how do i get the striker to
1. stay in between the to central defenders on pain of loosing his manhood
2. that when he gets the ball on a counter attack to NOT dribble down to th corner post and make a cross to NOBODY (ibrah)
how do i get the AMC to be a playmakr and not some brainless fool that keeps being ahead of the striker (iniesta/henry)
and having set the entire team to cross seldom and to try through balls often i still get more crosses than throughballs WTH? how do i fix that?
Most of this needs to be sorted out with Advanced player instructions:
1.& 2
Ibra trying to bend it like Beckham
Ibra is actually much better at getting the ball and either slipping the ball to the inside forward, as you well know, or having an inside forward slip the ball to him for a tap in from inside the box. In order to achieve this, I used to slow tempo, reduced Ibra's crossing from byline to moves into channels, crossing to low, through balls to high and more importantly, passing to very short. The combination of slow tempo (no urgency), short passing and hold up ball should make him want to either play someone in, or at least try to keep the defenders from mobbing him. The problem with 1 up front is he needs to take his time, keep posession and do his thing.
Another good combination may be a High Defensive Line and the above settings, since it typically means the attackers can support much quicker, and he won't want to run to the wings to 'hold' the ball, which seems to be the default position instead of trying to dribble past 2-3 players - sensible, but it does deny you wonder goals! Use a high Attacking Mentality for the player if you want him to play far up the pitch to try and create space for the midfield (I use this with tweaked Complete Forward - Support instuctions.
3.
AMC as Playmaker and not Forward
I had the exact same issue myself, the solution seems to be playing with the mentality sliders (decrease it so he joins in front midfield), or drop him back to a natural midfield position and tell him to make lots of forward runs with the ball. For a "1-up" tactic it does tend to turn the striker into a support striker and the AMC into the striker for through balls though. The best solution (for me) was to play Iniesta as a Central Mid with an Attack duty or as an Advanced Playmaker with an Attack duty and play him in natural midfield with a slow temp.
4.
Reducing crossing
I'd always suggest crossing from deep with full-backs as it seems to create a lot of easy tap-ins, or at least picks you up a throw in or corner near the opposition box, but if you want to reduce crossing entirely, look at player instructions-> advanced and reduce passing distance, reduce creative freedom and reduce tempo. It seems the defenders still refuse to listen (a superb regen of mine who is being sculpted into the next Roberto Carlos plays at left back and seems to want to hit it long whatever his instructions) but more often than not midfielders will knock it sideways. As for a counter attack strategy, I have little experience, I'm presuming the reason for this is that if you play a Counter strat it increased passing to 'Direct' which makes your players more likely to launch it high down the wings and hope, which at the top level doesn't seem to work too well if you want to replicate Barca's posession football.