Whats a good defensive formation for holding a lead?

[Hyphron]

At Southampton I'm playing a 4-1-2-3 DM Wide which has been very successfully for me in my first season. However, something that was notable was throwing away leads, I really felt we could have pushed for champions league places if we had not let leads slip. Changing team mentality is something that didnt seem to work, eg changing to contain after being 2-0 up so im looking for advice on a solid formation that I could switch to when trying to hold a lead.

Thanks!

 

[WickedRamdeuter]

4-1-2-3 DM Wide is fine. You want the players to keep a good positioning and stamina, so try to mantain the posession, stay closer, try to play at a slower tempo and use a control or defensive mentality. If you're up in the score by 3+ goals, focus totally on defending and forget attacking.

If you're playing against a very powerful side, with superior players, you should consider to change to a 5-1-2-2 DM or a 5-2-3 DM Wide formation, and use a defending mentality. You can take advantage of the bad positioning of your rivals (they're rushing and trying to score goals so they not well positioned) and counter-attack.

Don't use containing mentality unless it's really necessary or there are less than 15 minutes left in the game.

I really like Southampton as they have a very competitive squad, Wanyama is a beast as anchorman, schneiderlin as box to box and ward-prowse as advanced playmaker or midfielder(attack) so they provide great stability to your game. Also consider to buy Balanta as it would be great addition to your defence. I hope this helped you , always happy to help.

 

[Conflictinbanno]

I use a variation, I tend to go Defensive or unlike WickedRamdeuter, I did use Contain and surprisingly to very good effect. I didn't have to change any of my instructions, but I found when using Defensive or Contain to see out games, because the other team was pushing forward to get that goal, it would often leave a lot of space for my attacking players and we would usually capitalise on this new found space and grab an extra goal leaving me in a much more comfortable position. I wouldn't say it is requiring a formation change to see it out, maybe a change to your player duties, although changing mentality changes this a lot anyway.

As for example if you have a Full Back on an Attack duty, on Control they will try to get forward as often as possible with a slight caution to players near them, switch this to say Counter and they will only get forward when they feel there is space to take advantage of, on Defensive, they are only likely to get this far forward if there is no danger, while on Contain I found they only really pushed forward when there was enough players back to cover. Not once did I change the duty of the player to support or defend, I only ever did this if I felt the opposition were more dangerous on the flanks, meaning I couldn't be as attacking in fear of them using these flanks to hurt me.

 

[mollyparra]

At Southampton I'm playing a 4-1-2-3 DM Wide which has been very successfully for me in my first season. However, something that was notable was throwing away leads, I really felt we could have pushed for champions league places if we had not let leads slip. Changing team mentality is something that didnt seem to work, eg changing to contain after being 2-0 up so im looking for advice on a solid formation that I could switch to when trying to hold a lead.

Thanks!

I really like Southampton as they have a very competitive squad,