i'm quite sure i will be sick of it by a week, but i resolve to adhere to this diet strictly for my own good. i got the idea from ruiyong, so i do hope i am able to achieve similar things xD
(though it never works this way D= )
i may have gotten fm10, but i'm hooked on fm08 again. quite hard not to when i have devised a killer tactic that is inspired by total football and absolutely dominates the opposition. some key ideas of total football include very high and hard pressing, zonal marking (revolutionary then), the trademark switching of positions between players without compromising the tactical shape AT ALL, and of course johan cruyff =D
this tactic adopts the basic dutch 4-3-3 shape, with slight variations with regards to the farrows and barrows. all the players save for the centre backs have a free role (i have yet to discover how removing them affects play, but why fix it when it works, and anyway its quite funny to have free roles for all players). the tempo's on the slow slide (historically incorrect i think, cause football then was definitely of a very slow-pace, but my team doesnt dominate that much if the slider is at the extreme end, so ... whatever works i guess). all the individual settings for the players are identical, meaning mixed settings and normal mentality for everything and everyone. creative freedom is maxed out, width is maxed out, and the team holds a very high line. this is in tandem with the maxing out of the closing down slider, so the other team has absolutely no space and time to do shit. coupled with hard tackling for everyone, this formation has unexpectedly turned out to be a mean defensive monster.
all the players have instructions to swap positions with the centre forward, or should i call it the cruyff-position, such that the play revolves around him. the centre forward is the playmaker, though he has identical settings with everyone except that his mentality is set to all out attack. the team pivots around him, with he deciding with who and to where he wishes to go, such that the swap in position is carried out according to his wishes. u need an all-round playmaker forward here to fill this role. examples include rooney, tevez, arshavin.
unfortunately, if i do set everyone to swap with the forward, my players will literally be all over the place ie. i do see evra at centre-forward quite often when using man utd. it can get quite infuriating when gary neville misses an open shot at goal, when u do noe someone else like ronaldo would have scored. or when the opposition forward scores a header because he was up against carlos tevez who just happens to be at centre-back and a very short fart at 168cm.
u see, this is a very critical flaw of total football. it demands all players to have a certain amount of technique and versatility such that they are comfortable everywhere on the pitch, which in today's game is frankly impossible. evra wouldnt be scoring headers, and i doubt u would want scholes to make a last-ditch tackle in ur own box. hence, i removed the swap settings for the back 4, so only the midfielders and forwards interchange positions. so no chance of neville being a centre forward. but in the end i set evra to swap positions with giggs cause evra is a real bomb going forward. no point setting it on the other flanks as well because a) neville/brown will never be marauding right-backs and b) i don't trust ronaldo to defend.
basically it looks like this.
the all-so-original instructions
i'm going to try and create something like this on fm10 and see if it works. if it does...