Tactical Challenge: Making Inverted Wingback Your Primary Goalscorer

[crusadertsar]

I remember a few FM versions back @herne79 ran a series of challenges meant to give some inspiration for those looking for new save ideas after getting bored with their initial club save. Or those looking for some guidance in starting their first save. With the multitude of save possibilities literally spread across hundreds of leagues in FM22, this could be a challenge in itself. I liked the idea of simply approaching the game as a specific tactical challenge to be solved with a single club as your testing ground. 

The above were my favourite ones.

So I present the following dilemma for those of you interested in starting a new save for the purpose of the challenge. 

And the challenge? Create a tactic with any club and over the course of a single season make your Inverted Wingback into your top goalscorer. Or at least one of your top scorers. Does not have to be in your first season either. As long as over the whole season he is in the top three of your team's goalscorers. 

 

Tactical Introduction

For my inverted wingback to have even a remote chance to be a goal-scorer he needs to consistently get into the half-spaces. This requires a specific kind of movement. While player attributes will play an important role in helping the player perform his role correctly, traits, team and instructions play a far bigger role in making your inverted winger into a surprising goal threat. Here is what I will be experimenting at the start. Again this is my preliminary tactic so these could still change from match to match.

Firstly, you will want your inverted wingback to underlap into the midfield from his wide position. It is true that this behaviour should be coded into the role already. After-all as part of the name suggests, the role focuses on cutting inside into the midfield. Sometimes there are some unexpected obstacles to this seemingly basic function of the role. For example when your midfield is already packed with 3 or more players, especially in the DM strata. They will be using the same space as where you want the inverted wingback to run. Some will even be running into the same half-space.

In the case of inverted wingback on attack duty I would go as far as leaving the AMC spot empty. And instead have your striker drop deep to link up with the IWB running up from the midfield. Sort of like a deep shadow striker. During attacking transition, attack duty IWB will regularly get up into the space that's traditionally occupied by advanced midfielders. At the same time you'll want one player on each flank providing width and stretching the opposition fullbacks and/or centrebacks.

Secondly, it's not recommended to play an IWB whose dominant foot is the same as the flank he plays on. He will tend to hug the flank like a regular wingback rather than cut inside onto his dominant foot. Seems a little obvious, but easy to miss if you forget to check the development screen for the player's footedness. So you definitely won't want your right-footed IWB candidate to play on the right flank. It will require changing the formation into its mirror version in order to accommodate this player on the left flank.

Then even after you made sure that the IWB is positioned on his opposite foot flank, you might notice the underlaps and penetrating movement are still not happening consistently. Here is where role combinations, traits, team, and specific player instructions come into play.

For example, by selecting the "underlap right" team instruction it will do several things. Firstly it will increase the individual mentality of your inverted wingback. This will simply make him more aggressive in taking risks and getting forward into the final third.

At same time "underlap" affects the behavior of the wingers and midfielders who are directly in front of your IWB. They'll tend to hold back in their own forward movement, waiting for the IWB to pass them on the inside.

So a typical play would go like this. The goal-keeper passes the ball to IWB (because of pass to fullbacks instruction), who then passes to the mezzala. The mezzala then moves wide (his role's hard-coded behavior), holds up the ball, and then passes the ball back into the space he vacated. The inverted wingback runs into this space and receives the ball again. Of course, this will probably work better if both the mezzala and IWB have the "plays one-twos" trait. While the inverted wingback would benefit from "gets forward often" or even "gets into opposition area" traits. To increase the frequency of such behaviour I would also use "shorter passes", "quick tempo" and "dribble less" team instructions. In my experience they are the best instructions for recreating quick pass and move attacking football. "Roam from position" could also increase the tendency of your players moving into the half-spaces.

But of course you will need players with the right attributes. Especially your inverted wingback. So that note I would like to reveal the player that I would like to build my tactic around. And to hopefully answer the question of whether it's tactically possible to turn your inverted wingback as your primary goalscorer? To begin, it would not doubt require a very special player.

Players like Jamal Musiala, Bayern Munich's golden boy and one of the best options to retrain into an ultra-attacking IWB.

And what about in lower rep leagues or mid-to-low level clubs in the established leagues? Retraining into a new position and role is the best solution. This way you could always take a young winger or inside forward and retrain them into IWB. Of course their lack of more defensive attributes might hinder their performance when not in attacking transition. But do you really need IWB to get back into defensive position when you want him as the main goal-scorer? Probably not.

