My Journey with a 5-2-3 / 3-4-3

Hello! Thought it would be good to document my tweaking of a new tactic, to track what I'm doing, to share and to get feedback from others. I don't claim to be a master tactician, quite the opposite in fact, so if I'm doing anything that seems weird then let me know! To give you a bit of a background I'm currently into my 6th Season in my save and I've been quite successful so far. Having started at Harrogate Town in the Conference North and gained promotions with them, Crewe and Bolton, I've just taken a job at struggling Stoke, who were 17th in the Premiership just 6 games into the season. I had just been sacked at Swansea because I was 5th in the table with a handful of games left but they were expecting my to win promotion by winning the Championship. I think my squad were strong enough but my tactics, a 4-1-3-2 with a DM and 2 wide midfielders relied heavily on crosses to a Target Man which seems to have suffered a bit with the new 16.2.0 update, either that or maybe just didn't suit that level of football.

So I want to create a new tactic (with help from everyone else!) and I thought I would go with something a bit different. I wanted to go with a 2-3-2-3 (2 DCs, 3 DMs, 2 CMs and 3 STs) which worked really well when I was playing FML. I have gone for something similar but seeing as though a lot of people have had a 3 man defence I dropped the central DM.

I have gone with a Counter mentality and I think I have a nice mix of attacking and defensive roles. The Complete Forward is set at support so he is not completely isolated and hopefully the 2 IFs and the 2 WBs will offer offensive support with the Advanced Playmaker. I was unsure whether the AP needed an Attacking duty so he would offer more going forward but for now I'm going to see if this works. The only TI is that I wanted to play fairly narrow, but I have set the 2 WBs with a PI of stay wider. My thinking is that I still get the width but I am more compact in the middle. Hopefully, going forward, the two IFs will get the ball and drag the opposing Full Backs inside, giving my 2 WBs a lot of room to get crosses in.

So I play the first match against 6th placed Everton, and win 3-0, one goal before half time and 2 from a substitute.

Although the result was great and I have only considered one match, the stats above show a few things. Ryan Shawcross was immense defensively, although his distribution consisted of regularly giving the ball away. In fact my Ass Man was telling me throughout the match we were terrible keeping possession and my 3 DCs appear to have been the biggest culprits. The wing backs were getting forward in the match, which was positive. I decide to change the PI for the 3 DCs to Pass it shorter and try it for a couple of games.

0-0 (D) vs Plymouth (20th) (46% possession)

1-0 (W) vs West Brom (5th) (53% possession)

1-0 (W) vs Derby (11th) (48% possession)

3 positive results really. I know drawing with bottom-placed, winless Plymouth could look like a bad result (and the board agreed with this) I need to remember that the players are still learning the tactic. After 4 games though I'm looking very solid defensively, but I'm not really creating many chances apart from set pieces. In order to improve going forward I'm going to change the role of my Advanced Playmaker to Attack.

And then I suffer my 1st defeat...a 2-0 at Bournemouth, who have made a great start and are 5th after this win. I revisit the stats screen and spend more time examining it.

The 3 DCs have terrible pass completion stats, but upon further inspection of this (and the previous stats pic) I notice that actually the worst offender is my keeper! I don't know how I missed this before. Looking at his passes on the analysis page I see that all his long kicks fail miserably - a 15% pass completion rate. Looking at my squad I then notice that none of my players apart from my Complete Forward are anywhere near 6ft! My CF is 185cm and he's the tallest offensive player - almost every other offensive player is around 178cm. This is probably something I need to address when the Transfer Window opens but in the meantime I change my keeper so that he Takes short kicks.

3-0 (W) vs Newcastle (9th) (54% possession, GK pass completion 88%)

0-2 (L) vs Forest (19th) (53% possession, GK pass completion 76%)

My GKs passing has improved having a positive effect on my possession. The other thing I realised but didn't change until this point is that my wing backs are getting loads of crosses in, but again not many are completed. In the Forest match only 1 out of 37 crosses were completed! This is probably to do with the height issue of my players so I'm going to ask the team to deliver low crosses in. The next 4 games are difficult fixtures.

2-1 (W) vs Arsenal (2nd) (50% possession)

1-3 (L) vs Man Utd (1st) (48% possession)

0-2 (L) vs Liverpool (18th) (48% possession)

The Arsenal match ended in a great result, however my 2 wing backs and the defensive rock Ryan Shawcross both were all injured, making the next matches even harder.

I don't want this to end up as a "Story" about my season - I want people to concentrate on the tactic and how it develops. I am going to continue with the tactic in its current guise and I will let you know how it continues after the Transfer Window where I only have a small amount to spend!

If anyone wants to try the tactic with their team then here is a link:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/i5h1buyzu4s6b71/ABs_5-2-3_4D1D8986-D138-47F7-9F81-AAC80B4DB0A3.fmf

and if anyone has any hints, opinions or suggestions then I would happily listen.