FM12 Passing

Im wondering how to get my team to be great at passing.

its not about the passing. initially in my first FM12 game I didn't av possession that much but I was always winning. not even a division 2 team.

2012-10-18 00:30#67695 jaycie_caesar : its not about the passing. initially in my first FM12 game I didn't av possession that much but I was always winning. not even a division 2 team.

how can you win possession with every team? i only know that short passing style will win more possession than the direct one, is that true or you have any other factors?

Teamwork, and how long the team has been together counts for abit. Also things like teamwork matter as if teamwork is high the team will pass the ball around more instead of going on solo runs. There are quite alot of features/abilities that count towards passing.

2012-10-24 12:16#68354 _Man_u_barmy_army_ : Teamwork, and how long the team has been together counts for abit. Also things like teamwork matter as if teamwork is high the team will pass the ball around more instead of going on solo runs. There are quite alot of features/abilities that count towards passing.

so we should choose Teamwork match preparation instead of attacking movement or defensive movement if we want to play the possession game. Is that can be success on weak team such us blue square bet team or lower league team?

If you want to play possession you have to do a lot of things. Even with several years of FM play behind me, and reading various opinions, I'm not sure which have the biggest impacts, but you can sort of apply logic: long passes have a lower percentage chance of retaining. Long headers even worse, I think (no setting for that, but it drives me nuts to see players head it long, which you usually have to have space to do, when they could have brought it down to feet and retained while the header ALWAYS fails it seems). Long goal kicks again in the equation. Banging away at long shots means giving up a lot of goal kicks instead of keeping the ball. Shooting on every free kick in the opposing zone will also probably stop play and give up possession. All these are things you can fiddle for your team/player/set piece instructions. As someone who's done a bit of real life coaching I can say... all those are necessary sometimes, but when done with poor judgment drive us nuts. So that's the next issue: if you give instructions that indicates a style of play, and your players don't follow those instructions, you still don't get what you want. So you have to also exert some control on "creativity" - too much, and you increase the chance of decisions counter to what you want. Truly creative players with great decision making you can individually give more latitude to, but the team instruction matters a lot. You can't play too attacking, because attacking mode means you want your players to pick the riskier attacking pass when a safer possession pass might be on. And so forth, just think about the different aspects....

This said... pure possession may or may not be what you want. There should be plenty of real-life examples where we've seen teams stroke the ball around attractively and not muster anything close to goal, and the objective, after all, is to score more goals than your opponent, not to mesmerise them with your super passing, which scores no points in the table. Although the criticism is in my opinion somewhat overblown, Arsenal gets characterized this way a lot. The masters Barcelona, remember, started this style as a defensive tactic, not an attacking one (on the very sound principle that if the opponent doesn't have the ball, they can't score on you). They also sometimes have trouble scoring, but they have an unfair advantage: Messi, who bails them out of poor positions so often.

FM, by the way, doesn't seem to have passing statistics which match real life. I've had matches where I've been happy for my team to succeed at a 75% level (although I prefer close to 80), and dominate, and then I've read real-life match reports where some player is criticised (eg: Frank Lampard, Chelsea) for having the LOWEST completion percentage on the whole team at 75%.

2012-10-24 16:10#68399 Zenkazama :

2012-10-24 12:16#68354 _Man_u_barmy_army_ : Teamwork, and how long the team has been together counts for abit. Also things like teamwork matter as if teamwork is high the team will pass the ball around more instead of going on solo runs. There are quite alot of features/abilities that count towards passing.

so we should choose Teamwork match preparation instead of attacking movement or defensive movement if we want to play the possession game. Is that can be success on weak team such us blue square bet team or lower league team?

I'm saying teamwork is an element of passing(the attribute, and the training focus), and possesion football is probably not the right strategy to choose at level to be honest.

You also need takling!! if you can't win the ball you won't be able to pass it to begin with. Decisions is also a factor as the players need to be able to make the right decision on where to pass the ball, if he cant decide good and quick he will lose the ball. Your players will need to have less flair perhaps so they dont keep the ball too much for themselves. Ball control is needed as its no good passing if they cant recive a pass and control it correctly. I find using a short passing game ridged(have I spelt that right lol) game and a slow tempo helps a passing team more. Teamwork and training in team cohesion should help too.