Four more matches passed. The first match in Vanarama North ended 0-0, but I can't blame a team of youth in their first official league match.
Second match was away from home against a stronger team in Vanarama North, with no time to rest for the next match in FA Cup, against another amateur team at home. Since I really need the money from qualifying in the cup, I decided to play with Light Blue 2.0, to keep my players fresh. Despite the cautious tactic, we managed to score a beautiful goal in the first half and a throw in goal to win 2-0. The result was nice to raise the spirits of my players for the decisive FA Cup match.
In the third match, we faced Radcliffe at home for the FA Cup. Since the team is amateur, we won without much trouble. The referee robbed our opponent by giving us a penalty, then we got two more goals from through balls to win 3-0. Too bad or right winger got injured for over a month.
The last match was against a stronger team at home for Vanarama North. Spirits are sky high and some players are showing signs of tiredness and complacency. My team dominated from start to end, but we only managed to win by a tight 1-0 with another robbed penalty for us. We didn't pay the referee like @ta2199 when he got 7 penalties in a match, but two non existent penalties in a row, in different matches, would still be enough to think something shady is going on behind the curtains. Anyway, used Light Blue 2.0 on second half to hold the result and rest players.
Next match is FA Cup against a team from Vanarama National League, one league above us. We are expected to lose and leave the cup now, but you never know, since we are playing home. To surprise the opponent, I set up some Set Pieces Delivery training this week. Let's hope it we have a good day against them.
All matches can be watched here: Matches The video descriptions being an explanation of what happened during the match, including the reason for team talks, change of tactics or substitutions.
Match was played with Blue 2.0 on first half and Light Blue 2.0 on second half. Since it was 3-0 at half time, three substitutions were made to rotate the squad.
Two goals were scored from through balls while the third was scored from a cross. The team conceded by the end due to an individual mistake, not because of the tactic. If you look at the player (DM, covering while defenders were marking), it clearly moved to the wrong position to intercept the ball, which could have been caused by low stats or by complacency.
No shout was used during the match, but I should have praised when winning. By the end, I complimented the victory since it was the first match. The match was pretty poor, but that's the level of matches in the lower leagues, when stats are all gray.
Next time I will record the match live instead of showing replay. I will upload all matches to youtube, but will link here the interesting ones.
P.S.: I told you Brown-Sterling was a goal scoring machine!
P.S.2: Just managed to loan a goalkeeper, right winger and striker. Before the first match of Vanarama North, media asked me who would be relegated, but I prefer to not comment as that could fuel a team against me later on. My work now is to keep the players relaxed, since it's the first matches, then focused when they start overachieving, since complacency will be an issue. I will come back after 5 or 10 matches with a summary of what happened.
Finally the first official match is coming. In FA Cup,I got an easy draw of Hednesford (amateur team) at home. Since I really need the money and can't afford losing in the first match, I will train Set Pieces Delivery as well as Defensive Shape, Teamwork and Attacking Movement. I also intentionally set the last friendlies to be very easy so my team improves the atmosphere and morale.
For loans, I got a defender, midfielder and left winger, all for free. The other positions wanted me to pay 100% of wage, so I sent them back from trial and got some others from Vanarama National. None of them is good enough for first team, but they are still decent for rotation.
I will record some best moments and show the video here later. I can only hope my team won't get complacent and lose.
P.S.: I changed the tactics to Blue 2.0 and went to the match. For team talk, it's a bit tricky, because you don't want to make your team complacent, so you can't tell them to relax, at the same time that you must calm them down since it's the first match. My approach for that is to tell them to show why they are the favorites, then tell defendes and midfielders that I have faith in them. Highlights soon.
Pitch dimensions were set to maximum allowed. I choose this for two reasons. First, longer pitch means there is more space behind defenders for through balls. Second, broader pitch means defenders are more spaced, allowing my players to move into channels. Since most my goals are from through balls, this is the obvious choice.
