Turning moaning into positive energy

Since the latest patch hit the Live Gameworlds, people have been complaining about the new match engine. Too many injuries, too many red cards, too many yellow cards...

Regardless of the fact wether or not these complaints are actually valid or just the result of poor tactics *cough cough*, these complainers have been rather vocal both inside the Gameworlds, using the discussion mailing list and general mailing list, as well as on the forums, where numerous threads popped up where people either did a rage quit or moaned at the supposedly poor Match Engine.

I'm not a big fan of these negative discussions floating around, as they give off a wrong vibe. It's a very vocal and hardcore minority which finds these changes terribly negative, but the majority of the people will just get on with the game, adapting to the new surroundings and conditions.

FM Live is much like, constantly changing and evolving. Don't resist the changes or try to control every aspect, because that won't work. It will generate stress and anger, which in turn poisons the atmosphere inside a Gameworld. For a game so relient on its community and human interaction, this could be fatal.

Instead, go with the flow and experiment to adapt to the new conditions. Try and see the positive in these new situations. Everyone has to deal with this, so why not ask others how they are handling it and you would be amazed at the amount of tips and pointers you will receive.

In an effort to channel this negative energy into something more positive. People complain about injuries and bookings? So let's give them a challenge where they have to get as many of those as possible, with a competition element added as well.

I've created a sort of CPU challenge, where users take on the environment of the Gameworld, preferably against a side everyone will be able to beat anyway. Instead of focussing on scoring goals, which would favour the stronger sides of the Gameworld, I will let everyone have a go at exactly these points they are complaining about, injuries and bookings.

This is the challenge I have issued to the Gameworld:

MISSION: HIT THEM HARD: your team plays . +1 for every yellow card you get, +2 for a direct red card, +3 for every knock you inflict upon your opponent, +4 for every green injury you inflict upon your opponent and +5 for every red injury you inflict upon your opponent.

Now instead of moaning about the Match Engine, people have banded together and are trying tactics to maximise their amounts of bookings and injuries, in an effort to reach the top score in the Gameworld (which incidentally is 29 points).

This is a two-way street as well. If they know what they have to do to get a lot of cards and injuries, they also know what to do to prevent these things from happening.

Trying to channel moaning and negativity into something more constructive, it really can be this simple.

It's been a while...

I haven't exactly been a very diligent blogger. In fact, I've been rather inconsistent these past few months. Mostly because of a combination of a severe lack of inspiration and other work taking up all my attention.

To get you guys upto speed on my activities lately... I have resumed my community activities and have in fact been promoted to the Support Moderator team to boost the community activities throughout GameWorlds.

I have also managed to secure a position within the faculty of the school I was working, which means I have to devote more time and effort towards my work compared to last year.

What can you expect the next few weeks? I hope to write several blogs in the next few days. Some will deal with the constant moaning in the Live Worlds about how bad the 1.6 patch was, some will deal with how the ME seems to have changed and some will just deal with the topic I am best at; community activities.

I hope you will all stick and have stuck with me, since I know I've been neglecting this blog severely.

What makes FMLive so great

My mates sometimes ask me what's so fun about FM Live. It's not always easy to explain. I think it's the fact that you outsmarted another human being and you can actually rub it in a bit.

Incidentally, I just noticed this chat in Butragueño's DFA.

D1: sunderland sharks 2-0 Jazzy Ginners F.C FT
Liam Ferguson says: (14:24:43)
Noor Sabri - legend
Tom "Metgod" Parkin says: (14:24:58)
shit
Liam Ferguson says: (14:25:17)
he got man of the match in our game he cant be shit ^^
Tom "Metgod" Parkin says: (14:25:19)
RAGE QUIT
Tom "Metgod" Parkin has left the chat
Liam Ferguson:user#500766> says: (14:25:25)
lol
Liam Ferguson says: (14:25:34)
owned

Countering the hordes of 4-3-3 / 4-1-2-3

Whether it is the Lobby, the Tactics chat room or the forums, people are always complaining about other users and the supposed successes they are achieving because of their 4-3-3 / 4-1-2-3 formations.

Basically, the formations looks a bit like this (image is the courtesy of FML-Tactics):

In some cases, the DM (defensive midfielder) is replaced by a regular MC (midfielder central), but this is pretty much how it looks. Depending on if you're facing a classic tactic or one created with the tactics creator, there will be some differences in the definitive setup, but this is the overal look of the thing.

Instruction-wise, these formations have one thing in common. They are ultra-narrow. I mean really narrow. What they rely on, is dominance in the centre of the pitch. Call it a glitch in the Match Engine or whatever, but playing very narrow upfront and in midfield seems to work wonders.

Your own narrow midfielders are perfectly capable of going wide to track an opposing winger, whereas the same winger or midfielder seems unable to cut inside to mark a run of the narrow player.

This generally leads to the three forwards overloading on the two central defenders, because the opposing wingbacks won't cut inside to help their centre-backs, unless you instruct them to man-mark, which most managers don't do by default (the default setting for most wingbacks is zonal).

When you leave a match versus a team like this to your AI, you're pretty much screwed. Your AI won't make the necessary changes and when it does, the other manager can just change his tactic around again and hammer you anyway.

Should you find yourself in a live match versus a 4-3-3 or 4-1-2-3, don't despair. You can beat them. I won't say it'll be easy and it definitely won't be a pretty match to see, but hey, it's not your fault they're all mindless sheep playing the same generic formation someone posted on the forums, right?

Taking in mind I'm using a 4-2-4 formation (basically a 4-4-2 with advanced wingers), this is how I counter the swarm of mindless sheep using the same formation.

First of all, my DR and DL are set to man marking. That doesn't mean just general man marking, but I assign them to a specific opponent. My DR picks up their FLC, whilst my DL picks up their FRC. That should leave my two centre-backs to deal with their remaining central forward.

That isn't enough ofcourse, as your defence will most likely still be spread wider than their offence, meaning your wingbacks still have to cut inside to mark their target, which they are generally not good at.

So the next thing we do, is change our style of play. I generally opt for a counter-attacking match strategy. This automatically narrows the own formation to match that of your opponent sufficiently to allow those wingbacks of yours to pick on those pesky all-speed winger-attackers.

As I said above, the 4-3-3 / 4-1-2-3 sheep usually employ very fast forwards, who can run at your defenders and skip past them. There's not much you can do about that, but you can limit the effective range of these speed demons.

The best way to do that is to use one of the in-game shouts. Tell the team to drop deeper. By dropping back, you effectively decrease the amount of space a forward can run into. More often than not, if a striker does run through your defence, he will find himself in a difficult angle or even running the ball out for a goal-kick.

Setting up your keeper as a sweeper-keeper also tends to help, as he can help sweep up any through-balls or pesky strikers chasing after such a through-ball.

That pretty much sorted out the defensive part of taking care of the mindless drones, but I'm quite sure none of you are satisfied with just keeping them at bay. No, we wish to punish them for their lack of imagination by actually winning the match or at least putting a few goals past them.

