Advanced Tactics Primer - Improving 4-2-3-1 Possession Tactic via One-Twos

[crusadertsar]

This originally appeared on Dictatethegame.com https://dictatethegame.com/2019/07/27/fm19-advanced-tactical-primer-boosting-your-4-2-3-1-possession-tactic-via-ppms/

You can still read it there in its original formating and high quality pictures. I'm the original author and an reposting it here to see if I can generate discussion about 4-2-3-1 formation, using One-Twos PPM (or your other favorite PPMs) or possession tactics in general. So let me know what you think and drop your feedback and comments below. I'm planning to make my Roma save into a long series at least until FM20 comes out. Cheers!

 

I have been playing Football Manager since 2013 and year after year I still see the same questions pop up regarding Player Preferred Moves (PPMs or also known as Player Traits). Why do they not work how they should? My player has “Plays with back to the goal” but I never see him receiving passes and holding up the ball? How come my centreback with “Brings Ball out of Defence” does not dribble into the midfield? The game engine must be broken right? Wrong, what you see is the divergence between what his role is instructing him (including any idiosyncratic traits he possess) and the general team and/or individual player instructions. This guide will examine some popular Player Traits and explain how they can work together and be applied to a typical 4-2-3-1 tactic to enhance overall possession and scoring.

Likes to Round the Keeper – one of the coolest PPMs to have on your player, given the right tactical set up and the player with the right attributes

A few years back Mesut Ozil made it look easy when he decided to round Ludogoret’s keeper in the Champions League. In the game, as well as in reality, there are quiet a few complex factors that combine on the field to make the occurrence of such artistic moves more likely. In on itself, rounding the keeper might not be a game changer or even tactically significant, but it shows that in the sport of football we must take into account that each player is an individual with unique traits and idiosyncratic tendencies that a good manager must carefully pay attention to. Even though the whole match is a team performance, it consists of numerous individual performances that add up minute after minute. Thus, one can never know how one player’s single moment of brilliance could affect the flow of the rest of the game. Foremost, a competent manager must be a good manager of individuals and know each players very well, before they can claim to be a good manager of the whole team.

The above statement is one reason why I prefer to work with small squads that I can study and get to know very well during the preseason. Managing large squads with multiple substitutes per position and large reserve and junior teams actually scares me. This is one reason that for the last couple of iterations managing AS Roma has always been a big temptation for me. They have one of the smallest and most focused First Teams in FM 2019.

Prelude: Brazil’s 4-2-3-1 – The Magic Formation

As promised in my last Shadow Striker article I will be taking a deeper look at the famous 4-2-3-1 formation. In that article I argued that this well-known shape had its origins in Brazilian leagues in the 1950s. Over the years this formation evolved into the more familiar, and very Brazilian, “Magic Box” 4-2-2-2 formation. In the Magic Box the two advanced midfielders play behind the strikers, giving the formation its pronounced narrowness. The only width comes from the two fullbacks, giving one of the reasons why this role has become so important in Brazil with some of the best fullbacks and wingbacks in the world coming from the region.

Yet the 4-2-3-1 as played by Brazilian teams between 1950s and 1980s, was essentially the classic Magic Box formation in everything but name. While separate on paper, the two formations became interchangeable in Brazilian football as 4-2-3-1 would transform into 4-2-2-2 in its attacking phase. This is thanks to the two inside forwards tucking in to play through the middle (essentially as central advanced midfielders) and the shadow striker moving up to play beside the deep-lying central forward.

4-2-3-1 – One of the most flexible formations and one of the best to win and maintain possession in the middle, since it can transform into a narrow 4-2-2-2 in transition phase

As result of all this movement and rearrangement, you end up with three distinct banks of players playing closely together and sharing tasks. You have the four attackers in the front mostly tasked with attack and having more creative freedom than the rest of the team to craft out moves and exercise their flair. Next there are the two defensive midfielders and center backs focusing on playing the high defensive line and preventing the opponent from advancing into our own half. The defence is definitely more structured and disciplined than the rest of the team.

