[FM 11] Hitch's 4-3-3 - Versatile tactic

BEFORE USING THE TACTIC PLEASE TAKE 5 MINUTES OUT OF YOUR TIME TO READ THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS/GUIDELINES ON USING MENTIONED TACTIC SUCCESSFULLY. THANK YOU AND ENJOY!

This tactic has been tested for a single season with both Barcelona and Tottenham. These two clubs were chosen to highlight whether the tactic could be successful with a team that was expected to win the title and one that is expected to only qualify for European football. I was going to include a test for Udinese (a team estimated to finish 14th in the league, and also making sure I covered English, Spanish and Italian league football) but due to constraints on time I will be playing that game at a much slower pace, meaning it could take me a while to get the results up for you to see.

Here is the tactic, tested in 11.2.1:

http://rapidshare.com/files/443993822/Hitch_s_Versatile_4-3-3_v1.0__Tottenham__Jun_2011_.tac

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W2842GMS

I use a 4-3-3 formation, with a DMC situated behind one support central midfielder and one who is more attacking. The support midfielder is set as a primary playmaker so try to accommodate a midfielder who is more suited to this role, for example in my Barcelona game it was usually Xavi and in the Tottenham game it was Van der Vaart (could have been Modric in hindsight). Along with this there are two inside forwards who complement the attack by cutting in with their favoured foot (right-footed player on the left hand side and vice versa). You can get away with playing someone on his favoured side, I did so with David Bentley at Spurs and he weighed in with his fair share of goals. The tactic has proven to be successful at both attacking and defending at differing levels of competition and therefore I felt I could now post it up for you guys to start using.

Here is the formation:

As far as using it goes, just drop it in your tactics folder and once it is archived it should just be a plug and play tactic. No changes need to be made unless you would like to tamper with it but then by no means am I able to tell you what would happen with the results. I also ensure that my Reserves and my U18's are all using this current tactic to help their progression to the first team if they manage to make the grade.

In addition to using the tactic I will explain what extra instructions and changes I made during the course of testing;

Training: At the start of every season I loaded up Maestro Ugo´s schedules for both Senior and U18 players which can be found here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/443993823/Maestro_Ugo_schedules.rar

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VYHM7ZJP

Here is his thread on 'The Dugout': http://www.thedugout.tv/community/showthread.php?t=70624

Special thanks to him for creating these schedules, I had used a couple of others but didn't feel comfortable with any until I found his.

Match preparation: I always filled the workload bar to ´Very High´ as soon as I took over and selected my tactic along with Team Blend. Once I got to the last few days before a competitive match started I lowered the workload to ´Low´ and kept Team Blend selected all throughout the season. I know this is not conventional but it seemed to work, and it also rid me of that awful ´Current´ bug that crops up every other day. I have heard people say that you can drop the match preparation down to 'Very Low' but personally I have not tried this and have no idea if it will have any effect on results from thereon.

Pitch size: In both cases I used the standard length pitch with is around 109-111 yards by 71-73 yards I believe. As the two Inside Fowards cut inside it doesn't require a very wide pitch (although if someone is willing to test it out to see how it does then that would be great).

Opposition instructions: I did not use any, at all. If you wish to use them, it is entirely up to you but I cannot guess what effects it would have on the tactic and whether it would be successful so use at your own risk.

Team talks: I had trouble with away games like a lot of people and couldn´t figure out what I was doing wrong. I had always used ‘You can win the game´ however I believe this is where my problem lied, so while testing the tactic I only used this during home games. While playing away games I selected ´Wish Luck´ and this was replicated during any cup game where the second leg was being played at home, instead of using ‘Encourage´. I know that there are many guides out there that state you should do otherwise and that´s fine, they have just never really given me great success so using this method is recommended alongside this tactic. For friendly games I always use 'Show me what you can do'/'Impress' and am not to harsh on them unless they have played really poorly. Back to competitive games; During half time, depending on performance I select the following,

Team is playing well and leading 1-0 or 2-0 at home: ‘Encourage’ to the whole team

Team is playing well and is 2-0 up away from home or more than 2 goals up at home: ‘Pleased’ to whole team

A player is nervous or not confident: Tell him there is ‘No pressure on him’

A player is disinterested: Tell him ´Show me what you can do/Have faith’

