How can I improve this tactic?

[ferrrif50hunt]

I'm a big fan of the Pep Guardiola possession/tiki taka style, and have decided to try and get my Arsenal team to play that way. My main goals with this tactic are:

- To have 70% possession or more in most games. (Obviously against tougher teams it's not always possible.)
- To have a pass completion rate of 90% or more in most games.
- To have at least one player in the team completing over 100 passes a game.
- To create as many CCC's as possible.
- To keep a reasonably solid defence.


The basic things I decided I would need for this approach are:

- Bodies in midfield.
- Width, to stretch the field and make it harder for opposition players to close me down.
- A high defensive line, to push to opposition back.
- High pressing, to win the ball back as soon as possible and to prevent the opposition having time and space to exploit my high line.

I started off with a 4-2-3-1, but could not get that to work at all. Then I moved on to a 4-5-1 with a half back and a flat 4 across the middle of the pitch, but really struggled with that. Tried a basic, Barca style 4-3-3 but could never get more than about 55% possession and my passing % was always lower than 80% which is terrible.

Next thing I decided to try was a 4-6-0, and came up with this:

View attachment 434711

Now this tactic gave me my best result yet in terms of passing and possession. Against Olympiacos at home, all 3 of the central midfielders completed over 100 passes, and provided their fair share of key passes too:

View attachment 434707

But this still left me short of the kind of statistics I was looking for:

View attachment 434706

I've got all my players instructed to pass shorter, less risky etc except for Ozil, because I want him to be a bit more risky in order to create chances.

So my question is, how do you think I could improve this tactic, in order to increase the possession and the passing percentages to those magic numbers I'm looking for? (70% possession, 90% passing.)

 

[iota4u]

far too many playmakers, ideally you should ave two max per team, an AP and DP, change the winger AP's to either wingers of inside forwards, change the enganche to either a treq or shadow striker and perhaps change one of the CM Ap's to either a BWM or B2B

 

[miitchh]

Change EG to Shadow Striker or Treq. You need him to be more mobile.

Either change wide AP to Wingers or change WB (S) to CWB (A). You need to stretch opponents.


Don't listen to the haters, this is a great idea.

 

[bluebird123]

Why do you want to much possession? You don't need that much. Having loads of possession won't win always win you matches. It'd be too easy to put a wall ahead of you and you wouldn't get through because you also have no movement in your tactic.

You're only in September and you've changed formation 4 times? Why? You have to stick with it for something to work. You can't chop and change every game because you don't have over 60% possession.

I won't slate someone because they have ideas and certain philosophies on how football should be played but you are too fixated on having possession without actually hurting the opposition.

A 1-0 win over Olympiakos isn't something to be happy about (no disrespect but Arsenal are superior by far) but as I said, you're too fixated on having lots of possession.

I have no idea why you have 5 playmakers in one team with an enganche who is meant to be the main creator. There is no movement so you won't hurt anyone. I won't give you advice on how to get over 70% possession (because why? having possession is all well and good but if you don't do anything with it, it is redundant) I'll give you a tip on how to balance your tactic.

When playing with no striker the role has to be either a shadow striker or a trequarista. They roam and try and attack the box. Basically you have all this possession but no-one doing anything with it. Add in an inside forward also to attack the box.

Any other advice I give isn't going to comply with your need of having a high possession rate so I'll leave it there.

 

[ferrrif50hunt]

I'm not fixated on having possession without hurting the opposition, I'm fixated on having possession AND hurting the opposition.

It can be done. Look at Bayern Munich under Guardiola, they have an incredible average possession of 71.1% and have only conceded 8 goals, but they are still the top scorers in the league and create multiple goal scoring opportunities each game.

The same applies to Barcelona when Pep was manager there, over 70% average possession with the best defence and best attack in the league.

I know a 1-0 win over Olympiacos isn't impressive, but if you look, we had 4 CCC's in that match, but Ozil and Chamberlain missed 3 1v1's with the goalkeeper. On another day, it would have been 4-0.

I'm not looking to score 5 or 6 goals a game, I just want to completely dominate the game from start to finish, keeping the opposition pinned back into their own half and waiting for the right moment to play that killer ball. It's possible in real life, so why not in FM?