So here's what we do. Again, we look to use the in-game shouts. Since your own formation is by default wider than theirs, as you are using at least two wingers or inside forwards, your opponents weakness lies on his wings, where he basically has no players.

Sure, the central players will drop wide to get at your wingers if needed, but that will take time and we're not going to allow them that time. No, we are taking advantage of their Achilles' heel and we are hitting them where it hurts them the most. We're doing this by using the exploit the flanks shout, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Next up is the get the ball forward shout. We don't just want to go wide, we want to go there fast, as we don't want to allow their central midfielders to drop wide and pick up on our runners. So get it out there and get it out there fast.

Last up is the pass into space shout. If your wingers start running with the ball in their feet, they're usually a bit slower, so let's not do that. Since the opposition has no-one directly picking up your wingers, they're going to have a fair amount of space, so let's use that to our advantage. Let the wingers chase after a ball that's not played into their feet.

More often than not, this will draw an opposing wing-back out of position as well, as he will try to intercept. When your winger is fast enough, he will usually skip past this wing-back, which leaves your man on the ball, plus your two regular forwards and other inside forward/winger on the other wing versus three defenders.

Sure, that won't always result in a goal, but in the end, you're always going to put a few of those chances away. Oh by the way, this isn't a 100% guaranteed way to success against a 4-1-2-3 or 4-3-3, but I reckon I've won about 80% of my live matches against one this way.

Stepping Down As Quiz Master

This has probably been a long time coming, but I've decided to stop hosting quizzes in my Live GameWorld, which is currently Nuñez.

The quizzes are supposed to help build community spirit and bring the community together. What I've seen in the last quizzes is something quite the opposite. Several mutes because people wanted to disrupt progress. People ignoring other people's requests and the moderator's requests to play the quiz or leave the chat room.

When you take into account that a sixty minute quiz takes about the same amount of time in terms of preparation, you can see why I'm not in the mood to have it ruined by a few buffoons.

Last night's quiz wasn't even my own, but it was symptomatic to what the community has degenerated into at times. Some random shouts and "humorous" attempts at an answer.

I suppose we have to accept "Abu Hamza" as a valid guess to the question "Who was deemed the Asian Maradonna, before the Iranian government forced him into retirement?"

The same applies to answers regarding Germany, where it's apparently perfectly acceptable to name Hitler or other nazi party members.

Under the new guide-lines, we have to be pretty lenient with that, so we didn't even mute on first offence, but only used this on repeat offenders.

This usually stops the trouble, but the fall-out means we have to deal with adding mod notes to someone's dossier, as well as dealing with the muted user after the quiz.

To be fair here, most acknowledge their mistake and just move on, but there's always one who vehemently protests his treatment and claims victimisation on our part. A bit of a mail contact between me and a user is below:

(User X)

i never swore.. kum is a player ive been offered by jim !!!!!!! i can prove it !!!!! unmute me <:emoticon#67> and i want compensation

--------------------

(Guido)

Mind your language and you wouldn't have been muted in the first place.

--------------------

(User X)

unmute me i was discussing a transfer with jim <:emoticon#3> i dont pay money for you to be an idiot 

It's this general shift in attitude that gets to me, as this attitude is becoming more and more common. You know there's a quiz in place.

Picture the situation if you will. You've been asked several times to discuss your transfer outside the Tactics Chat (which makes sense to begin with, quiz or not). You persist anyway. You get muted and then you proceed to call the moderator in charge an idiot, demand compensation and hurl in some abuse in the Lobby as well?

Oh haha, Guido! Grow a sense of humour. The player is called Kum! That is bloody hilarious.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but when it's clearly disrupting an activity which seems to amuse about twenty or so other managers and you are asked to stop it, why do you insist on continuing?

People seem to enjoy challenging the guys with the badges a bit too much for my liking, as well as trying to get others into trouble or disrupt whatever chat is going on in the GameWorld with inane drivel and spam-like comments.

No more of that for me, please. When running a quiz means we have to have a second moderator tag along to clear the debris and fall-out from users going berserk, I feel we've taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line with our community approach.

It's not cheating if SI don't fix the bug, right?

I think they coded this bug out of existence by now, but the effects can still be noticed in Miller, which is running a follow-up of codes. Basically what happened is this, some users were buying up Returning Stars and waiving them to gain a higher position in next year's draft.

What they did was exploit a small loop-hole in the code. They signed cheap and not very good Returning Stars from teams who were glad to get rid of them for a bit of cash, they kept these players for a few days and they waived them to gain rank in the draft, ending up ahead of genuine new players and the legion of regular restarters we have every season.

This meant for example that a club with a Level 12 reputation was ending up in the list of Reserved Players. These Reserved Players are basically the very best stars returning and they are reserved for a reason. These players are allocated to users who are new to the GameWorld. You could end up with guys like Pato, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Xavi for example.

Our exploiting friend ended up in this list three seasons in a row. Even after the bug was fixed, he still ended up there, presumably because he waived so many Returning Stars before that he lodged himself into the top 20 of the draft for some time to come.

Despite this being an exploit, it isn't entirely a bad thing. After all, the nature of beta is that you try to fix bug like this one and the only way to know that they are there is to try and see if you can bend the system in a way it wasn't designed. Naturally, your obligations as a tester would require you to actually log such attempts if successful, so that the development team can fix it.

For example, about nine months ago, I discovered an exploit where it was possible to invite CPU clubs into competitions with prize money and basically hammer them into oblivion whilst gaining money at the same time. It was basically the ultimate DYM, when properly ran, you could potentially make 450k profit pro half hour by hammering a single CPU club. Not a bad deal I would say.

Naturally, I logged this bug with the development team when I noticed it was working and it is now no longer possible to use this exploit to boost your club's finances. I did what any good beta tester would do when he discovers an exploit, I logged it and provided the developers with a load of evidence of what I did exactly so they could fix it. As a sort of reward, I got to keep the 200k I made with these competitions, as I had ran them in a small scale form

Unfortunately, our exploiting buddy I mentioned earlier did no such thing. He didn't report the bug on the forums, he didn't flag it in-game, he kept it quiet and continued to exploit it for about two to three seasons. By that time, we as a moderator team had noticed him climbing the ranks of the draft in an odd way, but we needed the time to gather evidence of what he had done exactly before we finally logged the bug. At around the same time, a regular user also flagged this on the forums.

So, what do you do as a moderator in such a case after the bug is flagged? We looked into the situation and because the exploit was never flagged by said user, we issued a warning and took his Returning Stars allocation for that season, hoping that would fix the situation.

Next season, he ended up in the top 20 of the draft again, so naturally we repeated the process, which apparently angered said manager. He was furious at the moderator team for taking his Returning Star again, as he failed to see that he was still benefitting from his exploiting efforts several months before.

He failed to see the causality between waiving a bunch of Returning Stars and climbing the ranks when he shouldn't have been able to and him ending up in the top 20 of the draft, above genuine newcomers from Beta Coppell, so he vehemently protested what we were doing, claiming it wasn't a cheat if SI didn't fix the bug.