Team is playing well but some are below 6.0 or Ass Manager says they are having a poor game: ‘Encourage’ the team but ask the non-performing players to´Try harder/Disappointed. Now this worked most times but in the case of Messi in the CL final he seemed to respond in a more negative manner and perform very poorly, finishing the game with a 4.6. This is the one and only time that happened (and it gutted me because the season would have been unbeaten). Maybe it would have been better to select ‘Have faith in ability’ I will incorporate this in future depending on the character of the player. (I used this more during the Spurs game and it seemed to work well, poor performances turned into a 7 or 8 rating on a number of occasions)

Team is losing 1-0 at half time: Select ‘We can win this’. I used to choose ‘I want to see a performance from you’ occasionally but I have stopped choosing this during these tests and it seems to work. On numerous occasions we have pulled out a storming second half performance, most notably a 2-0 half time deficit away at Getafe with Barcelona.

Full time team talks I select:

Won the game: ‘Well done’

Drawn the game but been the better team: ‘Sympathise’

Drawn the game but not played well: ‘Disappointed’ but don´t include any players in this who are 7.0 rating and above

Along with the general team talks here I include personal ones for performance rating,

8.0 and above: ‘Delighted’

6.0 – 7.9: ‘Did well’

Below 6.0: ‘Disappointed’

Red card or second yellow during game: ‘Angry’

When a player is sent off, if you are winning and the game is in the end stages you can take the MC (attacking) off and drag the support midfielder vertically above the DMC and this can see out the game usually. In most of the cases when this happened to me it was fine, but sometimes a red card is handed out early and in the case off this it is necessary to take the striker off and leave the rest of the formation untouched as the Inside Forwards will still cut in and shoot at goal. I will say that if I ever go a man down I have hardly ever noticed a drop in play and in most instances have even gone onto score more goals and win games.

During many of the games, if it is a tight affair, for example you are leading 1-0 or 2-1 away from home or you are against a big team (I found in my early games on FM11 that Chelsea are ones that will sucker punch you at the end, no matter how badly they have been playing) and you want to protect the lead I usually change the strategy from 'Standard' to 'Contain' around the 83rd or 84th minute. During both seasons there is only one single time that I ever conceded a goal in these last minutes and in fact there were many number of occasions where we actually score ourselves.

Manager interaction: I usually don´t bother when someone says ‘You can´t win the title’ or words to this effect as I don´t feel there is a proper response as there was in past games. I only ever respond when it´s a rival battle or a title contender match and then I usually select: ‘I see this as being an important game, and we want to win and hope to carry on the momentum during the season’. I know that these comments might not have any effect in the game but for some reason I believe they influence results a fraction and try to keep the arrogance or arse-licking to a bare minimum.

Press Conferences: They may have no effect whatsoever but when playing the game it feels like they do sometimes, as saying certain things could put unnecessary pressure on your team. I usually err on the side of not too brash but with a desire to win. Questions like 'Do you think you can win' are answered with 'As long as we stick to our game plan we can win'. Most questions are answered in a similar humble way. I try to respect other teams as getting too cocky can bring some embarrassing results, and I found this a lot during early play of FM 2011. Since using these methods the embarrassing results have pretty much disappeared so maybe it has some effect.

Filters for the different positions:

I have saved some filters that will allow you to physically see who would be more suitable for each position in the tactic on your own saved game. They are set at a certain level of ability but you can increase or decrease the stats to suit your team. They are just a guideline more than a definite 'Player A is better than Player B' , for example in my Udinese game I took the stats all the way down to 8 in the AML position and Alexis Sanchez still didn't appear to cut the mustard, yet I am playing him in that position as my squad dictates it and I don't wish to sell him. Unzip and stick them in your 'filters' folder and you can import them into your game. You can download them here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/443993821/filters.rar

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MDIB0IYQ

HERE IS A CHEAT SHEET THAT HAS MOST OF THE INFO YOU REQUIRE CONDENSED INTO A WORD DOCUMENT:

http://rapidshare.com/files/444508523/Cheat_sheet_-_Hitch_s_4-3-3.docx

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L4V6VZVW

Right now that is out of the way, onto the results I had with the tactic. These will follow in the next two posts:

