Pre-season 2018
Posted by: not-Greg in First XI, negotiations, squad, tags: First XI, negotiations, squadThe coming season 2018 will be my twelfth season in this Master League career with my custom Coventry City team. A few seasons ago I won a Treble—League, Cup, European Cup—but last season, 2017, I won nothing. I only came close to winning something in the Division 1 Cup, where I lost in the final on penalties. It was a bad season. I was sulky and complacent, often just pressing buttons instead of actually playing.
A lot of factors affected me. There was scripting, for one. This controversial aspect of PES is as bad as it’s ever been. After playing so many seasons the way the game massages not just individual matches, but the overall story arc of a season, became so glaringly obvious that I ceased to take the entire game seriously, for a while.
There were other factors. There was simple PES fatigue, unrelated to the whole scripting thing (I love chilli con carne, but if I ate it every day I’d soon tire of it; ditto PES). There was the allure of FIFA08, and other games. There was a busy work and personal life, packed with things to distract me… My peak in PES came in 2005 when I was unemployed; perhaps my sky-high regard for that year’s PES5 is a reflection of that time.
But now I’m back, I think. Towards the end of last season I rallied a little, and could have snatched the league title at the death if I’d only focused just that little bit more. I’m still determined to win what I regard as a proper Treble in this game. The season I did win it felt very much as if the game had awarded me the Treble just for hanging in there. I really want to win the league by a lot of points, not by goal difference on the last day.
My existing squad (left) has become a problem. It’s too full. It’s time to trim the fat. For about a season and a half I’ve had a squad of near enough the maximum 32 players. All but a few of them have been the top players in their positions. This has meant that I’ve barely used some really great players.
I started looking for players to release. Not transfer—after the first couple of seasons, no CPU team ever buys players from the human team. This is a massive fault in the game’s transfer market that has surely got to be fixed for PES2009. (Along with a lot else.)
I released Mathieu. He’s been my ML talisman for a couple of memorable years now. Releasing him is a bit of a departure, to say the least. It hurt quite a bit to do it, but I had to do it. Unlike in previous PESes where Mathieu was completely dominant from the outset, he’s less so this time around. I got him too late and played him too little for him to reach his usual sensational heights. I’ll keep an eye on the Youth list and get him again when he Regenerates. Then I’ll see if Mathieu can be great again.
I also released Donk, Traore, Shubin, and Podolski. The latter was actually the hardest. At his peak, Podolski was my top striker. Big, strong, and skilful, he was my Schwarz before I got the actual Schwarz. But he’s in his 30s now, and in serious decline. The others are all above-average players, but could never be anything more than squad players. As such they’re taking up space and getting in the way of the talent.
I was looking for a top-rated left-sided AMF. I went on an Advanced search, and found Burdner. It was a toss-up between Burdner and Malgani, but I had Malgani in my PES6 ML team, and felt like trying out Burdner. I offered Burdner’s team one of my three goalkeepers, Lehmann, as part-exchange for him, and was successful at the first attempt.
All of which reduces my squad size for 2018 from 32 players to 27 players. That’s roughly where I want it to be. On the First XI front, Burdner comes straight in and Dos Santos drops to the bench (he’ll be an able deputy). In the centre of defence it’s time for Couto to take a starting place again.
I’ll make no other changes for now. I toyed with a couple of ideas—dropping Kim Cyun Hi and restoring Schwarz to the central attacking role, replacing Giggs with Del Piero, shifting Camacho to DMF, and a few other things. But I’ll leave it alone for now, and review things in the mid-season.
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I think I know why Kim’s not working for you, it’s because you’ve got three CFs, instead of one CF and two WFs, as in my formation. I tried changing my formation to three CFs, and it just doesn’t work as well. Try that and see if it works better.
In all my time playing master league, I try to keep a squad of 22, with back up in each position.
This works for me once I rid myself of the default players.
I only found out yesterday my ace striker BEN SAHAR is a Chelsea youngster in real life.
Adriano - thanks for the tip (you really love Kim Cyun Hi, don’t you!) but… I’m not changing my formation to accommodate any one player at this stage. Maybe in the future for a novelty but not now. It’s too soon in my ML career.
I’m more than a little sceptical that having two wide WFs would magically transform Kim from being a merely good striker (as he is for me now) into the phenomenon he is for you. Kim is a CF and he’s playing in a CF position - in the prime CF position - and he’ll have to stand or fall accordingly. I don’t see how redefining the two wide CFs to WFs would have an automatic effect on the central CF - just how does that work? Is it a recognised factor of PES formations? I’ve never heard of it. I believe Kim’s so-far lack of brilliance (compared to your Kim) is mostly down to my style of play, which really is nearly all pass and move.
In any case, I can’t play PES again now until tomorrow at the earliest. Today is Metal Gear Solid 4 day. It came this morning and I’ve been playing it all afternoon. It’s bloody great!
heraldo - I always find when I get into all competitions that at least 25 players are required to field a more or less fully-fit team in every game. I’ve got 27 at the moment and I’m looking to go down to 25 asap.
