Tactical Challenges #3: Strikerless

[SeanRTG]

Season 2 was superb. Predicted to finish 8th, we defied expectations and finished 3rd behind Man United and Chelsea.

The tactic worked great and how I'd hoped. Atsu was a constant threat in behind and managed 19 assists (Highest in the league). Dani Olmo was voted PFA player and young player of the year - he managed to create 79 chances (highest in the league) and got 17 goals too. Zappacosta was a machine down the right and had the highest average distance covered.

As a team we scored the 3rd most goals (70) and had the third best defence (32). The football was fast paced and exciting. Our average possession was 47.5%. We relied on our defence to be solid, win the ball back and get it forward quickly to the attackers. We created 203 chances, the highest in the league by 55 - despite having the lowest passes completed in the league (14153).  32 of our goals came from crosses and 28 from through balls. Our chance breakdown is as follows: 

I believe I could challenge for the title next season given I invest in a clinical forward player to finish off the chances we create. This may require me moving Olmo to Treq where I feel he may be more suited anyway, in order to have a shadow striker with better finishing.

Edited July 14, 2018 by SeanRTG

[Dyvim Tvar]

First season is in the books and as I predicted the propensity for draws cost us, however it was fractional when compared to our expected finish so complaining would be churlish.

We managed to grab third, which to be honest was a bit clutch since we hit a poor run of form in April and May, so while I'm somewhat disappointed that we didn't challenge for the title better I think it's definitely a good achievement.

Ended up mostly abandoning the five at the back variant of my tactic since it just kind of fell apart and never recaptured the magic of the Chelsea and Leicester results. Still never really settled on deeper wingers or ones slightly higher up, probably never will but that's fine.

Selling Lanzini might also have harmed us fractionally, since Lansbury (who replaced him mostly in the Treq role) only managed to finish the season with the same amount of goals and assists as Lanzini had in his 16 games for us. Swings and roundabouts though, Lansbury was still very influential so I don't imagine it would've been the difference between winning the league.

I'm up in the air about if I'm going to continue into season two with West Ham or if I'm going to jump ship and try to build another team around the tactic. Spurs have an interim manager right now and Arsenal look like they're going to be sacking Wenger soon, either of those are interesting prospects since I think they'll provide a different challenge to what I faced with West Ham. Although neither team have CL football and the prospect of testing my tactic there is very appealing so we shall see.

Challenge accomplished I guess, now all that's left is to see if I can win some silverware with this instead of choking kappa

Edited July 14, 2018 by Dyvim Tvar

[zlatanera]

So I've finally settled on a strikerless tactic! Fiorentina didn't stick, so I decided to try out South America with River Plate. The craziness of the Argentina league appealed to me - as this blog post details, although you can't fully mimic AFA's craziness (irl the leagues is supposed to kick off in a month yet the start date and fixtures haven't been an announced), a league that changes structure so you in terms of games for the first five seasons you have 27, 25, 46, 42, 38 is an unique challenge. Especially when you add in that the superliga matches the European calendar whilst continental competitions and the Copa Argentina all run calendar-year (the last one is really odd). 

I started out trying to play a counter-attacking 4330 narrow and it got results initially - we reached the Libertadores final although we were lagging in the league that was mostly due to heavy rotation. After Flamengo beat us 4-1 on aggregate though we collapsed and I was nearing the sack - I used Cleon's 4231 deep from his thread on the formation to drag myself out of trouble, up the league to a respectable 3rd place (but far behind Boca) and through the LIbertadores group and the national cup, then looked at my team and decided to go for a controlled approach again, as I'm good at it and my desired SS-EG-SS attack probably isn't suited to sitting back. 

Herne will probably shudder at the sight of all those instructions, but they're all necessary to achieve the desired style of play - although I do sometimes tweak by removing Exploit The Middle (which I use as from my understanding it should mean we don't look to hit the wing backs too early in play unless we really need an out ball, allowing them to get up the field to cross nearer to the byline) and Look For Overlap if I'm chasing a goal to give variation, and going for a slightly deeper defensive line if I'm playing a superior team (basically Boca or a European giant). 

