CRAZY 4-2-4 Formation from AI teams with late lead

It's the 86th minute. Sunderland lead 2-1 at home in the league. They go 4-2-4, when they've been clinging on all half.

This is insane.

And it's the second time I've seen a team go 4-2-4 with the lead late in a game.

They do say attack is the best form of defence

This has happened to me a lot too. The weird thing also is that when they are losing, they haven't gone 4-2-4 on me...

Yeah, I've noticed the AI seem to go 4-2-4 at times that it doesn't seem to be the right thing to do.

If you watch arsenal on FM08, if they are winning, the will always go 4-2-4 for the last 10 minutes of a game. It's quite an interesting tactic. Just when the opposition are thinking about going all out attack to get into the game, a manger throws on a couple of strikers and tries to scare the crap out of them! Thus forcign them to abandon their comeback plans

I rarely concede from that tactic - the trick is to see it coming; drop your mentality, switch to counter-attack and have your entire defence on man-marking.

I was hoping they (SI) would remove this tactic from the AI teams and maybe vary it eg one team goes 433another 424 and also 352 maybe? But they haven't

I find the AI always rolls out 4-2-4 on me if im winning in the last ten mins of a game! as mentioned in an earlier post, rather than go defensive i go 4-2-4 also! Thing is it always works for the AI and not me! Its like the AI's diablo tactic

Last night I was playing a game, down 2-1 with 15 minutes to go and the opposition switch from 4-4-2 to 3-4-3. Very bizarre decision. How often during a game do you see a team switch from 2 centre backs to 3? Hardly ever.

If you watch arsenal on FM08, if they are winning, the will always go 4-2-4 for the last 10 minutes of a game. It's quite an interesting tactic. Just when the opposition are thinking about going all out attack to get into the game, a manger throws on a couple of strikers and tries to scare the crap out of them! Thus forcign them to abandon their comeback plans

I always want to see if it will work, but I'm afraid.

I haven't seen it happen as much in the demo as in FM08 and when I have seen it happen I haven't been stung as I was almost all the time in FM08

Oh no, not another year of this.

It happens on FM09 demo, but is not as effective as on 08. However, when it does happen, adjust your tactics and you should be fine. Might take a bit of experimenting but with FM08, where it was looked upon as a "super-tactic" I would concede maybe half a dozen times a year from the AI doing this, usually because I didn't notice they had switched.

I think many of you haven't properly read my post.

The CPU is doing this at the end of the game WHEN THEY ARE *WINNING*. Twice now.

(Not the old "Boro-in-the-EUFA/FM2007-8" 4-2-4 when *losing*)

See the problem now?

My bad.

A couple of teams used to do this in 08 too. Not sure why.

Yes this needs fixed ! i was winning and 5 minutes to go i went defensise then my central defender ended up in the middle of the box thinking hes maradona :O and the team my team was still attacking looking for another goal when i wanted them to sit back and plauy on the counter