Apart from training, scouting and analysing the next opposition is a major part of upcoming match preparations. By learning as much as possible about the next opposition and identifying individual strengths and weaknesses within the opposition team, you’ll be one step closer to getting that winning edge!
To help you take advantage of what I believe is one of the most underused areas in Football Manager, I will hereby give you a complete guide on how to analyze the next opposition in Football Manager.
By analysing the next opposition you want to identify the strengths and weaknesses within your opponents starting XI and how they are going to play. In this instance, I will take a closer look at how you can use the Data Hub to analyze the next opponent and give you a deeper insight on how I assess statistical data and take advantage of all the reports and visuals compiled and gathered within the Data Hub about the next opposition to better identify the strengths and weaknesses in the opposition team’s way of playing.
Table of Contents
I believe the most avid Football Manager gamer is guilty of not taking advantage of the collected information the FM game and your backroom staff gather for you, for instance through Scouts and Analysis reports. We all have the tendency to glance over them but not really taking the extra effort to think things over and browse through all the valuable information about statistics and data your Performance Analyst and his Data Analytics Team provide you before upcoming matches.
To help you better understand how to assess opposition scout reports and what to look at and how to interpret the reports about the opposition team, I will guide you through how to analyze the next opposition in Football Manager to enhance tactical planning prior to the upcoming match.
1. Why analyzing the next opposition is important?
The most important match is the next one, is a familiar statement football managers and players use in interviews to ensure focus is on the upcoming fixtures. In todays competitive game, the difference between success and failure is often decided by the smallest margins.
Football is no longer a game that’s simply won on the pitch. For some managers and clubs, they believe matches can be won by being better prepared by knowing more about the opponent than the opponent might know about themselves!
These days, clubs and managers uses match highlights, statistical data and data analysis to leave nothing to chance. Hours after hours have been spent on assessing footages of individual players and the team to identify weaknesses and tendencies to take advantage of. Then, it’s a matter of planning the match tactics and take the finding onto the training ground to make the team fully prepared to perform to the best of their abilities both physically, mentally and tactically in the days leading up to the event.
Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins.
Johan Cruyff
Whether it’s an important Cup match, a league encounter against a team of similar caliber, or the final push for the title, managers and his backroom staff looks to take advantage of any measures possible to get that winning edge. The same applies for you in Football Manager!
To overcome your opponent you need to learn how they play.
As the manager, one of your most important task prior to the upcoming match is coming up with a tactical plan that you believes will give you an upper hand to your opponent. Putting an extra effort on match preparations such as to identify strengths and weaknesses within the opposition team and try to better understand how the opponent will attack and defend against you, will certainly be beneficial in your hunt for points, wins and ‘eternal’ success.
When facing a new opponent, there are many questions arising ahead of the match. The objective with analyzing the opposition team is to answer questions like;
- what’s their preferred formation and which formations are they vulnerable against?
- which players do you need to be wary of? Who will be the major threats?
- is it a team who needs to rely on individual performances or do they rely on team ethic and organization?
- how are they most likely to play in terms of tactical style (passing, pressing and tempo)?
- how can you beat them? Are there any weaknesses in their way of playing that you can take advantage of?
- how does their abilities match up to your team?
- how’s the opposing team’s current form and how has they performed in the last maches?
- when do they tend to score or concede goals?
- how are goals scored and conceded, and from where are chances created?
- where are they most likely to attack you?
- are there any specific patterns in their play that should be taken into regard (e.g rehearsed movements and passing patterns)?
By conducting analysis of the opposition team we aims to answer these questions by looking to identify:
- the most used formations and expected starting line-up against you
- key players (most assists, top goalscorer(s) and good performers)
- expected tactics and tactical style including player roles most likely to be used
- weak and strong player connections and partnerships in regard to passing and chance creation
- player and overall team qualities the opposing team possesses (strongest / weakest areas of play)
- tendencies in their attacking play (how, where and when will they probably attack you)
- tendencies in their passing play including connections and passing patterns
- tendencies in shooting and crossing
- tendencies in set-pieces
The information you receive within scout reports about the next opposition will help you to to better understand how the opponent is going to play and how you can beat them.
The objective with analyzing the next opposition isn’t only about identifying individual strengths and weaknesses within the opposition team but also gather important information that enables you to adjust your tactics accordingly to counter opposing threats.
You can then take advantage of that information to better prepare your team both tactically and mentally of what you’re coming up against. By working on different aspects of play at the training ground that looks to combat their way of playing, you can better the odds to take home all the points.
Analyzing the opposition team will even help to identify strength and weaknesses within the opposition team that ensures you’re better prepared to set up opposition instructions more correctly!
Background Story: the Spygate Scandal
The amount of focus and the importance certain managers believes tactical planning is in their quest to better the odds for a win, or greater performances, became evident during Marcelo Bielsa’s spygate scandal in 2019 when managing Leeds United.
With notebooks after notebooks from the current season and the seasons before, spreadsheets, match highlights and tactics sheets, Marcelo Bielsa gave a powerpoint presentation to the press that would give us a great insight to how football have become.
All available information gathered through watching matches of the opponents within his league, using scouting analysis programs (e.g. Opta, WyScout or Scisports) and assessing metrics and statistical data over a longer period of time was compiled and transformed into human-readable reports, provided to Marcelo Bielsa and his coaching staff.
Leeds United’s head of media, James Mooney, described it all well: “It reveales the huge level of intense analysis goes into every single game”.
Even though the spygate scandal abrupted when a Leeds United employee was caught overseeing Derby United’s training session, Bielsa called the press conference to show how much they already knew about them from weeks and months of analyzing the club and its players.
Looking back, it’s both a sense of genius and insanity in the Spygate saga.
The reason why, is simple!
It shows the effort top managers take today to identify strength and weaknesses within the opposition team.
There’s no longer the case where you can simply pick a starting XI and a tactic, without taking into account to your opponent. In this instance, I believe us Football Manager gamers have a lot to learn!
Watch this wonderful video by Mustermann FM where he gives an overview of how he analyze the next opposition and make in-game match adjustments to try to get the better of the opponents with his 3-2-5 shape.
Without further ado, let us now take a closer look at how to analyze the next opposition in Football Manager prior to the upcoming match by assessing the opposition scout reports and other analyst reports that would help to adjust your tactics accordingly to your opponents way of playing.
2. How to Scout the Next Opposition in Football Manager
To give you the winning edge, it’s essential to scout the next opposition to get as much information as possible about the opposition’s way of playing and be fully prepared for whatever they may launch at you.
In the preparations for the upcoming match, you need to conduct an analysis of the next opposition to better understand how the opponent is going to play and how you can beat them. Basically, you want to know more about how they attack and defend so you can better understand what you’re up against.
By analysing the next opposition you want to identify the strengths and weaknesses within your opponents starting XI and how they are going to play. This will be worthy knowledge to increase your chances of a good outcome – preferable a win.
