest because something caught my attention. I've played the match at least eight times, with one win, two losses and the rest draws. But the tactics work extremely well. I dominate the game and have far more shots and shots on target than my opponent. And my striker, whom I recruited two years ago with excellent AP attributes, almost never misses. My second and third strikers, whom I sometimes play, perform better than him. That's it for my tests.

[TazerMan]

I wanted to say that my Striker Naderi, score rarely. He is bad but his attributs are amazing.

[Mae]

Finished the season with Monaco. No signings at all, just one loan in January because of injuries.

Won the league with 22W, 10D, 2L, scoring 65 and conceding 29. Up until November we only had 4 draws. Then my wing-backs got injured and November was rough — no wins, one CL loss to Liverpool and the rest draws, including PSG.

From December onwards we picked it back up and started winning again.

The only league losses were to Marseille and Lyon.

Champions League ended in the quarter-finals vs Liverpool.

Coupe de France was a disaster — lost 1–0 after 120 mins to a 3rd division team after Dier got sent off in the 29th minute.

Big standout was Mike Biereth with 24 goals and 7 assists in 35 games.

I know it’s Monaco, I will run a test with lower division team.

[TazerMan]

Black Hawk, i know you already did it but maybe it elvolved: can you tell us what are the required attributs for each roles ? Thanks

[Black Hawk]

So guys, after four positive tests with Brighton, Arsenal, Burnley and Cagliari, I've reached a road block.

A road block that has convinced me there's no way to design a plug & play tactic that works for any team playing the way The Black Hawk usually does; it will only be possible to find a base, let's call it the DNA of the tactic, but the instructions in Final Third will have to be adjusted according to the players we have.

That road block has two names: AS Roma and Manchester United.

After Cagliari, I decided to try out AS Roma and... it wasn't that it went badly, not at all, but I felt for the first time that the team was struggling immensely to score goals. In some games it wasn't even for lack of shots, but the goalscoring opportunities weren't clear-cut enough to result in goals regularly.

I reached mid-season with AS Roma like this.

As you can see, it's not that things are going badly. We're in 1st place, we have a solid defense, but offensively... 30 goals in 19 games is low.

I'll elaborate on what I think happened there. After finishing this test, I picked up Manchester United and gave up after dropping points against Arsenal, Man City, Brentford, Liverpool, Forest and Spurs. That is, in six out of eleven Premier League games.

With Manchester United the same thing was happening as with AS Roma, that is, we were conceding few goals, but having offensive difficulties in creating good goal scoring chances. We create some, but most are not clear chances, those are too few.

The question is this: this last variant I shared (with Work Into Box + Run At Defense in the Final Third) works almost like the TBH in FMM23. I could copy and paste what I wrote at the time in the FMM23 tactics thread, but to summarize: our team plays in a narrow, narrow area of the pitch, drawing opponents towards the central zone.

This isn't a flaw: it's the tactic's objective, it's deliberate. The goal then is to open up the flanks for our Wing Backs, Inside Forwards and sometimes even our Box to Boxs to advance without oposition down the wing bringing the game to our opponents box. It's a way to bypass the overcrowded inside zone of the pitch, allowing us to reach the final third and forcing our opponents to drop back: the further they are from our goal, the fewer chances they have of scoring against us.

Obviously this makes it harder to break their defense, but that's why I've been testing for the last two months. In FMM24 it was way easier, the combo Work Into Box and Through Balls was overkill. As it is not working that well on this FMM26, I'm looking for answers on the good old TBH of FMM23.

Right now, with Work Into Box + Run At Defense, our team finds three ways they look up the most to create goal scoring chances:

Plan A) creating numerical superiority on the flanks, with the WB, B2B and IF forming a triangle that breaks down the opponents' marking and opens up spaces for our players to quickly progress and exploit them.

Two examples:

Here Martinelli roams to the wing, their right FB goes with him which leaves a big ass space that himself runs to. Alternatively, Zubimendi (left B2B, #36) could have explored that space too, but this time he didn't.

Here's another example. Their FB has to press Lewis-Skelly and one of the CBs goes to cover Martinelli and Zubimendi. The space was already there, Zubimendi quickly launches Martinelli and it's a goal.

Alternatively, Lewis-Skelly could have passed the ball to Martinelli and it would be Zubimendi attacking the space and shooting to target.

For those who still remember, this is the use of the flanks that Guardiola's Barcelona made. Barcelona players often opened up on the flanks not to go to the line to cross the ball, but to attract the defenders and open up spaces inside that other players could exploit by rapidly attack those zones. It is the same principle that I try to apply here.

This requires Creativity (the assists from Rice on 1st GIF and Zubimendi on 2nd GIF), Movement and Pace (the runs from Martinelli), and sometimes Dribbling (if the play is a bit behind, Martinelli would had to run with the ball to get closer to the goal).

Plan B) playing the ball around on the center of the pitch to get our opponents out of their positions to then make a deadly pass to the back of their defense, often after our Pressing Forward dropping behind to make their CBs leave their position. This would enable forward runs by IFs, B2Bs or even the PF.

Here an example. Not the best one, it was the only one I got from this match, but I believe you guys can see it: we passed the ball around until one of the CBs opens up the space to a pass through. It was Gyokeres who run for it (and missed), but it could have been Martinelli too.

It's more usual to be Gyokeres who runs behind making one of the CBs to go with him, not in this case but it worked too.

This requires Creativity and Movement from our midfielders, as they have to pass the ball around in the narrow space that our opponents give on the inside of the pitch. It works with Arsenal even with defensive opponents as the players are fantastic, but works with Brighton and Burnley too because few teams park the bus against them and so there's space to explore.

Plan C) If the space wasn't there, our Wing Back can simply cross the ball near the box in search of our Pressing Forward. Anyone who played FMM23 with TBH back then should remember that this resulted in many goals if our Pressing Forward had a good combination of Aerial + Aggression + Movement. Players like Osimhen, Scamacca and even Beto from Everton (who was at Udinese at the time) banged many goals this way.

So, what's the problem with AS Roma and Manchester United? Well, similar ones but not necessarily the same.

AS Roma has a good team overall, with IFs like Dybala and El Shaarawy who are theoretically good players. However, this is only theoretically.

AS Roma's midfield lacks creativity and movement. This prevents them from playing in tight spaces inside the pitch, forcing them to play too wide, often searching our WBs or IFs in the wings.

Here's the second problem: Dybala and El Shaarawy are well over 30, both lack movement and pace (and in El Shaarawy's case, also dribbling). This leads them to be slow to exploit spaces that open up in the opposing defense.

Overall we have possession, but when it's time to speed up the game to attack spaces in the defense, neither the box-to-box midfielders nor the IFs are quick to attack the spaces to perform Plan A, and AS Roma midfielders are not good enough to play by the inside of the pitch for the Plan B.

Sometimes they could, but sometimes they couldn't when our opponents park the bus. What remains is Plan C, so the team relied a lot on crosses to Dovbyk and Ferguson (our Pressing Forwards). They scored between them 53% of our team goals...

In the case of Manchester United, the midfield is beyond bad. Casemiro and Ugarte are terrible. Things improve a little when Mainoo gets his first boosts, but until then only Bruno Fernandes is useful. So Plan B is hard to pull of as a lot of teams park the bus against them.

Just like at AS Roma, this results in the team having to play too much on the flanks where we actualy have goodish IFs (Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Amad, Mount isn't bad either), but the wingbacks are poor. Dalot, Mazraoui and Shaw, not one of them is useful, they are slow to progress with the ball and in this way our opponents easily close the spaces before we can exploit them (so the triangle I said comes too late to work). Dorgu is the exception, but he also only gets goodish when he gets his first boosts.

The way I found to make AS Roma and Manchester United to work was to tick on Looks for Overloads. Basically, playing all the same, but with the combo Overloads + Work Into Box + Run At Defense.

What happened is not to my liking, but it was efective. The team opened up. The IFs and B2Bs are more wide. The team relies a lot more on crosses, but also this makes our opponents wider and that forces spaces on the inside to explore that we couldn't find previously without Overlaps.

The results were these.

AS Roma scored 11 more goals. We conceded more, but these numbers are acceptable, I believe.

We also made more points, but Juventus (who won against us on the first test) was nowhere as strong on this second test and we won there. Those 3 points would have been lost if they were as stronger as in the first test, so there was not much separating the points in the two tests.

Oh, in this test I started to use tactics only to secure points later in the game. I'm only starting testing them, so I won't share them for now.

And can be seen, the goals are more distributed by the team. Even the midfielders scored some, which didn't happened much in the first test.

The IFs didn't had much impact as they lack Movement, Pace and in some cases Dribbling, as I said. I'm hoping Leon Bailey can change this, he recovered later from the injury he starts with and already made an impact, he is Pacy and has good technical attributes.

With Manchester United it went well. I don't believe them to be much better than Brighton, if I could choose players from Man Utd to enter the starting eleven of Brighton I probably would only choose De Ligt, Yoro, Bruno Fernandes and Sesko... So I expected to finish close to what I achieved with Brighton by midseason (41 points). Man Utd did better, but we got lucky on two or three games, we could had only something like 43 or 44 points.

Oh, we lost against Arsenal, Man City and Liverpool, so the games we were expected to lose. The draw was against Aston Villa.

Here we had more impact by the IFs. Matheus Cunha is our best goalscoring and that is because he has Dorgu (WB) and Bruno Fernandes (B2B) playing closer to him. Those three make that triangle I spoke of by the left and are deadly together.

The midfielders are dreadful, just look at the stats of Casemiro, Ugarte and Mainoo, together they don't make what Bruno Fernandes did alone (and Bruno somewhat has modest stats).

Also, Dalot and Mazraoui don't do anything. Really, this Manchester United team is just... uffff...

Anyway, all this to say what: seems like there's not a plug & play that works for any team like on FMM24. All depends on our players and our opponents.

The version with Work Into Box + Run At Defense worked with Arsenal (what doesn't work with them, right?), Brighton, Burnley and Cagliari. With Arsenal because they are good enough to play against ultra defensive opponents, with Brighton, Burnley and Cagliari because our opponents don't park the bus against them, so we have space to play.

AS Roma and Manchester United play frequently against defensive opponents, some park the bus against us, and they lack quality in some positions to make it work, so I had to play with Overlaps to break defenses.

If anyone wants to play with these versions, check the stats of your players and look closely to the games to see if they are having a hard time. And then change to the version that suits them the most.

[Mik3lourenc]

@Black HawkThe version with roles too? We have to change the Roles of the DMC ? You can speak in portuguese, i am from portugal

Edited January 9 by Mik3lourenc

[panjalakuruchi]

Wow. I am arsenal btw

 

[leedsunited87]

@Black Hawk

Your a tactical genius 👏 alot of effort has gone into this tactic, fair play to you 

On my own save with my Tactic, I had to adjust to the PL. Took over as Leeds, 19th in the Prem. Finished a mighty 12th. This season, I have tweaked my Tactic again. I have found out that each of my players positions, is the fav of the player. So for example, a SS say, if you have a player who is both, but is naturally a CM, it ain't going to work. That goes for every position. I'm currently 3rd in the prem, 21 games played. Think I have cracked it. I used a 42121. 2 defensive full backs, 2 cbs, 2 DMs (B2B) 1 AP, 2 wingers and a AF

The 2 DMs massively help the CBs, along with the defensive full backs. Attack is still great, but also pretty defensively good as well. I haven't touched my Tactic in about 16 games now, I think it's all about the players, what fits what type of formation you use, the player much be great in that position you play in. So casiamo and ugate wouldn't be any use in CM, I'd personally play them in the DM position

Edited January 10 by leedsunited87

[berkyyuksel]

8 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

So guys, after four positive tests with Brighton, Arsenal, Burnley and Cagliari, I've reached a road block.

