Hello everyone,
This is my first guide, but I really wanted to share this with the world because I feel I've come up with an original tactic that honestly, makes FM too easy. Let me show my save:
First of all, this is my 5th year playing as Stade Lavallois. It's a French National team, Semi-pro at the beginning, and I've managed to win the National league first, then instantly win the Ligue 2 with over 90 goals scored, then I established myself in Ligue 1 with a mid-table finish but 1 year later I WON the French cup spending only around 9M€ salary per annum while PSG has over 200M€.
Right now I'm still very weak finantially but I'm currently at the top of the French league, and beating Tottenham in the EURO group, as you can see here:
In summary, I'm obviously not a strong team, and even then, I'm doing tremendously every year, so much so I'm starting to believe that FM is getting "too easy" and I believe it's thanks to this very peculiar tactic that I came up with to suit what I had in my team:
The tactic
At first I wanted to go for a more possession based formation, but I noticed that I had many good AMs and I wanted to use them, so I started using this and I started winning non-stop after a bunch of tweaks here and there. It still does good on possession, although when I'm the underdog I don't do so well to keep it, but it doesn't matter if I still win anyways!
That's what I think is the strength of this tactic. When I play against someone weaker than me, the forward 3 are very oppressive in the centre and they end up finding space here and there. Also, when the balls come from the wings there's so many people in the opposition area, their defence is many times overrun.
The instructions
In possession
As you can see in the screenshot above you have the instructions on the left side. First, I must say that now I normally play on "Positive", but I've used mostly "Balanced" to climb my way up here, since it's better against better teams. I usually change to Defensive when I'm ahead at minute 70-80~.
Even though I'm using short passing, most of the goals have always come from the centre with long passes into the space, with many successful counter-attacks that have demolished some of the best defenses in France, but I feel that if I used long passes I would struggle too much for possession. You may consider this a fluid-counter attack formation maybe, but my club vision is to play possession game and I'm still doing good there. Normally, the "Be more expressive", "Pass into space" and "Higher tempo" I feel that's what makes this formation very good at scoring goals, since most of them come from fast counters from deep.
In transition
Here, I think everything is obvious except for the "Regroup". The issue with this tactic is that we can't make the DLP and CBs go too far up because then we'll open up spaces, so I always use regroup if the enemy team has good dribblers and fast forwards, since I prefer my defenders to be near the goal covering for anything that may come. Anyways, normally I just leave it blank and don't use neither Counter-press nor Regroup if the game is balanced or I'm the better side.
Out of possession
About extremely urgent, I feel that any formation needs it in FM, even if that's the opposite of what I've said just above. I also want to talk about the Lines here. I've seen that "Standard" has been the most effective for me on the offensive line, as I don't have a tall forward, but a fast one, and they start running from deep, making the enemy defence come up so he can outrun them. About the defensive line, I use "lower" if the rivals use faster forwards, and "higher" if they use target men. If they're a balanced team, I just leave it on standard.
The roles
Of course, you can always use whatever roles you have in your team and whatever you think works best. Let's start from the bottom:
GK: Even though my keeper is a SK he pretty much never leaves the goal, since the defensive line is usually down deep, but I use SK because he might help sometimes with the short passes when playing out from defence. I recommend a GK who's very good at stopping shots, just like Iván Martínez (very good youngster)
Defence:
I use a IWB because I have a couple of them who are very good on the left side, and they help a lot on our empty mid field. I recommend having 1 or 2 IWBs, since the mid field might be too empty with full backs. I also use a FB on attack because I need someone to cross the ball from the right side (but my IW up top is too good to change for a winger).
I like the CBs to be athletic, but in this case it might be smarter to use tall/stronger defenders who aren't bad at passing. The CBs are very important in this formation, because any spaces in the back may crumble this tactic, so find good defenders and it will work great. (Lenihan is our captain, a Model Professional who's even our candidate for foreign player of the year.)
Midfield:
It's very important to have a very good DLP with high passing and vision to distribute the ball where he thinks is best. He's probably the most important player in the team, as he's our only reference over the defence and he's the link between the defence and the attack.
