FM 2013 13.3.3 tactical talk

[11v11]

it has been painful but like everything difficult, when championed, the feeling is immense. I kept on repeating my games until I've got to understand a little bit of the match engine. 2 seasons champion as Manchester united with a scrappy shamelessly ultra defensive win in the champions league against real Madrid. the interesting bit is my 3rd season, 3rd match, playing at home against spurs, at old Trafford spurs in attacking mode! for 15 minutes I was pegged within my own half, how embarrassing.

i realize they are on full closing down and have pushed up their defensive line against my quick attackers with success, shockingly. analysis. they closed down/press successfully so well into my defenders because i have a DM as deep laying playmaker. huddlestone. upon doing this, he had no space to operate and my plot completely fails pinning a system on him to transform defend to attack. i reset him as DM only and suddenly i began opening play but still pegged by high defensive line. why were their defensive line successful i thought against my quick strikers, rooney and 15+ paced inside forwards and winger such as nani(winger), and a maturing Bernard(IF). apparently the opposition took advantage of my setup, with one winged inside forwards and winger assisted by a deep laying forward(DLF) my front was too deep and gave their defenders space to hold possession. they were playing so wide with nice one touches, closing them down would only deform my 4-1-2-2-1. i switched to trequesta and their defensive line suddenly dropped. spurs was on a 4-2-3-1, to turn the match i placed huddlestone on a hole, between spurs two MC. i have 3 MC's now, my other two MC kept their MC's busy creating space for huddlestone as my two MC press forwards running closer towards my FC in support, occasionally making dangerous overlaps into the box and scoring. this also forces their MC's to run backwards.

it was rather surprising to see our successful tactic being destroyed even with our strong team but i think it is important to think through it. for the first 15 minutes it looked as if my team had no hope after winning against spurs almost all the time. 15 minutes in, they had 5 shots off target to our two with more than 56% possession. at old trafford, they came and attacked us, the audacity i thought. they even had a picnic in our penalty area. at first it was frustrating to see them play so well having confidence approaching the match. but after observing what was going on, we came out winning 3-0 and they had no shots on target. nani bagged two goals, apparently he is completely useless if setup as a supportive winger. on attack, he penetrates closer towards the goal and make closer shots to goal instead of wasting chances outside the box. rooney scored one with some brilliant passes with my MC's charging from deep.

my team plays FB on support, one defender as cover and other as defend, one DM as DLP if there is space(i put huddlestone as MC at times if there is space while the two other MC's keep the opposition MC's busy, for improved passing), two MC's who are set as CM on attack to get them to perform more like AMC's, kagawa and wilshere. they are my key scoring plan. occasionally when my DM is not performing, one of my MC's would be set as advance playmaker. at the moment it is kagawa as wilshere has not quite blended in. two wingers on support, left is a IF, right is a winger although my backup player is a right IF( originally prefer having two IF but cant afford yet) and one DLF. the idea is to get the MC's to go forward with the support of the wide creative wingers. i play this way, in the process making my life difficult, because i stubbornly refuse to play an aerial forward, philosophically adapting quick fast dribblers for a technically devastating attack and in successfully doing so have made FM such a joy.

quite interesting how i got wilshere at £19.5M. i offered £40M and got it turned down. this made wilshere unhappy and wanted to be listed. one of the main reason why i have my MC's on such an attacking setup is because with out an aerial forward a weaker team will simply play very defensively and crowd out my quicker striker. so overloading that area becomes a must. i think i'd like to try and get huddlestone to make runs into the box to score on a headers.