In terms of the football, we get lots of nice free-flowing passing moves and a mix of crosses and through balls for assists (as well as Enzo Perez collecting from a throw, cutting in and blasting it near post twice a season). The goalscoring burden is mainly on the front three, with the HB doing the whole "Lavolpiana" build-up play and wing backs providing width. I would offer a more detailed break down but I play on 3d normally, and I can't offer goal highlights as I've not been able to successfully upload from my Mac since FM15. I couldn't decide what to do in the middle - didn't want playmakers to draw the ball away from my Enganche, didn't want a roaming B2B, and saw no justification for MEZ / CAR so CM-Su it was. I like the balance of having one play simple passes and one be more aggressive due to their traits, so am training youth players to match. The results:

We've lost twice in the league - a game where we just couldn't finish (press asked me afterwards about hitting the woodwork three times, neglected to mention a missed penalty) and a weakened team against Boca as the Club World Cup semi was just two days later, which we still could have won as my main penalty taker missed two in the match. In the Copa Argentina Huracan were just good - you don't expect to win every game. Libertadores we needed away goals to dispatch Sao Paolo as the team weren't familiar with the tactic but then comfortable dispatched a few other Brazilian teams before a comfortable all-Argentina final against Racing. The Club World Cup was brutal - needed 120 minutes to take 2-0 down to 4-3 up against Hebei China Fortune (whose squad is almost entirely foreign geniuses) and then bottled a 2-0 lead against Man City due to tiredness (Raheem Sterling running at a centre back who's on 70% and a full back on 66% who's easing off tackles due to an early yellow when he's on 99% is never going to end well). 

I'll print a retraction if I get sacked in the remaining 12 games of the season, but I'm really happy with this 

 

Edited July 18, 2018 by zlatanera

[Robson 07]

9 hours ago, zlatanera said:

Exploit The Middle (which I use as from my understanding it should mean we don't look to hit the wing backs too early in play unless we really need an out ball, allowing them to get up the field to cross nearer to the byline)

That's an interesting one Zlats.  Do you mind me asking if that is your own interpretation or something you've picked elsewhere?

[zlatanera]

4 hours ago, Robson 07 said:

That's an interesting one Zlats.  Do you mind me asking if that is your own interpretation or something you've picked elsewhere?

My own interpretation. I play on Key highlights so don't have much evidence to back it up, but I like what I see - even when we lose, we're playing our game it just doesn't always come off.

I kinda reverse-engineered an interpretation from this post as I'm kinda interpreting it as the central players will all be more aggressive, and push forward, but then look for overlap will make them more aware of the wing backs when they run into too many bodies. I play on an absolutely huge pitch as well - 120m x 87m or something ridiculous - which seems to mean that when the wing backs get it they're in acres of space where they can either whip in a cross or pull holes in the defence by simply being so far away from the defenders who have to charge out to meet them. 

Obviously if anyone can 100% either confirm my thinking or demolish it completely, go for it. 

Edited July 15, 2018 by zlatanera

[Velodromè]

Decided to give this one a go. Playing as Chemie Leipzig I did some trying and a lot of failing during the season. My first attempt was quite similar to the Roma-formation. I have quite a few playmaker types in my squad and no very good wingers, so I went with a 4141 shape, very similar to Herne. The idea was to create a side that was aggressive when defending, with a high defensive line, and decent in possession with lots of movement between the lines of the opposition. 

In possession it worked alright. With no good, creative dribblers in the squad I went for the enganche up top. In the beginning I wanted all four in midfield to contribute with through balls, so the wide midfielders got the "more risky passes" instruction. That made the team a bit too eager to play the through ball, resulting in loss of possession and a counterattack, so that was removed. The big issue however, was the defensive line. It worked reasonably well in pre-season, where we beat Bundesliga opposition in Bochum. It also looked good against Magdeburg in the season opener, but then it started to crumble. I struggled a bit to see if it was a tactical cause to our issues or if it was just down to the players I have. A lot of the goals conceded was down to personal errors, rather than major tactical flaws, atleast until the game against Düsseldorf. There it was plain obvious that the line was too high, exposing us to balls in behind and crosses from the sides. We got hammered, with Düsseldorf scoring all their major chances. I lowered the defensive line a notch. In hindsight, I probably should have lowered it some more. What followed was one of the most frustrating rows of matches I have endured on FM. We weren't outplayed in any of the games, but made silly mistakes in almost all of them. Own goals, penalties, personal errors, corners and long shots. One of them in each game, combined with bad finishing on our side. 

