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Tactical Theorems & Frameworks 09
Managerial Type & Mentality Systems
The two primary tactical instructions (mentality and creative freedom) are the most difficult to translate into real world footballing language. It is difficult to imagine a manager specifying exactly how attacking each player should be or how much he is allowed to deviate from managerial instructions to the degree the sliders allow. Such levels of precision have traditionally caused much angst and argument among FM managers and have often been heavily criticised as being too complex. In attempting to unravel these complexities, we’d like to offer a new conceptualisation of these sliders as determining manager type as much as the tactics of the team.
The two polarities of managerial type are the Authoritarian and the Libertarian manager. The Authoritarian determines every aspect of the team’s play and expects each player to follow his instructions to the letter. Mentality structure will be individually tailored to the players and creative freedom will be close to non-existent. The team will play very precise, controlled football with little flair or creativity and heavily rely on set pieces and set moves to score. On the other hand, the Libertarian manager has a rough idea of how attacking or defensive his team should be for each match and gives players their heads. The mentality structure will be very generic and creative freedom will be high. The team will play free-flowing football and goals will come from all types of open-play moves.
As in real life, these two managerial stereotypes, although potentially successful short-term, are likely to fail in the long run as they are too one-dimensional in approach. The overly structured manager can take his highly controlled style of football to the top level but is often too regimented to remain there, with his teams failing to offer enough flair and creativity to break down high-class defences. However, he should be able to keep a poor squad up simply by playing percentage football. The flair and creativity focused manager will do very well with a squad full of players who can operate at the higher end of the divisional level but will fail to bring enough tactical acumen to the table to win really big matches and titles. With a poor squad, he is likely to be an unmitigated disaster, as he will ask his players to do things of which they are not capable.
As with real life managers, the successful FM09 manager will need to learn how to balance a systematic approach to formation structure with a trust in which players can be allowed the creative freedom to express themselves without disrupting his overall tactical vision. Knowing which type of manager you are will then enable you to choose or design a mentality system that best suits your style. Some systems better suit a manager at the Authoritarian end of the scale, as they can do well with restricted creative freedom, whereas others are friendlier to the Libertarian axis, requiring a lot of creativity and flair to flourish.
No matter which one you choose it is likely that they will need to be tweaked further to suit your own playing preference, managerial style and the ability of the individual players at your disposal. You might be an aggressive manager that tries to impose his particular style of play on the opposition and thus veer towards an attacking framework with low creative freedom. You might examine your opponent's strategy in fine detail and assign the majority of players to counter it whilst relying on an elite few to do the creative stuff. There is no 'best way' to play or manage. However, somewhere there will be a style of play that best suits your temperament and vision. Although the full document outlines eight mentality systems, we’ll restrict ourselves to two here, an extremely Authoritarian system in the style of José Mourinho and a slightly freer one in the style of Alex Ferguson.
The Nike Defence
Manager Type: José Mourinho
Although this mentality structure is basically an adaption of the Rule of One (see page 13), it is ideally suited to those that wish to play the Mourinho way. It is exceedingly control-orientated and specifies more individual mentality settings than any other system. It closely mirrors Mourinho's tactics in two ways. Firstly, it employs an athletic covering DC to support a powerful destroyer in the manner of the Carvalho/Terry Chelsea partnership. Secondly, the MCd sits slightly deeper than he would in the Rule of One, which equates to how Mourinho employed Makalele. Like all Rule of One tactics, it suits the Mourinho-type manager as it can do well without excessive creative freedom.
GK: 7
DCd: 6
DC: 8
FB: 10
MCd: 9
ML/R: 11
MCa: 12
FC: 13
Bands of Two
Manager Type: Alex Ferguson
Sir Alex is the first manager that deviates from a very tight control methodology. Manchester Utd's system, most especially in the Queiroz years, operates through four bands of play. While the central defenders are predominantly instructed to defend (unlike when playing for Capello, Ferdinand stays back) the full backs and defensive midfielder offer deep support for the front line alongside their defensive duties. The attacking midfielder and wingers have become virtually interchangeable, switching roles in the high support band, and are usually allowed their creative heads. The final band is the spearhead forward, ideally a complete player who is comfortable playing with the ball at his feet or in the air.
