Teams sitting deep in my counter-attacking save

Hello I am trying to create an efficient counter-attacking tactic with Nottingham Forest. The team that I usually field is quite poor, generally I see Forest struggling to stay above the relegation zone in my other saves so to be 11th with two points away from 5th is decent, as I am looking to finish the season around the play-off places before I build the next season a better side to promote.

Anyway, the fact that I flirted with the top 3 positions before the bad form made me think that some teams have decided to play more defensively against me which is reflected by the terrible shots on target ratio (sometimes the likes of 22/6 or 17/3 which seriously annoys me). I am seriously in trouble as I don't know how to break those sides or actually lure them towards me without conceding too much space then launch counter-attacks.

I am very disheartened by the injuries. Basically you can form a first team made of the injured players (including those injured at the start of the season) which is better than my actual 11.

Thing is I am not sure what to look at when it comes to watching the first 10 minutes of the match. That's a point. Another point is I have no idea if my tactic is on point when it comes to counter-attacking, so if you have any tips to improve the tactic itself other than breaking the bus, please let me know.

the distribution of your roles doesn't seem to be set-up correctly to create movement. If your WM has instructions to cut inside then it probably would be a good idea to have your left full back changed to wing back - support. On the right side you only have supporting duties so obviously no one would attack space, which is essential in a counter set-up. Full back support+ winger attack might be a solution. The thing is, it's not pretty clear how you want your side to play. You have a very fluid shape, which I wouldn't recommend given how poor the technical skills of the players are(trust me, i know each and everyone of them, too many forest saves ), and the rest I'm not sure because i don't know how you've set-up individual instructions and well.... because I haven't seen how your tactic works. Try to think of the general idea of how you want to play, which players and what should they do and how your set-up translates that into the match engine.

My tactic is inspired from Simeone's 4-4-2, bar the high pressing (because the work rate is low and I feared it might lead to losing shape) and some tweaks here and there. So therefore it's counter-attacking. I have read Cleon's The Art of Counterattack thread and he mentioned that in Defensive/Counter tactics there should be up to 2 attacking duties, but it's better if we use only one. Team Shape is set to Very Fluid to compress the space so to be harder to break. I've got no star player so no Specialist role so everyone should contribute to all phases of play, I don't worry much about the expanded Creative Freedom. I've set the Defensive Line higher TI as I noticed there was a significant gap between my defence line and midfielders compared to mid to strikers gap so I thought that I should limit the space. The other TIs are to tweak the tactic a little bit.

I'd take still take it a notch down to fluid. If not, at least instruct the team to be more disciplined, a very fluid system literally means your defenders are going to try through balls and your strikers tackles, and for the level of these players I doubt it's appropriate. A higher defensive line+get stuck in in a very fluid system is probably why you have so many injuries as well, because your players are trying to win back the ball agressively high up the pitch. Do your players have good enough attributes for decisions, tackling, strength and work rate to make this style of pressing effective? If this is what you are trying to achieve, maybe try closing down more instead of hard tackling. The space between your midfield and defence can be miminized by changing the cm(D) to a DLP(D) to come deep to get the ball and generally protect the d-line. So basically, I'd go for Normal d-line, untick get stuck-in, tick close down more, change cm-d to dlp-d or bwm-d and have a more advanced forward up front to spice things up in attack a bit. These are just tiny elements of a system you are imagining though, and I see you've made up your mind about they way you want to defend, but I think you should revise your transitions and work on a clearer definition of how you want to attack.

Hmm I thought about dropping the Team Shape to Fluid and I will possibly look into changing the CD role and the duty of the DLP. We're conceding a lot from crosses though. I am thinking about getting a little bit wider too, might be too narrow at times and that doesn't work against defensive sides.

Have a read of this posted by Rashidi. Counter is only a small step change away from the Defensive mentality he mentions:

You have got the general flow, however, how many players get up and attack also depends on your duties. So while you have identified what generally happens, the specific players involved in transitions will be those that are "support" duties. So a defensive/structured system with say 5 players on support and 1 on attack, would see 5 drop back to defend leaving one forward, whilst one with 2 on support and 5 on attack, would have a different result..

There are so many things at play here...but all you need to understand is what does mentality affect and what does shape affect, for instance.

In an attacking mentality - a defender will look to play more direct passes occasionally, and support players may play more direct passes because of their risk appetite

On defensive mentality - a defender may look to play safer passes or punt the ball, and support players may look to play safer passes and won't be looking to generate an attack every moment.

On structured shapes the distinction is clear, however on fluid shapes, because players are likely to share the same mentality and have have higher creative freedom, you would see a more disorganised mass heading back to defend on transitions. The same would not be true for Structured shapes. The compactness of shapes plays a big part here.

Not all roles and duties have high risk, some roles are hardcoded to approach a game with low risk. To check this look at a Player Instructions, if the Play Less Risky Passes option is locked out, hovering over it will let you know what kind of passes he will make. On a fluid system everyone on the team will have one creative setting, however those whose roles have more risky passing, are more likely to have higher creative freedom hardcoded too.

Defensive/Very Fluid will always struggle to work, because your team is already playing a deep defensive line, taking less chances, but you are opting to get them to play very fluid, which doesn't give the time much spatial options.

Defensive/Structured makes more sense, since there is more distinction, a team will have players who depending on the duty split will approach things in varied ways. More support duties will encourage camping, forward roles with attack duties would place high demands on good players to find space and others to play the ball to them. And this would help set up nice counter systems.

When looking at mentality you are addressing a team's passing, width and general risk appetite. Shape commands a team to create distinctions in duties. Every problem I have noticed on the forums with respect to tactics that don't work, have a problem with either duty selection or shout choices.

