ZaZ
Nikko said: Great stuff, @ZaZ! :thup:

Thanks!
Meiser63 said: Looks really solid. Do you think it is possible to mirror the Formation?

It is possible, but not recommended because left footed players are more rare than right footed ones. It's uploaded there if you really want to use it.

P.S.: I re-uploaded the tactic since I forgot to change team instructions.
Now at 26 matches into the league. I got kicked out of Carabao Cup, but still going on FA Cup and Papa's John Trophy. The league is also going well, maybe way easier than I thought it would be.

Because of the good results in the cups, my finances are finally in the blue, with 516k in balance and a projected balance of 268k for next year. I tried to ask for improvements for training grounds and youth set up a couple of times, but got denied twice already. Because of that, club structure is still the same as when we started, except stadium, since we loaned a bigger one because of league requirements.

During these past matches, I gave two weeks of holidays to my players, in two different occasions (when I got 8 days between matches). Two of my players are now regulars on their national teams, Liberia and Saint Kitts and Nevis (sorry if anyone lives there, but I didn't even know that country existed). I really dislike to have players in national teams, because you get no benefit from it, but I try to think like real life and just let them be happy there.

Some players are starting to complain about play time, so I changed all agreed playing time from main team to regular starter and all second team players to squad players. Half the squad complained, but since they were happy they just let the issue go when I talked to them (without the need of convincing them). Two players required me to promise to increase their play time, but I will just keep my plan and hope they get happy enough. Even when they get unhappy with playing time or unkept promises by the end of season, they usually let it go after a while if team is winning and they are happy.

Other important things that happened include the injury of my main goalkeeper for nine months, with a broken leg. My reserve goalkeeper is not that great so I might need to hire a new player just in case. Transfer window is now open and I have around 60k free annual wage budget, so I might try to find some good free player to improve the team.




showmake said: For most of the matches, do you skip them or choose to coach in person?

I manage everything. I'm just playing the game normally and having fun.
Just uploaded Green 3.0 since someone requested to use it. It doesn't need to be tested since it's too similar to this.

P.S.: Didn't expect they to test it. Results are inside margin of error, with same goal difference, so not much to learn from both tests.
ihowardy said: Can you upload this to maybe try? :)

There it is. Gonna update the page too in case other people get interested, but it won't get tested.

Guidito said: Hey Zaz do you think its possible to make the training schedules downloadable? Or shall I  just look at OP and copy?

It's pretty simple to create a schedule, so I prefer to keep the images so people on consoles can use them too. The annoying part isn't creating or loading the training schedule, but assigning it to the entire year.
ZaZ - Green 3.0.fmf
Downloaded : 242 times
Uploaded : Dec 27, 2021
JamesFox100 said: I havent conceaded since switch to White but i am noticing more fatigue setting in but i am in a very busy Decemeber with my Liverpool squad.

Can't be helped, december is always busy. If I already dislike competitions like Carabao Cup, imagine friendlies like World Cup.
JamesFox100 said: Tried this out myself and getting good results seems to be tighter at the back compared to Blue DM and Orange 2.0, albeit very limited testing.

I didn't optimize it yet, this is just a raw draft to see if it has any potential. It can probably be improved later, if results are promising.
Tejash said: @ZaZ  can the earlier light blue be use d if leading by 2 goals?

I will make a light version after I finish the tests.
JamesFox100 said: Thanks once again

How does this shape up against Blue DM and Orange 2.0


I didn't do all tests yet to compare, but I would say initial results were pretty good. In the first and only test, it got better results than any of the three tests of Blue RPM (Blue DM) for Manchester City, Arsenal, Southampton and Derby. However, I need to finish all tests before drawing any conclusion.
White is a high intensity tactic with heavy focus on the right flank. The idea is to concentrate your players from middle to right, overloading that side to create numerical advantage.





Instructions
Spoiler For people in consoles, below are the screenshots of team and player instructions.








Set Pieces
Spoiler My set pieces are a tweak from earlier versions of Blue, Void from @Cyborg, Motion from @Egraam and Phoenix from @Magician. More information in this thread. (I will try to improve set pieces eventually, but I keep pushing it farther ahead in the schedule.)

Set piece takers should be the best available. For throw ins, give preference to wing-backs of respective side, and for corners, give preference to wingers of respective side. Right BPD should be the best header and right AF should be the fastest striker.

Set pieces are the same as Blue, with mezzala doing the role of shadow striker and inside forward doing the role of defensive winger.


Training
Spoiler My training schedules are focused in the following sessions:
- Recovery: injury risk.
- Quickness: most important attributes (pace and acceleration).
- Match practice and team bonding: cohesion and happiness.
- Teamwork, defensive shape and attacking movement: upcoming match bonuses and tactical familiarity.
- Match preview and rest: match day defaults (rest would become travel in away matches).