In Football Manager, there are several ways to go about it to learn more about the opposition team’s strength and weaknesses. You can either manually scout the opposition team, request team reports of your upcoming opponent, or ask your Performance Team to conduct analysis of the next opposition on an ongoing basis.
Below we will go through some of the methods you can use to scout the next opposition & what to look for.
2.1 Setting up the Scouting & Data Analyst Team
One of the first tasks when entering a new club is to ensure that you get a team of Data Analysts who can gather and compile reports and visuals about the performance of not only your own team but also about the next opposition. The size of your recruitment and coaching team, hereby concerning the number of scouts and performance analysts are vital in order to gain insight to how your opponents perform and acquire key findings about how they play that you can use against them.
In the matter of scouting and analyzing the next opposition you will need a sizeable amount of 1) Next Opposition Scouts and 2) Performance Analysts.
1. The Next Opposition Scout
The next opposition scout could be your chief scout, who will apart from assigning scouts to different scouting assignments or provide you with feedback on which players the other scouts has found through their scouting assignments, also be the one scouting the other teams within your league.
The desireable attributes for a scouts gathering and compiling scout reports of other teams should preferable have good levels of;
- Judging Player Ability
- Tactical Knowledge
2. The Performance Analyst
The main job of the Performance Analyst is to gather statistical data about your team or its opponents. He will search through different data available, or track special statistical data and visuals of your request to let you understand how your team and its indidivual players, or your opponent and its players, performs.
The key findings of their reports will be added to the Data Hub.
The team of data analysts (e.g. Performance Analyst) will give you a breakdown on how your team performs and present the data in a more human-friendly data visualisation that provides you with key findings about your way of playing. In regards to the next opposition, the person in charge of providing analysis of the opposition team and your own team will match the statistical data so you can get a better understanding of how the two teams match up, and where the differences lie.
To get as accurate reports and visuals, a Performance Analyst requires good levels of;
- Analysing Data
- Judging Player Ability
- Tactical Knowledge
In Football Manager, your team of Performance analysts and scouts will work hard to digest statistical data about the performance of your team and the next opposition. The information they manage to gather will be presented to you in the Data Hub, alongside two different report cards: the Scout Report and the Analyst Report. More about how to take advantage of the Data Hub and next opposition scout reports further down the article.
The size of the Analyst team will determine how indepth the coverage of statistical data and visuals. So, with more resources and a bigger size of analyst, more information will be available for you to digest.
In the Data Hub, you’ll get information about the quality of the your club’s data analyst team and how advanced the analysis will be. With more Performance or Recruitment Analysts, the more resources available to gather and compile in-depth analytics and track statistical data, which may come in handy later on.
2.2 Get more accurate team performance statistics in the Data Hub
To take advantage of the statistics and visuals presented in the Data Hub, it’s important to pick the best possible staff to take charge of providing reports about both your team and the next opposition.
You can select who should be in charge of delivering those reports either within Staff Responsibilities or at :
Scouting > Scouting Coverage > Match & Team Analysis > Next Opposition
In this window, you will have three different options:
- Report on specific team
- Attend / scout a specific match
- Ongoing reports on next opposition
To learn as much as possible about the next opposition it’s recommended, depending on your size of the Recruitment team (number of scouts and whether you got a performance analyst) to request at least ongoing reports on the next opposition but you can also ask to create reports on specific teams that you will meet far into the future.
To set up in-depth next opposition scout reports you want to pick the best scout and performance analyst for providing ongoing reports. You would like to delegate the responsibilities to the staff with the best possible attributes according to their role (see above).
The scout you select will travel around creating team reports of the next opposition. This type of scout report will be more or less quite similar to the general scout reports of players. The only difference being identifying pros and cons of the opposing teams skills and tendencies. More about this in section 3.
The major difference between the team report and the next opposition report is in the level of detail, where one looks at squad information and its strengths and weaknesses relating to skills, while the other compiles statistical data and more in-depth performance reports.
Both of these reports will be valuable in your quest to understand more about the opposition’s strength and weaknesses.
2.0 How to learn more about the opposition team?
When you have set up the next opposition scouting, the information gathered will be presented to you within the Data Hub. The Data Hub will give you an insight to the latest performance of your next opponent within the last few matches, or give you an overall overview of their expected style of play, line up, as well as notable trends and key findings of your opponent’s performance.
In Football Manager’s Data Hub, there will be five different screens packed with information that will be of your value when you are analyzing the next opposition. This information will help you to decide on the team’s training and match preparations for the upcoming opponent.
These five screens are:
- Overview – which provides you with a summary about the next opposition and give you a quick insight to what you can expect from the next opposition relating to style of play, set-pieces and expected tactics. Regardless of you take the time to completely analyze the next opposition, it’s a minimum requirement to visit the Next opposition overview before heading to the next match. You can gain alot of worthy knowledge at a quick glance. At least, take note of their expected line-up and tactical style.
- Scout Report of the Next Opposition – Section 3
- Analyst Report of the Next Opposition – Section 4
- Next Opposition’s Performance – Section 5
- Stat Pack – which provides you with a comparison between the next opposition and your team relating to player stats, league results and other records.
Let us take a closer look at what you can learn about the opposition team by assessing the information within these reports.
3.0 What to learn from the Opposition Team’s Scout Report
Acquiring ongoing team reports on the next opposition is one of the most natural steps to take to learn more about the opposition team. It gives you a complementary insight into the opposing team that helps to understand the full picture about the opposition team’s capabilities and style of play.
Alongside Analyst Reports they will increase your knowledge and provide you with valuable tips on what you need to be aware of, along with hints about how to stop their game or exploit certain weaknesses.
The opposition scout report can give you a quick but very handy insight to the opposition team. It’s an important report to request since it helps to fulfill the picture about the opposing team for the upcoming match.
These scout reports will be available within the Data Hub for a limited time period. Normally until the match is played and before a new report about the next opponent is created.
You can find this information within: Data Hub > Next Opposition > Scout Report
The Opposition scout report will let you learn more about the:
A) Opposition Manager’s Profile
A great way to better understand how you should consider approaching the upcoming match, is to assess the opposition team’s Manager profile. Understanding more about the opposing manager’s football philosophy and style of play can help you to gain knowledge of what to expect from the opposition team in the next encounter.
You’ll gain an insight to the opposing manager’s preferred formation, preferred tactical style, playing mentality and pressing style by browsing the Scout Report made available inside the Data Hub.
Or, you can visit the opposing team’s Manager Profile and learn more about his coaching tendencies and capabilities.
What the manager tends to do, or not, or his level of coaching attributes in Defending, Attacking, Technical or Tactical Coaching gives you clues on what you can predict of how the opposition team will look to play in general.
It gives you a great background knowledge to the style of play the opposition team favors – wether he is more likely to play Tiki-Taka and a possession based football or a style of play revolving around quick counters.
