crusadertsar

Nope. None at the moment.

This makes me really happy to see. It's a good sign of things if our primary goal-keeper has won Top World Keeper award. Meaning the tactic is doing something right defensively. I mean Remiro is still a pretty good keeper, just not on the same level as ter Stegen or Ederson. Yet he still managed to beat them in clean sheets and fewest goals conceeded statistics.

Yes. Maybe not pushing the lines higher but taking off short passing and going more direct. Also for me going slower tempo actually works better against teams that are parking the bus. By giving my players more time on the ball, it allows them more chances to pick those stubborn defences apart. Although it's never a sure thing when facing an ultra defensive formation.

Regarding the attributes to focus on, you can read about that in my very first post in this thread. For LaLiga I usually look for minimum 13-15 (same for EPL) in the important attributes. Although higher is always ideal obviously.

A few more reports are trickling in but still not as many as I expected. So ended up doing it manually. Every few months I go through all the national teams (for Spain and France) and scout any Basque youngsters I see. It feels like cheating, although not quite like it I was playing with attribute masking turned off. But I don't know what else to do. I miss the old scouting system we had a few FM versions back. It might have not been as realistic but at least it was easy to set up and worked. And we didn't need to scout player multiple times over weeks just to see all of his attributes. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Haha I gotta admit this year it took me longer to settle on a tactic that I really enjoy. Hence the frequent changes. But the 4-0 Man City win (and a few other results since like the most recent 1-1 Real Madrid draw) convinced me that this tactic might be it. It defends well but also does not compromise our attacking potential too much. I always start out with distribute to centrebacks and throw long because I hate losing possession due to long kicks from my keeper. Absolutely hate it. And yes it's a good way to start counterattacks. Play out of defence instruction you have to be more careful with, however. For example, I removed it during both Man City and Real Madrid games because we were facing superior opponents who were pressing us hard in our own half. During such situations "play out of defence" becomes more of a liability. It's also usually a good idea to play with increased tempo in such situation.

I liked managing in 3rd Division in Germany back in the day. Hands Rostock was my go to team whenever i was looking for a save where you bring up club through the leagues. Great blue and white kit too. But they have been Bundesliga 2 for a few seasons now.

I think you misunderstand the concepts behind pressing in the game. We press intensely in our own half. Thats the whole point. It's not high pressing at all. Also high defensive line does not mean high pressing. What the combination of mid-block and high defensive line does is compress my defence, making it a more united close-knit unit in our own half that is really hard for opposition to break down while we can regain the ball much easier. Again none of what I'm doing can be considered highpressing where you actually "defend" aggressively in opponents half. Does that make more sense to you?

Great minds think alike And good point on Treq. With a player with just right mental attributes it can be a great attacking/creative role. In some ways better than Shadow Striker.

