Ok - im back again, sorry for the long delay.
Team Instructions - Continued
Another aspect of your tactic that i think may be causing a few problems is your passing style. It can be pretty difficult to breakdown teams through the centre the whole time no matter how good your CM's are. It's probably best to set this to "mixed" so that you have a more varied attack. You also need more width to play such a counter attacking game.
2rdly - Target Man. This option can sometimes be a double-edged sword. If you get it right it can be amazing however if wrong it can completely mess up your team. Supply guidelines:
NOTE: ALL TARGET MEN NEED GREAT TEAMWORK* AND WORKRATE AND STRENGTH STATS, IN ADDITON TO V.GOOD STATS FOR THE FOLLOWING:
To Feet - First Touch, Dribbling, Pace, Technique
To Head - Height! Jumping (more important than heading)
Mixed - All the above (N.B. If you want a consistent goal scorer they need, finishing, composure, decisions and off the ball skills first and foremost, pace and technique will help immensely also)
Defence
Try giving your fullbacks a creative freedom of "normal", theres nno point telling them to make so many forward runs if they have no license to be creative. In any case its not a good idea to have them making so many forward runs anyway. You should keep it as normal at the most "rarely" if you have a big game.
There isn't much wrong with your CB's though i like to set their mentality to ultra defensive, but thats completely up to you of course.
Midfield
You're on the right track with your DMC's instructions, they're very similar to my own instructions, only thing i would suggest is lowering his closing down to "own half only" so that he's not pulled out of position and make his passing very short! You dont want your DMC losing possesion. Also tell him to hold up the ball, it works a treat.
Your 1st MC's instructions are also fine, the only thing i would say is to lower the creative freedom slightly. the 2nd however - woah! its never a good idea to have your CM's making so many forward runs RWB is ok sometimes, if they have excellent dribbling skills but FWR's should be a definite no-no.
Another problem i can see is with your mentality and closing down settings. Why are they completely different for every player? You do know that due to this, if you change your overall team instructions in-game it wont have any effect right? Just letting you know incase you weren't aware.
I think you should tell your wingers to cross from mixed positions as they may not always be able to get to the byline and might lose posession as a result when they could have probably crossed earlier and set up something. setting it to mixed gives your attack more of a variety.
Personal Tip
I usually give my whole midfield the "hold up ball" instruction. I find that it makes me less likely to lose possesion, though i'm not saying it will work for you thoguh, might be worth a try though
STRIKER
I can see a massive problem here straight away. Its always best to leave your strikers instructions to "mixed". Don't restrict him in what you want him to do, he's a striker (your only one at that) he's got to take some sort of risks. If he doesn't who will? Put his mentality as high as it can go, normal creative freedom and untick the other boxes. Also, if he is a target man why is he not attemtping to hold up the ball?
All this said, it still might not be enough. You need to ensure you have the right players in the right positions. Your team instructions should be based on your players attributes tbh. Not saying that they arent.
One final tip i would suggest is not to play such a direct passing game if you can avoid it. You can set some players to direct passing but when you have it as a team setting, you tend to lose possesion more often than not. Hope it helped (i'm probably going to b in a bucket load of trouble with my manager for taking so long to write this. i was suppose to have started on this powershell script ages ago! Good luck!)
Linear Mode