Another choice I made was to use the Light Blue 2.0 for matches in pre-season, to avoid injuries. Those matches were also controlled by assistant manager, since I don't like to control friendlies.
Finally, I got rid of all deadwood with transfers or loans and hired some trialists so I have 11 players in my squad. I am now completing my squad with loans from other teams from upper leagues.
The current stats from my team compared to my league are presented below.
I choose young players because they usually have lower wages. I wanted them to be fast to score from through balls and catch when the opponent does the same. High vision allows my players to see opportunities for through balls, but unfortunately they will waste most of those with their low passing. They are also pretty poor in heading, which I tried to balance with some extra height.
For reference, I will show some of the best players from my team, from different positions.
This last one, Brown-Sterling, was in my team from another playthrough, in Sweden. He isn't the best striker in numbers, but his consistency in Sweden made me go for him again. I have high hopes that he will score a lot.
For the media, they don't seem to believe in my team very much, giving me extremely low odds in the season preview.
Time to dig in for 6 loanees for the season, to make a squad of 17 players. One goalkeeper, one left winger, one right winger, one defender, one midfielder and one striker. I will scout them offering 4 weeks trials and will hope to loan for free from upper leagues, before season starts. Wish me luck!
P.S.: In case anyone is curious, my max budget is 240k for wages, zero for transfers. I am currently spending 188k in wages. My projected income is 320k and my projected expenditure is 447k, so I am at a loss of 127k for this year. My rule is to always end the year positive, but it isn't always possible in the first year. I hope I can get some money from the cups.
Starting a new campaign with Leamington, worst team from Vanarama North. The goal is to win the UCL. Tactics used will be Blue 2.0 and Light Blue 2.0 (for resting).
First, let me present the best player:
Anyway, my first steps were setting training intensity to double for rested players, arrange 10 friendlies for income (cancelled the free ones) and hire a new assistant manager and new physios. I also fired my director of football to save money.
I have no scouts and won't hire any since finances are pretty bad, but I checked players interested in transfer and proposed a trial to 30 of them.
For pre-season, my trainings are Endurance/Match Practice on tuesdays and saturdays, and Endurance/Physical on thursday. When official matches start, my trainings are Defensive Shape/Match Practice on tuesday and Attacking Movement/Teamwork on thursday.
I will report interesting developments here, every 5 or 10 matches.
P.S.: During pre-season, a team called Undy invited me for a testimonial match, because some player was retiring. My team made 10 goals against them. Seriously, you shouldn't do that many goals in a celebration match, I feel sorry for the player. Usually you even allow the retiring player to score just so the fans can have a good time...
Milakus said: I think the point of this thread was having a tactic that offers the most effective "conditions" saving mode and something like that is only possible when the intensity bar is in the green zone.
If you need a defensive tactic then it's a different story because a defensive tactic might not be a low intensity tactic.
You can't tag a tactic with the intensity bar in the red zone as a low intensity tactic.
You can't have all at once. Expand
Fair point. Maybe I shouldn't have posted here. I just posted because I was already developing a tactic like that to use when the team has a comfortable lead. I thought "lower intensity than normal" would be enough to make it useful for resting players, for thos interested.
Markizio said: That isn't a low intensity tactic, the intensity bar is red and it isn't even blue or green.
When the intensity bar is red then the tactic still takes a ton of the players conditions.
Low intensity tactic is when the intensity bar is green, and average intensity is when the intensity bar is blue Expand
Low intensity compared to Blue 2.0. My main goal was to concede less goals and keep a similar win ratio, while having as low intensity as possible. That is the most I can go without sacrificing too much in performance. For even lower intensity, you can use the one from Magician.
Added Light Blue 2.0, a tactic to save energy, concede less goals and make less fouls, to be used when you have a comfortable lead (I use when winning by two goals of difference).
Rince said: I would say something like that is a half-measure.
I think having more than two tactics would make things too complicated for many people.
I'm sure you need to keep things as simple as possible.
