I need some help to establish possesion based football

[Alexandrops]

I ve picked Hansa Rostock for a new career in the German 3. League but i just cant make it work.
My biggest problem is that i cant find a tactic thats working.

I made my mind up at the start of my career that i wanted to play possesion based football out of two reasons. First of all because my team is one of the better teams in the league, so i figured that my usual counterattacking aproach might not be too useful, since most of the time are set on defending against me. Secondly because my team is fairely good in terms of passing, first touch and technique in comparison to the other teams.

With this controll based approach i toyed around in many different ways but could not get it working, or atleast not like it should. Im currently at the end of my second season and sitting for the second year in the middle of the table. I win some games, draw more and loose the most, but if i win its mostly because of some penalties, corners or some other luck stuff. If i loose however i have like 55-60% possesion but only create like 5-6 shots a game, which would not be that bad if i wouldn't get hit on the counter like 1-2 times a game.

If tried almost everything. From 4-4-2 to 4-2-3-1, from rigid to fluid, with various different team and player instructions but I cant make it work. Now im not that fixed on possesion football and tried attacking but i couldn't think of an other way to beat my defensive based opponents.

before this setup i had: keep possesion, shorter passing, pass into space, work ball into box, look for overlap, much higher defensive line, hassle opponents and lower tempo.

i switched all those on and off again trying to find a functioning pairing but nothing seemed to be working.

the only Personal Instructions i curently have:
GK: Distribute to defenders
both CD: shorter passing
both FB: run wide with ball
AP: more direct passing
AF: hold position



I would be so glad any help and any opinions on what to try as i cant think of anything which would change my fortune around.

p.s. external link if the screenshot is to small: http://s1309.photobucket.com/user/Co...75324.jpg.html

 

[Igneos79]

http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...-creating-tiki-taka-guide-igneos-eructid.html

 

[Alexandrops]

thanks. Will definitely have a look at that

 

[fm is scripted]

Hi there

I see you have the look for overlap shout, I would only use this if you have inside forwards so that the fullbacks can run up the flanks and support the forwards with crosses and passing, you already have wingers who stay wide? This could leave space behind your defence if your fullbacks are running past your wingers. It's all about linking play, especially with possession based tactics.

Try have your defensive midfielder be more involved if you use fullbacks with that tactic, give him a regista role maybe so that he can push further up the field and support your players and maintain possession? In my opinion this role is very important for possession based tactics.

But yeah I recommend reading some guides on possession tactics especially some role combinations and go from there. Good luck

 

[Alexandrops]

Thanks.

Yeah i had that in place because my fullbacks were very strong offensively.

I thought about the regista thing but i was a bid afraid it would expose even more space infront of my defense.

But this is now somewhat irrelevant for this save right now, because i somehow managed to get promoted. Now i have to resort to counter attacking most of the time, because i cant find another tactic that works for a mediocre team vs other mediocre teams. First i tried to somehow emulate the aggressive counter pressing many german sides use. (like Mainz, Berlin or Dortmund) But i could not get that working so far
so for now i resorted to this setup against better and similar rated teams:


imgur: the simple image sharer


The BWM was a CM for a long time now but my best CM just broke his foot and is out for 5 months, so i had to mix things up. Would you recommend changing anything?