Shyftyy's 6-1-2-1-0 Counter football without Counter Strategy

Shyftyy

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Latest updates always in BLUE

Update 1: 14-02-2014:

I have updated the tactic with some minor tweaks. improve defense a bit by changing the Central Defender Defend to Ball Playing Defender Cover. This reduces the throughball goals.

Changes roled of SS during corners to charge down corners

Set HB player instruction to shoot less often to reduce wasted opportunities.

Updated link and images to reflect the above

Feedback from testers:

Nemanja Vidic: Page 10, Post #93 : Shyftyy, this tactic is just great! Maybe the best I have ever tried on FM
smile.gif
Thank you, the game is now playable again.

Energised: Page 11, Post#104: Best tactic i ever had on fm14 so far !
keep playing nice attacking football, winning almost everything, only lost 2 times since i started using & only a few draws..

Nezza6969: Page 11, Post#109: i don't know why but i feel so much comfort using this tactic but iv'e tweaked it a bit leading to 2 SS and 1 Box to Box player and the results are looking very good, in the friendly iv'e beaten Bayern, Napoli & Dortmund using a weaker players whilst them 3 had there best players out.

fantastic tactic mate keep up the good work

Mickeylad: Page 18, Post#176:

After months of trying to design my own tactics and downloading tactics it appears i finally have one that works, cheers Shyftyy! using the original tactic with the HB tweak you mentioned (tactic used from red line)

A good run of results with hardly any goals conceded.

its interesting that the tactics that work are ones that a real life FM would never use haha! keep up the good work

Further mentions should include Zemkl (3 with Swansea first season), Sgaramis (1st place portugues league with Estoril), Spaulding (1st place EPL with Hull, first season), Mikedodgson (1st place newcastle, first season), Dimartino and others. <3


Hello all,

The following tactic is for version 14.2.2

THIS TACTIC HAS NOW PROPERLY BEEN TESTED WITH A FULL SEASON WITH NEWCASTLE AND VARIOUS OTHER TESTERS IN THIS THREAD.

Prepare yourself for a long read

As you may or may not know, I like to create a different tactics, not only for my own fun but also to see if I can beat the ME in some sort of way. In FM2013 I released a tactic called the 6-2-2-0 which was defensively very strong but the common consensus was that it did not score enough. In FM 2014, however with the new roles there were a lot of possibilities to re-create this tactic and I have done so from the bottom up.

You see, I found that combining the push up mentality with the 'deep positioning' of the team lures the ME into a sense that it should push up as well. Through most games I have consistently found space behind the defense and this tactic is made specifically to put that space to good use through crossing but mostly by throughballs.

Get something to drink since this will be a long write-up:

The formation and it's philosophy:

View attachment 420988

Although FM calls this formation a 6-1-2-1-0, I personally see it more as a 4-6-0 since the the WBs are so offensive, they can hardly be called defenders. They will of course perform their defensive duties.

As stated above this whole formation is aimed at using space behind the defense. As you can see in the image below, most of the playing will take place on an extremely small piece of the field(area between the red lines). This situation is against the defense of Juventus so definitely not the worst defense in the game. Note how far their defense is coming forward even though my offense is moving into their half. The natural reaction would normally be drop back since nobody is close enough to the player with the ball to do any efficient pressing.


View attachment 422917


The WB's are set to sit narrow while the FBs, designed to come up to cross (or dive in to space although less often than the WBs) when the opportunity presents itself, will stay wider. This combined with the tendency for the opposition defense to move up will make them come forward and be stretched our across the pitch of the field.It also maintains the overlap between the FB and what normally would be the winger. The halfback is there to step into the defense when both FBs and WBs are moving forward to maintain the 3 at the back. Back to the situation mentioned above:

Instead of falling back, Juventus decides to push even further up and try to press the ball carrier(Armero, the WBL) who now that he has pulled one defender out of position because of this pressing attempt will pass to the BBM who has 3 passing options for people to run into space. The Shadow striker, the other Box to Box Midfielder and Britos, the FB who has escaped all attention of the defense since they tried to put pressure on the WB.

View attachment 422907

He chooses to pass to Britos who now has a clear run on goal and he finishes nicely.

