Getting it horribly wrong

[Old No7]

So 3.5 seasons into my non league save & having got my lower mid table side performing more consistently & into the playoff positions I was offered the chance to jump up 2 divisions & get York out of the relegation zone, being just 4 points from safety with a hefty budget for the division & the best average attendance I thought this offered a great long term chance to prosper. I inherited an incredibly bloated squad clearly geared up for playing 5 at the back, we have more CB's than you could ever need & at least 6 wing back options. We then have a lack of central midfielders & decent striking options but 4 viable AMC's. No problem I thought, survive the season & a bit of a clear out with loads of expiring contracts.

I haven't played much with 5 at the back before & the one save I attempted was mixed at best (started well, collapsed horribly). This attempt has been even worse, relegation & the sack are now almost inevitable. I did want to try & save the situation myself so avoided posting earlier, so this isn't a plea to save my season, it's too late for that, more trying to build an understanding of where I've got it so wrong.

With the squad I had my initial thoughts a 5-2-2-1, trying to control possession, having players in that shape just sort of struck me as a possession tactic. I think I started with the wingbacks in the defensive strata but slowly tweaked to this. We defended wider because we were conceding to crosses, I had initially tried to focus play through the middle & look for the overlap. Just 1 draw & 4 defeats led me here and a decent cup win made me think I could be onto something, but subsequent league results suggested otherwise.

So being a not very good conference side I decided trying to control the game might not be the smartest thinking and tried to come up with something more counter attacking, I dropped one of the AMC's & brought in a DM, so we were now playing a diamond in the middle & some joy, an actual league win! (I don't have a screenshot of the full set up but it's very similar to the roles & TI's i'll come onto in my third version). Having won this match we then drew our next league game 1-1 having lead & then beat opposition 2 tiers below in a replay having suffered a goalless draw at home. We then got hammered 3-0 away at promotion chasing Yeovil & then lost 1-0 at home to the team immediately above us in the league.

So I concluded that we simply weren't scoring the required number of goals & 3-0 beating aside seemed to be not terrible at the back. So that lead me to version 3, remove the DM & stick another striker up top

So in both this & the diamond version above we are trying to be a more a direct counter attacking side, The TI's had served me well in a 4-4-2 at my previous club & I thought they might translate style wise, we were using a lower line of engagement too but I felt in this shape we were inviting too much pressure so I've dropped that. The results? A 1-0 away defeat to mid tale side & a cup draw at home.

My results since taking over make grim reading, and we are now a whopping 14 points from safety

Defensively we've actually been ok, especially since dropping my idea of controlling possession, a 3-0 hammering aside we've conceded only 1 in almost every other game. Clearly the attack isn't functioning as I rarely score more than 1 either if we score at all.

So as I said to start, not a plea to save my season, it's gone. I'd just like to understand more how I've got it so wrong, I think I've tweaked my way further down the rabbit hole in attempts to get something functioning that it's become hard to analyse.

3 or 5 at the back does interest me, i've not had any joy with it though! 

[Experienced Defender]

My first question for you is - why did you decide to switch from possession-based to counter-attacking football? Do you have fast forward players who can potentially exploit space behind opposition defenses, or it was just because your possession tactic had failed?

Don't get me wrong, I personally prefer counter-attacking to possession football, so the question has nothing to do with my personal preferences. Just curious about your thought process.

[Old No7]

Hi,

Yeah the main reason was having drawn 2 & lost 5 of my opening league games in charge then things weren't working & as we were well into the season rather than continue to work at that I thought i'd switch up for a couple of reasons.

1.  We are in the relegation zone, teams are quite likely to come onto us & there shoud be counter attacking opportunities
2.  I'd had a little joy playing 5 at the back in a Leicester save in FM18, in that we were set up to be defensively sound & use Vardy on the break, can't remember exactly but I think I was mostly playing a 5-1-2-2 DM, in our second season we were top of the league at halfway before falling away badly.
3.  My squad is below average technically, certainly in passing, vision & team work. We are strong in terms of tackling, marking & heading though, so I thought we should be defensively able to cope, we are poor though on acceleration, pace & crossing. My best striker is a target man, so I thought we could use him as an outlet with 2 AMC's behind or later a poacher alongside & an AMC behind. That however is probably a bit top heavy for the defensive side of what we need to do.  
4.  In the job before York, with my local non-league side we had been performing quite well using a counter attacking 4-4-2 after transitioning from a 4-4-1-1 which you helped me with in this thread, so whilst the shape was obviously different i felt confident with the required styleso that was my thinking ad whilst we were losing it was only by the 1 goal usually so I thought with a bit of tweaking I could turn it round, I was wrong!

[pheelf]

I think you have fallen into the trap of trying to shoehorn an unbalanced squad into a formation rather than selecting a formation which suits the style of play you want and working from there. The likely reason why the team was struggling in the first place is that the squad is unbalanced, the solution is therefore to restore that balance.

The bread and butter of lower league football in England is the 4-4-2 formation. It seeks to exploit the wings and sacrifices control of the central midfield. This is a problem as you have chosen a shape which is weak to this approach.

Why do you need to play 3 at the back when the majority of the time they will only be facing at most 2 players?

In a scenario where the opposition fielded 3 ST or an AML-ST-AMR trio that would make sense otherwise, you are just sacrificing a player who could be utilized further up the pitch which could help your attacking play.