In the last home game agains St Pauli I got desperate and changed to a 3-6-1, but against Magdeburg again it was back to strikerless, but now I tried something new. 

At first it was 2x Shadowstriker and enganche up front, but then I discovered that those roles don't do pressing high up the field, so I changed to AMs. Though it worked against Magdeburg, it became apparent to me during the winterbreak that the formation was too narrow in attack, so back to the drawingboard again. After trying and failing a lot with the idea of a high pressing team, I decided to channel my inner George Costanza and try the opposite. A Diego Simeone-inspired 442 was born. 

I decided to keep it simple and remove all TIs and rather add them if I saw something was off. The AMs has PIs making him quite similar to an Enganche, but without the "press much less" instruction. The plan was to have the AMa as the main goalscorer, but after the first few matches I noticed that the CMa got more chances, so that is where I use my best finisher. In attack things work very well, we are threatening from both out wide and in the center, but we waste way too many chances. Defensively we are ok, but there are still issues to work out. We let the opposition have to many long shots from just outside the box, so I adjusted the line up a notch. We also have problems defending down the flanks, so the opposition get the ball into the box too easy for my taste, but I'm not sure how to fix that just yet.  

The results improved dramatically, and could have been even better. We had the lead in all the draws and outplayed Regensburg, but couldn't finish our chances good enough, then they got a penalty. For the next season I have to work out how to defend the flanks better. Might also try a Segundo Volante next to the DM to see how that works out. Hopefully we can push for promotion. 

Edited July 17, 2018 by Velodromè

[herne79]

12 minutes ago, Velodromè said:

The results improved dramatically, and could have been even better.

Glad you turned things around .

The 4141 probably didn't work for you because apart from changing two roles you've basically copied my system - except I never posted full details of my system or how I adapted things during matches if I needed to.  But you now seem to have found your own system which you understand better and so the results have picked up .

[Velodromè]

4 minutes ago, herne79 said:

The 4141 probably didn't work for you because apart from changing two roles you've basically copied my system - except I never posted full details of my system or how I adapted things during matches if I needed to.

Think I may give it a go again, but I'll drop the Enganche and go with a AMs as I do now. Didn't get enough movement behind the Enganche, instead he was leading the line himself quite a few times. Now the partnership between then AMs and the CMa is a joy to watch at times, but lack of vision/decisionmaking mean that the ball don't always arrive when it should. 

[zlatanera]

A little wobble putting Boca 9 points clear at the top of the table had me ready to type out that retraction...

But a double header against Rosario Central got our groove back, even if our new Brazilian imports Rodrygo and Fabricio Oya took a little time to get going, and by the end of the season we were ahead on goal difference!

I then typed out this self-congratulatory post before realising that in yet another adorable quirk (next season we'll go from 25 games to 46), I now have to contest a play-off! I'm not optimistic - I've played Boca twice (both times away) and lost both times, but this is in a neutral venue so maybe I'll stand a chance? 

EDIT: Well we lost - some abysmal finishing made for an incredibly one-sided 1-4 hammering where the team with 1 were the dominant one. But WE DEFENDED A CROSS!!!!

So even if I only have one trophy to show for it, I don't have the best squad in Argentina (or South America) so I'm very happy with my tactic, won't update here any more. 

Edited July 18, 2018 by zlatanera

[Velodromè]

Just completed my second season with the 4220. Turned out to be a funny season. The distribution of my goalkeeper led to a few stupid goals conceded at the start, but "fewer risky passes" fixed that. Had a few bumps here and there, but we were the better team in most of the games. A bit on the backfoot away against Freiburg, but the promotion was never in danger. Lots of good combinations and nice goals from the five players responsible for the attacking phase. Lost one keyplayer to Liverpool after the season, but the rest is still at the club, ready to face FC Bayern and the rest next season. 

