The 4-4-2 diamond. Narrow and wide. Opinions invited.

This is only my personal observation of the 'title formation'. Am I the only person thinking that perhaps there should be a third option with this formation? I am thinking along the lines of being able to position the 'diamond' midway betweent he current 'narrow' and 'wide' positions. That is, placing the two CM's 'narrow' and the two CM's 'wide' in a position that would place them at the position where the halfway line intersects the centre circle. For myself, I feel that the current settings are too narrow and too wide. All opinions gratefully accepted.

I agree Oescus. I've always thought that the two 'inside midfielders' should take up a middle ground between the central and wide midfield positions. Sort of like a hybrid position. As it is, they either play like two CMs in a 4-4-2 (far too narrow) or like MR/ML. I don't necessarily have an issue with the latter (didn't Argentina line up at the last World Cup in this formation with two natural wide players?) but the former doesn't look realistic in the match engine to me personally.

On the older FMs, you could use side arrows to get them to play the middle ground between the MC and MR/L positions. This is no longer possible, unfortunately, and the wide play settings have not directly replaced this old option. One possible solution is to play a three in the middle, either dropping the AMC back to MC, or pushing the DM forward to MC, which seems to be a kind of half-baked 'fix' to get the two 'inside midfielders' playing a bit wider. Using mentality, you can still get the diamond effect but it isn't quite the same admittedly.

For me, the game needs less rigidity in these kinds of formations so that a proper diamond formation with MCs would naturally see the MCs sitting a bit wider as a natural consequence of the formation choice. Equally, something like the 4-2-3-1 should see the unit of '2' sitting slightly deeper if the user has decided to opt for playing MCs instead of DMs. I should note that I'm talking about in the match engine and not just on the tactics screen, of course. The other option I have just thought of is to have a tactical option in which players can play 'the middle ground' between two positions, which would help to create more realistic modern formations (for example, the 4-5-1/4-3-3 with the AMR/AML playing the middle ground between that position and FR/FL, as well as the other options detailed above involving the diamond formation and the 4-2-3-1). Some may argue that with a combination of mentality, forward runs, roaming and wide play instructions, you can sort of get things to work, but I don't think it provides all of the solutions needed and often can involve giving instructions that you don't want to give in order to get a certain effect to play out in the match engine.

That's my opinion anyway. I think this has been discussed elsewhere but no conclusions ever reached really. Of course, the old arrow system offered a solution to these kind of issues (for example, with the diamond, you could attach side arrows to the MCs to get them to play wider) and, with the removal of the arrows in the game, it has left this kind of issue unfortunately.

Hello "C". I played last season using the in game 4-4-2 with Preston. I manged to finish in 10th position, using only the players given at the game start. Preston were tipped to finish in only 19th by the in game information. In my second season, I am playing the wide 4-4-2 diamond. I have brought in four new players. They are all much better than the players they have replaced. Even allowing for the team to 'gel', the results have been poor, worse than last season. I am now thinking that the wide diamond does not lend itself to FM'11 properly. I may revert back to the flat 4-4-2 or make up a 4-5-1 formation. Kind regards.

The problem with the 4-4-2 diamond wide is that if you don't have a DMC with good passing attributes then your tactic's dead. With a narrow diamond, the MCs can do this job, but using wide mids and an AMC leaves the DMC as the only option to start offensive movements.

Hello "C". I played last season using the in game 4-4-2 with Preston. I manged to finish in 10th position, using only the players given at the game start. Preston were tipped to finish in only 19th by the in game information. In my second season, I am playing the wide 4-4-2 diamond. I have brought in four new players. They are all much better than the players they have replaced. Even allowing for the team to 'gel', the results have been poor, worse than last season. I am now thinking that the wide diamond does not lend itself to FM'11 properly. I may revert back to the flat 4-4-2 or make up a 4-5-1 formation. Kind regards.

Sounds good. Can't go wrong with 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 really.

Ive always thought a slider for the width of each area of the pitch would be a good idea. That way you could leave your defence relatively narrow but play with say just 2 MCs and set the midfield width to a really high setting to stretch them out more. Could work quite nicely and sounds easy to implement as the width setting already exists, it just needs to be altered to affect the Def/Mid/ and Att.

For me, the game needs less rigidity in these kinds of formations so that a proper diamond formation with MCs would naturally see the MCs sitting a bit wider as a natural consequence of the formation choice.

This is a problem that comes up regularly with players who should be in those "half-way" slots, whether it be the MC/MC or ML/MR that we're talking about in the diamond formation, or inside forwards/wide midfielders. "Cuts inside" is not the same as "tucks inside", though there is only one of those options in the ME now. No satisfaction with using MC/MC with "moves into channels" or even "hugs touchline" as their wideplay instruction?

A "midway" position or width slider per player is what I've been asking for since the death of side-arrows. In FM08 and previous, you could put side arrows on ML/MR positions, and they'd tuck into those midway positions.

Could you not play a "flat" 4-4-2, and set one MC to attacking and one to defensive? Isn't that what they used to replace the arrows?

I would say narrow diamond with central mcs set wide play @hug touchline could maybe do the trick. Gonna test it myself and let you know

IMO, 4-1-3-2 with 3 CMs and a Balanced style to maximize mentality differences is the most accurate way to execute a diamond in-game. Since you'll presumably have one forward on support duty anyway, you don't need to have the creative CM pushed that far up.

You can choose a left-footed CM to play on the left side of midfield, a right-footed CM to play on the right side of midfield, then complete with a shout 'exploit the wings'. That might encourage the 2 CMs to play further apart from each other.

The other option I have just thought of is to have a tactical option in which players can play 'the middle ground' between two positions, which would help to create more realistic modern formations (for example, the 4-5-1/4-3-3 with the AMR/AML playing the middle ground between that position and FR/FL, as well as the other options detailed above involving the diamond formation and the 4-2-3-1). Some may argue that with a combination of mentality, forward runs, roaming and wide play instructions, you can sort of get things to work, but I don't think it provides all of the solutions needed and often can involve giving instructions that you don't want to give in order to get a certain effect to play out in the match engine.

That's my opinion anyway. I think this has been discussed elsewhere but no conclusions ever reached really.

This is something I was promoting for way back when FMLive was around. They implemented Wide Play instructions instead at the time.

I think that creating a plethora of actual new positions would require huge amounts of new code and testing to get it all working the right way in the ME. So it's probably more feasible to concentrate on improving the existing player instructions. How about adding kind of defensive equivalent to wide play instructions that would allow you more control in your players defensive positioning?

When it comes to wide diamond, I think that it's pretty suicidal formation. It may work on occasion but you're very prone to being overrun in the middle, so you'll likely concede a lot of goals. However good your DMC is he can be passed around if you attack him quickly.

When it comes to wide diamond, I think that it's pretty suicidal formation. It may work on occasion but you're very prone to being overrun in the middle, so you'll likely concede a lot of goals. However good your DMC is he can be passed around if you attack him quickly.

I remember in FM11 the width slider will actually move the payers in the formation.

I play with a wide diamond, with natural m/am[r-l], but with defensive winger role and attacking duty, and the FBs set on a support duty