That brings me to a rather interesting point and a flaw in his logic. How can they even know there's a bug if you didn't report it? You are saying you're not cheating because they never fixed a loophole you didn't report in the first place. Am I the only one who thinks this is weird?

Observations From A Potential Client

Much like myself, my younger brother has been an avid fan of the Championship Manager series and the subsequent Football Manager series. He has never ever played FM Live though, not until recently anyway, when he spent the at my place and watched me play FM Live for a bit and eventually had a go at playing a few friendlies with my team as well.

Naturally, he had a few things to say about the game and I feel that some of his observations make sense and are worth mentioning in this blog, and probably towards SI as well.

He immensely enjoyed the fantasy football aspect of FM Live. A chance to build a team from scratch and just use your nouse and instinct to work the market and tactics to achieve success. He thoroughly enjoyed browsing the database and checking how the game rated his favorite real-life players.

Whilst he saw the advantages of Returning Stars, especially for newcomers, he wasn't a big fan of this feature. In his opinion (and my own), retired players should stay retired. He proposed offering the Returning Stars system in combination with Youth Academies. All the graduates would be tossed in a large pool, the worse clubs get first pickings.

Youth Academies were a nice idea, or so he thought initially. When browsing the market for free transfer youths, he noticed there were hardly any and the ones that were there had been dumped by the larger clubs. I explained that the great number of academies meant that there were less players generated for the free market. He replied that this would mean that academies were the only viable alternative for long term planning regarding a youth team, in which case academies should be scrapped, since it's basically forcing the users to play the game in a certain way. As an alternative, he mentioned the drafts.

The last of his key issues was related to the time it took to build a successful team. My team is a Level 17 club, so he understood I had a pretty good team going. With him being less patient, he was afraid that if he didn't achieve success within the first three to five seasons, he might lose interest and stop playing.

According to him, (some, if not a majority of) people buy computer games because they want something to win at. He acknowledged that FML has no win button so if there was not enough success, he would quit. We have seen this in the post-reset GameWorlds, where hundreds left because they can't hack it.

So there you have it, the views of someone who never played the game before... Which conclusions should be drawn from this? Maybe I'll get back to you on that a bit later.

Why Can't I Get This Idea To Work?!

Okay, I'm trying something here and I can't get it to work... This is basically what I have in mind, tactically speaking. For the past two seasons, Barcelona have employed a formation where the deepest midfield player (either Yaya Toure or Sergio Busquets) drops into the centre of defence. The two centre-backs, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol, will spread into extremely wide positions whilst Barcelona are in possession, almost on the touchlines. This spreading allows the wing-backs Dani Alves and Maxwell to bomb forward without fear of leaving the defence completely exposed.

The problem with attacking wing-backs is that they are never completely free to attack, they are always concerned about their defensive responsibilities. When I can create a more reliable and sturdy three-man defence, they could get to the opposition byline without leaving a huge hole at the back.

A big part in these bombing forward runs is the role of the wide players on my team. Rather than stay wide (which would hamper the ability of the wing-backs to get forward), they narrow, drifting into the box and almost a conventional front three with the central forward. This has the effect of narrowing the opposition defence, as their natural markers follow them into the centre.

Basically, I am combining the inside forward idea with more attacking wing-backs, as the inside movement of the wingers opens up a huge amount of space on the flanks, ready for the wing-backs to run into and exploit.

Apart from the regular problems the inside forwards present to any defence, the opponents wide midfield players are suddenly charged with an almost solely defensive job. When my wing-backs get to the byline and the opposing wide midfielders track them all the way, my opponent will end up with something approaching a flat back six, which means there is now space in midfield to exploit.

Intelligent movement as the key to unlocking an opponents defences. Intelligent movement, as stated earlier, implies position switching, which in turn means that players will often end up finishing an attacking move in a different position to which they started this attacking move, in an effort to exploit the gaps in defence created by other people's movement.

The only problem is that I can't get the bloody defensive midfielder to drop into or even right in front of defence. It keeps looking like a fucking pyramid with two at the back in a narrowish formation and one in front of those two.

This is a problem because the defence is too narrow, particularly if the opposing striker is or opposing strikers are faster than the defenders and able to move wide before outpacing tjheir marker to the ball. Add to that the fact that every team has at least one of these speedfreak forwards, and you can see the problem I am faced with.

Soooo... to cut a long story short, any ideas on how to bloody fix this?

The Come-Back Of The Inside Forward

This season in real life could very well mark the end of the traditional centre forward as we know him from the past as a traditional goal-scorer, as this central forward is being replaced by a new role, that of the old inside forward.

The winger as an inside forward, drifting into the penalty area from the wing to provide assists or score goals. It is a role which is becoming more and more popular in modern football. Just look at some of the teams in the semi-finals of this year’s Champions League. Lionel Messi and Arjen Robben are prime examples, whereas Cristiano Ronaldo holds a similar role at Madrid and used to hold this role for Man Utd.

Sir Alex Ferguson was last season quoted saying: "When forwards attack from wide to inside, they are far more dangerous," Ferguson explained. "It's funny when I see centre-forwards starting off in the middle against their markers and then going away from goal. Strikers going inside are far more dangerous, I think. When Henry played as a striker, and sometimes when Wayne does, they try to escape and create space by drifting from the centre to wide positions, when that actually makes them less dangerous." (source: The Guardian)

We’re basically noticing a shift away from central forwards who are supposed to score the goals. The stereotypical strikers such as Gabriel Batistuta and Ronaldo are being replaced by a new breed of goal-scorer. When we look at the last two World Footballers of the Year, we notice these have been primarily wide players who cut inside and score many goals, exploiting the space made by the central forwards moving around and luring defenders away as well.


Intelligent movement upfront has become the key to unlocking an opponents defences. Intelligent movement implies position switching, which in turn means that players will often end up finishing an attacking move in a different position to which they started this attacking move, in an effort to exploit the gaps in defence created by other people's movement.


These movements cause problems for a defence because the responsibility for marking the runner shifts between players. When a winger drifts into the centre of the pitch, the wingback is forced to make a choice. If he leaves his position to follow his marker, he leaves a lot of space on the wing, which happened to Lyon against Bayern.

With Ribéry (initially anyway) and Robben drifting into the centre, their opponents were forced to follow, leaving the Bayern wingbacks Contento and Lahm with a lot of space in the backs of the Lyon midfielders Delgado and Ederson. Philipp Lahm especially excelled in this role, as Lyon chose to focus on Arjen Robben, leaving Lahm with a lot of space to run into, which he frequently did.

Should the wingback decide to remain in his position, he creates a new problem, as the centre-backs run the risk of being out-numbered. In sticking to the Bayern vs Lyon game, I am going to sketch a possible scenario now.

If Cissokho and Reveillere had decided to remain stationary instead of following their markers, the Lyon centre-backs Cris and Toulalan would have to face not only Olic and Müller, but potentially one or two of the wingers as well, creating a numerical advantage for the forwards.