Finally, you have the two fullbacks, acting as the key pivots in the tactic, linking the defence and attack. They probably have the most important roles on the team, both offensively and defensively responsible in running up and down the field for the full 90 minutes. I prefer one to be more defensive than the other (usually on the side of my more attacking winger).

Having broken down the team into these three distinct area, one can see how important it is to have players with complementary roles as well as the PPMs to suit them. This is especially true for your four front attackers. Speaking of those attackers, in my last article I gushed all over the Shadow Striker role, specifically when in partnership with a Deeplying Forward. Unfortunately that article turned into a theoretical analysis of these roles as I did not have enough game time to run a proper test save. Presently, after putting the tactic to a test for almost a full season with AS Roma, I can confidently say that a Shadow Striker role works as well as envisioned, if not better. I also discovered that there are some PPMs that make this role more potent when slotted into a short passing high-possession tactic.

One, Two …. GOAL!

In the following video, can you count the number of passes between the halfway line and the goal? The whole play takes less than fourteen seconds and is a typical example of a play that I see a lot with my latest 4-2-3-1 tactic.

While testing tactics, I tend to watch most of my matches in full or at least in comprehensive highlight mode. Trust me, it helps a lot when trying to tweak your roles and instructions. Thus I was able to see the efficiency of my 4-2-3-1 tactic improve drastically from when I first tried it with Fiorentina to my move to Roma. My goals scored have increased (while at same time keeping more clean sheets) and the team has started playing a much more beautiful brand of football, almost like Tiki-Taka in its approach with one key difference. As you can see in an above video, it is a possession-heavy style with plenty of short, quick passes but it is far from being stale passing for the sake of passing and pointless possession that people tend to attribute with Tiki-Taka. Rather I will join the football hipsters in borrowing the term “Vertical Tiki-Taka” to describe how this tactic plays. Vertical Tiki-Taka is a more aggressive style of possession football where the emphasis is as much on keeping the ball as it on moving it up the pitch as quickly as possible. It is brand of “liquid football” that brought celebrated managers like Pep Guardiola and Maurizio Sarri a lot of success in recent years.

But how did I achieve this? It is not because Roma’s squad is better than Fiorentina’s. For the most part, it is not. With the exception of its fullbacks, Fiorentina is technically equivalent. While the Giallorossi are predicted to finish in the top 5, they do not possess a world-class squad and have little depth outside of the first team. Also, I barely changed the team instructions and roles between the two saves. So why is Roma playing so good after only half a season? I believe the answer to that lies in the player’s player traits.

Maurizio Sarri’s Vertical Tiki-Taka “Sarriball” at its best

As you can see, Vertical Tiki-Taka, as played by Sarri’s Napoli is similar to Pep’s vision of the more dynamic Tiki Taka in how it relies in creating overloads on one side of the field in order to unlock a very attacking player on the opposite wing (in this example, Callejon). So how do PPMs fit into it?

With Giallorossi, my overall strategy is shaped by the fact that for most domestic matches I am the favoured side, required to play through dense enemy defenses. In order to win against parked buses I have come to rely on tactical overloads (a concept I covered extensively here) and specific Player Trait combinations. I’m not going to go back and explain the three ways in which I create overloads. With Roma I decided to keep a symmetrical 4-2-3-1 formation while using only two overload methods: specific supporting roles and team instructions to overload our left side.

While overload itself is easy enough to achieve, switching the ball to the right “unlocked” flank turned out tricky. Initially, I found that managing a top side like Roma can make it difficult to find space behind the opponent’s defensive low block and score goals. To do this more consistently I crafted my tactic to take advantage of the PPM “Likes to play One-Twos”. Luckily the squad already had a few players with this trait and I started promptly to train all my attackers in it. The video below will give you a good idea how one-two passing helps to “play through” defenders.

