Striker Combination - Which Side / foot

SebastianRO

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Hi guys, I have a question that has been bothering me since forever. I am playing 5-3-2 (Antonio Conte system) in my beloved AC Milan save, with 2 strikers up front: Carlos Bacca and Marcus Rashford. Now, Bacca is more powerful physically and Rashford is extremly explosive. I am thinking about a standard DLF-S + AF combination. My question to you is next ? Both are right footed so which should I play left and which should I play right ?

According to my logic, it would make sense to play Rashford (AF) in the right side because he could have the option to put in better crosses (since he is right footed) and Bacca on the left (DLF-S) because he has really good Balance and can turn with a killer ball to Rashford.

The only reason I am even asking this, is because everywhere I looked in the past years, I've always seen this combination (AF + DLF-S) as AF on the left and the DLF-S on the right.

I would also want to hear your opinion about other different possibilities about different roles for this combination (Bacca + Rashford).
 
Do either of them have a decent weak foot rating?

Rasford Left Foot - Fairly Strong
Bacca Left Foot - Reasonable.

Also, I've been meaning to ask: What would be a poacher's good partners in a dual combo with / and / without an AM behind them ?
 
I've not really used a poacher on this years game mate, I usually go complete forward or deep lying forward so can't comment there!

I'd play Rashford on the left due to him being slightly stronger with that foot but I wouldn't be looking for either of the front two to be setting each other up too much, get your wingers doing that (if you're using them!). Both have low crossing attributes either way

Good choice of team to support by the way, check out the AC Milan thread on here (under english football though!)
 
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Hi guys, I have a question that has been bothering me since forever. I am playing 5-3-2 (Antonio Conte system) in my beloved AC Milan save, with 2 strikers up front: Carlos Bacca and Marcus Rashford. Now, Bacca is more powerful physically and Rashford is extremly explosive. I am thinking about a standard DLF-S + AF combination. My question to you is next ? Both are right footed so which should I play left and which should I play right ?

According to my logic, it would make sense to play Rashford (AF) in the right side because he could have the option to put in better crosses (since he is right footed) and Bacca on the left (DLF-S) because he has really good Balance and can turn with a killer ball to Rashford.

The only reason I am even asking this, is because everywhere I looked in the past years, I've always seen this combination (AF + DLF-S) as AF on the left and the DLF-S on the right.

I would also want to hear your opinion about other different possibilities about different roles for this combination (Bacca + Rashford).

In FM14, I learned that Advanced Forwards - which only come with the Attack duty - work much better when they play on whichever side corresponds to their strongest foot; right footers on the right and left footers on the left. When a forward in a front two makes a run into the channel, he typically goes between the opposition full back and centre back. So if he's left footed, in the left hand channel, with the ball on his left foot, his body is between the ball and the defender with the whole goal to aim at. If he's in the same position but needs to put the ball on his right foot, then the ball is now between the forward and the defender, making it easier to block or tackle.

Now this makes sense to me logically, as someone who has watched FM matches in the Comprehensive View and noticed what was working and what was not, and it also makes sense to me as a former amateur central defender of many years, trying to play the ball without bringing down the man inside the penalty area. Another user of this site has argued that his players cut inside onto their stronger foot and are just as effective, but while I see that happen outside the box with long range shooters in the False-9 or Deep Lying Forward roles, my FM14 experience - where I was making tweaks to my tactics in order to accommodate excellent youth academy products into my Southampton team - tells me that AFs should play on their stronger side. If it's totally different in FM16, then so be it, but I do keep on winning promotion from the Championship doing it my way, in my current journeyman save.
 
Rasford Left Foot - Fairly Strong
Bacca Left Foot - Reasonable.

Also, I've been meaning to ask: What would be a poacher's good partners in a dual combo with / and / without an AM behind them ?

False-9_Support.

If there's no traditional No.10 behind him, he'll drop into that area and look to play angled passes into the path of the Poacher or out wide to your wingers. If he's a decent long range shooter, he can also provide a threat from just outside the box. The problem is, False-9s are few and far between. Zach Clough played the role brilliantly for me at Championship level with AFC Bournemouth but I've been unable to find another player with the same qualities for my current Aston Villa team. If you can retrain or develop one of your own then you're onto a winner.

I often had Clough playing alongside Rushian Hepburn-Murphy (Advanced Forward_Attack) for Bournemouth. Despite his filthy offside fetish, the latter thrived off that kind of service. A decent Poacher should do likewise.
 
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@Average Joe
@rocheyb

Thank you both for your replies. I maybe should have mentioned that I play FM15 with an updated database. I played FM16 for about 300 hours and I just hate the Match Engine. It has nice moves and all, but man ... those spaces out wide are just terrible and there is literally no way to exploit an opposition through the middle because teams defend so so narrow that my fullbacks are never marked and they always get priority on recieving the ball from my miedfielders. This results into the same action every single time. None of my miedfielders tries a killer through pass to the strikers, instead they just pass it out wide to the unmarked fullback (which most of the times results in a cross). So yea ... I reverted back to the FM15 because I just love it's match engine.
 
I always found that the "footedness" doesn't matter all that much. A strker will have learned by the time he reaches the game age (16+) how to adjust. Which plays deeper is more a factor of how your midfield is set up; you don't want a deep lying forward getting in the way of an advanced midfielder.
 
I always found that the "footedness" doesn't matter all that much. A strker will have learned by the time he reaches the game age (16+) how to adjust. Which plays deeper is more a factor of how your midfield is set up; you don't want a deep lying forward getting in the way of an advanced midfielder.

I think it was more of an issue in FM14 than FM16, due to changes they made to the Match Engine. But in this case, I would still play the DLF on the left of the two, because he'll often be playing with his back to goal, playing throughballs on his stronger right foot to Rashford in the channel.
 
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