TheEquinox
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I recently started to dive into creating own tactics and experiment around with the effect a little after having some great reads here in the forums. Here is what I came up with so far, my 4-1-3-2 tactic turned my dutch 2nd division Maastricht team from a relegation struggler to a promotee to Eredivisie.
It would be great to get any feedback, suggestions or maybe even some info how it works for your team if you try it out.
But here we go (sorry for the german screenshots, but I think you can work out easily what is what) :
At first look this might seem to be a risky lineup because it is very offensive. At the second look you will realize that the first look was correct - lol. Expect to see a lot of results like 4-2. 5-2, 4-3 aso. - I conceded a lot with this tactics but in most cases scored more than I caught.
The only real defensive field players are the two centre backs who both have a limited defender / stopper role. The "V" in the screenshot stand for the german word "Vorstopper" (stopper) just to avoid confusion. Their purpose is to conquer the ball and forward it to the defensive midfielder who is played as a deep lying playmaker. There's not much more to say about the centre backs, I only set their mentality to extreme defensive and their passing stlye to extremely short.
The above mentioned deep lying playmaker in the defensive midfield is set like this :
Looks quite simple as well, he gets short passes from the centre backs and plays short passes either to one of the wingers or back to the centre backs if there's opposition.
So far, the settings I did give me a good posession every match, mostly between 50 and 60% even against stronger teams. Btw. I ended up promoting through playoffs, finishing 4th in the league with a media prediction of 16th. Only serious first team players I got to improve the squad were the two wingers and the target man.
The wingers play the key part in this tactics and you will need quick wingers with dribbling and especially crossing skills as high as possible. Both my wingers have 15 quickness and acceleration and between 13 and 15 dribbling/crossing which I consider quite high for the division I'm playing in. Aside from my treuqartista Smeets, they are both easily my most expensive players in the squad. Here is how I set them up :
Every single attacking move is going over one of the wings and will either end with a crossing or a winger dribbling into open channels and giving it a shot himself. So a solid finishing skill will make the wingers even more effective. In my squad my two wingers led the club's goal scorer boards until about mid-season when my target man and trequartista caught up on them.
Because the wingers tend to try and break into the opponent's box on their own quite often with this setup, I decided to give them some support in case they bounce off. For that purpose I have set my wingbacks to supporting role with an offensive mentality :
That way they are moving behind the wingers and if they get tackled and the ball bounces out, there's always someone near to grab it back. If they fail, you will pretty much see your goalkeeper face a one-on-one next, so better make sure they have good tackling, concentration and attendance skills. Mine don't, in fact they are only quick and suck a lot besides that, so I see those one-on-ones I mentioned quite often
Finally, the strikers. I would say you need at least one target man as the primary crossing target for the wingers. In my case, I didn't have any striker capable of playing a target man, so I bought one (Meza-Cuadra). Despite his age (30), his main skill is quickness (17) and besides that he has at least 10/11 in all the other abilities needed for a target man. Given the league rating I'm facing, this was quite a coup for my team and I got a lucky free signing. His salary however eats up about 1/5 of my wage budget, but in the end he turned out to be worth it...
Here's his setup :
It was a struggle at first to get him involved in the action properly. The key to making him effective in my case was to set the crossing style in the team settings (see 1st screenshot) to "play into his movement" (or whatever it is called in the english version). With his quickness that worked out nicely, seeing him run towards the box and getting a crossing directly in front of his feet.
The other striker is a poacher in my case. There's not much thought behind it, it's just been the role that guy could play best. I realized that having a poacher in the opponents box is good to "tidy up" the rests like blocked shot bounces or lost balls. Setup :
Last but not least there is the trequartista. A real lucky gem I got there from the club's youth squad. In the first season, when I signed at Maastricht, I directly promoted him to first squad, kept tutoring him and gave him a game from time to time. Now in the second season, he is the most valuable player in my team (1/6 of the whole club worth) and performs extremely well, scoring 10 goals in the first 15 games at the age of 20. Because I have no real concerns with how he is performing, I just left his setup alone. Only thing which is not set to automatic is the creative freedom, which is set to maximum freedom for him.