For instance, in the case with Wrexham’s manager Phil Parkinson we see that he prefer to use a 5-2-2-1 DM AM formation with a tactical style revolving around wing play. This is further amplified with his 15 in defensive coaching and 13 in mental coaching – painting a picture of a tactical manager who likes to use defensive solidity to be the foundation for his success with many players congesting the middle and few metres between the lines. This is summarized by his Defending Coaching style.
On the other hand, he tends to rely on set-pieces something that provides a valuable hint of what we can expect from their match strategy.
At the same time, he never tends to make tactical changes early – something that tells us that he will most likely try to keep himself to the plan until the final stages of the match, or until he needs to make any changes to gain a good result.
Even though his tendencies won’t give me any particular reasons to adjust my tactics and decide on tactical changes to do immediately, it gives me some points on what to expect from the next encounter.
If he had a tendency that said ‘prefers playing out from the back’ it could give me a reason to make some tactical changes – for instance by taking advantage of ‘Prevent Short GK Distribution’ and increase my line of engagement to higher to make it more difficult for them to play out of defence.
B) Key Players & Best Performers
A major part of the opposition scout report is in its capabilities to identify major threats for the upcoming fixture. Knowing who to target and what capabilities they possess will be vital if you want to reduce their impact on the game.
Even though the overview will give you a better knowledge of who are the current top goalscorers, best performer (highest average rating and player of the match awards) and the player with most assists, it will also give you information about injuries or suspensions.
When requesting Opposition Team Scout Reports you will enhance the knowledge of their players. The opponents players’ player attributes is no longer displayed in ranges but is displayed more accurately. You will learn about their player traits and best position and most suitable role.
The increased knowledge makes it easier to analyze individual player’s strength and weaknesses and what you might need to do reduce their influence and effectiveness in the upcoming fixture.
All in all, it provides you with all worthy information you need to set up opposition instructions – either for the specific player or for a position. You can learn more about how I counter player types by using OI’s in this guide.
C) Team Report Card
The scout report of the opposition team will also give you greater insight to the team’s overall strengths and weaknesses. By providing a deeper knowledge into the overall abilities within the squad you’ll be able to comprehend what the strongest or weakest areas of their game is.
There are two ways to get access to the team report card. You can either:
- i) go the desired team > Select Team Reports > Scout Report,
- ii) or, go to Data Hub > Next Opponent > Scout Report > Strengths
- You can head to the Strengths & Weaknesses Overview either by clicking Strengths as described above or click Team Reports and then Strengths and Weaknesses.
The team report card includes an overview of the opposing team’s Best XI along with a breakdown of their qualities in the different player attributes; mental, technical and physical attributes. You can take into account their level of attributes to give you a deeper insight into what qualities they possess – what are they good at and what are they weak at.
Basically, it breaks down the current abilities within the opposition team by strength and weaknesses – just like you’re accustomed to from the player report card.
The Team Report Card will give you a thorough list of the squad’s average attributes and give you a quick information about their capabilities (good or bad) within that aspect. Wether they have stamina as one of the strengths or composure as one of their weaknesses isn’t something I pay attention to.
Apart from providing knowledge about the team’s abilities it gives you a better understanding of how your squad compares to the opponent in a particular area of the game, whether it’s their proficiency in defence, midfield or attack to pass, cross, run or shoot.
However, the team report card can provide you with some valueable information.
Below I’ll quickly run through a few areas within the Team Report Card that you should pay attention to when conducting analysis. These findings could help you to make changes to your match tactics and help to decide on a specific match plan, regardless if they comes up as Strengths or Weaknesses in the Team Report Card. Basically, they help you to consider your approach in the upcoming fixture and plan accordingly.
Goals Against
This section brings further information about how frequent goals have been conceded for the opponent in their last matches and from which locations on the pitch these goals have come from.
It describes the types of assists used to create chances and goals, such as whether the goals have come from crosses or through balls.
In the case with Wrexham, it’s important to note their bad Goals Against Tendency.
They tend to concede goals from crosses and assists that comes from inside the penalty box. It’s reason to believe it will be most effective by ticking the Team Instructions Focus Play Down the Flank, perhaps even coupled with Overlap Left to create overloads and 2vs1 down that flank to emphasize play towards their weakest area.
It also gives you the reason to use a striker with great Heading, Jumping Reach and great height if using Whipped Crosses, or one with the quickness and movements to come first at low crosses.
Then, you can focus on Working the ball into the box to prioritize throughballs into the penalty area. However, since they are playing with a back five and two DM’s in front of three defenders, they may be likely to park the bus and give you very little space to work with – meaning ‘Work ball into the box’ will work to their favour as they will be able to maintain positioning with a more patient build-up.
Creativity
Knowing where the assists come from and how the opposition team aims to attack can give you valueable information about which flank or channel you need to prioritize your defence. The opposition’s Creativity will give you insight to where most of the assists has come from. In the case of Wrexham we see most assists come down their right flank. This is backed up by statistical data which reveals attacking wingback Luke Bolton making 14 assists this season.
This information could have also been found within the Stat Pack screen available under Data Hub < Next Opposition < Stat Pack
Quick Starters
If the opposing team tends to score a lot of goals in the first minutes of the match, it will be displayed in the Opposition Scout report as Quick Starters. The information you receive here, will help you to decide on your choice of Mentality and Formation/Shape.
For instance, it might be wiser to lower the Mentality (if normally using Attacking or Positive). Then you could consider lower the defensive line and change Defensive Width depending on the opposition team’s abilities in Quickness, Crossing, Heading and Flair.
– Are they likely to take advantage of the space behind your defensive line by quick counters and a more direct playing style?
– Will they attack down the flanks to try to get in early crosses or use through balls to work the ball through the middle of the pitch because they got great Vision, Passing, Decisions and Technique.
To understand how to avoid conceding goals in the first fifteen minutes of the match, it’s important to analyst how the opposition team create chances and their shot locations. Also, take some time to consider the individual abilities of their attacking threats.
Best Player Form / Player Struggling for Form
The team report will also notify you if there are specific player that are in great form or are struggling for form. Even though players who are struggling for form might not be selected for the upcoming match, it’s useful to think about how you shall deal with the player who are in form.
Despite the report card will only notify you of their average rating in the past few matches, you’ll be informed about who to be aware of.
TIP! If you like to track a player’s form you need to add the player to the shortlist. Data about the player’s performance is displayed within the form section of the player profile for the following matches AFTER he’s added to the shortlist.
Information about a player’s form can help to decide on who you shall Tight Mark for the upcoming match and whether you need to apply specific man-marking on him.
Based on the information from the Team Report Card and getting the knowledge of best players in form, who records the most assists and scores the most goals, it can help you on how to apply opposition instructions for specific players.
Set Piece Chance Creation & Defensive Set Piece First Contacts
The team report can give you valuable insight to their performance in defensive and attacking set-pieces. The defensive near post set piece first contacts gives us a valuable information about how they like to defend corners and what corner routine you should pick. In this instance, an inswinging corner to the near post could be beneficial but we need to back this up with more stats.
