Each cross or shot are stop by opposition defenders

[CRN711]

Hello,

My problem is the title.. I'm playing Atletico Madrid, a 4231 and everytime my players try to cross or shoot, they get countered by opposition defenders.

I tried to play wider, play narrower, run at defence.. It changes nothing. In attack I have

Diego Costa (AF)

Villa (IF) Turan (Enganche) Adriàn (W)

Can anybody help?

Thanks

[RTHerringbone]

What Duties do the wide men have, what Mentality are you using?

Any Team or Player Instructions?

EDIT - what level of Highlights are you watching?

[CRN711]

Villa is on attack duty, Adrian on support. Attacking mentality.

Team instructions are:

Shorter passing

Pass into space

Work ball into box

Play out of defence

Exploit the flank

Look for overlap

Much Higher defensiv line

Hassle opponent

Higher tempo

Be more expressive

And for players instructions, they only have "Tackle harder"

I watch game in comprehensive level.

[DavidPengilley]

That's a really attacking formation and gives a lot of space behind your line with the attacking mentality combined with much higher line. Personally I wouldn't alter the line unless the match dictated such to me and I was chasing the game. Also I'd have thought the pace into space combined with shirt passing and work into box conflicts slightly as they'd be passing short, into space but also trying to slowly work it into the box

[bakes106]

i have the same problem with my everton team 95% of my crosses are blocked

[keithfc]

i get the same problem too. many cross are blocked. i watch full match.

[Thunder88]

The problem is you're not getting enough players in the box so obviously the opposition will cut them out,if the winger or full back is hitting the first man every time with his cross or he doesn't cross at all and just loses possession then again same problem.

Think of the situation as you would in real life,if you have the ball and look up to cross into the box and only see one player up against say 6 defenders then you're either gonna hit the opposition defenders or you'll dwell too much,i was getting my players dwelling on the ball and then eventually getting tackled so i had to change a few things around to suit the players and system..

I'm playing as Liverpool and were using a 4-2-3-1 system,my players never found Suarez with crosses and i often finished each game with a 0% cross success,this was because Suarez dropped deep and was never in the box....now i play with 2 strikers and an advanced playmaker and i've seen much better success as i have more players in the box.

In the Atletico Madrid post above it looks like you have the same problem i had,Diego Costa drops deep like Suarez does and Adrian is focusing too much on his wing duties,even though Adrian and David Villa both cut inside neither will constantly be in the box to get on the end of the crosses and i never really used Arda Turan so not sure if he is in the box either,but my opinion is he'll be waiting outside the box..

All this is just my opinion based on what i've come across during my save games with Liverpool and Atletico Madrid.

[remembertofeedthecat]

Been playing FM14 for a couple of weeks now and I've observed this in many of the games I've started so far. I've generally had cross completion %s in the low teens :-(

My experience has been that a fair amount of the crosses weren't completed because I didn't have a good enough aerial presence in the box to win them.

That manifests itself in seeing your strikers with lots of headers contested but very few actually won.

I guess the solution is to change instructions to drill crosses to near post??

Anyways I got so frustrated with it that I started a game with Juventus, a conventional 3-4-3 with Llorente (beast of a target man) as the focal point of the entire team.

What I love about that tactic and game now is that I have a real identity - Route One, Pump Ball into the Box etc. and it works a treat.

Now the second reason IMHO for seeing so many crosses uncompleted is (as mentioned above) because the defender simply blocks them out for a corner.

For me I think this happens a little too frequently compared to IRL but admittedly I don't watch a lot of football.

The upside though is that you win LOTS of corners.... and if you have the players to take advantage then that can be a real boon.

With Juve not only do I have Llorente but I also have 3 centre halves with very decent heading and jumping. So that's four targets for my corner taker (Pirlo) to aim at.

Looking at Diego Costa's stats his heading and jumping is good but not great. I would suggest getting your winger to drill their crosses near post.

Maybe alter Villa's instructions to encourage him to cut inside and shoot a bit more. You say you have Adrian as your winger.

In the game I've got open at the moment he has crossing of 9 which is fairly poor. Maybe best to sell him and bring in a winger who can specialise in quality crossing and corners.

That's my 2 cents

[RTHerringbone]

I'm not certain what real life cross completion stats are, but know that they are also pretty dreadful, it can be a poor method of supply.

[remembertofeedthecat]

I'm not certain what real life cross completion stats are, but know that they are also pretty dreadful, it can be a poor method of supply.

Yeah I actually meant to post this above. http://eplindex.com/47355/liverpool-2-0-hull-city-post-match-stats-tactical-analysis.html

Scroll about 3/4 of the way down for stats

Just one game obviously. I spent a couple of mins trying to find more concise data but failed... Nevertheless gives me some solace!

[RTHerringbone]

I have a feeling that the overall cross completion average is something like 13-15% in the Premier League.

It is such a wasteful distribution method that I play without wide midfielders.

[paetoja]

try turan as a Advance playmaker on support who moves into channels, he's averaging over 1,5 key passes for me in that role