Possession with intent: Exploring tactical flexibility with the 4-5-1.

[sporadicsmiles]

6 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

Majer is a talent for the future and backup at CM(a)

I love Majer. In FM19 I had a save where I ended up at Dinamo for a couple of seasons, and he was an absolute beast for me from CM(A) and from DLP(S) in midfield. An awesome player.

6 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

That is an incredible result. I am used to being battered by Liverpool for about 3 years in FM! I usually just write these games off as learning curves and expect to lose! 

I'm very much enjoying reading what you are doing. If I find the time (and it is at a premium right now, life eh?) I want to try to expand on a different idea of this. I want to do something that is a 4321. If I have fun with one CM(A), imagine playing with two of them! Or at least two players getting forward centrally from midfield. I will just have to decide on the team to try it with. 

[witticism]

14 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

That is quite a nice variation - coincidentaly, i have just been trying out a slightly modified version of what i used at Fiorentina, and one of the changes was moving the playmaker to RCM and using RPM role, and just having a basic CM(d) as the middle CM. 

Also experimenting with the use of  BPD at the back.....

 

I still want to work a Wide Playmaker but I don't know of a way to set up the midfield after that, so I haven't gone back to it. Similarly, when I had the deepest midfielder in the rcm or lcm position I still found the man in the middle was the one to drop the lowest and closest to the defenders despite any other instructions. Turns out asymmetry is complicated.

[zlatanera]

@witticism I’ve not tried this flat 4-5-1, but have experience with a Wide Playmaker. 
I mostly use them in a 4-4-1-1 or 4-4-2. My WP was on At duty, which means they start wide but look to get into the typical #10 space. So I’d keep my Su striker or AM on the opposite side (i.e. WP at LM, AMCR or STCR) so they don’t get in the way.

I’d also have my near-sided CM be a holding role such as CM-De or DLP, with the far side CM and wide player being runners i.e. CM-Su, -At, BBM and WM or W to give the WP options. 

The full back behind the WP should probably be an aggressive overlapping role such as WB, CWB or FB-At perhaps, to make sure you still have some width - that holding midfielder then serves a dual function of keeping out of the WP’s way and shoring up that flank when the defender goes forward. I used the Overlap instruction but that was specific to my system. 

Hope this is in any small way helpful!

[retrodude09]

3 hours ago, zlatanera said:

@witticism I’ve not tried this flat 4-5-1, but have experience with a Wide Playmaker. 
I mostly use them in a 4-4-1-1 or 4-4-2. My WP was on At duty, which means they start wide but look to get into the typical #10 space. So I’d keep my Su striker or AM on the opposite side (i.e. WP at LM, AMCR or STCR) so they don’t get in the way.

I’d also have my near-sided CM be a holding role such as CM-De or DLP, with the far side CM and wide player being runners i.e. CM-Su, -At, BBM and WM or W to give the WP options. 

The full back behind the WP should probably be an aggressive overlapping role such as WB, CWB or FB-At perhaps, to make sure you still have some width - that holding midfielder then serves a dual function of keeping out of the WP’s way and shoring up that flank when the defender goes forward. I used the Overlap instruction but that was specific to my system. 

Hope this is in any small way helpful!

This is pretty much nailed on for how I set up Arsenal in the save I just started:

AF (A) - DLF (S)

WP (A) - CM (D) - CM (S) - W (A)

WB (S) CB (D) - CB (D) - FB (S)

SK (S)

Pre-season has been fairly promising so far but I'm interested to get the league started. 

[witticism]

3 hours ago, zlatanera said:

@witticism I’ve not tried this flat 4-5-1, but have experience with a Wide Playmaker. 
I mostly use them in a 4-4-1-1 or 4-4-2. My WP was on At duty, which means they start wide but look to get into the typical #10 space. So I’d keep my Su striker or AM on the opposite side (i.e. WP at LM, AMCR or STCR) so they don’t get in the way.

