Magic 105.4 is gently playing in the background, playing songs straight out of the Sunday stress-busters playlist and I find myself staring at a 2D match engine, like many others I’m sure on a Sunday afternoon. I’m patiently waiting for my Toulouse team to beat the opposition team 3-0 and go onto win every competition and I find myself getting really bored.
So there I am saving the game and closing FM16 and thinking, I know if I switch to FM17 all my troubles will be over, the match engine has been tweaked and I’ll definitely win everything!!
15 minutes later, I’m watching my West Ham team lose 2-0 to a team I have never heard of in my first pre-season friendly. I am playing an Attacking 4231 after the board telling me this is the style of football they want me to play. The 4231 because this is how all the top managers play, right?
I keep finding articles suggesting that when starting a tactic no team instructions should be enabled unless you have an idea of how you want to play.My Urika moment happened. I have just seen Ogbonna pick the ball up as a Ball-Playing defender and launch a 60 yard ball to Lanzini who happens to be marked by a defensive midfielder followed by a central defender who had stepped up. Guess what, Lanzini got nowhere near the ball and it came straight back towards us where my midfield are spectators in a game of Football Tennis happening above their heads. The opposition didn’t capitalise on it thankfully and we managed to retain position. What I also noticed was my deep-lying playmaker and both full backs were free, Ogbonna had at least 3 shorter passing options available to him and he thought let’s ping a 60 yard ball to the smallest player in the team, that seems sensible.
The space bar was instantly pressed on my Macbook and I go straight to the tactics overview and I hit shorter passing. Hold on, I still want Payet, Lanzini and those creative players capable of such beautiful long defence splitting balls to be able to do so. So, I also clicked Pass into Space. Right now we’re getting somewhere. The opposition are now running around after me trying desperately to get the ball back. We go in at half time 2-0 down but the last 10 minutes or so I can see a drastic improvement, my players are starting to get into the game. Changes to tactics are not instant and you should always give it 10 minutes or so of game time to see if it has made a difference. Don’t do what I normally do and impatiently turn on all different combinations of shouts and expect it to work.
So to recap we are using fluid attacking 4231 and 5 minutes into the the second half we are trying to force ourselves on the opposition and we seem to be ok in defence but our midfield are now trying to launch 60/70 yard balls to Payet and Lanzini which isn’t what I want at all. So for some reason I’m thinking that might have something to do with my mentality, Attacking says the board, what do they know about football. I tone it down a little and move to a standard mentality with a fluid shape and as if by magic my defence find my midfield, who then find the creative players finding pockets of space, brilliant. However, Sakho is getting in Lanzini’s way by dropping off the defenders. This has probably got something to do with the Complete Forward role he’s got with support duty. No one is pushing the defensive line back, I could have changed this to an attack duty but I wanted to reduce the work Sakho had to do and focus on pushing higher up the pitch. Although I don’t particularly like the Advanced Forward role, because they dribble to much for my liking, Despite this player instruction, I changed his role to Advanced Forward and he basically stopped getting Lanzinis way. I also found Kayoute, my BBM, pushing further forward and almost getting as high as Sakho.
Well on one occasion he didn’t just get up with Sakho, Kayoute ran passed him and scored a screamer from just inside the box which made it 2-1 game on. 10 minutes later a ball from Sam Bryan was floated to the far past and Diafra Sakho side foots in the equaliser. Bingo, back in business and the small changes I made to the tactic have turned the game in its head.
Now that I have seen the error of my ways, let’s crack on and make sure all the other positions are correct.
Goalkeeper
There is nothing complex about this role, standard goalkeeper with two player instructions – distribute quickly and distribute to full backs. Again this is pretty self explanatory, I don’t want my goalkeeper gifting possession back to the opposition and want to play out from the back. I don’t want him to hang on to the ball unnecessarily and as soon as he has the ball to get the ball moving so to speak, no pun intended, back to one of my fullbacks to start an attack.
Full backs
After the game I started to focus on how my fullbacks interacted with both Payet playing an Inside Forward on the left and Antonio playing as a winger on the right.
