[coach422001]

Tonight I played three tries of Real vs Bohemians. I started as Bohemians. I edited City tactics to play deep and longball. They basically played their high pressure all game. Announcers even said the pressure was up.

Like others have been saying in the slider forum, Real was putting in a ton of crosses. I tried playing a wider defensively with the tactics adjusted as such. Seemed to help a bit, but (playing on Pro setting) my defenders really gave Real the wings and FB. When I instructed the Real FB to not overlap and stay back it reduced the number of crosses, but still seemed like there were more crosses than you'd expect.

I then switched to play as Real. At least on Pro it was pretty amazingly clear how much faster the Real players are (I didn't try legendary to see if that equilibrates the speed). I set Bohemians to long ball and play very deep. I also changed their "attacking" gameplan from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-2-4, and I moved their CB to the front line and their striker and CAM to the back line. Default tactics of Bohemians was balanced; their back line wasn't as deep.

Game started and they sat back deep like I hoped. They didn't pressure the ball. Didn't get too many opportunities to play the ball long. In the second half I moved the controller back to Bohemians. Stood on the ball and changed their gameplan to 'attacking'. Moved the controller back to the middle. Their pressure in the plan was to constant pressure. They played for pretty much the half with 4 men up front, including both center backs, before I ended the game.

So what I would want to do next is make 4 obvious game plan changes so that it would be clear what was going on (4 attacking players...or 5 in the back...constant pressure vs possession) with a lower level team and play out the game to see if during the game it is obvious the opposition is changing their plan. I'm pretty sure it is what I saw in Matt's stream the other day but would want to verify since tactics aren't his bag.

The challenge would be that you have 5 plans per team, how do you make the teams play "like real life" with those options and the time it would take to set those up in advance of starting a CM, or being able to extract real-life stats to suggest the set ups for all these teams. Then of course , if you set them up, right now i'm not sure if they will change plans on their own. Another thing if you don't have the game yet is these plans all are based on their starting lineups. So you may want to have 3 forwards in an attacking plan when normally you play a striker and CAM with 5 at the back. when you set the plan up, you have to utilize the 11 in your starting line up to set up that new formation. Perhaps when I test with radical formations and personnel, I'll see if the CPU 1) adjusts during the game, and 2) makes subs to get the more appropriate personnel on the pitch to optimize their new plan.