And its Rashidi....not Rashid :-)

@James9 you are generally right, and my explanation should cover your question too. Control/Structured vs Control/Fluid influences depend on your duty allocation first. Look for support players and then you will see who goes up and down in transitions.

So do you also believe, herne, that Counter is not exactly compatible with Very Fluid? I am only looking to compress the depth space by using that Team Shape option and I believe the Creative Freedom could be somehow lowered to a normal value with the TI "Be More Disciplined"?

I am trying to create an efficient counter-attacking tactic

When setting up a counter attacking system, the main thing to understand is that when a counter attack is triggered, the AI takes over and makes your team very attacking for the duration.

In other words, the AI ignores your own Team Instructions, Mentality and so on, and turns your team into attack minded monsters. So, any instructions you give your team will be used when you are not counter attacking.

Therefore, when looking to create a counter system, it can be important to set your team up to trigger counter attacks more frequently. You want the opposition to commit players forward, over stretching themselves so that you can then hit them with a fast counter. More Fluid team shapes don't really help with that, nor do TIs such as a higher def line, tackling harder or more pressing. Formation is also important - set too many players too far forward (as in the 4231 for example) and the opposition won't commit enough players forward.

In the following sticky you'll find an excellent article that goes into a lot of detail about counter attacking http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/458976-Tactic-Building-and-Training-Guides-gt-gt-Start-Here-lt-lt

When setting up a counter attacking system, the main thing to understand is that when a counter attack is triggered, the AI takes over and makes your team very attacking for the duration.

In other words, the AI ignores your own Team Instructions, Mentality and so on, and turns your team into attack minded monsters. So, any instructions you give your team will be used when you are not counter attacking.

Well this is something I needed mention of as I wasn't sure of it so thank you for bringing it to surface. The primary though was that if I leave space, the opponents might exploit it which could lead to conceding goals so I thought a very stiff defence might frustrate them so they would bring more men forward or change in a more attacking mentality that could leave them exposed.

And I must ask you one more thing, do you believe the duties approach inspired from Cleon's counter attacking thread is a good idea in creating CT tactics?

Meanwhile I made some tweaks to the tactic: dropped the higher defensive line, switched the CM (D) to a DLP (D) and changed from Very Narrow to Narrow as I felt I was a little bit too compact at times which led to goals from crosses because my fullbacks were a bit too tucked in.

If you mean about Cleon's CT thread, I already gone through it like 3-4 times because that's where I learned about counter attacking tactics.

If Cleon's written about it, rest assured it is absolutely a good idea.

The width setting TI relates to when your team is in possession, not defending. Your team will naturally revert to a compact shape when defending regardless of that TI.

If Cleon's written about it, rest assured it is absolutely a good idea.

The width setting TI relates to when your team is in possession, not defending. Your team will naturally revert to a compact shape when defending regardless of that TI.

Well are all the TI influencing only the attacking phase of a tactic?

It's funny how sometimes I believe I finally made the right tactic before I post it here and I realize there are a lot of things to be learned.

No. If you look at the TI UI you'll see some TIs are under the "Defence" section, some are under "Build Up" whilst others are under "Attack".

Tempo and Time Wasting are not included under any section as whilst they are in possession TIs, you can defend with the ball just as you can attack with the ball.

Width should be probably be included in the Build Up or Attack sections, but that's the only anomaly.

Well are all the TI influencing only the attacking phase of a tactic?

It's funny how sometimes I believe I finally made the right tactic before I post it here and I realize there are a lot of things to be learned.

The first piece of advice you need to take onboard is this:

1. Don't use TIs till you see your system in flow.

Basically you want to see how your tactic plays out. For example if your players are isolated in attack, and you are finding it hard to get the ball to them, this has nothing to do with Tis, this has everything to do with your duty allocation.

2. When using TIs, some affect the way you defend, others affect the way you attack, others affect decision making. There's already a wealth of information on TIs or you can go to my blog and read up, I did try to explain the TIs a while back.

3. Some of the TIs are DEFENSIVE in orientation - the Retain Possession is one of them, cos it tells a team to reduce width, passing directness, and removes Risky Passes.

A good tactic needs very few TIs. Some TIs become redundant with the right roles/duties, eg. Look for overlap. If your tactic is well thought out, you will at most need very few TIs, if you think you need more, then you are grasping.

Yes, this is exactly how I approach the game, the TIs I have selected were after I watched the friendlies/a couple of division games. If anything, then I believe TIs such as "Higher Defensive Line" added to compress space, was rather because I do not know a lot about tactics in general (of course not knowing the game entirely like being able to drop a player in the space to protect the back four as a replacement to the TI) which I believe is harming my chances of creating successful tactics.

One more thing I'd like to ask it might be silly but I need to clear it, seeing that all the TIs matter when the team is in possession and not counter attacking, can the same be said about Roles?

I may be wrong but wouldn't it be better to play slightly deeper for countering rather than slightly higher, as then the opposition are likely to be further in your half?

Like I say I might be talking rubbish but usually I have thought that 'slightly higher' is better when controlling, as it will pen the other team in their own half.

I may be wrong but wouldn't it be better to play slightly deeper for countering rather than slightly higher, as then the opposition are likely to be further in your half?

Like I say I might be talking rubbish but usually I have thought that 'slightly higher' is better when controlling, as it will pen the other team in their own half.

I think you are right but I have used higher defensive line because I wanted to compress the space between defence and midfield.

I may be wrong but wouldn't it be better to play slightly deeper for countering rather than slightly higher, as then the opposition are likely to be further in your half?

Note that the D-Line isn't high. Counter has a fairly deep line so he's pushed that up slightly.