A road block that has convinced me there's no way to design a plug & play tactic that works for any team playing the way The Black Hawk usually does; it will only be possible to find a base, let's call it the DNA of the tactic, but the instructions in Final Third will have to be adjusted according to the players we have.

That road block has two names: AS Roma and Manchester United.

After Cagliari, I decided to try out AS Roma and... it wasn't that it went badly, not at all, but I felt for the first time that the team was struggling immensely to score goals. In some games it wasn't even for lack of shots, but the goalscoring opportunities weren't clear-cut enough to result in goals regularly.

I reached mid-season with AS Roma like this.

As you can see, it's not that things are going badly. We're in 1st place, we have a solid defense, but offensively... 30 goals in 19 games is low.

I'll elaborate on what I think happened there. After finishing this test, I picked up Manchester United and gave up after dropping points against Arsenal, Man City, Brentford, Liverpool, Forest and Spurs. That is, in six out of eleven Premier League games.

With Manchester United the same thing was happening as with AS Roma, that is, we were conceding few goals, but having offensive difficulties in creating good goal scoring chances. We create some, but most are not clear chances, those are too few.

The question is this: this last variant I shared (with Work Into Box + Run At Defense in the Final Third) works almost like the TBH in FMM23. I could copy and paste what I wrote at the time in the FMM23 tactics thread, but to summarize: our team plays in a narrow, narrow area of the pitch, drawing opponents towards the central zone.

This isn't a flaw: it's the tactic's objective, it's deliberate. The goal then is to open up the flanks for our Wing Backs, Inside Forwards and sometimes even our Box to Boxs to advance without oposition down the wing bringing the game to our opponents box. It's a way to bypass the overcrowded inside zone of the pitch, allowing us to reach the final third and forcing our opponents to drop back: the further they are from our goal, the fewer chances they have of scoring against us.

Obviously this makes it harder to break their defense, but that's why I've been testing for the last two months. In FMM24 it was way easier, the combo Work Into Box and Through Balls was overkill. As it is not working that well on this FMM26, I'm looking for answers on the good old TBH of FMM23.

Right now, with Work Into Box + Run At Defense, our team finds three ways they look up the most to create goal scoring chances:

Plan A) creating numerical superiority on the flanks, with the WB, B2B and IF forming a triangle that breaks down the opponents' marking and opens up spaces for our players to quickly progress and exploit them.

Two examples:

Here Martinelli roams to the wing, their right FB goes with him which leaves a big ass space that himself runs to. Alternatively, Zubimendi (left B2B, #36) could have explored that space too, but this time he didn't.

Here's another example. Their FB has to press Lewis-Skelly and one of the CBs goes to cover Martinelli and Zubimendi. The space was already there, Zubimendi quickly launches Martinelli and it's a goal.

Alternatively, Lewis-Skelly could have passed the ball to Martinelli and it would be Zubimendi attacking the space and shooting to target.

For those who still remember, this is the use of the flanks that Guardiola's Barcelona made. Barcelona players often opened up on the flanks not to go to the line to cross the ball, but to attract the defenders and open up spaces inside that other players could exploit by rapidly attack those zones. It is the same principle that I try to apply here.

This requires Creativity (the assists from Rice on 1st GIF and Zubimendi on 2nd GIF), Movement and Pace (the runs from Martinelli), and sometimes Dribbling (if the play is a bit behind, Martinelli would had to run with the ball to get closer to the goal).

Plan B) playing the ball around on the center of the pitch to get our opponents out of their positions to then make a deadly pass to the back of their defense, often after our Pressing Forward dropping behind to make their CBs leave their position. This would enable forward runs by IFs, B2Bs or even the PF.

Here an example. Not the best one, it was the only one I got from this match, but I believe you guys can see it: we passed the ball around until one of the CBs opens up the space to a pass through. It was Gyokeres who run for it (and missed), but it could have been Martinelli too.

It's more usual to be Gyokeres who runs behind making one of the CBs to go with him, not in this case but it worked too.

This requires Creativity and Movement from our midfielders, as they have to pass the ball around in the narrow space that our opponents give on the inside of the pitch. It works with Arsenal even with defensive opponents as the players are fantastic, but works with Brighton and Burnley too because few teams park the bus against them and so there's space to explore.

Plan C) If the space wasn't there, our Wing Back can simply cross the ball near the box in search of our Pressing Forward. Anyone who played FMM23 with TBH back then should remember that this resulted in many goals if our Pressing Forward had a good combination of Aerial + Aggression + Movement. Players like Osimhen, Scamacca and even Beto from Everton (who was at Udinese at the time) banged many goals this way.

So, what's the problem with AS Roma and Manchester United? Well, similar ones but not necessarily the same.

AS Roma has a good team overall, with IFs like Dybala and El Shaarawy who are theoretically good players. However, this is only theoretically.

AS Roma's midfield lacks creativity and movement. This prevents them from playing in tight spaces inside the pitch, forcing them to play too wide, often searching our WBs or IFs in the wings.

Here's the second problem: Dybala and El Shaarawy are well over 30, both lack movement and pace (and in El Shaarawy's case, also dribbling). This leads them to be slow to exploit spaces that open up in the opposing defense.

Overall we have possession, but when it's time to speed up the game to attack spaces in the defense, neither the box-to-box midfielders nor the IFs are quick to attack the spaces to perform Plan A, and AS Roma midfielders are not good enough to play by the inside of the pitch for the Plan B.

Sometimes they could, but sometimes they couldn't when our opponents park the bus. What remains is Plan C, so the team relied a lot on crosses to Dovbyk and Ferguson (our Pressing Forwards). They scored between them 53% of our team goals...

In the case of Manchester United, the midfield is beyond bad. Casemiro and Ugarte are terrible. Things improve a little when Mainoo gets his first boosts, but until then only Bruno Fernandes is useful. So Plan B is hard to pull of as a lot of teams park the bus against them.

Just like at AS Roma, this results in the team having to play too much on the flanks where we actualy have goodish IFs (Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Amad, Mount isn't bad either), but the wingbacks are poor. Dalot, Mazraoui and Shaw, not one of them is useful, they are slow to progress with the ball and in this way our opponents easily close the spaces before we can exploit them (so the triangle I said comes too late to work). Dorgu is the exception, but he also only gets goodish when he gets his first boosts.

The way I found to make AS Roma and Manchester United to work was to tick on Looks for Overloads. Basically, playing all the same, but with the combo Overloads + Work Into Box + Run At Defense.

What happened is not to my liking, but it was efective. The team opened up. The IFs and B2Bs are more wide. The team relies a lot more on crosses, but also this makes our opponents wider and that forces spaces on the inside to explore that we couldn't find previously without Overlaps.

The results were these.

AS Roma scored 11 more goals. We conceded more, but these numbers are acceptable, I believe.

We also made more points, but Juventus (who won against us on the first test) was nowhere as strong on this second test and we won there. Those 3 points would have been lost if they were as stronger as in the first test, so there was not much separating the points in the two tests.

Oh, in this test I started to use tactics only to secure points later in the game. I'm only starting testing them, so I won't share them for now.

And can be seen, the goals are more distributed by the team. Even the midfielders scored some, which didn't happened much in the first test.

The IFs didn't had much impact as they lack Movement, Pace and in some cases Dribbling, as I said. I'm hoping Leon Bailey can change this, he recovered later from the injury he starts with and already made an impact, he is Pacy and has good technical attributes.

With Manchester United it went well. I don't believe them to be much better than Brighton, if I could choose players from Man Utd to enter the starting eleven of Brighton I probably would only choose De Ligt, Yoro, Bruno Fernandes and Sesko... So I expected to finish close to what I achieved with Brighton by midseason (41 points). Man Utd did better, but we got lucky on two or three games, we could had only something like 43 or 44 points.

Oh, we lost against Arsenal, Man City and Liverpool, so the games we were expected to lose. The draw was against Aston Villa.

Here we had more impact by the IFs. Matheus Cunha is our best goalscoring and that is because he has Dorgu (WB) and Bruno Fernandes (B2B) playing closer to him. Those three make that triangle I spoke of by the left and are deadly together.

The midfielders are dreadful, just look at the stats of Casemiro, Ugarte and Mainoo, together they don't make what Bruno Fernandes did alone (and Bruno somewhat has modest stats).

Also, Dalot and Mazraoui don't do anything. Really, this Manchester United team is just... uffff...

Anyway, all this to say what: seems like there's not a plug & play that works for any team like on FMM24. All depends on our players and our opponents.

The version with Work Into Box + Run At Defense worked with Arsenal (what doesn't work with them, right?), Brighton, Burnley and Cagliari. With Arsenal because they are good enough to play against ultra defensive opponents, with Brighton, Burnley and Cagliari because our opponents don't park the bus against them, so we have space to play.

AS Roma and Manchester United play frequently against defensive opponents, some park the bus against us, and they lack quality in some positions to make it work, so I had to play with Overlaps to break defenses.

If anyone wants to play with these versions, check the stats of your players and look closely to the games to see if they are having a hard time. And then change to the version that suits them the most.

Is there a version you would recommend for now?

[Manan Jain]

This isn't the BH version but this tactic worked well for 10 seasons and then the save became quite repetitive as I kept winning . It uses kind of the similar players but takes a season to become invinsible.

[TazerMan]

14 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

So guys, after four positive tests with Brighton, Arsenal, Burnley and Cagliari, I've reached a road block.

A road block that has convinced me there's no way to design a plug & play tactic that works for any team playing the way The Black Hawk usually does; it will only be possible to find a base, let's call it the DNA of the tactic, but the instructions in Final Third will have to be adjusted according to the players we have.

That road block has two names: AS Roma and Manchester United.

After Cagliari, I decided to try out AS Roma and... it wasn't that it went badly, not at all, but I felt for the first time that the team was struggling immensely to score goals. In some games it wasn't even for lack of shots, but the goalscoring opportunities weren't clear-cut enough to result in goals regularly.

I reached mid-season with AS Roma like this.

As you can see, it's not that things are going badly. We're in 1st place, we have a solid defense, but offensively... 30 goals in 19 games is low.

I'll elaborate on what I think happened there. After finishing this test, I picked up Manchester United and gave up after dropping points against Arsenal, Man City, Brentford, Liverpool, Forest and Spurs. That is, in six out of eleven Premier League games.

With Manchester United the same thing was happening as with AS Roma, that is, we were conceding few goals, but having offensive difficulties in creating good goal scoring chances. We create some, but most are not clear chances, those are too few.

