Need help in playing the Big 4 sides in prem away from home

I play a 4231 formation for my Chelsea side and I'm in my third season and I can't seem to always perform again the big sides away from home as I played arsenal at their place and lost 5-0 and man united and lost 5-0 , need help with what mentality I should use and the fluidity and what team instructions as well

Someone help??

Wow impatient!

We need to know more about your team instructions and player instructions and what you are doing. What players you have and use etc etc.

Detail is king here. Once we know we can help you. There is not a "use this mentality to always beat big sides" thing, no answer fits all, so it is all very team specific.

Sorry. The team instructions I play are retain possession, shorter passing, pass into space, play out of defence, run at defence, play narrower, roam from positions, hassle opponents, use offside trap and higher tempo! The mentality I use is standard and I have a balanced fluidity! I also know there isn't a tactic that guarantees you to win away from against the top sides but I want something that may bring the score line down to a more reasonable score line for my team

Player instructions are

Azpilicueta CWB attack

2 centre backs both defend

Luke shaw CWB attack

1 BBM support

1 DLP defend

2 inside forward attack

1 attacking playmaker attack and

1 advanced forward attack

Nobody at all is defending your flanks. What sort of goals are you conceding in these matches - where do they come from?

So would you recommend that I have my wing backs playing defensive? Normally a mixture, tends to be a lot from the wide areas

Not necessarily defensive, but you need some sort of balance out wide in these games - especially as the big sides in the PL typically use AML/R players.

You have loads of options. You can either reel in Duties out wide, you can drop the AML/R players back to the ML/R lines, or you can make fundamental changes to Mentality and / or Team Instructions.

Well I just played Liverpool at anfield and my wing backs were put on automatic and I managed to grind out a 1-0 nil win so I think it just varies

Well I just played Liverpool at anfield and my wing backs were put on automatic and I managed to grind out a 1-0 nil win so I think it just varies

Automatic Duties have their actual Duty set by the Team Mentality.

Wing Backs are less attacking than CWBs anyway, and with a Standard Mentality, Automatic Duties effectively assign a Support Duty to the Role, so you were inherently more conservative with both the Role AND the Duty in that match.

Oh right I didn't realise that, I'm still getting used to the game so finding out things is interesting

I noticed this when I was improving my team to champions. We were one of the best teams in the league, but going against the lieks of Arsenal and Man Utd was always very tricky and worrying. I eventually realised after a while that their players that caused problems always had high numbers in Jumping, Strength and/or Pace.

That was my epiphany. From then on, my criteria for buying players was added to: they had to have at least 15 in Pace, Strength or Jumping, preferably all 3, and especially if they had a rating of 18 or above. One season, I won every competition I was in, and a lot of goals came from headers (including the final goal, the 1-0 winner of the CL final that wrapped it all up).

In fact my selection policy for matches (as I had at least two top players for each position, being a top side) involved looking at the opposition players and writing down their Pace, Jumping and Strength stats. I would then pick the players opposite them that either matched or beat their attributes.

Last night I beat Man City at home 3-2 with 10 men. Deep 4231 with an experiment of two Registas with two Defensive Wingers in the AM strata rather than my usual two CM's who don't track back enough. Had a full back sent off so lost the AM so it was a 4221 as such. Conceded both goals by going counter and contain. Went to attack and scored all three on attack. My experience with FM is don't try and defend just attack. If you defend you can't score goals at least that's my experience I just suck at defensive tactics!!