Barcelona

Obviously they are expected to win the title anyway but compared to Man United or Real Madrid they have a very small squad so when injuries kick in you need to rely on some unproven youngsters. I only signed one player and that was Lukaku, he was bought purely to cover any injuries/tiredness to my other strikers Villa, Bojan and Rochina. I promoted some younger players such as Thiago, Rochina, Muniesa and Montoya into the full squad and as you can see they featured quite heavily in what was a very successful season. We didn´t lose a game all season until the final game which was unfortunately a CL final against our bitter rivals Madrid. Somehow we lost 1-0 and it was totally undeserved but that is FM for you, gotta take it on the chin and we managed to win the title in our league game at the Bernabeu which was cracking http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Barca%204-3-3/Unreal.png

The goals flowed all season and there are some great results in there; http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Barca%204-3-3/Fixtures1.png, http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Barca%204-3-3/Fixtures2.png, http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Barca%204-3-3/Fixtures3.png, http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Barca%204-3-3/Fixtures4.png. In addition to this it was nice to see that they came from every angle, with the defence getting a great share too which is largely due to the Set Piece instructions which I have had great success with both offensively and defensively. The midfield can look like it is very low-scoring but since one of the three players hardly ever takes a shot then it's not so bad, the assists they provide more than make up for it.

P 62, W 51, D 10, L 1, F 146 (2.4), A 27 (0.4) - 82% win ratio

Past positions:

Goal share: Defence - 23, Midfield - 16, Attack - 102, o.g - 5

Tottenham

This has to have been one of my favourite 1st seasons on the last few incarnations of Football Manager, it was kind of exhilarating as we were capable of absolutely battering teams such as Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Man United http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Spurs%204-3-3/Fixtures1.png, http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Spurs%204-3-3/Fixtures2.png, http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Spurs%204-3-3/Fixtures3.png. Along with this there were a couple of unfortunate draws where we just couldn't break the weaker team down and ultimately this cost us in the league as we were ended up just a point behind the winners Arsenal, albeit with a greater goal difference. We were unlucky in the early cup draws, meeting big teams when we had a fixture pile-up but in the Champions League we excelled only losing out to away goals in the Semi Finals at the end after dominating both matches I might add. Not to be too downhearted though, this tactic took Spurs to heights that would never be expected in the first season, not least when our only transfer business was taking Ruud van Nistelrooy for £4m and letting Pavlyuchenko go out on loan to Atletico Madrid. Arsenal on the other hand spent £45m and sold no-one http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r266/RocknRollStar_album/Spurs%204-3-3/Arsenalspending.png, maybe if I had spent some money we could have pushed further but I wanted the tactic to stand up on it's own with pretty much the squad we had to begin with (both times I might add, as in the case of Barca one signing had to be made to cover the striker position).

Again the defence weighed in with an impressive number of goals and the overall ratio of goals is very similar to that of the Barcelona game which can show you the success over two very different challenges. Similar to that game I gave young players a chance, Kyle Walker, Sandro and Dos Santos were used extensively, with the latter a permanent first choice.

P 56, W 40, D 11, L 5, F 112 (2.0), A 31 (0.6) - 71% win ratio

Past positions:

Goal share: Defence - 25, Midfield - 19, Attack - 64, o.g - 4

The style of football played in both 1 season tests was outstanding and the sheer amount of chances that were created in most matches was very high, the number of CCC's is the highest I have ever seen. In the next few posts you can see some of the in-game stats to highlight how effective the tactic can be.

Here are a couple of zip files that contain these matches so that if you would like to actually see the tactic in action you can do so by watching the games yourself:

http://rapidshare.com/files/443993820/Barcelona_4-3-3_matches.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/443993820/Barcelona_4-3-3_matches.rar

Anyway, I will let you get on with it and try it out yourself, have fun and please let me know what you think and whether it brings you any success. It is very interesting to me to see how it fares for all the other teams out there. Personally I also used it for a little while with Braintree Town and it again worked but I left that game as i would prefer to start a proper career game once the last patch is released and the game is finally the best it can be.

Enjoy!

Played 5 quick games with this as Zenit in Russia just to get an idea about the style. I have been playing a similar formation so the adjustment was fine. My players seem to suit the formation and the play is really strong. Good control of the ball and a decent amount of goal scoring opportunities without suffering at the back. I do like tactics that create a style of play that you can plan for i.e. transfers and youth players rather than those that just aim to exploit the ME

OP is fantastic as well, going to start a new game in Russia so will report back

Great stuff, would like to see how you get on. Thanks for having a look and testing, all the best.

don't mind uploading on another site

Have just added megaupload links to anyone who needs an alternate download link. Alternate links are provided for the tactic, the schedules and the filters. Enjoy!

