Egraam
I'm still in the very early stages of figuring the game out (mainly because I've decided to play the game a little more casually this year) but I've had somewhat promising results with this one, so I thought I might share it. The set piece setup is the same as last year - most of the set pieces are from ZaZ Blue.

Normal holiday tests are super high variance this year, at least for me. For example, the most basic test - one season with City on the default database - a good tactic last year would consistently get between 93-100 points every run no matter what, while this year I had tactics that got 90 points on the first run and then 75 points on the next. It's hard to tell right now what really works and what doesn't, at least not until the editor is available and fmarena starts their testing.
Gaksital said: Half Back at DM works effectively in my save game, also! Especially at the mentality of 'attacking'. RMD is better than before also.

In additon, Poacher is better than Advanced Forward, i think:)


I'm also using a Poacher in my tactic 👍 But paired with Target Forward, I don't how effective is he on his own or together with another Poacher.
Sane said: So, in the end, what to choose for the greatest efficiency? With two If-At and two AF-At? And what are the roles of the central midfielders?
And are you sure that the very attacking mentality is much better than the positive one in this beta?


I'm playing on balanced with my tactic, also had more success with Attacking and Cautious than with Positive. Positive just seems not be it on this engine, at least for me.

(results with balanced)

Corners are even stronger than they were before (same routine as last year)

Just a quick observation from playing a few games, but I score a lot of goals from winger getting to the byline -> getting a low cross in the box -> forward finishing. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe exploiting flanks is strong on this engine, will have to test more.
Last tactic update for FM21, I'm pretty much done with this year's edition:

V3:
Central Defenders to Cover with Close Down More

At this point of tactic optimization it's pretty hard to tell wheter or not a tactic is a direct update, but this version is basically a guaranteed cup winner as you can see in the screens below and winning UCL was the thing I had the most trouble with in my own careers.

Main post updated with the file.

MisterCMS said: The attack power is absurd! Is there any way to improve the defense a little more, @Egraam ? Are you working on it?

A natural solution would be to move Wingers down to ML/MR slot, and if you want to improve the defense even more you could change their duty to Support from Attack (or you could change the duty to Support without moving them down), but my only goal for this tactic was to make it the highest scoring one in the game, so I wasn't really paying attention to defense. The other possible defensive tweak would to be maybe change Roaming Playmaker to Deep Lying Playmaker.
This is just a for fun tactic, I was trying to create a tactic that will just brute force as many goals as possible and that was the only goal - it can still work with elite teams (as you can see in the tests below), but I wouldn't expect it to bring you some amazing results overall - maybe just use it if you desperately need a goal.

152 league goals City, 167 PSG (if managed manually you could possibly get close to 200).



You can also arrange friendlies against very weak teams and play them in those in the desired position. This is probably the best method if you want to do it as fast as possible and can't really afford to play them in league matches when they are unfamiliar with the position.
Middleweight165 said: @Mark Do you think there's a contradiction between your strategy and the results of the testing on this site?

Also to add to what @Mark has said, the ratings actually make sense when compared with fmarena results - the tests here have shown that Pace and Acceleration are the most important attributes across all the positions (because the tests show results of what happens when you decrease the attribute by 3 points across all the positions), and if you look at the table Mark has posted Pace and Accceleration are the only attributes that are there for all the positions (aside from GKs). So it makes sense the whole team plays worse when these attributes are decreased. Agility - the 3rd most important attribute according to fmarena tests - also appears to be important for a lot of positions in Mark's table.

Maybe the only one that Mark's table overvalues compared to fmarena tests is Decisions, but other than that I don't see many contradictions.
CBP87 said: I appreciate that and I am trying to keep it simple, it was just a case of trying to understand it a little better to help me make the correct decisions when it comes to buying players.

I'm of the sort opinion, Messi is miles better than Dembele, but according to the game using those ratings, he isnt


You're comparing ratings from different positions. Winger, using @Mark's ratings is the easiest position to get high rating in because it's all about Pace and Acceleration which are basically the only two attributes that matter for that position (the next most important attribute is 4 times less important) - that's why Dembele is rated so high - that doesn't mean that he is 2nd best player in the game - just that he may be the 2nd best winger. You shouldn't really compare ratings between positions because the less attributes are needed for a certain position, the more likely it is a player will have a really high rating. Just use those ratings to compare players that play in the same position.