Tactical Showcase - Narrow Diamond I really got to stop changing my tactics mid-season. But that's the curse of an incessant tactical tinkerer. Although to spread some blame around, I was partly inspired by the comments from some of the followers in this thread. You know who you are I really like the Narrow Diamond 442 for the two following reasons. It can be an exciting high-scoring tactic so I often switch to it when I just want to have some fun with a save and break some league records. Or just to underachieve as an underdog sometimes. Secondly, and this plays into the fun part again, it gives me less headaches and feeling of uncertainty when it comes to role selection. I find that in wide formations I can never settle on the optimal wide roles selection. Lately FM has given us much to think about when it comes to our winger and fullback/wingback selection. There are just so many roles and combinations that can work together! And it's made even building a simple 433 a potentially daunting task. Especially, If you are a tinkerer who obsesses about every detail in the tactic and want to make it as efficient as possible. If you are like me then with certain formations you will never feel like your tactic is complete. Well, with a Narrow Diamond there are no wingers and it actually brings me some peace of mind. To me Narrow Diamond is a definition of FM-Zen. It is kind of funny how by limiting a tactic you can actually make it easier to set up and understand. I guess I am a minimalist at heart who seeks a break from some of the tactical complexity involved in FM tactical creation. Another reason that Narrow Diamond is so easy to create and work with is because some of the roles that work really well in it just MAKE SENSE in this formation. In some ways, they were designed with a narrow formation in mind. So while there are so many things that you can do wrong in tactical crafting, at least you can feel confident that you cannot really mess up your role selection. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before you decide that you want to give Narrow Diamond a try, you need to see if your current squad is even capable of this formation. Like I mentioned before it is not a very demanding formation as it already cuts down your shopping list in terms of the wide attacker department. Nevertheless there is still a shopping list of requirements for a good balanced Narrow Diamond. A say "Balanced" because my objective in this tread still remains to showcase Defensively-responsible tactics. So naturally my Narrow Diamond will be more like Mourinho's Porto rather than Ancelotti's Real Madrid. My Defence-First Narrow Diamond Requirements: 1) Complementary Wingbacks - One Complete Wingback who is very capable in attack. Another wingback should be more defence-conscious. So while one pushes aggressively forward the other can cover for him (and allow other players in your formation to be more attacking). 2) Hard-Working Specialized Midfielders. The midfield diamond is essential to this formation so naturally we need very good players here. BUT as an underdog you can get away with lesser quality players here IF they are: 1) Hard-Working Teamplayers and 2) Complement each other's strengths. That is having 3 midfielders who individually can fill the 3 roles of Runner/Water Carrier, Destroyer and Creator, without necessarily having players that can fit all three roles themselves. When managing on a budget you want hard-working specialists to fill your diamond, not total footballers. 3) AMC Wildcard Player (Creative and Attacking). This is the role that is missing from the standard flat 4-4-2 and it's arguably what makes Narrow 4-4-2 so special. Because it could be a player that contributes to both attack and creative support. If your team is lucky to have one, then you could stick your playmaking wizard here, the fantasista player, the creative mastermind through whom most the attacks can be channeled. Roberto Baggio, the famous #10 often comes to mind as a perfect example of this role. In fact, Italian soil has been quite fruitful in yielding some of the best #10s in recent memory. AS Roma's Totti was another one. Anyway, you get my point. Even Jose Mourinho had his own talismanic fantasista wildcard player at Porto, Deco. Also your AMC does not necessarily have to be a playmaker. Personally, I am rather partial to Shadow Strikers. And that is one role that absolutely thrive in a Narrow Diamond. I will explain more of that later. We are not finished with our Narrow Diamond shopping list. 4) Finally for a successful Narrow Diamond, you will need a strong pairing in central defence. Since enemy attacks will come often via crosses from the flanks, you cannot get away with less quality here. Your centrebacks will need to be among your best players, if not outright stars of the team. Or at least try to get ones with better than league average for their defensive attributes (such as the mental and physical ones I mentioned in my very first post in this thread). And once you have your shopping list, it leads us to the strengths and weaknesses/limitations of the Narrow Diamond. Because why proceed with this formation? Is it worth the trouble, given its obvious width limitations? YES! It is very much worth it. In fact, I noticed that recently on this forum some misleading information has been floating around. Some people are claiming that Narrow formations like 442 Narrow Diamond are somehow weaker and flawed in the current match engine. Well that is very far from truth. And I would very much like to dispel this misinformation. But at the same time one has to be objective. Narrow Diamond is not a perfect formation by any means. No shape in football is perfect actually. Likewise Narrow 442 has its limitations. Luckily some of these can be mitigate by clever use of roles and instructions. But once again more on that later. Strengths: 1) Defensive Stability. One of the benefits of a midfield diamond is that one midfielder (usually the central one at the lower tip of the diamond) can be tasked with supporting the defence and drop deeper to form a passing triangle with the centrebacks. This can both help stop opposition attacks through the middle, help deal with crosses (if the player is tall) and aid in bringing the ball up from defence. By having a dedicated defensive midfielder, the Narrow Diamond sacrifices some attacking potential to ensure defensive stability. Which, given my aim of Defence-First Football, is perfectly fine. This extra man, the DM (or middle CM) destroyer, can