Gegenpressing problem 433

[Michaelgabriel4]

 

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum.
I started my career with the Sassuolo team, I love Jurgen Klopp's gegenpressing style and the offensive style of play.

I'm broken because I can't play it on FM, what am I doing wrong?

I am sending you photos for my tactics please, give advice on how to play effectively, offensive football in Fm. Thank you.https://ibb.co/P5qZ6bt https://ibb.co/tp1VvNQ

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zemahh]

You're conceding a lot of goals, I'd try toning things down a notch. Sassuolo may not have the quality required for such an aggressive system, you're likely making things easy for opposition with allowing them to play right through your press.

Your current Mentality structure is quite aggressive as well. IFs on Positive Mentality are unlikely to do much defending at all, making your wings quite vulnerable:

Balanced

V. Attacking            V. Attacking

Positive V. Attacking

Cautious

Attacking Cautious Cautious Positive

In my opinion, 4-3-3 is better suited for teams capable of dominating possession. Wide forwards also require capable wing backs providing regular overlaps, as they end up cutting inside quite early and could potentially leave you with no attacking width. Instructions such as Higher Tempo and Hit Early Crosses could also be counterproductive to this and are instead better suited for counter-attacking tactics.

If you want a full on gung ho system, 4-2-3-1 would probably be a better choice. It has more players positioned in the final third and allows for quick transitions without necessarily isolating your forwards. It will also allow you to press high more effectively, if that's your main goal.

[HUMBL3B33]

5 hours ago, Zemahh said:

You're conceding a lot of goals, I'd try toning things down a notch.

Agreed. Your primary issue is with the aggression but the aggression in the wrong place, even if you want to play with a nice 433 you need to make sure that you have a playstyle that's good enough for your players. You need to find what kind of playstyle favors you or what kind of playstyle does your board want to play and you need to do this in both attacking and defending.

Say for example: we have a great high jumping and heading backline but they are not so good at running as a result i would naturally be more inclined to play a lower defensive line and make sure that i leave less space behind my back line for opposition front line because i know my defenders arent the best at doing so. As a result my midfield also needs to come a little deeper to compensate the defenders operating from deep in order to cover up the space left between defense and midfield after which i have 1-2 players left and they can attack the opposition backline in order to find a long ball from deep to open up space behind them.
You attacking then depends on how good are you at doing different things with the ball, lets say you are great a dribbling than you can allow the team to play on high tempo short passing and allow them to run more often. This will ensure they take the ball and try to dribble past the opposition defense. Alternatively you can simply opt for a long ball approach like my burnley team, with low to mid tempo and direct passing which make use of the OFF THE BALL attributes of your attacking players and VISSION and PASSING from your backline/midfield in order to hit the opposition back line with a line breaking pass.

You can know how to play by going into Team Reports section> Analyst Report> Comparison> Defense> Select only defense to know for defending (strikers in attacking and midfield in midfield areas). Once you post those screenshots we can help you understand which attributes can help you play in the favored way.

At the moment just by looking at the formation with roles and duties, it seems to rely too much on your teams ability to keep the ball. As a result you need great composure, balance, off the ball and anticipation to keep the ball moving. Or Strength, balance, off the ball and anticipation in order to hold the ball against the opposition team. Which i doubt you have a great deal at sassuolo. Hence, i would suggest you to operate with a different set of roles and duties.

Ideally: 

               FBs CB CB FBs

                     DM(d/s)

                 CMs  BBM
              Wat          Wat

                       AFs

As a result you will have an attacker keeping the CB pinned, 2 wingers trying to stretch the pitch and ping the balls into the box with early crosses also 2 capable midfielders who can either operate in the space between opposition midfield and front line to recycle the ball well or just make late runs into the box and allow another way to score goals. Very much along the lines of Jurgen Klopp. Although a better formation could be custom made according to your team. But if you want to play with 2 IFs and a deep operating forward, I would suggest you to add more solidity to your midfield by removing the mezalla and adding CMd and add CMs in place of CAR to make use of the possession you get with the high press. However, a gegenpress system relies more on the surprise that your front line can spring onto the opposition back line hence it is hard to play effectively and if you leave too much space while pressing you can be easily bypassed. There are a lot of things to be changed in the tactics for my liking.

