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[FM11] 4-2-4 Wide - The Only Way To Play


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Howdy,

What everyone has been missing over these last few years is a bit of nostalgia. Some of the more veteran members of the forum may remember my name, most of you won't.

Back when Football Manager was more about managing a football team and less about social media and continual press conferences and the match engine nearly worked I had a series of ambitious saves. [FM10] The Rise Of A College Team - Team Bury FC, the legendary [FM11] The Ice Cream Dream, The Rise Of Icelandic FootballI'm Just Flamers From The Bloc.and Pastries, Bacon and Butter. What more could a man want?.

Recently I had the urge to sadistically trudge through the management of a cold remote Icelandic club again so I fired FM11 back up to see what I could do. If you use your GoogleFu you will struggle to find many pointers to what works back in the older versions of the game. Luckily I am here to save you.

The concept of this tactic when it was first born was simple. Score more goals than they do. If you have ever tried managing in the Icelandic second division you will quickly learn that defending isn;t a thing that your players can do. Therefore the best way to win is scoring a bigger number of goals than they do.

So now to the meat and potatoes of this post. The tactic.

Upper League Tactic - 2021

Formation

The top part is the current iteration of the tactic which works with a higher level team and is not suitable for lower division side (think English conference level), the second part is a tactic for those lower league sides.

The formation is pretty self explanatory, 4 defenders, 2 midfielders, 2 attacking midfielders and 2 strikers. Looking something a little like this:

OZZ9xJg.png

Player Instructions

Unlike some of the newer versions of FM that image doesn't provide with all the details. So heres a breakdown of roles starting from the bottom (click to see Specific Instructions):

GK - Goalkeeper - Defend

DL - Full Back - Automatic

DCL - Central Defender - Defend

DCR - Central Defender - Defend

DR - Full Back - Automatic

MCL - Advanced Playmaker - Support

MCR - Ball Winning Midfielder - Defend

AML - Winger - Attack

AMR - Winger - Attack

STL - Target Man - Support

STR - Poacher - Attack

Team Instructions

Now you have a pretty decent idea of the players and how they play we can move onto the team as a whole. This is a bit of an interesting one as this tactic is about the goals and the first thing you will notice is I use "Counter" as the mentality this is mainly to guard against complacency, if you are playing in a lesser known nation you can end of as a very big club for your nation very quickly. It also helps when you are playing against bigger teams as it allows you to launch breaks quickly.

4YaKMIv.png

What we are looking to achieve is wide football with plenty of crosses for your strikers to get on the end of, simple law of averages. Cross the ball enough and you will score.

You can find attached the download to the tactic, if for whatever reason it ever goes missing you can also download it here as well.

Results

All of the above is just words and pictures without some proof, I have no interest in showing you what this looks like when I take Man Utd to a Premier League title in the first season because let's be honest we should all be able to do that. What I can show you is this tactic beating Premier league teams with an Icelandic team, going 48 games unbeaten in the league, winning every game in a season. Previous iterations have won back to back promotions, the treble has been done before, we have been league champions for 8 seasons now.

Historic Premier League Winners

2011 - Second Division

2012 - Second Division

2013 - First Division

2014 - Premier League

2015 - Premier League

2016 - Premier League

2017 - Premier League

2018 - Premier League

2019 - Premier League

2020 - Premier League

2021 - Premier League

2022 - Premier League

2020 - Champions League

2021 - Champions League

2022 - Champions League

Lower League Tactic - 2014

This part is focused on the earlier version that is more for the lower leagues where players have less creativity and capability, it's expected you will generally have a much worse team and lower reputation to go with it.

Formation

LLrvOpx.png

Once again, the same formation, the only difference is with the central midfield players, the rest of the roles stay the same

Player Instructions

MCL - Deep Lying Playmaker - Support

MCR - Ball Winning Midfielder - Support

 

There you have it a fairly comprehensive post around scoring a shed load of goals and conceding several on the way. I would be interested if anyone can recreate this in a newer version and see how much the match engine has changed. If you have any questions please post them and I'll do my best to answer them.

If you're curious how many hours I've spent in FM11, as of writing this post 1023 hours.

4-2-2-2 2021 attack (Magni, Mar 2021).tac

4-2-2-2 2014 attack (Magni, Nov 2018).tac

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