4-1-4-1 DM wide issue?

[BigV]

Has anyone tried this tactic with a positive mentality? It seems to be working rather odd, one game you could win against the best opponents and then end up drawing/losing while dominating the whole game. I've noticed that playing a higher temp game in any attacking formation or tactic DOESN'T work very well and in real life you'd expect top teams to have a good tempo to keep attacking with flair and put the opposition on the back foot. Im playing wide, short passing, run at defence, expressive, work ball into the box. The cm's are useless in creating chances and doesn't help with the wide players at all coming inside or even going into the box. Adv playmaker in attack and a BBM with instructions to go higher up still doesn't have the effect. I'm with manchester united and not even pogba can create, find this annoying considering 4-1-2-3 fits his system and the teams overall structure. Any help with this please?? 

[FrazT]

You would be best to repost this in the Tactics forum for help with this

[Vali184]

58 minutes ago, BigV said:

Has anyone tried this tactic with a positive mentality? It seems to be working rather odd, one game you could win against the best opponents and then end up drawing/losing while dominating the whole game. I've noticed that playing a higher temp game in any attacking formation or tactic DOESN'T work very well and in real life you'd expect top teams to have a good tempo to keep attacking with flair and put the opposition on the back foot. Im playing wide, short passing, run at defence, expressive, work ball into the box. The cm's are useless in creating chances and doesn't help with the wide players at all coming inside or even going into the box. Adv playmaker in attack and a BBM with instructions to go higher up still doesn't have the effect. I'm with manchester united and not even pogba can create, find this annoying considering 4-1-2-3 fits his system and the teams overall structure. Any help with this please?? 

You better wait for a tweaked match engine. At the moment you can't play how you want and be successful, you have to play how the match engine wants you to play. You may get some wins here and there with your system but it is inconsistent.

Now quote me and say 'it's your tactic'!

[Lynch48]

46 minutes ago, Vali184 said:

You better wait for a tweaked match engine. At the moment you can't play how you want and be successful, you have to play how the match engine wants you to play. You may get some wins here and there with your system but it is inconsistent.

Now quote me and say 'it's your tactic'!

It's your tactic

[BigV]

@Vali184 Great PP ahaha, when does it usually come out and tbh i cba waiting till the winter update when im already finishing 1 season. @FrazT thanks will do, could you link me to the page I can't find it.

[FrazT]

I have moved it for you.

[BigV]

@FrazT thanks man appreciate it

[womble248]

18 hours ago, BigV said:

Has anyone tried this tactic with a positive mentality? It seems to be working rather odd, one game you could win against the best opponents and then end up drawing/losing while dominating the whole game. I've noticed that playing a higher temp game in any attacking formation or tactic DOESN'T work very well and in real life you'd expect top teams to have a good tempo to keep attacking with flair and put the opposition on the back foot. Im playing wide, short passing, run at defence, expressive, work ball into the box. The cm's are useless in creating chances and doesn't help with the wide players at all coming inside or even going into the box. Adv playmaker in attack and a BBM with instructions to go higher up still doesn't have the effect. I'm with manchester united and not even pogba can create, find this annoying considering 4-1-2-3 fits his system and the teams overall structure. Any help with this please?? 

I said this in another thread, but maybe consider fiddling with training as an alternative? I like the formation enough that I don't really want to mess with it (I play 4-1-4-1 with Gegenpress with some minor adjustments), so what I've ended up doing is adding a lot more focus on chance creation and chance conversion in training sessions. It doesn't take up that much condition - but it means my poor players are doing triple sessions more often than they probably do in real life - but it has helped a little bit in scraping more 1-0 wins out of dominant performances as opposed to 0-0 draws. 

[BigV]

5 hours ago, womble248 said:

I said this in another thread, but maybe consider fiddling with training as an alternative? I like the formation enough that I don't really want to mess with it (I play 4-1-4-1 with Gegenpress with some minor adjustments), so what I've ended up doing is adding a lot more focus on chance creation and chance conversion in training sessions. It doesn't take up that much condition - but it means my poor players are doing triple sessions more often than they probably do in real life - but it has helped a little bit in scraping more 1-0 wins out of dominant performances as opposed to 0-0 draws. 

I have but players get unhappy because of the issue with "quickness training" and then when you pick quickness training some say they've had too much of it... you change one thing for the better to make the other worse off its a bad cycle. The only reasonable way to win is the fact to stick to grinding out results or if you're dominating and end up losing/drawing is to restart which i've done a couple of times cause it really wound me up. For me the conditioning is poor, match fatigue seems to be a bit of an issue, playing 3+ games in 14 days make its high chances of injury which usually leads to injuries. it's very unrealistic and makes me change my team every so often which creates problems with game time/ team form. Has anyone got back to you in that thread?? Might even post it in bugs tbh its becoming a big issue. 