Second in goals scored and first in goals conceded. 

Will give one more update after the first season in 1. Bundesliga, to see how the formation/tactic holds against superior opposition. 

 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2018 by Velodromè

[Chevie]

The Idea

Not only did I want to try this strikerless challenge, but I also have an idea of the style of football I'd like to play.

Hopefully the formations and mentality I choose will tempt the opposition defenders to creep forwards, leaving masses of space in behind. To exploit this, I want to use a deep midfield player to ping long passes in behind for my players breaking into that space.

This is the one position where I'm not sure what role to choose. I'm trying to decide between a Half Back (Defend) or a Deep Lying Playmaker (Defend). Both will have the PIs More Direct Passing and More Risky Passes to encourage this ball in behind the defence (coupled with a few PPMs but more on that later).

 

The Tactics

I've created the following three tactics:

My thinking about these was pretty much completely inspired by @westy8chimp and his 7th season at Leverkusen where he planned to have a player attacking each of the 5 zones. In the 3-1-4-2-0 I have the Winger, Trequartista, Shadow Striker, Mezzala and Winger. In the 4-2-2-2-0 I have the Wing-Back, Trequartista, Shadow Striker, Segundo Volante and Winger (This tactic has also taken a lot from the France tactic suggestions from this year's World Cup Interpretations thread). In the 4-3-2-1-0 I have the Wing-Back, Inverted Winger, Shadow Striker, Segundo Volante and Winger.

Mentality - Counter - This should make my team sit deeper and a little more compact compared to default.

Team Shape - Structured - From what I've read on this forum, I may have understood wrong, this shape should mean that my players with attacking duties concentrate on attacking more than they would on fluid. This will hopefully help me exploit the 5 zones with my 5 attacking mentalities.

Shorter Passing - This encourages the team to focus on shorter passing meaning that it should mainly be my Half Back / Deep Lying Playmaker who is aiming to find the space with his passing which is my vision for how I want to play.

Pass Into Space - Passing that ball in behind a defence that has slightly pushed higher. Exactly what I want.

Not many PIs. Obviously I have the two I mentioned earlier for the DMC and I've got a couple on the goalkeeper for his distribution.

 

The Team

The main reason for choosing this team is the player they have for my HB/DLP:

Here are his attributes and PPMs. Before I decided on who I wanted to play here, I earmarked three PPMs which I thought would be perfect for the player in this role:

Likes to Switch Ball To Other Flank - A PPM that encourages longer passing. This one could be useful when my HB/DLP is slightly to either side of the pitch and a Wing-Back or Winger has space to attack.

Tries Killer Balls Often - Killer Balls. Ideal.

Tries Long Range Passes - Rather obvious this one. My idea is for this player to knock the ball long into the space behind the oppositions defenders.

As you can see, this player already has two out or three of these desired traits (and the final one will be trained ASAP). I also like the attributes he already has. 14-15 for Passing, Technique and Vision which will hopefully improve with training which focuses on these attributes.

This player is Pedro Obiang - This guy will, hopefully, be a key cog in my team - Therefore, I have gone for West Ham. I am on an updated database with summer transfers so I won't be making any transfers on for this save.

 

I will update at intervals during this season, hopefully all goes well!

[Jommelb]

I'm curious if you're gonna achieve that style. I find it hard to play direct passes into space with a strikerless system. At least from a very deep position. Most of the time my players don't make the runs into space when the ball is that far back. 
Noticed one thing: why a HB with 3 central defenders? I wonder if that will work, he's got no space to drop into.

[zlatanera]

1 hour ago, Jommelb said:

I'm curious if you're gonna achieve that style. I find it hard to play direct passes into space with a strikerless system. At least from a very deep position. Most of the time my players don't make the runs into space when the ball is that far back. 
Noticed one thing: why a HB with 3 central defenders? I wonder if that will work, he's got no space to drop into.

I've had success with the direct passing, but I was using the SS-EG-SS combo (or SS-AM-SS), don't know how it'll work with only a lazy Treq and one SS in the AM strata.

