retired_Sophie335

Ive always fancied using a good old fashioned 4-3-3 formation, no wingers with arrows going here there and everywhere.

What I am trying to find is tactics to make my formation work. Now, I know that it works with my Man United team and Im sure its just down to the players! I have problems with the tactic and slight tweaks so I hope some suggestions help.

Now, to start you have your GK, set with detault GK instructions, although I change his distrubution to Defender Collect and dont name a player.

FB's
Mentality 3 or 4
Creative Freedom 3 or 4
Passing Team (Mixed) or anywhere within Short
Closing Down 12
Tackling Normal

CB's
Mentality 3, CF=1, Passing as above, CD=9 Tacking Normal.

For all 4 - Rarely Forward Runs, Run With Ball and Long Shots. Mixed Through Balls & Cross Ball.

I am trying to mix and match to see what happens but useless at reading games and determing where im going wrong.

Then you have 3 Central Midfielders...They dont have to be strictly central midfielders, you could play a winger on the edge of the 3.

Team Mentality for first 5 instructions. Forward Runs Mixed. Run With Ball, Long Shots are Rarely unless you have a player with 15+ at these attributes. Try Through Balls Mixed and Cross Ball Rarely.

Then you have 3 centre forwarders, again you can use wingers on the edge if you feel you have a player good enough...ie Ronaldo, Duff, Lennon or whoever.

All should have Often for Forward Runs and Rarely Run with Ball, Long Shots and Cross Ball, Try Through Balls often. As with Midfielders, if players are good at Dribbling or Long Shots then change them to Often to get the best out of that player.

As the title of the topic suggests, I think the key to this formation is the middle central midfielder is your playmaker, because he is central he can spray passes and players always look to give and take passes, he will make double, sometimes treble the number of passes than his teammates.

I try to select a targetman, but never tick the targetman box, doesnt work for every player.

For set pieces if your interested I would try and have the midfield 3 standing over the ball(x2) run over the ball (x1) your 3 strikers disrupting the wall and 2 CB's attempt to mark the keeper or one mark keeper and back if needed with the other two FB's.

Team Instructions are
Mentality=Mixed
Creative Freedom = first notch on Much
Passing Style = Mixed
Closing Down = Mixed
Tackling = Normal
Focus Passing = Mixed
Marking = Zonal
And I only tick Use Playmaker, and perhaps Counter Attack if away from home. Though that is something I am working on as ive had a few hammerings trying different mentalities at different stages of matches. Ive also hammered a few teams when ive managed to get it right.

This will be all for now, id like people to try it out and see what works on a general scale, if you know what I mean. Ive tried this with Dundee United, Man United and Newcastle and Tottenham...the tactic generally created alot of chances during matches but my poor decision making sometimes cost me matches when making tactical changes.

retired_Vicious

So have u succede with it?

retired_Sophie335

Did i suceed? Erm, a wee bit. Not enough to say its a great tactic. But its something different.

I loose track of what i am trying to do and end up mixing different bits from different tactics which id like to implement in my team but it just gets messy.

The playmaker is fun to see how many passes in a match he can make!

retired_Sophie335

I have been playing around with different ideas from other peoples threads and trying to implement them to my formation.

One thread was about someone using default tactics and nothing else...that gave me an idea so I started a Tottenham game and gave it a go. It worked out ok. But one thing that I picked up on was that with the 4-4-2 formation, the midfielders had Often for forward runs and try through balls and that created many chances for the forwards, so Ive implemented that to my midfield in the 4-3-3 which has been successful.

The other thing was the default tactic used global mentality for everything so while it might seem a little boring I thought id implement that too, I use defensive mentality for away matches and sometimes counter attack and for home matches, attacking mentality and Much creative freedom.

As for the other settings everything is restored to Mixed and controlled on the team instructions. I feel that Width and tempo are grey areas - meaning I dont quite get how they work, I know to be a little tight defensively i should use narrow width and quick mixed passing but its anybodies guess how it works!

retired_Sophie335

RIGHT THEN, SUCCESS!!!

After mixing and matching with different styles, I think I have came up with something that seems to work – but it does require the manager to make decisions, its not exactly a plug-and-play type of formation.

You can forget about most of the above, can be used as a base for the set-up. Detailed below are my new settings.

Goalkeeper – still on default instructions, have what you like for distribution.
Full Backs – First off – ‘team’ mentality. Closing Down ‘Often’ – but the important part is to watch some match action and adjust according to who your up against, don’t have them pressing too much if the winger is getting the better of him. Tackling ‘Hard’ Forward Runs ‘Mixed’ and Cross Ball ‘Mixed’ the rest set as rarely, or you can move each up a notch for increased attackingness. Cross from Deep aim to Far Post.
Centre Backs – At home I choose team mentality and away from home Mentality of 3. (The team defensive line can adjust where they are on the pitch) I have rarely on all the settings, cross from is mixed.