Unfortunately, Fm does not upload in any higher resolution than 360p so the quality is really poor but it should give you a good idea of what the tactic intents to do.You can see the goal below:

[video=youtube_share;AFAg_a-LBYQ]http://youtu.be/AFAg_a-LBYQ[/video]

Most goals will come from the Shadowstriker however but the principle is always the same. Pass to whoever has the most space available. Unfortunately, the quality is really poor so I don't think I will show too many. You'll just have to create your own highlights :)

[video=youtube_share;iPxAo1w7PcE]http://youtu.be/iPxAo1w7PcE[/video]

Mentality and Style
It's set to very fluid since I want everyone to be involved in going forward just as much as I would like everyone to fall back into defense. This is also based on the fact that there is no real specialist roles (although the Sweeper Keeper can be argued) in the formation. If you would like a deeper insight into what I mean by this, please read Laffles excellent article (although written by an employee of SI) regarding philosophies here: http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/football-manager-2014-tactics/150566-12-steps-successful-career.html

I chose to go with Standard for the same reason above, everyone should be involved in everything so I do not want the style to interfere with the positioning or mentality of the players.

Team instructions are set as follows:

View attachment 420987



I will not go through all of these but some are worth mentioning:

- Play narrower, obviously I want to get as many players threatening to run into the space behind the defense as possible. If I were to set this to play wider or normal those players would lose their defenders somewhere near the sideline from where it's much more difficult to get a free run at goal.

- exploit the middle is for the same reasons as above.

- Play out of defense I turned on for 2 reasons: The main reason being that since we overload a small part of the pitch, any longballs or panic clearances will just end up with the opposition. We already do not have the most possession during the games so no need to make it any worse with crazy long balls. If a long ball still happens it usually by choice because of space available.
The other reason is that when we have goalkicks , the 4 defenders, 2 wingbacks and sometimes even the half back will come down to the keeper to receive the first pass. With 7 options available to him to pass to, you will rarely see a frustrating goalkick straight to the opposition.

- Stay on Feet. I found that without this, we create an incredibly amount of fouls because we do press since Herassing the Opponent is on. Also I do not want my team to be sliding all over the place since the space behind the defense is not there for long so when we do have the ball they need to be ready to pass instantly.

I believe the rest is self explanatory.

So now that we know what it does do, let's discuss what it does NOT do.

THIS IS NOT A POSSESSION BASED, TIKI TAKA TACTIC.

Possession with this tactic lies between 35 and a maximum of 52% possession. You will also not get 100 passes out of one player. The whole tactic is based around creating CCC based on abusing space behind the defense.

To illustrate this, let's take a look at some match stats form various games I have played.

In the game against Udinese, absolutely everything went according to plan. You see that I managed to get the highest amount of possession (a very rare occassion) albeit it only 52% but also managed to get a staggering 11(!) CCCs of which(because I did not have the greatest finishers and their GK was amazing) I only managed to convert 4.

View attachment 422893

However, this was an exception, on average possession and unfortunately CCCs will be much lower. A more realistic image would be for example my loss against Real Madrid in which I only had 37% of possession but still managed to create 3 CCC and 2 half chances. You can also see why I ended up putting Stay on Feet into the team instructions with 20 fouls by my side and 7 by them. You will still have fouls and card but not as many as I had before :)

View attachment 422892

Obviously sometimes the opponent will have some more CCCs and you will have less
Corners - Attacking:

Since I am horrible at setting up the setpieces I decided to find some instructions on the forums here and ended with Jassar's preferred 14.2.2 set-up which can be found here: http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/shar...read***********************jassar*******.html and all credit for these should go to him. As always: Right footers take left sided corners and vica versa.

That being said I did tweak them a bit for my own preferences which you can see in the image below. You'll notice that my RB is going forward. This is because out of the 3 flank defenders he would be the one most likely to get something out of a corner. You may have to change this depending on your team.

Secondly, something you may choose or not, I have my Shadow Striker challenging the keeper. Dries Mertens can't jump. Defintely is not a header. He is there to prevent the goalie to get to the cross to easily.

View attachment 422890

Now, I have to say. I scored 21 goals from corners in this test season. Albiol got 11 goals , Cannavaro 9 and I think a back-up CD got one as well. This seems like a lot so I hope this is not considered an exploit although I do not think so since it's the standard near corner set-up. I like it and thank Jassar for the wonderful guide so if you prefer a different corner set-up by all means go ahead.

Corners - Defensive


After some research by DiMartino and the good folks at the SI forum, he found out that, with the current (bugged) defensive setpieces, the default version is actually the best. Therefore the latest tactic is now v2.1 which is exactly the same as v2 except that the defending corners and freekicks have been reset to the default value.



HOW TO PLAY THE 6-1-2-1-0

Training Pre-season:

I like to stick with what works for me. For FM2013. I found an article on the mypassion4footballmanager site (which is excellent next to FM-Base) that helped me get the tactic as fluent as soon as possible. Obviously this takes longer in Fm2014 but I feel that this is still the right method for me personally.