SteHitch, just wanted to say well done on a brilliant OP... one of the best I've read - very extensive and explains everything anyone needs to know.

Out of interest, how did you do in the champions league in both games?

Brilliant OP, Very well thought out and explained.

Well Done bud.

Excellent OP. I am interested in how you think a van Nistelrooy type of striker works in this formation. Since your filter contains Pace, Dribbling and Flair, did van Nistelrooy perform as well as you would have liked, or would you suggest using a faster or more creative striker?

Brilliant OP. I will try this out with Everton and see how it works.

Having just resubbed my FML team I was looking for a new tactic to play with, and this is fitting the bill nicely.

Starting from scratch and going with an all USA team, I do not have the resources to scour 50,000 players and pick out the few with perfect stats etc...

This tactic however has got my ragtag group playing nice football and posting some nice early results.

I will be condensing your extensive, quality posts into a cheat sheet when bored at work tomorrow, so I can quick reference it in games

Is this tactic suitable for smaller team like newcastle. Do you always start the game with standard mentality even though you are not favorite away from home. And should I change mentality to more attacking if I go behind and looking for equaliser

@ SteHitch - Really well presented and detailed OP here.

I like the look of the formation and the fact its in the new style not old style like a lot of tactics about. I want to start a new save in Serie A and think i might give this tactic a go and see how I get on.

Any suggestions off the top of your head of teams that might have a squad that would fit well with this tactic?

SteHitch, just wanted to say well done on a brilliant OP... one of the best I've read - very extensive and explains everything anyone needs to know.

Out of interest, how did you do in the champions league in both games?

Thanks very much.

The progress in the Champs League should be evident in the Results pics but to go into a little more detail, with Barcelona we absolutely ripped it up, that was at least until the final against Madrid but it was just one of those games, will post up the stats of the game so you can see how it went.

As for with Spurs, we got a lot further than expected, possibly due to getting relatively easy draws in the 2nd Round and Quarters (Schalke and Shakhtar) but we also won a very tough group which included Bayern and Roma, not dropping a single point too I might add.

Excellent OP. I am interested in how you think a van Nistelrooy type of striker works in this formation. Since your filter contains Pace, Dribbling and Flair, did van Nistelrooy perform as well as you would have liked, or would you suggest using a faster or more creative striker?

Cheers!

Yeah I realise that the filter wasn´t suited to Ruud in those respects but my thinking was that I could use him for the first 65-70 minutes and if any chances cropped up he would put them away, if a game wasn´t going too well or the opposition were tiring then I could bring Defoe on who could get at the defence with pace and stretch them to the limit, possibly nicking a winner, which he did on numerous occasions (most of his goals came in this way)

Do I regret not using him from the start? Not really because the season worked out well, and I guess that playing with Barca to start with made me believe that the team needed a natural finisher like Villa so I went down this route. There is a chance it could have been more successful with Defoe leadfing the line and Keane coming on late but not to worry.

Having just resubbed my FML team I was looking for a new tactic to play with, and this is fitting the bill nicely.

Starting from scratch and going with an all USA team, I do not have the resources to scour 50,000 players and pick out the few with perfect stats etc...

This tactic however has got my ragtag group playing nice football and posting some nice early results.

I will be condensing your extensive, quality posts into a cheat sheet when bored at work tomorrow, so I can quick reference it in games

With regards to the filters, you can still use them but lower the attribute values and this should filter out who you can and cannot afford. The button is ticked to filter out any unrealistic players (the likes of Messi etc are clearly not goona join) and this should help. I did the same for Udinese and Braintree using the same filters.

Thanks for trying out the tactic, that cheatsheet sounds like a great idea. I thought about that the other day and will try and knock one up myself to condense all the info I placed in the OP. Good luck with it and let me know how you get on.

Is this tactic suitable for smaller team like newcastle. Do you always start the game with standard mentality even though you are not favorite away from home. And should I change mentality to more attacking if I go behind and looking for equaliser

I don´t see why it can´t work for Newcastle, can´t hurt to give it a shot. I have just started with Udinese but am playing at a very slow pace (the girlfriend is sick of me playing it at the minute so it´s on the backburner) and it is working out well, we are 2nd in the league after around 10 or so games. Haven´t played it for the last few days but hope to get a few hours in at the weekend. Once I have completed the season I will post up the results as I did the others.

