4-2-3-1 with Shadow Striker - Advice Needed!

[LHurlz]

I've joined the dark side and turned to a formation that I usually despise - the 4-2-3-1.  It's been a mixed bag with this tactic.  We beat Spurs, held Man City + Arsenal to draws (great results), but also got held to draws by Leeds, Swansea and West Brom (not great results) and as a consequence won't be playing in Europe next year after consecutive seasons of European football featuring a UEFA Conference League win.

The idea is to press efficiently using a split block and to try control possession once we have the ball, but without tapping it around sideways/backwards for the sake of it.  That attitude may lend itself more to a Positive mentality but with an already top-heavy formation and a team that's only Top 7/8 quality it may be a bit ambitious.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, I feel that we're not far off a proper top 6 push but just can't quite get the wins/consistency needed.  We were 7th in the league for xG and also 7th best for xGConceded (we conceded roughly 9 more goals than the stats suggest we should have), so maybe coming 10th is not an entirely fair reflection of our performances this season.

Key Points

• Split block being used (closing down more applied to front 4)
• Current CM(s) has no PIs, but does have Arrives Late in Opponents Area and Tries Killer Balls Often PPMs. (potentially problematic?)
• Front 4, full backs and CM(s) already trained or being trained to Play One-Twos.
• Have noticed the DLF(s) coming very deep at the beginning of transitions, particularly when Lucas Testa (screenshot further down) plays there. Potentially due to his extremely high work rate. 
• Ben White, right-sided CD has PPMs Brings Ball Out of Defence and Tries Long Range Passes.
• DLP(D) has Runs With Ball Often PPM, in process of trying to untrain it.
• Have noticed that we have conceded a good few goals from diagonal passes, often in behind my FB(A) who has a poor marking attribute but is otherwise a world-beater.

I have a few players in my squad who I feel are great candidates for the Shadow Striker role, feel free to let me know who you think is best, so this role is non-negotiable and I would like to build my tactic around extracting the most from it.  

Shadow Striker candidates:

 

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by LHurlz

[Mr_Demus]

I play something very, very similar to this and have had the same experience with top teams (great results) and bad teams (bad results). I won't comment on the shadow striker, as I don't have a clue, but I would guess that the bad teams are beating you on the counter, and their goals coming from the space created between the DC and the full back who is caught a bit out of position. So I would suggest being a bit more conservative at fullback. It's a top heavy formation, so you already have players far up field.

 

Also, if I am not mistaken, your defence needs to be quick and intelligent to play with an offside trap. If they aren't, then that might be problematic as well.

[frukox]

8 hours ago, LHurlz said:

I've joined the dark side and turned to a formation that I usually despise - the 4-2-3-1.  It's been a mixed bag with this tactic.  We beat Spurs, held Man City + Arsenal to draws (great results), but also got held to draws by Leeds, Swansea and West Brom (not great results) and as a consequence won't be playing in Europe next year after consecutive seasons of European football featuring a UEFA Conference League win.

The idea is to press efficiently using a split block and to try control possession once we have the ball, but without tapping it around sideways/backwards for the sake of it.  That attitude may lend itself more to a Positive mentality but with an already top-heavy formation and a team that's only Top 7/8 quality it may be a bit ambitious.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, I feel that we're not far off a proper top 6 push but just can't quite get the wins/consistency needed.  We were 7th in the league for xG and also 7th best for xGConceded (we conceded roughly 9 more goals than the stats suggest we should have), so maybe coming 10th is not an entirely fair reflection of our performances this season.

Key Points

• Split block being used (closing down more applied to front 4)
• Current CM(s) has no PIs, but does have Arrives Late in Opponents Area and Tries Killer Balls Often PPMs. (potentially problematic?)
• Front 4, full backs and CM(s) already trained or being trained to Play One-Twos.
• Have noticed the DLF(s) coming very deep at the beginning of transitions, particularly when Lucas Testa (screenshot further down) plays there. Potentially due to his extremely high work rate. 
• Ben White, right-sided CD has PPMs Brings Ball Out of Defence and Tries Long Range Passes.
• DLP(D) has Runs With Ball Often PPM, in process of trying to untrain it.
• Have noticed that we have conceded a good few goals from diagonal passes, often in behind my FB(A) who has a poor marking attribute but is otherwise a world-beater.

I have a few players in my squad who I feel are great candidates for the Shadow Striker role, feel free to let me know who you think is best, so this role is non-negotiable and I would like to build my tactic around extracting the most from it.  

Shadow Striker candidates:

 

 

Your current system currently seems to congest the middle of the pitch too much by having two wingers coming inside. One of them should stretch the play to wider areas of the pitch to create more space in the middle for the others to operate better.

Your left side might be exposed sometimes due to your CM being at the edge of the box often.

DLFS might be too deep in the early stages of attacking transitions. 

