I’ve always been a partisan of the 4-4-2 in FM. It’s classic, flexible, easy to implement, and simple to reconfigure for all kinds of attacking and defensive possibilities. Most importantly, I’ve used it so much that I understand how it works in the game in a way that I don’t many other formations. I’ve enjoyed playing around with other schemes—most notably the Brazilian midfield (two defensive midfielders, two attacking midfielders, no wingers) that I used to take Heerenveen to the Eredivisie title in FM08—but I’ve always gone back to the 4-4-2 in the end. It’s just comfortable.
So it was with a feeling of low-grade panic that I realized that Serie B was going to require me to change. We’d played our first eleven matches, and after a fantastic start to the season—winning our first two games, including an astonishing 5-1 rout of Piacenza—we’d gone into a full plummet, scoring three goals in our next nine matches and eking out a record of one win, three draws, and five losses. I said in my last update that our hopes of staying up would depend on the (for me) always somewhat unfathomable mystery of whether our strikers would be able to convert easy chances. Well, they were not able. Messi of Waidhofen/Ybbs hadn’t scored all season, Akassou had managed one goal, and Jorge Ibáñez had heroically managed two (one against a Serie C team in the Coppa Italia) before going down for two months with a hip injury. He was still our leading scorer.
Almost as troublingly, I was having a huge selection headache in midfield. In my usual 4-4-2, I like to give one central midfielder attacking duties and leave the other in a holding role. The choice for the latter was easy: Jacopo Sammarco, our new signing, who was a defensive midfielder at heart and one of the best players at the club. But if I played Sammarco as my defensive-minded midfielder, it meant that the only spot for Ewan Vignau was as an attack-minded midfielder, a role in which he tended to struggle. (He tended to do very well in the role I was giving to Sammarco.) I had a good attack-minded midfielder in Marco Antonelli, but if I played him along with Sammarco, it meant leaving Vignau, one of my best players, out of the squad.
Normally, I probably would have tried to press on and use Vignau as a high-class substitute. But we were doing so badly that that didn’t seem like an option: I needed a way involve all my good midfielders, de-emphasize my struggling strikers, and work the ball into the goal. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to change formations.
Swallowing my trepidation, by which I mean the Chinese leftovers I had for lunch, I picked up my low-fi FM tactics manager (a sheet of paper and a pen) and set up a 4-1-2-3 that, I hoped, would get the team working again. The idea was to use three midfielders as a kind of fulcrum to get the ball to my two attacking wingers and lone striker. Antonelli, my attack-minded midfielder, would try to get forward fairly aggressively, while my striker—Messi, as long as Ibáñez was hurt—would drop back and hold up the ball. The fullbacks would attack down the flanks behind the wingers or stay back and defend, depending on the circumstances. I slotted Vignau in as a neutral central midfielder, and Sammarco in as a straight defensive mid, but with a high degree of creative freedom and boosted-up through-balls instructions in the hope that he could continue to guide the attack from the back.
The attacking version of the tactic looked like this:
Yes, it’s a bit Chelsea-under-Mourinho-looking, but then, Chelsea under Mourinho would never have lost 0-1 to Frosinone.
I was hoping that moving David up to left winger would allow him to wreak havoc on the defense in a way that Carlo Saba couldn’t, and also that playing Akassou as a right winger would take advantage of his prodigious dribbling and crossing skills while taking his awful shooting out of play. Moving David to winger created a problem at left back, because Bicalho had gone down with a torn calf muscle that would take five months to heal (I wickedly terminated his loan rather than paying half his wages till April—did I mention that this was a tough season?) and I didn’t have anyone else to fill the position. I’d have to use Monti, a backup centerback, and try to work something out in January.