Everyone just need some defensive tactic with a very low intensity to use when they achieve desirable score in the match and want to kill the game and save the players conditions. Expand
You are comparing apples and oranges. For resting, you can just turn off anything that increases intensity and turn on what decreases it. That's not my goal. I am trying to find the most effective tactic which concedes less goals than Blue 2.0 and has significantly lower intensity. I plan to use it to park the bus and rest players. My goal is not to just rest players, as that is trivial to do and don't need much testing at all.
Rince said: As people say "you can't sit in two chairs with one butt".
You have to choose between two modes: "conditions saving mode" and "extreme effectivity mode"
Sometimes you need the first and sometimes you need the second Expand
Like I said, I am thinking of 3 tactics. Blue 2.0, high performance rest and training mode. Training mode is the one you are talking about, when you have no chance of losing. I am trying to figure out the best tradeoff in the middle ground.
I am actually getting some good results with some variant now, using both stay on feet and waste time often, but keeping high tempo.
P.S.: I often play in lower divisions, with little money to get a large squad, then need to play two matches with one day to rest. I am talking here about the lowest divisions, with semi-professional teams. In that case, you need a balance between performance and resting your players.
Grimlock said: but it should not be as effective as Blue 2.0, you need this tactic when you already have a solid lead in a match and you just want to save the Physical Conditions of your players and "kill" the game. Expand
I want one that I can use when winning 2-0 with 15 min of match, so I can safely change without fear of losing. I can still have another with everything on for when I know I can't lose anymore. I am just trying to find a park the bus and rest with points per match similar to Blue 2.0.
Grimlock said: Why do you need using a different shape? Use the same shape as Blue 2.0 because it's the best shape at the moment, just bring the intensity level into the "green" zone. Expand
I said shape meaning team instructions. I plan to keep the same formation and roles than Blue 2.0. However, I don't think I will be able to bring it to green while achieving close to 100 points in the league with Manchester City, as well as good result with Fulham.
P.S.: Stay on feet also performed worse. However, I will keep one tactic with stay on feet and waste time often to use when the match is already decided.
Grimlock said: Also, it makes sense adding "Stay On Feet" TI if you want to reduce the amount of fouls your players produce and yellow/red cards they receive. Expand
It makes sense. I am running tests for that right now.
My way of testing is like this: I set the tactics for both teams (Manchester City and Fulham) and go in holiday for the season. Repeat it three times and consider the worst result. If the worst result is too different, then I run two more times and pick the second worst. That is to make sure my tactic is consistent.
For theses experiments with lower intensity, I am trying to get a tactic with lower intensity and results as close as possible to Blue 2.0. That would mean the tactic won't increase my chances of losing too much for pulling back.
Right now, the best option is cautious mentality with slow pace down. With that, my worst result had Manchester City with 100 points winning the Champions League. The results make me wonder if Light Blue 2.0 (name I chose for this tactic) is actually as good as Blue 2.0. I wonder if @Zippo would allow one test for this lower intensity tactic, when I figure the best shape for it.
Anyway, waste time often is good when you have a comfortable lead. It will make you concede as much as without the instruction at the cost of scoring less goals. However, scoring less golas can make you lose a match that you normally wouldn't, making it less effective than without wasting time. If you know you won't lose, then it's worth it to keep your players in shape.
I will bring more info when I get the results for stay on feet.
I am testing different things to lower the intensity and concede less goals for ZaZ 2.0, without losing much performance. The plan is to use that when winning to rest players and hold the result, but without risking too much. I suppose the same instructions can also be applied to Phoenix. Right now, I can say changing mentality to cautious and asking goalkeeper to slow pace down are effective measures to reduce intensity and concede less while keeping similar chance to win the match. Lower tempo, lower pressing intensity and deeper pressing line all reduce your chance to win, increasing the likelihood to concede goals. I am currently testing waste time often.
Mark said: @ZaZ A few interesting observations as I drill into the data.