easily step back into defence to act as the fifth defender if the team is under pressure. In some tactics (depending on the roles and instructions used) it can even lead to a transition in the form of a defensive 5-3-2. And thankfully to the Positional Play changes in FM24 match engine, such transitions are easier than ever to set up. 2) Midfield Control. Pretty self-explanatory. Three midfielders are always better than two when it comes to "bossing" the midfield and controlling the ball. It's even better when you have a hard-working AMC dropping deeper to help support as well. A player with high Workrate attribute will do so even in a seemingly ultra-attacking roles like Shadow Striker. "Comes deep to get the ball" trait can also help in increasing this behaviour. Furthermore, four midfielders ensure that there is no space for the opposition to string together passes in the build-up, which ultimately leaves them with two options — the long ball or cross from the flank. And luckily for us, there are specific team instructions that can help us deal with those two modes of attack pretty easily. 3) Boosted Attack. It is no secret that Narrow Diamond 442 can be an attacking formation on steroids. Afterall, you can essentially operate with two strikers and one shadow strikers. Albait the variaton of roles and duties is very important here since you will want to make sure that each of your final third attackers is doing something different that complements what the other two are doing. No 2-3 Advanced Forwards in my tactics, ever. You can try that, but that would be cheating and what's the fun in that? Weaknesses: To note here is that while Narrow Diamond has some clear weakness, they can all be mitigated to a certain degree. You may not be able to cancel them out completely but at least make them less of a liability. The important thing is to take advantage of the strengths to help you win games while reducing the weaknesses by specifically addressing the limitations. 1) Lack of Width. Another pretty obvious one. The Narrow Diamond is a very narrow formation due to the lack of wide players. But this can be addressed pretty easily through selection of roles. Having forwards (or AMC) which drift wide and move into channels. Some midfield roles such as Mezzala and Carrilero are also programmed to do exactly that and that is the reason why they are ideal for narrow formations. Similarly some wingback roles like CWB are designed to use the full extent of the flank. So even in a narrow formation, you can have a lot of attacks going through the flanks either via drifting forwards, midfielders, or fullbacks. It also helps to set the tactical width as wide as possible through team instructions. Or to move the traditional bottom of the diamond DM player up into CM strata and thus push the wider midfielders more towards the flanks. That is one reason why I prefer using 4-3-1-2 variation of Narrow Diamond over its 4-1-2-1-2 form. 2) Opposition Counterattack. Your centrebacks and defensive midfielder are usually the only defence against counterattacks. And these can be devastating to a formation that has less cover on the wings. To mitigate this I like to inject a healthy dose of Mourinho into my tactic. One wingback/fullback becomes more defensively-minded. Let the Mezzala in-front of him do all of the offensive heavy lifting. Obviously, you will need the right players for both roles to make this risky gambit work and not bite you in the backside. An example of a nice Mezzala. He can run, tackle, pass and shoot and cross pretty well. The only thing he is missing is above average dribbling. But then you cannot have everything in life haha. 3) Increased Player Fatigue. Notoriously narrow formations are thought to require extremely fit central midfielders to cover ground, and fullbacks who can bomb up and down the pitch with ease for the whole 90+ minute duration of the match in some case. This may put a strain on the players, resulting in a possible decrease in efficiency over the course of the game or season. But it does not have to be that way. By applying some of the principles of Defence-First Football, which I already implemented in my previous tactics, I can largely mitigate the effect of fatigue. Even with a more-attacking Narrow 442 I can still maintain low-intensity balanced strategy. In fact a lot of the instructions that used in my previous 4-2DM-3-1, Le Verrou 433 tactics are still present. Observe how the tactic's name is still Le Verrou. All I did is change and move some roles around. Alot of our important instructions remained the same. And most importantly the overall Tactical Intensity (in upper right corner, outlined in red) is still below the red zone. My players can often play for the whole match and take long time to go down below 70% condition. In the image above (of the Man City victory) you can see just how much better our overall physical conditioning was when compared to Man City players'. So in the end, after you read all this, do you still need another reason to use a Narrow Diamond? Especially when seemingly everyone is using the same ultra-attacking, intensely pressing 433 or 4231 tactics? 1) Sometimes you just want to go against the grain and succeed with an unpopular less-used formation. It’s the same drive that attracts us to managing underdogs. Achievement is usually more satisfying when it arrives at the end of a challenge. Thus I would like to present to you my rather simple tactic which nevertheless gets the job done for me. And is also very solid defensively in LaLiga. Most importantly it does not tire my players out for the whole 90 minute duration, unlike all those popular attacking gegenpress meta tactics. Just Low-to-mid intensity mid-block Balanced tactic. No more than 3 attack duties. NO Counterpress. NO Highpressing/Get Stuck In, Highest Closing down typical gegenpress "exploity" instructions. Just instructions that would make sense in real football and channel AI into areas where your diamond holds the advantage. Trap the AI and force them to exhaust themselves hitting the wall while you hit them with quick crosses and smart movement into half-spaces. That's all it takes. And Narrow Diamond is just such a great set-up for this kind of football. Especially given how there are roles in FM that were designed and exist specifically with this formation in mind. I am looking at you, Complete Wingback, Mezzala and Carrilero. PS: I also usually select "overlap right" to give a bit more attacking oumph to my CWB. TO BE CONTINUED ...

