Upturn in fortunes

My world class striker Chris Pearce, which I posted in the previous blog post, has been injured for 3 months!

Thankfully, his deputy, Vaclav Kadlec, a Czech Republic striker has taken over his position superbly.

Vaclav Kadlec is a real person in real life, unlike Chris Pearce, and can be bought at the start of the game for a free. :)

Here is his stats.


As you have noticed, his stats is somewhat similar to Chris Pearce. Super in the air, and has good finishing ability. He has pace, although not very fast, but still enough to cause problems to a slow and pushed up defence.
Though not as good as Chris Pearce, he is what I call a complete striker.

Notice his goals per matches. Twice this season, I have played him in the 80th minute and he came off the bench to score a 90th minute goal. Fantastic super sub.
As Chris Pearce is injured, I have played him in 2 matches and he has scored in both. A good deputy.

As for my results, I think I have finally found the sweet spot :)
I used to play short passing football with a normal tempo. I thought that was very similar to the way Arsenal play in real life.
The results I got were not very good. Although I had very high possession and shots, I find that I was creating too little clear cut chances and my possession was due mainly to my players playing very cautious passes.

One day, I read an interview by Fabregas regarding the way Arsenal play football. He stated that Arsene Wenger encouraged them to play forward passes. Mistakes were allowed, but if you give the ball away carelessly, that was not tolerated.
This statement set me thinking. Maybe Arsenal were not playing short passes, but more of passes that were generally more attacking/forward. To conduct my experiment, I watched the match Arsenal vs Wigan.
My theory was proven right.

Arsenal were playing very attacking passes. Only the Defenders were allowed to play short passes that were mainly cautious. They were also capable of long passes when openings were spotted. This was mainly done by Fabregas.

So I went back to FM's tactical board and created a more direct passing tactic. I also made more forward runs for my players. More forward runs = more forward passes.
Direct passing didn't mean that there were more long ball passes, but meant that passes were more direct, more towards goal, rather than trying to keep possession and pass the ball short.
Direct passes can also be on the ground, not just in the air.

I created the tactic and then tried it. The results? Simply superb.



The football has been fantastic to watch at times, and there was always an element of control in the game. Sometimes I had less than 55% possession, but I was always attacking and the opposition chances were long shots at goal, hardly threatening.

Enjoy :D