@Chevie the point about the HB with 3 CD is relevant - the role is designed to drop deep as your two centre backs split, with 3 the CD-Co and HB are going to get into the way of each other. Maybe try DLP for that system?

[Chevie]

1 hour ago, Jommelb said:

Noticed one thing: why a HB with 3 central defenders?

I was hoping with one defender on cover that the HB would still drop in and almost create a back 4 all at CB but from my first couple of friendlies this certainly hasn't been the case

4 minutes ago, zlatanera said:

Maybe try DLP for that system?

The passing directness of a DLP, although close, is shorter than for a HB:

HB:

DLP:

So even though it won't quite have the desired effect in terms of positional play it should help with the style of passing I'm hoping to achieve.

[Chevie]

Early Tactical Re-Think

Having watched and analysed the stats from my first three friendlies, I already wasn't happy with how the tactic was performing so I made a couple of changes. Hooray for friendlies!!!

Remove Shorter Passing - Obiang's passing, although more direct than the rest of the team, was still not as long as I wanted when I can up with the style of play I was aiming for:

In place of this, I have given PIs to the players who surround Obiang to shorten their passing and encouraged them to play fewer risky passes. In my mind this will keep the team playing it simple to Obiang who will then hit it long into space. As you can see, his passing directness is now a lot higher:

This will hopefully be reflected in the upcoming friendly matches.

Add Drop Deeper - Making my team drop slightly deeper will hopefully encourage more space in behind the oppositions defence.

Add Lower Tempo - Along with the TI to Drop Deeper, I hope that this will tempt the opposition to creep forwards and leave me more space to exploit. It will also give my players who are attacking from deeper positions a chance to get forward.

Trequartista to Attacking Midfielder (Attack) - As you can see, my Trequartista wasn't threatening in behind anywhere near enough:

I watched this player's movement after @zlatanera's comment about how lazy this role was. This was even when I used a player with the PPM Gets Forward Whenever Possible. Changing to an Attacking Midfielder means this player now has the PI Get Further Forward which should make them a threat in behind.

[herne79]

9 hours ago, zlatanera said:

don't know how it'll work with only a lazy Treq and one SS in the AM strata.

 

1 hour ago, Chevie said:

I watched this player's movement after @zlatanera's comment about how lazy this role was.

The Treq being lazy is a bit of an urban myth.  Sure, the intention behind the design of the role is that it's based on real life players such as Totti and Riquelme who didn't always work hard.  But in game, there's nothing to stop the Treq working just as hard as anybody else, especially if you use a player with lots of work rate.

[Chevie]

4 hours ago, herne79 said:

The Treq being lazy is a bit of an urban myth

Lazy was probably the wrong way of putting it on my behalf.

Quite naively, when choosing this role and seeing it only comes with only an attacking duty, I assumed this meant it had Get Further Fowards as a PI. When checking back it actually didn’t and it’s also blocked out as something you’re not able to choose.

My idea was to have this player pushing into one of the 5 zones which needed this PI. Hence the change to an AM (A).

[Chevie]

One almost perfect bit of play from Obiang here:

As Fabianski throws the ball out to the right sided defender, you can see that Obiang (Number 14) is deeper than the central defender, waiting for the ball. So the Half Back choice working as I wanted in terms of positioning. Yarmolenko (Number 19), in the now amended AM (A) role, starts a forward run into the space.

From this deep position, Obiang send a long pass into the space that Yarmolenko is moving into.

Yarmolenko gets on the end of this pass but is fouled by the covering defender (under his name on the screen grab).

If moves like this continue and start leading to chances then I'll be very happy!

Edited July 21, 2018 by Chevie

[MBarbaric]

@Chevie

You have really good thinking behind your decisions. Maybe I've missed it, or you didn't mention, however, if you are a dominant team expected to win most of your matches, you are likely to face teams deep in their half that don't allow space for these long direct passes. What is your gameplan in these matches?

[Chevie]

@MBarbaric for the games where I'm favourite, I'm hoping that my deeper defensive line (and therefore deeper team) and lower mentality will tease the opposition into creeping slightly forwards and creating space that way.

