Possession and Positional Play with 5-back?

[odigweg]

This is my first time trying to start a topic on this tactics forum. For the last few editions, of FM I have been obsessed with principles of Pep Guardiola's philosophy. As such, despite my best attempts to branch away from the 4-3-3, I kept coming back to it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, though, I have always felt my teams could be fun to watch while being mean defensive units if I was able to translate those principles to a 5-back formation. I guess my question is: has anyone else tried to create a 5 at the back system with such principles? How did you do it? How did you cope with the relative difficulty in pressing a back-4 consistently with bottom heavy formations? 

P.S: I have had some success with 5-2-2-1 and 5-2-3 (in this vein) in various editions of the game. I am just curious as to how others are going about it, if anyone even is. I really enjoyed playing the 5-2-2-1 and 5-2-3 because of their natural ability to fill the five channels in attack. I was also able to do similar things with the 5-3-2 recently, but I find that more suited to counter attacking. 

Anyway, I am welcome to suggestions regarding all of those formations and others I may not have talked about. I was also going to include more detailed photos and analysis of some of the tactics I created, but I get the sense that once a discussion starts, we'll get into most of that organically. 

[SixPointer]

I would recommend taking a look at Gasperini at Atalanta. I done a thread on him a few editions ago. And he does a lot of what your looking for. will certainly give you some ideas. 

 

[odigweg]

18 hours ago, SixPointer said:

I would recommend taking a look at Gasperini at Atalanta. I done a thread on him a few editions ago. And he does a lot of what your looking for. will certainly give you some ideas. 

 

Thank you! Having a look now