Last month the GrassNGear Podcast released their 29th episode called Tactical Annals where DGear86 and FMGrasshopper assessed the tactics of fellow FMers and offered advice on how they could be improved. To say the episode was a success would be an understatement and if you've not heard it yet, then give it a listen now via this link.
I'll admit that i felt a frisson of pride when the lads messaged me and asked if i'd like to feature. I eagerly agreed and sent over my tactic, along with a short description of what i was trying to achieve with it. This is important since the critique was based largely on whether the tactical set up was meeting the tactician's objectives or not.
I was the fifth FMer to be reviewed out of the six of us featuring on the show, but as i listened while driving in to work that morning, little did i know that my previous admission of knowing nothing about tactics was about to take centre stage.
Below is what i submitted, along with what i wanted the tactic to do.
Here's the tactic which is my interpretation of West Hams style of play through the years - the West Ham Way. The aim is to play exciting football with a balance of creative play makers and hard working ball winners, who break down the opposition and quickly transition through the middle to one of the forward men. Possession stats should be high with it, as well as tackles and interceptions. It's versatile too, with the AMC sometimes being swapped for a DMC when needed to add extra cover in front of the back 4
3/10 - See me after class!
If you want to skip ahead to the part of the episode where this tactic is reviewed, it starts at around 34 minutes 40 seconds. It was very funny to listen to and the more the lads talked, the more i realised the obvious flaws in my approach. I can't say I cared much for the anti-West Ham comments (what do they know?) but I enjoyed the rest of the feedback, which included some brilliant quotes, such as "I can't see how this is working successfully, if it is" and "I would start again". I have to say though, my favourite has to be "Could this be really effective in rugby?"!
Once you've finished rolling around the floor in hysterics at my expense, i think you'll agree that you can distil the advice down to these main points :
A symmetrical approach means your team only has one way of playing. It's best to vary the roles, particularly of the wide men, to give your team a plan B or second option when they need it
Employing a playmaker will encourage the rest of the team to give him the ball, whilst two playmaker roles will create confusion for the players as they don't know which one to pass to
Adding too many central themed Team Instructions, such as "underlap" and "pass through middle", will limit the amount of variation and wide play, making you easy to breakdown
I don't doubt that for most of you reading this, these points are obvious but somewhere between initially building my tactic, to the point where i'd submitted it for the podcast, i lost sight of what i was trying to do, and in turn i ignored some of the basic principles of tactic creation.
I'd been given my school report, and now it was time to face my punishment.
Detention Exercise - 500 lines of "I will apply what I've learnt"
This tactic was one i'd been using while in charge of FC Emmen, and one that i'd developed in my previous role at KuPS. I've already written about how i created the first iteration of it and you can read more about that here if you so wish.
Over time, i'd made the mistake of tinkering with a system that worked, and the result was what you see above. Bizarrely (and presumably Dan will be disappointed to learn), it wasn't a total failure either! That is, i was winning some games while admittedly losing just as many others.
Taking in to account the feedback from GrassNGear (captured above) and Dan's suggestion of "starting again", i decided to do just that, sort of.
Actually what i did was loaded up the original tactic (which i'd saved thankfully) and started applying the edits accordingly. The two big differences were the swapping of the AMC back to my trusty DMC and the reinstatement of the asymmetrical roles for the wide players. Both of these changes had been implemented to suit players in the new Emmen team, and I'd become sentimental about them as i tried to keep them happy - big mistake! I immediately sold my AMC and set two of my ageing wide men for release at the end of the season.
The next thing to do was to work on the Team Instructions, of which there were a lot. I'd started off with the Vertical Tika-Taka template which includes a lot of instructions, hence why so many are included above.
Dan has talked many times on past episodes about allowing the players to make their own decisions on what to do with the ball, rather than giving them strict instructions that limit their creative freedom. FM Samo has also spoken before about the same thing and so i boldly (for me anyway) cleared every one of them and went through each phase of play to methodically re-add instructions that suited our style.
Out of possession, i want us to chase for the ball and harass the opposition to force a mistake, while during transition i want to quickly recycle the ball and utilise our playmaker to get it knocked forward to our attacking trio as quickly as possible.
From there we have the option down the left of running down to the byline and crossing it in, or the option down the right of cutting inside and attempting a long range shot or through ball to the forward.
Behind the left Winger on attack, our Roaming Playmaker should have room to move and find the right pass, while with the right Inside Forward cutting inside, we've a Mezzala moving across in the space behind him and the Wing Back on attack can provide an overlap option as well.
With all that taken into consideration, below you can see how the revised tactic looks.
A Fresh Start and a New Leaf
I don't doubt that for many of you, even with the changes I've made to the tactic, there are still some things you would do differently. In my opinion there's no "one way" or even a "right way" to play the game and so, just as in real life, this is how i will set up and while i hope it will work, I accept that sometimes it won't.
Initial results suggest it's going very well, even better than when i was at KuPS. At the time of writing i have moved from Emmen to Hibernian and now have a solid Complete Forward at my disposal. This seems to have made a huge difference to the tactic and we've managed to string a series of wins together, even against tougher opposition.
In terms of tweaks and alterations, i try to keep these to a minimum. Against superior opposition i might downgrade our mentality to Balanced or even Defensive, but usually not until we've played the first half with Attacking. Even away from home, a more positive mentality seems to put our opponents on the back foot, allowing us to profit most of the time.
In closing, I'd like to thank GrassNGear for their feedback and entertainment, and for featuring me on the show. I hope that this blog post might prove helpful to anyone out there who might be stuck or at a crossroads with their tactic. My suggestion, aside from absorbing much more sage advice from other content creators out there, is to strip it back to a shell and be methodical with what you put back in. Even it fails, you'll have a much better understanding of what's failing if you do it this way. Good luck!
Thanks for reading the blog, i hope you enjoyed this update. You can follow me on Twitter @fm_athlete and in my FM Slack channel #fm_athlete for more updates throughout the season.