Before our first match with the new tactic, a tough home game against fifth-placed Triestina (we were in 18th, on the border of relegation territory), I tried to remind myself not to expect immediate results, as it would unsettle the team to change the system so dramatically. But I don’t know—I must be the greatest manager in the history of the world or something, because these are our results in the five matches since I made the switch:
Of these teams, Triestina (whom we beat) was ranked fifth, Brescia (whom we beat) was ranked second, and Pisa (whom we tied) was also ranked second (because Brescia dropped to third after we beat them). We did lose 2-0 to Bari, but they’re also one of the best teams in the league, and two wins, two draws, and a loss during this brutal stretch of the season feels as good as perfect at this point. Especially because Messi scored twice, Akassou scored, David scored, and even when we weren’t winning, even when I was using the most defensive variant of the tactic, we were still spending a lot more time galloping around our opponent’s half of the pitch. It’s also the first time since I’ve been at Pro Vercelli that playing wider and trying to use the flanks in the attack has made us more dangerous rather than leaving us weeping in a little huddled ball.
We’re up to 13th with a third of the season gone:
If Ibáñez comes back in a good mood and I can find a left back over Christmas, we might have some hope. Fingers crossed.
Read More: Football Manager 2009, Pixel Dramas, Pro Vercelli
by Brian Phillips · March 2, 2009
Brian – started a game without real players with QPR (my go-to team) the other day after your recommendation. It certainly makes things more difficult, as one cannot just sign the same tried-and-true names. However, something I noticed is that while the actual players don’t exist, reasonable facsimiles do. For example, I always like to buy Franco Zuculini (an Italian-passport-having Argie) from Racing Club in Argentina. He wasn’t there, but a guy named Nilton Betancourt, a Colombian Italian with very similar attributes and similar age (18 instead of 17) was. Have you noticed the same thing?
Great blog, btw. Vercelli seem to be inching towards safety, though that 3rd relegation spot is worringly close. Have you ever tried a 4-2-3-1 formation? Works great for me sometimes – you can either play the outside AMs as wingers or simply as outside AMs. I’d recommend the former.
I don’t know for sure, but my impression is that there are a certain number of similarities that tend to crop up in a largely randomized game world. I’ve been playing around creating new games, and have seen Chelsea repeatedly given a tall, strong striker from the Ivory Coast (though his stats never exactly match Drogba’s) but many other players with no real-world equivalents (Manchester United’s technically dazzling Brazilian right back Cicero, or a stocky, bruising Irish striker at Arsenal).
As for the relegation spots, they’re even closer than they appear in the table, because the 18th and 19th-placed placed teams can also get sucked into a relegation playoff depending on the points differential. We’re really only three points from trouble, but at least we’re moving in the right direction for now.
If we look at the sport in general terms, no amount of randomness will ever be possible.
At one level, we are all carbon based entities revolving around a mass that circles a star. Soccer does not change this.
However, even with a much closer inspection, patterns emerge that defeat any level of “randomness.” For example,
Just the other day, X club, based in Europe, signed a teenager South American at Racing/River/Boca/Independiente with a great grandparent that got them the European visa.
I predict much success.
On another level, I am glad you went out of your comfort zone with the 4-3-3.
As a note, Jose’s 4-3-3 was more of a “breathing” 4-5-1. Robben and JC packed the midfield on defense for large parts of a game, and only spread out on the counter, with the opposite side flanker being the second forward.
Conversely, Riijkaard’s Barcelona was the aristocratic 4-3-3. Ronnie and Messi were never expected to get their knees dirty with defense, spending entire matches in the offensive half.
Which one is your preference?
We’re not as packed in as Chelsea, but not nearly as open as the conventional Dutch 4-3-3. I called it a 4-1-2-3 because the way it’s working now Sammarco is as much a part of the back line as a component of the midfield, which gives the flow of play a toothy defensive quality. Akassou and David play pretty high and wide at all times, though, and we don’t have that dense Mourinho discipline (i.e., aren’t boring, at least for Serie B).
It seems like a good tactic to use when you’ve got a plethora of midfielders. Is this league playing more openly than then one Pro Vercelli were promoted from? That may be a reason why the increased width is helping
Also, that table looks a lot like the PL this year. What’s the cutoff for a relegation playoff in Serie B
How do you play so many matches in such a short time? The tactics tweaks take me so long, match to match, even without switching formations–not to mention in-match tweaks–that it’s all I can do to get in a match or two each night. Is this a full-time occupation for you? I’m not being snotty, I’m curious. I’d be happy to meet my fate–in FM ’09, always a bad one–sooner rather than later. I’m just amazed that you can bring us Pro Vercelli fans up to date with a whole hunk of their season each day, especially when you obviously take such pains over each detail. In any case, BRAVISSIMO!