These scout reports about the opposition team will be forwarded to your Inbox normally a week before the upcoming match (e.g Monday if you’re playing on Saturday). The timing of their delivery will also depend on the fixture list and whether you got multiple matches in a short period of time. Then, they might be delivered as late as 2 days before the match.
The scouting report Inbox message will give you a great summary of the opponent with the opportunity to delve deeper into the analysis of the opposition team and its major threat.
4.0 The Analyst Report
To learn more about the opposition team it’s useful to acquire more thorough analysis about the opposition team that the team scout report won’t cover. I’m talking about deeper analysis of the opposing team’s way of playing and their tendencies when attacking and defending. Basically, you can use the Analyst Reports and statistics to back up the findings within the Team Report Card, as well as giving you more information to digest.
The Analyst Report gives you a deeper insight on the positive or negative performance of the opposition team. For many, me included, the Analyst report can look quite overwhelming with data from the last five matches provided to you in positive and negative tendencies.
You can delve into the matter by clicking on the different positive and negative performances to get a better understanding of where they make chances from, how passes are played and to where and lots more information about shots, touches and final third entries, or who and where they regain possession most often.
Following is a break down on what I emphasize the most within the Analyst Report.
4.1 Formation Analysis: Formations Used / Faced
At first, I like to go through the Formation Analysis by clicking on its header within the Analyst Report.
The ‘Formation Used’ section will give you further insight to their abilities to create chances when using that specific formation. The longer you’re in the season, the more accurate it will be.
The ‘Formation Faced’ informs you how well the opponent happens to defend against your used formation or how vulnerable it is against a specific formation they have faced.
Will the formation you use cause problems for them due to more clear cut chances being created throughout 90 minutes, or have they impressed against it by making more chances than you in average?
If you discover that the opponent performs brilliant against your First Tactic, there might be a reason to opt for a plan B by going for your secondary tactic, or another formation – if you dare!
In the event of Wrexham we see they prefers a 5-2-2-1 DM AM formation. This system has been used nearly 75% of the times in the last 20 matches and with it they have created a clear cut chance every 117 minutes – quite decent attacking wise.
A similar breakdown of ‘Formations Faced’ will give you an insight to which shape they are likely to be vulnerable against. In this case, we see that they tend to meet the 4-2-3-1 formation most often and happen to get a chance created against every 123rd minute. This is far lower compared to the chance against every 272 minutes with a 5-2-3 DM Wide – which I use.
To avoid any doubts, in the overview of ‘Formation Faced’ and ‘Formation Used’, the ‘chances created For’ is for your own team, or the team you are scouting.
The report says Wrexham are most vulnerable against the 4-4-2 – which they have only faced 1 time!
Their capabilities of creating chances with the formation used, gives us an indication of their threat. What we do not know yet, is from where positions (or areas on the pitch) chances are mostly created from. We need to investigate further! It’s here the Analyst Report will come to its force.
I can then compare their Formation Used Stats with my teams formation Faced stats to identify how my formation will most likely perform against them. My analysis reveals that it might be a very open match if I keep using my preferred 5-2-3 DM Wide.
4.2 How does the Opposition Create Chances & Score Goals?
A major part of analyzing the next opposition is to digest statistical data to better understand how your next opponent create chances and score goals.
The Analyst report can give you an insight on which locations on the pitch the opposition is most dangerous from. Simply click the Scoring section within the Analyst Report to get an overview of goal types, assist locations and how they create chances.
Goal Types
Assists Types
In the case of Wrexham we see they are most dangerous down their right side – something that is evident by the number of assists from their right attacking complete wingback, Luke Bolton.
Further investigation reveals that they are most dangerous from crosses if we see the information within the Scoring Overview. By clicking on the Assists coloumn in top right corner, we can see from which areas of the pitch assists come from and how many for each of the types of assists.
Goal Times
At last, we can also use the information about when the opposition score or concede goals to set up a match plan in terms of when to attack or defend. When goals are scored, or conceded, is often in the last 15 minutes of each half so it might be useful to take advantage of touchline shouts to ensure the players are focused and aren’t getting complacent.
In the matter of Wrexham, we see that they score 26% of their goals between the 76th and 90th minute. At the same time, they concede 26% of their goals between the 46th and 60th minute – meaning it might be worthy to be more attacking at the start of the second half and revert into a more defending shape in the last 5-10 minutes of the match – all depending on the current score.
Nevertheless, it’s useful information that might be worthy to remember as we approach the match.
If we refer back to the goal analysis within the Summary of the Analyst Report, what’s interesting is that what’s their main strengths are also their weakness. They score 33% of their goals from crosses, meanwhile they also concede 35% of their goals from crosses. Same with the types of goals they score and concede. They normally tend to come from placed shots within the centre of the penalty area. This is very similar to how I like to play and how I have set up my tactics.
Like me, they use a variant of a 3-4-3 formation, or 5-2-3 as it’s described as in Football Manager. Instead of using wingers like me, they use two attacking midfielders. This means they are overly reliant on their wingbacks as they need to stretch the pitch and got no other players to provide overlaps meaning we can counter their main attacking strengths with minor changes to the out of possession team instructions and using opposition instructions to limit their wing play threat and avoid crosses into the box.
What’s certain is that we need to prioritize our defending against their right flank. According to analysis 36% of Wrexham’s assists have come down their right wing.
4.3 How does they approach the final third?
The analysis of the opposition team will not only give you hints about how to stop the opposition from scoring goals and creating chances. You can assess what they are good at, or weak at, to determine specific match plans.
By flicking through the positives and negatives of their previous performance reveals that their very likely, and quite good at it, to move the ball into the attacking third from central areas of the pitch.
By browsing the pitch of where their final third entries have come from we can discover that they tend to instruct their defensive midfielders and central defenders to launch more direct passes towards either flank. Particularly George Evans has a tendency to look to the flank towards their right wingback Luke Bolton.
At the same time, Eoghan O’Connell (their most likely left wide centre back) has a tendency to make more risky long-passes and often out of play. His passing could tell me we are dealing with a no-nonsense centre-back who uses direct passes as a counter-attacking threat.
4.4 Where does they win possession?
When analyzing how my next opponent play, the Analyst report reveals that they are rather good at winning the ball down the left half space. Or should I say, Jack Simpson is the reason why they are able to regain possession. His capabilities to win back the ball and on the outside left of the back three can be a huge counter-attacking threat. His anticipation, composure, tackling and marking is all above 12 and could become a huge obstacle in terms of our chances to create goalscoring opportunities down the right wing. The player needs to be highly press-resistant with above 12 in acceleration, first touch, dribbling and flai to be of equal quality to Jack Simpson.