GK: 8
DC: 8
FB: 10
MCd: 10
ML/R: 12
MCa: 12
FC: 14
Tactical Theorems & Frameworks 09
Player Roles & Forward Runs (FWRs)
When assigning forward runs to your players, it is important that you are very clear as to their role in the team. Player roles are defined in the following way:
Defend: The player will focus heavily on defensive duties
Support: The player will perform both defensive and attacking duties
Attack: The player will focus heavily on attacking duties
Asking your players to make forward runs defines how often and by how far they will deviate from the assigned formation position. If a player is told to make Forward Runs Rarely, this translates into the match engine as an instruction to hold his formation position and be ready to cover any counter-attacks. Assigning Forward Runs Mixed translates as instructing him to help out with attacks but not to stray too far from his formation position so he can quickly get back and help out the defence as and when needed. Forward Runs Often tells the player to move into attacking positions as soon as the team has the ball. With the above in mind, forward runs should be applied in the following manner:
• Defend: FWRs Rarely
• Support: FWRs Mixed
• Attack: FWRs Often
To keep things simple, we will restrict early discussion of player roles to the three most basic match strategies, Defensive, Standard and Attacking (see pages 31-32). Every tactic requires enough people defending and enough people attacking to be stable, but attacking flavours require more attackers and, conversely, defensive tactics need more bodies in defence. Hence, roles are assigned in the following manner:
• Defensive: 5 defend, 2 support, 3 attack
• Standard: 3 defend, 4 support, 3 attack
• Attacking: 3 defend, 2 support, 5 attack
Such a system assigns player roles into a basic configuration of 3 Defend, 2 Support and 3 Attack, which repeats through all the match strategies. The manager then decides on which two players he wishes to ‘float’ between the three. These ‘floaters’ will be classed as Defends in Defensive match strategies, Supports in Standard match strategies and Attackers in Attacking match strategies. For most formations (including 5-3-2, 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1 etc.) the likelihood is that these players will be the full backs or wing backs. For systems without full backs, the manager needs to be more creative. Once you’ve identified which players you are going to ‘float’ it becomes simple to scale the instructions and create all three strategic flavours of any tactic.
When assigning these roles, it is important to recognise the forward positions as being attacking by nature. As such, they do not require having FWRs Often/Mixed to be classified as an Attacker/Support. Indeed, assigning FWRs Often to both FCs in a two-forward formation will often lead to their being isolated from the midfield and uninvolved with play. As specified earlier, one FC (FCd) will need to operate in a deeper, support role to link the attack with the midfield, whereas the other (FCa) should be looking to play on the shoulder of the last defender. Correctly assigning their forward runs is fundamental to having your attack operate as a unit:
• The FCd can be classed as attack/support with no/mixed FWRs
• The FCa can be classed as attack with mixed/often FWRs
Tactical Theorems & Frameworks 09
Closing Down
Closing down translates as how quickly and how far a player will leave his defensive position to deal with an attacking threat. Setting it too high throughout the team will lead to defensive structure disintegrating as players chase their opponents all over the pitch. It will also result in a lot of tired legs and defensive errors during the latter stages of a match. Setting it too low will see players backing off and backing off, allowing the opposition time and space to make through passes and set up for shots in dangerous positions.
Generally, closing down will work best if players perform it in relation to their position. Forwards are positioned high up the pitch, so need to close down more aggressively than their defensive counter-parts. Midfielders will be somewhere between the two. With this in mind, it is advisable to use your goalkeeper and central defensive pairing as a base and grade upwards from there. For lower level, poorly conditioned and ill-disciplined squads you should veer towards the lower end of the closing down spectrum. For quality, hard working, fit and disciplined sides, you should veer towards maximum settings.
Using the DC’s mentality as a base (x), closing down should roughly conform to the following minimum to maximum settings:
• GK/DC: x
• FB/WB: x + 1 to x + 4
• DMC/MCd: x + 2 to x + 6
• MCa/AMC/Wingers: x + 3 to x + 8
• FCs: x + 4 to x + 10
As highlighted above, when choosing the correct settings for your team, it is important to recognise whether the closing down structure is too aggressive for the type of football your players, in terms of fitness, tactical discipline and technique, are capable of playing. A key indicator that closing down is too high is seeing your players running around like headless chickens and finishing games in a state of semi-exhaustion. This is likely to be quite common for high pressing tactics in lower level football. If you notice your players, either individually or as a unit, closing down to the extent that your defensive formation shape suffers, reduce individual closing down settings until you are happy with performance. Alternatively, you might decide to play a more cautious game or conserve player energy in easy matches, which will also require the reduction of closing down. The indicator that you have gone too low is seeing the opposition having time and space in front of the back line to pick their through balls and compose themselves to make consistently effective long range shots.