[Andyh21]

I've subscribed to this, see it in tactics folder but cant get to it in the game so any obvious reason for that?

[BigV]

@Andyh21 what do you mean? You mean downloading a tactic from the workshop?

[Andyh21]

Just now, BigV said:

@Andyh21 what do you mean? You mean downloading a tactic from the workshop?

yes, made a thread about it aswell

[BigV]

2 minutes ago, Andyh21 said:

yes, made a thread about it aswell

I dunno mate, probably best for the bugs forum. I've posted it several times in bugs forum but no one reads it so im just gonna probably stop playing or wait till a new update. This is pretty much a rant how bad the game is for a certain tactic aha

[Andyh21]

so its the same for you then??

[BigV]

3 minutes ago, Andyh21 said:

so its the same for you then??

I haven't downloaded anything in the workshop, I've used a pre set tactic and switched it up. Ive tested it with other tweaks and to the original topic I posted it still didn't help.

[womble248]

3 hours ago, BigV said:

I have but players get unhappy because of the issue with "quickness training" and then when you pick quickness training some say they've had too much of it... you change one thing for the better to make the other worse off its a bad cycle. The only reasonable way to win is the fact to stick to grinding out results or if you're dominating and end up losing/drawing is to restart which i've done a couple of times cause it really wound me up. For me the conditioning is poor, match fatigue seems to be a bit of an issue, playing 3+ games in 14 days make its high chances of injury which usually leads to injuries. it's very unrealistic and makes me change my team every so often which creates problems with game time/ team form. Has anyone got back to you in that thread?? Might even post it in bugs tbh its becoming a big issue. 

Actually that's a very good point. I thought that was just a thing in my game, about the quickness training. Hmmmm.

I think fatigue depends on your players and how much conditioning you've done? I've managed to get by alright, and I also just try to rotate as much as possible. My general principle when playing FM is to make sure I have (if everyone's fit) two sets of XIs so during the season, if I need to do, I can drop every regular player and play the subs. 

But I think it might be worth posting about the quickness training thing in the bugs section. Some people will probably argue that the grinding out results thing is normal a la 2017/18 Liverpool who could have 80% possession and somehow contrive to lose 1-0. Hahahaha.

[BigV]

42 minutes ago, womble248 said:

Actually that's a very good point. I thought that was just a thing in my game, about the quickness training. Hmmmm.

I think fatigue depends on your players and how much conditioning you've done? I've managed to get by alright, and I also just try to rotate as much as possible. My general principle when playing FM is to make sure I have (if everyone's fit) two sets of XIs so during the season, if I need to do, I can drop every regular player and play the subs. 

But I think it might be worth posting about the quickness training thing in the bugs section. Some people will probably argue that the grinding out results thing is normal a la 2017/18 Liverpool who could have 80% possession and somehow contrive to lose 1-0. Hahahaha.

They know about it ive posted it many times and they don't comeback with anything, it'd be nice ifthey acknowledged it. 

I do have 2 teams but then other players moan about gametime, you have no way of choosing. In reality martial, matic, pogba, shaw (united fan) play most games in a row without any "rest" in terms of games yet they still do their stuff without a problem, match fatigue should only come into question if pre season didn't go well or they didn't have any for whatever reason usually internationals. 

Yeah im gonna post aload of bugs all at once just to annoy people so they actually see whats wrong with the game. After the release the people that ask for the data and issues just ignore without telling anyone they've acknowledged it. Might just stick to 17 lol

[Bergbatov]

On 10/11/2018 at 13:01, BigV said:

Has anyone tried this tactic with a positive mentality? It seems to be working rather odd, one game you could win against the best opponents and then end up drawing/losing while dominating the whole game. I've noticed that playing a higher temp game in any attacking formation or tactic DOESN'T work very well and in real life you'd expect top teams to have a good tempo to keep attacking with flair and put the opposition on the back foot. Im playing wide, short passing, run at defence, expressive, work ball into the box. The cm's are useless in creating chances and doesn't help with the wide players at all coming inside or even going into the box. Adv playmaker in attack and a BBM with instructions to go higher up still doesn't have the effect. I'm with manchester united and not even pogba can create, find this annoying considering 4-1-2-3 fits his system and the teams overall structure. Any help with this please?? 

I have no problem playing the way you say you want to play. I have the same formation and it works great! Upload a screenshot of your tactic and i'll help you and tell you what might be wrong etc.

