The WM revolution: from Herbert Chapman to Andras Kuttik

The WM tactic in action.

I opened this thread cause I wanted to recreate my own version of the old WM tactic, or Chapman system, from the name of the mighty Arsenal coach that invented that revolutionary tactic in 1925.

If you want to read more about the historical background of the tactic, go here.

If you're interested like me in historical football formations you could read a book written by Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid, a good reading.

Still don’t know if I’ll be able to build a successful tactic, however I’ll report here , my updates about the devolopement of my WM formation.

Hopefully other people could be interested about this and will begin to develop their own version of this tactic.

Feel free to comment and suggest any ideas about it, as I said it’s a work in progress but from what I saw so far I think it could be quite interesting.

Valerio Bacigalupo, Aldo Ballarin, Virgilio Maroso, Pino Grezar, Mario Rigamonti, Eusebio Castigliano, Romeo Menti, Ezio Loik, Guglielmo Gabetto, Valentino Mazzola, and Franco Ossola

I don’t know how many people here could recognize this lineup, I can say it was one of the most famous in Italian football history.

On May 4, 1949 the Italian football team called “Grande Torino” crashed on the hill of Superga while they where returning from a friendly match vs. Benfica, all the players and the manager died in that plane crash.

From 1943 to 1949, they won five times in a row Italian Serie A, a record still unbeaten.

I’m taking about this story cause this is the WM I’m going to recreate, so an English tactic with an Italian flavour.

The team I chose to make this experiment was Wigan Athletic, media predicted to be 16th in the EPL.

I know other people could choose better team, with more players that could fit the tactic well already in, I chose them just to have a more realistic test with the tactic, if Latics will be able to do well using it, then probably lots of EPL teams will, with the right players.

Of course playing with Wigan I can’t afford at once all the players needed, but this makes this project more challenging I think.

As you see WM uses only one centre back and two full backs, covered by two Dmc that should defend and let the counter-attack begin.

Upfront we have five attackers ( 2 wingers 1 striker and two inside FC’s playing in the hole to help the midfield.

So this tactic seems to split the team in two units, our first managerial aim will be to avoid gaps in the middle of the pitch and let them play as a unit.

Andras Kuttik, the first manager to use WM for Torino, teached their wingers to start from the same line of the 2 FC’s/Amc’s, to have more space to exploit with their runs, looking for a lethal cross.

That was the main difference between this version and the original Chapman’s one, the other was a greater emphasis on counter-attack, linked to the peculiar Italian football style.

Useful info: for now the tactic won’t be available to download, for the simple reason there is no working tactic, only an experiment, I’ll try give you many details about it, so if you would be interested you could try to recreate your own WM tactic.

Afterwards if I’ll be successful at creating a consistent enough tactic, I’ll upload it somewhere.

More to come soon....

Basic tactical framework.

These are the ideas behind the tactic I’m using, maybe some of them will be confuted by the pitch, but more or less I decided to start with these settings.

Home & Away tactic: from what I saw in my first matches, the tactic has to be tweaked for away matches, afterwards I could find a better balance but for now it seems very advisable to be more cautious far from home.

Mentality: the main issue of this tactic could be having your team splitted in 2 units, a dangerous situation that needs to be fixed from the beginning.

The wingers will be the players with the higher mentality, this tactic heavily rely on them to develop good attacking manouvres, so no defensive duties for them.

So I set both of them on second notch attacking, while all the others midfielders, striker included will have normal mentality (wingers ment. – 3 notches), the defensive three plus Gk on normal too, only a bit lower (wingers mentality – 5 notches) in this way I shouldn’t see too many holes in the tactic.

Trying to balance things, for away matches I lowered mentality for every players by 2 notches.

Closing down: another important setting to be linked with my mentality framework, mentality is mainly a positional tool, so when I set that I’m saying my player where he should start to play, his closing down instructions shouldn’t be set too far from the precedent value.

All my players have to close down up to last notch of own half, only my 3 defenders have a c.d. settings lowered by 3 notches.