As for the mentality, yes I always started the game with a standard mentality, the tactic is good enough on it´s own to both attack and defend well. For me, whenever I went behind or was chasing a goal I kinda just stuck with it, there was rarely a time when I went to all out attack I can only remember doing this a coupe of times when there was 5 or so minutes on the clock. Sometimes you can go behind to an early goal but I stuck with it and the tactic produced teh reults I needed. The 3-2 match with Getafe was a prime example of sticking with it, we were 2-0 down at halftime and I think the team talk more than anything changed the result as I refused to change the tactic and we stormed back with 3 unanswered goals to win the game.

Hppe this helps.

@ SteHitch - Really well presented and detailed OP here.

I like the look of the formation and the fact its in the new style not old style like a lot of tactics about. I want to start a new save in Serie A and think i might give this tactic a go and see how I get on.

Any suggestions off the top of your head of teams that might have a squad that would fit well with this tactic?

I haven´t had the chance to look at the squads in Serie A properly, the thing to look for is at least 2 decent strikers who can replace each other if injured/tired and some good AMR/AML to play in the Inside Forward position. Some teams just don´t have the sqaud for the tactic, I think I had a look at Palermo because I usually have a game with them every year and their squad wasn´t best suited to it in regard to the AMR/L. This is fine if you have a little money to spend to bring in a player or two, and I am sure that you could sell one of the many CM´s that they have to raise funds.

I already mentioned but I am playing with Udinese to see how it goes with a low rated team, and their squad while not as gifted as Milan or Inter etc, has the players that suit the tactic more or less. I have only had to bring in a couple of loan players and the game is working out well so far.

I believe it could work for any team, as I have had some success with it even with Braintree Town (a game I abandoned due to waiting for the final patch). The starting squad is a good refence point but changes can always be made to personell if a team is too heavy in CM or ST position and the filters I linked you guys to can help with finding some affordable targets to fit in.

Hoep this helps.

Brilliant OP, Very well thought out and explained.

Well Done bud.

Thanks very much, it´s members like you who have done this for years that made me want to get it posted up for everyone and present it the best I could. Cheers!

I have just included in the OP a cheat sheet that can be used to condense all the information you require for the tactic once you are playing.

The link can be found in the OP but I will also post here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/444508523/Cheat_sheet_-_Hitch_s_4-3-3.docx

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L4V6VZVW

Ok using this tactic on my 3rd season with newcastle and finish 6th. Got some great results including beating Man Utd 4-1 at home. After the season finished, I was offer spurs job and I took it. Only 2 months in the season so far and jermaine defoe totally terrific, scoring in every match.

This is so far one of the best tactic I've ever tried for FM2011

I have just included in the OP a cheat sheet that can be used to condense all the information you require for the tactic once you are playing.

The link can be found in the OP but I will also post here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/444508523/Cheat_sheet_-_Hitch_s_4-3-3.docx

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L4V6VZVW

Excellent, thanks for that

I had good to better results with your tactic, with a below average pool of players (of my own chosing, have gone single nation with USA).

Being my nature, I went off and tried a bunch of other tactics found in this forum in search of better results.

The best compliment I can offer you is I am now back to using the Hitch 433

One question.

If you are chasing a game in the 2nd half, what shouts / match strategy / formation changes do you make?

Ok using this tactic on my 3rd season with newcastle and finish 6th. Got some great results including beating Man Utd 4-1 at home. After the season finished, I was offer spurs job and I took it. Only 2 months in the season so far and jermaine defoe totally terrific, scoring in every match.

This is so far one of the best tactic I've ever tried for FM2011

That´s great, glad it is working out for you! You´re making me wish I had played Defoe from the start haha. Keep us posted on your progress chief.

Excellent, thanks for that

I had good to better results with your tactic, with a below average pool of players (of my own chosing, have gone single nation with USA).

Being my nature, I went off and tried a bunch of other tactics found in this forum in search of better results.

The best compliment I can offer you is I am now back to using the Hitch 433

One question.

If you are chasing a game in the 2nd half, what shouts / match strategy / formation changes do you make?

Wow, that´s really nice to hear. Glad it is working out for you, hope others can give it a whirl too.

When I am chasing the game in the 2nd half I am starting to think I will change the strategy to attack but at the minute I have no idea what effect this will have on the tactic as it will alter many sliders.

As for my two games I tried I never had to change it at all throughout both seasons but I am finding a few tough games with Udinese where the results are not as easy to get.

