Midfield positions

[LEWI5777]

Hi,

I need some general help with midfield positioning. I find that if I put players in the correct position the formation tends to look stupid, not at all like a real team would line up. Due to this I sometimes play players slightly out of position and do not know if I should or not.

For example, if I have a 4 man midfield, and one players best position is DM, if I put him there, with one general mid player in front and 2 on the outside, it looks pretty stupid, one behind the other, and a lot of space either side of them. This gets worse if you have AM right and left.

Some wingers say their best position is AMR or AML, and others say they can play ML/R and AML/R. What I tend to do in order to keep some kind of formation is to put them in ML/R and draw the forward line arrow from there going forward, but do not know if this is as effective as playing them in their preferred position. Plus if you play one (who is best AML) in AML and one (who is best MR) in MR it looks completely unbalanced. What should I do?

The diamond can also be a problem, if you have 2 wingers, one AMC and one DM, there appears to be a space the size of Wales in your midfield?

Please help! I seem to do alright by forcing players slightly out of position and drawing arrows to their best position, but would like to find out if there is a more effective way to poisition them.

P.S, I play 2008, but I guess this would probably apply to all versions. Thanks a lot.

[Nevrin]

Besides the position of the players that you need to consider, the mentality will solve your problem. Although you do use an AM and a DM which are quite "far" apart from each other, keeping their mentality near together will reduce the space between the AM and DM. You need to tweak the mentality so that your team will be more compact. Depends on how do you set the mentality.

[Xennaz]

Also, asymmetrical formations are far from stupid, if done right. Hope you manage to figure how to "balance" things, but keep an open mind!