If you want your striker ahead of our CAM's then you should change him to an attack duty.
With this formation (I've used it before, it produces wonderful football with plenty of goals) you need
both of your CM's to sit and defend and allow your wing backs and front 4 to do the creating. Change the BWM to a CM-D and keep the other one as a DLP-S. Otherwise you have a huge gaping hole in the middle of the pitch, add to the fact you are closing down all it'd take is the AI to set pass into space and exploit the middle coupled in with some runners from deep and your back four are going to be all over the place.
Note: Set a PI on the CM-D to close down much less otherwise you'll have similar issues as the BWM.
Another thing with your tactic is that you're incredibly predictable. You have one player attacking the box in the AM-A, whilst the AP-A will get in the box he won't be much of a goal threat. The CF-S is focused on creating chances than finishing them and you have absolutely no width (why have you not set the CWB to attack and why is Stevens a FB-D? You have no wing play). Add to the fact you're using exploit the middle on a game to game basis your tactic is completely one dimensional, I'm sorry but you will keep the ball well with your 3 play makers but overall I struggle to see how your tactic will work against an AI manager who denies you any space. All it takes is for you to come up against someone like Alan Irvine (most defensive manager in the game from my experience) to play his 4-2-3-1 (DM), negate your AM's influence with the CDM's and hit long balls out to the flanks. So while you're struggling to play through the middle your full backs will be getting nose bleeds going past the half way line so you will be playing in such a congested mess of a midfield with all(!) of your midfielder's pushed right up against each other (exploit the middle increases the mentality of all your CM's, AM's and ST's) trying to occupy the same space. All whilst playing at a tediously slow tempo, I am not sure what's attacking about retain possession and lower tempo (If you think back to the days of the sliders your tempo would be at the absolute lowest).
All in all you need to get width from your FB's (CWB set to attack, FB-D set to WB-S). If you don't then you may as well ditch this formation and try another one. You absolutely need a sitter in midfield, you need more of a goal scoring presence (sacrifice one of the AP's for a more goal scoring role). I haven't touched on this but use tighter marking benefits you in no way and play out of defence isn't needed whilst playing control, your D-Line is already high on control so drop that. Basically you have too many TI's.
So drop:
Tighter marking, push higher up, play out of defence, retain possession, exploit the middle.
One more that is questionable is play wider. Without any width your players are probably gifting the ball to opposition fb's because you're telling them to pass it wider without anyone being there. Unless you change your FB's then you should drop this too.
Long post I know but hopefully you take something from it. But I will finish with this, ignore the CC stat, it's useless. FM has weird ways of defining what a CC is. Unless
YOU see that you are giving away too many chances (like the opposition playing through you and out numbering you in the box or getting loads of 1 v 1's) then you shouldn't take any notice of it. If you still have issues then drop the CM's to DM's permanently, Anchor man and RPM would make a very good pairing. Anchor man on the side where your CWB-A is and RPM on the other side where your WB-S is. Simply because the anchor man will cover the CWB and the RPM will move forward together without giving up too much space at the back.
Hope it helps