I’d also have my near-sided CM be a holding role such as CM-De or DLP, with the far side CM and wide player being runners i.e. CM-Su, -At, BBM and WM or W to give the WP options. 

The full back behind the WP should probably be an aggressive overlapping role such as WB, CWB or FB-At perhaps, to make sure you still have some width - that holding midfielder then serves a dual function of keeping out of the WP’s way and shoring up that flank when the defender goes forward. I used the Overlap instruction but that was specific to my system. 

Hope this is in any small way helpful!

It's more than I had to start with, appreciate the input!

[zlatanera]

@retrodude09 I can never bring myself to manage a PL team other than my beloved Manchester United, but I'm jealous of how potent Aubameyang could be playing off the shoulder of the last man!

@witticism Looking forward to see what you come up with so I can potentially steal it! 

[Jambo98]

15 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

That is an incredible result. I am used to being battered by Liverpool for about 3 years in FM! I usually just write these games off as learning curves and expect to lose! 

I'm very much enjoying reading what you are doing. If I find the time (and it is at a premium right now, life eh?) I want to try to expand on a different idea of this. I want to do something that is a 4321. If I have fun with one CM(A), imagine playing with two of them! Or at least two players getting forward centrally from midfield. I will just have to decide on the team to try it with. 

yeah this version seems to be working very well against the big teams. Next "top" team were Utd, and whilst we didnt score the goals this time, the overall performance was pretty great and a very one sided match: 

 

and yeah i wanted in this version i wanted more attack from the centre. The Mez didnt really work, so the RPM i was looking forwart to seeing how they attacked. So far, Alberto has been one of the stars of the show:

no goals, but a creative force. Auba also knocking them in very regular - having a real goalscorer at ST is helping. Tierney down the left is doing well but seems knackered by 70mins in most games, which is not that unexpected given how much ground he covers, but his stamina is not low (14). Kolasc is fine off the bench late on. 

On the flipside,  Pepe has been rubbish so far. So much so that he is losing playing time to Reiss Nelson, who banged in a hatty in the Europa. 

Interestingly, something i have never noticed before.......if you go to player instructions, it tells you where an instruction within the role clashes with a trait - see below:

Even more confusing, is looking at that screen for Ozil. I get the following:

Those listed as "conflicts with role", are not traits, but instructions which are hard coded within the role........ uh what,  

[retrodude09]

1 hour ago, zlatanera said:

@retrodude09 I can never bring myself to manage a PL team other than my beloved Manchester United, but I'm jealous of how potent Aubameyang could be playing off the shoulder of the last man!

@witticism Looking forward to see what you come up with so I can potentially steal it! 

My plans kinda went out of the window when Ozil got injured in the first game of the season for 5 months & back to back away trips to the Etihad & Stamford Bridge

[Jungztar]

@Jambo98Great to see the development in your approach. I am doing the same with my HSV save but I will need to test the RPM role because I also find the MEZ not working for me. The greatest eye-opener for me has been the effect of the wide players. HSV has a lot of AM wide naturals but they all perform very well in the MR/ML positions - they start deeper and are more involved. A player like Sonny Kittel is absolutely tearing up the opposition. I am still undecisive on the SC role and I change it a lot based on the opposition formation etc.

I have also tried moving the playmaker role around to exploit opposition weak areas - i.e. exploiting opposition BWM or BBM roaming/closing down.... But still no conclusions from my side before I complete the season  

[sporadicsmiles]

Control the centre.

I have been playing a lot of chess lately. Lockdown has given me time to sit at my board and play low level stockfish. There is something beautiful about playing the game with solid pieces rather than only on the screen. Plus, the translation of the moves onto the board actually makes me think about what is happening. 2 1/2 to 1/2 today. Not bad. If anyone wants to play a learner on Lichess, please add me! 