[Experienced Defender]

Your instructions suggest you want to play possession football, and the setup of roles and duties is for the most part well-designed. Except for one role - CM on support. That's the only role I would change into more of a holding or covering one, both to better protect the flank and to avoid competition for space with the AML + ball-recycling. So either BWM on support or carrilero. 

Of course, when it comes to the 4231 as a formation, the first thing you need to make sure is that both players playing in central midfield have proper defense-related attributes. 

However, even a perfectly designed tactic won't work if the tactical style does not suit your players.

[LHurlz]

Thanks for the replies and advice everyone.

@Mr_DemusYeah it's extremely frustrating outplaying Man City one game then getting done by Brighton in the next. A more conservative full back role does make sense and it's something I'll experiment with, my issue however is that both of my fullbacks are extremely talented going forward, just the RB is slightly on the suspect side defensively (10 marking but other defensive attributes are good).

@frukoxMy first implementation of this tactic used a winger, swapping to an IW didn't really make a noticeable difference in fairness so maybe I'll go back to that as well as alter my CM(s) to a more holding role as both yourself and@Experienced Defendersuggested.

As for my midfield two, defensively they are... okay.  I have another CM who is more defensively solid so I may have to experiment with him as my Carrilero/BWM but you know how FM is, I'm besotted with the player I currently use and I'm still holding out hope that he changes his mind and declares for Ireland Just look at him, the work rate, technique, flair, physicals, two-footed

Edited January 15, 2021 by LHurlz

[LHurlz]

A small update..

In my first post I mentioned that I felt we were not far off a Top 6 push.  Having finished 5th in 22/23 with a considerably weaker squad, I got myself into a mindset where I wouldn't settle for anything less than Top 6.

I decided it was time for an upgrade in the Goalkeeper department.  Being a potent attacking force is a great aim, but we needed someone a bit more dependable between the sticks, it's the defence that'll help us grind out the tricky 1-0 or 2-1 wins that push you up the table.  With that in mind, we picked up Cristian from Benfica for a relatively paltry £34.5m.  As you can see from the screenshot he had a fantastic debut season for us, picking up 18 clean sheets and only letting in 34 goals.

Nicolas Dominguez decided he wanted pastures new.  I was sad to see him go, he's a true all-rounder, a fantastic technician but also having work-ethic and grit to his game.  To compound my misery, the best we could get for him was £19m, a horrific loss on the £41m we paid Shandong for him.  Either way, I knew I'd need to identify a player in the same mould to occupy our DLP role.  A playmaker yes, but also someone capable of contributing defensively and rolling their sleeves up in those gritty games against the sides who want to sit deep and get stuck into us.  After some careful scouting I found the man.  23 years old (at the time), a fantastic playmaker, a fierce worker, but most importantly - amazing hair!  Enter our only other first-team signing of the summer, Xavi Simons, who came with a price tag of £48.5m from Dutch giants Ajax.

Another very successful signing despite unfortunately missing 2 months of the season due to a major hip injury.

Tactically not much changed.  I followed the advice from @Experienced Defenderand changed my CM(s) role to a Carrilero.  Martyn Finch continued in this role and contributed 5 goals and 10 assists.  The largest change made was to add the "Counter" TI. This may seem a bit illogical for a team that wants to try and retain possession and control games, but ultimately I felt our attacks were sometimes a bit toothless.  I wanted to see a bit more ruthlessness and urgency when we won the ball back, and considering the incredible pace we have upfront, asking my team to go on the Counter more often made sense.  I think adding this TI added a layer of unpredictability to our build up.

Anyway, the resounding (and unexpected) success story of this season is Adalto.  We picked him up for £13.75m last season from Palmeiras.  He made a few first team appearances, scored a couple of goals, I saw potential but with the squad I had I thought he'd be best served getting some game time elsewhere.  We sent him to our Premier League rivals Leeds, and by January he'd racked up 5 goals and 5 assists.  Jonathan David had sustained a serious injury earlier in the season, and I decided it was time to recall Adalto and see what he could offer us in the Inside Forward role.  It turns out he could offer us 11 goals and 4 assists in 17 appearances, 14 of which were starts.  This included a spell in which he scored 9 goals in 5 games, 6 of those goals coming from hat-tricks.

There's no doubt that Adalto's incredible form was the key to our success this season.  His spate of goals contributed to some big wins and gave our Goal Difference a crucial boost.  After a tough season and a sensational run of form that saw us go unbeaten from the beginning of February until the end of the season, we did the unthinkable.  We pipped Liverpool to 4th, and we'll be playing Champions League football next season.  Raheem Sterling's goal vs Liverpool on the last day sealed it for us as we held out for a nervy 0-0 at the Molyneux.

Summer recruitment will be necessary again if we wish to compete seriously in Europe and maybe even mount a title challenge in the next season or two, but for now I'm over the moon.  Thanks all for the advice, it helped me to turn around a save that was beginning to get a little bit stale.

 

P.S - Mods if you wish to move this to the save story/update section (can't remember the proper name), that is fine

Edited January 21, 2021 by LHurlz