Thus, if the defensive responsibilities for picking up on moving forwards are not managed properly, the inside forward will find himself in acres of space, which leaves him more opportunity to assist the strikers or score himself.


So basically, when an inside forward such as Robben or Messi drifts inside, he creates confusion as the responsibility for marking him shifts from the full back or the side midfielder to the centre back. Not only does this create space in the “hole”, it also creates space in the “channel” between wing back and centre-back. With much more communication needed in the opposition defence, a good inside forward on the wing can create so much space for his team mates as he drags players out of position from all over the field.


The inside forward often starts wide, meaning the opposing team's wingback assumes he is the player he should be picking up. But then, the winger starts drifting inside, which means the opposing teams wing-back usually tracks him into the centre, which in turn opens up space for a deep-lying forward (such as for example Thomas Müller or Zlatan Ibrahimovic) on the flank to exploit with either a cross or a through ball.


In other variations, we have seen the deep-lying forward (again, Ibrahimovic or Müller for example) dropping into the gap between defence and midfield, luring his defender along, which leaves a gap in the centre of defence. A well placed through ball means either space for the second striker or for the inside forward drifting inside to pounce upon, as Arsenal fans can probably remember when Vermaelen was lured out of position as few times.

It’s not just in the Champions League where these inside forwards are gaining in popularity and impact. In Italy for example, Antonio di Natale is topping the goal-scoring chart, whereas in Holland, Bryan Ruiz and Luis Suarez are fighting for the top goal-scorer crown. All these players are mostly forwards who start on the flank and drift inside.

It should be very interesting indeed to see if the World Cup this summer catches up with this trend from club football and if this trend continues into next season. That the inside forward is highly effective in FM and FM Live is something I have been well aware of for a while now.

Guest Entry; A game world is more than just a collection of teams and FAs

Not my own work this time but something another manager and regular reader of my blog wrote. I like it, so it's getting its own spot on here, because D. doesn't have her own blog.

Well it deserves the name "world". It is full of personalities, has its own economy with booms and recessions, and has its own evolutionary trends. By this I am of course referring to tactics.

A man who started his career as a clerk in a patent office went on to theorize, "For every action, there is an opposite and equal re-action". He later went on to patent Einstein's theory of relativity. I would like to suggest that "For every tactic, there is an opposite and equal counter-tactic". In application of such a theory you will elicit far more benefits than you first imagine. It is about more than simply defeating the latest "super-tactic" or countering the latest corner "exploit". Let me explain what I have been noticing...  

The latest "super-tactic" is the narrow 4-3-3. It is tantamount to what I've heard is known as "Kevin Keegen soccer". You score, 3, we'll score 4. And it works. The working of such a tactic is beyond the scope of this blog, but there are plenty of posts out there explaining how it works. People have been embracing this religion of narrow 4-3-3 and dumping world class wingers onto the market place as they have no need for them, often going for half MV! Whilst pacey strikers (as called for by the use of 4-3-3 narrow) have seen their MVs rocket up!

So, what did I do? I decided to develop a counter tactic for this 4-3-3 narrow formation employing wingers to specifically mark the opposing FBs, and using a single big TM up front and flood the midfield a DM/CM and two supporting AMC's for the TM. And my tactic works. I came from mid table obscurity in my league which I had just been newly promoted to, to winning it in the last third of the season. I made a ton of cash selling a pacey striker, and paid peanuts for a couple of wingers as the MP was flooded with them. And the best bit was, as popularity in narrow 4-3-3 grew, my advantage grew further as I came up against more 4-3-3 narrow teams and turned what might have been draws against higher rep stronger opposition teams into wins and took the title.

Investing time alone into FML by searching out the latest super tactic or corner exploit and applying it correctly will bring you some short term success against teams with managers who are less active and don't keep up with the tactical trends. You're 1 or 2 steps ahead of them and you will bag the points. However, it is not a recipe for long term success. Especially if you end up reshaping your squad each time you change your tactics. You sell your unwanted players at below MV, and pay way over the odds for the required players. Supply and demand. It's simple economics and you don't have to be Adam Smith to work that one out. So you are left with no money to invest in infrastructure which is key to the long term success in FML.

I prefer to take a leaf from Darwin's book. He theorized that "It is not the strongest who survive, but those with the ability to best adapt to change in their environment". Evolution. Our environment is our game world. To be the strongest and survive using narrow 4-3-3 you have to buy the best 3 pacey strikers and best 3 ball playing MCs. In other words, be better than the other 4-3-3 narrow teams out there by having better players! That will not be cheap! You are fighting for the same limited resources everyone else is. Instead, adapt to your environment, don't join the flock in going narrow 4-3-3, find the equal and opposite counter-tactic. Do this by finding a CPU team that plays this way and practicing against them and gradually over the course of maybe 15 - 20 games develop a tactic. Whilst developing it, look at the changing trends in the MP and see what you notice. In the case of narrow 4-3-3, all the wingers going for half MV... could you somehow employ these guys in your counter tactics to your advantage? (remember the specific marking of the opposing 4-3-3 fullbacks whilst running rampage down the wing using "hug the line" instruction?)...

My results speak for themselves. I have been in Miller for three seasons, won three consecutive promotions, two of those as league champions. Cup semi finalist on two occasions where I dumped out much higher rep teams along the way and last week i won the most recent CPU vs Human tournament. I have a very healthy 28 day financial projection, great youthful players with huge potential as well as current ability, and a stadium with 4 two tier Opstilla II stands with exclisiff boxes raking in the money. All in 3 seasons by adapting to my environment.

In conclusion, monitor and adapt to your FML environment, and you will not only win on the pitch, but you will conquer the transfer market, be financially sound as this will allow you to invest in the long term future of your club with infrastructure, and you will have money to pay for higher wages and buy better players. In short, whilst the other clubs that followed the latest super tactic pay over the odds for players in short supply and offer ridiculous wages for them in auctions, and eventually go into administration and start again... you will not only survive, you will grow and prosper in your FML game world. 

There Is A Reason Default Tactics Are Not Flawless...

Call it repetitive if you will, but lately I've noticed a lot of people are complaining about the tactical aspect of FM Live. On the one hand, people want to stop so-called supertactics, the very effective tactics which use and abuse the weaknesses in the Match Engine to get good results and require very little editing pro match. On the other hand however, they are asking SI to upgrade the default tactics. That seems a bit odd to me.

This isn't going to be a very long post, just one where I wonder where this contradiction in terms comes from. On the one hand, people want to stop the supertactics to create a more level playing field. Certain formations were supposedly overpowered (remember the big 4-6-0 drama and in Beta, similar discussions were had about the 4-3-3 with 3 central forwards formation) and people were branded as exploiters or even cheaters. On the other hand, the default tactics should be better to counter these so-called ME exploits or super tactics.

These requests seem contradictory to each other. Either you want total freedom, which means very basic default tactics in which people have to think for themselves and edit it, or you want a totally restricted tactical system, where everyone who creates a tactic that requires an opponent to switch things around and actually think about what to do next (GOOD HEAVENS!!!) is branded an exploiter.