[zlatanera]

6 hours ago, herne79 said:

The Treq being lazy is a bit of an urban myth.  Sure, the intention behind the design of the role is that it's based on real life players such as Totti and Riquelme who didn't always work hard.  But in game, there's nothing to stop the Treq working just as hard as anybody else, especially if you use a player with lots of work rate.

Lazy was probably the wrong word. But it sounded like he wanted a runner rather than a playmaker, and a runner is just something I never saw coming from that role. 

[Jommelb]

Played first season with FC Dordrecht, definitely overachieved. I've been tweaking the tactic a lot, but last half of the season I used this one. Started with 4240 with an IF and a Winger. WM(a) on the left cuts inside and stays narrow. DM(s) has more direct passes and more risky passes (has ppm switch ball to other flank)

 

 

Edited July 24, 2018 by Jommelb

[Chevie]

Result so far:

Not the greatest at all. I may be being harsh considering the level of opponent I have played so far but the idea of strikerless was to exploit the space big teams gave me and this has only happened once (even then, Tottenham were admittedly the better team).

Also, the tactics above haven't had the desired style of play even though Obiang now has the trait Tries Killer Balls Often. I've now got him learning the PPM Dictates Tempo and will start him on Comes Deep To Get Ball once he is done as I feel these will help get Obiang playing the style I want from him.

However, back to the tactic, he has only been playing 1 key pass per game ... MAXIMUM. This was not the idea I had. I've been using the 3-1-4-2-0 so far as I felt in pre-season that this was performing the best.

This may be because of the role selected. Although it allowed for the most direct passing of all the roles with a defensive mentality, the half back hardly screams creative. Because of this I have decided to change to a Regista as I hope this will make Obiang the central figure in my tactic.

I also think that the space required for Obiang to pass into currently isn't there, for whatever reason, so I hope this new tactic I have designed will create an overload on one side of the pitch for a killer pass to exploit the space on the other.

As you can see, I hope all my support duties on the right side draw the opposition across to create space for my left back and left midfielder who, in turn, should supply my attacking midfielder.

The wingers on either side in my old tactic also left me very vulnerable down the sides so this formation should be a little more solid in defence.

The original one tactic will remain to give me a choice but the above will become my new first choice.

I'll update again soon to say if this goes any better!

[mikcheck]

Hello,

Since this is the thread for strikerless systems, can you give me your opinions on mine? Does it look balanced?

Maybe the BWM should be told to hold on position? And the MCL also has get further forward and move into channels PI, I like the overload that it makes sometimes, when he is getting into the box together with the other players and defenders don't know how to deal with it.

Thanks.

[herne79]

Thought I might blow the cobwebs off this for a little fun.  Still works .

[mikcheck]

11 horas atrás, herne79 disse:

Thought I might blow the cobwebs off this for a little fun.  Still works .

Some great goals and combinations right there! The OP is from 18, so I guess you're using at least different roles or the same tactic/roles you've posted in the OP?

Edited May 2, 2021 by mikcheck

[herne79]

3 minutes ago, mikcheck said:

Some good goals and combinations right there! The OP is from 18, so I guess you're using at least different roles or the same tactic/roles you've posted in the OP?

The exact same tactic from FM18.

[bibird.]

On 02/05/2021 at 11:19, herne79 said:

The exact same tactic from FM18.

Have you made any alterations, considering Team Shape is no longer a factor?

I'm not asking to copy the tactic for myself, I'm just intrigued by your own process. A lot of people ask about this sort of thing with tactics by @Ö-zil to the Arsenal!, so I was interested to see if you made any changes to mitigate the loss of Team Shape.

[herne79]

22 minutes ago, bibird. said:

Have you made any alterations, considering Team Shape is no longer a factor?

I'm not asking to copy the tactic for myself, I'm just intrigued by your own process. A lot of people ask about this sort of thing with tactics by @Ö-zil to the Arsenal!, so I was interested to see if you made any changes to mitigate the loss of Team Shape.

Nope.  Same mentality, TIs, PIs, roles & duties.