One-Twos work similarly in the game. Like any Player Preferred Move, they increase the likelihood of an action. In this case, the likelihood that the player will pass short to a teammate before making a forward run into space with the intention of quickly receiving the ball back.One-two passing works especially well in a short-passing possession tactic. It can help your team to use short passes and superior off the ball movement to play through stubborn opposition. So where the more direct diagonal passes and crosses are blocked, high-speed running and passing is harder for defenders to contain. It you have a team full of good passers and attackers with above average (15+) off the ball and decision-making , then one-twos become an essential compliment to playing possessive football.

Breaking the Bus with Roma

I am going to argue further that when facing a parked bus, possession football is exactly what you need to play, and not a more direct attacking approach. Many FM players also make the mistake of sitting back and hoping that the opponent will come forward more and expose gaps behind their defense. While this might work as a counter-attacking strategy when you are the underdog, when you play as the favoured side it only gives the defensive opponent more time on the ball. In the game this translates to instances of very high possession for the defending side who sit back and the hog the ball while hoping for a draw. Early on in my FM career the amount of boring draws I would get infuriated me. Its one of the reasons I started playing around with overloads and other ways to break the bus.

After hours of experimenting with various teams, I found that the best way to break down a low defensive block is to keep possession and dictate how the game should go. When you maintain high possession while overloading one side, it allows your central forwards and/or wingers to get more involved in the play. It keeps your attack tight and spaced close for short passes so even if there is little room behind the opponent’s defensive wall, you can break through it via a series of short passes and runs into space.

A video example from my save is probably the best way to show how this works. In the clip above notice how initially we overload the left side before advancing rapidly up the field via short passes and off the ball runs. I can count at least three one-twos in the final third. What you cannot tell from the clip is that Cagliari was a very stubborn side playing exemplary negative football for the whole 90 minutes. So when it finally came, this beautiful goal, by none other than my golden boy Nicolo Zaniolo, arrived in the last minutes of extra time. Better late than neve. Our patience paid off with the goal allowing Roma to advance to the next stage of the Italian Cup.

To create more one-two passing between them, I have my two inside forwards play as close to the shadow striker as possible. It helps if they have “Cut inside” trait. By staying close to the center it should allow the inside forwards exchange one two passes more frequently with the shadow striker or even my deeplying forward. Having One Twos trait on the inside forwards is probably even more important than on the central striker pairing because there is inherently more space on the wings to take advantage of this PPM. Also having overlapping fullback and wingback with the same trait provides another passing avenue to our attack.

My 4-2-3-1 Tactical Primer – The core selection of PPMs that allow my Roma team to play their own brand of “liquid” attacking short pass football – “Vertical Tiki-Taka”.

The image above is my easy-to-use visual guide on how I mold my team into playing an attractive brand of possession football. The 4-2-3-1 is a perfect formation for it, and I had a lot of success with it. That is provided you have capable players with the right PPMs. As you can see in the picture, I’m in the process of defining the core PPM selection for the roles in my tactic. The ones listed above are by no means exhaustive as there are other traits that can work. However I believe these ones are essential to how my 4-2-3-1 functions. They enhance my tactic and help it to work well with fewer instructions. I chose Roma for my test as their team already has at least one player in each position with one or more of the required preferred traits. The rest I can train. Essentially, I ask all my wingers, and shadow striker to play one twos and move into channels while the central striker absolutely needs to have “comes deep to get the ball” in addition to playing one twos. With adequate training most of my team should possess these traits by the end of 1st season. I will be bringing other suitable candidates via transfers. You can see the team instructions I use but keep in mind that the tactic is still a work in progress. Although feel free to try it out for yourself as I include the download link at the end of the article. In future entries, I plan to go in more detail on how I set up 4-2-3-1 formation as well as how we performed in the 1st full season in Serie A (SPOILER – We did quite well!).