I lowered a bit this settings for away games.

Creative freedom: quite simple, I gave very little creative freedom to my defending unit (Gk, Fb’s, Cb, Dmc’s) and first notch of much to my attacking one, my striker has c.f. set on normal.

Team settings:

Tempo: I’m trying to play high tempo for home matches, lowering it when I go away.

Width: normal/high at home, narrow far from home.

Focus passing: mixed (home and away, sometimes down both flanks if I can’t score at home)

Time wasting: rarely at home, normal away.

D-line: still playing with this, from last notch of deep (from the left) to first notch of pushed up.

A lowered d-line seems to work better especially far from home.

Passing system: short (Dc & Fullbacks) Mixed (Dmc's) and First notch of direct all the others.

These are the grounds of my tactic, just to give you some ideas about how to develop your own version of WM, all the other settings are still being tested so it would be useless to say something more now.

IMPORTANT: I'm going to update this opening post every time I'll have to add or change something tactic related, so before posting any questions remember to read this !

If you're interested like me in historical football formations you could read a book written by Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid, a good reading.

It's a great book!

WM makes me wet myself a little!

Will follow this!

Looking forward to this... Seems to be a popular tactic...

Also, nice presentation

Great to see you give yourself an even greater challenge this time Higgins. Only 1 CB most people would think you are mental. I have great faith in you though. I will be following this with interest

Great to see you give yourself an even greater challenge this time Higgins. Only 1 CB most people would think you are mental. I have great faith in you though. I will be following this with interest

Thanks mate, the key will be to have a good balance between the 2 units.

Well I think the DMCs will be the most vital part of your team as they are going to have to help out your lone DC by tracking bacl and filling in the gaps as well as starting your attacks when you get the ball. Are you going to have one of them set as a playmaker?

You AMCs and wingers will have to work their arse off as well to track back so there is not a massive gap between your defence and attack. Or you could play a direct game and just launch the ball from back to front

Well I think the DMCs will be the most vital part of your team as they are going to have to help out your lone DC by tracking bacl and filling in the gaps as well as starting your attacks when you get the ball. Are you going to have one of them set as a playmaker?

You AMCs and wingers will have to work their arse off as well to track back so there is not a massive gap between your defence and attack. Or you could play a direct game and just launch the ball from back to front

I'm still considering my options, however I decided that my wingers will have only offensive duties as in classic WM tactic.

The playmaker option is a valid one, don't know if I have the right player to cover that role, I'v been quite busy with a heavy transfer campaign, but I had a limited budget too.

Shame your not using the actual proper shape though and using a proper W-M.

Shame your not using the actual proper shape though and using a proper W-M.

On the pitch this is very close to a classic WM, because the wingers have higher mentality than the rest of the team so they stay higher on the pitch.

The side attackers of the WM were wingers, not strikers, their main duty was to put balls into the box for the striker and the inside forwards playing in the hole.

Imo, FM 09 match engine don't let you recreate properly the WM if you put your side attackers in the strikers left and right spots, the only chance to reacreate the movements of the classical WM is to use wingers (Amr and Aml spot) as they were in real life.

In the proper W-M the wingers played as strikers, hence the name W-M. It was a mirror image of how the defence is set up, so when you looked at it on the pitch it was a W and M. The FM09 engine is good for old tactics especially the W-M. It's difficult to do though, but you can get it working simliar to how it did in the real world.

I did wonder why it was called a WM tactic. It seems so obvious now that I know.

In the proper W-M the wingers played as strikers, hence the name W-M. It was a mirror image of how the defence is set up, so when you looked at it on the pitch it was a W and M. The FM09 engine is good for old tactics especially the W-M. It's difficult to do though, but you can get it working simliar to how it did in the real world.

Yes, but Torino team in 1945 played WM, one of the first italian team to use that tactic, more offensive compared to the old italian Metodo of Vittorio Pozzo.