To avoid Jack simpson to successfully win back the ball without any problems, I’d like to set up specific opposition instructions on that player so the players will immediately counter-press once loosing the ball. My initial thought is to ask the players to tackle harder, trigger press and force the ball onto his weaker foot in order to limit the counter-attacking threats if he wins back the ball.
Another plan might be to focus play down the opposite flank of where he plays and try to take advantage of other weaknesses in the opposing teams defensive line up – rather than playing down the channel where they are the strongest.
When analyzing the oppositions team pressing intensity and where they regain possession, we need to analyze further. It’s here the Data Hub and the next opposition’s performance comes in.
5. Next Opposition’s Performance – Taking Advantage of the Data Hub
The Data Hub in Football Manager does not only give you information about your team’s performance in and out of possession, or at set-pieces (which we will get back to) but also about your opponent. Here you can ask your Data Analyst to create specific visualisations about a number of aspects of play, from picking specific scatter graphs and zone maps to identify positive or negative trends.
You can style your Data Hub by selecting a number of visuals that matters the most to you. What’s important to note in regard to opposition scouting is that the visuals you pin to your Data Hub will mean you request your Performance Analysts to gather similar reports about the opposition team.
To edit the Data Hub according to your preferance, you can either:
i) Ask for specific visuals and pin those reports to the main overview screen by clicking on the ‘Display in Team Analytics’. For instance, by requesting visuals about the team’s attacking efficiency which brings up a scatter graph of conversion rate in percentage and shots per game to get a better understanding of how clinical you or your next opponent is.
ii) secondly, you can click the Edit button to select a number of different visuals at once by clicking the ‘All Visuals’ drop down menu, to pick those reports that matters the most to you. You can pick from scatter graphs, polygons and zone maps grouped into six different sub-headings; General, Defensive, Creating, Scoring, Possession and Last Match.
Once you have selected the visuals you like to pin to the Data Hub on Football Manager, you can re-arrange the visuals as you prefer to make the Data Hub incorparate the statistics and reports that may benefit you the most.
Personally, I arrange the pinned visuals in a specific way to let me easily find the most useful information quickly and efficiently.
In the top row I have all the basic performance data, such as the General Performance, Team Attacking and Team Defending. Then, I like to include the xG Table before requesting visuals about the performance in the last matches, such as the shot map, pass map and match momentum. Later on, it features more visuals about the team’s performance in possession and pressing. At last, we have the brand new visuals looking closer at defensive and attacking set-pieces.
How you set up the Data Hub on Football Manager, and what areas you emphasizes is all up to you, but I like to consider my tactical style to the type of visuals I select. Remember, the visuals you want to bring to your attention will also be tracked for the opposition team, so choose wisely!
Once the data visualisation is pinned to the Data Hub, it will be constantly updated for your benefit within the Team Analytics area, and may give you more information about how you and your opponent match up well, or where the difference in performance and football philosophy lie.
If you like to prioritize certain data visuals; zone maps or scatter graphs, you can request your analysis team to gather those team performance visuals by clicking ‘Set Preferred’ or the Star icon in the top right corner.
When analyzing the next opposition, you will find it highly beneficial to prefer certain visuals because these will pop up in Key Findings, as well as pre-match opposition reports that will be send to your Inbox a few days before the next match, as well as Match Reports delivered to your Inbox after the match.
Pass Map
One of the visualisations that can give you a lot of information about your next opponent’s way of playing is to study their pass map from the previous match. The pass map can give you valuable information of which players links up well and the passing combinations between the players.
In reality, you can use the pass map to set up opposition instructions. At least, I find the pass map highly useful in this instance.
In the matter of Wrexham we can see from the pass map that Jack Simpson (#13), Thomas O’Connor (#22) and James Mcclean (#23) are the ones who links up well and has the most passing combinations in the team. When the ball is given to one of the players in this triangle, the opposition team will try to retain possession until a player breaks away. This is something we need to find a way to combat so the impact of Jack Simpson and O’Connor – who is the heart of everything going on in the middle – will be reduced to a minimum.
One way to limit the impact of Simpson is to ask the players to press him in a manner that he needs to play the ball towards the middle of the pitch by showing the ball onto his weakest foot (right).
The pass map also reveals how wide the opposition team plays and their focus of play. In this instance, we can see how high the defensive midfielders move forward and how they play in something like a 3-5-2 shape in possession and stretching their play over the entire surface of the pitch.
It also reveals that their striker is most likely to drop deep just like a target forward or deep-lying forward and that their AMCL is the one moving furthest forward – like a shadow striker or attacking midfielder.
We can envision that the opposing team will most likely focus play down their left side to tilt us over before using the playmaking abilities of George Evans (#12) and Andy Cannon (#20), and crossing abilities of Luke Bolton (#17) to aim for either Elliot Lee (#38) and Paul Mullin (#10) to come to goalscoring chances.
It’s also interesting to see how direct their defenders in the back three are compared to our way of playing. It looks like their initiative is to get the ball forward to the defensive or attacking midfielders at the first opportunity rather than playing their way out from the back.
Match Momentum
The match momentum can be valueable in the matter of understanding how dominant the opposition is and when they might focus on attack or defending. From their previous match we saw that the team was overall quite dominant and enjoyed a lot of possession and chances throughout the entire match.
They only had one weak period where Forest Green managed to score a goal but apart from the poor spell in the middle of the first half – right after they scored a goal and probably sat back to defend the lead, Wrexham should have won the match.
They seemed to flew out directly from the start and managed to be very dangerous in possession in the first 15 minutes of the match. In fact, we can see from the match momentum that they tried to be positive in possession in two spells within the first half.
Set Piece Analysis
One of the greatest benefits with the Data Hub on Football Manager is the introduction of new zone maps relating to defensive and attacking set pieces. Analysis of the opposition team’s attacking and defensive corners is as important as studing their way of playing to find weaknesses in their tactics we can take advantage of.
By going through the Overview of the next opponent, it includes a section which summarizes their set piece strategies. See illustration under section 2.
It informs us that they are most likely to deliver their set pieces with an outswinging cross towards the central area. Making the appropriate changes to my defensive corner strategy is required to ensure we have enough players inside the central areas to defend that central area zone.
To back up these findings, the Data Hub includes five new scatter graophs or zone maps:
- Set Piece Defensive Efficiency – Defensive
- Set Piece First Contacts – Own Box – Defensive
- Set Piece Attacking Efficiency – Creating
- Set Piece First Contacts – Opposition Box – Scoring
- Goals from set Pieces – Scoring
In regards to analyzing the next oppositions set pieces, I have highlighted the zone maps I find most useful.
The study of their attacking set pieces and most likely corner strategy reveals that they will look to aim the ball either to the near post or to the far post – meaning I have to defend both the Central Area (aka the Six Yard Box (Centre), the Six Yard Box (Near Centre,) and the the Six Yard Box (Far Centre). Their likeliness of being first to the ball at near post means I must have a player zonally mark the near post as well as either player on the near and far post.
