thezogsageordie

i just played watford as newcastle and before the game i was 7th and they was 17th got the scout report it said they were defensive so i went offensive.

in the game i watch key highlights and have a split view of their formation and match stats, they had 4-4-2 with farrows on their wingers, nevertheless i went attacking and after 29 minutes marlon king turned one of my cb and scored! i was gettin mullered! they had 4% better possession and better passing!

so i went defensive and invited them onto me. i won 2-1, with 6% better possession and 8% better passing, i dont mind going defensive but as you can see i'm newcastle (lets not talk about their defense eh ) the game is on 20th january so "re-ranking" should have occured just want to know why they didnt put 11 men behind the ball?

that would make sense to me (!) or am i being narrow minded?

any suggestions welcomed (have to be useful though )

thezogsageordie

just played bolton who are 16th and they started with a defensive 4-1-4-1 and i went 1-0 up and then they went 4-1-2-2-1 with aml/amr i went defensive and went 3-0 up, they went defensive 4-1-4-1 i couldnt be asked to change it as it was last few minutes and i won 4-0 woop! well done mr martins! i think bolton are reading my moans!

ssaun is cool

The main reason that I can think of for this is that it looks like they're going to be in a relgation dogfight so will want to get as many points as soon as possible to seperate them from the bottom three.

thezogsageordie

fair enough saun anybody got any other ideas?

socks

The ai uses a few versions of the 'defensive 442', the main one is with two small farrows on the wingers.

It can be be diffucult to tell this apart from the standard 442 with farrows if the ai changes to it in-game, but once you
know which formations work against it, you can soon tell if the ai has switched to the standard or the defensive variation fro mthe pattern of play.

When using this variation of the defensive 442, the ai will look to exploit your attacking wingers out of position on the counterattack.

MrMagic

Try lowering your defensive mentality and closing down. New players often set closing down very high.

This may help.

Millie

I wouldn't complain. If Watford attack, they aren't playing to their strengths. You went defensive and beat them. In purely selfish terms, I'd be happy.

It does seem a little "against the grain". We usually assume "bad team, defend, good team attack". I don't know why some teams go against it. Possibly it's a plan of theirs to unsettle you - do the unexpected - like teams occasionally do against Manchester United. And, like in real life, United react and put four past them. 3 points, job done, off to the pub.

Fluorine

IMO I would say that maybe you mis-interpreted defensive 4-4-2. Not your fault, it's just possible that you maybe assumed they were more defensive than they actually were and they caught you by surprise.

And even if a team is playing defensive, that doesn't stop them going forward...
And if they had better possession, maybe it's because they are just doing short passes along their defence to keep the ball. Lots of factors could have contributed to that, not just their team mentality

thezogsageordie

thanks for the advice guys will lower my back 4 CD a bit!