Midfield 3 – at home I give all three Forward runs ‘Often’ and Try Through Balls ‘Often’ and away I would give the central mid mixed forward runs, or during a game have all three as mixed forward runs. If you feel confident enough you can give Long Shots a go too if the individual player is good enough. The mentality would be team at home and first notch on normal away from home. As for closing down I have it very high, approx 14-17, again this can be adjusted depending on how you see your players performing. You can choose to give Hard tacking depending how you want to go about your business. I choose mixed for the rest of the settings. The playmaker can be selected if you wish, he must have good passing, creativity and decisions, possibly flair as well, to make it work and he must play in the centre of the three.

Forward 3 – Team Mentality. Normal Cr Freedom. Short passing. 18 for closing down. All settings to Mixed, if player very good at dribbling then I would give them license to run with ball often, but only if Dribbling at 17 or above (for premiership level) Cross ball set to Rarely, this makes a huge difference to what the player does because it encourages them to shoot, or they make a through pass rather than useless cross.

I don’t know if your still following me, now for something ive never thought about trying before and it seems to be good so far.

Defensive Free Kick settings – two Full backs on either post, everyone else on man marking except two of the stikers who would form the wall – this means that depending on how many players the other team have going forward each would be man marked and those not man marking would join the wall anyway. Leave on striker forward at all times.

Defensive Corner settings, as above, this time with one of the strikers closing down, one just as back, and one forward.

Attacking Free Kick settings – Choose a set piece player and have him ‘stand with taker’ and choose another player to ‘run over ball’ I would have two or three players stay back at all times and one player disrupt the wall, the rest of the players set as forward. If you have a successful tip for free kicks then please share!

Attacking corners – who knows…tried the player outside the box with the rest standing on the far post and tried the flick at the near post but not found anything conclusive to share yet.

Now for Team mentalities…you have to decide depending on how the percentage of possession is looking. I don’t know a hard n fast rule to give to you but I tinker around with 3 or 4 settings – Team Mentality, Closing Down, Width and Defensive Line. Mix and match a combination of these to be the same setting and it gets me results.
What I mean is, whatever your mentality is then the closing down, and defensive line should be the same. Width and Tempo can be adjusted depending on your needs, as well as passing. If I am going to try and attack then I would increase attacking mentality to two notches inside attacking and match up closing down and defensive line to be the same…if you don’t have a positive effect then try taking one of the above down to first notch of normal and see what change it has. So you could be attacking and have high closing down, but go deep with the defensive line or have attacking mentality and low closing down and deep defensive line, which works against fast strikers at home.

I will leave this for now and do some more testing, in the meantime, anyone that has a read at this I would like to hear your thoughts.

retired_Sophie335

I am wondering if anyone has been reading this and/or trying out my tactic???

Im having the best success with global mentality attacking at home and defensive mentality with small increase from defence to midfield to attack. Also tie this in with Closing Down & Defensive Line according to how the team is performing. I try to have at least two of the above matching.

Definete tweaking in-game required if things are not in your favour.

So, please let me know if anyone is interested in this idea, otherwise my thread will disappear into the graveyard of old usesless threads that no one reads anymore!!!

retired_sgfootball2006

I'm starting today after work my Barca's game and want them to play 433 so now as I'm office worker I'm getting background on 433 on this forum later i will try implementing some ideas from this forum to my 433 formation and i will let you know what tweaks are useful for 433.

retired_Sophie335

It works well with Barca...Your front 3 could be Messi, Henry & Eto'o and the central midfielder could be Ronaldinho as the playmaker flanked by Xavi & Iniesta or Toure.

I have definetely got something going with the closing down and defensive line and mentality. These have to change during the game according to what the opposition does and how many chances they create as well as posession.

For example my Tottenham team lost alot of posession early on to Chelsea as I started off the game on closing down of around 6 or 7, I increased this to 15 or 16 and we got ourselves in the lead and created more chances and eventually won the game. I dont keep it that high all the time though.

retired_Getn_Fit

try my mattuk 4 33 which is in the tactics thread.

The benefits in my mind of the 4 3 3 is thus.

6 wide players = full backs, 2 mids with arrows wide, 2 forwards with arrows wide. the centre mid is the fulcrum to make plays, the centre striker is the poacher.

on the defensive these players become more compact so that you have 3 mids in the centre vs 2 in a 4 4 2.

retired_kellyk

MattUK, honestly mate there's no need to come into another 433 thread and trumpet your tactic.


Saintjonny, I've read thru some of the individual instructions you've posted and it looks like your second version is better than your first.

I have two different 433s. One is along similar vein with one playmaker anchored by two hatchetmen, and in another one I have two players anchored by a MC playing as a DM.

Both formations work. So long as you maintain the shape in midfield you should be fine. You need high closing down for the fullbacks I may even venture to increase their mentality.

You could also make another variation with one targetmen, supported by 2 deep running AMs who come from wide positions, its worth exploring. The 433 is a very interesting formation applying global mentalities isn't a bad idea, one suggestion you could put the whole team on global leave the DCs on UDefensive. That way you can use the defensiveline/mentality tweak. In other words without having to change any other instructions all you do is drop mentality and dline together..to remain defensive.

Since this is a 433 that depends on quick breakout attacks, it may be worth considering 1 passing for the defenders and direct for the DMC. When this happens the passes get knocked up to the DM for a rapid rapier rushjob.


You may even get around to just using one 433 for home and away..then. You'll just be using the defline/mentality tweak to add or relieve pressure.

cheerz