Do you know that moment when you did something during the match and it worked? The simple change(s) based on watching the game and it paid off? That’s exactly what happened in my FM23 save with the VVV-Venlo during our third season, the second season in the Netherlands’ top tier. It was an ordinary league away match against Cambuur. But the comeback, the changes I made and the final result led me to write this post.

BACKGROUND

Our opponent for this match was Cambuur. This club was promoted to the Eredivisie after the 2020/2021 season in real life, so a year before this save started. They ended 9th, 13th and 6th in both seasons of this save so far. They had a perfect start to the 2024/25 season as their worse position in the opening 12 rounds was second place. They were able to beat (struggling) AZ, and they tied with PSV or Ajax.

Their perfect start was mainly thanks to their two key players - 198cm tall Latvian striker Roberts Uldrikis and Daniël van Kaam who is able to play mainly on the left side of the pitch or in the middle. Uldrikis is the best goalscorer of the Eredivisie and van Kaam has the most assists from all players. He is also in the top three within key passes per 90 minutes and other key statistics within the attacking movement/passing.

Uldrikis scored two goals in the previous three matches against us so I knew he is the main threat no matter how good he is right now.

TEAM FORMATIONS

I’m still playing the lone central defender but I made a couple of changes to other roles ahead of the 2024/25 season. I decided to use two DM(D) roles and AP(S) above them in the MC position. Our right-sided winger also was changed from attacking duty to support duty. And the last change was that I get rid of the DLF(S) role and changed it to the Pressing Forward with the attacking duty.

Other things are very simple including the team instructions and in terms of individual instructions, only our full-backs have the individual instructions. Exactly as I wrote in this post - HERE.

Cambuur is playing mainly with the 4-2-3-1 formation including two defensive midfielders. As already mentioned Daniël van Kaam is playing as the DLP(S) in the DM position. And Uldrikis is playing as TF(S) as he is the best suited for this role and any manager would be stupid to not use him in this role.

OPPOSITION INSTRUCTIONS

“Do you have some OI?” “What about individual instructions?” Probably the most common questions whenever someone shares his tactic. The same as I’m not the type of player who would tick every single team instruction just because it’s possible, I treat the opposition's instructions in the same way. Just keep it simple.

My most common go-to is to identify the biggest weakness of the opponent. I wrote about it in the past already but I’m currently not sure if this post was migrated to the Coffeehouse website from my old personal site. But. It can be a central player with bad decisions attribute and I set Tackling to Hard and Trigger Press to Always.

When the opponent’s wide players have one of their feet weak, I usually set Show Onto Foot to Weaker Foot. But as I said - the main point is to make it simple and my own rule is to not set more than three opposition instructions.

The reason is that my players can become too confused about what I exactly want from them and they can act like frightened and crazy hares. They will want to be everywhere around the pitch, they will want to press every one. But it usually leads to bigger chaos and to the fact there are bigger gaps within our own formation. That’s also the reason why I never hit the “Ask Assistant” button because he usually set too many opposition instructions.

All central Cambuur’s players have a decisions attribute of 12, 15 and 16 so it was not the case this time to press them with high intensity. But both AML and AMR players have weak feet so I set Show Onto Weaker Foot to both of them. And for some reason, I decided to set Tight Marking to Never for Uldrikis. Maybe because I said to myself it’s useless to mark him as he will keep the ball no matter what my players will do because of his strengths.

THE MATCH, CHANGES & REACTIONS

The match didn’t start well for us as we conceded in the 2nd minute. Our left defender gave the ball away too easily, van der Water made a simple turnaround and found Uldrikis before our goal with a simple cross. Uldrikis headed it to the net.

The second was scored in the 20th minute. And it was almost the same. Di Franco lost possession, and van der Water ignored his weaker foot and made a simple cross with his left foot to Uldrikis. Easy finish and 2:0 for Cambuur.

Decision number 1: While Alex Bangura was almost invisible on the left side of the pitch, van der Water had two assists after twenty minutes and other two dangerous crosses. So, I removed the Show Onto Weaker Foot instruction.

The second issue was connected to Roberts Uldrikis who scored both goals for Cambuur. Except for goals scored, he also won 17 headers during the match, 12 of them only during the opening 40 minutes of the match. He was able to hold the ball even if there were two or three players around him and he was dangerous everywhere. I also wanted to divide the defensive and attacking half as he is useful also within defensive set pieces - 14 of his 17 headers won were in the attacking half.

Decision number 2: I removed the “Never” Tight Marking instruction and let my players decide what they will do with Uldrikis. The result of this and some other changes I will mention below was that Uldrikis won only 5 headers since the 40th minute of the match and he didn’t have more opportunities to complete a hat trick.

I didn’t want to lose this match, the same as any other match and I knew I have to make some changes during half-time. Our game was very slow, players gave the ball away very easily with the short passes (which they usually have no problem with) and the fact Cambuur played very simple football with long balls to Uldrikis and a lot of passes to the right side of the pitch, it caused problems in combination with using AP(S) in the middle.

1. I subbed Mijnans and changed the MC role from AP(S) to CM(A) to stop “playmaking” in the middle.

2. I removed both in-possession instructions to make our play more straightforward instead of cuddling with the ball.

3. I added Much More Direct Passing.

4. Take Short Kicks instruction was replaced with Distribute to Target Forward as I wanted to pass the ball quickly upfront and I wanted to beat the middle of the pitch.

5. The last thing that I removed was the Low Block and it was changed to the Standard/Middle Block.

“I’m not happy with your performance.” That was my feedback to the players during half-time and that was all I did except for the changes I shared above. Don’t expect everything to be bright and phenomenal immediately after kick-off but there were small snippets of how our approach changed.

I like to keep the ball and play patiently while waiting for the right moment for the through ball or clever long ball from side to side. I know I already mentioned in the previous posts but I’m not used to playing so many long balls as it was while I was using No-Nonsense FB or CD.

There’s a very nice change in the passes’ direction and length. It’s clear at the first sight that we were much more straightforward in the second half.

Change of the team instructions

We got back to the match in the 69th minute when Levi Smans found Sydney van Hooijdonk and he scored our first goal. Nick Venema equalised ten minutes later and he also scored our winning goal in the 83rd minute. Both subs Ertan Hajdaraj and Levi Smans made a huge impact as they provided assists for the first and second goals.

Sometimes, it’s about small changes. Sometimes, it’s about identifying your own mistakes. In this case, it was the latter.

Thanks for reading, take care.