Creative Freedom affects Flair. Flair affects how much the player is willing to express his Creativity, or any of his other attributes.
If you watch the behaviour of Michael Carrick you will see what low Flair does to a very intelligent and creative player. If you watch the behaviour of Nani you will see what high Flair does to a player that is not the sharpest knife in the box.
Originally Posted by drhay53 
That is a fair point, but if you have a player with high Flair and you want him to be flamboyant then you really want him to be able to see things around the pitch, otherwise he is just going to try and dribble past players or hit longshots over and over. If the dribbles/shots come off then great, and the player might skin a few players and then do something flamboyant with the cross, but flamboyant players and a lack of intelligence and creativity are generally not the best combination.
Originally Posted by batata169 If so I’d be interested to know how you instructed those 5 players, and also what tempo are you playing at ?
Originally Posted by michelco I suppose I should spend some time describing my tactics, because tactics do matter even if the “philosophy” is to design freedom into a team.
Formation and Basic Shape:
The reason for this formation and basic shape is first of all defensive in nature. Just because I am building a team that I want to play very creative attacking football most of the time does not mean I will ignore defending. This shape when my instructions are tweaked to play more defensively will drop deep into a “triangular midfield” sitting ahead of the back four, forcing opponents wide and defending the centre with numbers and with a good shape.
FM10 does not handle changes of shape very well so a more attacking shape would not be able to defend so well so easilly and would require a lot of tinkering and tweaking on a regular basis. This shape in attack is very sound, and especially so when my Fullbacks get forward. With my ability to pass the ball, having players that sit inbetween the lines without heaps and heaps of support is not a problem. Rooney is not isolated, Berbatov will not be marked out of the game, my Wingers will not find it difficult to spot a pass and my CM’s will not have trouble moving the ball forward.
Control of Player Instructions:
This is a screenshot of how I control the Tactical Instructions for players. The reason I do it this way is so that through using the Shouts and Role Change shortcuts I can quickly and easilly define a huge amount of changes to each players playstyle or the teams playstyle without affecting any of the specific behaviours I want them to carry out.
I don’t want my CM to stop playing throughballs and start hitting longshots purely because I want him to drop a bit deeper on his own. The Shouts and Roles are for my purposes purely a way to change the players positioning, tendency to play Short or more Direct football, to press more or back off more or tackle more/less aggressively. It’s about controlling how aggressively I want him to play his particular game.
So for me the TC in all it’s forms is purely about controlling those details of general shape, general aggression of attacking/defending. I use it to alter these details on-the-fly. And because I set up the “Action Instructions” in detail, I think about all the Roles and Shouts in the game in terms of Mentality, Pressing, Creative Freedom. In terms of positioning and shape and attack/defence aggression.
So in this screenshot you can see my tweaked version of Central Midfielder Attack. My version of Central Midfielder Attack is an advanced midfield position that looks to keep the ball moving around attacking areas, probing for Throughballs and with high Creative Freedom to express his abilities, that does not move from the Central Midfield area and is tasked with holding an advanced position and using his intelligence and creativity to pick out any kind of attacking pass if possible, but not so high a demand for attacking passes that I encourage him to give the ball away.
So while it looks like a very aggressive attacking role, it is a very advanced position for a very defensively strong midfielder with bags of passing ability. My CM is supposed to sit high up the pitch, staying in position, winning the ball and pinging it around looking for openings. If you watch the PKM you will see that my CM’s hold a very high position but sit there and dictate the match.
Control of Team Instructions
This is arguably the most important screen for me, because it is the screen that shows shape, positioning and aggression of position, and it shows style and philosophy and strategy for the match.
You may have noticed that Balanced Philosophy + Control Strategy + My Player Roles have produced a Mentality arrangements that is almost identical to a Very Fluid Philosophy. However crucially unlike a Very Fluid Philosophy my Centrebacks are not going to push forward and my Striker is going to play slightly deeper. Here I can see precisely whose Role needs to be tweaked to produce a slightly different overall shape to my team, for example I could choose Roles with reduced Mentality for my Fullbacks to produce a deep back four when attacking instead of more of a back two, or do the same for my CM’s to produce a shape that has Dual Holding Midfielders. Indeed this is where I spend a lot of time before each match, flicking between Philosophies and Strategies to study different shapes to my team within it’s formation, then going back to the player screen and adjusting Roles and Duties.
As I said before, the TC for me is all about shape and strategy and aggression of attack and defence. I don’t pay any less attention to Mentality frameworks because the TC exists, I just use it speed up the process of defining shape and strategy.
My “Balanced” “Control” framework is infact highly Fluid and positionally aggressive. Which is precisely what I want to pin teams in their own half and look for openings. However I have a strong back two sitting deep behind all this ready to mop up any passes into the lone striker or to hold their shape and wait for “reinforcements” should the opponent manage to break through my defensively strong, positionally aggressive Central Midfielders and my very advanced Fullbacks.
Playing Style will likewise be chosen on a game by game basis. The Playing Style shown here does not completely fit the Shape of the team and I went for Aggressive Closing Down and Hard Tackling to fit the shape of the team for the Fulham match. You will notice the Tempo, Width and Time Wasting sliders. This is what Control Strategy gives me. I might be playing a Positionally Aggressive game but I am in no hurry to make anything happen. I am going to camp inside the Fulham half and play some controlled football.
Zonal Marking is pretty much a no brainer for this kind of style and shape. It’s areas of the pitch I want to defend and dominate and I intend to use my defensively strong CM’s and my defensively strong Fullbacks to control the width of the pitch, getting Berbatov to drop into position ahead of the CM’s incase Fulham try to play their way to a draw against a two man midfield. Not that Berbatov is going to bother doing much but he is quite good at nicking passes off players and winning headers and atleast if he is standing there then I have a man in the hole Fulham would like to exploit to keep the ball off me.
And there is a screenshot of my distribution and level of Closing Down, at the levels I used against Fulham. And a look at the instructions for my AMC.
I would never get away with that level of Closing Down across my team if I played a two man midfield or a three man midfield that had high differences in Mentality creating lots of gaps and distance between players. The only way you can get away with such high levels of Closing Down is if you have a strong shape and your players are working together as a unit. And so long as I keep the ball for long periods of time I shouldn’t wear my players out getting them to work this hard defensively all match.
Berbatovs Instructions here show a player that is set up float around between an MC/AMC position just ahead of my CM’s as well as move into lethal attacking areas in support of Rooney. You will see a goal against Fulham where Rooney recieves the ball in a central position and Berbatov makes a Channel attacking run. That is one of the basic points to this system I play, a good Central Striker that is lethal off the ball and makes attacking runs from a slightly deeper position, with a pretty dangerous AMC that attacks the Channels and is free to Roam around as he pleases.
You will notice that while I play a positionally aggressive game with high Mentalities and bags of Creative Freedom, I don’t force players to do anything much. My CM’s yes are asked to try raking throughballs regularly but there is no Direct Passing, no over usage of RWB/TTB/RFD in my advanced four players. My game isn’t about forcing my players to attack along certain lines, it is about setting them up to be Attack-Minded but ultimately free to do whatever they see fit. Barring longshots and crosses from players that can’t do these things.
That is all the important stuff described I think. It’s a system more about supporting the “style” or “philosophy” of Creative and Flamboyant football than an actual in-depth plan to cut open the opponent in detail, because that’s the way I want to play.
Creativity and Flair 
Posted on May 15, 2012
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