This is what he looked like when I made the screens for this thread (about mid-season):
It would be great to get any feedback, suggestions or maybe even some info how it works for your team if you try it out.
But here we go (sorry for the german screenshots, but I think you can work out easily what is what) :
At first look this might seem to be a risky lineup because it is very offensive. At the second look you will realize that the first look was correct - lol. Expect to see a lot of results like 4-2. 5-2, 4-3 aso. - I conceded a lot with this tactics but in most cases scored more than I caught.
The only real defensive field players are the two centre backs who both have a limited defender / stopper role. The "V" in the screenshot stand for the german word "Vorstopper" (stopper) just to avoid confusion. Their purpose is to conquer the ball and forward it to the defensive midfielder who is played as a deep lying playmaker. There's not much more to say about the centre backs, I only set their mentality to extreme defensive and their passing stlye to extremely short.
The above mentioned deep lying playmaker in the defensive midfield is set like this :
Looks quite simple as well, he gets short passes from the centre backs and plays short passes either to one of the wingers or back to the centre backs if there's opposition.
So far, the settings I did give me a good posession every match, mostly between 50 and 60% even against stronger teams. Btw. I ended up promoting through playoffs, finishing 4th in the league with a media prediction of 16th. Only serious first team players I got to improve the squad were the two wingers and the target man.
The wingers play the key part in this tactics and you will need quick wingers with dribbling and especially crossing skills as high as possible. Both my wingers have 15 quickness and acceleration and between 13 and 15 dribbling/crossing which I consider quite high for the division I'm playing in. Aside from my treuqartista Smeets, they are both easily my most expensive players in the squad. Here is how I set them up :
Every single attacking move is going over one of the wings and will either end with a crossing or a winger dribbling into open channels and giving it a shot himself. So a solid finishing skill will make the wingers even more effective. In my squad my two wingers led the club's goal scorer boards until about mid-season when my target man and trequartista caught up on them.
Because the wingers tend to try and break into the opponent's box on their own quite often with this setup, I decided to give them some support in case they bounce off. For that purpose I have set my wingbacks to supporting role with an offensive mentality :
That way they are moving behind the wingers and if they get tackled and the ball bounces out, there's always someone near to grab it back. If they fail, you will pretty much see your goalkeeper face a one-on-one next, so better make sure they have good tackling, concentration and attendance skills. Mine don't, in fact they are only quick and suck a lot besides that, so I see those one-on-ones I mentioned quite often
Finally, the strikers. I would say you need at least one target man as the primary crossing target for the wingers. In my case, I didn't have any striker capable of playing a target man, so I bought one (Meza-Cuadra). Despite his age (30), his main skill is quickness (17) and besides that he has at least 10/11 in all the other abilities needed for a target man. Given the league rating I'm facing, this was quite a coup for my team and I got a lucky free signing. His salary however eats up about 1/5 of my wage budget, but in the end he turned out to be worth it...
Here's his setup :
It was a struggle at first to get him involved in the action properly. The key to making him effective in my case was to set the crossing style in the team settings (see 1st screenshot) to "play into his movement" (or whatever it is called in the english version). With his quickness that worked out nicely, seeing him run towards the box and getting a crossing directly in front of his feet.
The other striker is a poacher in my case. There's not much thought behind it, it's just been the role that guy could play best. I realized that having a poacher in the opponents box is good to "tidy up" the rests like blocked shot bounces or lost balls. Setup :
Last but not least there is the trequartista. A real lucky gem I got there from the club's youth squad. In the first season, when I signed at Maastricht, I directly promoted him to first squad, kept tutoring him and gave him a game from time to time. Now in the second season, he is the most valuable player in my team (1/6 of the whole club worth) and performs extremely well, scoring 10 goals in the first 15 games at the age of 20. Because I have no real concerns with how he is performing, I just left his setup alone. Only thing which is not set to automatic is the creative freedom, which is set to maximum freedom for him.
This is what he looked like when I made the screens for this thread (about mid-season):