Due to my recent promotion to League One in my save with the mighty Vale, I have decided to post a little ramble about its strengths and weaknesses. I don't know if you expect to learn anything from this, you probably won't but I thought I would post anyway.

An outline

The formation and team instructions are shown below:





The main changes I made to the team instructions are as follows. I instruct the players to pass the ball shorter so that we can keep the ball for longer and hopefully do not lose possession of the ball. Floating the ball from crosses is useful as we have a target man who is quite tall in Marc Richards. As the crosses come in, he can hopefully head it goalwards or lay it off to another player in a better position. I play a deep defensive line because both of my centre backs are quite slow and would struggle if I played a high line as they would not be able to catch up with pacey forwards. The high width allows us to stretch our play when going forward and allows us to stretch their defence and find more gaps to attack in. Playing at a slow tempo helps us keep the ball and along with a short passing game, we should not lose possession as often as we would with a quicker tempo and a more direct passing style as we do not have the players with the abilities to play more fluently.

And here are the attributes of the players above, shown with the key attributes highlighted for the roles that they played:

GK: Stuart Tomlinson > Goalkeeper - Defend
DR: Liam Darville > Fullback - Support
DL: Lee Collins > Fullback - Support
DC: Gareth Owen > Centre Back - Defend
DC: Anthony Gardner > Centre Back - Defend
MC: Anthony Griffith > Central Midfielder - Defend
MC: Gary Roberts > Deep Lying Playmaker - Support
AMR: Louis Dodds > Winger - Support
AML: Rob Taylor > Winger - Support
ST: Jamil Adam > Poacher - Attack
ST: Marc Richards > Target Man - Attack

The main success from my tactic for the season in which we won League Two was our forward line, not our defensive capabilities. This was shown by the following screenshots:







As you can see above, Jamil Adam beat off Marc Richards by just one goal but both reached the thirty goal mark for the season which is terrific. This is also a lot due to the support they were given by the wingers, as Louis Dodds was given the nPower League Two Player of the Year after making an incredible twenty seven assists and scoring six goals himself.

Player Instructions

As it is a game based in the lower leagues, of sorts, I thought it would be best not to make things too complicated. As a result here are the only player instructions I employ with my players:


Anthony Griffiths, the main player who plays in the position as a defending central midfielder is not the best passer of a football on the team. As a result of this, I have set his passing to short. I have done this as I believe if he focuses on passing the ball shorter, to either the winger on the right, central midfielder on his left, he is less likely to give the ball away.


Shown above are both of the winger's instructions. The only changes I have made here are three changes offensively and two changes defensively. For a start, I instruct both wingers to attempt to get to the byline. This is because I believe that if they get into a position on the byline, it is a better place to cross from and it is ultimately nearer to the oppositions goal. I also tell both Taylor and Dodds to aim their crosses towards the Target Man. This is because if the crosses get to the target man, he can either hold the ball up for another player to strike home. Another attacking instruction is to hug the touchline. By doing this, players run down the line and full backs must run further from their boxes to tackle them and therefore if they take them on, they will be in plenty of space to put in a decent cross, and if they don't they will probably win a throw in. Instructing the wingers to tightly mark players and go in for hard tackles is pretty good defensive instructions as even if they foul the opposition, it will probably be in their own half and will cause less of a threat.

I also instruct Marc Richards, the target man to hold up the ball. By doing this, he will hopefully help bring other players into the attack and we will have more players going for the goal.

In-game analysis

Port Vale v Crawley Town

The first game I will analyse is a home game against a mid table side like Crawley Town, a game in which Vale were in goalscoring form, but also showed some defensive frailties.

This is the point in which the game is at one goal apiece. This is a key move which shows players doing there jobs.



As shown above, you can show the left winger playing in this game, Sean Rigg, playing a ball to target man Marc Richards, who has dropped back to hold up the ball and help with supporting the onrunning forward players. As Vale press forward you can see that once Richards get the ball, he has two options available to him.