The 2 side attackers were wingers cause they stayed mainly very wide on the pitch, ready to cross, a striker as you know, in old times football, did not stay wide but he nearly always was anchored in the box, waiting for a decent ball to arrive.

In the Arsenal team under Chapman, one of the main scorer was Cliff Bastin, a winger often cutting into the box starting wide from the flank, running with the ball or receiving a pass close to the box, mainly from Alex James one of the inside forwards, the more skilled one.

Playing with the shape I chose, imo, is the better way to recreate that kind of football, with 2 wide wingers sometimes crossing and sometimes cutting into the box trying to score.

Very nice presentation mate I hope your experiment goes well and you get good results

I needed to rebuild my team, looking for the players that in my opinion could fit the tactic better.

Looks brilliant. I love the idea of tactics like this, so all the best. I'm going to give this a go myself see if I can conjure up anything (would be on sheer luck no doubt ). Looking forward to your results.

You sold Titus Bramble

I've tried creating a tactic with just one centre back. No joy what so ever. One long ball and your defence is screwed. But i wish you all the best in trying mate.

I havent seen this formation before, its totally mental I love it. This has inspired me to have a go.

I have my Arsenal game saved just bfore barcelona in the CL so I am going to use that game as a tester. I will be using good DMC and AMC but they will be up aginst some of the bet players in the game.

I will surely follow this thread good luck:thup:

I've tried creating a tactic with just one centre back. No joy what so ever. One long ball and your defence is screwed. But i wish you all the best in trying mate.

Thanks, I appreciated that.

I havent seen this formation before, its totally mental I love it. This has inspired me to have a go.

I have my Arsenal game saved just bfore barcelona in the CL so I am going to use that game as a tester. I will be using good DMC and AMC but they will be up aginst some of the bet players in the game.

I will surely follow this thread good luck:thup:

Another WM addicted, welcome here!

Cannot download the tactic..please post it somewhere else or send it to me...thnx!!!

sorry i didn't read the post well i saw it's not available for downloading sorry!

Right I've started a game as Real Madrid, with the intention of playing WM. I've got the players so it'll be the tactics if I fail.

Gone for an attacking, creative and narrow formation.

I udated the OP with some useful infos about my tactical framework.

The season begins!

First match away with Liverpool, after this game I understood that at the moment I should not play with the same settings home/away matches, too risky and too inconsistent my team to play attacking and high tempo football in match with tough opponent like Liverpool.

Babel, Kuyt and Torres hammered me, none of the tweaks I tried had any effects, despite I scored first with Milevsky, they had a superb come back and won quite easily.

The only positive sign I saw was the possesion stat. 58% for me, but they had 24 shots, I think too many.

Bad team gelling, of course is an issue, my players are not playing as a unit, but it was higly expected.

Width: wide

Tempo: high

D-line: last notch normal (then changed to deep)

Liverpool – Wigan 3 - 1

Next match Chelsea!

Unlucky mate. It is only your first game so dont get too downhearted. For me it is always nice to see you get beat. It makes me feel human again

W-M, I suppose!

I'm quite surprised about the outcome of my second match, I played vs. Chelsea with my standard settings for my home match, but I thought they could have demolished us, but my team had a nice start, scoring twice in ten minutes putting Chelski K.O.

What's more surprising they had no reactions, only long shots not bringing any danger to my Gk, Kirkland.

My defenders made a great job not to leave their striker easy chances.

Wigan - Chelsea 2 -1

I created the same amount of CCC's with fewer shots.

This is the W-M in action...

Dedicated to Cleon that said I'm not playing a proper W-M!!!

In that screenshot and the one in your first post it looks like 1 decent long ball would kill your team. There is so much space for the oppossing attackers. That is what makes this really strange to see you winning because if I was playing against it I would be fuming if I lost

In that screenshot and the one in your first post it looks like 1 decent long ball would kill your team. There is so much space for the oppossing attackers. That is what makes this really strange to see you winning because if I was playing against it I would be fuming if I lost

Sshhhhhh....don't say that to Abramovich or he could sack Hiddink too!

