My Liverpool formation and how to improve it.

1. Control / Attacking are high tempo mentalities, and it may be that their urgency tempers your desire for more intelligent movement

That did help me a lot; playing on (much) lower tempo allows me to untick retain possession and we are basically now much better in attack, the way I'd like to see.

7. Depends where you have played him and in what system. Has he played in this screenshot-ed system, or something else? I generally don't buy the whole "they're settling in" notion. If played correctly, they'll be fine

I tend to play him as replacement for Coutinho in the AML position, as IF. He is just not making it whatever I tried with him.

8. Whipped are fast but the accuracy lacks, low crosses aren't necessarily fast and with an attacking system like yours, they're likely to be delivered into busy areas. I'd Hit Early Crosses, given the Mentality and Sturridge's Role / Duty

I always believed he'd benefit more from through balls or, since he dribbles well and is quite pacy, just simple balls to feet and he can create the chances himself if needed. I dislike having Hit Early Crosses, it might be just my preference. Also, I quote from Llama3's Pairs:

"You can also hit early crosses, which means floating crosses from much deeper positions, this can support a direct style of play, and it can help get the ball to your forwards from wide if your wide-men are struggling to get past their opponent, allowing them space and time to find their teammate."

Back to the point:

What I am trying at the moment is to get rid of BBM and AP; BBM because it seems both Henderson and Hamšik, in that position and role, tend to finish plenty of games at 6.5, which suggests it's not really the best role for this formation and set-up. I just wanted to see how it would look like if I changed them to DLP and it worked well. BUT - I want to get rid of both playmakers role, since it sort of forces players to pass ball to both DLP and AP. I tried emulating previous roles with CM/S and CM/A, where the latter is quite straightforward and is working well, but I am unsure on how to setup CM/S, since he is a little bit deeper than before as BBM even with Get Further Forward.

Edit: It seems that under the new system, when we are attacking - at least on Standard, DM and CM/S are creating a partnership in the middle, with CM/A being further forward. It might work against teams who tend to press more, with some space left behind, but since most of the teams defend deep against us with plenty of players behind the ball, there is not much space for CM/S to spray balls around. Not sure what to do, really.

Any other suggestion is more than welcome, thanks again.

It seems that under the new system, when we are attacking - at least on Standard, DM and CM/S are creating a partnership in the middle, with CM/A being further forward. It might work against teams who tend to press more, with some space left behind, but since most of the teams defend deep against us with plenty of players behind the ball, there is not much space for CM/S to spray balls around. Not sure what to do, really.

In these cases you have to create space for your team to operate. One way to achieve this is to use a more defensive setup yourself. Counter or Defending. Cleon has a great thread where he discusses just this point, but the basic idea is you have to draw the defense out and stretch them either vertically, horizontally, or both. Sitting deeper with a slower tempo can help achieve this. Next time you run into a bus parking scenario, try dropping deeper and slowing the game down and see where the opponent have to come forward to engage you. This will show you the spots you can focus your attack.

In my second season, I am basically destroying the opponents; first three games were: Man. Utd. at home 4-0, Chelsea away 1-2 for us, and Arsenal away 1-1 even-though they were 1 man down since minute 4. I'm on a 10 league games winning streak, with 14 wins and 2 draws. Obviously, being called overachievers, I am expecting their game-plans against us to change soon.

The only real change I did so far - beside changing BBM and AP as I described in the post above Dr. Hook's - is removing retain possession, since it did make us blunt in the middle. I usually play with Much Lower Tempo and/or short passing, which still makes us being the possession based team - even without short passing.

The wonky 4-1-4-1 looks a bit vulnerable down the left. You have the natural gap between the wing back and the IF, and whilst the Duty of the IF will mitigate that a bit, you have an attacking wing back plus a BBM bombing forward in aggressive Mentalities. If I played you, I'd Exploit The Right Flank.

I wondered if moving my DM to the left DM slot would make him cover more on that side? His main use, of course, is to catch loose balls - and they most certainly do not choose which side they'd go to! Just wondering if it'd make sense to move him there.