Sides that had a lower number of players in the Squad were either worse off or more variable in their results. Weymouth had the smallest squad with just 16 players when I stopped them recruiting. It would only take a suspension or injury to impact them.
The stats that they all seemed to have that were consistently high for their sides were (in order):
Determination Natural Fitness Work rate Stamina Team work Acceleration
Of these there were 3 that increased in importance as you moved up through the grades ie you needed these to increase as you move through the leagues:
Work rate Stamina Team work Expand
I was thinking of checking team report to see the attributes of each of the ten teams, then list how much % of league average for each attribute. Then I could check what attributes are more important for each strategy.
skywalk3r83 said: What do you do for individual training? Player roles or playing position? General training by assistant? Expand
I do player roles for individual. For general training, I always have Attacking Movement, Defending Movement and Teamwork before every match. Before decisions, I also add Set Pieces Delivery. Other than that, I add Match Practice and Team Bonding for cohesion and happiness, and Recovery to prevent injuries. All the rest is usually optional, like one physical if I have full weak of training, overall or outfield.
Eric said: Usually, when my team leads by 2 goals or more in a match then I go for a very defensive tactic that implies very low tempo and time wasting to save the conditions of my players and I'm sure if you don't do something like that then you'll burn the conditions of your players very fast. Expand
I don't like to do that because I hate when my real team does that, putting the result at risk. But it's probably not a bad choice in game.
Second match was away from home against a stronger team in Vanarama North, with no time to rest for the next match in FA Cup, against another amateur team at home. Since I really need the money from qualifying in the cup, I decided to play with Light Blue 2.0, to keep my players fresh. Despite the cautious tactic, we managed to score a beautiful goal in the first half and a throw in goal to win 2-0. The result was nice to raise the spirits of my players for the decisive FA Cup match.
In the third match, we faced Radcliffe at home for the FA Cup. Since the team is amateur, we won without much trouble. The referee robbed our opponent by giving us a penalty, then we got two more goals from through balls to win 3-0. Too bad or right winger got injured for over a month.
The last match was against a stronger team at home for Vanarama North. Spirits are sky high and some players are showing signs of tiredness and complacency. My team dominated from start to end, but we only managed to win by a tight 1-0 with another robbed penalty for us. We didn't pay the referee like @ta2199 when he got 7 penalties in a match, but two non existent penalties in a row, in different matches, would still be enough to think something shady is going on behind the curtains. Anyway, used Light Blue 2.0 on second half to hold the result and rest players.
Next match is FA Cup against a team from Vanarama National League, one league above us. We are expected to lose and leave the cup now, but you never know, since we are playing home. To surprise the opponent, I set up some Set Pieces Delivery training this week. Let's hope it we have a good day against them.
All matches can be watched here: Matches
The video descriptions being an explanation of what happened during the match, including the reason for team talks, change of tactics or substitutions.
Match was played with Blue 2.0 on first half and Light Blue 2.0 on second half. Since it was 3-0 at half time, three substitutions were made to rotate the squad.
Two goals were scored from through balls while the third was scored from a cross. The team conceded by the end due to an individual mistake, not because of the tactic. If you look at the player (DM, covering while defenders were marking), it clearly moved to the wrong position to intercept the ball, which could have been caused by low stats or by complacency.
No shout was used during the match, but I should have praised when winning. By the end, I complimented the victory since it was the first match. The match was pretty poor, but that's the level of matches in the lower leagues, when stats are all gray.
Next time I will record the match live instead of showing replay. I will upload all matches to youtube, but will link here the interesting ones.
P.S.: I told you Brown-Sterling was a goal scoring machine!
P.S.2: Just managed to loan a goalkeeper, right winger and striker. Before the first match of Vanarama North, media asked me who would be relegated, but I prefer to not comment as that could fuel a team against me later on. My work now is to keep the players relaxed, since it's the first matches, then focused when they start overachieving, since complacency will be an issue. I will come back after 5 or 10 matches with a summary of what happened.
For loans, I got a defender, midfielder and left winger, all for free. The other positions wanted me to pay 100% of wage, so I sent them back from trial and got some others from Vanarama National. None of them is good enough for first team, but they are still decent for rotation.
I will record some best moments and show the video here later. I can only hope my team won't get complacent and lose.
P.S.: I changed the tactics to Blue 2.0 and went to the match. For team talk, it's a bit tricky, because you don't want to make your team complacent, so you can't tell them to relax, at the same time that you must calm them down since it's the first match. My approach for that is to tell them to show why they are the favorites, then tell defendes and midfielders that I have faith in them. Highlights soon.
Another choice I made was to use the Light Blue 2.0 for matches in pre-season, to avoid injuries. Those matches were also controlled by assistant manager, since I don't like to control friendlies.
Finally, I got rid of all deadwood with transfers or loans and hired some trialists so I have 11 players in my squad. I am now completing my squad with loans from other teams from upper leagues.
The current stats from my team compared to my league are presented below.
I choose young players because they usually have lower wages. I wanted them to be fast to score from through balls and catch when the opponent does the same. High vision allows my players to see opportunities for through balls, but unfortunately they will waste most of those with their low passing. They are also pretty poor in heading, which I tried to balance with some extra height.
For reference, I will show some of the best players from my team, from different positions.
This last one, Brown-Sterling, was in my team from another playthrough, in Sweden. He isn't the best striker in numbers, but his consistency in Sweden made me go for him again. I have high hopes that he will score a lot.
For the media, they don't seem to believe in my team very much, giving me extremely low odds in the season preview.
Time to dig in for 6 loanees for the season, to make a squad of 17 players. One goalkeeper, one left winger, one right winger, one defender, one midfielder and one striker. I will scout them offering 4 weeks trials and will hope to loan for free from upper leagues, before season starts. Wish me luck!
P.S.: In case anyone is curious, my max budget is 240k for wages, zero for transfers. I am currently spending 188k in wages. My projected income is 320k and my projected expenditure is 447k, so I am at a loss of 127k for this year. My rule is to always end the year positive, but it isn't always possible in the first year. I hope I can get some money from the cups.
First, let me present the best player:
Anyway, my first steps were setting training intensity to double for rested players, arrange 10 friendlies for income (cancelled the free ones) and hire a new assistant manager and new physios. I also fired my director of football to save money.
I have no scouts and won't hire any since finances are pretty bad, but I checked players interested in transfer and proposed a trial to 30 of them.
For pre-season, my trainings are Endurance/Match Practice on tuesdays and saturdays, and Endurance/Physical on thursday. When official matches start, my trainings are Defensive Shape/Match Practice on tuesday and Attacking Movement/Teamwork on thursday.
I will report interesting developments here, every 5 or 10 matches.
P.S.: During pre-season, a team called Undy invited me for a testimonial match, because some player was retiring. My team made 10 goals against them. Seriously, you shouldn't do that many goals in a celebration match, I feel sorry for the player. Usually you even allow the retiring player to score just so the fans can have a good time...
Have you read yourself?
If you need a defensive tactic then it's a different story because a defensive tactic might not be a low intensity tactic.
You can't tag a tactic with the intensity bar in the red zone as a low intensity tactic.
You can't have all at once.
Fair point. Maybe I shouldn't have posted here. I just posted because I was already developing a tactic like that to use when the team has a comfortable lead. I thought "lower intensity than normal" would be enough to make it useful for resting players, for thos interested.
When the intensity bar is red then the tactic still takes a ton of the players conditions.
Low intensity tactic is when the intensity bar is green, and average intensity is when the intensity bar is blue
Low intensity compared to Blue 2.0. My main goal was to concede less goals and keep a similar win ratio, while having as low intensity as possible. That is the most I can go without sacrificing too much in performance. For even lower intensity, you can use the one from Magician.
I think having more than two tactics would make things too complicated for many people.