So definitely through the retraining option, there are way more potential candidates for this role then you might realize. Especially when you find an inside forward with good physical attributes and workrate (ideally).

On the other hand, by pure chance my scouts found this little gem of a player. Kevin Diks. And he does not even need that much retraining. Even has the two traits that are ideal for an attacking inverted wingback. Perfect subject for my crazy inverted wingback experiment.

Coming Up With The Formation

Now on to the most fun part of any tactical experiment. In my opinion at least. Creating the formation and setting the roles.

I decided to go with a rather simple 5-3-1 WB Wide formation. I chose it because of two main reasons: creation of space and duty and role balance. The formation can essentially be split down the middle and I made sure that both halves had a good distribution of duties. So that the right half although more attacking has a defend duty DLP balancing the two attack duties. While on the left the two support duties balanced the single attack duty rather well. I was never a fan of the overly aggressive or unbalanced tactics that try to break the game. To me the best tactics are ones that are well-balanced in both attack and defence.

The balance on both sides also comes from the player roles. On the right-hand half we have one player who is aggressively attacking the half-space - inverted wingback. Similarly on the left there is a Raumdeuter who is attempting to do the same thing in the left half-space. Then each half has at least one role that provides width and makes more space for our two half-space attackers. In the case of the right flank, it is the winger and on the left it's the wingback. Finally each half has one role whose main function is to support the attackers and the "wide players". In each case it is a central midfielder with more creative freedom (either through role or PIs).

The DLP is a perfect role on the right, because he is hard-coded to hold his position. And with defend duty he does so deeper then he would. This ensures that there is less chance for him to encroach into the space that I want my IWB to occupy. Basically the DLP should drop to cover for the much more aggressive inverted wingback. I foresee that this part of formation will require future tweaking after watching a few matches. It is possible that DLP on support would work just well and still free up enough space for the IWB. So hopefully testing will shed more light on that.

Both DLP and CM(S) can take more risks in their passing in order to better support the players in front of them.

I don't instruct the CM(S) to hold his position like DLP. But neither do I want him to roam around and get forward aggressively at every opportunity. I just want him to act as a constant advanced support for my Raumdeuter. And sometimes provide late goal threat when it's safe. Otherwise he needs to be able to get back quickly into his defensive position and defend against counter-attacks.

The Raumdeuter and central striker. Are actually the two roles that interchangeable in the formation. Meaning that depending on the players at your disposal you can play other roles there. As long as you keep the same duty, it should not affect the tactic too much. Ideally, if managing a world-class club (and possessing the best players for the roles) then I would use Raumdeuter/CF(S) combo. Or you could go with a different combo of the two, such as DLF(S) and IF(A) for example. Essentially you want a striker that excels in the link-up role and can create space for your two half-space runners.

The three-men defence is the rock upon which this formation is build and having suitable players here is absolutely essential. It is also another part of the tactic that I never change. The stopper/cover combo is one of the best you can have when operating with three central defenders. I also like the inter-play between the two stoppers and the central defender. The covering centreback is sort of like the old Italian-style sweeper in the Catenaccio system.

Here you can play a more mobile player (pace and anticipation) with better anticipation. He can "cover" any holes left in the defensive line by the stoppers when they advance to close-down opposition attackers. Also, having two stoppers on the outside allows them to close-down the space left behind by the Wingback and IWB. This a good way to stop counter-attacks when the two wingbacks are caught up the field during attack transition, and don't have enough time to get back into their defensive positions.

So that is my formation in the nutshell. And here are the team instructions that I will be using at the beginning. The only individual player instructions I'm using are the ones you already saw for the CM(S). As you can see you can use a mirrored version depending from which side your IWB will cut inside from. The opposite from his dominant foot.  

As I do in most of my tactics, I am trying to go for a minimalistic approach. So if things don't work as planned at the start, then I won't have a ton of variables to tweak.

So there you have it! Now time to test the tactic. And see if I can indeed crack this challenge make my inverted wingback into one of my tactic's primary goal-scorers. But what I would love to see the most are your own tactical ideas and experiments. Have you tried something similar with a different formation? Or in the past have you ever had any success with your Inverted Wingback racking up the goals? If so then you could drop your own tactical idea in here to discuss. Or have you taken on the challenge yourself? If so then let us know with what club and what formation. All comments and suggestions are welcome. 