In refrerence to the shouts etc, I wanted to minimise them completely as it could have thrown up too many variables in my results that may have not been replicated in other peoples games. In light of this I felt that the Spurs and Barca seasons were very similar in their success.

Came on here looking for a tactic after my own saw me gather a feeble 10 points in the second half of my first season with Stoke. Granted, I've spent a fortune over the summer but the first five games of using this have been great! Not lost yet, drew away to Chelsea and beat Liverpool 4-1 at home.

Top stuff so far this pal, I'll keep you posted.

Came on here looking for a tactic after my own saw me gather a feeble 10 points in the second half of my first season with Stoke. Granted, I've spent a fortune over the summer but the first five games of using this have been great! Not lost yet, drew away to Chelsea and beat Liverpool 4-1 at home.

Top stuff so far this pal, I'll keep you posted.

4-1 against the Scousers is a great result! Keep me posted with how it goes from here on.

have been using this tactic for 2 months with tottenham and had been satisfied with it. I must say that I buy almost all new team and they must have some time to adopt, but almost all messages are won, just one draw with blackburn. will update you at the end of the season, thanks mate for this great tactic (so far).

this is my team:

akinfeev - srna - gallas - zapata -bale / m.sissoko / modric - VDV / jovetic - lennon / -neymar

btw. you have right regarding defoe, he is a killer almost all match get on the scoresheet

Well, I had a nerve-wrecking season with these tactics, and ended up winning the league and Carling Cup. Disappointingly I was beaten in the quarter finals of CL by Porto, although under unlucky circumstances. Due to very hard competition in the league I had to win my 13 last league games in order to win the title, with 94 points, 30 victories, 4 draws and 4 losses. My goal difference was 96-19. In all competions I had 8 losses and 6 draws. Actually I managed to lose versus Manchester City 3-0 even though it was 5-0 in CCC in my favour. I guess the best thing about the tactic is how many goals you score on corners and free kicks. I basically averaged half a goal per match on corners. I think I lost a bit too many matches though.

8 losses is not too bad though. Like you say you won the League and Cup double. That is pretty good going for one season, you can't always win every trophy - bit unrealistic. Well done.

I'm playing with barcelona too. And I'm having some problems to score, sometimes I have to change the tactic to get a result. At the start of the season the results were great, but now. I play against weaker teams and only 1 or 2 goals. Played against Real Madrid home and were fortunate to beat them 1 - 0. Got 6 shoots and they got 19. Didn't had one single shoot at goal for the whole second half. Gonna continue with your tactic to see if the results appear again.

I too decided to give Barca a go and landed on this tactic as the way i wanted to go and i have to say i had some great results.

Won the treble (League, Spanish Cup and Champions League plus the Spanish Super Cup). And before people say 'but youre playing as Barcelona', i know, but this tactic gave me the lowest goals conceeded of any of my seasons on FM and still scored a more than adequate amount!!

Defensively this tactic is awesome, the only downside is against the dreaded 4-1-4-1. Ive struggeled to create as much as in other games. So im tweaking the forward 3 in order to try and get the inside forwards in on the scoring act a bit more.

Links to the final La Liga Table and my Barcelona Records.

http://www.filefront.com/17903072/Barca League Table.jpg

http://www.filefront.com/17903074/Barca Records.jpg

To finish, thanks SteHitch for a marvellous tactic!! Has managed to get me back into FM!!!

Nice to see it worked out well for you. Mkabas - "Only scoring 1 or 2 goals" how many goals do you want to score? I am sure there may be tactics out there that make you win every match 7-0+ but don't you feel that is highly unrealistic and quite boring to play?

Can't explain why you're not having a lot of shots on goal but hey, you beat Madrid while they peppered your goal. Usually it is the other way round and you have 20 odd shots and the other team wins after taking 5 shots.

Nice to see it worked out well for you. Mkabas - "Only scoring 1 or 2 goals" how many goals do you want to score? I am sure there may be tactics out there that make you win every match 7-0+ but don't you feel that is highly unrealistic and quite boring to play?

Can't explain why you're not having a lot of shots on goal but hey, you beat Madrid while they peppered your goal. Usually it is the other way round and you have 20 odd shots and the other team wins after taking 5 shots.

Still using it. I'm currently 24 games in the season and conceded only 6 goals. i changed messi and Vila in some games. But the defence is Monster!!!!!

Still using it. I'm currently 24 games in the season and conceded only 6 goals. i changed messi and Vila in some games. But the defence is Monster!!!!!