Richards is given the ball by Rigg and plays a cross field ball to right win ger Louis Dodds, who has options ahead of him. He has Adam running into space in the middle of the pitch and he is supported by three other players as Vale build a five player pronged attack as they press the Crawlet defence. Dodds could also run down the line and attempt to put in a cross.



The movement from Adam is fantastic. As soon as Dodds gets the ball, he is able to lay it off to quick striker Jamil Adam very quickly. As a result, Adam runs on to the ball to complete a brilliant Port Vale move and to put them 2-1 up.

Passing Analysis



In this game, our passing was pretty good indeed. Players who were instructed to pass shortly, such as defending central midfielder Sam Morsy in this game, has a very high pass succession rate. Out of thirty passes attempted, he has managed to complete twenty five of them. The low passing of the centre backs may be attributable to players booting it up or out of the play, rather than taking more time and showing more freedom, by finding a suitable short pass to play. The strikers passing rate are also very high. This, to me is a key to our success. They are obviously linking well with each other, as well as the rest of the team, creating more goal scoring opportunites higher up the pitch.



There is a few conclusions we can draw from the stats of the Port Vale v Crawley match and these are as follows. The game was a very close one, probably changed by how clinical Vale players were. vale edged the game, as they had six shots on target, compared to Crawley's two. Of these six shots on target, five goals were scored. Very impressive work from the Valiants. Vale were however overshadowed on many other stats, including passing, but they were dominated in the only stat that matters at the end of the game, goals.

Port Vale v Bury

Another game I will show is one where my defensive frailties were shown, with Bury beating my Vale side four games to two.



As shown above, Bury did give themselves plenty of chances to score a goal, and it was always going to be likely that they would be amongst the goals. They created four clear cut chances, which were in our box and that is just not good enough. Whether it be that the players were not marked tightly enough or that they were not closed down upon getting the ball, something was going wrong.



Here we have a look at full back Lee Collins, who had a particularly awful game for us, getting a 4.2 rating. As shown, he only attempted five tackles for the whole of the game. In this game, he lost out on three of them and two of them were in very dangerous areas of the pitch. After missing out on the tackle, it would be hard for the full back to get back and the winger or player he has failed to tackle would be able to cut inside or play in a cross with more freedom.



As you can see by the stats for this game, Bury completely ran the game from the off. Perhaps I was a bit hasty, not adapting to the pitch conditions and their manager out thought me but I just think it was one of those days. Bury were a strong side who were relegated the year before and could not deal with the forward Shaun Harrad. Although being dominated, we still got two goals out of the game ourselves, one positive to draw.

Goal Analysis

After looking at match analysis, let us have a look where my goals are actually coming from and how we are letting most of our goals in.



Here it shows the big majority of both ours and opponents goals are coming from placed shots. We have scored seventy two goals out of of one hundred and twelve goals with placed shots, which shows that are strikers are great finishers and that they are getting into some fantastic positions. However, I am not happy with how many close range shots we are conceding. I can not evaluate anything wrong with either player instructions or team instructions, so I will put it down to having a poor pool of players to choose from. The amount of headers scored are impressive, showing our impressive aerial pressence and that we are taking our set pieces well.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Our forward line is very good. The link up play of target man and poacher has been impressive, netting a total of sixty six goals between them this season.

Our wingers and midfield link up very well. The passing stats of central midfielders are good, as are our assists from our wingers. Main first team wingers Rob Taylor, Sean Rigg and Louis Dodds have achieved a total of forty one assists between them. Centre midfield Gary Roberts has contributed with ten.

Defence is looking weak. Conceding sixty eight goals in the season is the most in the top six in the league and we will not be able to afford to do it in League One. I think a better left back will be needed who is braver and is better at tackling than Lee Collins. This is if I have the available budget to do it.

Key Statistics



And finally, if you want to download a tactic that concedes shit loads of goals, but also creates a lot more, you are welcome to try it here.


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