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I have experimented for the last 8hrs on players and team mentality. As the manual states u should not have player instructions on defensive if ur overall team instruction are attacking as this confuses players. So I thought I would come up with 2 formations, 1 defensive and 1 attacking.
The defensive formation all players were put on defensive mentality even the forwards. Defenders were set on slider 1 of defensive, Midfileders slider 3-4 and attackers 6. overall team mentality slider 3-4 of Defensive. I took the manual advice and played a deep line slider 3-4, direct football slider 16-17, width 20, temmpo same as direct slider, team creativity slider 5 and focus passing down the wings as this is the best way to counter attack as the manual states.
The attacking formation was the complete opposite instructions i.e short passing and slow tempo, except for playing wide that was kept on 20 but mixed focus of passing. I did not want to test this tactic with a top team as this proves nothing imo, so i played it with Wolves in the championship. I used the attacking formation with every home game and when i was winning 2-0,3-0 i would swap it to my defnesive formation.
all the away games i played away were with the defensive formation except against weak teams according to the betting odds. If i was chasing a game which was rare i would swith to my attacking formation to try and nick a goal.. My results over the season was played 46 won 39 Drew 5 lost 2, Team scored 98 goals and conceded just 21. If i could i would post the proof on the site but i cannot do it as i don't know how, but please belive me and try it for yourselfs.
I played a 4-1-3-2 formation which consisted od 2 wide men in the 3 midfield with farrows on each to the top, Other than that not much else except DO NOT play with a target man up front, for some reason my target man who had jumping and heading of 20 did not do very well playing as a target man.
really interesting stuff. couple questions, was ure passing global? or did u have them tweaked for each position? why did u choose to keep width so hi for both home and away? and have u tried this with a standard 4.4.2.? or any other formations, 4.1.3.2 seems to be a very effective tactic for home, away seems to get hurt due to the width of the opps.
I designed a defensive counter attacking tactic with the guidlines you gave and I have to say that the results are overwhelming.
With this style of play I´m currently sitting at the top spot in the premiership with Aston Villa(!!!) after 12 games. Best result so far is 3-0 against Arsenal at Villa Park.
I only use one tactic and it have proved to be succesful even against defensive opponents and now I´m just awaiting the re-rank to further investigate the tactic.
If I have to, I will build an attacking variant but it will have to wait as I´m really enjoying the defensive style at the moment.
Try putting on "Hold Up Ball" on your FB:s, Wingers, DM and one of the strikers. I´ve done this and it seems to do something good =)
I kept the width high on away as the manual states best to play high tempo and direct footy, play wide at home to give more options when going forward. Not tried this with any other formation as yet as the AI have yet to break me down. Imo opinion this should work for any formation you play as all players are on the same mentality and team instruction mentality so they all know wheteher they should be very attacking or defensive. All the players instructions were set set at default of 4-1-2-3 forward runs etc except for the DM I changed it to rarely forward runs. Closing down is the interesting one as I took the manual as a guide I have 1 of the 2 strikers closing down fully, my 2 wide men fully and my 2 full back fully, the others all on mixed. With regards to re-reanking the attacking formation will be more commonly used as teams will be very defensive against you, you need to get the lead wait for the opposition to swap to a more attacking formation then swap to your defensive formation. Just finished my first 12 games in the Premiership and I am unbeatean winning 10, I have yet to use my attacking formation as i'm the underdogs in every game so far. The only draw back on the defensive formation I can see is that it is quite boring football a bit like chelski in real life (machine like) but always seem to get the results.
I have been using a 433 formation with defensive mentality both home and away. It's actually a tweaked version of bebbelino's duscher tactic from last year. (Pele10 should know about that). All the players are on team settings apart from creative freedom and no player is set to do anything "often" (thanks to beevester's thread) it's either mixed or rarely. The back 4 and my central midfielder are just there to defend, win the ball back and give it to the attackers. It uses short passing but a quick tempo and width is wide BUT closing down for the 10 outfield players is often(notch 20). I want to win the ball back as soon as possible and give the opposition less time on the ball.
Pre patch it was averaging 3 goals a game and conceding a handful of goals during the first half of the season. Major difference i noticed with settings being set to mixed was that i was converting a large percentage of attempts that were on target. Some game i had 12 shots of target but 5 on target and scoring 4 goals. Away from home i usually decrease the width to narrow but with my strikers having sarrows they go out wide anyway. But after the patch it just didn't work totally fell apart with the match engine being tweaked slightly. So for the second half i was lucky if i managed 4 attempts at goal because my players seem confused and didn't know what to do for the best.
Then i noticed that when you apply the patch it actually re-ranks you to a low reputation, here i was at barcelona won the league and champions league four years in a row and yet the board wanted a respectable league position!!! wtf?? After finishing the season and now into pre-season i am using the same tactic again and its on fire again probably due to being re-ranked proper.
Pele are u using the attacking formation aswell as the defensive one. Personally I find the attacking one much more enjoyable to watch as all the players are looking to create chances and is very pleasing on the eye and scores loads of goals.
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