I suggest you read the entire write-up(all credit to the people of Mypassion4footballmanager) which can be found here: Pre-Season Assignments - How to Increase Match Fitness | Passion for Football Manager

but to summarize:

1# If you are playing multiple leagues, select the earliest start date available. For example Germany starts in June 2013 whereas England starts in July. This gives you a month extra pre-season for your team learn the tactic, work on fitness and team cohesion which is especially important when new purchases come in.

2# Arrange 7 to 10 friendlies with an interval of 3 days, against two or three teams with larger reputation.
Do this right away when the game starts

3# Develop or adjust the preferred tactic for the season ahead. You can set-up some shouts but I do not use these as I feel it interferes with testing.
Time Period: From the start and if you are creating your own tactic keep tweaking

4# Pre-season training; Match Training - Tactics Only, and General Training - Fitness (Very High). Set the scheduling bar to 50% (Highest level).After 3-4 friendlies Change the General Training to Team Cohesion
Time Period: Fitness the first 2 weeks / Changed to Team Cohesion after the first 2 weeks.

5# (As)sign four to 5 star coaching (Football Manager 2014 Staff Recommendation | Passion for Football Manager) and backroom staff to improve the results of player development and team training, which lays the foundation for a professional team management.

6# Give your scouts different scouting assignments to track possible transfer targets that can strengthen your squad and aid team performance / or player development.

Personally I like to get Bernhard Peters from Hoffenheim in as assistant manager. He is not cheap (approx 17.500 euro a week) but in the way I use the assistant (scouting, tactical advice etc but nothing actively on his own) he is the best I can find.

Training during the season:

As soon as the season starts I think it's best to concentrate your training on individual training and/or next opponent match preparations. The scheduling bar can be lowered to 20%, as I feel this is a good amount of match training. (see image below)

View attachment 420414

To get the best gaining set the general training intensity to average, which makes a general workload of medium, before setting up individual training for your players.

Testing and feedback from other testers have shown that so far the best combination is

General traing - Balances at average intensity
Match Training - Attacking movement at 20% on the scheduling bar. If you notice that selfish/low teamwork players start trying 'stupid' attempts on goal, switch this to teamwork for 1 week.

If you have a week with loads of matches, like in the image where I have 3 matches in 5 days, then simply rest your players for that entire week. Otherwise they will be too tired to get results as their match fitness will easily fall below 70%.

View attachment 420410

Individual training:

Train your players for the role you expect or want them to play. This may mean re-training them to the position and think about PPMs. For example I am training Sissoko to go forward as often as possible.See picture below:

View attachment 420406



Opposition Instructions and Shouts

None were used as I feel these both interfere with the basis of the tactic when testing. Feel free to set these up on your own in actual games.

Red Cards:

Obviously it depends on who get's the red card but there are a couple on mandatory positions that need to be filled and therefor cannot be left empty.

1 - Your SS, he is the main outlet for the passing behind the lines. Without this position you lose a valuable link-up player as he will drop down and send your BBMs forward as well.

2 - Your Half Back - with both the FBs and the WBs bombing forward, he is a vital **** in this tactic. He is your invisible player that makes your whole team and tactic function. Everybody's favorite team has one of these and this position must always be filled as he keeps the 3 at the back and sweeps up through passes.

3- In case of red cards to the FB, move the WB to that position. The WB is used mostly for offense and as FB he can still provide some back-up offense but you'll keep the defense first mentality which you need with one man down.

LLM Play: I didn't do this but if you are severe underdogs, Sgaramis recommends to change the mentality as follows:

Home not favourite = Defensive
Home favourite = Standard
Away not favourite = Defensive
Away favourite = Counter


Recommended playertype:

Nothing out of the ordinary here, I believe. Just some pointers and player filters below.

For the offensive players (WBs, BBMs, and SS) try to get players that have decent speed and first touch. Finishing is a lower priority. Dries Mertens( MY SS who is only a 2 star SS) scored 26 goals together with 12 assists with a finishing of 12. Once they get open it's such a clear cut chance that they will outscore the rating they have. The higher the finishing is the better of course.

I chose to play Hamsik as BBM instead of SS and I feel he is the ideal BBM for this tactic. He had 23 goals(he also takes the penalties) and 18 assists but felt I would lack the passing to get the SS open if I used a different midfield set-up. He is a 4 star SS with higher finishing so he could probably score more than Mertens but I felt threading those passes was more important.

