I don't remember more as it was a long time ago, and I never used downloaded tactics in my serious saves — only downloaded some to analyze and learn from them.
Basically, you just made a couple of custom gegenpressing tactics, trying to prove that gegenpressing is not the only way to get good results... It's about the high pressing and NOT about ticking on or off the 'counter-pressing' button, which does almost nothing:
A few weeks before, I also conducted many similar tests like yours, for example, taking SI's catenaccio tactic but changing pressing and tempo, and it did okay.
Now I took one of your gegenpressing tactics:
The results by eoy are quite good, as expected: (not as good as when using a more positive mentality though)
But then I loaded back to the pre-season and changed only two things: lower tempo and pressing.
By the end of November, West Ham was sitting in 18th place, and I knew that sacking was imminent:
'You can play literally the hell you want, but jesus apply some "meta-sense".'
No, we cannot. The game forces us to press like madmen and play higher tempo if we wanna get good results. It's broken and unbalanced. You can get a 3rd division team go full attacking with high pressing against stronger opponents, for the whole 90 minutes (!) which is totally insane. However, playing defensive or parking the bus with a team that has very good defenders is impossible.
Let's not even talk about how most of the attributes and tactical instructions don't do anything. Sadly, FM is pretty much like FIFA now.
What's up guys? I reinstalled FM13 and did a quick test comparing FM13 vs FM24 using defensive tactics, here you go:
I picked the team predicted to finish 10th in the PL, Aston Villa.
I set up a simple, generic 4-1-4-1 defensive tactic: -Defensive mentality, rigid philosophy -Deep defensive line, hold position, stand off (no pressing) -More direct passing, slow tempo, counter attack on
Holidayed until end of the year, ticking on "use current tactic". The team sat at a decent 7th place:
As you would expect from such a tactic, they had solid, reliable defense. And they also didn't score much (besides 2 lucky games vs Reading and Q.P.R.).
FM13 felt like a tactical simulator, with balanced tactical styles. It was all logical. Basically, ANY tactical style worked as long as you had the right players. You could replicate almost any team's playing style.
I jumped back to FM24, using the same tactic with the 10th predicted PL team, West Ham.
Well, by the time I came back from my 6-month-long Hawaiian vacation, I was already sacked:
Notice zero clean sheets in the PL, often conceding 3-4 goals.
Okay, I decided to start a new save and test one of the official preset tactics. These were made by SI games; surely they know what they are doing. I picked the catenaccio, as I loved playing that style in FM13:
Logic would tell us that playing such a compact defensive formation with defensive mentality will result in good defense. Well, FM24 match engine disagrees:
I was sacked earlier this time. Look at those results, 0-4, 1-4, 0-4, 0-3. Oh my...
I was curious what happens if I use the mighty gegenpressing tactic:
Surprise, surprise, not only did I still have a job by the end of the year, but West Ham also overachieved:
The funny thing is, even though playing a high tempo, high d-line attacking football as a mid-level team, they had a very solid defense:
Playing on defensive mentality and slow tempo is suicide in FM24. Basically, sitting back and absorbing pressure doesn't work. The match engine is seriously unbalanced and flawed. If you use high tempo, pressing, shorter passing, you will overachieve. Try anything else, and it's a struggle.
You guys have already demonstrated all of this through the tactical testing, but it's good to compare it to older FMs so everyone can see it wasn't always like this. Ten years of development, and the match engine is more unbalanced than before...
Thanks for the recommendations. I read other forum topics and polls, and many people say FM17 is really good. Mark, in what areas FM19 is better than FM17?
Scoring goals is fun, but I also really enjoy building a very strong defense.
I still remember my Vitesse save where we won the Eredivisie by scoring just 40 something goals. Our deep 4-1-4-1 was super solid; we conceded about 0.5 goals/game on average. Next season in the Champions League, we were in a group of death with Barca and Man City or UTD. Somehow we finished 2nd.
Sitting deep, absorbing pressure, frustrating the Barca players, then getting a goal by a beautiful counter-attack and winning 1-0 was really satisfying. I felt like I'm Jose Mourinho.