The question is this: this last variant I shared (with Work Into Box + Run At Defense in the Final Third) works almost like the TBH in FMM23. I could copy and paste what I wrote at the time in the FMM23 tactics thread, but to summarize: our team plays in a narrow, narrow area of the pitch, drawing opponents towards the central zone.

This isn't a flaw: it's the tactic's objective, it's deliberate. The goal then is to open up the flanks for our Wing Backs, Inside Forwards and sometimes even our Box to Boxs to advance without oposition down the wing bringing the game to our opponents box. It's a way to bypass the overcrowded inside zone of the pitch, allowing us to reach the final third and forcing our opponents to drop back: the further they are from our goal, the fewer chances they have of scoring against us.

Obviously this makes it harder to break their defense, but that's why I've been testing for the last two months. In FMM24 it was way easier, the combo Work Into Box and Through Balls was overkill. As it is not working that well on this FMM26, I'm looking for answers on the good old TBH of FMM23.

Right now, with Work Into Box + Run At Defense, our team finds three ways they look up the most to create goal scoring chances:

Plan A) creating numerical superiority on the flanks, with the WB, B2B and IF forming a triangle that breaks down the opponents' marking and opens up spaces for our players to quickly progress and exploit them.

Two examples:

Here Martinelli roams to the wing, their right FB goes with him which leaves a big ass space that himself runs to. Alternatively, Zubimendi (left B2B, #36) could have explored that space too, but this time he didn't.

Here's another example. Their FB has to press Lewis-Skelly and one of the CBs goes to cover Martinelli and Zubimendi. The space was already there, Zubimendi quickly launches Martinelli and it's a goal.

Alternatively, Lewis-Skelly could have passed the ball to Martinelli and it would be Zubimendi attacking the space and shooting to target.

For those who still remember, this is the use of the flanks that Guardiola's Barcelona made. Barcelona players often opened up on the flanks not to go to the line to cross the ball, but to attract the defenders and open up spaces inside that other players could exploit by rapidly attack those zones. It is the same principle that I try to apply here.

This requires Creativity (the assists from Rice on 1st GIF and Zubimendi on 2nd GIF), Movement and Pace (the runs from Martinelli), and sometimes Dribbling (if the play is a bit behind, Martinelli would had to run with the ball to get closer to the goal).

Plan B) playing the ball around on the center of the pitch to get our opponents out of their positions to then make a deadly pass to the back of their defense, often after our Pressing Forward dropping behind to make their CBs leave their position. This would enable forward runs by IFs, B2Bs or even the PF.

Here an example. Not the best one, it was the only one I got from this match, but I believe you guys can see it: we passed the ball around until one of the CBs opens up the space to a pass through. It was Gyokeres who run for it (and missed), but it could have been Martinelli too.

It's more usual to be Gyokeres who runs behind making one of the CBs to go with him, not in this case but it worked too.

This requires Creativity and Movement from our midfielders, as they have to pass the ball around in the narrow space that our opponents give on the inside of the pitch. It works with Arsenal even with defensive opponents as the players are fantastic, but works with Brighton and Burnley too because few teams park the bus against them and so there's space to explore.

Plan C) If the space wasn't there, our Wing Back can simply cross the ball near the box in search of our Pressing Forward. Anyone who played FMM23 with TBH back then should remember that this resulted in many goals if our Pressing Forward had a good combination of Aerial + Aggression + Movement. Players like Osimhen, Scamacca and even Beto from Everton (who was at Udinese at the time) banged many goals this way.

So, what's the problem with AS Roma and Manchester United? Well, similar ones but not necessarily the same.

AS Roma has a good team overall, with IFs like Dybala and El Shaarawy who are theoretically good players. However, this is only theoretically.

AS Roma's midfield lacks creativity and movement. This prevents them from playing in tight spaces inside the pitch, forcing them to play too wide, often searching our WBs or IFs in the wings.

Here's the second problem: Dybala and El Shaarawy are well over 30, both lack movement and pace (and in El Shaarawy's case, also dribbling). This leads them to be slow to exploit spaces that open up in the opposing defense.

Overall we have possession, but when it's time to speed up the game to attack spaces in the defense, neither the box-to-box midfielders nor the IFs are quick to attack the spaces to perform Plan A, and AS Roma midfielders are not good enough to play by the inside of the pitch for the Plan B.

Sometimes they could, but sometimes they couldn't when our opponents park the bus. What remains is Plan C, so the team relied a lot on crosses to Dovbyk and Ferguson (our Pressing Forwards). They scored between them 53% of our team goals...

In the case of Manchester United, the midfield is beyond bad. Casemiro and Ugarte are terrible. Things improve a little when Mainoo gets his first boosts, but until then only Bruno Fernandes is useful. So Plan B is hard to pull of as a lot of teams park the bus against them.

Just like at AS Roma, this results in the team having to play too much on the flanks where we actualy have goodish IFs (Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Amad, Mount isn't bad either), but the wingbacks are poor. Dalot, Mazraoui and Shaw, not one of them is useful, they are slow to progress with the ball and in this way our opponents easily close the spaces before we can exploit them (so the triangle I said comes too late to work). Dorgu is the exception, but he also only gets goodish when he gets his first boosts.

The way I found to make AS Roma and Manchester United to work was to tick on Looks for Overloads. Basically, playing all the same, but with the combo Overloads + Work Into Box + Run At Defense.

What happened is not to my liking, but it was efective. The team opened up. The IFs and B2Bs are more wide. The team relies a lot more on crosses, but also this makes our opponents wider and that forces spaces on the inside to explore that we couldn't find previously without Overlaps.

The results were these.

AS Roma scored 11 more goals. We conceded more, but these numbers are acceptable, I believe.

We also made more points, but Juventus (who won against us on the first test) was nowhere as strong on this second test and we won there. Those 3 points would have been lost if they were as stronger as in the first test, so there was not much separating the points in the two tests.

Oh, in this test I started to use tactics only to secure points later in the game. I'm only starting testing them, so I won't share them for now.

And can be seen, the goals are more distributed by the team. Even the midfielders scored some, which didn't happened much in the first test.

The IFs didn't had much impact as they lack Movement, Pace and in some cases Dribbling, as I said. I'm hoping Leon Bailey can change this, he recovered later from the injury he starts with and already made an impact, he is Pacy and has good technical attributes.

With Manchester United it went well. I don't believe them to be much better than Brighton, if I could choose players from Man Utd to enter the starting eleven of Brighton I probably would only choose De Ligt, Yoro, Bruno Fernandes and Sesko... So I expected to finish close to what I achieved with Brighton by midseason (41 points). Man Utd did better, but we got lucky on two or three games, we could had only something like 43 or 44 points.

Oh, we lost against Arsenal, Man City and Liverpool, so the games we were expected to lose. The draw was against Aston Villa.

Here we had more impact by the IFs. Matheus Cunha is our best goalscoring and that is because he has Dorgu (WB) and Bruno Fernandes (B2B) playing closer to him. Those three make that triangle I spoke of by the left and are deadly together.

The midfielders are dreadful, just look at the stats of Casemiro, Ugarte and Mainoo, together they don't make what Bruno Fernandes did alone (and Bruno somewhat has modest stats).

Also, Dalot and Mazraoui don't do anything. Really, this Manchester United team is just... uffff...

Anyway, all this to say what: seems like there's not a plug & play that works for any team like on FMM24. All depends on our players and our opponents.

The version with Work Into Box + Run At Defense worked with Arsenal (what doesn't work with them, right?), Brighton, Burnley and Cagliari. With Arsenal because they are good enough to play against ultra defensive opponents, with Brighton, Burnley and Cagliari because our opponents don't park the bus against them, so we have space to play.

AS Roma and Manchester United play frequently against defensive opponents, some park the bus against us, and they lack quality in some positions to make it work, so I had to play with Overlaps to break defenses.

If anyone wants to play with these versions, check the stats of your players and look closely to the games to see if they are having a hard time. And then change to the version that suits them the most.

Hello BH, thanks for your tests. Could you tell us which last third instructions to use depending on the attributs of the miedfield/attack roles. And which is the best last third version if we have the required attributs (that you could tell us). Thanks a lot. Have a nice day 

[leedsunited87]

@Black Hawk

I can't put my finger on it, so results from my PL season. I have resigned. Just took over as Lazio, my 1st game, reverted back to my 42121, I won 3:0. I was using 42121 (with 2 DMs) all of a sudden, results started to drop. Has got me absolutely stumped. Ive managed in Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and Italy. Premier league is the hardest I've manged in this year. Just got me stumped 

[panjalakuruchi]

On 10/01/2026 at 19:54, Manan Jain said:

This isn't the BH version but this tactic worked well for 10 seasons and then the save became quite repetitive as I kept winning . It uses kind of the similar players but takes a season to become invinsible.

What is the tactic?

[Manan Jain]

7 hours ago, panjalakuruchi said:

What is the tactic?

Squad depth is important in every position.

Also what I did every match (except in some special cases) was that at around 55-65th minute substitute my wingbacks and my two cm's .

you have to trust the tactic cause the league was always easy but the champions league was always hard but with a good set of players this works for sure

Using the wingbacks in the same line as the centre halves works as well

Edited January 13 by Manan Jain

[Manan Jain]

On 10/01/2026 at 09:21, panjalakuruchi said:

Wow. I am arsenal btw

 

what tactics are you using right here??

[Schem-tic]

On 09/01/2026 at 23:34, Black Hawk said:

I'll elaborate on what I think happened there. After finishing this test, I picked up Manchester United and gave up after dropping points against Arsenal, Man City, Brentford, Liverpool, Forest and Spurs. That is, in six out of eleven Premier League games.

With Manchester United the same thing was happening as with AS Roma, that is, we were conceding few goals, but having offensive difficulties in creating good goal scoring chances. We create some, but most are not clear chances, those are too few.

Noticed too, but i have choosen to change the center back pairing from Sweeper to BPD, they overall are defensively sound when i use them and attribute more to the attack compared to a sweeper under my saves.

I find that the sweepers are programmed or feel as if they need to be safe which means under zero pressure they always pass back to the keep who more than often doesn't follow the instruction of short passes, making sweepers in my saves usefull against sides with great attacker e.g Madrid ( Mbappe ), Bayern ( Kane and Oilse sometime Daiz), Arsenal ( Kai ).

BPD defenders as i mentioned are about as good as sweeper defensively but are just far better in generating attacks, this being sole based on the idea that on the highlight the game shows more attacks and less highlights eluding to pressure from the opposition side.

Note: also find it interesting how Centerback parings in this version of the game are only good when you have the same role across both pairings 

[Black Hawk]

So, let's get back on track. Sorry in advance if I forget someone, but I genuinely don't know where did I stop answering last time. If I forgot someone, let me know.

Also, this is a long post because I did seven tests (all until midseason) that I will post in the end of this post.

Let's get to it.

On 06/01/2026 at 20:59, Lmarco said:

Great stuff @blackhawk! I admittedly laughed profusely out loud when you acknowledged the tactical reason for your dreadful start at Cagliari (could have been worse.. am i right Wilfired Nancy?!). 

