Bristol City 3rd season, 1st in Premiership away tactic help

[Jack_Has_Arrived]

Hi all, I've achieved back to back promotions with Bristol City and am now in the Premiership. I'm 9 games in and sitting in 9th, which I'm happy with as I have a squad which is woefully unprepared for the Premier League. What I'm not happy with, however, is my away form. As you can see from the screenshot, in every away game I've been battered and haven't won a point. My home form is the only thing saving me at the minute.

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Below is the tactic I'm using, it's served me well for the past two seasons and I'll keep using it at home as my home form has been very good. I said to myself that I'd give it a try away for the first few games as it has done so well before, but away I think it's not up to the task in the Premier League.

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I thought about going to a counter style, but in my current tactic closing down is a big factor and I personally like that style rather than inviting on pressure. Would securing the midfield be a good way to go? Maybe play a Defensive midfielder (D) in the DM position and then change one of the roaming playmakers to a CM(S). I just feel that the two RP's are getting cut through too easily by better teams. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks

 

[WJ]

It's an attacking, aggressive tactic and you're paying for it because your squad isn't good enough.

 

[WJ]

This was just talked about on the SI forum and I'm curious, why the Look for Overlap instruction? Nothing in your tactic indicates that you even want overlaps.

 

[Jack_Has_Arrived]

Do you have any suggestions on how to make it more defensively sound, specifically for away games? At home it still seems solid.

This was just talked about on the SI forum and I'm curious, why the Look for Overlap instruction? Nothing in your tactic indicates that you even want overlaps.

As for Look For Overlap, when I first created this tactic the idea was to stretch play, play wide and attack down the flanks. To my understanding both full backs as well as wing backs are influenced by the instruction, resulting in full backs making for forward runs and giving an extra player down the wings when attacking. It's worked for me in the past two seasons, as my full backs have often either assisted goals or been a distraction allowing the wingers to assist

 

[WJ]

Since your focus seems to be on the fullbacks, why not just give them attack duties? Why have wingers with the instruction to play wider, when you want overlaps? Why have wingers on Attack duty, bombing forward, but still expect an overlap somehow from support duty fullbacks?

As for advice about the tactic itself, be less aggressive. You're extremely attacking. At the very, very least, tone down the mentality. You're one of the weakest teams in the league, trying to play like Man City. Surely you must realise this won't be that successful? I also have my doubts about your AML and AMR and how much they contribute defensively against teams who will generally at least have 1 attacking fullback.

 

[Jack_Has_Arrived]

Well up until this season it was working well, so I kind of just adopted a 'if it isn't broke, don't try to fix it' mentality to it, might look to change that now then and put them on attack duties.

I made a couple of changes, mainly scaled back the aggressiveness of the tactic (quite a lot), and tried to make it tougher to break down and more defensively minded in the midfield, we'll see how that works! Thanks for your suggestions