Plug and Play Winger tactic

[Miiksern]

First of all, all credit goes to Mr Hough and his excellent 4-1-2-3 tactic which this is based on. I really don't have much experience in making tactics, so I just modified Mr Hough's tactic since I wanted to play with wingers.

I haven't done extensive testing, mostly because I don't have time and I can't motivate myself to make time. The teams I have tested it with are Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool and with those teams it works like a charm but then again most tactics do. And I can't guaratee it'll work with teams who haven't got quality players. Although if you aquire players who have the needed attributes for every position it probably does.

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For most of the positions you need the same attributes as you do for Mr Hough's tactic. Incase you don't know and can't be arsed finding out here they are:

GK: Aerial Ability-Command of Aera-Handling-One on Ones-Reflexes-Positioning-Agility

Full backs: Heading-Tackling-Positioning-Marking-Jumping-Concentration

DC's: Heading-Marking-Tackling-Anticipation-Positioning-Jumping

DMC: Heading-Marking-Tackling-Anticipation-Work Rate-Teamwork

MC: First Touch-Passing-Positioning-Teamwork-Tackling

Wingers: Dribbling-Technique-Finishing-Pace-Off The Ball-First Touch-Composure

DLF/FCl: Finishing-Off the Ball-First Touch-Flair-Composure-Creativity

AF/FCr: Same as wingers, but a goalgetter will always preform decently in this position. Palermo is always outstanding and he's not particulary quick.

Now the CB's, again both need to be good in the air, Otamendi is consistently crap for me and the only explanation I can find is his weak heading. The cover DC (DCl) needs pace but it doesn't seem to be that important with the stopper (DCr). Obviously the stopper being fast is all well and good but I've had players like Campbell preform great and he's slow. Big and strong > Pace for DCr.

I feel like i'm repeating myself but the DMC needs to be a good header aswell.

Also I know tackling is one the criteria for the MC but i've had players like Verratti(After a few years) preform fantastic so I guess it's not -that- important.

For the wingers i'd go for the cutting in types, so right footed on the left and left footed on the right. Altough thats not a must have, i've had pure wingers like Valencia preform well.

Hmm I think i've said just about everything I had planned now. Oh yeah one last thing - I strongly recommend everyone to use Wolfsongs Teamtalks, they've done absolute wonders for me, I can't praise them enough really, Wolfsong is a genius.

You find them here:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=183599&highlight=wolfsong

Here's the tactic:

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V2, simply better:

http://www.filefront.com/17022749/4-2-2-2%20test2%20%28Arsenal%2C%20Okt%202009%29.tac

Good luck and feedback, especially constructive criticism, is more than welcome.

PS: No shouts or OI's and smallest pitch size.

[Miiksern]

I've been playing some more and i've made a few changes which seem to make the play flow better and tighten up the defense abit. I think the defense works better with the original closing down from Mr Hough's formation than with the tweak from his thread. So I reverted back and the it seems tighter.

Here's how it looks now:

I need to stress that you need a defensive minded midfielder in the left MC slot other than that I swapped the DC roles so the stopper is on the right.

Well here's the update, hope it improves the defense for you aswell.

http://www.filefront.com/17022749/4-2-2-2%20test2%20%28Arsenal%2C%20Okt%202009%29.tac

[Goose54]

Having much better results with the updated version, almost done with season 1 with Aston Villa, im currently 7th, which is decent, but think i can make top 4 next seaon with your updated tactic.

well won the uefa cup over roma, and made it to the semi in fa. cup, and 6th in prem..

so it became a really good season,

[Miiksern]

Having much better results with the updated version, almost done with season 1 with Aston Villa, im currently 7th, which is decent, but think i can make top 4 next seaon with your updated tactic.

well won the uefa cup over roma, and made it to the semi in fa. cup, and 6th in prem..

so it became a really good season,

Cool, good that the second version is working better, let me know how the second season goes.

[StormenDK]

I will have a go at this at some point I think ... I have great success with Hough's narrow tactics, though I seem to struggle when playing away on wide pitches. So I had been looking for some way to utilize wingers on the wider fields. I tried to tweak his tactic myself to use wingers, but that didn't work well. So I hope this will work better for my Bath City team

[Miiksern]

I will have a go at this at some point I think ... I have great success with Hough's narrow tactics, though I seem to struggle when playing away on wide pitches. So I had been looking for some way to utilize wingers on the wider fields. I tried to tweak his tactic myself to use wingers, but that didn't work well. So I hope this will work better for my Bath City team

Good luck, let me know how it goes. Would be nice to see how it works for a lower league team.

[Miiksern]

So i've been away for a few weeks (Vacation :3 ) and I see there's been pretty much no interest, which was as expected. But I decided to do some further testing with the second version of the tactic. Lazy as I am I picked Everton and went on holiday for the whole season and let the assisant manager play with the original squad. The results were suprisingly decent:

[Blade25]

I've been using the V2 and it works a treat with my Stoke side, good work!