I wanna experience this again.
One of the most shocking things was reading the player attribute testing and realizing "positioning," "tackling," and "marking" are pretty much worthless in the newer games. In FM13, these and "jumping" were the main attributes I always looked for in defenders.
What about FM17? Can't find any attribute testing for older versions.
Hi guys. I'm a veteran FM player, having played more than 1000 hours with FM2013.
What I really loved is that I could play ANY style I wanted if I had the right players.
I won leagues with mid-level teams using a very solid 4-1-4-1 formation, with counter or defensive mentality, a very deep defensive line, with no pressing. Most of our matches were like 1-0, 0-0, 2-1, etc. We didn't score much but also rarely conceded; even stronger teams struggled against our defense.
I also had success with slow-tempo, short-passing tiki-taka tactics, getting 65-70% average possession.
Then on other saves, I went full attacking with a 4-2-3-1 formation (2 MC, 3 AMC) and scored the most goals in the league, even though we weren't the strongest team.
After 10 years, I came back to FM, and I'm disgusted by FM2024's match engine. Apparently, nothing works except gegenpressing. Tactical instructions don't make any difference. I can't get results with slow-tempo tiki-taka or catenaccio styles even though I have the right players.
I read about FM-Arena in a Reddit post and found it very useful. Your tactical instructions and attribute testings basically verified what I feel after ~150 hours playing FM2024: most of the tactical instructions don't do anything, except for a few like high tempo and pressing. And most player attributes are meaningless, except for the meta attributes. This game is seriously broken.
As I skipped every FM between 13 and 24, what would you guys say, which one has the best match engine? By "best," I mean the one where I could succeed playing any style of tactic I want, not just high tempo gegenpress.
I guess our only option is to use shady marketplaces like G2A, where they sell Steam keys.
Modern Warfare 4-4-2, the one that Mark posted above, was very popular and powerful.
Helenio Herrera's catenaccio:
https://www.fmscout.com/i-541-of-helenio-herrera-for-fm13.html
Arrigo Sacchi's counterpressing 4-4-2:
https://www.fmscout.com/a-fm13-tactic-442-of-arrigo-sacchi.html
I don't remember more as it was a long time ago, and I never used downloaded tactics in my serious saves — only downloaded some to analyze and learn from them.
This article was useful for me when I was doing a tiki-taka style save, it's an attribute testing about passing accuracy:
https://footballmanagerfocus.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/the-pass-masters/
Sure, if you use the 'Much More Often' pressing and higher tempo instructions, no wonder the results are better. We all know that:
https://fm-arena.com/thread/2864-high-pressing-vs-low-pressing/
https://fm-arena.com/thread/2890-passing-directness-amp-tempo/
Basically, you just made a couple of custom gegenpressing tactics, trying to prove that gegenpressing is not the only way to get good results...
It's about the high pressing and NOT about ticking on or off the 'counter-pressing' button, which does almost nothing:
https://fm-arena.com/thread/2911-counter-press/
A few weeks before, I also conducted many similar tests like yours, for example, taking SI's catenaccio tactic but changing pressing and tempo, and it did okay.
Now I took one of your gegenpressing tactics:
The results by eoy are quite good, as expected:
(not as good as when using a more positive mentality though)
But then I loaded back to the pre-season and changed only two things: lower tempo and pressing.
By the end of November, West Ham was sitting in 18th place, and I knew that sacking was imminent:
'You can play literally the hell you want, but jesus apply some "meta-sense".'
No, we cannot. The game forces us to press like madmen and play higher tempo if we wanna get good results. It's broken and unbalanced. You can get a 3rd division team go full attacking with high pressing against stronger opponents, for the whole 90 minutes (!) which is totally insane.
However, playing defensive or parking the bus with a team that has very good defenders is impossible.
Let's not even talk about how most of the attributes and tactical instructions don't do anything. Sadly, FM is pretty much like FIFA now.
I picked the team predicted to finish 10th in the PL, Aston Villa.
