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4-2-3-1 Second Season Struggles


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I started my FM14 save as I always do, with Arsenal. The obvious tactic was a 4-5-1 variation of some sort, I had a lot of success with the Asymmetric tactic in FM13 but opted with 4-2-3-1 as many other have as well. I wanted to base the tactic around holding possession through patient build up and after much to-ing and fro-ing over the first season I finally achieved the tactic I was aiming for. The second half of the season went very well and I managed to pip Spurs to 2nd on goal difference with Man United being the winners by 5 points but I crashed out of all cups early on often to much weaker opposition. All in all it was a reasonable first season and towards the end I was happy with my tactics.

Here is the tactic -

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I also vary the tactic depending on opposition into control and counter -

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Now my problem is this second season I have been leaking goals, especially late on (even though fresh legs are on, normally in midfield) and have been especially bad away from home. I'm also finding that despite all of my possession, I don't create a great number of CCC's could this be something to do with player roles and movement or is it that my team has possession too high up the pitch and players aren't getting in behind the defence?

These are my league results so far this season -

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They aren't all that bad but I will likely be out of the Champion's League if I can't win my next 3 games as I have a pathetic 2 points in a group that has Steaua Bucharest, AC Milan and Dynamo Kyiv.

I'm not too good at reading the analysis screen so I'm not going to post pictures of those unless requested, not sure which ones will be useful.

So hopefully someone out there can pick some holes in my defense and my away set up!

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I'm having similar trouble, the tactic that got my Villa side to easy safety last season isn't producing anything at all this season with 6 points from 9! I don't create more than a couple of CCCs a match though, which is I guess the problem :/ last season I was creating plenty, even in games I lost. Very frustrating!

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not playing fm14 yet but from what I've read about 4-2-3-1 and applied successfully on my fm2013 game, do you have high closing down on your more attacking 4-2-3-1? it is designed around it, high closing down and fast pace attacking. nick the ball from the opposition and attack immediately rather than intermediately. 2nd more defensive version would be 4-2-3-1 deep, direct passing, counter attack, winger role instead of inside forward and attacking mid field instead of playmaker, full-backs all the way up. asymmetrical setup only if you know the opposition has one side of their tactic weaker than the other.....this is all Jurgen Klopps game on 4-2-3-1, he has three variations just like how SI has adapted this approach advice on 3 sets of tactics as mainstream per team

http://www.thehardtackle.com/2011/tactical-titan-deconstructing-the-kinetics-of-kloppmetry/

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Had the same thing happen to me. Switched to 4-1-2-2-1 with Fulham halfway through the first season and was working really well - beat City, Liverpool, Spurs & Arsenal at home. Now in the second season I've only won one of my first 8 games, struggle to create anything and generally have a ridiculously low amount of possession (just scraped 39% of possession at home to newly promoted Blackburn)

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I'm now mid way into my third season 9 point behind the leaders in a table that has Stoke 1st and Newcastle 2nd? Beats me. Anyway, I am still struggling with my tactics. Here are the 3 tactics I currently toy with.

http://imageshack.us/f/22/i0x1.png/

http://imageshack.us/f/707/nvtw.png/

http://imageshack.us/f/716/36kw.png/

The top one is my more attacking home option and the other two are the more reserved, big game/away game options. None of which are particularly successful and I still struggle for goals/possession, even against newly promoted sides such as Sheffield Wednesday whom I drew 0-0 with away recently. Of the 35 games I have played this season in all comps, I've lost 8 and drawn 7.

I've changed my strikers role to Deep Lying Forward with a view of bringing him into the play more as opposed to Target man or Advanced Forward I've used before. It seems to have worked and ratings have improved, but goal return and assists have not. I've also messed around with the CM's roles a bit but the only change I noticed was having Lucas Romero as B2B he grabbed more goals than usual but obviously tired a lot faster (stamina 19?) leading to him being subbed.

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Over the last couple of days I have been keeping a close eye on Llama3's Pairs & Combinations guides, which has been truly fantastic to read. I have now tweaked my tactics slightly with great results.

I have removed retain possession, replaced it with pass into space. Added the offside trap to my control tactic. Switched Ozil from Advanced playmaker - Attack to Advanced Playmaker - Support and changed my striker from Deep lying forward to Advanced forward.

Here is a shot of the first game I played using this system.

http://imageshack.com/a/img194/4787/31yu.png

The difference from my previous tactic being the higher number of CCC's which I believe is a combination of more runs from the advanced Lewandowski, the pass into space shout and Ozil looking for a pass rather than running with the ball due the the change in duty. There were also a much lower number of fouls for some reason.

This was however against a struggling Forest side currently 19th in the league. So I will test it a bit more and update what results I get.

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Do CCCs even mean anything?

I generally find it better to look at the shots on goal/shots on target/goals ratios to one another, it gives a better idea of the quality of chances (I find), especially in combination with looking at where the shots are from on the analysis. If they're shooting from angles that they shouldn't be, it implies they lack support, they have the wrong tactical instructions, or are an idiot and should be sold to Leyton Orient.

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I believe they do.

My previous tactics have certainly not lacked in shots or shots on target, nor have they been a long way from goal but I would struggle to score against poor teams/keepers. I would put this down to players not really having enough time to steady themselves for the shot, but should a player like Lewandowski need that CCC? I don't think so, but using my old tactics which produced 2 CCC's a game if I was lucky, he had scored just 8 goals in 19 appearances.

With this current combination which has provided 4 and 3 CCC's in the 2 games I have used it in, Lewandowski has scored 4 goals and the team has scored 8.

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My 3rd season went horribly wrong towards the end and I finished 4th after around 3 wins in last 12 games and a lot of draws. I'm not in the Champions League due to England only being allocated 3 places for some reason so that caused a lot of problems within the squad with some key individuals. Namely Ozil, Lewandowski, Szczesny and Alvarez Balanta. I managed to come through the other side of those issues and get morale back up in time for the first game of the season. Below is a ss of my results so far.

zp3z.png

After the Sevilla game I switched to very fluid after another read through of wwfan's guide and as you can see the results went brilliantly, not dropping any points until the end of september. Also surprisingly Vitinho is my top goalscorer this season with 15 goals in 20 games so far. Before the season I was considering him as back up to Bakkali, but an injury to the Ox forced me to play him on the right.

Then came what will be my hardest run of the season. I expected to drop points here but not as many as I did all by tight margins.

Below is the tactic I've used all season so far.

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For the Chelsea, Spurs and City games I decided to drop my CM's to DM for a bit of solidity but I'm not sure it helped, in the United game as I was at home and as the DM experiment hadn't worked, I reverted back to 2 CM's which obviously didn't work either. The most frustrating thing about those 4 games being that all the goals conceded were really, really crap. Deflections, from set pieces or rebounds. Every single one. Obviously I wasn't able to break these team down enough either.

Does anyone have advice as to what to do for the tough games in a 4231 formation aside from the DM change (or maybe coupled with it)?

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My understanding of pass into space is that it instructs the team to attempt more through balls than usual. Shorter passing is just that, don't hoof the ball keep it neat and tidy. I've created a lot more chances since introducing pass into space.

Retain possession and pass into space would be a conflicting ideology I believe as one says to keep the ball at almost all cost, the other says risk possession by playing a hopeful pass.

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