 

This looks like we could have a winner! Just wondering, if you have different variants of this tactic for when:

A) You're Brighton and you're playing a great powerful side such as Liverpool at Anfield or City at the Etihad? (or just any world class team home or away or do you stick with these tactics right from the off?

B) You're up by a goal with 20-10 mins left and you want to park the bus?

C) You're down by a goal or two in the second half and you decide to throw caution to the wind?

 

LM 

 

 

I have been trying some variants, but mainly for defensive reasons. As many people have said, some teams became prime Guardiola's Barcelona somewhere during second half and I've had to look for counter-measures to try and stop them.

Usually I play with the standard tactic. I just look for alternatives late in the game. In some matches I parked the bus in the last 5 minutes (85th minute onwards), despite the fact I don't like it.

Actualy, I don't like this match engine at all, but I will get back to this latter.

Ofensively, I didn't find anything to go for a late goal. I played with Control minded teams for some years now and that means I struggle when looking for offensive tactics. That's something I have to work from zero...

On 07/01/2026 at 01:02, DanEnglish said:

This genuinely made me laugh 👍 glad you continued with the test as well - nice result 

Dan, I am late to the party, but that discussion about some games looking like they are rigged against us? Here my two cents on the matter.

I don't know if you remind them, but some years ago (decades, actualy, God I'm getting old...) there were some books by Ian Livingstone, I believe their original version was called Fighting Fantasy. In those books, we played a hero story and choose what to do, where to go and who to fight.

I'm the beggining we throw a dice to know what our battle skill was. Then when we had to fight, our opponent also had a battle skill. We would throw a dice for us and for our opponent.

Let's say we have a skill of 10 and our opponent a skill of 8. We throw a dice for us, if we get 5 we have a power of 15; we throw a dice for our opponent, he had a 6, his power was 14. We won the first round and our opponent got the damage. Then we did it again until one of the characters takes enough damage to die.

Most times our base skill was high enough to overcome eventual bad luck in some of the throws, but we could lose against any opponent.

I'm saying this because FMM26 looks a lot like this series mechanics. Sometimes it looks like the game sets a base skill to a team before every match and then when the match engine generates the game it attributes a random number to add to that base skill.

The example that started all this: my match against Bournemouth. They are not better than Brighton, should be a 50/50 event. Sometimes Brighton should win, other times Bournemouth should win, there's not much separating them.

But what I saw was a Bournemouth too strong. I replayed enough matches to notice how Bournemouth outplayed Brighton almost everytime. I tested different tactics, mine and from other users, some control minded, others defensive and even attacking ones. Didn't matter, they were too strong. Sometimes we won, but only a few times and they were scrappy wins with a lot of luck.

It felt like the game decided Bournemouth had a very high base skill and Brighton a low base skill for that particular match. Then the match engine generated the game and most of the times that difference on base skill was too high to overcome.

That's why I said it feels like it was decided we had to lose that game. It was a bad choice of words. It was not necessarily like we had to lose, but more like the game decided we had to struggle and gave Bournemouth some kind of high base skill and low skill to us on that particular match.

We could win, but it was already predetermined it was going to be really hard to get a result there. If we played this in a normal save we would brush it off as a bad game as often happens. I only noticed this pattern because I'm testing tactics and replayed some bad games to understand what went well (in a save game slot I had only for this, I always went ahead with the result of the original match).

Also, this kept happening. For example with Arsenal I got a home draw against Aston Villa where we played horribly, we only got the draw with a late goal at 90+5 and... I replayed that game a few times, only won twice. I didn't won more times than the ones I won.

This was impossible in real life, no way Arsenal would win only two times in seven or eight home matches against them. Not when Arsenal got there with 17 wins in 18 games while Villa had 1 win in last 11 games. Doesn't make any sense.

That's why I say there's some matches that feel like predetermined to be unreasonably hard, like the game wants to balance the results a bit because either we were winning too much or our opponent were losing too much. A good tactic will help to overcome those kind of games and get results regularly, but sometimes there's nothing really one can do especially when playing with weaker sides.

There's something very wrong with how this FMM26 is designed.

On 07/01/2026 at 01:12, Punishxr said:

Run At Defence? Could you explain it a bit more?
Since this tactic uses two Sweepers, wouldn’t that be an issue? As we know, Sweepers rarely make forward runs.

And about the SK — didn’t you mention before that the SK often makes mistakes that lead to goals conceded, especially risky passing during build-up? After the recent update, is the SK role still prone to those passing errors, or has it improved?

Sorry if I’m asking too much — I’m just curious how it works before I test it out.

I choose Run At Defence because Through Balls is not working as well as in FMM24. The spaces may be there, but for some reason out players don't roam there as much, so I figured the best way to exploit them is for our players running with the ball there as they did in FMM23 (at the time, the tactic had Run At Defence). Also, it helps with progression by the wings from our Wing Backs, which helps running to the final third avoiding the crowded inside of the pitch as our opponents just place almost all their team there.

SK is mostly to enables our goalkeepers to Run towards long balls to the back of our defense. Most times our goalkeeper will pass to our Wing Back and we start from there. There's still some errors there, but there's also errors with normal Goalkeeper role so, all in all, I believe it's worth the risk.

On 07/01/2026 at 18:46, Mae said:

Finished the season with Monaco. No signings at all, just one loan in January because of injuries.

Won the league with 22W, 10D, 2L, scoring 65 and conceding 29. Up until November we only had 4 draws. Then my wing-backs got injured and November was rough — no wins, one CL loss to Liverpool and the rest draws, including PSG.

From December onwards we picked it back up and started winning again.

The only league losses were to Marseille and Lyon.

Champions League ended in the quarter-finals vs Liverpool.

Coupe de France was a disaster — lost 1–0 after 120 mins to a 3rd division team after Dier got sent off in the 29th minute.

Big standout was Mike Biereth with 24 goals and 7 assists in 35 games.

I know it’s Monaco, I will run a test with lower division team.

Good results. How's that going on?

On 09/01/2026 at 21:01, TazerMan said:

Black Hawk, i know you already did it but maybe it elvolved: can you tell us what are the required attributs for each roles ? Thanks

The same as always. Movement is a requirement for almost every position (mainly WB, BBM, IF and PF). Agression is a nice bonus for midfielders, but that's really important for centre backs and pressing forward.

For the WBs, I look for Movement, Pace, if possible Crossing and Dribbling.

For CBs, I look for Agression, Decisions, Positioning. Aerial if possible. As they play as Sweepers I don't look as much for Pace as I did previously, but it is really important too. In some tests in Premier League I played with CBs with Pace 13 or 14 and they delivered, but if possible CBs should have Pace as high as we could.

BBM really depends of our players. I don't want three midfielders that are all the same. The bottom line are the Key attributes for the role of BBM. Movement and Decisions is always good for all of them.

The DM BBM should also have good Tackling, Positioning, Passing and Agression, the MC BBM I look for players with more Creativity, Passing, Technique, if possible Dribbling and Shooting.

The thing here is that without a RP as DM, we now can look for a player there more like a defensive midfielder. The two ahead should be more offensive while not being bad defensively. A partnership of a good ofensively and one more balanced overall is good.

IFs is the same as always: Movement, Pace, Dribbling and Shooting, mainly these.

PF, Movement and Agression are key, Aerial is a really good bonus to have, Pace too while not key (unless the guy has like 10 or 11 of Pace, that's just not good lol).

On 09/01/2026 at 23:20, Mik3lourenc said:

@Black HawkThe version with roles too? We have to change the Roles of the DMC ? You can speak in portuguese, i am from portugal

A fellow portuguese? Tão bom poder escrever na nossa língua!

O médio defensivo como Box to Box ajuda a equilibrar a equipa, em particular contra adversários que tenham um médio ofensivo nas costas do avançado. Tira um pouco de preponderância ofensiva ao médio defensivo como tinha enquanto Roaming Playmaker, mas acho que a equipa fica mais sólida no geral.

Preferia claramente como era no FMM24, mas o motor de jogo desta edição não quer nada com táctica de mentalidade controlo e limitou a performance do Roaming Playmaker... acabei por ter de fazer concessões contra a minha vontade.

On 10/01/2026 at 04:25, leedsunited87 said:

@Black Hawk

Your a tactical genius 👏 alot of effort has gone into this tactic, fair play to you 

On my own save with my Tactic, I had to adjust to the PL. Took over as Leeds, 19th in the Prem. Finished a mighty 12th. This season, I have tweaked my Tactic again. I have found out that each of my players positions, is the fav of the player. So for example, a SS say, if you have a player who is both, but is naturally a CM, it ain't going to work. That goes for every position. I'm currently 3rd in the prem, 21 games played. Think I have cracked it. I used a 42121. 2 defensive full backs, 2 cbs, 2 DMs (B2B) 1 AP, 2 wingers and a AF

The 2 DMs massively help the CBs, along with the defensive full backs. Attack is still great, but also pretty defensively good as well. I haven't touched my Tactic in about 16 games now, I think it's all about the players, what fits what type of formation you use, the player much be great in that position you play in. So casiamo and ugate wouldn't be any use in CM, I'd personally play them in the DM position

I don't like the two options DM only because it takes two players away from the support to the attacking trio. Or I have been playing this way for so long that I am too attached to the 1-2 triangle to change now...

On 10/01/2026 at 06:21, berkyyuksel said:

Is there a version you would recommend for now?

The one with the Work Into Box + Run At Defense (no Overlaps) is my favorite as it tries to play exactly how I want to play.

Unfortunately it's not for every team as some team don't have the quality to play that way against defensive opponents. If it doesn't work we may have to tick on Overlaps, which helps getting to the final third of the pitch more times, but also teams play a lot more by the wings and crossing...

It's all a matter of taste and the team we have.

I did several tests with Overlaps, I will share them by the end of this post.

On 10/01/2026 at 12:25, TazerMan said:

Hello BH, thanks for your tests. Could you tell us which last third instructions to use depending on the attributs of the miedfield/attack roles. And which is the best last third version if we have the required attributs (that you could tell us). Thanks a lot. Have a nice day 

It's hard to answer as this really depends on how the players perform. For example, with Roma I was convinced the midfielders were good enough to play by the inside of the pitch, but then when playing I noticed they couldn't and always chose the easy pass -> delivering the ball to the WB on the flanks.

The Burnley midfielders, worse than the ones I had with Roma, played by the inside really well.

I don't have a clear explanation as to why this is happening. My best guess is that Roma plays more against defensive opponents and they don't find the space to play by the middle, while Burnley don't face defensive opponents that much so that was not an issue.

By now, until the issue becames clear I would say top teams without midfielders with Technique, Creativity, Decisions, Movement, may struggle against defensive opponents. That happened with Roma and also with Man Utd (only Bruno Fernandes can actualy play like that).

On 10/01/2026 at 19:26, leedsunited87 said:

@Black Hawk

I can't put my finger on it, so results from my PL season. I have resigned. Just took over as Lazio, my 1st game, reverted back to my 42121, I won 3:0. I was using 42121 (with 2 DMs) all of a sudden, results started to drop. Has got me absolutely stumped. Ive managed in Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and Italy. Premier league is the hardest I've manged in this year. Just got me stumped 

Italian League is really strange. I played with some teams now and that's really different from Premier League. It's incredible hard to create clear cut chances and to score. Much more than Premier League.