I set up a simple, generic 4-1-4-1 defensive tactic:
-Defensive mentality, rigid philosophy
-Deep defensive line, hold position, stand off (no pressing)
-More direct passing, slow tempo, counter attack on
Holidayed until end of the year, ticking on "use current tactic".
The team sat at a decent 7th place:
As you would expect from such a tactic, they had solid, reliable defense.
And they also didn't score much (besides 2 lucky games vs Reading and Q.P.R.).
FM13 felt like a tactical simulator, with balanced tactical styles. It was all logical.
Basically, ANY tactical style worked as long as you had the right players.
You could replicate almost any team's playing style.
I jumped back to FM24, using the same tactic with the 10th predicted PL team, West Ham.
Well, by the time I came back from my 6-month-long Hawaiian vacation, I was already sacked:
Notice zero clean sheets in the PL, often conceding 3-4 goals.
Okay, I decided to start a new save and test one of the official preset tactics.
These were made by SI games; surely they know what they are doing.
I picked the catenaccio, as I loved playing that style in FM13:
Logic would tell us that playing such a compact defensive formation with defensive mentality will result in good defense.
Well, FM24 match engine disagrees:
I was sacked earlier this time.
Look at those results, 0-4, 1-4, 0-4, 0-3. Oh my...
I was curious what happens if I use the mighty gegenpressing tactic:
Surprise, surprise, not only did I still have a job by the end of the year, but West Ham also overachieved:
The funny thing is, even though playing a high tempo, high d-line attacking football as a mid-level team, they had a very solid defense:
Playing on defensive mentality and slow tempo is suicide in FM24.
Basically, sitting back and absorbing pressure doesn't work.
The match engine is seriously unbalanced and flawed.
If you use high tempo, pressing, shorter passing, you will overachieve.
Try anything else, and it's a struggle.
You guys have already demonstrated all of this through the tactical testing, but it's good to compare it to older FMs so everyone can see it wasn't always like this. Ten years of development, and the match engine is more unbalanced than before...
Scoring goals is fun, but I also really enjoy building a very strong defense.
I still remember my Vitesse save where we won the Eredivisie by scoring just 40 something goals. Our deep 4-1-4-1 was super solid; we conceded about 0.5 goals/game on average. Next season in the Champions League, we were in a group of death with Barca and Man City or UTD. Somehow we finished 2nd.
Sitting deep, absorbing pressure, frustrating the Barca players, then getting a goal by a beautiful counter-attack and winning 1-0 was really satisfying. I felt like I'm Jose Mourinho.
I wanna experience this again.
One of the most shocking things was reading the player attribute testing and realizing "positioning," "tackling," and "marking" are pretty much worthless in the newer games.
In FM13, these and "jumping" were the main attributes I always looked for in defenders.
What about FM17? Can't find any attribute testing for older versions.
What I really loved is that I could play ANY style I wanted if I had the right players.
I won leagues with mid-level teams using a very solid 4-1-4-1 formation, with counter or defensive mentality, a very deep defensive line, with no pressing. Most of our matches were like 1-0, 0-0, 2-1, etc. We didn't score much but also rarely conceded; even stronger teams struggled against our defense.
I also had success with slow-tempo, short-passing tiki-taka tactics, getting 65-70% average possession.
Then on other saves, I went full attacking with a 4-2-3-1 formation (2 MC, 3 AMC) and scored the most goals in the league, even though we weren't the strongest team.
After 10 years, I came back to FM, and I'm disgusted by FM2024's match engine. Apparently, nothing works except gegenpressing. Tactical instructions don't make any difference. I can't get results with slow-tempo tiki-taka or catenaccio styles even though I have the right players.
I read about FM-Arena in a Reddit post and found it very useful. Your tactical instructions and attribute testings basically verified what I feel after ~150 hours playing FM2024: most of the tactical instructions don't do anything, except for a few like high tempo and pressing. And most player attributes are meaningless, except for the meta attributes. This game is seriously broken.
As I skipped every FM between 13 and 24, what would you guys say, which one has the best match engine? By "best," I mean the one where I could succeed playing any style of tactic I want, not just high tempo gegenpress.