Winning international tournaments

Can you win international competitions with a plain old 442? Especially if you know your players aren't the best around by a way? It's 2015 on my FM08 England save. For the last world cup campaign I used my trusty 4-1-2-2-1 and did fairly well, unlucky to lose in the QF. However as the last of the old guard such as Stevie G faded from the international scene I didn't feel I had the quality of CM available to stick to this system so I switched to 442 to accommodate an extra striker, as we do have some decent strikers available. However we've struggled in friendlies against the better teams, they make fewer chances but their better quality of players seem to put them away. We only managed second place in our qualifying group against such heavyweights as Ireland and Israel so I fear for our chances should we qualify. I feel like we're going to need something extra to stand a chance of winning the thing, but I'm not sure as the way to go. Any suggestions?

I won Euro 2008 with England on FM08 using a plain old 442, Defoe scored the winner late on against Italy in the final.

I have just started a new game of FM08 on my new laptop and have won Euro 2008 and the Confederation Cup in 2009 using an attacking 442. Works very well, Rooney is a goal machine!!!!

The thing is, there's so many variations of the 4-4-2 theme, not to mention you can have a 4-4-2 formation but something that plays like another formation depending on the slider settings.

I'm currently using a 4-4-2 attacking formation, but it plays more like a combination of the diamond formation and a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-1-2-1-2.