Well then, as I said I like the version with Work Into Box + Run At Defense. But as I faced some trouble making it work with Roma and Manchester United, I decided to try with Overlaps too (so with these three options ticked on).

Did 7 tests until midseason in different teams, both Premier League and Serie A, with some being extreme tests as I specificaly chose some teams that don't have the right players to play as I want.

So, keep in mind most of these tests should have been a disaster as some of these teams don't have the means to play as I want. I will say the particular problems with every team, don't worry.

Nevertheless, I will start this with a top team that is more than prepared to play as intended and to show what this version can do with a squad well designed (as I believe most of us would do during a proper career).

A quick remind: this is the last version with Overlaps + Work Into Box + Run At Defense.

 

1st Test: Top Team (Arsenal)

So, Arsenal is easy to manage. They have 20 field players that can be in the starting eleven, no problem. The centre backs have Agression and enough Pace, the Wing Backs are fast and have enough Movement, Rice and Zubimendi are fantastic, Odegaard lacks a bit of Agression but is really good, the IFs are fast and have Dribbling and Shooting, Gyokeres lacks Aerial but has everything else.

Any balanced tactic should work with them and this was the result.

A lot of goals (67 in 25 games between Premier League and Champions League), only 7 conceded in 25 matches. We won everything except for 3 draws: away Liverpool and Real Madrid, home against Aston Villa.

Easy test, the team is scoring for fun while not conceding too much. Everyone is scoring. Gyokeres had an injury and still banged 13 goals, Martinelli has 10, Saka 7, Trossard and Madueke are not the starting IFs and both of them have 6.

Then I tried a smaller team.

 

2nd Test: Midtable/Top Half Team (Brighton)

Brighton has a really good team to play like this. They have good IFs (Mitoma, Minteh, Rutter). A good midfield that while not being too good, are good enough for a midtable team.

They lack a but behind: Van Hecke and Boscagli are a bit slow with Pace of 12 and 13; Kadioglu and Wieffer lack Pace and Movement as Wing Backs.

Still, overall they are good enough to fight for a top half finish.

Not only top half, we are fighting for top4.

We lost 3 times, all in away games (Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal). The team are lacking a bit on goalscoring, but most because my forwards are missing easy goals and I don't understand why (both the IFs and PFs).

The team seems solid. Making 40 points with Brighton by midseason seems to me like a good result.

The next test was with a team even weaker.

 

3rd Test: Relegation Strugglers (Burnley)

I feel like I don't need to talk about Burnley. Their team is terrible for Premier League standards and particularly to play like we want to play.

Enough said...

... so you guys can imagine how proud I am with this test.

This was actualy really hard to get. Burnley starts the season having to play away games with Tottenham, Man Utd, Man City and Aston Villa (and a home game against Liverpool), and that's only on the first seven games! We reached that point with only 8 points (8-12 in goals).

After that we went on a 12 games streak winning losing, which helped us climbing the table until a fantastic 3rd place by midseason. 36 points! With Burnley!

Again, we are scoring few goals, but that has to be expected with a team like Burnley. Don't expect fireworks and rainbows with teams like Burnley: some wins were very hard to get, we weren't able to dominate most games, in some we had to suffer and even changing to a really defensive version to secure our advantage (I will talk about it later).

Let's go to the next one.

 

4th Test: Top Half/Top Team (?) (AS Roma)

I honestly don't know if Roma is supposed to be a top team or a top half team. I was convinced they were, but then I found out their IFs (Dybala and El Shaarawy) are old and lack Pace and Movement, and their midfielders don't have the overall quality to play against narrow and defensive opponents.

Fortunately, they have two great strikers: Dovbyk and Ferguson. We relied a lot on them to score.

I actualy talked about this test in my last post, so I won't go to say much more about this. The results were really good despite the fact I didn't like how the team played. We attacked more by the wings and only ocasionaly tried to go into the box, but it was actualy efective.

 

5th Test: Top Half Team (Manchester United)

The test with Manchester United was also shared in my last post, so I don't have much to say. The team has terrible Wing Backs (Dorgu becomes better after his first boosts) and the only good midfielder is Bruno Fernandes (Mainoo gets better latter).

The results were really good. Matheus Cunha was our best goalscorer (Sesko has an injury and was away for a while). The team has reasonable numbers and with Man Utd original squad it's hard to imagine making better than this, honestly.

 

6th Test: Relegation Strugglers (Cagliari)

Cagliari is a lot like Burnley... or so I thought. They have a much worse team!

Their best player is Yerry Mina, a CB with Pace 9 which was obviously put apart and almost didn't played. I used Zé Pedro and Luperto as CBs, both with only Pace 12.

Wing Backs lack Movement and Pace. Midfielders have key stats between 11 and 13. They start with only two IFs (Luvumbo and Felici). Luvumbo starts with Movement 13 and Pace 14 (I think) and Felici has 12 and 13 on those.

The strikers (Esposito and Borrelli) lack Movement, Agression, Aerial and Shooting.

A disaster.

Here the best we could was a 7th place by midseason. 31 points. Overall, I believe it's unreasonable to expect better than this.

We conceded 22 goals... but 11 of them in only three games as we lost away at Roma (3-1), Napoli (4-1) and Milan (4-1). So, half goals conceded were in those three matches.

The other 16 games we conceded only 11 goals, which shows how resilient teams become on this version. On the other hand, in this test we struggled A LOT ofensively. The Wing Backs crossing was terrible, my midfield never got relationships because they couldn't get possession (so their game stats was always low), my IFs couldn't run with the ball and my strikers couldn't score regularly even when they had the chance.

We still got a good position, so this is to show how even with a terrible team, not at all prepared to play a possession game, this version still delivered results.

 

7th Test: Kind of Midtable Team (Fiorentina)

The test with Cagliari left me full of doubts so I decided to do another one in Italy. I choose Fiorentina because in reality they are in relegation zone and in the tests with Roma and Cagliari I always saw them in the middle of the table.

Now, Fiorentina has overall good players, but they are not designed to play 4123.

For starters, they don't have any IF. I had to retrain Gudmundsson and Infantino (both central attacking midfielders) to play as right IF (and Gudmundsson is right footed, but I had no other choice), and Moise Kean and Cher Ndour to play as left IF (Kean is a striker, Ndour central midfielder). Some of them were yellow as wingers, so it took a lot of time for them to be at least light green there.

The defenders are actualy good, both CBs and WBs. The midfielders are not fantastic, but they are good enough. The problem is the attack, as I said the IFs are not existent and the strikers... well, remember Dzeko? He is the best striker, with his 39 years of age and Pace 9 (they also have Piccoli which gets better with time and started to play in his place).

And this went well.

We had 2 goals per match on the first 9 game of Serie A, but from the we stopped scoring as much and ended with only 1,52 goals per match, which is low. I don't know why. It felt like my players forgot how to shoot a ball.

The 4 loses were against Inter, Juventus and Milan (all away games) and a shock home defeat with Udinese (we conceded on a counter-attack on added time when attacking to win the game).

Overall, this felt a lot like the Brighton test, even the numbers resemble that test.

 

So, what can I say? I like the version without Overlaps more than this one. With Overlaps, my WBs go to the end of the pitch more times to cross the ball, resulting in more crosses (and a lot of them don't do any good). This also prevents the team to do what I want: the team to try to work the ball into the box as I said in my last post (and with some GIFs showing examples of how they do it).

Nevertheless, the results were not bad - in some cases are really good.

The team being control minded won't risk much when already winning, which may explain the number of goals in some tests.

The number of conceded goals is good. The team is resilient. Sometimes when things aren't going well, we still got the result.

I just... don't feel joy playing on this match engine. I don't want to look like I'm making myself more important than I am, but it feels like this match engine was made specificaly to counter how TBH (and other similar tactics) from FMM24 worked: how our players roam less the pitch without the ball; how Roaming Playmaker was nerfed on this new game; how opponents now put everyone crowding the center of the pitch to prevent any kind of plays by the middle.

The results are there, but to get them we have to play by the wings. To play by the wings makes our players cross the ball a lot regardless what instructions we do to them. Looking our players running down the wing and crossing is not fun. I'm not having fun in this years game - but that could be my problem.

Anyway, I believe both versions are good to go, depending on the squad available. If getting trouble with one of them, you guys can try the other one. Hopefully, one of them could work for you guys.

As for me, I will stop putting update a for now. Playing this way I guess this is the best I can invent for now. Will try something else that works and can be more beautiful to watch than this, if I find something I will Share, if I don't the most probable outcome is for me to drop the game.

[berkyyuksel]

1 saat önce, Black Hawk dedi ki:

So, let's get back on track. Sorry in advance if I forget someone, but I genuinely don't know where did I stop answering last time. If I forgot someone, let me know.

Also, this is a long post because I did seven tests (all until midseason) that I will post in the end of this post.

Let's get to it.

I have been trying some variants, but mainly for defensive reasons. As many people have said, some teams became prime Guardiola's Barcelona somewhere during second half and I've had to look for counter-measures to try and stop them.

Usually I play with the standard tactic. I just look for alternatives late in the game. In some matches I parked the bus in the last 5 minutes (85th minute onwards), despite the fact I don't like it.

Actualy, I don't like this match engine at all, but I will get back to this latter.

Ofensively, I didn't find anything to go for a late goal. I played with Control minded teams for some years now and that means I struggle when looking for offensive tactics. That's something I have to work from zero...

Dan, I am late to the party, but that discussion about some games looking like they are rigged against us? Here my two cents on the matter.

I don't know if you remind them, but some years ago (decades, actualy, God I'm getting old...) there were some books by Ian Livingstone, I believe their original version was called Fighting Fantasy. In those books, we played a hero story and choose what to do, where to go and who to fight.

I'm the beggining we throw a dice to know what our battle skill was. Then when we had to fight, our opponent also had a battle skill. We would throw a dice for us and for our opponent.

Let's say we have a skill of 10 and our opponent a skill of 8. We throw a dice for us, if we get 5 we have a power of 15; we throw a dice for our opponent, he had a 6, his power was 14. We won the first round and our opponent got the damage. Then we did it again until one of the characters takes enough damage to die.

Most times our base skill was high enough to overcome eventual bad luck in some of the throws, but we could lose against any opponent.

I'm saying this because FMM26 looks a lot like this series mechanics. Sometimes it looks like the game sets a base skill to a team before every match and then when the match engine generates the game it attributes a random number to add to that base skill.

The example that started all this: my match against Bournemouth. They are not better than Brighton, should be a 50/50 event. Sometimes Brighton should win, other times Bournemouth should win, there's not much separating them.

But what I saw was a Bournemouth too strong. I replayed enough matches to notice how Bournemouth outplayed Brighton almost everytime. I tested different tactics, mine and from other users, some control minded, others defensive and even attacking ones. Didn't matter, they were too strong. Sometimes we won, but only a few times and they were scrappy wins with a lot of luck.

It felt like the game decided Bournemouth had a very high base skill and Brighton a low base skill for that particular match. Then the match engine generated the game and most of the times that difference on base skill was too high to overcome.