Obviously if you have unlimited budget then go for a player with the highest CA - but higher CA most of the time means more money and higher wages - that's also what those ratings are use for - you will be able to find players that overachieve their CA because they have their attribute points in the right places.
BeRe said: thank you both,it helps a lot.what about coach most atts to drive better development?i mean i know the 3 importants DDM,my point is which att heavily do the most influnce?motivating?discipline?also does it matter the personality of coach?

I'm not really sure if one of the attributes is more important than the others, but if you google "fm coach calculator" there are a few sites where, if you are looking for a new coach, you can input their attributes and it will show you how much training stars they will have in all the training categories. I just try to get the coaches that will have the highest star rating in the training category that I'm looking for.

When it comes to personality, it definitely matters when looking for a Head of Youth Development, because it influences the personality of newgens that come to your academy. I don't think it matters for the other coaches, but if I have two coaches that have the same star rating, I'll choose the one with the better personality. Other than that I don't really pay attention to it.
Middleweight165 said: Are the 9 attributes Pace, Acceleration, Agility, Dribbling, Balance, Vision, Anticipation, Jumping Reach, Decisions? Why isn't passing one, when it has the same pts per game as decisions

Where did you get the number 9 from? If you're talking about the link name, it's not "9 important attributes", it's "important attributes" and then every site/thread on this website gets a number at the beggining, like for example the thread you have linked in the original post - https://fm-arena.com/thread/938-the-most-important-player-attributes-in-fm21/ - has 938 at the beginning.
Striker, shorter passing, standard tempo and hold shape instead of the usual counter - should provide a somewhat different playstyle than most of the meta tactics - average possesion is usually around 53-55%, so nothing groundbreaking but the tactic keeps the ball a bit more than the high tempo gegenpress that everyone is used to.

Usually the striker scores at least 20-25 goals a season, depending on his quality, you could possibly get numbers over 30 with a well constructed team.
Set pieces from ZaZ Blue.

RB Leipzig predicted 4th, Werder 12th:

There is also an option in Preferences -> Advanced -> Match -> Processing -> Match scheduling options, where you can change so you have games only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so you won't have to bother with editing schedules.
ElTurco said: Your ZaZ - Blue 3.0 tactic is an improved version of the PHOENIX V5.0 tactic.. While your tactic is being shared, why isn't my tactic, which edits like you, shared.The instructions I have given in tactics play the game differently, I guess you are not aware of this, and I tried a lot with zaz blue 3.0, after a while, it becomes a losing streak. You should know that your tactics do not work..

1) ZaZ - Blue 3.0 is not my tactic, it's @ZaZ 's
2) Pheonix 5.0 or 4.0 (it's the same tactic but with different throw-ins) was shared after ZaZ - Blue 3.0 which is just renamed ZaZ - Blue 2.1 (2nd March for Pheonix vs 27th February for ZaZ Blue), so no I wouldn't say @ZaZ was just taking someone's tactic and only tweaking it, when he was the one who posted it first.
3) I don't have a problem with tweaking others people tactics, I do it myself sometimes (like with Turtle which is a defensive tweak of ZaZ Blue), I'm just telling you why it probably won't get tested.
ElTurco said: It's been days since we shared the tactic, why hasn't it been tried yet? Can you explain Admin ??

Probably because it's ZaZ - Blue 3.0 with:
- Right winger changed to Winger from Defensive Winger (those roles are basically the same)
- Cross From Byline removed from wingers
- Addded Distribute to Fullbacks
- Force Opposition Outside

And none of these changes are significant enough to make the tactic get much different results than ZaZ - Blue 3.0 or play much more differently.
Waves V2.5, some small tweaks, added the file to the main post:

- Removed Mark Tighter of the 4 players that had it
- Throw ins back to the pre 21.4 setup (the one that ZaZ Blue and everyone else was using before)

Some results:
Inter predicted 2nd, Crotone 19th


RB Lipsk predicted 4th, Werder 12th:


Chelsea predicted 3rd, West Ham 12th:
4-4-2 Diamond with actual strikers and only slighty more urgent pressing. Not the best defensively, but provides plenty of firepower in the offense. Set pieces from ZaZ Blue.