Come deep to get ball + get forward whenever possible?

I'm currently playing a central midfield trio of BBM - BWM-S - BBM, usually consisting of Wilshere, Lars Bender and Obiang/Ramsey

I'm sick and tired of them never providing options for my centre backs to pass to.

Wilshere has 'get forward whenever possible' as a PPM. Would teaching him to come deep to get the ball be ok? Or a disaster?

Three supporting MCs doesn't sound great tbh.

I wouldn't teach Wilshere comes deep when he has gets forward.

What I would consider is putting your BWM on defend orders which might help your passing options for your DCs.

Are you playing them in a horizontal line, a vertical line or a diamond?

The reason I ask is that I had quite a successful, (or so I thought), tactic that had propelled my San Marino club side into Serie A. It had even won me the Serie A title for the 1st time, (so that must mean it's not rubbish right?), but the season after I had won the title everything changed and it just wasn't working for me. Teams were giving me more respect and despite dominating games I was on the end of results that I see others posting in here and complaining about. When I asked for some advice, straight away multiple people pointed out that they "don't like" flat lines in midfield, (I was using a vertical line). It was a polite way of saying that it wasn't very good despite whatever I had accomplished.

I battled on for a while and then tried both a defensive Regista diamond and an attacking AMC diamond. The difference it made was immeasurable and suddenly we were making xx% more passes and everything seemed so much easier.

My advice is post your tactic in the T&TGF and see what others say. You don't have to agree with them and can completely ignore them if you want, but it just might help.

Are you playing them in a horizontal line, a vertical line or a diamond?

My advice is post your tactic in the T&TGF and see what others say. You don't have to agree with them and can completely ignore them if you want, but it just might help.

Horizontal.

And yeah I'll post it after the season to work out what players I might need.

Three supporting MCs doesn't sound great tbh.

I wouldn't teach Wilshere comes deep when he has gets forward.

What I would consider is putting your BWM on defend orders which might help your passing options for your DCs.

Yeah simple solution but I like him pushing forward to win the ball higher up the park. What would you suggest? I'm not really a fan of the BBM midfielder tbh. Never had any major success with them, not sure why I'm persevering with it.

Yeah simple solution but I like him pushing forward to win the ball higher up the park. What would you suggest? I'm not really a fan of the BBM midfielder tbh. Never had any major success with them, not sure why I'm persevering with it.

Three supporting midfielders is generally not good as all three will be moving forwards & backwards at the same time.

You need a mix of duties to give more passing options and so that the players are moving between the lines at different times. Ideally I would look for one on defend, one support & one attack. I would prob also look for one of the three to be a playmaker.

Three supporting midfielders is generally not good as all three will be moving forwards & backwards at the same time.

This. People tend to go overboard by showing screenshots of real games and highlighting triangles everywhere, but it is a key element. Creating triangles. It's easy to cut out passes when your three midfielders are in a straight line. It also limits the passing option to only one of the two other midfielders. Mix your duties up a little, as was suggested.

IMO whenever someone says they don't like flat lines or something about your formation it's really just them having a different preference about formation, just like you see the staff on FM have. A lot of people love 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 or the 4-3-3, but that doesn't mean a flat 4-5-1, 4-1-3 (flat)-2 or 3-5-2 doesn't work. It really is just about the roles you set unless you load too many players into a position and don't balance it like having 3 DMs and 5 defenders (which is obviously absurdly defensive and you won't get a lot of luck going forward).

So I would just ignore that. Right now, I am a 4-1-3-2 man.

But when people talk about roles, that's when it's worth paying a lot of attention. And I agree 3 support roles is not balanced. It's good to have a defensive role, an attacking role and one or two support roles in midfield. With my 4-1-3-2, I have the DM as the defender (destroyer), the middle guy in support (passer/creator) and the outer players either as CM(A) or B2B (runners).

No-one is saying a flat 3 in midfield can't work. We're saying that attacking-wise, you need to mix duties to create better passing options and movement.

Yes, it's possible. If I understand these PPMs correctly, it'll be like having an attack duty player on a lower mentality, so he'll be more inclined to sit deeper in early build-up and more inclined to make off the ball runs when play is advancing into the opposition half.

So you'll simultaneously see more of this:

But also this:

Basically, his movement should be much more dynamic relative to other MCs, but he'll likely get worn out faster with the extra running.

Now, the problem with not having one of your MCs on a defend duty is that you'll see more of this when the opposition breaks:

When you want someone always doing this: