Tactics that shouldn't work...?

[LCFCEaves31]

Hi guys. 

A friend of mine who has been playing a Crewe Alexandra save, now into 4th season I believe sent me a message last night of how he has just won 6 games on the bounce in the Championship and is top of the league! "Well done" I said, how are you managing it though? I got promoted with Cambridge into the championship and although i appear to be fighting off any ideas of a relegation battle, my players are well short of performing any miracles and battling in the top half, let alone top 6.

"Send me a picture of your tactics". So he did... what I saw, made absolutely no sense to me and I cannot see how it wins so many games, but it is working. I asked if he had downloaded one of these supposed 'Super Tactics' and he said no, just tweaked it as the season has gone on and just keeps winning. I asked him if I could post it on here, just out of interest really and see what you guys make of it and advise perhaps why he is having so success with it. All for a bit of fun and curiosity, nothing else.

So here it is:

             AF(a) AF(a)     
                  AP(s)
     AP(s) BWM(D) AP(s)
WB(Au) CD(d) CD(d) WB(Au)

                    G (d)

That's the formation and roles

Mentality - Attacking
Team Shape - Flexible
Team Instructions (5) - More Direct Passing, Fairly Narrow, Exploit the Middle, Look For Overlap, Work Ball Into Box

I don't think I am missing anything else, he doesn't have any PI's... For me, as a novice, the three big things that stand out straight away are... 3 AP's! Both Attackers are advanced forwards on attack, and defensive cover... BWM on D is having found good on his own, but not tried it too often, I am bit old school and stick to CM(d). 

Would be interesting to see what you all think, he is also interested to know what an FM community has to say, as he has never been to forums etc.

Cheers

[westy8chimp]

It's not that crazy... think of the playmakers... what would be the difference if the 2 in CM were CM support and the AM was AM support instead of AP? The BWM on defend is playing less risk so would still look for a shorter easier pass to one of the other CMs ... so both being AP doesn't change that. The TI is more direct passing... which is what APs do anyway in a sense and the team mentality is attacking (so added risk, which APs do anyway).

Wb will be providing attacking width

TI for narrow and work into box will reduce some of that attacking mentality.

Both advanced forwards will be running the channels wide and vertical... so no different really to 2 CFs. Dont need a DLF or CF as the playmakers behind will be reasonably static and draw some defenders out.

it's by no means a great tactic ... looks weak defensively and a bit predictable in attack... but it's not crazy.

if I redraw an alternative of creating the same effect, you will see what I mean;

Mentality attacking, Flexible

TI more direct passing, Narrow, work ball into box (exploit middle is unnecessary as it is a narrow tactic, with narrow width as well/overlap unnecessary as WBs on attack duty and no one to overlap)

                   CF a        AF a

                           AM s

             CM s    BWM d  CM s

     WB a    CB d     CB d      WBa

 

I think this is in effect what your friend has. It would then be castly different if some of the roles were changed to introduce 1 or 2 playmakers in different zones... or a DLF upfront and a runner from midfield. It would make the tactic better through variance...

 

 

[LCFCEaves31]

6 hours ago, westy8chimp said:

It's not that crazy... think of the playmakers... what would be the difference if the 2 in CM were CM support and the AM was AM support instead of AP? The BWM on defend is playing less risk so would still look for a shorter easier pass to one of the other CMs ... so both being AP doesn't change that. The TI is more direct passing... which is what APs do anyway in a sense and the team mentality is attacking (so added risk, which APs do anyway).

Wb will be providing attacking width

TI for narrow and work into box will reduce some of that attacking mentality.