However, It's good that you have chosen a tactically nuanced setup for your first save in FM. Welcome to the best journey of your life. I remember when i started i knew only how to play gegenpress and nothing else. Over the time i learnt more about counter attacking and possession heavy setups as well. Keep in mind, In my opinion approx. 60-70% of the battle in order to set up  a nice tactic is to set up the correct roles and duties for the players. Rest can be tinkered along the way.
If you want, You can share the screenshots of your team comparison so that we can help you identify your weakness and strengths.

Have a fun time with the game mate.

[Kami Kamikazich]

First of all this is not 433 and I don't know why people call this formation 433. You play 4321. 

Your formations are very bad in many ways and with this team you might consider changing to more defensive. But if you like the real 433 (like I do) than play like this:

GOALKEEPER

GK defend

DEFENSE

WB (at)   CD (df)   CD (df)  WB (at)

MIDFIELD

BBM (su)  DLP (de)  BBM (su)

ATTACKERS

AF (at)  F9 (su)  AF (at)

[HUMBL3B33]

31 minutes ago, Kami Kamikazich said:

First of all this is not 433 and I don't know why people call this formation 433. You play 4321. 

Your formations are very bad in many ways and with this team you might consider changing to more defensive. But if you like the real 433 (like I do) than play like this:

GOALKEEPER

GK defend

DEFENSE

WB (at)   CD (df)   CD (df)  WB (at)

MIDFIELD

BBM (su)  DLP (de)  BBM (su)

ATTACKERS

AF (at)  F9 (su)  AF (at)

I believe it fairly qualify to be called a 433 as football theory a 433 contains 4 defenders, 3 midfielders and 3 attackers hence making it a 4-3-3. Definitely FM has its own characteristics that makes it 4321 as well. But you would not be mistaken if you call it a 4321 by any stretch of imagination. It is more subjective at this point as you can do so much with those wide attacking mids. 

The formation you suggested however is also a kind of 433 but would definitely have some issues for him in terms of solidity. As a default you are leaving 3 attackers at the top and allowing 2 of them to put pressure on the opposition defense line. A good idea in theory but needs a formidable defense nonetheless to protect any sort of opportunity as your midfielders are almost always going to be outnumbered in the midfield and giving out good quality chances to any side if they can move the ball quickly enough.

I could be criticized a lot to not like the F9 role a lot as for me it asks too much of a team when it is against a good opponent in terms of ball moving ability and not providing enough tactical solidity. In this exact formation i would rather play a DLFs to allow that structural solidity for a weaker side as that restricts the movement for the DLF to an extent where it can be trusted.

Again for the midfield having 2 BBM and a DLP as a pivot is okay in theory but it is way unlikely to find players to fit in more often than not at least for a weak team. You will need capable players in all the departments to play them as a BBM. Great role but very hard to find a great player for. The DLP however could do a good job asking for balls and pinging over the top of defense to play the 2 AF up top. 

Attacking WBs with 3 attackers up top and 2 BBMs is definitely suicide in my opinion. You are just inviting devastating Counters down your flanks with literally no one protecting them as soon as you get the ball around the half way line as the WBs are hardcoded to rush into the opposition box. 

This in theory is definitely a workable tactic but more on the attacking side, the side will hardly maintain any solidity. Definitely a tactic that can keep the opposite side in check by outscoring them. But definitely leaves too much on chance when it comes to defending as there is virtually no solidity in the lineup. Apart from the 2 CDs and 1 DLP (if he is in the DM strata) every single player will look to run into the box or stay right at the edge of it. That allows almost all of the pitch for other team to hit you on the counter fairly easily.