For additional focus, goalkeepers train reactions while all other players train quickness.

Below are training schedules for one match per week, two matches per week and pre-season. I assume one match per week during pre-season, for revenue.



Important Attributes
Spoiler Please, check the FM-Arena table for attributes ratings and this thread for Genie Scout ratings. I have also created this rating for Genie Scout based on the FM-Arena table.

I recommend dividing attributes in three tiers to compare players. Use lower tiers only to break ties of uper tiers.
- Tier 1: pace and acceleration.
- Tier 2: stamina, anticipation, jumping reach, dribbling (offensive players), work rate (defensive players).
- Tier 3: all other attributes.


Preferred Foot
Spoiler Right foot for everyone, but don't skip on a good player just because of preferred foot.

Role Ability
Spoiler Role ability, or the stars showing how good a player is in his role, can be safely ignored. It's just cosmetic, showing the opinion of your assistant manager based on current ability and the role attributes. It's always gonna be low for IWB using the same foot as side, or DW with low defending attributes, despite making no difference in performance. In the end, what really matters is position rating, which should be at least accomplished (dark green).

Remember, the important attributes are not the ones highlighted in a player role, but those that actually impact performance as you can see in the FM-Arena table for attributes ratings.


Opposition Instructions
Spoiler Empty. Feel free to change if you know what you are doing, but don't listen to your assistant manager.

Squad Management
Spoiler To be successful in football manager, you need to manage your team's playing time, which affects happiness, match sharpness, fatigue (can only be seen with sports scientist) and condition. Happiness and sharpness are managed by making sure each player is getting enough minutes, while fatigue and condition are managed by avoiding giving more minutes per week than they should play. Note that you can use friendlies and reserve matches to keep players sharp, but those matches have no effect on happiness.

My suggestion to manage the squad properly is to add two columns to selection info: "fitness and injuries > fatigue" and "stats (general) > general > games missed in a row". You can do that by right clicking any column name in squad screen, e.g., name, position, and selecting insert column. Make sure you don't use players with high fatigue and don't let any player reach too many games missed in a row (between 3 to 5 depending on your squad size).

After matches in tight weeks, you can rest the most tired players from training so they can recover condition to the next match. To do so, select any players you want to rest, then right click, training > rest > 1 or 2 days. That should be enough to have your most important players in shape for big matches.

Morale is another characteristic that needs management. The easiest way to increase morale is by winning, but you can also praise last (official) match, recent form (last 5 games) and training level, as well as criticize the same things. I recommend praising anyone with rating above 9 and criticize anyone with rating below 6. After defeats, I recommend complimenting any player with recent form or training with rating 8.1+.

Finally, you also need to manage complacency and anxiety. That is usually done through team talks and shouts. The effect is based on players hidden status and match odds, but some talks and shouts are usually more positive than others. For example, praising a winning team with shouts usually gives positive response, as well as encouraging your team when not winning (losing or tie).

For team talk, I usually prefer to relieve pressure telling them to play their natural game, then tell them individually that I have faith on them. At half time, I praise them if winning by at least two goals, otherwise I tell them I'm not happy. After match, I praise them for victories, tell them I'm unhappy when we don't win and sometimes warn against complacenty after big wins. Keep in mind that you should be a little bit lighter with your team against stronger opponents.

If one of your players get a yellow card during a match, it might be a good idea to change his players instruction to Ease Off Tackles to avoid being sent off. To do so, click on the player card by the bottom of match view, then click player instructions. You can also do the same for very tired players if you run out of subs, as well as reducing his individual pressing trigger, to avoid injuries.


Custom Testing League
Spoiler My testing league is set to include only english competitions and english teams. All players from English Premier League and Sky Bet Championship are set to have maximum consistency, important matches and natural fitness, while having minimum injury proneness. The editor data can be downloaded here.

There are two different group of teams being tested, with each run using two teams from Premier League and two from Sky Bet Championship, simultaneously. Teams were picked by preview odds, having the best and worst odds of each league, as well as best and worst from middle ten odds. The teams from Premier League are Manchester City, Arsenal, Southampton and Norwich, and the teams from Sky Bet Championship are Bournemouth, Blackburn, Barnsley and Derby.

Tactics are tested in holiday mode, three times for each group of teams, with results ranked between all tactics tested. The tactics with smallest sum of ranks is considered the best. For example, below are the results of Blue 3.0, Blue DM and Orange 2CM, with selected cell as the best result.


Changelog
Spoiler

Other Versions
Spoiler White (Reverse) is the same tactic, but mirrored. Not recommended since left footed players are rarer than right footed ones.