Why, you may wonder, am I talking about my chess efforts in a thread about football tactics? Well, one of the key tenets to playing chess is to control the centre. You want the central squares for your pieces. And this is what has kinda inspired me to my newest version of this tactic. The first tactic I posted here was about controlling the other side by corralling them into their own half. Screw possession, screw everything except the score. We could use Monty Python here. Now for something completely different. I'm going to try to win games by controlling them. And I want to do that with a minimum of changes to the TIs I used originally. Why? Because part of the idea of this thread is to explore tactical flexibility. Jambo has done that wonderfully by making wholesale changes. I want to try and produce totally different football by changing roles only. Sounds fun, right? 

I'm also going to try to add more chess analogies in here, because I do love to do that in these threads. Besides, some of the things you do in chess translate very well. Removing the defender of a piece by attacking it, for example, can be directly translated into FM. But I digress.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum.

Try reading that without singing it. Anyway, you guessed it, I am going for a christmas tree. But with a twist. Before you read on and look at the tactic, I have a challenge for you. Write down how you would set up the 4321 out of the base 451 formation. And then compare to mine. Not to gain points by matching what I have done, I do not claim to be posting the only correct way. Could just be fun, to see what people think. If you are willing to share it as well (no cheating!) then great! 

I have chosen to be RB Leipzig. That team whose name is definitely not affiliated to Red Bull at all. Why? Well, I did Spain, Jambo did Italy and is doing England. So I ran out of leagues! And of all the German sides I want to be, this is the one I have never played as. 

So, the 4321. Here is how I have set it up. It is probably not quite how you imagined. 

Let's talk about the obvious elephant in the room. What is going on with my wide positions? 

It took me about 30 seconds of the first match I played with this to see that I was never going to get the two wide players to sit narrow enough to get what I wanted here. I want three closely spaced players right in the middle of the park. While you could get this behaviour a little, I decided it was not worth the endless tweeking to get it is right. So I thought quite far outside the box: my full backs are my central midfielders, and my wide players are my wing backs. Two of my central midfielders are attacking midfielders and apparently almost nobody is going to stay where they are meant to here! 

So you catch my drift, I hope. I am using two IWB(D) alongside a DLP(D) (and I am still experimenting here) to create the 3 in my 4321. These players are the control of the centre. They are the players who we want to get the ball, and play it around. Alongside the two more attacking midfielders, we have a 5 man midfield. Technically a 7 man midfield, but lets get to that. 

The wide midfielders. They have to behave like wing backs in the WBL/R positions when we have the ball. They have to start deep, and work forward slowly so we do not get caught out too early. Because my goodness we could be vulnerable to losing the ball during an attacking transition with the amount of shuffling my players will do. So their job is to hold, and then attack. Hence the DW (he is my WB(S)), and the IW(S) (he is my CWB(A)). What I am trying to achieve here is a formation whcih defends with two players on each flank and attacks with one. Shifting from a wide to a narrow formation. It is flexibility gone mad. 

The two central attacking players are just meant to get forward. I have no decided on the role of the MCR yet. He will get to try out many things until I am happy. I will of course use a CM(A). I would feel tactically naked without this role. My absolutely favourite (and Jambo inspired me to by Lovro to play there too). 

And just to point out, this is almost exactly the same in terms of TIs (I got rid of the overlap instructions because there are no overlaps), and the only difference in PIs is that I have changed the pressing assignments to the most forward players. Otherwise, all I have changed in roles and duties. There is so much power in this. Never think solely in terms of formation, because the roles and duties have a profound influence in what you will see on the pitch. I will try to demonstrate that to you when I get to the season. I mean, hell, this could blow up in my face! 

What are we aiming for?

We want to dominate possession. But not the crappy AI version in my own half. I want to keep it in their half, with my midfield 3, and then penetrate with the midfield 2, the wide players, and the striker (who I have to work out what I am doing with still). To that end, we may make some TI changes (I have not done it yet because I want to show the power of roles first). So we are going to aim to outpossess everyone while carrying a goal threat. The holy grail. Possession football, without it being sterile. And I want to win the league so I can keep up with Jambo .

Thus far I have only played a few preseason games. However, we did this in one of them.

