Trying to (finally) success!

[Riven]

Hi all, first of all i want to clarify that english is not my native lenguage so i will try my best! 

Im starting third season with Marseille and I have some doubts cause I struggled a little bit in the first two seasons, mainly against teams that park the bus. I won some of that matches through screamers or set pieces, but I didn’t see too many highlights and I think I have a really good team right now.

So I read some great guides here in the forums and I tried to apply them in a new system that make us really strong and challenge for trophies.

I put myself a few rules to follow as I think we need ideas to develop a balanced & nice playing tactic.

• When we have the ball, I want to play a ‘positive’ football that combines possession (mainly in defence to lures the opposition) with verticality, as I don’t want the players keep moving the ball around and around like in a tiki taka system. I want aggressiveness when we have it.
• Without the ball I want to press in the final third, simply because it suits the style I want to play. Also I have one of the fastest defences in the league so I think it will be ok.
• As I said, I want verticality if we have the chance so if we make Counter-Press maybe it will be better, but the downside of my talented players is that we don’t have as many work-rate that id like them to have, so I don’t think we are going to reach that level of aggressiveness without the ball right now. Maybe signing a player with more spirit of sacrifice will encourage them to do it.
• I have young players that are really talented like Matías Zaracho and Thiago Almada in the final third, so I want to allow them some freedom in that area of the pitch.

That’s it, don’t want to overcomplicate things as I didn’t play the game for many years and I can consider myself a brand new player.

Saying that, I have three options to work with:

A typical 4-3-3:

Spoiler

A 4-2-3-1:

Spoiler

And a counter-attacking 4-1-4-1:

Spoiler

First and second ones suits the style im trying to implement, and the third one will be used for hard away matches where we are inferior (thinking of PSG and some european matches).

Is this a good starting point? Would you make any changes?

[Riven]

Nothing. Not capable of opening those very-low blocks. 

[Experienced Defender]

@Riven My first suggestion for you - especially if you are not an experienced tactician - is to focus on one tactic and one formation only instead of having 3 of them. 

 

8 hours ago, Riven said:

Stick to this particular formation (4123 wide) because it's best balanced and easiest to set up correctly. 

This tactic does not look bad per se (although we don't know your player selection for these roles).

Just a few tips:

- you basically do not need a CWB role in this type of system, because CWB makes sense in narrow formations (when he is the only player on the flank), Use the WB on support instead

- you also do not need distribution to CBs and FBs when you already play out of defence + shorter passing

- you can just slightly drop the Line of engagement (to standard instead of higher) so as to create more space up front for your forwards by luring the opposition into advancing a bit further forward

- an instruction you may experiment with is the Overlap left, so as to encourage more dynamic interplay on that flank by bringing the IF and WB a bit closer together.