Struggling with Udinese

[maztheplaya]

In the first season with Udinese, and as the title says it im struggling with them. Altough at this point I'm 10th in the league which is on par with the boards objectives, but with 5 games left (Roma and Juve are the last 2), I doubt I can achieve this goal. the results so far, it all went downhill after the 2nd game against Milan.

I've been thinkering with my tactic all season, first I started out with a 5-4-1 Diamond, Di Natale up front, until I quickly realized he couldn't cope on his own. So the formation changed into 5-2-1-2 WB, which proved to be quite good for a while. I try and watch the first 15-20 minutes of all games, and then switch to comprehensive or extended based on the opponent and result.

I dont have a clear vision of how the team should play, I just wanted to make a tactic that suited the players of the team.

On the defensive end: I think the tactic has been good considering the players at my disposal.

Where I see the problem is in attack and the transition to attack, the team isnt creating chances. Initially I wanted to play with a DLP at CM but I didnt have any player that could properly do it, so I changed to a CM(S). I think that hurts my build up, not much I can do in that case. In attack the movement of my players doesnt seem to create space, so my strikers have to take though shots, and Di Natale is hugely underperforming. Im out of ideas on how to change my attack.

This is my current setup

[THOG]

Have you tried a different mentality? Standard is a good option if you are confident in your ability to pick teams apart, but it's intended to give you slower, steady transitions as much as possible. With a mid-table side lacking great creators, that can see you being too cautious too often. With Counter, your players will be more likely to break forward quickly if given the opportunity, and Control will just generally see your players working at a faster pace.

[maztheplaya]

Most of the games I play with the Standard mentality. The new plan, thanks to your post, is to have Structured Shape, less CF for my players, and Control for games where I expect to win.

How do the roles look?

[THOG]

In the abstract, the general duty structure is reasonably balanced for your main tactic, but there are two things that I would watch out for. The first is the right flank becoming a bit of a dead zone even with the attacking wingback (and especially so if he's getting isolated). If you find that's an issue, you could alleviate that by having either the AMC or STR move into channels. The second is a lack of targets for your playmaker's passes. This can be tricky to get right with narrow formations since the natural instinct is to achieve a kind of symmetry in the middle, but if you do this, you can end up with a lot of central players stepping all over one another. Here, you have your AF making runs, then your playmaker is flanked by two other distributing/creating roles. The wingbacks will get forward, but they are not players who will attack the box consistently.

Going more into the details, I would question how effective Di Natale can be as a support duty DLF. This is a role that is going to downplay his main strengths (anticipation, movement) while calling attention to many of his weaknesses (balance, strength, work rate).

Your choice of playmaker is also going to cause you problems. Kone's passing and vision are mediocre for this level of play, and he also suffers from poor teamwork and composure. Receiving the ball in a congested centre, I'd predict he would squander a lot of opportunities.

One idea might be to try Di Natale as the trequartista given that he's your standout player, though this would require you to rebalance the rest of your set-up.

[maztheplaya]

I used Di Natale as my AF, thinking his finishing and great mentals would be good on the scoring side. My playmaker is Bruno Fernandes who is better than Kone, I'm quite happy with him.

For the next season I'm thinking it isnt worth it to keep Di Natale, since he's quite on big wages. I have my eyes on a couple of good AF's coming back from loan.

The game that got me a new contract played it on Structured and Control, went pretty well, their keeper was on great form. Next game was a draw away at Sampdoria (5th at that moment). Next 2 games Roma and Juventus, one home and one away. Time to test the Counter setup.

[Jambo98]

I see 2 immediate problems:

1) You state that you dont have a clear idea of how you want the team to play - Thats a red flag im afraid. How can you hope to create any type of successful tactic if you dont know what it is your trying to achieve? Your not likely to just stumble onto something, you need to think about how you want your squad to play. Your right to let that thinking be influenced by the players available, but you need to put in the thought otherwise you wont have any sustained success.

2) The tactic you linked to has a high line, but no pressure on the ball - If you want to know how that tends to work out, ask AVB. If you want to play high you generally will want to press, otherwise you give good players time to pick a pass in behind. Bigger teams can take advantage of that, particularly in Serie A where there are plenty good playmakers and fast strikers. Its worth a thought about why you made those choices

[sporadicsmiles]

One thing you can think about is switching the creator role that you have implemented in your AM strata. The DLF is going to drop deep and occupy similar space to the AP anyway, so why not use him as a player who can receive the ball and create chances for others? You can then have your AMC in a role that encourages him to make runs into the box. You then have two forms of vertical movement which could cause problems for opposition, especially when you come up against weaker defences.

[maztheplaya]

@Jambo98

Thats the hard part for me, having that clear idea of what exactly I want, I usually end up making too many changes in a short period of the time. Dropped the high line and offside trap for the new season.

@sporadicsmiles

So a Shadow Striker as my AMC?

[Pav_Makarov]

Thats the hard part for me, having that clear idea of what exactly I want, I usually end up making too many changes in a short period of the time. Dropped the high line and offside trap for the new season.

That was exactly my problem untill recently. I had a formation, but I wanted it to perform in more ways, that it actually could, so I was making sporadic decisions, changing shouts multiple times, re-assigning roles, etc, so my consistency was horrible. As soon as I finally saw what i did wrong (by playing full matches in 2-d observing the movement and watching heatmaps and individual stats mostly), I narrowed my options to 2-3 game patterns per tactic and stuck to them, making only minor adjustments. I couldn't believe how satisfying it could be untill all of this came to work.

[Jambo98]

@Jambo98

Thats the hard part for me, having that clear idea of what exactly I want, I usually end up making too many changes in a short period of the time. Dropped the high line and offside trap for the new season.

@sporadicsmiles

So a Shadow Striker as my AMC?

I gotta say, im lost as to how you can see its the problem, yet keep doing it? In the time it has taken you to post the collective posts in this thread, you could easily have come up with a clear vision of what you want, laid it out and asked for help implementing it (if you even needed that).

Give it a try. Loads of threads on here/examples which will help you and your enjoyment of the game will be increased.