I run through the individual games pretty quickly—I turn the highlight speed way up, only watch key highlights, and follow most of the match by tracking the statistics and reading the commentary. For tweaking tactics, I (like a lot of people) have a series of set schemes for different situations already saved. So I can switch between them as the stituation warrants and only change individual settings when I need to.
How do the rest of you pace your games? In FM08 I turned the highlights off and only watched the stats, which was blazing fast and surprisingly workable. But it’s not really a functional approach if you have to write about the game afterward. And the 3D engine makes the matches more fun to look at anyway.
EDIT: Brandon — Yes, I think the league is a little more open than Serie C1, though the fact that we have better players is surely a big factor too. I think the pitches might be a bit larger as well, which helps.
I’ve been reading the blog for a couple of weeks and I like it. Good stuff.
Also, I noticed another Will, so I’ll be Will II for now.
As for FM, if you choose to start a game without real players, the names are masked and the attributes remain similar. Nationalities are usually mixed up, too. That’s how Dan was able to find his man. That’s how regens work, as well: they’re copies of retired players so the game database always has the same number of players.
Brian: your tactic looks very Barcelona, as well, not just Chelski under Mourinho.
Also, I’m enjoying the Pro Vercelli stuff. Keep it up!
I’m pretty sure that the regen system you’re describing was dropped after FM06. FM07 introduced a new system that was more randomized and no longer based new players on existing players who were retiring. Hence the jargon switch from “regen” to “newgen.” I’d guess that applies to games with unreal players, too, though I certainly could be wrong.
Great stuff man! I really enjoy finding out how Pro Vercelli are getting on, keep it up.
That could be. I just assumed that newgen was something different, like a different kind of regen.
Learn something new every day, hehe.
Brian…first time posting, but been following the trials and tribulations of pro vercelli for a while now. Well done! I’m working on resurrecting FC Kaiserslautern after a rather tragic fall from grace. I find myself watching the entire match with the match speed at about 75%. With new additions in every transfer window, and being new to football tactics in general, it helps me to watch the full game, get a feel for the flow of the game, and work to optimize the strengths of the players.
ive been mainly watching key, and during the big games, the extended highlights at basically top speed. I’d like to get more out of following the stats but i can’t really seem to get much out of them.
Of course ive been playing with the “real” Barcelona so i statistcally dominate everygame (even though sometimes the results dont show.) I know its basically cheating when you have a 100 million transfer budget, but after an unfortunate attempt to promote “fictional players” FC Sete out of the French leagues bottom feeders Pro Vercelli style nearly led me to break my new laptop in half, i just want to win something.
Hetz — I think watching full games is a great approach when you’re trying to pick up the game. I’ve never had the patience for it, but even watching 10-minute stretches here and there can make a lot of things clear that you don’t notice even with extended highlights.
gvb — The first rule of Football Manager is “do whatever it takes not to break your computer.” We’ve all been there. And I actually get annoyed with hardcore FM fans who act like it’s somehow a moral failing to play a big club. The game designers made the game with an incredible breadth of different scenarios; I say you should play whichever one of them seems like the most fun for you. This is a video game. Go annihilate Madrid.
This is my 2nd read-through, and Brian, this little blog of yours just gets better with age! I’ve become so enamoured with Pro Vercelli that I have ordered my very own squad shirt, complete with ‘S.Piola’ on the back.
To be honest, even though I’ve read all this before, and I know how it all goes, it’s like picking up the phone and having a nice long chat with a dear old friend who you haven’t seen in a while. This whole blog is so….. comfy!
I just want to wrap myself up in it and fall asleep in a corner….
Loving it, hope your enjoyment of FM (hopefully FM11 by now) never fades!