A key factor a lot of people forget while creating a tactic is that everything in the game affects everything. If you go down 1-0 in the first 5 minutes, it will add pressure on your boys and it will allow the AI to sit back and defend deep and that would not be super easy for this system as it solely relies on either the DLP or F9 pinging the passes to AF running behind the defenders which against a deep block will hardly be any. Essentially you need to find a balance between both attacking and defending to find a somewhat decent system for your players.

[Kami Kamikazich]

@HUMBL3B33

For me it is still 4321 and by no means 433  but my tactics 433 which I have been using for a few years is something completely different from how you see it. Team and individual instructions as well as finding a specific type of player for each position plays a big role in success. 

I had great success with this tactic for example on FM 20 I started in the Croatian second league and it took me ten years to get a managerial position in Man City all the time using 433 with five different clubs in four different leagues.

Here is a link from my FM 20 career 

 

Also here is a link where I presented my tactics for FM 20

 

For this case I did an experiment, I decided to play half a season with the same team (Sassuolo) but with my 433 tactics and here are the results. I didn't buy a single player and one of best players Berardi was injured just before the start of the season for three months. I still managed to get an A + from the management 

 

[HUMBL3B33]

12 hours ago, Kami Kamikazich said:

For me it is still 4321 and by no means 433  but my tactics 433 which I have been using for a few years is something completely different from how you see it. Team and individual instructions as well as finding a specific type of player for each position plays a big role in success. 

I had great success with this tactic for example on FM 20 I started in the Croatian second league and it took me ten years to get a managerial position in Man City all the time using 433 with five different clubs in four different leagues.

Here is a link from my FM 20 career 

Totally up to you mate, no one is asking you to change your mind. I was just explaining why people might call it a 433 (including me).
Team and individual instructions equally important and can definitely tone down the aggressiveness to some extent but its a question of sustainability to me. 
Your success depends on outscoring teams that you play against, which in your league could be very likely that you could do. But certainly in a strong league or even in the Continental cups you may find difficulty outscoring them because you can get teams that are far greater in quality or just simply better at keeping the ball than your side. I am afraid at that point the tactic becomes fairly one dimensional and definitely needs some changes to be made to the core of it in order to stabilize it.

Again, As specified earlier in my post i am by no means against your tactic. It's a game that allows you to play with berserker tactics i have in my knowledge even weird and overly attacking team managing to win the leagues where they were expected to finish nowhere close. Hence, anything and everything can work if you know what you're doing.

However, As he said he is new to the forum and i assume he is new to the game as well. I feel it's fairly responsible to learn how to defend as well and not just attack. Your tactic definitely will allow too many goals. 17 Goals in 16 matches, that's almost over 1 goal per match. Again by no mean catastrophically bad but definitely bad enough to hit your team's morale and make them miss chances that they otherwise should finish 9 out of 10 times. I have experienced the same for quite some time and only understood the importance of defensive solidity of a tactic.

For example, I played with burnley in FM 2019 for a long time and reached almost in pole positions during my initial years with Knapp's tactics only to realize I was just outscoring teams and did not know how to balance the tactic when i most needed to. for example: FA cup final against man united where they scored 2 in last 20 minutes in a 2-1 win over my burnley 2 years in the save. 

One key thing to notice with a burnley save is that the board expects you to play defensively solid as well as a direct method of playing. Which pretty much leaves you with a direct long ball counter attacking playstyle. I would encourage you to also experiment the same with Burnley and post the finding over at least 2-3 years if possible. To actually see how the board reacts to such an attacking tactic being in play.