That's why I said it feels like it was decided we had to lose that game. It was a bad choice of words. It was not necessarily like we had to lose, but more like the game decided we had to struggle and gave Bournemouth some kind of high base skill and low skill to us on that particular match.

We could win, but it was already predetermined it was going to be really hard to get a result there. If we played this in a normal save we would brush it off as a bad game as often happens. I only noticed this pattern because I'm testing tactics and replayed some bad games to understand what went well (in a save game slot I had only for this, I always went ahead with the result of the original match).

Also, this kept happening. For example with Arsenal I got a home draw against Aston Villa where we played horribly, we only got the draw with a late goal at 90+5 and... I replayed that game a few times, only won twice. I didn't won more times than the ones I won.

This was impossible in real life, no way Arsenal would win only two times in seven or eight home matches against them. Not when Arsenal got there with 17 wins in 18 games while Villa had 1 win in last 11 games. Doesn't make any sense.

That's why I say there's some matches that feel like predetermined to be unreasonably hard, like the game wants to balance the results a bit because either we were winning too much or our opponent were losing too much. A good tactic will help to overcome those kind of games and get results regularly, but sometimes there's nothing really one can do especially when playing with weaker sides.

There's something very wrong with how this FMM26 is designed.

I choose Run At Defence because Through Balls is not working as well as in FMM24. The spaces may be there, but for some reason out players don't roam there as much, so I figured the best way to exploit them is for our players running with the ball there as they did in FMM23 (at the time, the tactic had Run At Defence). Also, it helps with progression by the wings from our Wing Backs, which helps running to the final third avoiding the crowded inside of the pitch as our opponents just place almost all their team there.

SK is mostly to enables our goalkeepers to Run towards long balls to the back of our defense. Most times our goalkeeper will pass to our Wing Back and we start from there. There's still some errors there, but there's also errors with normal Goalkeeper role so, all in all, I believe it's worth the risk.

Good results. How's that going on?

The same as always. Movement is a requirement for almost every position (mainly WB, BBM, IF and PF). Agression is a nice bonus for midfielders, but that's really important for centre backs and pressing forward.

For the WBs, I look for Movement, Pace, if possible Crossing and Dribbling.

For CBs, I look for Agression, Decisions, Positioning. Aerial if possible. As they play as Sweepers I don't look as much for Pace as I did previously, but it is really important too. In some tests in Premier League I played with CBs with Pace 13 or 14 and they delivered, but if possible CBs should have Pace as high as we could.

BBM really depends of our players. I don't want three midfielders that are all the same. The bottom line are the Key attributes for the role of BBM. Movement and Decisions is always good for all of them.

The DM BBM should also have good Tackling, Positioning, Passing and Agression, the MC BBM I look for players with more Creativity, Passing, Technique, if possible Dribbling and Shooting.

The thing here is that without a RP as DM, we now can look for a player there more like a defensive midfielder. The two ahead should be more offensive while not being bad defensively. A partnership of a good ofensively and one more balanced overall is good.

IFs is the same as always: Movement, Pace, Dribbling and Shooting, mainly these.

PF, Movement and Agression are key, Aerial is a really good bonus to have, Pace too while not key (unless the guy has like 10 or 11 of Pace, that's just not good lol).

A fellow portuguese? Tão bom poder escrever na nossa língua!

O médio defensivo como Box to Box ajuda a equilibrar a equipa, em particular contra adversários que tenham um médio ofensivo nas costas do avançado. Tira um pouco de preponderância ofensiva ao médio defensivo como tinha enquanto Roaming Playmaker, mas acho que a equipa fica mais sólida no geral.

Preferia claramente como era no FMM24, mas o motor de jogo desta edição não quer nada com táctica de mentalidade controlo e limitou a performance do Roaming Playmaker... acabei por ter de fazer concessões contra a minha vontade.

I don't like the two options DM only because it takes two players away from the support to the attacking trio. Or I have been playing this way for so long that I am too attached to the 1-2 triangle to change now...

The one with the Work Into Box + Run At Defense (no Overlaps) is my favorite as it tries to play exactly how I want to play.

Unfortunately it's not for every team as some team don't have the quality to play that way against defensive opponents. If it doesn't work we may have to tick on Overlaps, which helps getting to the final third of the pitch more times, but also teams play a lot more by the wings and crossing...

It's all a matter of taste and the team we have.

I did several tests with Overlaps, I will share them by the end of this post.

It's hard to answer as this really depends on how the players perform. For example, with Roma I was convinced the midfielders were good enough to play by the inside of the pitch, but then when playing I noticed they couldn't and always chose the easy pass -> delivering the ball to the WB on the flanks.

The Burnley midfielders, worse than the ones I had with Roma, played by the inside really well.

I don't have a clear explanation as to why this is happening. My best guess is that Roma plays more against defensive opponents and they don't find the space to play by the middle, while Burnley don't face defensive opponents that much so that was not an issue.

By now, until the issue becames clear I would say top teams without midfielders with Technique, Creativity, Decisions, Movement, may struggle against defensive opponents. That happened with Roma and also with Man Utd (only Bruno Fernandes can actualy play like that).

Italian League is really strange. I played with some teams now and that's really different from Premier League. It's incredible hard to create clear cut chances and to score. Much more than Premier League.

Well then, as I said I like the version with Work Into Box + Run At Defense. But as I faced some trouble making it work with Roma and Manchester United, I decided to try with Overlaps too (so with these three options ticked on).

Did 7 tests until midseason in different teams, both Premier League and Serie A, with some being extreme tests as I specificaly chose some teams that don't have the right players to play as I want.

So, keep in mind most of these tests should have been a disaster as some of these teams don't have the means to play as I want. I will say the particular problems with every team, don't worry.

Nevertheless, I will start this with a top team that is more than prepared to play as intended and to show what this version can do with a squad well designed (as I believe most of us would do during a proper career).

A quick remind: this is the last version with Overlaps + Work Into Box + Run At Defense.

 

1st Test: Top Team (Arsenal)

So, Arsenal is easy to manage. They have 20 field players that can be in the starting eleven, no problem. The centre backs have Agression and enough Pace, the Wing Backs are fast and have enough Movement, Rice and Zubimendi are fantastic, Odegaard lacks a bit of Agression but is really good, the IFs are fast and have Dribbling and Shooting, Gyokeres lacks Aerial but has everything else.

Any balanced tactic should work with them and this was the result.

A lot of goals (67 in 25 games between Premier League and Champions League), only 7 conceded in 25 matches. We won everything except for 3 draws: away Liverpool and Real Madrid, home against Aston Villa.

Easy test, the team is scoring for fun while not conceding too much. Everyone is scoring. Gyokeres had an injury and still banged 13 goals, Martinelli has 10, Saka 7, Trossard and Madueke are not the starting IFs and both of them have 6.

Then I tried a smaller team.

 

2nd Test: Midtable/Top Half Team (Brighton)

Brighton has a really good team to play like this. They have good IFs (Mitoma, Minteh, Rutter). A good midfield that while not being too good, are good enough for a midtable team.

They lack a but behind: Van Hecke and Boscagli are a bit slow with Pace of 12 and 13; Kadioglu and Wieffer lack Pace and Movement as Wing Backs.

Still, overall they are good enough to fight for a top half finish.

Not only top half, we are fighting for top4.

We lost 3 times, all in away games (Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal). The team are lacking a bit on goalscoring, but most because my forwards are missing easy goals and I don't understand why (both the IFs and PFs).

The team seems solid. Making 40 points with Brighton by midseason seems to me like a good result.

The next test was with a team even weaker.

 

3rd Test: Relegation Strugglers (Burnley)

I feel like I don't need to talk about Burnley. Their team is terrible for Premier League standards and particularly to play like we want to play.

Enough said...

... so you guys can imagine how proud I am with this test.

This was actualy really hard to get. Burnley starts the season having to play away games with Tottenham, Man Utd, Man City and Aston Villa (and a home game against Liverpool), and that's only on the first seven games! We reached that point with only 8 points (8-12 in goals).

After that we went on a 12 games streak winning losing, which helped us climbing the table until a fantastic 3rd place by midseason. 36 points! With Burnley!

Again, we are scoring few goals, but that has to be expected with a team like Burnley. Don't expect fireworks and rainbows with teams like Burnley: some wins were very hard to get, we weren't able to dominate most games, in some we had to suffer and even changing to a really defensive version to secure our advantage (I will talk about it later).

Let's go to the next one.

 

4th Test: Top Half/Top Team (?) (AS Roma)

I honestly don't know if Roma is supposed to be a top team or a top half team. I was convinced they were, but then I found out their IFs (Dybala and El Shaarawy) are old and lack Pace and Movement, and their midfielders don't have the overall quality to play against narrow and defensive opponents.

Fortunately, they have two great strikers: Dovbyk and Ferguson. We relied a lot on them to score.

I actualy talked about this test in my last post, so I won't go to say much more about this. The results were really good despite the fact I didn't like how the team played. We attacked more by the wings and only ocasionaly tried to go into the box, but it was actualy efective.

 

5th Test: Top Half Team (Manchester United)

The test with Manchester United was also shared in my last post, so I don't have much to say. The team has terrible Wing Backs (Dorgu becomes better after his first boosts) and the only good midfielder is Bruno Fernandes (Mainoo gets better latter).

The results were really good. Matheus Cunha was our best goalscorer (Sesko has an injury and was away for a while). The team has reasonable numbers and with Man Utd original squad it's hard to imagine making better than this, honestly.

 

6th Test: Relegation Strugglers (Cagliari)

Cagliari is a lot like Burnley... or so I thought. They have a much worse team!

Their best player is Yerry Mina, a CB with Pace 9 which was obviously put apart and almost didn't played. I used Zé Pedro and Luperto as CBs, both with only Pace 12.

Wing Backs lack Movement and Pace. Midfielders have key stats between 11 and 13. They start with only two IFs (Luvumbo and Felici). Luvumbo starts with Movement 13 and Pace 14 (I think) and Felici has 12 and 13 on those.

The strikers (Esposito and Borrelli) lack Movement, Agression, Aerial and Shooting.

A disaster.

Here the best we could was a 7th place by midseason. 31 points. Overall, I believe it's unreasonable to expect better than this.

We conceded 22 goals... but 11 of them in only three games as we lost away at Roma (3-1), Napoli (4-1) and Milan (4-1). So, half goals conceded were in those three matches.

The other 16 games we conceded only 11 goals, which shows how resilient teams become on this version. On the other hand, in this test we struggled A LOT ofensively. The Wing Backs crossing was terrible, my midfield never got relationships because they couldn't get possession (so their game stats was always low), my IFs couldn't run with the ball and my strikers couldn't score regularly even when they had the chance.

We still got a good position, so this is to show how even with a terrible team, not at all prepared to play a possession game, this version still delivered results.

 

7th Test: Kind of Midtable Team (Fiorentina)

The test with Cagliari left me full of doubts so I decided to do another one in Italy. I choose Fiorentina because in reality they are in relegation zone and in the tests with Roma and Cagliari I always saw them in the middle of the table.

Now, Fiorentina has overall good players, but they are not designed to play 4123.