So far, the two teams has scored around the same number of goals from corners – 9 for Crewe and 11 for Wrexham but I have far higher expected assists from corners than Wrexham with around 0.19xA compared to theirs 0.13xA according to the scatter graph of set piece attacking efficiency.
Frankly, it shows that they are more likely to score goals from corners despite poorer xA and fewer number of crosses than us.
By watching highlights from their previous match, we can get some key information about their attacking corner routines.
From my studies, Wrexham tends to shift between an inswinging corner towards the near post or an outswinging corner towards the edge of the box. At the outswinging corners they tend to overload the near post area with players trying to get first to the ball at the edge of the penalty area. At inswinging corners they try to balance the positioning of the players so that the opposition has to guess where the ball will arrive but most often it landed towards the edge of the penalty box at far post.
At defensive set pieces, they are highly defensive solid with nearly 80% in average to be first to the ball.
As the summary of the analysis of Wrexham’s defensive corners reveals, they prefer to zonally mark the centre with a player covering the near post.
However, my studies from the previous match reveals that they are highly focused on zone defending with five players defending each of the zones, three players tasked to man mark and one player staying on the edge of the penalty box – resulting in that no players stay forward for quick counter-attacks.
From the zone map, we can see their reluctance to defend the far post with a little bit lower percentage in first contact. If there are any weaknesses within their defensive corner set up, the only minor weakness is their ability to defend and controll the far post, so it might be worth to exploit that by making changes to my attacking corner routines by aiming for the far post, rather than the near post.
Defensive Actions & Possession Gained
Zone maps like Defensive Actions and Possession Gained can also be useful analytics to look at. Where they regain possession, and where they make the most defensive actions can help us to know their pressing intensity and defensive block. will they be parking the bus or seek to win possession high up the pitch and use pressing as a tool to dominate the match. Or, are they happy to sit back and protect the goal within the defensive third.
In our study, we can see that Wrexham favours to sit back in a Standard or low defensive block and aims to win back the ball deeper in their own half. They also use to loose possession around the half way line or within their own penalty box.
With 45% defensive actions within their own penalty box, it paints a picture of a team who first and foremost looks to defend – perhaps why the analyst team has discovered they are most likely to play with a Cautious mentality.
Opening the scatter graph of defensive efficiency tells us that they got an impenetrable defence with under 11 shots faced per game and concede far fewer goals from the number of shots they face. Compared to my team, they got a stronger defence which tells us it might be a hard fought fight between two very equal teams.
Crossing
Since Crossing was one of the main threats in the next opponents way of playing, it might be useful to look at the scatter graph of their crossing statistics.
It describes a team who makes a lot of crosses but unfortunately for them, they tend to be very inaccurate. However, it’s not that much difference between their cross completion and ours. Should we dare to instruct our team to invite crosses and defend more narrower, or is it time to apply Stop Crosses and thereby defend a little bit wider – something that may give more space to the opposing AMC’s. It’s a difficult choice to make as there are pros and cons with both defensive tactical plans.
However, one way to stop both their crosses and the space between the channels for their AMC’s are switching to the 4-2-3-1 formation.
In the next chapter, I will reveal how I decided to counter the opposition’s playing system and use the knowledge from scout reports and analyst reports to set up opposition instructions.
Shot Map
At last, at least concerning the information we can take advantage of within the Data Hub in terms of next opposition analysis, it might be worth to consider their shot map for the last few matches to discover trends of where they like to shoot from.
The analytics team summarizes the opposing team’s shooting as rather average with poor quality in their shots compared to their high number of chances created.
In the last match, they had an xG of 1.65 but didn’t manage to score any goals.
In regard to the shot map, what’s useful to notice is where shots are coming from and how they attempt to score – feet or head? It’s a noticeable trend that Wrexham favors to shoot from either flank – with the two wingbacks the ones coming to the best chances. Their attacking instinct and tendency to move inside the penalty box might create space for their DM’s and AMC’s to come to goalscoring opportunities.
With two attacking midfielders and a striker leading the line, it’s strange to see how few shots Wrexham takes from the centre of the penalty box. Perhaps we should defend narrower and let the wingbacks shoot?
It also reveals their lower quality shots from long range despite it’s one of the team’s greatest strengths according to the Scout Report of strengths and weaknesses within the opposing team.
It might be worth to defend slightly deeper than usual to force the opposition to shoot from outside the penalty box – but a lower defensive block could easily gift the opposition better opportunities to enter the final third so it might be worth to find a balance of not giving away the initiative within the match and defend the penalty area.
6. Opposing Team Match Analysis
One of the final steps before making the final preparations for the next match in terms of team training and making tactical changes for the upcoming match is to quickly analyze the opposition by watching the highlights from their last matches- This is especially important if you’re heading into an important match which could decide the title race, secure promotion or for cup matches.
To be frank, Wrexham was quite unfortunate to not win their last match against Forest Green. After 21 shots, (6 on target) and an xG of 1.8 goals, they managed to loose 1-2. Their opponent made only 7 shots (3 shots on target), and were lucky to score from a penalty resulting in an xG of 1.03.
Wrexham truly dominated the match, which resulted in 68% possession, and made more progressive passes, passes in the final third and high intensity sprints than Forest Green.
Their OPPDA (opposition passes per defensive actions) was at a remarkable low 2.77 – meaning their high intensive press and brilliance with the ball could cause us troubles.
The highlight revealed that the first goal came from a counter-attack where Maddox decided to shoot from outside the penalty box.
By watching key highlights of the match, or dragging the mouse on the match timeline to watch clips of where Wrexham are in possession, we can notice the attacking positioning of the two wingbacks.
The back three coupled with the two holding midfielders enables the two midfielders to move higher up the pitch – giving us the 3-2-5 shape that more and more teams uses in possession.
With five players taking position in each of the five channels, their attacking shape could resemble Pep’s Man City tactics and could be difficult to defend against.
What we need to be aware of is the movement of the two attacking midfielders between the lines, and the passing triangles at the left and right flank. Once the right centre back is in possession of the ball, he can use his body angle to fake a pass towards the flank and play inside if the opposing midfielders track the DMC, or make a direct long ball towards the right flank and basically skip the longer build up for a quick transition into the final third.
Their shape also reveals how much they focus on width to create spaces in the middle to advance play forward. It would be useful to stop these passes from the outside centre backs towards the flank, or in this event the passes to Evans who quickly turned and moved the ball forward to Cannon before making a diagonal pass towards Bolton who will first and foremost try to run towards the byline to deliver crosses into the box.
At several occasions we’ll be able to see through the highlights that they tend to use Evans as an outlet to try to drag opposing players out of defensive block and use bounce passes to move the opposition team and create gaps to penetrate on the opposite flank by changing the direction of play. The passes from O’Riordan to Evans and back to O’Connell, who can decide to change the focus of attack from right to left by making a pass to Simpson, is something we saw several times. Once the two outer centre backs had the ball, they liked to play directly down the flank towards the wingback, similar to the no-nonsense centre back role.
