Struggling to break down opponents who defend with deep, packed defence

[Daverea]

Hi all, here's my main tactic http://prntscr.com/ud5gu

I'm really struggling to break through against teams defending as mentioned. During the game I sped things up a little, played wider in an attempt to stretch them out a bit more, but to no avail (I tend to alter instructions instead of using shouts at the moment because I'm having generally better results that way).

What changes would you make in this situation? How would you overcome the seriously packed defense?

[difran8]

The way you describe it you would certainly benefit from a higher creative freedom setting

[lucatonix]

Perhaps make your full backs more attacking so they make overlapping runs. Maybe make atleast one of your wingers a support duty. This should give you a bit more depth in your attacks. You might benefit from reducing the mentality from control to standard, if your players are situated too close to the opposition backline, thus not giving you space to play in.

[Daverea]

Thanks guys, such obvious answers to my problem! I really should be able to get there myself by now.

[crewe_york]

As lucatonix said, dropping the mentality or using the drop deeper shout should cause the opposition to step out to close the ball down higher up the pitch. Especially using a Deep lying forward and poacher combination, creating that space for the DLF to drop into and draw out defenders to create space for the poacher to run into is key. Additionally in those games where the opposition aren't threatening you're midfield to much on the counter, maybe setting one of your midfielders to make more forward runs aswell will create confusion in the opposition defence as who to mark, potentially creating space in and around the box.