[BigV]

2 hours ago, Bergbatov said:

I have no problem playing the way you say you want to play. I have the same formation and it works great! Upload a screenshot of your tactic and i'll help you and tell you what might be wrong etc.

A few away games i've restarted (cheated) cause of the annoyance of losing games and made me go wild so a few away games are holidays shown on the schedule. most away games are mainly 1 goal wins which is annoying and probably is a bug. Higher temp seems to create a missmatch between creating and scoring. I've had a few injuries so the current team showing isn't the main team but half rotated. Some away games i've "dominated" yet barely managed to win. 

[Experienced Defender]

According to the schedule screenshot, your results aren't bad at all. To the contrary, they are very good (even though your tactic is a bit "problematic" IMO, but given that it yields good results, I don't see any reason for you to complain).

[BigV]

13 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

According to the schedule screenshot, your results aren't bad at all. To the contrary, they are very good (even though your tactic is a bit "problematic" IMO, but given that it yields good results, I don't see any reason for you to complain).

It's more of the sense of when playing the games my players don't create a lot maybe a few key passes and 1 or 2 chances created. As I said before i've had to quit and restart a few away games cause it got me angry at dominating away games and losing 1-0 so often. About 5 away games i've done it too, happened too often in the beta too. A few people have said the same thing and in connection to that teams that play 4-1-4-1 AI play awful, city are 14th, chelsea are 6th and liverpool are 3rd except they're using gegenpress which works wonders apparently. The rest are using 4-2-3-1 or even a block of 4-5-1 dm and they set up shop and create 1 chance and ruin away games far too often against the real player/manager. 

[Bergbatov]

To be fair, this is just some ******** thread. You are winning your games, got one draw and still complain about an unlucky 1-0 defeat. But i'll give you some reasons for why anyway:

    1. You got 3 playmakers, so much of your focus is to get all of these players involved in the play before/when you attack. 
    2. You got 0 attacking duties
    3. What's going on out of possession?

As you say you meet teams who sit back and park the bus, so why would you have 3 central playmakers that slow down the game? You also have "work ball into the box" so this will make your players more patient. And what's your goal and idea behind this? Is it to play beautiful possession football or what? Whether you like it or not it's your tactic that is the problem. 

[Robson 07]

The Mods have put this in the tactic forum (probably a reason for that) but you're still talking as if its a bug.  If that's the case there is not one thing us forum members can do to help.  You need to provide examples i.e. gameplay screenshots explaining what's happening that shouldn't be or what's failing to happen and then report it as a bug. 

The game is hard and sometimes its better to lose games to analyse what's wrong. Replaying matches aint gonna get to the bottom of this.

[BigV]

34 minutes ago, Bergbatov said:

To be fair, this is just some ******** thread. You are winning your games, got one draw and still complain about an unlucky 1-0 defeat. But i'll give you some reasons for why anyway:

    1. You got 3 playmakers, so much of your focus is to get all of these players involved in the play before/when you attack. 
    2. You got 0 attacking duties
    3. What's going on out of possession?

As you say you meet teams who sit back and park the bus, so why would you have 3 central playmakers that slow down the game? You also have "work ball into the box" so this will make your players more patient. And what's your goal and idea behind this? Is it to play beautiful possession football or what? Whether you like it or not it's your tactic that is the problem. 

It's not a ******* thread at all when people have said the same things. If you read what I said earlier it'd be at least 4 game losses and at least 3 games drawn had it not been restarted. I forgot to mention fred/herrera play box to box and pogba usually plays mezzala on attack. 2, tried attacking duties for the wide players and they literally just did nothing going forward so changed them to support and ended up getting more of the ball and working with it. 3. a few players get 100% tackles, fred usually looses out cause of his position as box to box, centre backs usually intercept rather than tackle due to pressing well, in a block of 3 mids. Why would they slow down the game when the tempo is high? if it's high its drilled them into passing quick and have a bit of "swagger". I've tried it without working the ball into the box and it was worse off, working the ball into the box statically gave me an edge in shots on target and scoring goals. Previous to that save I did a full season with the same players and changed the tactic of the same formation after half of the season to see what worked best and out of the 2 was the latter which Is why i started again with that tactic shown on the scrn shots. Its a tactic based on controlling the game thats quick transitioning short passes into the final third and also based on countering quick when needed making sense of "positive" rather than "Attacking". I've used the same tactic for 5 years running, and somehow changes within a year? Okay i get they revamped the game but surely if it produced results beforehand it should do so again especially after a year when little has changed in terms of PL tactics and formations. 

