Does anyone remember in FM06 how you would painstakingly prepare for the dreaded Man Utd/Chelsea/Arsenal away game? Remember the pride you took in creating a tactic that you felt could hold the opposition to a 0-0 draw? Remember thinking that 'this one has to work'? Remember how in the first minute, all that hard work was obliterated as your defence leaked goals like a straw dam? One of my biggest gripes about the older version was this inability to find a tactic that could actually defend. I think it might just be possible in this version, and I think I may just have found the formula (at least with the 4-1-4-1): Closing down and width.
Okay, so it doesn't take a tactical mastermind to work out that a narrow formation should indeed be harder to break down, but closing down I think is still a bit of a grey area. I decided to try and go with a global closing down and global defensive mentality and it works a bloody treat. I have set my closing down to 4 or 5 so they don't close down often at all. It is worth mentioning at this point that the manual definition is different from the label in game. In game, the progression is labelled the usual from rarely to often. The manual states that the progression reads: close down in own area to close down in opponents half. I tend to think the manual makes more sense. I mean, how can you define close down on a scale? You either close down or you don't; it's pretty black and white. On the other hand, if the scale actually represents the length of the pitch, then the slider could represent at which point on the pitch the close down 'trigger' is released—meaning at which point your players are 'unleashed'. I think this makes much more sense.
Anyway, my 4-1-4-1 formation: I am only going to share with you the results of my observations on the pitch and the final result of the matches in which I used it. I play a fast direct counter too, but I am not going to go into other details, for this is about closing down. I am Everton.
The first thing I noticed is that Andy Johnson drops deep and kind of just sits in the attacking midfield position, where as before he would run after the defenders like a nut.
When the ball goes to their full back, my winger just sits and stays in shape. The whole team is nicely lined up in what looks like a rigid, solid, and narrow formation. My centre midfield 2 (Cahill and Arteta) are nicely marked on the middle 2, and Carsley just sits patiently.
If a winger retrieves the ball and he is making progress, my whole team just drops to the area, and nobody gets pulled out—that rigid structure stays constant. It's not until the opposition reaches about 12 yards from my box that they close down, and it's usually the winger or the full back. My middle 3 stay central.
The teams I play are very limited to long range shots and hardly possess in the middle when they reach a certain point. Also, the teams I have played thus far, never get to the byline. It's just too congested and there is nowhere to go. Since I have Johnson up top I play him as a target man with run on to the ball. Mot of my team are set to through balls. I get a lot of chances.
Vs Chelsea (A) 0-0 d
Vs Man Utd (A) 0-0 d
Vs Arsenal (A) 0-1 w
Vs Koppite (A) 0-0 d
Please feel free to continue the discussion. I must leave this office.
Finally I can play defensive without getting pounded 
Linear Mode
