Long shots

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The long shots tactic (LS) is used to trade attacks through the middle and on the wing for long shots. All long shots created are shown in the match report, including any missed or saved opportunities.
LS could be a tactical option for a team facing a really strong defense and/or if you have a hard time scoring with your team using your middle/wing attacks. But it's useful only if you have decent shooters.

Effectiveness

When playing LS, your players are instructed to rather go for a long shot than playing the whole attacking sequence through. As a matter of fact, a long shot puts the shooter against the goalkeeper. In order to decide whether the shot from distance is transformed into a goal, the match engine compares the shooter's Scoring and Set Pieces skills with the Goalkeeping and Set Pieces skills of the opposing goalkeeper.

In summary, long shots skips the usual criteria of comparison between the attack of the team who gets the chance and the defence of the team who wants to block it, in order to come to a result (goal or missed chance).

You'll get a limited number of long shots (usually less than 3 and only in exceptional cases 4 or even 6) and, in order to get a higher number of long shots, your players need high Playmaking skill. In fact, ball possession has almost the same importance as the level of the LS tactic, since having more chances means, as always, leaving less chance to score for the opponent, but above all more chances of converting a regular chance into a long shot for you.
Another necessary condition to avoid losing the game is to have a very good defense in order to prevent as much as possible the goals on the possibilities left to your opponent.

Benefits and drawbacks

The purpose of this tactic is to convert up to around 30% of side and middle attacks into long shots. The tactical level is an important factor to establish the number of the ordinary chances converted.
But you have to consider the counterbalance of tactic too: your wing and middle attack, as well as your midfield, get a little bit worse, with a penalty of ~2.7% in attack ratings and ~5% in midfield rating.

Even if the highest scoring rate of a long shot is reached by the Forwards (thanks to better Scoring skills), the probability to receive a LS is higher for an Inner Midfielder (19.44% of the cases) and a Winger (17.00%) rather than for a Central Defender (8.82%), a Wing Back (9.23%) or a Forward (8.17%).

As we have already said, primarily your players requires Scoring and Set Pieces, not only your Forward, but also your Midfielders and Defenders too. Secondarily they need Playmaking, once again not only IM, but all players on field. The Defending skill should not be overlooked too.
All these requirements leads us to the negative aspects of LS. It is quite difficult to get a good tactical level and you need a team made on purpose to get long shots and then to score them. The main disadvantage of this tactic is that a manager is forced to revamp the entire team with the sole aim of creating a new team suitable for tactics; and, since these players are expensive and rare on the market, the solution is usually to train them himself by upsetting the training program for seasons.

Counters

How can I fight a LS team? Usually when playing against long shots tactic you can neglect the defence, focusing on improving midfield and attack. When the opportunity is converted, a player on the pitch (interiors and wings are twice as likely) throws the shot; and therefore your goalkeeper is your only possibility to save the shot using his Goalkeeping and Set Pieces skills. A bit both skills are necessary, and it's better to have some of both skills than much of one.
Another solution may be playing Pressing. PR tactic acts different against a long shot, having the opportunity to block the chance twice: once when the opponent team gets the chance and once when your opponent succeed to convert the chance into a long shot (when an attack has been converted to a long shot, any defending team using the pressing tactic has a chance to steer off the shooting opportunity).
Besides, considering that the long shots are ordinary chances and they could result in counter-attacks if they are blocked, playing CA may be an idea.

Players

Relevant skills to determine the LS tactical level are your outfielders' Scoring and Set Pieces (with Scoring three times more important than Set Pieces). An empiric formula to calculate the LS level was discovered, but it works accurately only at top levels and is not precise with lower skills.

Level = ( 3 * SC + SP ) * 11 / 20 – 7.6
SC is the average of the outfielders' Scoring skill
SP is the average of the outfielders' Set Pieces skill
11 are players on field, 20 is maximum level in player abilities (Divine), 7.6 is a constant

Ideally you want to have some Scoring on all of your players, since it determines the level and the probability of scoring a goal from LS chance. Midfielders are more likely to get a long shot though, so it's better to have higher Scoring on them. Therefore the best secondary skill for a Defender is the Playmaking skill and for an Inner Midfielder is the Defending skill. On Wingers the most important skill is the Playmaking (and of course, a decent skill of Scoring and Set Pieces, to help in the LS tactic level). Passing skill is never important.

Specialty

For both Inner Midfielders and Defenders the best specialty is Head (for Corner+Head SE), followed by distance by Powerful (Powerful Defensive Inner Midfielder event breaks up attacks and players gain +5% in the rainy weather).
The best specialty for Wingers is Quick to get the Quick SE and score it. You can play an Inner Midfielder as a Winger Towards Middle (as usually you'll give up on attack ratings, Passing skill is not important). It would be nice to have some Defending skill. The Scoring skill is also important in order to score the Quick SEs.
Pure Forwards are not necessary, but if you have one utilize a powerful neutral forward for the rebound special event from long shots and miss chances.

Lineup

Since all your team force is used for defence and midfield, the most indicated coach is the defensive coach.
You might need 10 outfield players lined up in a 5-5-0 formation, all proficient in Playmaking, Defending, Scoring and Set Pieces. This is true on the most basic level, but this way you'll become very predictable. To avoid that, smart managers are also capable of playing LS with strong attacks and 2-5-3 or 3-5-2.
LS teams are very strong also with 4-5-1, perfect with a powerful neutral forward over there.

Training

Following up on that, no matter if the formations you can use are quite a few, you'll have loads of options in training:

• Defending training with 5-5-0 (or rarely 5-4-1): All your team needs that and you can train 10 player using the Inner Midfielders as Defenders in the friendly matches.
• Defensive positions with 5-5-0: you can train at maximum, 22 players/week, but less effective than the Defending training.
• Shooting with any lineup: you'll train the Scoring and Set Pieces skills, very important for a good LS tactical level.
• Set Pieces with any lineup: the most used training by a LS team.
  
• Playmaking with 5-5-0: in the official matches you can train your IMs and in the friendly matches your Defenders.
• Through passes with 5-5-0: 100% efficiency, 20 trainees/week, rarely used.

Crossing (Winger) and Goalkeeping training are not the very best options, but definitely you can do that if you want.
How would you build a training schedule for a team like that? Would you train five IMs in scoring first, then buy defenders and training all ten players in defending, playmaking and set pieces equally? Your choice!

Hattrick Announcements

LS tactic became available to the public in the beginning of global season 38.

Hattrick announces

Long shots tactic ready for use

2009-01-13

The long shots tactics are now ready to test in friendlies. We're including it this week already as a last beta test on this new feature. When the new season starts in two weeks you can use this tactic in all your games. Long shots is an attacking option for teams who have problems scoring on regular side/middle attacks, but it could also be a tactical option for any team facing a really strong defense. How the long shots tactic works can be found in the manual. There are currently no teams in Hattrick which can take full advantage of this new tactic right away (and deliberately so), even though teams with good set pieces skills are in a better starting position than other teams. With time, we hope to see managers build their teams with good shooters.

See also

• HTs on Global/Long shot tactics