Can you tell I'm trying to take the piss? Seriously, are we going to remove all tactical freedom from the game because a few muppets are too stupid to counter specific formations? Surely not?

We're Catering For Idiots...

Honestly, we really are listening too much to some of the idiots that populate the forums. I know, that's not a nice thing to say about people who are paying customers of the company that asks me to moderate one of its GameWorlds, but it's a fact, it really is. 

Take this specific thread for instance. People are, as always, bitching about Set Pieces. Some guy had a player who scored 3 past them. Now instead of looking as to why this may have happened, they rush off to the forums to have a whinge. In the most positive circumstances, they try again a few times before running off to the forums, but they always end up on the forums, complaining about the state of the Match Engine and how badly designed the game is, not to mention the fact that this "bug" is totally ruining their experience and they are considering cancelling their subscription.

Did I miss anything there? Does that summarise the thread accurately? I think I got it pretty much right there... It's this attitude that has been the downfall of the previous GameWorlds (pre-Reset) and if we're not careful, it will be the downfall of the new series of GameWorlds, which could usher in the end of the game itsself.

I mean seriously, before you point the finger towards the Match Engine, have you ever stood still to consider that maybe, just maybe, you, the human manager, have made a mistake? Poor tactics perhaps? If you know someone is having their strong headers attack the far post, it may just be a good idea to put your best headers on the far post as well...

Alternatively, when they actually do this, they are expecting their 15 jumping, 15 heading, 1.80 tall defenders to beat a 1.85 tall forward with 18 for jumping and 18 for heading. Granted, the defender will win some duels in the air because of better positioning or maybe a poor cross, but he is bound to lose a fair few as well, which could just lead to goals being conceded. 

Bug in the match engine, or unrealistic expectations from the human manager? According to some of the forum members whose posts I've recently had the "pleasure" of trawling through, that's a bug. Then again, their supposedly superior team not winning every match is a bug according to them, so I guess there's just no pleasing some people.

Still, if these whingers and complainers have it their way, the games default tactics should be enough to be successful (in their minds anyway...), but is this not punishing the managers who actually think their tactics through? People who are thinking outside the box in an effort to create new opportunities for themselves. Do we really want to punish these people for being creative by taking away every new option they find?

Making good tactics which people cannot counter immediately is an exploit or bug? Making people actually think about their tactics and not just going with some default system is an exploit or bug?

Surely people can ask in the Tactics Chat or on the forum how to combat this specific setup if they're too lazy to use their own mind or simply lack the know-how regarding the FML engine?

Those who cannot counter a specific setup or tactic should not immediately cry out that it is overpowered, a bug or an exploit, but they should lower their expectations a bit, look at themselves properly and ask around on how to combat a certain setup, before they go off on a rant.

It's these complainers who are giving the game a bad name, not to mention the fact that their "toys-out-of-the-pram" approach to matters actually seems to be successful. If you're vocal enough about your complaints, even if they really aren't that valid, you are listened to and sometimes, if enough people complain about something they are too lazy to change (read: not divert from default settings), it gets changed for them. 

Honestly, that's plain wrong. This is a game for managers, not click and drag monkeys who are not capable of analysing a game and trying to learn from their mistakes. Make a new game for these people, called Football Win Live. They get a chat room, a team and one button. Press the button and you win, regardless of who you're playing. That should keep these guys happy for a while...

I do realise that I am generalising and maybe portraying certain things a bit extreme, but I have noticed a tendency to give in to people who are complaining about little things that are not the games fault, but their own. As stated before, that's just wrong. I do realise that I am what you might call a hardcore gamer and that the game should cater for the more casual gamers as well, but surely it shouldn't be pampering them upto a point where it no longer pays off to invest a lot of time into the game?

They Said It Never Happens In Real Life

I know this game is more static than real life and poor settings are not always easily repaired within a match, but was the outside area corner routine really that unrealistic. You all seemed to think so. I disagree, and so does a certain mister Arjen Robben.



Yes, this post is all about shameless gloating and telling you I was right. It isn't unrealistic at all and it can be done. Ha!

Why I Dislike Returning Stars

Honestly, I know it will sound like I am whinging and complaining, and maybe I am a bit, but I'm just not a fan of the Returning Stars concept. The reason behind this is simple, I prefer players to stay retired. I have sort of emotional connections with certain players, some of which I have have had in my team for most of their career. I feel connected to these players and it hurts me to see them with another manager, especially if he's some inactive AI drone sitting in a bottom tier of the CFA someplace.

Incidentally, I do understand the concept of these Returning Stars and the reasoning behind the draft system. I even agree that the less fortunate managers in a GameWorld should receive some sort of seasonal boost, to try and close the gap a bit. The point is, I just don't like the fact that formerly retired players are used for this.

I would like to propose an alternative to the Returning Stars draft at the end of a season. Instead of making it a draft of returning formerly retired players, make it more like the MLS drafts, where young players, upcoming talents are drafted into the squads. The teams that have performed the worst are allocated the best youths, whereas the better teams get the worse youths.

The benefit of this system is, in my eyes anyway, that retired players stay retired. If you don't like the concept of players retiring and being removed from your game, don't play games such as FM 2010 or FM Live. Players retire, deal with it. Don't bring them back to have them sit at some AI drone and smudge their reputation they have built up within a GameWorld.

Seriously, sometimes it pains me to see which kind of players are wasting away at the AI drones in CFA and CIFA in Miller. Just a quick look at the players wasting away at AI drones. Michael Ballack, Thomas Kahlenberg, Carlos Vela, Marek Hamsik, Serdar Tasci, Younes Kaboul, André-Pierre Gignac, Arjen Robben, Edu, Raul Garcia and many, many more.

Replace these big names with young talents and at least you won't be tarnishing the players reputation and you won't reward these managers for being crap AI drones. In order to make something of these youths, they will have to actively develop them or if they're looking for a quick fix, they can sell them.

Pretty please, can you make it so SI?

Height Is No Longer Cosmetic

FM has for many years taken the approach that the Jumping attribute was based on HEIGHT + JUMPING. Beyond this Height had ZERO bearing on anything whatsoever. The leaden footed Peter Crouch has Jumping ~20 because of his tallness, the much springier Michael Owen has Jumping ~10 because of his shortness. Crouch wins the header of course.

The Jumping attribute was how high a player's HEAD gets. The Match Engine compared the two Jumping attributes and job done.

Hidden away in the release notes for the Match Engine upgrade it now says that the Jumping attribute is based solely on JUMPING. The leaden footed Peter Crouch would have Jumping ~5, the much springier Michael Owen would have Jumping ~15. Crouch still wins the header though because his Height is factored in by the ME.

As the stated above, and I am now quoting Marc Vaughan, jumping does NOT mean physically how many inches a player can jump - it is an indication of the height a player can reach while jumping, hence height is a large factor in this.

If you doubt this then consider the following - you're 1.60 tall, I'm 2 metres tall ... chances of you being able to jump heigher than me are pretty darn slim.