Greg
I got mine from ASDA at midnight last night, it’s brilliant, played it till 4am. My Mrs just shook her head when I told her what I was going for, “it’s a computer game” although she was impressed today when she saw it. It’s amazing on a HD Tv.
When I play a 4-3-3, I always use the 2 WF’s also. It comes down to your game style at the end of the day, I would harbour a bet that all the posters on her play a different style of football when we play PES.
I notice this when I play my mates and when I go online.
On the squad, 22 for me, is more than enough. It was only the PS3 version, where the fatigue levels were shocking, that I needed more. Most of my players on PS2 version play nearly every game. I have noticed that since I stopped relying on sprint button, my players energy was conserved.
How can I not love a guy I have scored 669 goals with?
I think the reason three CFs don’t work is because they tend to get jumbled together in the middle of the box or they tend to get in the way of each other, making it easier for the opposition to mark them. Whereas when you have two WFs and a CF, the wingers tend to attract the defenders away from the center, frequently leaving the CF 1-on-1 with a CB or, when the opposition’s DMF tracks back to help mark your WFs, you’re left with two CBs against your CF and your AMF, making it easier to do 1-2s or even (God forbid) “dribble” around the defenders.
What I do with my WFs is set their attacking arrows to the front and diagonally towards the goal, so the one who hasn’t got the ball will run towards the box when you cross. Try that for a change when you can, to see if it makes any difference, I insist. I also found the WFs tend to make more runs behind the defence to receive through balls than the CFs, who tend to run more towards the center.
heraldo - I’m 6 hours in total into MGS4 by now and it’s shaping up to be the best ‘game’ game I’ve ever played (PES excepted, of course). The next-gen - or at least the PS3 side of it - has finally arrived for me!
Adriano - you make a compelling argument. I’d counter that CFs whose preferred area of play (the shaded area in the formation screen) extends across the whole of the front third of the pitch (e.g. Giggs, Del Piero, etc.) should be perfectly happy playing as wide CFs.
But despite my doubts I just had a go. Partway through a league game where I was getting nowhere I changed Giggs and Cole respectively to WFs. I noticed straightaway that Giggs in particular seemed to drop deeper to collect the ball, and Cole was making more darting runs across he pitch. Whether this was the result of them now being WFs, or they’ve always done this and I’m only now noticing it because of this debate, I don’t know. It’s far too early to tell.
Kim scored - I played him in for a one-on-one that he finished coolly into the top corner. He’s always been solid on one-on-ones. Kim scoring does not mean the WF thing works! Kim’s always scored just enough goals to justify keeping him as a CF - he just doesn’t get the extraordinary number of goals for me that he does for you.
I’m still inclined to believe it’s due to our differing styles of play rather than Formation screen settings, but we’ll see.
I won’t be permanently switching my wide CFs to WFs, but I will make the switch partway through games where I seem to be struggling for goals. After a dozen or so attempts, I’ll be better placed to give my full opinion.
But what is this ‘dribble’ thing you mention? I am not knowing this ‘dribbling’…
I must confess I have actually never looked at that “preferred area of play” thing.
I’m like Felipão, my players will play wherever I tell them to play. Either that or they’ll go to the bench (after taking a good punching).;-)
Why don’t you set Kim and Andy Cole as CFs and Giggs as WF to see what that does?
You can also try playing around with just where you position your wide CFs (or WFs) to see in which position they work better for you. It makes a lot of difference, and it’s something one should definitely try changing from game to game, because it does depend a lot on what the opposition is doing. One thing I found that is obligatory is to have the wingers deeper than the CF so they can cross back to him instead of having to do early crosses or run back a little when you get near the goal line because the CF is not where he should be.
I find that playing with two WFs also results in less goals from headers than I expected. It happens a lot that the CF is alone in the box when they WF gets in a position to cross. Maybe because my WFs are a little too wide. But it also happens a lot that the WFs have clear chances on goal because they dribble past the SBs, and are free to score, since the CBs are too busy marking the CF.
The next time you’re in a game that’s going nowhere, you can also try switching to a 4-2-1-3, with Camacho deeper down the center of the pitch, with Burdner sitting back a little as CMF instead of AMF. That way Camacho will always be in the box for crosses and Burdner will frequently be waiting outside the box for rebounds. He’ll also do a better job in defense, I believe, than if you assign him the AMF role.
Adriano - lots of food for thought there. I’ll mention it in the posts if/when I start tinkering with my formation as the next days unfold.
I’m not a compulsive tinkerer with my setup. As a PES year passes I really do extract maximum value and lasting enjoyment out of the initial ten minutes or so that it takes me to set up my 4-3-3.
There have been exceptions. I think I’ve mentioned somewhere on the blog before that during the PES4 year, which I found a relatively easy one, I did restart ML and played a short career with a 4-2-2-2 formation using two DMFs, two wide AMFs, and two central CFs. I’d just won my first Treble with that formation when PES5 was released.