Up front, Mullin was often dropping deep and wasn’t causing as much troubles as he never tried to penetrate the space in behind the defensive line. It wasn’t until play entered the final third that Mullin started to make a major impact. With three defenders up against a lone striker, I should have decent cover to defend against Mullin.
However, in the latter stages of the match, Wrexham shifted into a 3-4-1-2 formation with Lee behind Mullin and Ollie Palmer – a 196cm tall target forward with more physical strength and aerial abilities than none of my defenders. He has scored 14 goals in 10 starting appearances but has came in as substitute on 16 occassions. From the outlooks, it might be a tough challenge to deal with his mental and physical strengths.
7.0 Manual Analysis: Team Comparisons
The first, or latter step when conducting analysis of the next opposition, is to get an overview of the opposition teams greatest strengths and weaknesses. The scout report can give you a great insight but if you should conduct a quick analysis, it might be worth to do some manual analysis by going through the expected match squad and take a note on the opposing abilities and key information.
As described in our guide on how to deal with certain player types by setting up opposition instructions we want to browse their squad for:
- height of defenders and attackers – this information will come in handy in regard to attacking and defending set pieces and their abilities in regard to defensive and attacking crossers.
- level of crossing for opposing wingbacks and wingers. Could theirs crossing be a huge threat in terms of accuracy and quality?
- height, strength, heading and jumping reach of the opposing striker – does the striker(s) pose a threat from high crosses or will they try to use low crosses and play the ball more to the ground due to the opposing forwards lack of aerial ability?
- acceleration and pace of defenders – can they be exposed by trying to take advantage of the space behind the defensive line and try to use carries as a way to beat the opposition team by using tempo of the game and taking advantage of the space to create chances.
- preferred foot, composure, first touch, passing and technique of the opposition team’s back line – will they be able to build out from the back and withstand pressure of a high press or are there weaknesses in specific players capabilities on the ball in pressured situations that helps us to win back the ball high up the pitch
- vision, flair, passing and technique – who are their main creative outlets in terms of making key passes or through balls?
- what’s the main skills of their key players and what’s their playing style
These are just a quick list of some of the most important attributes to consider within the opposing team when setting up opposition instructions ahead of the next match. THen you would like to compare their best skills to your players.
Football Manager has made this easier, at least for comparing player attributes for each of the units.
To get an overview, simply click on Squad Comparison in the bottom of the Scout Report. Or, go to your next opponent and browse the menu under the Team Reports tab and select Comparison.
This will open up a unit by unit comparison of average level of attributes in each department of player attributes.
In the event of Wrexham, we see that their heading and tackling is far better in both defence and attack as us. Their striker, Paul Mullin, has 12 in heading and jumping reach of 9 but isn’t the tallest forward in the game – standing at 178cm. It should be something our defenders could cope with as they are all above 180 centimenters with better jumping reach. Unfortunately, their average heading of 10 could be a reason for concern if the opposing team tries to use floating crosses.
If we look at the height of the opposing team’s centre backs they are all between 186 and 193cm, with none of the two defensive midfielders under 180cm height. It matches up well with our three forwards who have an height between 185 and 188 cm.
Facing such a tall opponent could be a reason to rest some of the smallest and most physical inferior players in such an important match.
When clicking on the Technical tab, it’s evident that our finishing is far worse than Wrexham’s (6.93 vs 8.10), and their long shots is in average better as well. In midfield their stamina, work rate and decisions are slightly better as well so in a number of key areas they have better abilities than us.
However, after browsing through the players abilities and compare it to my team, we are one step closer to set up opposition instructions and create a plan for countering their way of playing. What’s certain is that it will be a tense battle. Last time, they narrowly edged out a draw after scoring a goal in the 92th minute but they head into the match in a poor spell of form with 1-4 and 1-2 losses in the bag whilst I haven’t lost a game in 25 league matches but I haven’t been able to keep a clean sheet in six of these matches compared to theirs 8 clean sheets in the same period (They have made a total of 14 clean sheets in the league compared to ours 11 clean sheets).
Creating a Plan to Counter The Opposition’s Playing System
One of your most important task and areas of responsibilities ahead of upcoming fixtures is tactical planning and preparing the team for the upcoming battle both physically, mentally and tactically. Apart from training sessions that prepares the team about what to expect in the upcoming fixture, you might need to approach the next match differently both in terms of defensive and attacking organization according to the players abilities and structures you’re coming up against.
Whether you look to take advantage of opposition instructions in Football Manager, or you leave it to your assistant manager, the analysis of the next opposition will help to determine whether your tactics needs adjusting according to the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition team, or you can perceive with your most used tactics.
The Tactical Plan
As the manager, one of the most important task prior to the upcoming match is coming up with a tactical plan that gives you the upper hand to your opponent and increases your chances for a favorable result.
When creating a tactical plan to counter the opposition’s tactics you can either be the type of manager who completely change your tactical style to adjust your match plan towards the oppositon’s playing system, or trust your team’s abilities to get a good outcome.
What can help us to decide whether it will be useful to stick to your preferred tactics or make slight changes to formation, shape and player role and duties is to get a basic understanding of how their formation lines up compared to ours and where space will be created.
Here I’ve created an illustrastion of Wrexham’s 5-2-2-1 tactics with my 3-4-3 formation added to see how the players line up. It shows that it will be a man to man fight where quality superiority superseeds numerical superiority as both teams will attack and defend more or less with a similar shape – a 3-2-5 in possession.
However, the full picture isn’t as clear as that. The roles of my two defensive midfielders are quite different from the opposition. With only one holding position and the other one acting more or less like a central midfielder who moves into the final third with late runs to overload the left flank, his instructions can both be a key to success or make us inferior in the midfield as his attacking duty might give lots of space for the two opposing AMC’s to take advantage of on the counter-attacks.
On the other hand, whilst I love to attack and try to dominate the opposition in their own half, the mentalities and duties of the two defensive midfielders could leave too much space for the AMC’s to take advantage of.
To better protect the middle, I think it’s time to change the duties from DLP-support and Segundo Volante-attack to defend and support.
But if we look closer at the comparison of formation, it reveals that rhe opposition has a four versus two in the middle of the pitch. It might be difficult to manage to play through the center and get the ball forward from the DMC’s to the front line.
In fact, the potential problem that may arise is that the two defensive midfielders will be in covering shadow of the front three of Wrexham whilst the opposing defensive midfielders will pack and congest the playing area in a manner that makes passes towards the wingers nearly impossible.
Due to their numbers in the middle, we might be forced to play down the wings rather than moving the ball decessively through the middle for the wingers to progress play into the final third. In fact, we might need to change our approach and protect the middle with more men in order to aid the transition from defence to attack. A better approach could be to use a 3-2-4-1 formation with two central midfielders and a lone striker. Unfortunately, I don’t got a tactical familiarity with such a system and lacks players with the positional suitability to play in the AMC spot.