Even if I have absolutely NO jumping ability and can get barely 10 centimetres off the floor you'd still have to jump 40 centimetres in order to match my natural height advantage.

As such considering that 'jumping' is an indication of how high a player can jump in the game and as such has a factor of height in it I don't think its unreasonable to indicate what I did.

Obviously you can get short players in the game with reasonable jumping (ie. Mr. Owen - 1.80 & 9 jumping) and tall players who can't jump (ie. me in a previous game - 2 metres & 9 jumping ). But if both players are good jumpers than obviously the taller one will have a natural advantage (hence 20 jumping isn't likely to be held by a 1.60 tall player).

So in short, the Jumping attribute is now how high a player's FEET get. The ME combines the Jumping attribute with the player's Height and compares the two results, which is a significant change! As people have questionned earlier, how is this going to be reflected in the Jumping attributes of existing players? To reflect the new ME Crouch should have his Jumping adjusted down to ~5 (well, a fairly low figure - certainly not 20) and Owen should have his adjusted up.

Basically, if a ball is played to your 1.95 tall striker that is 1.90 off the ground then the striker can head the ball without jumping. The 1.85 defender will need to jump to reach this ball so his jumping skill comes into play. The player that does not need to jump will have the advantage in this case as he will not be affected by penalties to strength, agility etc.

If the ball is played higher than 1.95 off the ground then they both need to jump. In this case the player with the highest jumping would have advange (other secondary skills used in the calculation would include strength, determination, agility, positioning etc)

In short, your small DC with high jumping would generally be okay unless he comes up against a giant with good aerial and secondary skills.

My 4-4-2 / 4-2-4 Hybrid; An Alternative To The Ultra-Narrow Formations

The last week or so, I have been trying to come up with a way to counter the ultra-narrow formations dominating the GameWorld, without backing away from the formations and style of play I have been using since day 1. After an initial dramatic dip in form, I think I have now found a way to deal with the ultra-narrow formations, without abandoning my traditions.

These ultra-narrow formations rely on the fact that their central midfielders will drop wide to mark your own wide players, whilst forming a compact block defensively. Alternatively, when such a narrow formation attacks, the wide players of your own team seem very inept at picking up the narrow players moving out to the flanks from the middle on.

I have now found a way to make my 4-2-4 work against these narrow formations. Yes, I admit I have narrowed my formation a bit to bolster my defence, but I also re-distributed the roles within the team. Instead of two inside forwards, I am now only using an inside forward on the right and an actual winger on the left. Upfront, I am using a Trequartista on the right and a Targetman in the centre. In midfield, I am using an attacking deep-lying playmaker and a defensive ball-winning midfielders. At the back, there are two man-markers and two wing-backs in front of a sweeper keeper.

It works like this. At both ends of the pitch, the team’s shape adapts and evolves when in possession to expand the pitch and to create space for their flair players. In defence, the defensive midfielder Cleverley drops in as a centre-half to allow the actual centre-backs Miguel Ferreira and Samba Sylla to spread the width of the pitch, allowing Claudino and Jovanovic as wing-backs to venture forward.

The main effect of this is that is suddenly transfers a huge defensive responsibility onto the two opposition wide midfielders. When you're fielding a narrow formation, your main attacking threat was coming from the wings. My strategy meant it was very difficult for the opposition's wide players to track my wing-backs and then have the energy to attack them at pace. Many opposing wingers looked exhausted by the end of a game.

Upfront, the main movement was the combination of right winger David Hall and trequartista Ivan on the right-hand side. Hall starts wide, meaning the opposing team's wingback assumes he is the player he should be picking up. But then Hall starts drifting inside, which means the opposing teams wing-back usually tracks him into the centre, which in turn opens up space for Ivan on the right-hand flank.

Why Pace Is Such An Important Factor In Youth Development

In the past ten years, pace has become arguably the most important quality for young footballers in real life. FM Live tends to mimic this development, as pace is becoming more and more important. In fact, it's one of the key attributes the best teams scout for.

The reason for this probably lies in the increasing tendency for teams to play on the counter-attack, which means a fair amount of pace if a necessity to exploit the space the other teams are leaving going forward. It makes sense too, when you draw the opposition onto you, space opens up at their back for you to exploit, which works best if your players are fast and able to break away quickly.

The nature of modern football has meant that counter-attacking has become a major feature of almost every top club in Europe, and pace obviously plays a key role in this. The players on the pitch are more technically gifted players, matches are played on mostly pristine pitches perfect for passing on, and defenders are less able to escape bookings for cynical fouls. It even makes sense that teams are utilising a more conservative approach.

I picked up a nice comparison in regards to this topic on Zonal Marking, which I have quoted below.

The Arsenal side of seventy years later offers a good comparison. Theo Walcott versus Sebastian Larsson. Who is the better player on the ball? Walcott is a good dribbler; Larsson is more able to pick out an intelligent pass. But because Theo Walcott can sprint 100m in eleven seconds, and Larsson is quite sluggish (by Premiership standards), Walcott has been given four seasons’ worth of opportunities to impressin the Arsenal first team, whilst Larsson was discarded after only three league appearances, with an Arsenal coach hinting at the time that Larsson’s lack of pace made him incompatible with Arsenal’s system.

Take away the issue of pace, and there’s not that much difference in ability between the two. Indeed, it could be said that Walcott relies on his pace as much as any Premiership footballer today – Pete Gill at Football365 (perhaps slightly harshly) commented in the wake of Arsenal’s 0-3 defeat to Chelsea, ‘It’s just incredible that a football player of Theo Walcott’s stature has so little football talent. But for his pace he wouldn’t be a professional player. He has nothing else.’ Walcott’s own father puts it more politely, saying that ‘pace has been his killer edge over others’. But of course, you can’t take away the issue of pace, which is why Larsson is now at a mid-table club, and Walcott remains challenging at the top of the league.

Basically, for those of you complaining that it is not realistic that pace is so important in a player, give your head a wobble and try to actually watch real life football once in a while. Pace may not be the most important asset a youngster can have, but it certainly helps if you manage to snap up some pacey players to nurture and develop.

Sun Tzu's Art of (Football) War

Twenty-five centuries ago an extraordinary Chinese philosopher and general named Sun Tzu wrote a short work regarding his strategies regarding matters such as tactics, terrain, and manoeuvring. The work was aptly dubbed The Art of War.

Observing the precepts of this great work Sun Tzu and the armies he commanded prevailed for decades over their ancestral enemies. More than two millennia later, another famous general reportedly also used the principles described in the book. Napoleon is reputed to have waged his successful campaigns in Europe with Sun Tzu’s book in hand, only to fall to defeat when he failed to follow the principles of The Art of War.

Even in these modern days, the book remains the object of study by military commanders world-wide. For example, the American general Schwarzkopf may not acknowledge Sun Tzu as the inspiration behind the military operation he led during the First Gulf War; however the tactics he employed, which so emphasized surveillance, communications, mobility, and deception, appear directly drawn from The Art of War.