Another way in which it is weak is the flanks as you will find your wingbacks getting overloaded with a lot of 2 vs 1s.

If I were you I'd just go back to a flat back 4 and revert to the tactic which was serving you so well in your previous job. I see no reason why you discarded the 4-4-2 which was working and started to experiment with a new tactic when the situation is desperate and demands that you get points on the board.  

Is there no positional flexibility with the players which can play as wingbacks, central defenders and attacking midfielders? For e.g., if one of your WBL has decent crossing why not play him as an ML?

If not then you need to scour the free agent list and bring in some fullbacks, wingers and central midfielders to fill those gaps.

All the best

[Tom8983]

Honestly, just looking at your starting tactic I think I'd have changed two things. Give the RWB an attack duty, and change the striker to a DLF on support. Of course I'm not familiar with your players quality or strengths, but I'd consider those changes to bring about a more coherent tactic. The WB has a defensive-minded midfielder to cover him being more adventurous, so get him up the pitch to provide width and stretch the play a bit, giving an extra option to the AP. The DLF will drop a bit deeper, hopefully pulling defenders with him making room for your SS to run in to and exploit.

Similarly, with the tactic you seem to have ended up with if I read correctly, I'd change your LWB to an attack duty. Once again, he's got a midfielder to cover him, and gives another outlet to your target man who I'd assume gets a fair bit of the ball.

[Old No7]

1 hour ago, pheelf said:

I think you have fallen into the trap of trying to shoehorn an unbalanced squad into a formation rather than selecting a formation which suits the style of play you want and working from there. The likely reason why the team was struggling in the first place is that the squad is unbalanced, the solution is therefore to restore that balance.

The bread and butter of lower league football in England is the 4-4-2 formation. It seeks to exploit the wings and sacrifices control of the central midfield. This is a problem as you have chosen a shape which is weak to this approach.

Why do you need to play 3 at the back when the majority of the time they will only be facing at most 2 players?

In a scenario where the opposition fielded 3 ST or an AML-ST-AMR trio that would make sense otherwise, you are just sacrificing a player who could be utilized further up the pitch which could help your attacking play.

Another way in which it is weak is the flanks as you will find your wingbacks getting overloaded with a lot of 2 vs 1s.

If I were you I'd just go back to a flat back 4 and revert to the tactic which was serving you so well in your previous job. I see no reason why you discarded the 4-4-2 which was working and started to experiment with a new tactic when the situation is desperate and demands that you get points on the board.  

Is there no positional flexibility with the players which can play as wingbacks, central defenders and attacking midfielders? For e.g., if one of your WBL has decent crossing why not play him as an ML?

If not then you need to scour the free agent list and bring in some fullbacks, wingers and central midfielders to fill those gaps.

All the best

I've certaintly been guilty of shoehorning a formation on a squad before, but I don't think that's what I've done this time. I inherited a hugey imbalanced quad with 13 potential CB's, 4 right backs all capable as wing backs but more comfortable at full back, none happy further up & the same on the left with 1 happy in midfield. In the centre of midfield I've got 4 decent options, a couple can also play as a DM & 4 decent AM's a couple who I could drop back into the middle. Finally up front I have 5 options 2 of which are ok, 1 decent prospect & a couple of others who really aren't good enough.

So I honestly felt the formations I went with were a natural fit for the squad I had picked up, it wouldn't have been a tactic i'd pick to shoe horn on this bunch, staying with my preferred 4-4-2 would have felt like forcing it on the squad. As I said it's a hugely imbalanced squad but if we could have got through the season then that cold have been easiy addressed in the summer with a number of expiring contracts.

1 hour ago, Tom8983 said:

Honestly, just looking at your starting tactic I think I'd have changed two things. Give the RWB an attack duty, and change the striker to a DLF on support. Of course I'm not familiar with your players quality or strengths, but I'd consider those changes to bring about a more coherent tactic. The WB has a defensive-minded midfielder to cover him being more adventurous, so get him up the pitch to provide width and stretch the play a bit, giving an extra option to the AP. The DLF will drop a bit deeper, hopefully pulling defenders with him making room for your SS to run in to and exploit.

Similarly, with the tactic you seem to have ended up with if I read correctly, I'd change your LWB to an attack duty. Once again, he's got a midfielder to cover him, and gives another outlet to your target man who I'd assume gets a fair bit of the ball.

Yeah I think I probably should have stuck my original plan out a bit longer, but I tried to go for something more along the lines of what I knew. the tweaks you suggest make sense, although my best striker is a natural target man with ok pace so could be used as a poacher or pressing forward, his passing is pretty poor so he's not a great fit as a DLF, i'd rather use that role than a TM but it didn't seem a great fit

[Experienced Defender]

16 hours ago, Old No7 said:

 

18 minutes ago, Old No7 said:

my best striker is a natural target man with ok pace so could be used as a poacher or pressing forward

A couple of suggestions on counter-attacking football (especially useful for LLM):

- both strikers on attack duty (with complementary roles), but the AM on support (told to roam and take more risks); complementary striker roles include: TM/PO, TM/AF, TM/PF, DLF/PO, DLF/AF, DLF/TM (there are other possible combos involving roles like CF or TQ, but you probably don't have good enough players for these roles)

- hit early crosses and optionally pass into space

- lower LOE coupled with standard d-line and tighter marking (either instead or together with get stuck in)

Btw, not sure if defend wider is a good idea for your team. I would rather go with standard def width.