Another approach is to use a similar type of box midfield – for instance by applying a 4-2-3-1 system or 4-3-3 formation that transits into a 3-2-4-1 in possession.
The solution might be to ask the two wingers to tight mark the opposing defensive midfielders in the first stages of the match to see how it goes.
To better protect down the left flank, we will also change the duty of the DCL from WCB-support into a defend duty and ask Zac Williams to tight mark the assigned opponent in defensive situations to reduce the creative influence of Cannon and Bolton. Our DMCL will be asked to stick particularly tight to the opposing DMCR and tackle harder to limit the creativity of George Evans who has 13 in vision and passing.
The highlights from Wrexham’s previous match also reveals that there are huge spaces on both of the flanks – in the zones behind their attacking wingbacks. This can be taken advantage of with the positioning and instructions of our wingers.
They are already instructed to sit narrower to allow our wingbacks to overlap but to try to get them to exploit gaps in the opposition’s defensive shape, I want them to ‘Roam From Position’ more often. It’s especially the AML who I want to move into spaces. He will be playing down the same flank as their greatest attacking threat, Luke Bolton, and it could be an effective strategy to force the player to extort his energy on defending rather than attacking.
Due to how the two formations line up, I will start the match with my preferred tactics but could easily change to a 4-2-3-1 if necessary in second half.
In possession, it might be useful to change from working the ball into the box. Their defensive solidity might be hard to break down and gifting the opposition time to settle into a defensive block will help them more than it benefits us.
How to counter Wrexham’s main threats?
The information we can gather from the pass map helps us to decide on making slight adjustments to the out of possession team instructions. We know that their right wingback will be effective from crosses so reducing his impact will be of importance.
At the same time we know that they want to retain possession down their left side and seek to create space on the opposite side for Luke Bolton to take advantage of his acceleration and pace of 16 – far better than any of my players.
In order to limit their threat we will need to counter the attacking threat of the opposition’s WBR with specific opposition instructions and make some small adjustments to the out of possession team instructions.
His capabilities might want us to make slight adjustments to the line up and pick a more defensive solid wingback on that flank rather than one who lacks the marking, tackling and quickness to deal with Bolton’s attacking threat. It’s time to ask Rio Adebisi to play as left wingback rather than the highly attacking gifted Val Adedokun. Adebisi got acceleration (13) and pace (15), and marking of 7 compared to Adedokun’s 5. His tackling is beneath the average level (9) but got the work rate and stamina to try to catch up with Bolton’s incredible speed.
In defence, we need to prioritize the players with the height and aerial skills to compete against the opposition teams crossing but I have also other plans in my sleeve to counter their greatest strengths.
One of the first adjustments we can make is to the type pf out of possession team instructions. First of, we wish to reduce the number of crosses they make by asking the team to try to stop crosses.
'Stop Crosses' asks the team to seek to avoid defending crosses into the penalty area, instead forcing the opposition to find another way to attack.
By enabling this instruction, the team will defend a bit wider – something that may provide more space for the AMC’s so it’s important to assess how they play within the course of the match to see if our wide defending helps us or works against us.
At the same time, I have found it effective to set up a pressing trap on the outside against teams who play with only one wide player.
'Trap Outside' asks the team to set a pressing trap designed at funnel the ball into wide areas, where the opposition has fewer options with the ball, and are more likely to concede possession.
However, with such a strategy we need to be aware of any through balls delivered from the flanks, or early crosses behind our defensive line, so we can not stretch our defensive width too much as they can effectively play through the channels with two AMC. The work rate and defensive responsibilities of our two defensive midfielders will be of highest value.
Setting up opposition instructions
To try to limit the opposition team’s capabilities, we can set up specific opposition instructions to deal with certain players. My plan is to reduce the number of passes towards the flanks, as well as reducing the number of crosses. Above I have made changes to the team’s tactical plan ahead of kickoff and it’s time to instruct our players what they shall do when coming up against their assigned opponent.
First and foremost, I need to ask either my wingers or wingbacks to specifically tight mark the opposite wingbacks. I really want to avoid Luke Bolton to run with the ball directly from defensive third into the final third so it might be worth to take advantage of his poor composure, decision-making and concentration by asking the players to tackle harder and trigger press more often. At the same time, we wish to show the ball onto his weaker foot (Left) so he runs inside rather than down the flank. This might help the team to intercept passes played towards the AMC, rather than having to deal with crosses from the byline.
We will also tight mark their most creative player outside Bolton and go in strong on him as his bravery is low (8). It will also be necessary to tight mark their opposing AMCL (Lee) and limit his creativity and unpredictability. His off the ball movement is also magnificent so it might be worthy to ask one of the DM’s to track his runs throughout the match. Due to his good finishing we wish to show the ball towards the outside – meaning if he is likely to come to a shot it will be from a more difficult angle.
By coupling tight marking on the two opposing wingbacks and enable trap outside we can try to force them to play down the wings as we should have numerical superiority on the flanks with 2 wingers compared to the opposition teams two AMC’s, who needs to move wider to avoid our numerical superiority.
Finally, we wish to put up a higher press against their back three. The aim is to limit the number of passing options so they can make those direct passes towards the DM, AM or WB’s. We will ask our wingers to stick particularly tight to their outer centre backs and close down at the earliest opportunity as possible.
Instructing the front three to trigger press and show onto their weaker foot – towards the inside and away from their most dangerous players might help to win back the ball high up the pitch and avoid making the match go the way they want.
Since there are none players in the back three with a clear weakness in possession of the ball, I don’t want to force passes into a specific area. Normally, it could be a great strategy if a player has poor passing, composure and decision-making to not trigger press towards that particular player but instead force him to be the one building out from the back.
Conclusion
Having thought out a plan about how to approach the next opposition and coming up with a strategy to counter specific threats in their line-up, and see it working in the match, certainly increases my enjoyment of playing Football Manager.
Putting an extra effort into learning as much as possible about the next opposition is something I’ve found very rewarding. It doesn’t need to be as in-depth as my analysis of the next opponent either. Football Manager includes a number of quick hints within the game if you read the news tickers and data information properly. Simply browsing the summary of the Next Opponent in the overview screen can give you valuable tips on what you can expect.
I hope you have enjoyed getting an insight to how I analyze the next opponent on Football Manager and get some tips on what to look for in the Data Hub to assess before setting up opposition instructions. Finally, as always with tactical analysis, we never know if the changes we make to counter the opposition will work, or how the game will evolve as the smallest incidents and a little bit of poor luck can dramastically change the output.
However, with next match preparations and learning as much as possible about the next opponent, you will get one step closer to success.
Let us know in the comments, what you prioritize the most when analyzing the next opposition on Football Manager! Stay tuned for more Football Manager tactical guides and tutorials, or let me know in the comments if there are specific tactics you’d like to see recreated on FM24/FM25.