The Art of War has been applied to many fields well outside of the military. Much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle: it gives tips on how to outsmart one's opponent so that physical battle is not necessary. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.

The book highlights the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. Sun Tzu thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a changing environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.

If this is all sounded way too abstract for your liking and you do not recognise managerial schemes in the competing plans and the changing environment does not equal a football match for you, maybe the next quote will help. Dutch manager Rinus Michels was once quoted saying something which roughly translates as: “Professional football is something like war. Whoever behaves too properly is lost.”

So if football is a bit like war, the principles of war could apply to it. And if you take a football management simulation, which is supposed to simulate actual football, surely you can use these principles here in two-fold? For starters, because the concepts can apply directly to football and secondly, because these concepts are used by all sorts of managers and generals, so why not a football (simulation) manager?

New FA's Post Reset; A Sceptical Note

In Miller, we're currently working with the guide-lines for post-reset FA organising. We're not running all the FA's the Live worlds will get to see, but we're seeing enough of it to base an opinion plus we get the chance to test the new organising guide-lines. I have to say, I am a bit skeptical regarding some points.

The first point is league size, which is now becoming fluent instead of static. This basically means that if teams are moved INTO an FA, the tiers are expanded if necessary to accommodate them at the correct level. Promotions and relegations will be adjusted for the following season to compensate. Alternatively, it also means that if teams are removed due to inactivity or violating AI rules, no extra teams are going up.

I can definitely see the aims of this particular rule. If you don't deserve promotion, you are not forced to punch above your weight in a higher tier, simply because the FA has to make up the numbers. It also means that FA hoppers do not get an easy ride for the first (few) season(s) because they have to start at the bottom.

It also means that in some tiers in particular FA's, problems are arising. In one particular tier, 15 out of the 20 teams in tier had to be removed due to various reasons (forced de-activation, quitting beta, not enough players, inactivity, breach of AI rules).

Normally, I would just send these teams a tier up, merging two tiers to compensate for the loss of so many teams. In this case, I am still allowed to do this, but in the future, the open numbers will be replaced by CPU teams. I'm not entirely sure a tier with 5 live teams and 15 CPU teams will be all that appealing.

Second point is the use of play-offs in some FA's. I've never been a big fan of those, since they cannot be incorporated properly into the league structure and should thus be ran during the off-season. Teams above the AI limit are not allowed to compete for promotion, which sometimes leaves us with odd play-offs.

As it happens, we are supposed to run them English style, so with a double semi-final and single final match. So what happens when we only get 3 teams? One team gets a free ride into the final, with basically less chance of injuries or suspensions? I'd be pretty pissed if I were in the play-off final with several players injured or suspended and my opponent had a fresh squad because there were no semi's for him.

Adding the play-offs into the league structure could be an answer. With seasons taking 23 days instead of 21 soon, the extra two days could be used to automatically run the play-offs in the off-season, coding them into the leagues.

The only problem with that rule is that it won't weed out AI-teams. If a team exceeds an FA's AI rule, it is denied promotion so it becomes useless to make them compete in a play-off. By hard-coding the play-offs into the leagues, we run a risk of ending up with a play-off winner who can;t go up due to AI.

These are just two sceptical notes I have when I work at getting Miller ready for the next season start coming Saturday. Here's to hoping I was too negative in my initial thoughts and everything will work out just fine.

Creating Your Own Effective Scouting Filters; An Introduction

I recently read a column by Gabriele Marcotti about how statistics are becoming more and more important in sports.

Marcotti mentioned a book called Moneyball in his column. This book focussed on the Oakland A's, an American baseball team, and how this team managed to compete with bigger and more wealthy clubs by means of innovative statistical analysis.

The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed. Statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average, typically used to gauge players, are relics of a 19th century view of the game and the statistics that were available at the time. The book argues that the Oakland A's' front office took advantage of more empirical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball.

Rigorous statistical analysis had demonstrated that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success, and the A's became convinced that these qualities were cheaper to obtain on the open market than more historically valued qualities such as speed and contact. These observations often flew in the face of conventional baseball wisdom and the beliefs of many baseball scouts and executives.

By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately $41 million in salary, are competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, who spend over $200 million in payroll. Because of the team's smaller revenues, Oakland is forced to find players undervalued by the market, and their system for finding value in undervalued players has proven itself thus far.

Basically, the author claims that teams have finite resources (read: money) and are therefore forever looking for value. Value used to be assessed by evaluating traditional parameters. Most of these parameters were subjective, such as for example pace, strength and character. The author claims that one could identify value more efficiently by analysing certain previously obscure statistics.

According to Marcotti, finding a way to apply these principles to football has been something of a holy grail. The most obvious obstacle is that while baseball has easy-to-measure individual match-ups, football is a free-flowing game.

Fortunately, FM Live makes this measuring aspect a bit easier for us, since the game is all about statistics. The attributes of players are displayed in ratings between one and twenty and the game logs pretty much every statistic you would ever want to know.

This means one could apply the aforementioned principles to FM Live. Re-assessing value is becoming more and more important, since your budget is limited and there will be more teams fighting over the same players.

As a result, setting your scouting filters is getting more and more important if you want to end up with proper value for your money. In this article and several follow-up articles, I am going to describe how I set up my scouting filters. In this article, I will describe the general approach I take.

First off, let me tell you that I know what kind of players I am looking for exactly. The game offers various roles for players, even within positions on the pitch. For example, there are five or so roles you can select for your forward, but I know exactly that I only need Target Men or Trequartista's upfront.

Once you know which role or roles your players should cover, you can start by creating your own search template. The basic templates provided by SI give you a nice start to work with. However, following these templates will mean you end up with very broad and generic search results. Basically, you have to narrow the search results down further.

This can be achieved by adding extra parameters to the search. However, how do you know which parameters to add for your role? This is where a combination of common sense and being smart should be applied by a manager. Either read up on forums which attributes to use for which role or look at successful players within the GameWorld and look for common attributes in all of them.

Once you have added these parameters, you will have narrowed down the amount of players you are getting. Now look at the financial means at your disposal. If the listed players are all outside your reach, lower the standards a bit in the search parameters. Ideally, you want to end up with four or five candidates.

Now you can examine these candidates further. How have they performed in the past? What are their statistics like for pass completion or crucial errors? Look at those statistics that are crucial for the role the player should fulfill in your team.

Basically, this is a very generic approach to setting up your scouting filters. In the next few days, I will provide a number of examples of how I scout exactly for players within a specific role.

How I Love The Trequartista

It's an underrated role really. Most people back away from it, mostly because they don't really know what to expect. Now in my eyes, the Trequartista is a classic Number 10 in Dutch football terminology.

The word trequartista is derived from the Italian language, where it literally means "three quarters", as he plays 3/4 of the way up the field. This player basically has a free role and is allowed quite a bit of freedom to roam the pitch and cause mayhem for the opposing side.