@Robson 07 A mod did move it and some people had the same issue with the exact same formation with minor tweaks. Even a few people said the pre given tactic with no changes didn't work for the top teams, imagine using a controlling tactic for a top team and not working. Understood but when it happens so often it is a bug, losing away 1-0 on course to dominating the game almost all the time is wild but im gonna take your advice and play through it to get to the bottom of this. 

[Bergbatov]

12 minutes ago, BigV said:

Why would they slow down the game when the tempo is high?

Because you asked the team to play the ball through 3 playmakers rather than exploiting other opportunities.

And you asked if there was an issue with 4-1-4-1 DM Wide formation, no there isn't any issue with it. Works even better than last year IMO.

[melogroovy]

Too many support roles for a "positive" set up, IMO.  I'd set up your CF to attack and one of your WB paired up with an IF on attack.  Three playmakers in the midfield is an issue too.

I play the same formation and score plenty with Newcastle with only one change change to personnel.  I need to work on the defensive tweaks.

 

[Armistice]

On 10/11/2018 at 15:03, Vali184 said:

You better wait for a tweaked match engine. At the moment you can't play how you want and be successful, you have to play how the match engine wants you to play. You may get some wins here and there with your system but it is inconsistent.

Now quote me and say 'it's your tactic'!

It's always your tactic. The game's never buggy. 

 

[Jdn]

Could somebody please post screenshots of their successful possession tactic? I've tried everything and watched people who've been playing the game for 10+ years give up on possession football. I'm asking purely because I'd like to see where I'm going wrong because so far I have tried literally everything and nothing seems to work.

[herne79]

21 minutes ago, BigV said:

A mod did move it and some people had the same issue with the exact same formation with minor tweaks. Even a few people said the pre given tactic with no changes didn't work for the top teams, imagine using a controlling tactic for a top team and not working. Understood but when it happens so often it is a bug, losing away 1-0 on course to dominating the game almost all the time is wild but im gonna take your advice and play through it to get to the bottom of this. 

Just because others say something similar doesn't make it a bug.

You also haven't understood what the preset tactics are.  They're not the finished articles to use with any teams.  They're a starting point to help understand ways of setting up  certain play styles which may then require tweaking based on your team and available players.

What you need to do is stop holidaying and replaying matches, and actually analyse what's happening.  There are no bugs stopping you from putting together a decent 4141DM system.

1 minute ago, Armistice said:

It's always your tactic. The game's never buggy or anything.

The game does have bugs.  However people like yourself who fail to understand how to work out the wrinkles properly tend to believe everything is outside of their control and resort to sarcasm.  If you have something constructive to add, feel free.  If you want to carry on in this vein (yet again) I can do something about that for you.

[Armistice]

Already told you some time ago to do something about that.

[Jdn]

3 minutes ago, herne79 said:

Just because others say something similar doesn't make it a bug.

No it doesn't but gathering information and evaluating trends is how people build up to conclusions. 

[BigV]

Fair enough guys, I'll give it another look and delve deeper into whats wrong. I am adamant it's an issue as its worked perfectly for the last 5 years BUT i guess I have to adapt and tweak till its "normal". @Berbatov as I said i changed it to tweak what I was using before hand to see if it worked, 2 playmakers worked for 1 game that I had tried and will do so furthermore. Do you mind posting or telling what your tactic/formation is like? @Melogroovy tried lukaku as a CF attack worked on couple occasions so I tweak his role depending on opposition and to see if its working within game, also attacking duties on wide players tend to be more direct but the difference seems to be the passing and vision when in support for someone like sanchez a creative player can thread and do what inside forwards of high class usually do or at least thats my interpretation of the difference with support and attack is with the inside forwards in 19 with the highlighted attributes. Appreciate the help and the criticism you guys have added to make me aware of whats actually happening.  

[Synx]

I'm playing a similar tactic, and I would say it struggles with defensive teams, as the enemy box gets completely overcrowded. Everytime I faced a team with 2 or less enemy players at the striker or Am position, I had an hard time getting shots at goal as the high engage line 'pushes' the enemy into their own box. I once had 10 players of the enemy team inside their own box, with my own team trying to get shots through.

That's nothing new though, but it seems crosses are a tad weaker, which in previous games always seemed to work decently.

Maybe try dropping your line down a bit against defensive teams to create more space for your attacks.

[Jdn]

12 minutes ago, Synx said:

I'm playing a similar tactic, and I would say it struggles with defensive teams, as the enemy box gets completely overcrowded. Everytime I faced a team with 2 or less enemy players at the striker or Am position, I had an hard time getting shots at goal as the high engage line 'pushes' the enemy into their own box. I once had 10 players of the enemy team inside their own box, with my own team trying to get shots through.

