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Total Football Journeyman: How To Break Stubborn Defences

Total Football Journeyman: How To Break Stubborn Defences

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I pick up where I left off last time. Searching for the central striker role to complete my 3-4-3 Diamond formation. For this I will take a step back and look at the original inspiration for Louis van Gaal’s 3-4-3 formation. That is, Johan Cruyff and the Barcelona team of late 1980s and early 1990s. Also I will take a somewhat unorthodox approach to constructing my 3-4-3 Diamond Tactic. We will deconstruct the attacking formation by looking at defensive positioning….

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Total Football Journeyman: Bossing the Ball like 1995 Ajax

Total Football Journeyman: Bossing the Ball like 1995 Ajax

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Part 2 of Building a Total Football Club in FM20 It is not about how long you have the ball, it is what you do with it. When playing possession football, you should always have this mantra in mind. Although I am not one to obsess over getting high possession numbers. Of course it is always nice to see your team getting the higher possession %. I see it as proof that my players are imposing themselves on the opposition…

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Getting the Best out of your Striker Player Traits

Getting the Best out of your Striker Player Traits

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FM20 has a huge range of player traits to change, improve or occasionally disrupt your players behaviour on the pitch. In our last article we ran an experiment to see what impact ability had on certain striker traits like lobbing or rounding the keeper, and placing or powering in shots. It was a bit of a bust as we found that ability alone didn’t seem to have an effect. It was useful for partly busting myths about certain player traits…

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Player Traits for your Strikers: Place, Power, Round or Lob?

Player Traits for your Strikers: Place, Power, Round or Lob?

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Player Traits (or Player Preferred Moves – PPM’s as they used to be) can have a huge impact on your Football Manager experience. Just like in the real world, from the Premier League to non-league, in FM20 what a player prefers to do can change the way your tactics actually work. You might be telling your player to do one things, and they might be trying something completely different. Perhaps more importantly though the right moves or traits can change…

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Red Star Alliance: Shithousing the Shithousers (Socceroo Style Survival Tactics)

Red Star Alliance: Shithousing the Shithousers (Socceroo Style Survival Tactics)

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After two seasons playing variations on the Allardyce 4-5-1 (4-3-3) system, I decided it was time for a change.  Considering we had grossly overachieved with Red Star Wrexham and gotten into the Championship ahead of schedule, I am faced with the daunting prospect of avoiding relegation.  Given that we’ve already mastered the dark arts of defensive, pragmatic, resultism football, where else could we go? How does a team of shithousers get even shithousier? After a few days of reflection, the…

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Red Star Alliance: Resultism (30 Ways To Not Lose)

Red Star Alliance: Resultism (30 Ways To Not Lose)

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As mentioned in my previous articles in this series, I wanted to achieve success playing pragmatic football. Considering we’ve taken Red Star Wrexham from the VNL to the Championship in just three seasons, pragmatism doesn’t quite cut it as a good description. To use a term attributed to our lord and saviour Big Sam, we can only call it one thing: Resultism.  If pragmatism is the acceptance of who you are and making the best of what you’ve got, resultism…

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Red Star Alliance: Big Sam’s Greatest Hits (Tactics ala Allardyce)

Red Star Alliance: Big Sam’s Greatest Hits (Tactics ala Allardyce)

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This instalment of the Red Star Alliance series continues my current obsession with all things Sam Allardyce and outlines my FM Interpretation of a “greatest hits” (pun intended) album from his time at Bolton. These tactics were developed in conjunction with Big Sam’s Fantastic Four data metrics for my Red Star Wrexham save. Recreating IRL tactics is my preferred approach to FM. I watched Bolton matches from their most successful period (2003-2007) where they competed in Europe and made Cup Finals….

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Red Star Alliance: The Revolution Begins

Red Star Alliance: The Revolution Begins

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COUNTER-ATTACKING CORPORATE FOOTBALLFootball is no stranger to commercialism but corporate interests have slowly taken over the game, and in some cases, taken over our clubs. We now find ourselves in an era of ridiculous transfer fees, wage bills, and other escalating costs that are ultimately passed onto the fans.  In some cases, the fans have taken it upon themselves and established community-owned clubs run by supporters trusts as an alternative to the City Groups, PSG, Man United, and Red Bulls of…

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How to tell if your Goalkeeper is any good using xG against in FM20

How to tell if your Goalkeeper is any good using xG against in FM20

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The Goalkeeper. We need them, but I am terrible at working out whether mine are actually any good. With us being deep into our FM20 saves, whether we are in the Premier League with high fliers like Liverpool or in the lower leagues fighting against relegation, were are all probably looking at how to improve out teams. This could be through the transfer market, via training, or even tactically. However we plan on making changes we have to work out…

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