Here is one for the naysayers doubting the power of the Narrow Diamond Coincidentally it is the latest result from tonight's playing session where I utilized my 4-4-2 Narrow Diamond tactic. Real Sociedad in 2nd season so mostly original squad with a few new faces like Hugo Guillamon in defence. Against a mostly healthy (the only injury being to Kovacic) Man City squad in Champions League. The most satisfying thing was seeing the Norwegian brute Haaland finish the game with 6.1 rating. He sure tried. And they sure couldn't seem to shut us down haha. I also like the fact that all of our 4 goals came from open play and not set pieces. I don't want to further derail this thread so to those interested I will be happy to expand more on the tactic this weekend in my own "Defence-First Football" thread on here. In Football Manager it's not so much about the players you have or the formation. It is how you use them.

Shadow Striker is often best when he is offset to one side. In centre put some kind of striker that can hold up ball on support role. He doesn't necessarily need to be tall but just strong and with good balance. And ideally with good vision, passing and first touch. On the opposite side from your Shadow Striker you should play your other goal scorer such as AF or Poacher, depending on quality of your players.

In striker role. Give him full freedom to create and score. And some kind of hardworking role next to him like PF(a) or PF(s).

Trequartista might be the role you are looking for. That or Shadow Striker.

Well then look at my comment right above. Set him up as AF, especially since he is very mobile and has great dribbling. He would be wasted as Poacher. While as AF he can focus mostly on scoring. CF(s) besides him will hold up ball more and act as another creative force. And AMC in middle should be another source of support for your AF. This way your star striker is really well fed with chances.

He won't score many goals though. Your AF however probably will. And he doesn't need to have high Jumping Reach, not if he is fast and agile. And with decent enough strength and balance.

It helps if he is your creative star, the fantasista so to speak. Think Deke in Mourinho's Porto narrow diamond in 2005. You want to channel attacks through him and give him most creative freedom while the rest of the team works very hard. And have very mobile forwards to take advantage of all the chances created by your AMC.

No, definitely not AM(a). You need a role that drops deeper and works hard to link attack to midfield. Such as AP(a) or even AP(s). Then two strikers up top to go wider and work the two channels. On principal I don't use two AFs because I find that combo to be downright exploitative that AI can't deal with and which easily wins games for me. So I usually pair one AF with either CF(s) or PF(A) depending on player.

Who told you that narrow formations don't work? Every formation can work if it fits your players. Every formation also has it's weaknesses too. If anything there are no real overpowered formation this time around. FM24 is very balanced in that way. Just need to make the formation fit your players. With narrow formations you need to keep in mind it's weakness on wings but that can be compensated with smart use of roles such as Mezzalas and wingbacks. I think i will need to write a tactical update about my recent successes with narrow diamond because there seems to be lots false misleading information floating around.

Again you are talking from human player perspective. In FM24 AI is not very good at shutting down any of the formations I tried. This might be easy from human player perspective. But that's not the logic you can apply to AI. The combinations of roles AI uses dont help with this either.

I don't think AI can close you down and force the play to the flanks like you can do to AI. When i tried Narrow Diamond in FM24 it's still very effective, if not more effective than in FM23. Tactic should never be judged by the metric of how well a human player can counter them. By that standard ALL formation would be terrible. Unless you play online against human opponents. Then it's a different ball game. But then I figure most of us, most of us included, are in this section of the forum because we don't care about PVP.

What is OPPDA?

Thanks mate! I might just do that one of these days

4-4-2 is very strong this year. So not surprised that AI is using it. But then any tactic with two strikers would have an advantage against most single striker formations.

@AlexcH Great implementation of balanced Mourinho inspired 433 and very good results with Roma 👍 Jose Mourinho has been my greatest source of inspiration throughout most of my FM career (going back to FM14). Mourinho's Chelsea 4-3-3 especially. But also his signature narrow 4-3-1-2 was a very defensively-responsible tactic which I always admired and tried to recreate in every version of Football Manager. I prefer say "defensively-responsible" or "Defence-First" and not "defensive" because that's one thing that people tend to misinterpret about Mourinho, especially from those early years. He was never a "defensive" manager. Pragmatic maybe but certainly not "park the bus" kind of defensive. In fact, some of his earlier tactics were quite direct and attacking. But then at the same time he knew when to adapt to opposition or adjust the tactic when in tougher Champions league competition. In his 2nd year at Porto (when they won the treble) Mourinho got Porto playing a more cautious, narrow 4312 that didn’t get opened as easily nor did the team press as high as often (despite keeping an intense middle block press). Many considered their style less entertaining than his previous wide 433. But we have to remember that if this approach had not been adopted, it wouldn’t have been possible to reach the latter stages of the Champions League, let alone win it. In those important European games, more often than not Porto would defend in a 4312, while attacking in a narrow 4132. When defending the two deeper lines of players tended to have a short distance between them, sort of like two banks of 4 and 3. As with every Mourinho side, his Porto frequently adapted to the opposition. It was common to see differences between pressure zones, distances between sectors, even slight differences in player roles and movements from match to match, especially in Europe. Let’s not forget Mou was one of the first to analyse opposition in depth and adapt his findings to his game plan. A true mastermind tactician in a every sense of the word. The Special One.