Both advanced forwards will be running the channels wide and vertical... so no different really to 2 CFs. Dont need a DLF or CF as the playmakers behind will be reasonably static and draw some defenders out.

it's by no means a great tactic ... looks weak defensively and a bit predictable in attack... but it's not crazy.

if I redraw an alternative of creating the same effect, you will see what I mean;

Mentality attacking, Flexible

TI more direct passing, Narrow, work ball into box (exploit middle is unnecessary as it is a narrow tactic, with narrow width as well/overlap unnecessary as WBs on attack duty and no one to overlap)

                   CF a        AF a

                           AM s

             CM s    BWM d  CM s

     WB a    CB d     CB d      WBa

 

I think this is in effect what your friend has. It would then be castly different if some of the roles were changed to introduce 1 or 2 playmakers in different zones... or a DLF upfront and a runner from midfield. It would make the tactic better through variance...

 

 

Good reply... proves I still have a lot to learn!!!

[looping]

The tactic overloads central areas, which is good in fm. In line with that, exploit the middle makes sense.

Then has 2 wb providing width, which is also good. The look for overlap shout is completely off: there is nobody holding the ball and waiting for an overlap. Play narrower sounds weird, but perhaps is allowing more space to wb down the flanks.

On the other hand, this tactic is weak defensively down the flanks, I see bwm running like chicken without head trying to cover all space. To some extent APs may help with that.

Two AF is totally wrong, but in the first matches, probably opposition is overatacking and leaving huge spaces behind which are exploited by AF marking forward runs. More direct passing sounds at least logical (already on attacking mentality, probably unnecessary) but then he works the ball into box, which makes no sense.

In my humble opinion, he is winning despite his tactic.

 

 

[westy8chimp]

12 hours ago, LCFCEaves31 said:

Good reply... proves I still have a lot to learn!!!

Your friend is flawed in his thinking (unless he has some wacky explanation) but he's so far off it's come full circle to a fairly normal (slightly imbalanced) tactic.

What you could learn from it is what a playmaker is really for.

Primarily, they attract the ball ...and whether it's short or direct...they should be the main dictator of tempo.

So, hypothetically, if you have 11 playmakers it's no different to having 0 playmakers. And as I explained from your friends tactic... having 3 playmakers in that situation is pretty much the same as having none (due to the other players lower mentality)

My favourite use of playmakers is to have 2 ..one in the back 5/6 (depending on formation) and one in the front 4/5. This allows you to construct the different transition phases.

Let's say you have 4141 (pretty much a 5/5 split defence unit and attack unit)... and you only have one playmaker and he is in the central midfield. He will attract the ball, so when you win possession in defence, they will be more inclined to search him out, bypassing TI for shorter passing...and bypassing your DM. It's riskier and may not give time for your attacking phase to setup properly.

If you make the DM a deep lying playmaker... you allow the defensive phase to pass out shorter ... and then the DLP can search for the midfield playmaker while runners make their moves and strikers get in position... in theory your AP then has his direct risky options available ... or the short pass back to DM/full backs.

[summatsupeer]

Remember the type of player you use will affect how a role plays, so even though he has 3 AP, I doubt it would work if they were Ozil, Mata and Hazard.  But if they are more rounded players, Drinkwater, Herrera, Ramsey etc who can do a job defensively whilst having good attributes in the key requirements then it can still work.

I would expect his results to start to drop off though since he's over-achieving so teams will adjust how risky they play, reducing the space those AF have to run into.

[Armistice]

4 minutes ago, summatsupeer said:

Remember the type of player you use will affect how a role plays, so even though he has 3 AP, I doubt it would work if they were Ozil, Mata and Hazard.  But if they are more rounded players, Drinkwater, Herrera, Ramsey etc who can do a job defensively whilst having good attributes in the key requirements then it can still work.

I would expect his results to start to drop off though since he's over-achieving so teams will adjust how risky they play, reducing the space those AF have to run into.

Agreed but I doubt he has quality players in a newly promoted Championship side, unless he managed to pull off some coups. As westy said, having three APs will probably have less impact than some generic roles + playmaker, but I think the fact that they have the same duty and are employed in almost the same area of the pitch can lead to congestion. Playing narrower + direct passing have almost a neutral effect on width, but it baffles me that his strikers are not usually isolated from the midfield (or they probably are). 