I use a winger on the left to have someone crossing from that side, and an inverted winger on the right to have some more presence on the midfield. Of course I don't use AMLs or AMRs because they wouldn't help defending that much.
Another highlight of this tactic is the fact that there's 2 AMs. Both of them are very good at passing and long shots, and you can just imagine how much of a threat they're always to the rival team.
Forward:
I feel that AF has been the best for this tactic, as he just waits for that perfect pass to run and lob the keeper. My AF, Nikolai Frederiksen, isn't really a world-class striker, but even then, he's been the top scorer in all of Europe with 31 goals in 38 games, so yes, this tactic works very well with fast strikers with very good composure and "Places shots".
So, to sum up, you will need very good VISION, PASSING, TECHNIQUE, WORK RATE, TEAMWORK and STAMINA all around, with a GK with high REFLEXES and DECISIONS, defenders with very good COMPOSURE, DECISION and POSITIONING, midfielders with very good VISION, PASSES and LONG SHOTS and a forward with PACE, OFF THE BALL, ANTICiPATION and COMPOSURE.
Set pieces
I've used Zealand's video on Set Pieces
and specially the Long-throws have been amazing and Frederiksen has scored many goals with these. My team is overall very short, so there's no much luck with corners, but I recommend watching that video and suscribing to Zealand for the best FM advice.
In-game
Here's another very IMPORTANT piece of tactical advice. Normally, when I scored against a big team a couple goals, they usually go all offensive and put a lot of people up front, and that's very dangerous for this tactic, since it can get overrun on the midfield very easily. That's why, after scoring, I normally went on defensive and took off 1 AM and put in an extra DM, resulting in a 4-4-1-1 DM (sometimes even put the wingers back to wing-backs. That helped me survive a lot of pressure from the opposite teams and even sometimes score an extra goal from a quick counter.
So yeah, I feel that's pretty much it. Just try to tweak everything to suit what you have in your team, I believe this is a very specific formation that will need very specific players and required stats, but I think that it's a really fun one since this particular formation I've never seen it around and the games really get interesting with fast football and quick goals out of nowhere. If you have any questions, please ask, and if you have any extra advice, please go ahead and I'll try to improve it!
This is my first guide, but I really wanted to share this with the world because I feel I've come up with an original tactic that honestly, makes FM too easy. Let me show my save:
First of all, this is my 5th year playing as Stade Lavallois. It's a French National team, Semi-pro at the beginning, and I've managed to win the National league first, then instantly win the Ligue 2 with over 90 goals scored, then I established myself in Ligue 1 with a mid-table finish but 1 year later I WON the French cup spending only around 9M€ salary per annum while PSG has over 200M€.
Right now I'm still very weak finantially but I'm currently at the top of the French league, and beating Tottenham in the EURO group, as you can see here:
In summary, I'm obviously not a strong team, and even then, I'm doing tremendously every year, so much so I'm starting to believe that FM is getting "too easy" and I believe it's thanks to this very peculiar tactic that I came up with to suit what I had in my team:
The tactic
At first I wanted to go for a more possession based formation, but I noticed that I had many good AMs and I wanted to use them, so I started using this and I started winning non-stop after a bunch of tweaks here and there. It still does good on possession, although when I'm the underdog I don't do so well to keep it, but it doesn't matter if I still win anyways!
That's what I think is the strength of this tactic. When I play against someone weaker than me, the forward 3 are very oppressive in the centre and they end up finding space here and there. Also, when the balls come from the wings there's so many people in the opposition area, their defence is many times overrun.
The instructions
In possession
As you can see in the screenshot above you have the instructions on the left side. First, I must say that now I normally play on "Positive", but I've used mostly "Balanced" to climb my way up here, since it's better against better teams. I usually change to Defensive when I'm ahead at minute 70-80~.
Even though I'm using short passing, most of the goals have always come from the centre with long passes into the space, with many successful counter-attacks that have demolished some of the best defenses in France, but I feel that if I used long passes I would struggle too much for possession. You may consider this a fluid-counter attack formation maybe, but my club vision is to play possession game and I'm still doing good there. Normally, the "Be more expressive", "Pass into space" and "Higher tempo" I feel that's what makes this formation very good at scoring goals, since most of them come from fast counters from deep.
