Get the best from crosses.

Hi guys,

Im currently playing as Sheffield Wednesday in the first season. Im playing a 4-1-2-1-2 formation. I am playing a narrow game and am focusing in my passing through the middle due to the fact i have no wingers - only 2 central midfielders.

Anyway whilst looking at my assistants feedback for everygame im getting comments about how my crossing has been poor. How can i stop this from being poor? I did post this in the tactics forum but no reply. Please help.

Does it matter? If you're not crossing the ball regularly then it doesn't make a difference.

Buy a striker with good aerial ability, a couple of fast wingers with good stats for crossing, passing and technique and change your style of play to wider and set team passing to down both flanks.

I can't even get crosses to connect properly with strikers who have 18+ in Off the Ball, Heading, Strength and Jumping....so let me know if you figure this one out.

And yes, my wingers are good too. I understand defenders win most headers (It's what I play IRL), but every so often they will get past. I just don't see it happen too often.

Hi guys,

Im currently playing as Sheffield Wednesday in the first season. Im playing a 4-1-2-1-2 formation. I am playing a narrow game and am focusing in my passing through the middle due to the fact i have no wingers - only 2 central midfielders.

Anyway whilst looking at my assistants feedback for everygame im getting comments about how my crossing has been poor. How can i stop this from being poor? I did post this in the tactics forum but no reply. Please help.

Since you are playing narrow you shouldn't really worry about your assistants comments on crossing the ball. Crossing is a big part of wider formations so you don't really need to worry much about since your not playing wide. All I can say is that you could get full backs who are better at crossing and get strikers better at heading . Other than that you would have to, like slipknot said, change your style of play.......which I'm sure you don't wanna do.

Good luck

cheers guys. Do you think that if i pushed my full backs up and put their creative freedom up higher this might be a solution for the problem. This may however leave me in the poop if the opposition play down the wings.....

Im not entirely sure how to fix this one to be honest.

You can try pushing them up higher and maybe have them cross from the byline.

cheers guys. Do you think that if i pushed my full backs up and put their creative freedom up higher this might be a solution for the problem. This may however leave me in the poop if the opposition play down the wings.....

Im not entirely sure how to fix this one to be honest.

If they have the pace try changing their roles to wing backs and use the touchline shout 'Look for Overlap'.

your assman will tell you the crossing has been poor and dissapointing because he is only looking at the stats. so if you dont do any crossing, he will understand its poor and dissapointing.

the only way to counter this is to either encourage your wing backs to go forward and cross the ball. then you might start seeing "we are not connecting any of the crosses today" if the stats show that you are missing more than you are actually landing on the intended targets.

Crossing doesn't work very well in IRL either. If you watch any IRL game you would see that most of the crosses are usually cleared by DC-s. In fact, cross success around 10% (usual in FM) is fairly right in IRL. To improve that you should have really good target man who's strong in the air. And even that don't help if your opponent has decent DC-s. FM gives big advantage to defenders when it comes to winning headers, so you're striker should have better heading/jumping/strength attributes than opp. DC which is quite rare.

Just asking your wingers and full-backs to give more crosses doesn't work. You might increase number of successful crosses that way, but number of wasted attacks is increasing even more. Receiving part is more important.

In FM09 I used 4-5-1 tactics with target man. Target man received the ball, gave direct pass to winger, winger crosses and 2 MC-s who had forward runs set to 'often' received ball in the area. Opponent DC-s were out of the game because they were watching my sriker and opponent MC either missed my MC forward run or just lost header because poorer heading stats. It worked quite well then, in FM10 it's not so easy anymore.

I'd consider the following in your situation:

1) Set your full backs to support and have them cross from deep. Something to add to the plays through the middle.

2) Set one of you center backs to the cover role and he'll sit back a bit to hopefully provide some cover for your full backs if they're getting forward.

3) I assume you're playing a def midfielder, so make sure he's set to defensive rather than support. You can be a bit more adventurous at home obviously.

I'm no tactical genius by any stretch of the imagination but I'd be inclined to at least try the above.

Of course if you're playing predominantly through the middle and it's working then I wouldn't worry too much about crosses. You Ass Man could just mean balls from your central midfielders if they're drifting out wide. Do you find they do drift out in matches? You can set their wide play directions on their player tactics screen.

Would be interesting to know how you're doing with a very narrow formation because I've never had any success that way. I always play with wingers. They don't get a lot of crosses on target but they do tend to cause havoc drawing defenders out and leaving room for my forward and midfielders.