541 WB counter attack football help.

[fmburchillfan]

Hi I'm playing a network save with a few friends and in second season. I decided to try something different by going counter attacking.

Half way through the season and it's doing ok I just feel I'm missing something,  any help would be appreciated. 

[Mr_Demus]

From my understanding, higher d-line and urgent pressing is not good for counter strategies. You want to draw the opponents in, and you don't do that by harassing them.

-Drop d-line to standard

-Drop pressing to standard

 

That's where my knowledge stops.

[fmburchillfan]

2 minutes ago, Mr_Demus said:

From my understanding, higher d-line and urgent pressing is not good for counter strategies. You want to draw the opponents in, and you don't do that by harassing them.

-Drop d-line to standard

-Drop pressing to standard

 

That's where my knowledge stops.

Cheers 

Yeah my thinking with the high DL and low LOE with extreme pressing was a low block. So we draw them out but as soon as they were in my half we press to get the ball and start the counter .

[Experienced Defender]

You don't need to play on a low team mentality in order to play counter-attacking football. In fact, it works better under a bit higher team mentality (Balanced or Positive), because higher mentalities mean faster attacking transitions, which is essential for counter-attacks. Lower team mentalities are more suitable for passive defensive styles (such as catenaccio or parked bus). Whereas counter-attacking football belongs to more proactive styles of defensive football.

Therefore, you do not make your team defensively solid by playing on a low mentality, but by being compact in defense (the distance between DL and LOE) and by proper selection of roles and duties. Having said that, your setup of roles and duties looks fine to me. The only tweaks I personally would recommend are;

- swapping your CMs' sides - DLP in MCL and BWM in MCR

- changing the CWB into WB on support (because CWB is a bit too attack-minded role for a style of football that is essentially defensive)

[fmburchillfan]

8 hours ago, Experienced Defender said:

You don't need to play on a low team mentality in order to play counter-attacking football. In fact, it works better under a bit higher team mentality (Balanced or Positive), because higher mentalities mean faster attacking transitions, which is essential for counter-attacks. Lower team mentalities are more suitable for passive defensive styles (such as catenaccio or parked bus). Whereas counter-attacking football belongs to more proactive styles of defensive football.

Therefore, you do not make your team defensively solid by playing on a low mentality, but by being compact in defense (the distance between DL and LOE) and by proper selection of roles and duties. Having said that, your setup of roles and duties looks fine to me. The only tweaks I personally would recommend are;

- swapping your CMs' sides - DLP in MCL and BWM in MCR

- changing the CWB into WB on support (because CWB is a bit too attack-minded role for a style of football that is essentially defensive)

Cheers for the suggestion.

Most of the tome we were Set to balanced, and I definitely try your suggestion of swapping the midfield roles and the WB. 

[fmburchillfan]

On 19/07/2020 at 23:03, Experienced Defender said:

Therefore, you do not make your team defensively solid by playing on a low mentality, but by being compact in defense (the distance between DL and LOE) and by proper selection of roles and duties. Having said that, your setup of roles and duties looks fine to me. The only tweaks I personally would recommend are;

Quick question about being compact in defence. My high DL and low LOE should be ok then , as I had in mind a low block with that.

Or should I drop the DL back to standard. 

[Experienced Defender]

7 hours ago, fmburchillfan said:

Quick question about being compact in defence. My high DL and low LOE should be ok then , as I had in mind a low block with that

Or should I drop the DL back to standard.

High DL with low LOE is pretty compact, but more than optimally so. The optimal level of compactness is usually DL being just one notch higher than LOE (for example: higher DL/standard LOE or standard DL/lower LOE). So given that you want a counter-attacking style, standard DL/lower LOE is the combo that probably makes most sense. 

Of course, if you notice that the higher DL/lower LOE combo works well for you, then go with it (because each team is different, so what works best for my team will not necessarily work for yours)  

[fmburchillfan]

I will definitely give standard DL with low LOE go, I did find on high DL and low LOE that teams had time to hit balls over my defenders more then I would like 

[Experienced Defender]

9 minutes ago, fmburchillfan said:

I did find on high DL and low LOE that teams had time to hit balls over my defenders more then I would like

Exactly that's what usually happens with such DL/LOE combo