Well, I am guessing that since my thread got closed with no explanation that I am supposed to post this here? I didn't think so, as this wasn't a specific tactic to suit my team, but I could be wrong there...
Playing as Man City, 1st season in, playing a 4-4-2 formation. All is generally going well, I'm 2nd in the league, 4 points behind Chelsea after 19 matches. Into the semis of the League Cup, 1st knockout round of the EURO Cup, haven't started the FA Cup yet. Had some decent results, beating Chelsea 2-0 at home and drawing with Liverpool, Arsenal and away. This with tactics (Standard in this case) that I developed (and tweak each match) after reading the TT&F guide.
Team is (backups):
GK: Given (Hart/Fiorillo)
LFB: Bridge (Sakho)
CB: Yobo & Jagielka (Kompany/Dunne/Sakho)
RFB: Richards (Srna)
LM: Zhirkov (Petrov/Feghouli)
CMa: Aguero (Elano/Ireland/Johnson)
CMd: Kuzmenovic (Veloso/de Jong)
RM: Srna (Wright-Phillips/Feghouli)
FC: Wagner Love, Robinho (Balotelli, Bellamy, Sturridge, Caicedo)
I know I am playing Aguero slightly out of position, but he's been playing well in CM. Have also had problems getting any better CBs, but that's another story. Have signed a few cover backs (Loic Nestor and Lamine Gassama) for the January transfer window as well as a keeper (Erwin Zelazny), all young and with what my scouts tell me have 5 star potential.
But for some reason, playing against an opposition formation with a flat back 4, a DMC, two MCs, AMR & AML and a lone striker causes me major issues. Weird thing is that I seem to get decent match stats, but I get killed in the goal count.
Example lost 0-5 against Tottenham, despite me having 24 shots (9 on target) compared to 14 (9), 56% posession to 44%, 2 to 4 corners, 12 to 8 free kicks, 68% to 63% passes, 30% to 23% crosses, 86% to 96% tackles, 65% to 45% headers.
The goals were:
1) Long looping pass from a defender which Robbie Keane latched onto, beat a defender and slotted away.
2) A corner headed in at the 6 yard box by Corluka
3) A corner intercepted at the front post by Palacios who slotted it in past the defender
4) Robbie Keane gets a ball 25 yards out, runs wide past a few defenders, draws the keeper out and slots it in behind him from a narrow angle
5) Another looping pass from deep that Palyuchenko latched onto and slotted past my keeper
Nothing there that really jumps out at me tactically, other than just plain bad defending. My defenders had ratings of 4.6(!) and 5.6 for my FBs and 5.8 and 6.1 for my CBs. Bad ratings compared to normal for them, but they lost 0-5, I'd expect that. And the 4.6 was just a shocker for Micah Richards.
If this was a one off, I'd just put it down to a match where they got extremely lucky and I failed to score despite most of the stats going my way. Except in previous games where I was learning the match, I always seem to suffer against that opposition formation, despite doing well against most other formations. Just not sure how to counter it is all, cos everything I have seemed to try has failed.
Usually I tweak my tactics a bit and set one CB to man mark their striker, with the other center back set 1 notch more defensively to hopefully act as cover - not that that seems to have worked at all. I have tried setting both my fullbacks and then as an experiment my R/L halves to man mark their AMR/L. I have tried narrow formations, I have tried wide formations. This match due to the speed of Keane, I set my defensive line deepish (setting of 6ish). Normally on their long pitch I'd set it highish, but I was worried about opposition pace.
So, how do I defend against this formation? Any tips? Cos right now I am stuffed if I can think how else to tweak it to work. I could try pushing my backs up to the WB position, but they'd both be slightly out of position. And I know that against a 4-1-2-2-1 narrow formation I can just set my d-line high and cramp them for space in the middle, so I am thinking it's probably something simple, but that for my frustration, I just can't see it.