In transition
Here, I think everything is obvious except for the "Regroup". The issue with this tactic is that we can't make the DLP and CBs go too far up because then we'll open up spaces, so I always use regroup if the enemy team has good dribblers and fast forwards, since I prefer my defenders to be near the goal covering for anything that may come. Anyways, normally I just leave it blank and don't use neither Counter-press nor Regroup if the game is balanced or I'm the better side.
Out of possession
About extremely urgent, I feel that any formation needs it in FM, even if that's the opposite of what I've said just above. I also want to talk about the Lines here. I've seen that "Standard" has been the most effective for me on the offensive line, as I don't have a tall forward, but a fast one, and they start running from deep, making the enemy defence come up so he can outrun them. About the defensive line, I use "lower" if the rivals use faster forwards, and "higher" if they use target men. If they're a balanced team, I just leave it on standard.
The roles
Of course, you can always use whatever roles you have in your team and whatever you think works best. Let's start from the bottom:
GK: Even though my keeper is a SK he pretty much never leaves the goal, since the defensive line is usually down deep, but I use SK because he might help sometimes with the short passes when playing out from defence. I recommend a GK who's very good at stopping shots, just like Iván Martínez (very good youngster)
Defence:
I use a IWB because I have a couple of them who are very good on the left side, and they help a lot on our empty mid field. I recommend having 1 or 2 IWBs, since the mid field might be too empty with full backs. I also use a FB on attack because I need someone to cross the ball from the right side (but my IW up top is too good to change for a winger).
I like the CBs to be athletic, but in this case it might be smarter to use tall/stronger defenders who aren't bad at passing. The CBs are very important in this formation, because any spaces in the back may crumble this tactic, so find good defenders and it will work great. (Lenihan is our captain, a Model Professional who's even our candidate for foreign player of the year.)
Midfield:
It's very important to have a very good DLP with high passing and vision to distribute the ball where he thinks is best. He's probably the most important player in the team, as he's our only reference over the defence and he's the link between the defence and the attack.
I use a winger on the left to have someone crossing from that side, and an inverted winger on the right to have some more presence on the midfield. Of course I don't use AMLs or AMRs because they wouldn't help defending that much.
Another highlight of this tactic is the fact that there's 2 AMs. Both of them are very good at passing and long shots, and you can just imagine how much of a threat they're always to the rival team.
Forward:
I feel that AF has been the best for this tactic, as he just waits for that perfect pass to run and lob the keeper. My AF, Nikolai Frederiksen, isn't really a world-class striker, but even then, he's been the top scorer in all of Europe with 31 goals in 38 games, so yes, this tactic works very well with fast strikers with very good composure and "Places shots".
So, to sum up, you will need very good VISION, PASSING, TECHNIQUE, WORK RATE, TEAMWORK and STAMINA all around, with a GK with high REFLEXES and DECISIONS, defenders with very good COMPOSURE, DECISION and POSITIONING, midfielders with very good VISION, PASSES and LONG SHOTS and a forward with PACE, OFF THE BALL, ANTICiPATION and COMPOSURE.
Set pieces
I've used Zealand's video on Set Pieces
In-game
Here's another very IMPORTANT piece of tactical advice. Normally, when I scored against a big team a couple goals, they usually go all offensive and put a lot of people up front, and that's very dangerous for this tactic, since it can get overrun on the midfield very easily. That's why, after scoring, I normally went on defensive and took off 1 AM and put in an extra DM, resulting in a 4-4-1-1 DM (sometimes even put the wingers back to wing-backs. That helped me survive a lot of pressure from the opposite teams and even sometimes score an extra goal from a quick counter.
So yeah, I feel that's pretty much it. Just try to tweak everything to suit what you have in your team, I believe this is a very specific formation that will need very specific players and required stats, but I think that it's a really fun one since this particular formation I've never seen it around and the games really get interesting with fast football and quick goals out of nowhere. If you have any questions, please ask, and if you have any extra advice, please go ahead and I'll try to improve it!