That's nothing new though, but it seems crosses are a tad weaker, which in previous games always seemed to work decently.

Maybe try dropping your line down a bit against defensive teams to create more space for your attacks.

Tried this with no success.

[Experienced Defender]

@BigV Aside from your tactic and its possible deficiencies, what you should be aware of results-wise is that most teams will tend to play very defensively against you due to your team's high reputation, so it's quite normal that you will often struggle to create a high number of clear chances and/or achieve more convincing victories, even with a better tactic. A simple 1-0 win against teams that park the bus, looking to maximally deny you space in the most dangerous areas of the attacking third, is quite satisfying IMO. 

P.S: I've found that overload can be a very effective tactical weapon against those overly defensive sides (especially as you have players of sufficient quality to execute overloads well).

[Bergbatov]

1 hour ago, BigV said:

@Berbatov as I said i changed it to tweak what I was using before hand to see if it worked, 2 playmakers worked for 1 game that I had tried and will do so furthermore. Do you mind posting or telling what your tactic/formation is like?

Sure:

The idea is to play attacking possession based football but at the same time take the counter attacks when it's possible. If we lose the ball the objective is to try to get it back as soon as possible. In offense the AML/AMR get's narrow and the wing backs is stretching the width. Last season I think I had 64% average possession and something similar the first year. But if you try it out, you should remember that it takes time before a team gets used to a new system. I don't have time to explain it all now, but just ask questions if there is something you wanna know.

[BigV]

@Experienced Defender I've never had to try overload in previous versions but i guess i'll have to with this one thanks pal i'll give it a try. @Berbatov Thanks man appreciate it, can I ask why you've gone narrow? I know inside forwards usually play narrow but surely if there's width it opens up space and makes the opposition press making more room to work the ball into the box with quicker passing (tempo)? also could a f9 change to a cf support or any other striking options such as advanced forward as rashford is working wonders in that role? Plus I use width because IRL united don't play wide and kinda get sought out so my thinking behind it is to go wide and make them run at defences like martial/sanchez/ lingard/ rashford do and cause them to commit to make more room for scoring or trying to in this case. 

[Bergbatov]

1 hour ago, BigV said:

@Berbatov Thanks man appreciate it, can I ask why you've gone narrow? I know inside forwards usually play narrow but surely if there's width it opens up space and makes the opposition press making more room to work the ball into the box with quicker passing (tempo)? also could a f9 change to a cf support or any other striking options such as advanced forward as rashford is working wonders in that role? Plus I use width because IRL united don't play wide and kinda get sought out so my thinking behind it is to go wide and make them run at defences like martial/sanchez/ lingard/ rashford do and cause them to commit to make more room for scoring or trying to in this case. 

Here you see my heatmap and positions away from home against a better team(on paper). The whole idea is to patiencly move the ball until we find the gap and don't give away the ball unnecessary. As you can see we do play wide even tho it might not seem like that. This is causing the opposition to stretch out and giving us space. So don't get to focused about that I have picked more narrow, it's kinda like Man City with Mahrez, Sterling getting narrow and Mendy, Walker is holding out wide to stretch the opposition. And yes you can easily change the F9 to a complete forward. 

The problem with having Martial/Sanchez/Lingard/Rashford staying wide is that there will be so few players trying to attack the penalty area because neither of your central mids is going forward trying to help Lukaku enough.

[yorkie87]

I too am having problems with this game. Winning most of the time (like yourself). Winning by odd goals, losing/drawing games i dominate, lots of shots but the shots on target ratio is terrible. Just because you’re winning doesn’t make the game enjoyable. 

[BigV]

3 hours ago, Bergbatov said:

Here you see my heatmap and positions away from home against a better team(on paper). The whole idea is to patiencly move the ball until we find the gap and don't give away the ball unnecessary. As you can see we do play wide even tho it might not seem like that. This is causing the opposition to stretch out and giving us space. So don't get to focused about that I have picked more narrow, it's kinda like Man City with Mahrez, Sterling getting narrow and Mendy, Walker is holding out wide to stretch the opposition. And yes you can easily change the F9 to a complete forward. 

The problem with having Martial/Sanchez/Lingard/Rashford staying wide is that there will be so few players trying to attack the penalty area because neither of your central mids is going forward trying to help Lukaku enough.

Fair enough I can see that makes sense much more so than my point. I'll give it a try tomorrow and see how it works. I've used wider type for quite a while so it'd be interesting to see what difference it makes. @yorkie87 by the sounds of the things its a bit from both the player and tactics, im guessing you need tactical flexibility to get the best from your players.