WBs. Try to find someone similar to Armero. He took all the right side corners being a left footed player as well so at the end of the season he ended with 11 goals and 27 assist. Not bad at all for a Wingback right?

FB - All season long I used the Britos type player. Undoubtedly there are better FBs available. Britos can't cross at all but his passing of 12 still got him 8 assist in the season.

HB - Quite possible one of the more important positions. Aimed at keeping the defense together while both the FB and the WBs bomb forward. I used Inler because out of all the players available he was the one that had the highest star rating for the role. I believe knowing the role is more important than the actual stats a player has. I am sure that players like Lucas Leiva and Cheik Tiote (higher ratings) will do excellent at this position. Offense matters much less here since that is not their primary goal. Inler still managed to get 5 goals and 3 assist because of his shooting.

CD's - as normal, although decent to high marking is a plus.

Sweeper Keeper as normal: I was lucky to have Reina here but there are better ones available.

PLAYER FILTERS

Sweeper Keeper: Sweeper Keeper
Full Back Support: Full Back Support 2
Ball Playing Defender Stopper: Ball Playing Defender Stopper
Ball Playing Defender Cover: Ball Playing Defender Cover
Wing Back Attack: Wing Back Attack 2
Half Back Defend: Half Back Defend
Box to Box Midfielder Support: Box to Box Midfielder Support
Shadow Striker Attack: Shadow Striker Attack

Results:

Won the double in the Serie A (Title and Cup) and narrowly lost to Real Madrid in the Semi Finals of the Champions League(0-1 over 2 legs).The serie A was won with a +70 goal difference.

View attachment 422855

The overall tactic scored 104 goals and conceded 30 over 50 matches.

View attachment 423133

DOWNLOAD LINK:

MEDIAFIRE LINK: 6-1-2-1-0 final v2.1

Thank you for reading this and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have. Feel free to leave any feedback either here or through PM

TESTING AREA:

my own v2 -

Finished my own season with Newcastle utd.


Media prediction: 8th

Won the EPL and the Capital one Cup.



Individual awards:





Things to work on for V3

- Correct mistake in BPD cover who is now set to close down more. This obviously needs to move to the BPD Stopper.
- Improve Defense against Indirect Free Kicks. Not sure if this is down to the players I have or the actual set-up



- Optimise crossing setting , now set to far post with drill crosses. Currently testing with near post for the FB's and Far post for the WBs as tjhey are closer to the goal.

- Check and improve setting for throw-ins from the right side as apparently I have 3 people on the near post there.

EDIT: also need to improve player filters for other positions than BBM, SS and HB

With a full season in full manager mode now played and all the magnificent feedback I received from you guys (thank you so much) , I consider this tactic to be properly tested and working so I will update the main post to reflect this.


Nezza6969 - made some tweaks, his style is different than the original since it plays with 1BBM and 2Shadowstrikers. I have not tested this myself but the feedback he gets is very good.

View attachment 420926

You can find his version here:
7-1-2.tac

Dinjesk's version:

Almost the same tweaks as Nezza but different instructions and player settings. Very good results as well. You can read more about this on page 8 and the tactic can be found here:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/attachments/share-download-fm-14-tactics/497022d1392315155-shyftyys-6-1-2-1-0-counter-football-without-counter-strategy-rara13.tac Just copy paste the link into your browser. This was also not tested by myself but the pictures he posted showed good results.


 
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Unfortunately I could not access the site for a while (lost connection) and lost a lot of the write-up so I will finish this tomorrow. Good thing is that I will be working from home :D Also, Not including the link without the write-up. I appreciate the eagerness though. and thanks for having my back Jason :)
 
hooo... how I hate when people create threads speaking about their success with a particular tactic, but actually take 2 days to upload something...

This Forum is called "share and download FM 2014 tactics", and anyone that made a OP without tactic link should see the thread immediately closed! Sorry, it's nothing personal, but what you are doing doesn't make any sense... this is not marketing... it's not like you are selling something, it's just a Goddamm tactic...
 
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hooo... how I hate when people create threads speaking about their success with a particular tactic, but actually take 2 days to upload something...

This Forum is called "share and download FM 2014 tactics", and anyone that made a OP without tactic should see the thread immediately closed! Sorry, it's nothing personal, but what you are doing doesn't make any sense...
'

None taken. I prefer to do things right before I upload so you'll just have to wait.
 
I've been using Romian's 3-4-2-1 and Jassar's monster for quite some time now and I feel your tactic is based on the same principle. My problem with those 2 now is that after 10 years of total domination, opponents sit back and narrow all the time so I'm missing the space behind them quite often these days. The encouraging part of your tactic is the presence of the WBs in front of the FBs, which will probably add some width. Do you have any examples where you were really strong favorites and the opponents were playing tight?