As per the experiment is concerned, The good response from board is partially because you are sitting at the 7th position after half a season even though you were expected to finish way below. It is very much interesting to see if it continues to show the same kind of performance throughout the season and finish strong as well especially when the players are tired or you do not have the main players to cover the cracks due to injuries. It will also be interesting to see if it is sustainable enough to allow you to build up a team on for multiple years to come in the future. Definitely doable, and that's different challenge altogether. I would much rather help someone learn the complete basics right so that they can experiment themselves. Just a different school of thinking, nothing else.

Great job with the experiment though. Please carry on with the experiment and share the findings here as i would love to know and learn how it might behave in a long term save.

[Kami Kamikazich]

Challenge accepted...

Second part of the season.

I'm a little surprised because I expected to qualify for EL and not for CL but we play very good.

The experiment is complete 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Kami Kamikazich

[Michaelgabriel4]

Good day.

Thanks to everyone for the advice.

I started the season with the Brighton team. In season 1, I took 5th place in the league. In season 2 I took 8th place in the league and lost the Europa League semi-final.

Season 3 is tragic, I think I have a set tactic for gegenpressing.

I play with 4231, I changed the play style to positive / fluid because my team scored few goals to standard / flexible. Now they are losing a lot of goals and losing.

I don't know what to change anymore, I will ask you for more advice. Below are photos.
My squad is great and I play poorly 🥺.

https://ibb.co/nzTPgxB 

https://ibb.co/vzQ99Yv 

https://ibb.co/HntmMqB

 

[HUMBL3B33]

On 21/10/2021 at 01:38, Kami Kamikazich said:

The experiment is complete 

Great,

Did you try one with Burnley as well??

I did give it a try and noticed that it did work in weird way. It creates enough space for the players at the top to create good opportunities against teams that are even remotely trying to get aggressive, as their WBs are wide and out of position and then we have a clear 2 v 3 with the 2 CBs even with a DM it requires the DM to track back and give enough time for the 3 at top to run in and have a shot at the goal. 
But a clear thing i noticed was that it ships too many goals most of the times if your CMs are too attacking or not ready to work in the defense. So ideally looking for a defensively good CM to play as your BBM makes more sense. Even if they are not able to through passes to the forwards. Try to rely on a more cautious approach with the mentality as it gets most of the teams to come out of their box giving you a chance at the goal at the same time keeping you relatively safe from the attacks. 

You can play this tactic both in an attacking sense as well as in defensive, depending on your liking. As in both ways you have a chance at scoring more than the opposition with the quality of chances you have. So i think i learnt something new. Thanks my man. Let me know if you are going to do a save with burnley and try to impress the board with defensive and direct football.

Edited October 23, 2021 by HUMBL3B33

[HUMBL3B33]

On 21/10/2021 at 16:19, Michaelgabriel4 said:

Good day.

Thanks to everyone for the advice.

I started the season with the Brighton team. In season 1, I took 5th place in the league. In season 2 I took 8th place in the league and lost the Europa League semi-final.

Season 3 is tragic, I think I have a set tactic for gegenpressing.

I play with 4231, I changed the play style to positive / fluid because my team scored few goals to standard / flexible. Now they are losing a lot of goals and losing.

I don't know what to change anymore, I will ask you for more advice. Below are photos.
My squad is great and I play poorly 🥺.

https://ibb.co/nzTPgxB 

https://ibb.co/vzQ99Yv 

https://ibb.co/HntmMqB

 

I would suggest you to give @Kami Kamikazich tactic a try and get someone who has a high work rate, acceleration, strength and good defensive attributes in your CMs to ensure you are safe at the back. 

As for what i can see could be wrong with the tactic, you are having difficulties breaking down the teams that sit deep and because of your high line you are allowing space for them to score on counter. You can maybe stick with a deeper line and play on counter if you get highlights with opposition running at your defense after winning the ball from their half. Or you can try to keep the ball more often and play more of a tiki taka game. 

If you want to play direct balls then you are going to loose ball more often and that leaves you vulnerable at the back with a high line and not the best of back line to defend it. An imminent high level threat to your clean sheet. So, you can adjust accordingly.