1st Season so far – with handfull of games left, we are first but in a tight race with both Juventus and Napoli. Who will come out on top?

Nicolo Zaniolo – Future Imperator of Roma

Nicolo is one of several 5 star-rated wonderkids available to Roma. The others include Luca Pellegrini, Alessio Riccardi and Justin Kluivert have the potential to develop into wordbeaters

Nicolo Zaniolo has been responding to my training especially well. After six months, as my primary shadow striker he already learned to play one twos and possesses a veritable arsenal of other traits that make him excel in the role. He is currently my top goalscorer (with 14 goals, not bad for a 19 year old rooky in his first competitive season!) and as you can see attribute-wise he is shaping up into one of my most potent offensive weapons. AveNico!

Zaniolo is my ideal Shadow Striker – physically and mentally strong with enough tactical intelligence to anticipate, get into position off the ball, and technical enough to finish his chances. Having that Power Shot trait helps too, although he scores most of his goals from within the penatly area (he is especially good with headers).

I’m truly excited for what he will bring to my 4-2-3-1 tactic as I chronicle his rise (as well as Rome’s 2nd conquest of Europe) in my future articles. Thanks for reading and hopefully you will continue to follow my new Roma-inspired guide series titled Running with the Wolves!

Tactic Download: https://ufile.io/xnwyx9ef

Follow us @ Dictate The Game’s Facebook and Dictate The Game’s Twitter

 

 

[crusadertsar]

In case people do not see it (I know that wolf gif is very distracting  )

Tactic Download: https://ufile.io/xnwyx9ef

I will discuss the team instructions and individual instructions more in depth in the future entries. For now you can try it out and see how it works for your team. Although you will need a pretty technical team with good passing, first touch as well as good decisions and team work (for One-twos to work well, sorry forgot to mention that in article). Also will need decent level of composure and balance in order to hog the ball better. Enjoy and let me know how it works for you! I'm always looking for ways to tweak it.

PS: Woohoo My 300th post!

[irish kopite]

Excellent read and I'll give it a go. Right up my street as you can probably gather from my username.

[Robson 07]

Just given this an upvote, it's a very good article and I like the Hammer & Anvil that it links to as well.

[crusadertsar]

5 hours ago, Robson 07 said:

Just given this an upvote, it's a very good article and I like the Hammer & Anvil that it links to as well.

Thank you for the kind words  I'm glad you enjoyed them both. Theres also the Shadow Striker article that serves as a link between the two in case you missed it

 

 

[nick1408]

I have a question about the CM-Su. What is the reasoning for the particular player instructions for him?  I get the settings for the rest (even if I think the RB is a bit aggressive) but the CM-Su has me stumped. Are you trying to get him to play like a Carr without setting him as such?  Why do you want both CM’s dictating tempo, particularly the RCM (the DLP makes sense)?

[crusadertsar]

1 hour ago, nick1408 said:

I have a question about the CM-Su. What is the reasoning for the particular player instructions for him?  I get the settings for the rest (even if I think the RB is a bit aggressive) but the CM-Su has me stumped. Are you trying to get him to play like a Carr without setting him as such?  Why do you want both CM’s dictating tempo, particularly the RCM (the DLP makes sense)?

That was actually my reasoning. I was trying to make CM(S) role as a mix between carrilero and ballwinning midfielder. In a sense I want him to be another holding midfielder but play with more physicality, defensive intent than my DLP. I want him to hold his position and intercept the ball in the midfield. With Carrilero alone you cannot set "hold position" while ballwinning midfielder goes around chasing the ball too much (which goes against my whole holding midfield idea). I need my midfielders to be a solid rock in front of defence which allows my wingbacks to act much more aggressively, especially on the right. And they do, My right back Florenzi turned into a crossing machine with 13 assists so far. At the same time if my two midfielders are holding in the middle, with little movement to the front (with the exception of late runs forward thanks to Arrives Late in the Area PPM which is great and I have it on 3 out 4 of my midfielders) my forwards risk being isolated. For this reason both of my midfielders need to be exceptional passers so having dictate the game PPM is key here as it helps them control the pace of the game. They should be able to switch between short and long thorough passes depending on the flow of the game and to inject some unpredictability into our patient possession game. Otherwise it risks turning into stale game of 1000 sideways passes so to speak. At its best Barcelona team would field several players in midfield able to dictate the game. Anyway this is just my hypothesis. Although so far its going as well as I predicted. It could just mean that I'm just lucky with the players I have in my midfield