If your full-backs are pacey enough, they could track back and provide adequate cover, however I already thought some tweaks for next matches to stay safer.

I hope you don't mind if a slightly hijack your thread a little.

I'm playing the same formation as you and have seen quite a few WM moments

I find I'm getting a lot of possession and lots of shots, but thats proabably just me being RM.

I don't find I get many long balls coming over the top.

Well I didn't really achieve anything with this post, but oh Well.

I hope you don't mind if a slightly hijack your thread a little.

I'm playing the same formation as you and have seen quite a few WM moments

I find I'm getting a lot of possession and lots of shots, but thats proabably just me being RM.

I don't find I get many long balls coming over the top.

Well I didn't really achieve anything with this post, but oh Well.

Don't you worry.

I saw that right mentality and closing down settings help to keep the desired shape.

It's looks like you play wide?

It's looks like you play wide?

In that match yes, first notch of wide, It was a home match.

The WM is not such an unrealistic tactic, some real life managers use it nowadays (obiously everybody considers then mental cases)!! In Portugal Porto had a severe crisis period after mourinho, they sold Mourinho, and all the key players: Deco, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Maniche, etc etc. After a year with 3 managers, all fired, a dutch came along (Co Adriaanse) with strict discipline and very strange tactical ideas ( THE WM ). Everybody here said the man was insane! By the end of the season he clinched the portuguese league, and the portuguese cup. European career was nasty tough. But considering the domestic expectations he was great!!! Very important to say the system worked like a charm mainly due to a Central Defender called Pepe (now at Real Madrid) that has blistering pace and tremendous anticipation skills!!! He was everywhere in defence totally controling the show!!! Cheers for your courage higgins!!!

The WM is not such an unrealistic tactic, some real life managers use it nowadays (obiously everybody considers then mental cases)!! In Portugal Porto had a severe crisis period after mourinho, they sold Mourinho, and all the key players: Deco, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Maniche, etc etc. After a year with 3 managers, all fired, a dutch came along (Co Adriaanse) with strict discipline and very strange tactical ideas ( THE WM ). Everybody here said the man was insane! By the end of the season he clinched the portuguese league, and the portuguese cup. European career was nasty tough. But considering the domestic expectations he was great!!! Very important to say the system worked like a charm mainly due to a Central Defender called Pepe (now at Real Madrid) that has blistering pace and tremendous anticipation skills!!! He was everywhere in defence totally controling the show!!! Cheers for your courage higgins!!!

I agree, a strong centre-back is vital for this tactic to work, he must be good in the air and pacey enough to cover the space between the 2 full-backs.

In that match yes, first notch of wide, It was a home match.

Playing wide even at home creates problems as its not a tactic that offers width. You'll be inconsistent if you play this way imo. Just look at the space in the screenshot you posted, that there is to exploit. Any half decent side will rip you apart. If you play wide your putting a lot of strain on the DC and asking him to do far too much imo.

An interesting post. Oddly enough I was trying to look into the WW developed by (Márton Bukovi who turned the 3-2-5 WM "upside down".), according to our friends at Wikpedia!! Couldn't find a decent picture of it though and it just didn't look right with the FM positional discs so I abandoned the idea. Good try though fella, keep going.

Playing wide even at home creates problems as its not a tactic that offers width. You'll be inconsistent if you play this way imo. Just look at the space in the screenshot you posted, that there is to exploit. Any half decent side will rip you apart. If you play wide your putting a lot of strain on the DC and asking him to do far too much imo.

I see your point Cleon, I had some doubts about that too, but it seems that my Dmc's, having great teamwork and work rate, track back well to break down any counter attacking moves.

However just played few matches, so I will see if I'll have to change something for the future.

A wider setting offers my 2 Amc's more space to exploit, giving my opponents lots of troubles.