It is also important to recognise the distinct closing down patterns in different footballing cultures, with sides from hotter countries more focused on conserving energy than pressing the opposition at pace. In contrast, colder countries generally employ far higher levels of closing down.
Tactical Theorems & Frameworks 09
Passing Patterns
There are two major areas to be thinking about when setting passing patterns. The first is to make sure each player has plenty of passing options when he is in possession. The second is to think about what type of football you would like your team to play.
Passing Options
At the bare minimum, a player should always be able to look up and see two easy passing options. Ideally, there will be three but this might be difficult to achieve on small pitches, against entrenched defences or under heavy pressure. A common error is to allow a player no obvious forward passing options at all. If you ask a full back to play very short passes to an aggressive midfield, all of whom are looking to get forward at every opportunity, the chances are he will look up and fail to see an obvious pass. He will be able to pass it inside to the DC but that will not initiate an attack and often lead to the back four being put under pressure and being dispossessed by a pressing front line or punting a directionless, long ball to avoid being caught in a dangerous position. Common signs that this is happening are players dawdling on the ball when seemingly under little pressure or seeing a lot of players with short passing instructions banging it long.
Make sure that each defensive player can look up and hit a lateral ball, forward ball and a diagonal ball without too much difficulty. For a player high up the pitch, the forward ball might be very difficult to pick against a packed defence, so he needs to have lateral, diagonal and backwards options, which enable the team to retain possession and look for a new opening. Check on the positioning settings of the players around the passer (mentality and forward runs) and adjust his passing instructions so he can hit passes to any of the required lengths. That might mean giving him longer passing instructions than you would have first expected. Individual player attributes are influential when assigning passing instructions. A player with great passing ability should be able to find some kind of passing option no matter his instructions, as long as his temperament is up to his being able to play his way out of danger. However, someone who struggles to control his passing might be better suited to longer 'clear the ball' instructions so that he doesn't make poor, hurried passes from dangerous positions.
Although all passing systems can and should be tweaked to best suit the players at your disposal, there are two basic passing strategies from which you can build. One is focused on keeping possession, controlling the ball and breaking down the opposition in the final third. The other is more counter-attacking orientated and looks to clear the lines before catching a retreating defence out of position and vulnerable to the quick break.
Possession/Breaking Down the Opposition: Such a system requires a solid base from which to launch attacks. It is the job of the defenders to ensure possession is retained until a chance opens. Hence, defenders and more defensively minded midfielders should be looking to play possession-friendly short passes. The more creative players will be looking to move the opposition about and open up space in the final third. Hence, they will be playing a far more direct game. If they lose the ball and it is cleared, the defence reorganize, reset the base and the move can start again.
Counter-Attacking: This system requires the opposite approach. The defence is expected to be under pressure and its main aim is to clear the lines and, hopefully, initiate a counter while doing so. Hence, defenders’ passing settings will be direct, looking to bypass the midfield and feed the forwards, as a short pass to a deep-lying midfielder can be extremely dangerous if he is immediately closed down and loses possession. Direct passing instructions ensures the whole team is in passing range for an under pressure defender, offering multiple clearance options. The forwards’ job is to try and counter before the opposition gets its defence back into position. Hence, they will be looking to play short passes to their strike partner and supporting midfielders in the hope of quickly working a good through ball opportunity.
The above systems will need to be adapted to pitch size and match strategy. For example, on a smaller pitch, the direct passes of the attacking players might be over hit too often and need to be adjusted accordingly. Likewise, to see out a match with a possession mindset might lead to a manager asking a second central midfielder to play short passes to help with ball retention duties and only having four players probing for space in the final third. With a poor side, both systems may need to be based on longer passing instructions to ensure players aren’t making foolish and easily intercepted passes in dangerous positions.
[ 本帖最后由 Tottiseiya 于 2008-11-12 11:27 编辑 ] |
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发表于 2008-11-12 11:00:36
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