These are insane numbers. Actually they worry me, because it looks like we keep the ball too much. Lazy players could not find an extra 5 passes before the end as well? Anyway. This is both good and bad, I post it because it is the absolute polar opposite to what I was doing before. IT is good in that we have possession, and passes, and we created chances and scored (against a poor team, the huge caveat here, it is preseason). The downside is (except it being preseason) is that 1000 passes suggests we are not able to break the team down, or we are not trying hard enough. 

I will keep everyone updated. 

[Djuicer]

30 minutes ago, sporadicsmiles said:

Many (interesting) words.

My first instinct would be to use WPa and maybe inverted winger or wide midfielder with PIs. The three central midfielders to be relatively conservative and the wings belonging to the full backs. But as you said, It dosent seem to work well in the ME (wingers coming inside much and offensive enough).

What about dual WPa with get furhter forward? 

[witticism]

20 hours ago, Jambo98 said:

 The Mez didnt really work, so the RPM i was looking forwart to seeing how they attacked.

It has been my experience with my set up that the RPM slots in behind the players making the forward runs and arrives to the opposing area after the initial attack stalls. Not much end product but a lot available redirections which I find useful for what I attempt to do. More importantly, and I would be curious to know how it has been for you, it is the RPM making himself available in other areas of the pitch that I find so more useful over say, another role like bbm in the same position.

[sporadicsmiles]

7 hours ago, Djuicer said:

What about dual WPa with get furhter forward? 

That would be the other viable option to set this up. The two wide players becoming to the two central AMCs, and leave the midfield 3 where it is. 

[interferemadly]

Very nice thread! I decided to test this approach, it has a style very similar to what I want to achieve. However, after 5 games (2 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss), I started to notice some weaknesses in the team and wanted your advice.

The first thing is: my team seems to be vulnerable to long balls, so consider that in the image below the tactic, I can lower the Out of Possession lines depending on the situation. I'm thinking about hiring a faster defender for next season, but until then, what do you think that's advisable? I ask because it has to do with my second point...

I am having a lot of difficulties against 5-3-2 formation (which looks more like a 3-5-2), especially outside the house. I can barely touch the ball, my pressure doesn't work and I don't create chances. It's very weird. What am I missing?

 

28% of possession:

 

Here, against Stuttgart, 40% possession and they had much more tackles, CCC… 

 

 

My team have good mentals – determination, bravery, anticipation, off the ball… 

[sporadicsmiles]

3 hours ago, interferemadly said:

The first thing is: my team seems to be vulnerable to long balls, so consider that in the image below the tactic, I can lower the Out of Possession lines depending on the situation. I'm thinking about hiring a faster defender for next season, but until then, what do you think that's advisable?

I'd definitely lower the line and maybe even the mentality against teams who are throwing long balls at you. The original tactic I posted had extreme settings because I wanted to trap teams passing around. I do not know if I mentioned it, but the obvious way around that is to be super direct and punish the press. So if you see that, do not sit your defence so high. 

3 hours ago, interferemadly said:

I am having a lot of difficulties against 5-3-2 formation (which looks more like a 3-5-2), especially outside the house. I can barely touch the ball, my pressure doesn't work and I don't create chances. It's very weird. What am I missing?

What are teams playing like this doing that you are struggling to cope with? What is their style of play? When you are not one of the very best teams, you sometimes have to adapt to your opponent, especially away from home. 

[sporadicsmiles]

Keep the ball, win the game.

Well, I have turned things on it's head now. I have gone from screw possession, to let's try to win the battle in numbers. One thing we will not be forgetting, however, is that we want to win the battle of where we have possession too. I know I can get high numbers by sitting deep and keeping the ball. I have also shown this is utterly useless to win games. So can we get possession and win? Let's see. 

I have thus far played 3 competitive games. One was against a lower league side in the German cup. We completely destroyed them (although they scored a stunning long range goal), so I will not bother to show that here. It was like an extension to preseason more than anything else. 

So my first two league games. Away to Union Berlin. Home to Eintract Frankfurt. Not the hardest of starts, but still it should be interesting to see what we do. 