For starters, they don't have any IF. I had to retrain Gudmundsson and Infantino (both central attacking midfielders) to play as right IF (and Gudmundsson is right footed, but I had no other choice), and Moise Kean and Cher Ndour to play as left IF (Kean is a striker, Ndour central midfielder). Some of them were yellow as wingers, so it took a lot of time for them to be at least light green there.

The defenders are actualy good, both CBs and WBs. The midfielders are not fantastic, but they are good enough. The problem is the attack, as I said the IFs are not existent and the strikers... well, remember Dzeko? He is the best striker, with his 39 years of age and Pace 9 (they also have Piccoli which gets better with time and started to play in his place).

And this went well.

We had 2 goals per match on the first 9 game of Serie A, but from the we stopped scoring as much and ended with only 1,52 goals per match, which is low. I don't know why. It felt like my players forgot how to shoot a ball.

The 4 loses were against Inter, Juventus and Milan (all away games) and a shock home defeat with Udinese (we conceded on a counter-attack on added time when attacking to win the game).

Overall, this felt a lot like the Brighton test, even the numbers resemble that test.

 

So, what can I say? I like the version without Overlaps more than this one. With Overlaps, my WBs go to the end of the pitch more times to cross the ball, resulting in more crosses (and a lot of them don't do any good). This also prevents the team to do what I want: the team to try to work the ball into the box as I said in my last post (and with some GIFs showing examples of how they do it).

Nevertheless, the results were not bad - in some cases are really good.

The team being control minded won't risk much when already winning, which may explain the number of goals in some tests.

The number of conceded goals is good. The team is resilient. Sometimes when things aren't going well, we still got the result.

I just... don't feel joy playing on this match engine. I don't want to look like I'm making myself more important than I am, but it feels like this match engine was made specificaly to counter how TBH (and other similar tactics) from FMM24 worked: how our players roam less the pitch without the ball; how Roaming Playmaker was nerfed on this new game; how opponents now put everyone crowding the center of the pitch to prevent any kind of plays by the middle.

The results are there, but to get them we have to play by the wings. To play by the wings makes our players cross the ball a lot regardless what instructions we do to them. Looking our players running down the wing and crossing is not fun. I'm not having fun in this years game - but that could be my problem.

Anyway, I believe both versions are good to go, depending on the squad available. If getting trouble with one of them, you guys can try the other one. Hopefully, one of them could work for you guys.

As for me, I will stop putting update a for now. Playing this way I guess this is the best I can invent for now. Will try something else that works and can be more beautiful to watch than this, if I find something I will Share, if I don't the most probable outcome is for me to drop the game.

Can you send a photo of 2 versions, bro?

 

I couldn't understand the article because of my bad English

Edited January 15 by berkyyuksel

[PriZe]

Hey @Black Hawk!

I’ve been away from the forum for ages, but I see the new game has everyone busy again, especially with tactics 😄

Honestly, I’ve read through a your tests and updates and I really enjoyed it. The depth and understanding you have of the match engine now seriously impressive. Proper wow.🤯

I’ve jumped back in after a long time, I’m trying to build a setup where my central striker (my only striker) is the clear goal-scoring hero. I’m playing with wingers, but my ST is still struggling to get consistent numbers.

What’s your view on the Final Third instructions if the goal is purely to feed the striker?

Would you keep it more patient with Look for Overlaps + Work Into Box + Through Balls, or would you go more direct with Early Crosses + Through Balls, or even Run At Defence?

[Mik3lourenc]

@Black Hawk eu estou na 3 temporada com o tottenham e na 2 temporada usei a sua tactica mas em vez de usar o AP meti como SS e tive ate bons resultados mas tambem a equipa já esta bem evoluída. E hoje actuliazou o jogo e ainda não testei se a tactica funciona

[panjalakuruchi]

7 hours ago, berkyyuksel said:

Can you send a photo of 2 versions, bro?

 

I couldn't understand the article because of my bad English

Sir all this test your DM is box to box right sir?

[panjalakuruchi]

8 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

So, let's get back on track. Sorry in advance if I forget someone, but I genuinely don't know where did I stop answering last time. If I forgot someone, let me know.

Also, this is a long post because I did seven tests (all until midseason) that I will post in the end of this post.

Let's get to it.

I have been trying some variants, but mainly for defensive reasons. As many people have said, some teams became prime Guardiola's Barcelona somewhere during second half and I've had to look for counter-measures to try and stop them.

Usually I play with the standard tactic. I just look for alternatives late in the game. In some matches I parked the bus in the last 5 minutes (85th minute onwards), despite the fact I don't like it.

Actualy, I don't like this match engine at all, but I will get back to this latter.

Ofensively, I didn't find anything to go for a late goal. I played with Control minded teams for some years now and that means I struggle when looking for offensive tactics. That's something I have to work from zero...

Dan, I am late to the party, but that discussion about some games looking like they are rigged against us? Here my two cents on the matter.

I don't know if you remind them, but some years ago (decades, actualy, God I'm getting old...) there were some books by Ian Livingstone, I believe their original version was called Fighting Fantasy. In those books, we played a hero story and choose what to do, where to go and who to fight.

I'm the beggining we throw a dice to know what our battle skill was. Then when we had to fight, our opponent also had a battle skill. We would throw a dice for us and for our opponent.

Let's say we have a skill of 10 and our opponent a skill of 8. We throw a dice for us, if we get 5 we have a power of 15; we throw a dice for our opponent, he had a 6, his power was 14. We won the first round and our opponent got the damage. Then we did it again until one of the characters takes enough damage to die.

Most times our base skill was high enough to overcome eventual bad luck in some of the throws, but we could lose against any opponent.

I'm saying this because FMM26 looks a lot like this series mechanics. Sometimes it looks like the game sets a base skill to a team before every match and then when the match engine generates the game it attributes a random number to add to that base skill.

The example that started all this: my match against Bournemouth. They are not better than Brighton, should be a 50/50 event. Sometimes Brighton should win, other times Bournemouth should win, there's not much separating them.

But what I saw was a Bournemouth too strong. I replayed enough matches to notice how Bournemouth outplayed Brighton almost everytime. I tested different tactics, mine and from other users, some control minded, others defensive and even attacking ones. Didn't matter, they were too strong. Sometimes we won, but only a few times and they were scrappy wins with a lot of luck.

It felt like the game decided Bournemouth had a very high base skill and Brighton a low base skill for that particular match. Then the match engine generated the game and most of the times that difference on base skill was too high to overcome.

That's why I said it feels like it was decided we had to lose that game. It was a bad choice of words. It was not necessarily like we had to lose, but more like the game decided we had to struggle and gave Bournemouth some kind of high base skill and low skill to us on that particular match.

We could win, but it was already predetermined it was going to be really hard to get a result there. If we played this in a normal save we would brush it off as a bad game as often happens. I only noticed this pattern because I'm testing tactics and replayed some bad games to understand what went well (in a save game slot I had only for this, I always went ahead with the result of the original match).

Also, this kept happening. For example with Arsenal I got a home draw against Aston Villa where we played horribly, we only got the draw with a late goal at 90+5 and... I replayed that game a few times, only won twice. I didn't won more times than the ones I won.

This was impossible in real life, no way Arsenal would win only two times in seven or eight home matches against them. Not when Arsenal got there with 17 wins in 18 games while Villa had 1 win in last 11 games. Doesn't make any sense.

That's why I say there's some matches that feel like predetermined to be unreasonably hard, like the game wants to balance the results a bit because either we were winning too much or our opponent were losing too much. A good tactic will help to overcome those kind of games and get results regularly, but sometimes there's nothing really one can do especially when playing with weaker sides.

There's something very wrong with how this FMM26 is designed.

I choose Run At Defence because Through Balls is not working as well as in FMM24. The spaces may be there, but for some reason out players don't roam there as much, so I figured the best way to exploit them is for our players running with the ball there as they did in FMM23 (at the time, the tactic had Run At Defence). Also, it helps with progression by the wings from our Wing Backs, which helps running to the final third avoiding the crowded inside of the pitch as our opponents just place almost all their team there.

SK is mostly to enables our goalkeepers to Run towards long balls to the back of our defense. Most times our goalkeeper will pass to our Wing Back and we start from there. There's still some errors there, but there's also errors with normal Goalkeeper role so, all in all, I believe it's worth the risk.

Good results. How's that going on?

The same as always. Movement is a requirement for almost every position (mainly WB, BBM, IF and PF). Agression is a nice bonus for midfielders, but that's really important for centre backs and pressing forward.

For the WBs, I look for Movement, Pace, if possible Crossing and Dribbling.

For CBs, I look for Agression, Decisions, Positioning. Aerial if possible. As they play as Sweepers I don't look as much for Pace as I did previously, but it is really important too. In some tests in Premier League I played with CBs with Pace 13 or 14 and they delivered, but if possible CBs should have Pace as high as we could.

BBM really depends of our players. I don't want three midfielders that are all the same. The bottom line are the Key attributes for the role of BBM. Movement and Decisions is always good for all of them.

The DM BBM should also have good Tackling, Positioning, Passing and Agression, the MC BBM I look for players with more Creativity, Passing, Technique, if possible Dribbling and Shooting.

The thing here is that without a RP as DM, we now can look for a player there more like a defensive midfielder. The two ahead should be more offensive while not being bad defensively. A partnership of a good ofensively and one more balanced overall is good.

IFs is the same as always: Movement, Pace, Dribbling and Shooting, mainly these.

PF, Movement and Agression are key, Aerial is a really good bonus to have, Pace too while not key (unless the guy has like 10 or 11 of Pace, that's just not good lol).

A fellow portuguese? Tão bom poder escrever na nossa língua!

O médio defensivo como Box to Box ajuda a equilibrar a equipa, em particular contra adversários que tenham um médio ofensivo nas costas do avançado. Tira um pouco de preponderância ofensiva ao médio defensivo como tinha enquanto Roaming Playmaker, mas acho que a equipa fica mais sólida no geral.

Preferia claramente como era no FMM24, mas o motor de jogo desta edição não quer nada com táctica de mentalidade controlo e limitou a performance do Roaming Playmaker... acabei por ter de fazer concessões contra a minha vontade.

I don't like the two options DM only because it takes two players away from the support to the attacking trio. Or I have been playing this way for so long that I am too attached to the 1-2 triangle to change now...

The one with the Work Into Box + Run At Defense (no Overlaps) is my favorite as it tries to play exactly how I want to play.

Unfortunately it's not for every team as some team don't have the quality to play that way against defensive opponents. If it doesn't work we may have to tick on Overlaps, which helps getting to the final third of the pitch more times, but also teams play a lot more by the wings and crossing...

It's all a matter of taste and the team we have.

I did several tests with Overlaps, I will share them by the end of this post.

It's hard to answer as this really depends on how the players perform. For example, with Roma I was convinced the midfielders were good enough to play by the inside of the pitch, but then when playing I noticed they couldn't and always chose the easy pass -> delivering the ball to the WB on the flanks.

The Burnley midfielders, worse than the ones I had with Roma, played by the inside really well.