[westy8chimp]

2 minutes ago, nightwalker22 said:

Agreed but I doubt he has quality players in a newly promoted Championship side, unless he managed to pull off some coups. As westy said, having three APs will probably have less impact than some generic roles + playmaker, but I think the fact that they have the same duty and are employed in almost the same area of the pitch can lead to congestion. Playing narrower + direct passing have almost a neutral effect on width, but it baffles me that his strikers are not usually isolated from the midfield (or they probably are). 

yes being a newly promoted side he probably faces sides playing reasonably aggressively... so that 'isolation' will work in their favour in tandem with direct passing.

[Armistice]

8 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

yes being a newly promoted side he probably faces sides playing reasonably aggressively... so that 'isolation' will work in their favour in tandem with direct passing.

He's also playing Attacking which means he's aggressive too so he should be found at the back quite often.

[summatsupeer]

26 minutes ago, nightwalker22 said:

Agreed but I doubt he has quality players in a newly promoted Championship side, unless he managed to pull off some coups.

I was just using examples people will of likely heard of to show the difference in attribute balance.  The same principle can be applied with players of any level.

[Armistice]

3 minutes ago, summatsupeer said:

I was just using examples people will of likely heard of to show the difference in attribute balance.  The same principle can be applied with players of any level.

Yeah I get what you were saying but my point was that it is quite hard to find these type of players in lower leagues, especially for a newly promoted. I might be wrong.

[enigmatic]

Difficult to tell whether the tactic "works" or not from six games in a division, particularly not if you don't know what the scorelines are and whether his team's being carried by a couple of pacy or skilful forwards who were far too good for League One. It's a very aggressive formation which should be vulnerable to good wing play, especially a wide 433 (4-1-2-3) which it may not have faced yet.

I have played 3 playmakers before (FM16 - basically I wanted my central midfielders to hog the ball and pass to each other until an opportunity presented itself, and refrain from shooting), but here the 3 playmakers seem to mainly be cancelling out the effect of more direct passing by encouraging the defenders to pass to them if there aren't better options further forward.

[ajsr1982]

Three midfielders moving towards the ball (or two, if one of them is in possession), two forwards and WBs moving away from/onto the ball. It offers a decent number of options in possession, if the space is there to exploit. The last part of that is the real kicker.

I have no way of knowing the answer, but I suspect this could work despite having apparently conflicting instructions, and it might well depend on the decision making hierarchy.

For example, we know that playmakers attract the ball, but they're also there to create, and this tactic is basically tuned up to the max to play long balls over the top. What's the balance between looking for the APs and looking for the AFs? What wins over? Does it effectively reduce the APs to regular CMs?

What about 'Look For Overlap?' This tells forwards and midfielders to delay playing the ball to attempt to bring the WBs into play, and can slow down the tempo, but the tactic tells players to be direct? What wins out there? Do you end up with a nice balance of both?

Same goes for the WBs. With the team mentality set to attack, they should be focused on getting to the byline and providing crosses, but Work Ball Into Box and the presence of 3APs instructs them to recycle the ball into midfield.

[Mr U Rosler]

The formation is solid but the roles are likely sub-optimal.

I use a similar set up albeit with the centre of the midfield 3 in the DM spot giving us a classic diamond and different roles.

Attacking wise a front 3 like this will tend to generate a lot of shots although a lot of them will be 'straight on', when your strikers are 'on' and finding the corners it can be very high scoring but on off days you'll see them hitting shots straight at the Keeper. 

Defensively he has the centre of the pitch sewn up, that AMC on support will drop in with other 3 and form a near impenetrable barrier, any team trying to play through that will get chewed up. Conversely AI formations 'double teaming' the flanks (442, 4231, 4411 etc) has the potential to cause a lot of problems.

It would be more than capable of stringing good results together especially if either of the Strikers are running hot, don't worry, sooner or later he's gonna run into trouble.... like we all do!

Player quality is key of course.

 

[LCFCEaves31]

Thanks for all your comments guys! I will be trying to dissect all of this and feeding back to my mate next week, but I have also learnt quite a bit... cheers