Before, I have made one major change to the tactic I posted above. And I said I likely would have to. And it makes sense. 

Counter is replaced with Hold Shape. We want to bring the ball out and pass it around. Counter is not conducive to this. Hold Shape is. That is the only change, but one that we probably could all see coming. 

Union Berlin.

The summary of the match.

You can see we went behind early and managed to complete the comeback. We conceded from a lost ball in a transition, down my right channel into the space left by the FB. Which I already knew was going to be a weakness. Still, we came back very well. Kampl scored a lovely volley from the edge of the area. The second goal was a counter press goal. The DW won the ball back and Werner had tonnes of space and scored the 1v1 that resulted. The third goal was actually a central through ball (that rarest of things) from the CM(D) to the Werner. So all in all, it went pretty well. Not even a goal from a set piece. 

Looking at the match stats, you can see we dominated this game. This time we dominated all aspects of the game. Their only SOT was the goal. They did not have a sniff after that. We made over 55 passes (which I think is double what I was showing early in this thread with the 4231 variant). 61% of the ball. 90+% pass completion. Looking at the stats, you can say we were good for the win. As I said, though, the proof is not in the stats, but also where we have the ball. You can see I have retained the high DL and high press. So I still want to contain teams in their own half. The difference is that I want to play the ball around myself looking to score, rather than being direct. So what do our heatmaps say?

This is my heatmap. We have the ball mostly in their half of the field. This is definitely not possession without intent. This is not sterile. It is always in the right area of the pitch. Great. This is what we want to see. 

Union Berlin's heat map. They are trapped in their own half. And mostly cannot get out. This is again what we wanted to see. So the things I am telling you I want to do are also the things we are doing. An example of planning and using the tools available to me to make sure we are actually as dominant as we seem to be. I would suggest other people try to do this as well. Do not rely on the stats alone to say "we were the best side". Look at where you have the ball. Where the AI has the ball. You can even look at where your chances to score come from (I do not do that here, I already explained the goals). 

Finally, to give you an idea of how this looks in practise, here is a screen shot of how we usually look when we are starting to attack. Typically it evolves a lot and the wide players get quite far forward. And the midfield trio can have a tendency to be a little deep (something to keep my eye on).

You can see we have a "back 4" which is comprised of the CBs and the wide midfielders who are pretending to be wing backs. Obviously they never start out as deep as a true fullback, but they attack like them.

We then have our line of 3. The base of the tree. Or the bottom of the branches. No idea what metaphor should be there. Nice, compact, close. Always have a way to pass the ball around. We also are creating a huge central overload here. That many players are going to draw defenders. So that means we will often have our wide players 1V1. If not, we have always got at least one spare man in the middle. The outside players here are the IWB(D). Pretending to be central midfielders. I doubt you could achieve the same level of compactness with the wide players coming inside. 

Then we have the midfield duo, in AMC. This is a CM(A) and AP(A) pair. Who close down more. They are also creating a central overload. And they will create space for the striker (since the AI will have to deal with them). This is one of the few times I have ever overloaded the centre to create spaces for players. I usually overload flanks and then use the centre to attack or to pivot the ball around the field. 

The striker looks pretty lonely, but he does get involved in the game. And he is scoring goals for fun. 7 already in my 3 games (4 in the league, 3 in the cup, 1 penalty). He is benefitting from having players behind him who are also attacking space in front of the defence. It creates issues with how to defend, and so it is harder to simply mark him from the game. 

Well, this post is already pretty long. So I will leave the analysis of the second game until later. Let people digest this rather lengthy post first. I hope this gives you ideas of how to adapt to other "formations" or other styles of play. Doing this with a single base formation can teach you so much about that formation, and since you develop an understanding, you can really start to learn how player roles, duties, and all the rest influence what you produce on the pitch.