[StormenDK]

I have been using it for a while now for my U18 squad, and it gives fairly good results. It is by no means a super tactic, but I have gotten some good results with, even if my U18s are not the cream of the crop. I have not used it yet for my A-squad as I am currently missing wingers. But I might want to try it out soon on some away games, though I expect the results to be less than impressive until my guys learn this new tactic.

[Miiksern]

I have been using it for a while now for my U18 squad, and it gives fairly good results. It is by no means a super tactic, but I have gotten some good results with, even if my U18s are not the cream of the crop. I have not used it yet for my A-squad as I am currently missing wingers. But I might want to try it out soon on some away games, though I expect the results to be less than impressive until my guys learn this new tactic.

Alright let me know how it goes and if you have any feedback. (I assume you've been using V2?)

[StormenDK]

Yes, I have been using that one .... I have been trying it with and without AssMan's suggested OIs. Not sure what is best, as the results are still mixed. But I think I will only really be able to judge it once I start using it for the A-squad.

[jameswibbs]

might give this a go with my southampton side who are just promoted to the premiership

[Mr Hough]

Good work with the tactic, I haven't tried it yet but i'm sure it'll be good.

[Miiksern]

Yes, I have been using that one .... I have been trying it with and without AssMan's suggested OIs. Not sure what is best, as the results are still mixed. But I think I will only really be able to judge it once I start using it for the A-squad.

I've not been using OIs at all. And if I would I wouldn't let my AssMan decide, I don't trust him.

might give this a go with my southampton side who are just promoted to the premiership

Good luck!

Good work with the tactic, I haven't tried it yet but i'm sure it'll be good.

Thank you sir! If you have some free time after you've finished your 4-1-2-1-2, some feedback from you would be greatly appreciated.

[eddiv3dd3r]

Hi, any tips for tweaking part against big team? ie Spain or England. I'm using Czech

[Miiksern]

Hi, any tips for tweaking part against big team? ie Spain or England. I'm using Czech

I haven't tweaked at all no matter what opposition but if you want to tighten things up I guess lowering the width and defensive line a few notches might help.

[StormenDK]

I have been using this now for two teams in my laptop save ...

Wolves Casuals in Western Midlands Premier Division (lvl 11 in England), and Fremad Amager in Københavnsserien (lvl 5 in Denmark). So both rather low level teams with not much in terms of talent and skills. Though the players I can gather in lvl 11 in England, reeeeeally suck.

Anyways, this has turned out to be pretty good. My danish side have even only narrowly lost to teams from the danish Premier and 1st. Division. Though I was never near actually winning the game.

The only fault seems to be a vulnerability to long goal kicks over the heads of the defence. This has happened several times in my matches. Also what are your recommendations for pitch size?? .. long and natrrow or short and wide?

[Miiksern]

The only fault seems to be a vulnerability to long goal kicks over the heads of the defence. This has happened several times in my matches. Also what are your recommendations for pitch size?? .. long and natrrow or short and wide?

I haven't had much problems with long balls over the defence, might be because I always use the smallest allowed pitch size. Might be the quality of your defenders aswell, maybe drop the D-line two notches and see if that helps?

[StormenDK]

If I set the defensive Line lower, doesn't that mean that I just move my defenders back?? .. or is that for the whole team's defensive line??

[StormenDK]

Well as Wolves Casuals, I decided to try out having a short field, to counter the long goal kicks over the heads of the defence. Seems I just found a flaw in that strategy. Since my team isn't very good technically, the short field means that I have trouble penetrating the opposition defence as everything gets congested. Trying to cross with the wingers seems to have little effect at the box is already full of people, so any goal from a cross then is more luck than anything.

Maybe next season, I'll try a long and wide field ... see how that works out in the lower divisions ... should give me more space. But also give the opposing team more space.

[StormenDK]

Now it has been more than half a season for both teams using primarily this one

For Fremad Amager, it is unbridled success. Alsthough I think my team in general is just that much better than the competition, and I am not having problems attracting very good players. So far it is working well, and I like to play with wingers.

For Wolves Casuals, I struggle alot more with it. I am top of the table, but have way too many hard fought draws than I would have liked. My team is pretty good (for that level of football), and every game in the league are expected to be easy wins according to the media. This makes all my amateurs nervous much of the time, and they then don't perform well. As the center gets very congested, as I have many players forward, I am finding it difficult to play my way through the opposition's defense, and makes me vulnerable to counter attacks. I seems to struggle especially on narrow fields, even though my wingers do tend to go inside into the channels. So this is good against offensive teams on a normal field, but against teams who park the bus on a short or narrow field it becomes difficult to create open chances ... especially with lower league players.