[nick1408]

Thanks for the extra detail. It all makes sense. I know Roma has an embarrassment of riches with great central players but to see your explanation certainly does help.

 

I do have trouble translating ideas into tactics in the game so between you, @Rashidi, @Experienced Defender and some I'm missing it does help. I especially like seeing the tactics like this so I can ask questions like the above. 

 

 

[crusadertsar]

4 hours ago, nick1408 said:

Thanks for the extra detail. It all makes sense. I know Roma has an embarrassment of riches with great central players but to see your explanation certainly does help.

 

I do have trouble translating ideas into tactics in the game so between you, @Rashidi, @Experienced Defender and some I'm missing it does help. I especially like seeing the tactics like this so I can ask questions like the above. 

 

 

Its an honour for me to be mentioned in the same sentence as @Rashidi and @Experienced Defender, as I have great respect for their advise. Those guys are really able to cut apart the tactical part of the game and play the game on a whole new level. I've been trying to emulate that. But also some of my tactical musings should probably be taken with a grain of salt. I tend to get excited about real world ideas and try to translate them into the game. But then I realize that my understanding of the game concepts is still not great enough to do this as accurately as I wish. To cut it short, its a constant learning process and I'm very happy to share my learning experience with yourself and others who follow my stories. So far its been a great ride. Thanks for the support everyone! 

[nick1408]

How did the Roma season finish? Any unexpected pop up?

[crusadertsar]

2 hours ago, nick1408 said:

How did the Roma season finish? Any unexpected pop up?

We finished 2nd. Unfortunately had a few injuries and a dip in form. While Juve kept on winning of course. Winning Italia Cup and getting to Quarter Final of Champions League were the consolation prizes. Will be doing a full update article with more info on how I like to play possession 4-2-3-1 next week on Wednesday

[nick1408]

On 25/07/2019 at 22:27, crusadertsar said:

We finished 2nd. Unfortunately had a few injuries and a dip in form. While Juve kept on winning of course. Winning Italia Cup and getting to Quarter Final of Champions League were the consolation prizes. Will be doing a full update article with more info on how I like to play possession 4-2-3-1 next week on Wednesday

A heads up - the link in the OP doesn't work anymore.

 

I see the Tifo Football in your version of "Sensible Transfers". I have been watching this series with various clubs and tend to agree with yours. I am playing with Roma (although your tactic for me is nowhere near as successful as you were with it) and strengthened similar areas. I went for Predrag Rajkovic over David Raya (mainly due to price. I did scout Raya), Gianluca Mancini and Unai Nunez over De Ligt (again, price) and Sandro Tonali as I missed out on Rabiot to Manchester United. There is a lot of age in the squad but I am looking forward to getting Luca Pellegrini back to take over the left back spot.

[crusadertsar]

I think Roma got Mancini in real life incidentally. He is a great player. Would have got him myself. But I couldnt resist getting De Ligt, especially after Rabiot signed. I think they will develop a great partnership at Juventus. 

Thanks about the link heads. We switched to a new an improved site yesterday so all the links won't work. Will update with new link as well post the new update 

[crusadertsar]

Running with the Wolves: Part 2 - Sensible Transfers at Roma

https://dictatethegame.com/2019/07/31/running-with-the-wolves-2-tactic-sensible-transfers/

[nick_stags1]

@crusadertsar - what skin is this please?