Leave a comment below if you liked the tactic and make sure to share your results. Enjoy!
POXZILLA said: Yea, as long as I'm scoring goals I'm happy, but I really love to see my striker top the leaderboard at the end of the season. And that was something I managed to get from your "Orange" tactic. But at the end of the day, your tactics makes my FM experience a joy, so thanks for that : ]

If you want your striker to top the charts, then this tactic won't do. I was going to post an upgrade of Green another day that manages to get lots of goals into the striker, but then someone posted this tactic with almost the same roles and instructions (it uses AF instead). I can still post it there if you wanna use it, even if it won't be tested, but I suppose you can just use that one that was already tested.
Six matches into Sky Bet League Two (so I can skip ten at a time until fourty six matches of the season). My team is again predicted last by a large margin, but promotion should be easier since there are three direct promotions plus one in play offs (lower divisions have one direct plus one in play offs).

I have hired 8 new players, upgraded contract of 14 from last season to full time and sold (loaned out) everyone else. The new squad of 22 players has an annual cost of 586k euros, from ~360k from past season.

Season has been rather good this year. Other than pre-season cash grabbers, I have won all official matches. I'm rotating a lot, with second team playing Carabao Cup and Papa's John Trophy while main team focuses on the league. My initial goal is to earn 282k euros to get a positive balance projection, then I want to use any leftovers to start upgrading my facilities (still everything in the worst quality).

Below are media odds, projection of finances, competitions, schedule, squad and player in best form. Let me know if you want to see the full profile of any player. Tyler Magloire is a beast in speed.


POXZILLA said: So the reason why the same striker(Anthony van den Hurk, Helsingborgs IF in Sweden) managed to score 30+ goals for me on the last patch with a different tactic is just RNG? When I'm playing now, so far, 20 games played(30 in total) he has only scored 9 goals. And I doubt he'll ever get close to over 20 : D I basically got the RNG of a lifetime on my last save? ^_^

Thanks for all the replays explaining tho :) Really appreciated!


It also depends a lot on the tactic. Blue usually divides the goals evenly among strikers, shadow striker and to a lesser degree with all other players. Meanwhile, we have some tactics that just concentrate most goals into a single striker at the front. In the end, team goals count more than individual goals, and points per match matters even more than that.
Markizio said: Your players don't score their chance not because they're still "learning" the tactic but due to many different factors.

Let's say a player has these attributes:

Morale - "Ok"
Conditions - 90%
Decisions - 13
Composure - 13
Finishing - 13

And these attributes values give him scoring chance about 40%



Now imagine, a player has these attributes:

Morale - "Superb"
Conditions - 100%
Decisions - 16
Composure - 16
Finishing - 16

And these attributes values give him scoring chance about 60%


Also, we should take into consideration the opposite GK's "Reflexes" and "One one One"

That's how the game work and if your players don't score their scoring chances then the tactic has nothing to do with it.


The places where strikers shoot from also have some influence. For example, if the striker gets the ball inside the box without any defender nearby, he will have a higher chance to score than shooting from outside the box with a defender between him and the goal.
POXZILLA said:

Not sure where I should be looking, but here is a screenshot of the data hub(I can't afford any performance analyst, so the reports may be a bit inaccurate). But after I posted this I played 5 more games and we started to score some goals. So maybe players are still "learning" the tactic :]


In the right side, you can click "ask for" and write "scoring", then you get a graph like this. In this picture, for example, I'm in the top right even with the weakest team of the league.
Tejash said: Just came across this tactic beating the zaz tactic, wondering if it could be tested

I didn't test it here, but in FM-Base, it was better than mine for underdog team and worse for topdog.
POXZILLA said:
(Skott = Shots, På Mål = On target)
So I'm sure you can guess the result. This is a bit extreme, but most of my games so far end up with me bombarding the opponent's goal(and I guess the stands behind it). What can I do to improve and actually score some goals? I have good strikers for the division I'm playing. In the last patch, I used your Orange tactic with the same team, and my striker banged over 30 goals in the league(30 games)And I have so many matches now where my opponents have 2 shots on target and score 1 or 2 goals. It's really frustrating to draw these games when you are so dominating.


Welcome to FM! I mean, can you post your "scoring" graph from Data Hub? This tactic is usually "high score, clinical shooting", standing in the top right of the scatter graph. If it's not in that area, then there might be a problem with players or bad luck with RNG.
fmfAN said: when I check to see if their accomplished in the role the bar is just empty no green or anything just says awkward :)

I suppose you mean tactical familiarity? Then, you need to put them to train the desired role by right click > train > position/role.
fmfAN said: Yeah I looked at that ZaZ All my midfielders/wingers show nothing no green for the roles for this formation so I guess I need to let them learn the roles or maybe buy new players suited?

Thanks for everything you do Merry Christmas :)


I don't understand what you mean with green for role. If you mean the stars on tactics screen, then check "Role Ability" in the first post. If you mean position rating, then you should make sure they are at least accomplished in their position before they can perform well. If you mean match scores, then it doesn't matter much as long as your team is winning. Just make sure all your players are fast (pace and acceleration).