EDIT: Oh, and never mind the hasty people. You've done a great presentation there. I hate it when people just upload tactics without explaining the ideas behind them...
 
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'

None taken. I prefer to do things right before I upload so you'll just have to wait.

Again.. it's nothing personal. But that's exactly my point! You are not doing things right! First of all you write all you want in word, then you copy paste the entire text, and upload the pics that you previously selected and already placed in separate folder to make upload easy and fast. And after that you post the entire thing. Sorry, by no means trying to be a pain in the ***, but this is the right way to do this!
 
I've been using Romian's 3-4-2-1 and Jassar's monster for quite some time now and I feel your tactic is based on the same principle. My problem with those 2 now is that after 10 years of total domination, opponents sit back and narrow all the time so I'm missing the space behind them quite often these days. The encouraging part of your tactic is the presence of the WBs in front of the FBs, which will probably add some width. Do you have any examples where you were really strong favorites and the opponents were playing tight?

EDIT: Oh, and never mind the hasty people. You've done a great presentation there. I hate it when people just upload tactics without explaining the ideas behind them...

Thank you for the kind words.Unfortunately I don't have any concrete examples. I am sure that with the increase of your reputation the opponent will sit back and play narrow defense like you said. I have seen some matches where opponents like Sassuolo do exactly that but the FB's coming up for crosses keep the width to a certain degree as well as when the WB decide to cross and should be able to provide scoring opportunities still eventhough the opposition sits narrow. It provides a dual threat I feel.
 
I use the same principle in the 3-4-2-1-0 SicSyco tweak of Romian tactic. But overload and very rigid. Overload makes everyone going everywhere, so it is with your standard mentality. Or am im missing something? Very rigid seems to keep players in the positions, or you could have the SS running along the CBs and loose the connection you need upfront. Or not?

Also, retraining wingers to WBs could be profitable?

If it helps, against teams who sit deeper, low your d-line to get them more upfront and have the same space in the back that you need.

Btw, your crosses are set to aim where?
 
I use the same principle in the 3-4-2-1-0 SicSyco tweak of Romian tactic. But overload and very rigid. Overload makes everyone going everywhere, so it is with your standard mentality. Or am im missing something? Very rigid seems to keep players in the positions, or you could have the SS running along the CBs and loose the connection you need upfront. Or not?

Also, retraining wingers to WBs could be profitable?

If it helps, against teams who sit deeper, low your d-line to get them more upfront and have the same space in the back that you need.

Btw, your crosses are set to aim where?

I have no specialist with the exception of the Sweeperkeeper maybe. In this case I prefer the very fluid mentality since it tells the players that they HAVE to do everything. With rigid you tell them to stick their role and do not much else which is fine if you have specialists.

Overload will tell everyone to rush forward whereas with my settings I basically tell everyone except for the HB and 2 defenders to run forward and the passing changes with overload as well. I guess it comes down to a matter of preferences though.

Retraining wingers to WB can be very valuable yes.

Thanks for the tip if teams sit deeper and my crosses are not set at all except for Drill Crosses which should be a mixed or near post setting.
 
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After several years with the same team, I found out that opponents tend to stick to their defensive positions and not come forward even when I sit much deeper. The only way I can think to force them out of there is to create an "overload" of players in the flanks and that's what I'm really hoping to get from this tactic.
Anyway, finished my work so will start testing with a top-class team shortly...
 
After several years with the same team, I found out that opponents tend to stick to their defensive positions and not come forward even when I sit much deeper. The only way I can think to force them out of there is to create an "overload" of players in the flanks and that's what I'm really hoping to get from this tactic.
Anyway, finished my work so will start testing with a top-class team shortly...

Trying to open the defense to the flanks? Think that it can work :D. Will you test it and post some SS in here?
 
After several years with the same team, I found out that opponents tend to stick to their defensive positions and not come forward even when I sit much deeper. The only way I can think to force them out of there is to create an "overload" of players in the flanks and that's what I'm really hoping to get from this tactic.
Anyway, finished my work so will start testing with a top-class team shortly...

I hope it can provide you with you are looking for! As AVPmoreira said, please let me know :)
 
It will take a while though. I'm in the middle of the season and it wouldn't be fair to start trying this before I get some level of fluidity :)
 
It will take a while though. I'm in the middle of the season and it wouldn't be fair to start trying this before I get some level of fluidity :)

Of course, just take your time. I am just asking that when you do get a chance then please let me know :)
 
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