Yeah the defence is pretty damn good, I wanted to make sure that was the case and then the goals scored will win you games. Seems to be standard for most peoples games so there is definitely a consistency there. Might fire up my Udinese game again tomorrow, haven't played it for a couple of weeks or so. Would be nice to see if anybody is testing this tactic with teams other than United and Barca.

it worked for me in tottenham, have won the ligue by 1 point. the season had been amazing. Now I will try it with Real Madrid and will report. For now tactic is really great.

Well this tactic got me 4th in the in my second season with Stoke so big thanks to SteHitch for helping to deliver CL football to the Britannia. I've changed the mentality to Control for home games and it demolishes most teams. Stuggling a bit away from home though, I keep it to standard mentality but I seem to get over run. Can you suggest any tweaks mate?

Cant download off either link. Anyone can upload to filefront?

Cant download off either link. Anyone can upload to filefront?

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20016520/Hitch%27s+Versatile+4-3-3+v1.0+%28Tottenham%2C+Jun+2011%29.tac

Here you go. Why can't you download from either of the posted links may I ask?

Thanks, but the link was not working for some reason. Im also facing the same problem for the OP "cheat" file. Could you upload it elsewhere too please?

I've tried the tactic, whilst it creates more CCC than the opponents, in the key highlights it predominantly has the opponent creating the chances. The defence seems a bit leaky & rash in giving away fouls/penalties/red cards too. Trying it with Villareal. I had a 4-3-3 in the same mould which had after 2 seasons hit me at the brick wall in terms of goal scoring, which had dried up so I decided to try this.

Thanks, but the link was not working for some reason. Im also facing the same problem for the OP "cheat" file. Could you upload it elsewhere too please?

I've tried the tactic, whilst it creates more CCC than the opponents, in the key highlights it predominantly has the opponent creating the chances. The defence seems a bit leaky & rash in giving away fouls/penalties/red cards too. Trying it with Villareal. I had a 4-3-3 in the same mould which had after 2 seasons hit me at the brick wall in terms of goal scoring, which had dried up so I decided to try this.

In two separate seasons my team picked up 4 (with Barcelona) and 1 (with Spurs). I would say 2-4 is not that bad really over the course of a season. Especially considering how frequent they were in one of the first patches or on release of the game.

How many games have you actually used it for? Just that your edit shows you had it for a couple of hours meaning you played what? 6-10 games? You can't just expect to use a tactic and it produces emphatic results straight away. There is at least a ten game bedding in period that should be given, then judge it over the course of the season. Some people are having good results with it so it seems, Stoke coming 4th in the league, Spurs winning League and Champs League double etc.

Good luck with Villareal.

The thing is I've almost an identical set up to this one in my own tactic, in terms of positions, and largely mentality. However, my defence line was higher up and the defenders were tighter so I limited goals against column. It seems there is far more pressure on my team with this and the tackling which would result in free kicks in my previous tactic is now resulting in penalties cause of the deeper defensive line.

I am using OI's and match preparation on attacking movement, so maybe I should put it on defensive positioning & remove OI's?

Do you keep the strategy on standard for all games? I was down 0-2 at home to Valencia in the derby after 10 minutes and went to attacking. I dominated the rest of the match and won 5-2, and its the first match with this tactic that I seem to dominate.

It's up to you how you use it really. Like i explained in the OP I left it as standard, don't use any OI's and the match preparation was on Team Blend for the whole time. I did this both season and the results came from that method. If I had made lots of different tweaks and changes all season but then this wouldn't have given an accurate representation of the tactic, say if I lost a game because I switched to attacking - could have been possibly avoided if I had left it.

Just wanted to show that using those methods then it worked well for me, but obviously everyone is gonna tweak things (as you have) and I can't guess what the results will be really. Let me know how it goes though if you do keep using it, becuase I was hoping you guys would try it out and test it with your own spin on things.

Thanks mate. Will keep you posted in more detail as it progresses.

Hows your defence with the standard? Away form seems a bit iffy. Just lost 5-0 to Real Madrid away. Worst defeat of career, but it came on the back of 3 straight convincing home wins. I am also finding European football matches difficult to breakthrough in. Do you have any stats on your own away performances?

How does this fare with 11.3?

Thanks for the share!

Going to try this now. Kinda looks like my current step-up for Liverpool, in terms of the positions. But i can never get them to play good football. Hopefully this would save my job!