Defending as a team

[wazza]

If you wish to defend as a team - in other words your AML and AMR along with other attacking players to track back and get behind the ball to defend but also wanted to play an attacking game what settings would you use for mentality, team shape and the attacking players duties

[harryleechinyeow]

Good place to start would be placing ur players in a more defensive position rather than pushing them higher up. Eg: use ML and MR rather than AML and AMR.

Remember, the formation u set in the tactic screen is ur DEFENSIVE FORMATION. It is where ur players will be/fall back to when the team dont hv possession of the ball. So, if u put ur players in the AML or AMR position, that will be their defensive position. Of course, setting them on Support duty will get them to help out, defensively, but they will still start higher up.

[wazza]

10 hours ago, harryleechinyeow said:

Good place to start would be placing ur players in a more defensive position rather than pushing them higher up. Eg: use ML and MR rather than AML and AMR.

Remember, the formation u set in the tactic screen is ur DEFENSIVE FORMATION. It is where ur players will be/fall back to when the team dont hv possession of the ball. So, if u put ur players in the AML or AMR position, that will be their defensive position. Of course, setting them on Support duty will get them to help out, defensively, but they will still start higher up.

Thats ok if your AML and AMR as accomplished at starting in ML/MR positions - mine are not at the moment even though I am training them to be

[StinkFist]

Just play them in the position you want...an amr playing mr will still perform, plus they will learn the position quicker. Pretty sure its just the decisions attribute takes a small hit. As long as the attributes are there for the position you will be fine. Cleon did a piece about converting a left back to a deep lying forward that may help explain things better.

[herne79]

3 minutes ago, wazza said:

Thats ok if your AML and AMR as accomplished at starting in ML/MR positions - mine are not at the moment even though I am training them to be

If a player has the attributes for the role you want him to play, there's no need to be overly concerned with position familiarity.

In terms of your OP, getting AML/R players to track back will be influenced by different factors such as mentality, duty, and attributes.

So for example, using the Attacking mentality with an IF (attack) and a player with low Work Rate probably won't track back too much.  Now change one, two or all three of those settings and the amount of tracking back will increase.  Of course using ML/R instead of AML/R can help, but not everyone wants to do that so your tactical settings and the players involved become more important for players tracking back.

Now if you also want to play an attacking game, there are many different ways of doing that.  You can use the Defensive mentality and still be attacking (for example).  Start with the stickied guides at the top of the forum, especially Cleon's articles that use the Defensive mentality as the basis of attacking play, and his article on using the attacking mentality.