Edited December 22, 2021 by crusadertsar

[crusadertsar]

Reserved

 

NEXT: Choosing The Club

[Guest]

You really enhance this forum so much. A real pleasure reading your stuff

[crusadertsar]

46 minutes ago, Crazy_Ivan said:

You really enhance this forum so much. A real pleasure reading your stuff

Thank you friend! It's always my pleasure to share my ideas with you guys. These days I can't really enjoy any save without writing about it 

[Daz2205]

I've created a tactic on the notion of this idea a few weeks back but it wasn't to build around getting the IWB to score goals, that was simply a by-product of the tactic that just happened through me wanted to flood the midfield. How I came about this was simply because of the severe lack of movement off the ball the game has... just simply isn't any and from choosing IWB on attack I very quickly found they make insane movements relentlessly so much that they became my furthest forward player/s, to the point I felt it was bugged as their runs simply were not being picked up and the CD's were shuffling up to mark my F9 who is essentially in midfield. Creating the offensive freedom from the IWB(A) I needed some midfield solidity so I had a CM(D) and at the time a DLP(S) with IF(S), AM(S) and a F9 dropping deep which allowed the through-balls and passes to be made into the relentless runs of my two IWB(A). I used a positive possession, keep ball 4231 with the IWB the only attacking duties. I had Alphonso Davies and Hakimi at the time, since then a couple regens but they were all pitching in roughly 9-12 goals a season from through-balls/generally being furthest forward but not only the goals as that wasn't my idea for them at the time but the runs they make were simply incredible that I felt if only other further forward roles and duties was capable of this. Genuinely felt like I was cheating 

Edited December 22, 2021 by Daz2205

[Bradz FM]

Excellent stuff again @crusadertsar.

 

How many saves you have on the go now?

[crusadertsar]

25 minutes ago, Daz2205 said:

I've created a tactic on the notion of this idea a few weeks back but it wasn't to build around getting the IWB to score goals, that was simply a by-product of the tactic that just happened through me wanted to flood the midfield. How I came about this was simply because of the severe lack movement off the ball the game has... just simply isn't any and from choosing IWB on attack I very quickly found they make insane movements relentlessly so much that they became my furthest forward player/s, to the point I felt it was bugged as their runs simply were not being picked up and the CD's were shuffling up to mark my F9 who is essentially in midfield. Creating the offensive freedom from the IWB(A) I needed some midfield solidity so I had a CM(D) and at the time a DLP(S) with IF(S), AM(S) and a F9 dropping deep which allowed the through-balls and passes to be made into the relentless runs of my two IWB(A). I used a positive possession, keep ball 4231 with the IWB the only attacking duties. I had Alphonso Davies and Hakimi at the time, since then a couple regens but they were all pitching in roughly 9-12 goals a season from through-balls/generally being furthest forward but not only the goals as that wasn't my idea for them at the time but the runs they make were simply incredible that I felt if only other further forward roles and duties was capable of this. Genuinely felt like I was cheating 

Nice! It's really inspiring to know that this approach could work. And work really well apparently! And it wasn't even your objective  ?! Wow. Thanks for sharing.

@Trevomac Unfortunately, it will be three saves very soon (thanks to the challenge ). So yeah... my other videogame time is starting to suffer.

Edited December 22, 2021 by crusadertsar

[Bradz FM]

4 minutes ago, crusadertsar said:

Nice! That's really inspiring to know that this approach could work. And it wasn't even your objective  Thanks for sharing.

@Trevomac Unfortunately, it will be three saves very soon (thanks to the challenge ). So yeah my other videogame time is starting to suffer.

I don't feel so guilty wanting to start a third save now!

[nully29]

For what it worth, I am currently trying to make a winning tactics with the following settings:

 

1. Defensive mentality

2. Lowest possible lines

3. Least possible pressure

4. Regroup

5. Hold shape

I play with Winnipeg Valour. I went 0-0, 0-2, 0-3 in first three games, but improved to 1-0, 1-1, 1-1 in the next three.

Edited December 22, 2021 by nully29

[crusadertsar]

1 hour ago, nully29 said:

For what it worth, I am currently trying to make a winning tactics with the following settings:

 

1. Defensive mentality

2. Lowest possible lines

3. Least possible pressure

4. Regroup

5. Hold shape

I play with Winnipeg Valour. I went 0-0, 0-2, 0-3 in first three games, but improved to 1-0, 1-1, 1-1 in the next three.

Nice. And how is your Inverted Wingback doing?