I don't have a clear explanation as to why this is happening. My best guess is that Roma plays more against defensive opponents and they don't find the space to play by the middle, while Burnley don't face defensive opponents that much so that was not an issue.

By now, until the issue becames clear I would say top teams without midfielders with Technique, Creativity, Decisions, Movement, may struggle against defensive opponents. That happened with Roma and also with Man Utd (only Bruno Fernandes can actualy play like that).

Italian League is really strange. I played with some teams now and that's really different from Premier League. It's incredible hard to create clear cut chances and to score. Much more than Premier League.

Well then, as I said I like the version with Work Into Box + Run At Defense. But as I faced some trouble making it work with Roma and Manchester United, I decided to try with Overlaps too (so with these three options ticked on).

Did 7 tests until midseason in different teams, both Premier League and Serie A, with some being extreme tests as I specificaly chose some teams that don't have the right players to play as I want.

So, keep in mind most of these tests should have been a disaster as some of these teams don't have the means to play as I want. I will say the particular problems with every team, don't worry.

Nevertheless, I will start this with a top team that is more than prepared to play as intended and to show what this version can do with a squad well designed (as I believe most of us would do during a proper career).

A quick remind: this is the last version with Overlaps + Work Into Box + Run At Defense.

 

1st Test: Top Team (Arsenal)

So, Arsenal is easy to manage. They have 20 field players that can be in the starting eleven, no problem. The centre backs have Agression and enough Pace, the Wing Backs are fast and have enough Movement, Rice and Zubimendi are fantastic, Odegaard lacks a bit of Agression but is really good, the IFs are fast and have Dribbling and Shooting, Gyokeres lacks Aerial but has everything else.

Any balanced tactic should work with them and this was the result.

A lot of goals (67 in 25 games between Premier League and Champions League), only 7 conceded in 25 matches. We won everything except for 3 draws: away Liverpool and Real Madrid, home against Aston Villa.

Easy test, the team is scoring for fun while not conceding too much. Everyone is scoring. Gyokeres had an injury and still banged 13 goals, Martinelli has 10, Saka 7, Trossard and Madueke are not the starting IFs and both of them have 6.

Then I tried a smaller team.

 

2nd Test: Midtable/Top Half Team (Brighton)

Brighton has a really good team to play like this. They have good IFs (Mitoma, Minteh, Rutter). A good midfield that while not being too good, are good enough for a midtable team.

They lack a but behind: Van Hecke and Boscagli are a bit slow with Pace of 12 and 13; Kadioglu and Wieffer lack Pace and Movement as Wing Backs.

Still, overall they are good enough to fight for a top half finish.

Not only top half, we are fighting for top4.

We lost 3 times, all in away games (Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal). The team are lacking a bit on goalscoring, but most because my forwards are missing easy goals and I don't understand why (both the IFs and PFs).

The team seems solid. Making 40 points with Brighton by midseason seems to me like a good result.

The next test was with a team even weaker.

 

3rd Test: Relegation Strugglers (Burnley)

I feel like I don't need to talk about Burnley. Their team is terrible for Premier League standards and particularly to play like we want to play.

Enough said...

... so you guys can imagine how proud I am with this test.

This was actualy really hard to get. Burnley starts the season having to play away games with Tottenham, Man Utd, Man City and Aston Villa (and a home game against Liverpool), and that's only on the first seven games! We reached that point with only 8 points (8-12 in goals).

After that we went on a 12 games streak winning losing, which helped us climbing the table until a fantastic 3rd place by midseason. 36 points! With Burnley!

Again, we are scoring few goals, but that has to be expected with a team like Burnley. Don't expect fireworks and rainbows with teams like Burnley: some wins were very hard to get, we weren't able to dominate most games, in some we had to suffer and even changing to a really defensive version to secure our advantage (I will talk about it later).

Let's go to the next one.

 

4th Test: Top Half/Top Team (?) (AS Roma)

I honestly don't know if Roma is supposed to be a top team or a top half team. I was convinced they were, but then I found out their IFs (Dybala and El Shaarawy) are old and lack Pace and Movement, and their midfielders don't have the overall quality to play against narrow and defensive opponents.

Fortunately, they have two great strikers: Dovbyk and Ferguson. We relied a lot on them to score.

I actualy talked about this test in my last post, so I won't go to say much more about this. The results were really good despite the fact I didn't like how the team played. We attacked more by the wings and only ocasionaly tried to go into the box, but it was actualy efective.

 

5th Test: Top Half Team (Manchester United)

The test with Manchester United was also shared in my last post, so I don't have much to say. The team has terrible Wing Backs (Dorgu becomes better after his first boosts) and the only good midfielder is Bruno Fernandes (Mainoo gets better latter).

The results were really good. Matheus Cunha was our best goalscorer (Sesko has an injury and was away for a while). The team has reasonable numbers and with Man Utd original squad it's hard to imagine making better than this, honestly.

 

6th Test: Relegation Strugglers (Cagliari)

Cagliari is a lot like Burnley... or so I thought. They have a much worse team!

Their best player is Yerry Mina, a CB with Pace 9 which was obviously put apart and almost didn't played. I used Zé Pedro and Luperto as CBs, both with only Pace 12.

Wing Backs lack Movement and Pace. Midfielders have key stats between 11 and 13. They start with only two IFs (Luvumbo and Felici). Luvumbo starts with Movement 13 and Pace 14 (I think) and Felici has 12 and 13 on those.

The strikers (Esposito and Borrelli) lack Movement, Agression, Aerial and Shooting.

A disaster.

Here the best we could was a 7th place by midseason. 31 points. Overall, I believe it's unreasonable to expect better than this.

We conceded 22 goals... but 11 of them in only three games as we lost away at Roma (3-1), Napoli (4-1) and Milan (4-1). So, half goals conceded were in those three matches.

The other 16 games we conceded only 11 goals, which shows how resilient teams become on this version. On the other hand, in this test we struggled A LOT ofensively. The Wing Backs crossing was terrible, my midfield never got relationships because they couldn't get possession (so their game stats was always low), my IFs couldn't run with the ball and my strikers couldn't score regularly even when they had the chance.

We still got a good position, so this is to show how even with a terrible team, not at all prepared to play a possession game, this version still delivered results.

 

7th Test: Kind of Midtable Team (Fiorentina)

The test with Cagliari left me full of doubts so I decided to do another one in Italy. I choose Fiorentina because in reality they are in relegation zone and in the tests with Roma and Cagliari I always saw them in the middle of the table.

Now, Fiorentina has overall good players, but they are not designed to play 4123.

For starters, they don't have any IF. I had to retrain Gudmundsson and Infantino (both central attacking midfielders) to play as right IF (and Gudmundsson is right footed, but I had no other choice), and Moise Kean and Cher Ndour to play as left IF (Kean is a striker, Ndour central midfielder). Some of them were yellow as wingers, so it took a lot of time for them to be at least light green there.

The defenders are actualy good, both CBs and WBs. The midfielders are not fantastic, but they are good enough. The problem is the attack, as I said the IFs are not existent and the strikers... well, remember Dzeko? He is the best striker, with his 39 years of age and Pace 9 (they also have Piccoli which gets better with time and started to play in his place).

And this went well.

We had 2 goals per match on the first 9 game of Serie A, but from the we stopped scoring as much and ended with only 1,52 goals per match, which is low. I don't know why. It felt like my players forgot how to shoot a ball.

The 4 loses were against Inter, Juventus and Milan (all away games) and a shock home defeat with Udinese (we conceded on a counter-attack on added time when attacking to win the game).

Overall, this felt a lot like the Brighton test, even the numbers resemble that test.

 

So, what can I say? I like the version without Overlaps more than this one. With Overlaps, my WBs go to the end of the pitch more times to cross the ball, resulting in more crosses (and a lot of them don't do any good). This also prevents the team to do what I want: the team to try to work the ball into the box as I said in my last post (and with some GIFs showing examples of how they do it).

Nevertheless, the results were not bad - in some cases are really good.

The team being control minded won't risk much when already winning, which may explain the number of goals in some tests.

The number of conceded goals is good. The team is resilient. Sometimes when things aren't going well, we still got the result.

I just... don't feel joy playing on this match engine. I don't want to look like I'm making myself more important than I am, but it feels like this match engine was made specificaly to counter how TBH (and other similar tactics) from FMM24 worked: how our players roam less the pitch without the ball; how Roaming Playmaker was nerfed on this new game; how opponents now put everyone crowding the center of the pitch to prevent any kind of plays by the middle.

The results are there, but to get them we have to play by the wings. To play by the wings makes our players cross the ball a lot regardless what instructions we do to them. Looking our players running down the wing and crossing is not fun. I'm not having fun in this years game - but that could be my problem.

Anyway, I believe both versions are good to go, depending on the squad available. If getting trouble with one of them, you guys can try the other one. Hopefully, one of them could work for you guys.

As for me, I will stop putting update a for now. Playing this way I guess this is the best I can invent for now. Will try something else that works and can be more beautiful to watch than this, if I find something I will Share, if I don't the most probable outcome is for me to drop the game.

@Black Hawksir all this test you using box to box as your DM?

[DanEnglish]

That last post from BH must be one of the BEST posts on this years FMM 🔥 

[rseven]

10 hours ago, Black Hawk said:

It felt like the game decided Bournemouth had a very high base skill and Brighton a low base skill for that particular match. Then the match engine generated the game and most of the times that difference on base skill was too high to overcome.

That's why I said it feels like it was decided we had to lose that game. It was a bad choice of words. It was not necessarily like we had to lose, but more like the game decided we had to struggle and gave Bournemouth some kind of high base skill and low skill to us on that particular match.

We could win, but it was already predetermined it was going to be really hard to get a result there. If we played this in a normal save we would brush it off as a bad game as often happens. I only noticed this pattern because I'm testing tactics and replayed some bad games to understand what went well (in a save game slot I had only for this, I always went ahead with the result of the original match).

Hi Black Hawk,

1. I totally agree with your. There are "pre-set result" in FMM, but not only in FMM26. This game mechanics is always there from FMH to FMM.  Below is my reply in another post. 

2. Why we feel sad with FMM26? 
   a) Game developer give MORE "Buff" or "Bonus" to our opponent. For this, @Pinucciohad anlyzed in his post with software. AI team response quicker, move smarter, make decision smarter.... 
   b) The countermeasure from tactics side of gamer is limited in  FMM26. 

[JakeRM]

9 hours ago, PriZe said:

 

Hey @Black Hawk!

I’ve been away from the forum for ages, but I see the new game has everyone busy again, especially with tactics 😄

Honestly, I’ve read through a your tests and updates and I really enjoyed it. The depth and understanding you have of the match engine now seriously impressive. Proper wow.🤯

I’ve jumped back in after a long time, I’m trying to build a setup where my central striker (my only striker) is the clear goal-scoring hero. I’m playing with wingers, but my ST is still struggling to get consistent numbers.

What’s your view on the Final Third instructions if the goal is purely to feed the striker?

Would you keep it more patient with Look for Overlaps + Work Into Box + Through Balls, or would you go more direct with Early Crosses + Through Balls, or even Run At Defence?

Great to see you back !

Remember your Black Prize tactic was and still is my favourite tactic I’ve used.