4141 - Variations?

[Andy 23]

I'm setting up a 4-1-4-1 formation with the intention of dominating possession in games and shutting the opposition out. I have marginally the strongest squad in the division, so I'm hoping I won't give the opposition a sniff, and have a solid base once promoted.

I've followed advice to try to create it in the Tactics Creator instead of freehand. My team is a back four, with full backs supporting. Anchor man sitting in front. Wingers on attack duty. MCL is a Central Midfielder (support), he's my creative one who can play. MCR is a Ball Winning Midfielder, not a great tackler but good energy so he should press. Lone striker is a deep-lying forward, to link up so he's not isolated. (I should post a screenshot later for illustrative purposes!)

So I'm quite happy with the balance of that. What I'm a little bit stuck for ideas on is what variations my squad can learn for backup tactics. i.e. when I need to chase a game.

A few ideas so far:

1. Give my full backs more attacking roles, in which case everything else would need to remain the same.

2. Push my anchor man into midfield, but I've struggled previously to make a flat 3-man midfield work without my men crowding themselves out. Possibly make my creative midfielder a playmaker so he finds himself the space.

3a. Lose one of the three midfielders and go 4-4-2. If so, which midfielder? I wouldn't want to take off my creative midfielder, so one other will go and one will sit in central midfield (defend). More attacking in the sense that there's another striker to play with, but everyone else remains as they were, so I'm not sure there's a lot of logic behind this.

3b. As above, but in a diamond midfield, keeping the anchor man and pushing the creative midfielder to attacking midfield. I've not played this way since CM9798 - the big hole in the middle of the team scares me.

OK so now I've written them down I do have a few ideas after all! But I would still welcome any others as I'm not particularly keen on any of these.

I'd also welcome some suggestions on playing mentalities. Perhaps one very safe (Standard mentality?) style to start games and enjoy a bit of possession, and to end games when I'm winning. And a Control mentality version when I want to take the game to the opposition a bit more, pushing up. So that leaves one slot for an Attacking variation.

Any other advice also welcome. It's annoying you can't really use formations as a search term on these forums, I'd like to search for "451" to find what other people have posted!

[furiousuk]

Pushing the wingers up into the classic 433 (41221 shape) sounds like an attacking plan and allows you to use 1 or 2 Inside Forwards instead of wingers to make an attacking trio rather than a 1 supported by wingers.

You could also change the DM to deep-lying PM if you've got the players. This could drastically change your primary method of play as you look to attack with more creativity from deep and have a guy try and 'boss' the game for you rather than relying on hard work and endeavour.

Another variant that might suit is the 442 with 2 DM's instead of 2 MC's, so, effectively you're dropping an MC back (maybe as DLP), keep everything else the same and have your extra player up top as a poacher to complement the DLF you've already got. The 2 DM's help to maintain stability but the 2 up top give you a different dynamic there.

[Vidji]

I'm using a quite similar formation with Newcastle atm. albeit just started and PPMs are still in the learning process we can't seem to dominate posession yet. But we are quite sound defensively. What I've done is to accomodate HBA to put him in the AMR position as a APM(s). This is to give him abit more creative freedom and let me counter attack.

To get presence in the box I've got a CM(a) in midfield and trying to build around that. My hope is to take long enough to attack for my players to get in and around the box, but it proves difficult at times.

[Andy 23]

Aha, you might have given me an idea combining a few of those suggestions! I'd not thought of setting up the wingers with different roles, but an AML as inside forward and AMR as winger could work. DL could then become a wing-back in the space created by the inside forward.

I'd still like to keep my three midfielders in their same, natural positions but a couple of options:

1. My creative midfielder could remain a supporting central midfielder, joining in with the wing-back on the left wing. Or he could be a deep-lying playmaker, with options of passing to the overlapping wing-back or finding the inside forward's run.

2. Anchor Man could be switched to Defensive Midfielder so he adds to midfield numbers when in possession.