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FM YouTube channel ⚽️ https://youtu.be/LQjIlI3NWEE CHECK IT OUT! Join the Banter and the journey! Would love to see you there !!!! Nostalgic FM talk, career saves and journies up the leagues. Current save with Portsmouth as we await FM 19 - SOOO EXCITED! SUBSCRIBE IF YOU ENJOY! https://youtu.be/LQjIlI3NWEE

So I just won the Premier league with Palace in my first season playing counter attack. This was really weird, because the worst team i'd ever won the league with in my first season in older versions of the game was Southampton, so i think it's safe to safe that whatever has happened here has pretty much matched up with the demands of playing counter attack within the game. But the question is why ? My aim was to recreate Blackburn 1995, have a flat back 4, with two deep midfielders, and then rely upon getting the ball forward very quickly to the front 4, with the wingers putting in crosses to the front two, as Ripley and Wilcox did for Shearer and Sutton. I also wanted some aggression in the tackle, ala Colin Hendry and David Batty and Tim Sherwood. I've done a lot of analysis of the tactic now, i believe one of the foundations of the victory was the determination we scored SO many goals in the 75th + minute - if you see from the mental characteristics of the players (see image), their determination is off the charts. We also won a lot of tackles, and watching the games the amount of sliding tackles going on was ridiculous. I think determination seems to marry well with the counter attacking mentality, as well as the high team work, work rate, bravery, aggression, and the high pace and acceleration of our wide players and strikers. See the YouTube video to accompany the tactic I've attached most of the necessary screenshots. You can download the tactic from the steam workshop http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1209247153. It's also available from mediafire http://www.mediafire.com/file/czsw83zxevde2t0/palace10-1nice.fmf You also need the overload version of the tactic which i use when chasing a game, e.g. 1 or 2 nil down, or drawing 0-0 at 60 minutes. Available from http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1209309704. Also available from mediafire http://www.mediafire.com/file/hv19q2rd88u16p7/rescuetacticpalace.fmf The rescue tactic was quite important in the victory, we won a lot of points from coming back from behind or turning 0-0's into wins. Second season, I've just come back from behind twice to beat Man City 5-2. I assume part of the reason for this was the determination though, as well as the stamina, we were often far more fit than our opponents. I think having strong dynamics was also really important, and i focussed upon this straight from day one in training (see season two early season training schedules). Although we're so good second season i rarely use it. Just beat OG Nice 10-1. I'll be really interested to know how anyone else gets on testing the tactic, or tweaking it to the demands of their teams. I'm going to test it with a completely different club now and see how it goes. Maybe with out the determined players, and the aggression and pace it might not work so well ? I also made a blog post to give a little more info about it, cos i think it's a really exciting tactic https://footballmanager2017dotblog.wordpress.com/2017/11/24/the-classic-english-442-counter-attack/ You can see that it's essentially a structured tactic (which should marry well with less expressive and playing offside). It's a very quick tempo which obviously marries well with width, exploiting flanks and mixed passing. I didn't find pass into space provided any benefit though weirdly, but maybe at a club with better passers it might ? As i said we were very aggressive in the tackle, and OI's were set to the AM, but i set every position to Hard Tackling also. Obviously we used Run At Defence, although no overlapping used, as the wingers are set to attack functions.