Typically, your Trequartista or Treq as I lovingly call him, is the best or one of the better players on the team. The offense tends to flow through the player, as he either drops deep to collect the ball and distribute it further forward or he stays forward to be on the receiving end of a pass.

Basically, the guy is the pivotting point for your entire offensive gameplay. If the Trequartista has a good day, your team will prosper. He will score or assist seemingly for fun, like for example
Ronaldinho at Milan, Messi in many Barca matches, Totti at Roma, Diego at Juventus, Bergkamp at Arsenal and Ajax and there are many more examples.

So why do I love this player role? These players are generally a nuisance to mark, because their movement between forward and deep positions can drag defenders out of position, allowing my team to capitalise with a cutting pass. The Treq's forward movement also allows them to catch the back line off guard by arriving from deep, after setting up the attack himself most of the time.

All in all, it's a highly unpredictable role for an opponent, as you never really know what this forward is going to do exactly. Basically, the Trequartista acts as a hybrid between a traditional playmaker and a striker, making them extremely difficult to find, but very rewarding when used properly.

I tend to use the Trequartista as the second forward in a two-forward formation, where the second forward plays a set up role for the Trequartista and the wingers, who often act as inside forwards. If needed, the fullbacks provide the offensive width.

Over the past seasons, I have had a few highly successful Trequartista's in my team. Guys like Takayuki Morimoto, Lulinha and more recently Donati Signani have been instrumental in the successes I have achieved in GW Miller so far. So yeah, Treq's, I love you!

How To Do An Outside Area Corner Properly

Love it or hate it, until they code this corner out of existence, it's here to stay because of it's tremendous effectiveness. As I promised yesterday, I would details my settings and those of others on how to use the corner.

As you will have deduced by now, there are more ways to actually set up this set piece routine. The first one I will mention is one I plucked off the beta forums, mentioned first by Paul Collyer himself.

Two players - Near post flick
Two players - Challenge Keeper
Two players - Wait on the Far Post
Two players - Lurk (one of them is corner taker)
Two players - Stay Back

Corners are set to penalty area.

That's just one setup, and in my opinion the most basic one which is easy to defend with just zonal marking. There's a number of variations to this setup flying around, including my own, which looks more like this.

Three players - Stay Back

One player - Designated corner taker

One player - Lurk

One player - Short option

One player - Challenge Keeper

One player - Attack Far Post

One player - Attack Near Post

One player - Wait at Far Post

Corner distribution is again set to Penalty Area.

The concept of the changes is provide some form of automated cover in case an opponent tries to mark out your lurker. Often, the markers will choose to follow the players attacking the posts, so the runners are providing some distraction inside the box. The short option player seems to guarantee a better distribution of the corner somehow. I have not quite figured out how and why, but the delivery seems to be far more accurate with this guy standing around.

Exploit Or Evolution?

Those of you who are active in the beta worlds have surely seen, experienced or even used this specific corner setup.

The corner swings out to the edge of the box, where a seemingly unmarked player gets a free crack at goal, more often than not resulting in a goal.

Now, the fact of the matter is that the default corner defence many teams are using is completely inept at defending these kind of corners. As one might expect, there is an outcry on the beta forums to have this kind of corner banned/binned.

My ideas regarding the matter are bit more controversial. Bug or not, loophole or not, it's tactical ingenuity by the managers who come up with this. They are thinking outside the box in an effort to create new opportunities for themselves. Do we really want to punish people for being creative by taking away every new option they find?

Making good tactics which people cannot counter immediately is an exploit? Making people actually think about their tactics and not just going with some default system is an exploit?Surely people can ask in the Tactics Chat or on the forum how to combat this specific setup if they're too lazy to use their own mind or simply lack the know-how regarding the FML engine?

When a setup can be countered with new default settings (and this setup CAN be countered with relative ease), does this not make it just another valid choice by the manager to use it and defend against it? Not every unusual and unorthodox piece of gameplay should be branded as an exploit just because people can't figure out how to counter it in under a minute.

If you want to talk proper exploits, take the old "Challenge Goalkeeper" setup of the 1.3 engine. It's much harder to mount an effective defence against these type of corners. It didn't matter how good your set piece defence was, if the opposing team had someone who was better in the air (someone like Neretljak, Zigic or Onyewu), they would score anyway, regardless of how your defence was setup.

Loophole or not, the "Outside Area" setup adds some extra depth to the tactical aspect of FML and its set pieces. It's no longer "lump the ball into the box and hope someone manages to head it in" combined with buying some header beast like Neretljak, Zigic or Onyewu to ram the ball home. A bit of variation is not that bad...

Also, in due time, when people get acquinted with this corner strategy, they will setup their defence to counter it and it will die out anyway. It's now only effective against teams who refuse to tinker with their set piece instructions, most people who want to take the effort to counter it have managed to do so (at least, the ones I am playing...).

We shouldn't have to cater for the people who are too lazy or too casual to change things around, as this is punishing the actually active managers who try to find new ways to score goals by being creative with the options the game is giving them.

People who cannot counter this setup immediately cry "exploit" but is it really that or is it just some form of evolution? Fourty years ago, the off-side trap was starting to be developed. Teams had to re-invent their ideas about attacking. Exploit or good tactics?

Total Football as played by Ajax, The Netherlands, Bayern Munich and the German national team of '74 (yes, they played their own form of total football...) was a completely new concept with players moving all over the pitch and switching positions, making the game a lot faster. Teams had to re-invent their tactics to cope with this. Exploit or good tactics?

I know this game is more static than real life and poor settings are not always easily repaired within a match, but is it really a serious bug that cannot be countered or is it a new step in the evolution of set pieces within FMLive?

PS. for those of you interested in the actual setup both offensively and defensively, keep watching this blog the next few days

Set Pieces; A Suggestion

I've always been rather active with the set pieces. In real life, they are becoming formidable weapons you can use to score a goal with even though you're not really playing all that well.In FMLive, you have various routines that work pretty effectively, but if you want to change your routines mid-way during a match, you have to have them either saved in seperate tactics you can switch between or you have to manually alter the individual settings of the players involved.

I propose something different. Whenever you get a corner or a free kick within 30 yards of the opposing goal, the game times out for ten to fifteen seconds and a pop-up appears which allows you to choose between three different scenario's for the free-kick (for example "Outside Area" , "Challenge Goalkeeper" and "Far Post"). Likewise, the defending party gets three options to select a method of defence. Both parties are ofcourse unable to see each others choice until the match actually continues after this short interruption.

Naturally, you should be able to edit existing scenario's and create new ones, both for offence and defence. This gives the tacticians something nice to play with, as they can vary between their various set piece setups. You could even include this into match plans, create conditions during which a team will switch to a new set piece routine.

Ofcourse, if a team does not want to use this option, the game should just select the default set piece routine. Also, I would not like to see this option being used in AI matches unless he has a match plan that allows for these switches, as that gives you too big of an advantage over an off-line opponent. Preferably though, just use it in the actual human vs human matches, to add some extra depth to these matches.

Any thoughts on this? Please let me know in your comments.