Hi dimartino

theres a private msg for you....

have a look at your inbox. cheers

Hi dimartino

theres a private msg for you....

have a look at your inbox. cheers

Not so thread related. :confused:

hi higgins i've decided to join your revolutionary idea with the w-m idea. i've started a new game as villa and just ran with the instructions you posted. i must say so far so good mate had really good friendly results and good uefa qualifiers.the only problem i have is that i have no amc's!! im playing sidwell and petrov there!! one thing i have noticed which i think you may have spot on is the 2 dmc's i have gareth barry and reo coker playing there and so far theyv'e been nothing short of amazing. i will give it twenty games mate and update you great thread by the way.

hi higgins i've decided to join your revolutionary idea with the w-m idea. i've started a new game as villa and just ran with the instructions you posted. i must say so far so good mate had really good friendly results and good uefa qualifiers.the only problem i have is that i have no amc's!! im playing sidwell and petrov there!! one thing i have noticed which i think you may have spot on is the 2 dmc's i have gareth barry and reo coker playing there and so far theyv'e been nothing short of amazing. i will give it twenty games mate and update you great thread by the way.

Barry & Reo-Coker could make great things as your dmc's, try to train Sidwell as amc if you can't sell him.

W-M, I suppose!

This is the W-M in action...

Dedicated to Cleon that said I'm not playing a proper W-M!!!

I think I agree with everyone else, you won, well done but if you came up against a side with a quick striker who counter and play long balls, you are scuppered. But I hope you prove me wrong!

I think I agree with everyone else, you won, well done but if you came up against a side with a quick striker who counter and play long balls, you are scuppered. But I hope you prove me wrong!

I'd have more faith in the old W-M!

I see your point Cleon, I had some doubts about that too, but it seems that my Dmc's, having great teamwork and work rate, track back well to break down any counter attacking moves.

However just played few matches, so I will see if I'll have to change something for the future.

A wider setting offers my 2 Amc's more space to exploit, giving my opponents lots of troubles.

But playing wider causes you more problems than you'll cause the opposition due to the shape of the W-M.

But playing wider causes you more problems than you'll cause the opposition due to the shape of the W-M.

I'll keep testing and I'll report back here results and impressions.

Here is my more conservative take on the W-M:

I do have specific instructions for mentality, creative freedom, passing style and closing down for each position though.

I have played 6 games in Serie A with this tactic, winning once, drawing four and losing once.

Here are the results:

Sampdoria - 1-1

Palermo - 0-0

Lazio - 0-3

AC Milan - 1-1

Atalanta - 2-2

Cagliari - 2-0

All of the teams that I have played, other than Cagliaria, are predicted to finish higher than me in the league. I have been dominating possession with around 60% per game. However, one quick ball can destroy your team and I haven't been great going forward despite the attacking nature of the tactic. What changes would you recommend?

Here is my more conservative take on the W-M:

I do have specific instructions for mentality, creative freedom, passing style and closing down for each position though.

I have played 6 games in Serie A with this tactic, winning once, drawing four and losing once.

Here are the results:

Sampdoria - 1-1

Palermo - 0-0

Lazio - 0-3

AC Milan - 1-1

Atalanta - 2-2

Cagliari - 2-0

All of the teams that I have played, other than Cagliaria, are predicted to finish higher than me in the league. I have been dominating possession with around 60% per game. However, one quick ball can destroy your team and I haven't been great going forward despite the attacking nature of the tactic. What changes would you recommend?

I think you're too conservative move your Mc up to retain WM shape.

I can't afford to do that. I need to bridge the gap and that's what this does. The MC can also supply balls to both wingers easily from the position he is in. If I was a higher quality team, I'd consider it but Torino are simply not good enough.

I can't afford to do that. I need to bridge the gap and that's what this does. The MC can also supply balls to both wingers easily from the position he is in. If I was a higher quality team, I'd consider it but Torino are simply not good enough.

I assure you that if you find the right balance there will be no gaps.

Of course you can play as you like, just to say this was not W-M.

To be classed as a W-M it needs the W-M shape:)