Riven

I'm happy with my West Ham team (second season), the first season we qualify for Europa League because we was very strong defensively, barely conceding goals (2nd best defence in the league). The point is that the board ask me to play offensive football, and with the new signings, I think we can achieve that. We are playing like this: But we are not scoring just enough, we create few chances and still score a low rate of them. I tried dropping the defence, played the DLF in support and the IF in attack and then changed the role of Mezzalla to support, I tried with a CM(A) for more direct box attacking... but nothing seems to work to create very much chances. I don't care if I concede more goals, just want to play offensively and I think im not doing that well. I tried to counterpress sometimes but nothing, its all the same, we are sterile offensively. I wanted to ask this here because in all my saves in FM i always become strong defensively but very very very poor in goalscoring. Maybe its the formation? What do you recommend?

Can lower tempo + max pressure & d-line help to unlock defences?

Im going to start a new save - sure you guys know the difficult to find 'that' team to really have fun and pass through this hard days. So im thinking developing a style of football particulary, and it will be a 'possession + verticality' system. I already tried in Marseille and it was fun but i want some new challenges, maybe in another league. What teams can you recommend for this style? I don't want a top team, just an average or good one like Marseille.

Nothing. Not capable of opening those very-low blocks.

Hi all, first of all i want to clarify that english is not my native lenguage so i will try my best! Im starting third season with Marseille and I have some doubts cause I struggled a little bit in the first two seasons, mainly against teams that park the bus. I won some of that matches through screamers or set pieces, but I didn’t see too many highlights and I think I have a really good team right now. So I read some great guides here in the forums and I tried to apply them in a new system that make us really strong and challenge for trophies. I put myself a few rules to follow as I think we need ideas to develop a balanced & nice playing tactic. When we have the ball, I want to play a ‘positive’ football that combines possession (mainly in defence to lures the opposition) with verticality, as I don’t want the players keep moving the ball around and around like in a tiki taka system. I want aggressiveness when we have it. Without the ball I want to press in the final third, simply because it suits the style I want to play. Also I have one of the fastest defences in the league so I think it will be ok. As I said, I want verticality if we have the chance so if we make Counter-Press maybe it will be better, but the downside of my talented players is that we don’t have as many work-rate that id like them to have, so I don’t think we are going to reach that level of aggressiveness without the ball right now. Maybe signing a player with more spirit of sacrifice will encourage them to do it. I have young players that are really talented like Matías Zaracho and Thiago Almada in the final third, so I want to allow them some freedom in that area of the pitch. That’s it, don’t want to overcomplicate things as I didn’t play the game for many years and I can consider myself a brand new player. Saying that, I have three options to work with: A typical 4-3-3: A 4-2-3-1: And a counter-attacking 4-1-4-1: First and second ones suits the style im trying to implement, and the third one will be used for hard away matches where we are inferior (thinking of PSG and some european matches). Is this a good starting point? Would you make any changes?

Some teams like City are playing with two free 8/10 in the half spaces... so my question is, how can we reflect this in FM? Maybe two Mezzalas? Thinking in a 4-3-3 (or 4-1-4-1).