My left back Masuaku was overlapping Payet every time which was good but against better teams this will get exploited without a shadow of a doubt. Byram on the other hand was overlapping Antonio but it seem less erratic. Comparing the roles of both fullbacks Maduaku is a Wing Back with attack duty and Bryan is a Wing Back wit support duty. So, the left Wing Back is switched to a support duty with an added individual instruction “Get Further Forward”. I want him to overlap but not every time and without assessing the situation, the player instructions kicks in when we have the ball so he should remain deep with the other defenders. When we get the ball back he will try to exploit the space left by the Inside Forward sitting narrower.
I’m happy with Byram supporting Antonio and overlapping when Antonio has dribbled inside. He does this on occasion because he has a very bizarre PPM for a winger which is to cut in from both wings.
Centre Backs
Both central defenders seem to be ok, Ogbonna as a ball-playing defender in the left and Reid on the right as. Standard central defender. The only changes I made to them was give them an individual instructions of pass shorter to prevent long balls and instead looking for either full back or my deep-lying playmaker.
Central Midfield Pair
I always struggle to choose this pairing, it would always contain a Deep-lying playmaker in defend duty but as soon as you tell you decencies line to be slightly higher the BPD and DLP Occupy the same space so I changed Noble to a DLP with support duty and he now does his defensive duty but gets involved with the build up and provides a slightly deeper passing option who is rarely marked. Next to Noble is Kayoute who is a natural Ball Winning Midfielder in the DMC strata however, he is big, strong and fast so he goes in as a Box to Box Midfielder untill I can find a more technically gifted BBM but he will do just fine as we have mentioned before popping up with a few goals. I e over this player to be right I the middle of the action with direct running which is hard to mark or track.
Attacking Midfield
So I think I am pretty set with the central midfield with Lanzini as an advanced playmaker just in front. Alternatively, if Lanzini is injured Payet can slot in here Nandi don’t think I would change anything keep it simple.
Wide Men
This year West Ham seem to have an abundance of wide players; Payet, Gohkan Tore, Fegouli, Antonio and Ayew.
To be honest as Gohkan Tore, Fegouli and Ayew are new to the squad they have to prove they are better than Payet and Antonio.
Payet will slot into the AML slot as an Inside Forward on support duty. Antonio on the other hand will be a Winger on support duty. He should be pulling wide and stretching the defence to make space for the on running BBM. Although, as we’ve mentioned Antonio does have a PPM which sees him venture inside.
What I am actually trying to build is a stable platform that I can take back into my Toulouse save to get more out of my current crop of players. I don’t want to play with an Inside Forward basically because I don’t have any and I will employ wingers on both sides.
I have two very skilful left wingers who don’t have great work rate, both with 12, so they will need the support duty so they don’t go missing and still chip in defensively. In addition, both of my right wingers are equal on the work rate front but slightly less technical and a position I do need to strengthen in the summer.
The fluid team shape will cause my players to play closer together and therefore both wingers will shuffle inside with the rest of the team as it shifts from side to side and this will naturally create space for overlapping fullbacks.
Attacker
As I mentioned earlier, I used an Advanced Forward up top to push the defensive line back. I’m not completely happy with the standard player instruction of “dribble more” however, I understand that if an advance Forward where to pick the ball up he will look to be direct. I could look at the Poacher role but I think that the Forward would be too static. Alternatively, I could use a complete Forward in attack duty but then I’ll be concerned he’ll go wide too often and get in the way of the wide men. A Trequartista would be too lazy I think but could be useful especially if the advanced forward is poor in the air, decisions, decision. I may need to experiment with the role and to be honest that is likely to be the only role I’m not settled with and o could end up coming full circle and settling with the Advanced Forward and I just need the right player.
To summarise I have created what seems to be a good foundation of a successful tactic and now the thing to do is test it. I fully intend to create this tactic in FM16 with my Toulouse save and see how I get on. I know I have strong wingers and a strong defence not quite sure if my midfielders will produce e but we shall see.
I will follow this post up with another and look at the games played with this formation and I’ll try my best to analyse the games to either prove or disprove my theory.
Thank you as ever for taking the time to read my blog and I am always grateful for any retweets if you have come across this from twitter or any comments, questions you have.
Matt
MH10 