[robot_skeleton]

1. So you are using inwerted wingbacks? is this a one-off? (because I cannot see that on you latest tactic screen)

2. How is the defensive side of the game, pressing-wise doing well?

[sporadicsmiles]

1 hour ago, robot_skeleton said:

1. So you are using inwerted wingbacks? is this a one-off? (because I cannot see that on you latest tactic screen)

 

This is the setup for the roles and duties (you can see it in a post a few above this one. The only changes are a CM(D) instead of a DLP(D). And Hold Position instead of Counter.

My plan is to use inverted wingbacks to try to get something compact and deep for the 3 of the 4321. I do not think I can do the same with the wide players. However, someone pointed out above that you could also use the central 3 as the midfield 3, and the wide players as the 2 of the 4321. That is another option to explore. 

1 hour ago, robot_skeleton said:

2. How is the defensive side of the game, pressing-wise doing well?

Pressing does fine. It is always hard to get enough pressure here, but I am trying to defend like I did in the OP of this thread. I want to pressure the defenders and make them struggle to get the ball forward into dangerous areas. I have seen some lovely counter press chances too (and also conceded one, which is a risk I have to live with playing as I do). We haven't come up against a team who are either better than us or will attack us hard. However the defensive shape of 451 is generally solid.

[jc577]

On 23/04/2020 at 20:47, sporadicsmiles said:

So, the 4321. Here is how I have set it up. It is probably not quite how you imagined. 

It's just dawned on me that this is pretty close to a Man City replication  

[sporadicsmiles]

8 minutes ago, jc577 said:

It's just dawned on me that this is pretty close to a Man City replication  

Only if I sell most of my CBs, and the one I actually like is made from glass and always injured. Then replace them with midfielders but complain I have no had enough money to spend to improve the defence .

I will admit there is always some elements of Guardiola when you look to create a passing style. That is the influence he has had on the game. Although in this instance it was not my intention. Honestly though, I would love to have de Bruyne and Silva in those two attacking midfield roles. They would destroy teams. Might be a bit of a waste of Sterling though, I'd probably have to flip the flanks (although that is quite easy here). 

[Davi3s]

Would just like say this is a fantastic thread and I have loved reading it.

I have really enjoyed how you have evolved the style of play but kept the same shape. 

Can I ask if you have added any Player instructions to be able to get the in possession shape (4231 or 4321) you where looking for or have you just used the players traits. 

 

 

[sporadicsmiles]

1 hour ago, Davi3s said:

Can I ask if you have added any Player instructions to be able to get the in possession shape (4231 or 4321) you where looking for or have you just used the players traits. 

 

The only changes I made to PIs were the individual closing down instructions. In the 4231 the CM(A), PF(A) and IW(A) were all told to close down more. In the 4321 it is the CM(A), the PF(A) and the AP(A) who are closing down more. Basically whoever is supposed to be further forward can press more. Other than that, I avoided making many instructions and changes. 

[davidbarros2]

@sporadicsmiles lovely shape you're getting a 4321 quite nicely! Have you encountered any issues with the AP (A) not getting far enough? I assumed the PI get further forward, or the player trait get forward whenever possible would be of some utility and some player traits like comes deep to get ball would be prejudicial in achieving that 4231 shape?

[sporadicsmiles]

8 hours ago, davidbarros2 said:

@sporadicsmiles lovely shape you're getting a 4321 quite nicely! Have you encountered any issues with the AP (A) not getting far enough? I assumed the PI get further forward, or the player trait get forward whenever possible would be of some utility and some player traits like comes deep to get ball would be prejudicial in achieving that 4231 shape?

I have not really thought about it too much to be honest. I have been giving myself a rest from the tactical saves for a while and gone back to my main save for a while. It is definitely a role that could be looked at. For example a MEZ on attack would open different avenues of attack. And you are right the traits you mention there are definitely good ones to have.

[sherifdinn_]

On 25/04/2020 at 11:06, sporadicsmiles said:

You can see we have a "back 4" which is comprised of the CBs and

Wow excellent shape. I remember seeing a post on Twitter on how the 3 deeper "midfielders" form a solid rest defense that helps protect against the counter attack and gives the rest of the players freedom.