I'm sure you need to keep things as simple as possible.
Everyone just need some defensive tactic with a very low intensity to use when they achieve desirable score in the match and want to kill the game and save the players conditions.
You are comparing apples and oranges. For resting, you can just turn off anything that increases intensity and turn on what decreases it. That's not my goal. I am trying to find the most effective tactic which concedes less goals than Blue 2.0 and has significantly lower intensity. I plan to use it to park the bus and rest players. My goal is not to just rest players, as that is trivial to do and don't need much testing at all.
You have to choose between two modes: "conditions saving mode" and "extreme effectivity mode"
Sometimes you need the first and sometimes you need the second
Like I said, I am thinking of 3 tactics. Blue 2.0, high performance rest and training mode. Training mode is the one you are talking about, when you have no chance of losing. I am trying to figure out the best tradeoff in the middle ground.
I am actually getting some good results with some variant now, using both stay on feet and waste time often, but keeping high tempo.
P.S.: I often play in lower divisions, with little money to get a large squad, then need to play two matches with one day to rest. I am talking here about the lowest divisions, with semi-professional teams. In that case, you need a balance between performance and resting your players.
I want one that I can use when winning 2-0 with 15 min of match, so I can safely change without fear of losing. I can still have another with everything on for when I know I can't lose anymore. I am just trying to find a park the bus and rest with points per match similar to Blue 2.0.
I said shape meaning team instructions. I plan to keep the same formation and roles than Blue 2.0. However, I don't think I will be able to bring it to green while achieving close to 100 points in the league with Manchester City, as well as good result with Fulham.
P.S.: Stay on feet also performed worse. However, I will keep one tactic with stay on feet and waste time often to use when the match is already decided.
It makes sense. I am running tests for that right now.
My way of testing is like this: I set the tactics for both teams (Manchester City and Fulham) and go in holiday for the season. Repeat it three times and consider the worst result. If the worst result is too different, then I run two more times and pick the second worst. That is to make sure my tactic is consistent.
For theses experiments with lower intensity, I am trying to get a tactic with lower intensity and results as close as possible to Blue 2.0. That would mean the tactic won't increase my chances of losing too much for pulling back.
Right now, the best option is cautious mentality with slow pace down. With that, my worst result had Manchester City with 100 points winning the Champions League. The results make me wonder if Light Blue 2.0 (name I chose for this tactic) is actually as good as Blue 2.0. I wonder if @Zippo would allow one test for this lower intensity tactic, when I figure the best shape for it.
Anyway, waste time often is good when you have a comfortable lead. It will make you concede as much as without the instruction at the cost of scoring less goals. However, scoring less golas can make you lose a match that you normally wouldn't, making it less effective than without wasting time. If you know you won't lose, then it's worth it to keep your players in shape.
I will bring more info when I get the results for stay on feet.
Sides that had a lower number of players in the Squad were either worse off or more variable in their results. Weymouth had the smallest squad with just 16 players when I stopped them recruiting. It would only take a suspension or injury to impact them.
The stats that they all seemed to have that were consistently high for their sides were (in order):
Determination
Natural Fitness
Work rate
Stamina
Team work
Acceleration
Of these there were 3 that increased in importance as you moved up through the grades ie you needed these to increase as you move through the leagues:
Work rate
Stamina
Team work
I was thinking of checking team report to see the attributes of each of the ten teams, then list how much % of league average for each attribute. Then I could check what attributes are more important for each strategy.
Player roles or playing position?
General training by assistant?
I do player roles for individual. For general training, I always have Attacking Movement, Defending Movement and Teamwork before every match. Before decisions, I also add Set Pieces Delivery. Other than that, I add Match Practice and Team Bonding for cohesion and happiness, and Recovery to prevent injuries. All the rest is usually optional, like one physical if I have full weak of training, overall or outfield.
I don't like to do that because I hate when my real team does that, putting the result at risk. But it's probably not a bad choice in game.