Help Please with My Arsenal Tactics

[James9]

Hello I currently play with Arsenal Football Club. My board wants me to play possession football and attacking. I have decided to set up my team instructions to try and achieve this. Please see below my team instructions which i currently use. Could you let me know if I am on the right track or do I need to make any changes. I do not currently have a set up when I playing a big team. I tend to make changes to player roles to try and make my team more solid. For example when I playing a big team or when I am not the favourite to win, I will switch Cazorla from Deep Lying Playmaker Support to Deep Lying Playmaker Defend. I am playing a 4231 formation. I would like to get feedback from the better tactical experts on how to make the team more solid defensively

I am using Attacking and Very Fluid (to achieve my board objective of playing attacking and possession football). So I can looked at how to to achieve the type of football I want and below are the team instructions which I decided to use. Once again please offer any advice on what you can see is wrong with my set up. I am open to advice and help. I am not very good at tactics are reading the game so I am really hoping for expert feedback from the better tactic creators.

TEAM INSTRUCTIONS

Retain possession

Shorter passing

work ball into box

whipped crosses (when i playing Giroud as a Target Man)

Play Wider

Push Higher Up

Stick to position

close down more

Use tighter marking

use offside trap

be more disciplined

higher tempo

Please could you have a look at my instructions and let me know if I need to make any changes to my team instructions

My player roles are as follows (I am playing with a edit database which allows me to have Petr Cech)

Cech - Goal Keeper Defend

Mertesacker - Central Defender - Defend

Laurent Koscielny - Central Defender Defend

Hector Bellerin - Full Back Automatic

Monreal - Full Back Automatic

Cazorla - Deep Lying Playmaker - Support or Roaming Playmaker - I will use these player roles when playing weaker opposition. When I playing stronger opposition Cazorla will be changed to Deep Lying Playmaker Defend to offer better protection for defence

Coquelin - Central Midfielder - Defend

Alexis - Inside Forward Attack

Ozil - Trequartista

Walcott/Chamberlain - Winger Support

Giroud - Target Man Attack/Walcott - Advance Forward

[vasilli07]

Using a targetman will change your passing to a more direct style. May want to consider using a DLF instead.

TIs like play wider, push higher up, close down more, use offside trap and higher tempo makes your attacking strategy looks like a overloading strategy instead. You are likely create alot of rush chances and turnovers because of it.

[herne79]

"I am using Attacking and Very Fluid (to achieve my board objective of playing attacking and possession football)."

I think this may be where you could start to review your system. You don't need to use an Attacking mentality to play attacking / possession football. Likewise, your team shape doesn't need to be Very Fluid.

Mentality is more about risk, regardless of what it says on the in-game tooltip. As you move from a Defensive mentality up the steps through to the Attacking mentality, your Defence becomes progressively more aggressive (higher defensive line, more closing down and so on) while your more attacking players start to play in a more direct manner, with greater width and at a higher tempo. That's the summarised version - check the stickied threads at the top of this forum for more detail.

Next, with a Very Fluid team shape, you are not only allowing your players to play with a more fluid, versatile approach, but also telling your players to play with increased creativity. Is that how you want to play, or with using 2 playmakers (DLP and Treq) do you want creativity to primarily focus through them?

Further, your Team Instructions may not give you quite what you are looking for. For example, "Retain Possession" is not going to magically give your team the majority of possession - all it does is shorten passing length and reduce the tempo. "Shorter Passing" does pretty much the same thing.

Play Wider, Push Higher Up, Close Down More, Higher Tempo are already set by default just by using the Attacking mentality - so adding those TIs increases those defaults. Is that what you want?

You haven't told us what sort of results you have been getting (have you played any matches?), but try working your way through some of the stickies to understand more about how different settings correlate and compliment each other (or not). If you don't read anything else, at least go through Cleon's articles showing how a Defensive mentality can give you great attacking football with lots of possession http://sisportscentre.com/category/the-school-of-defensive-arts-2015/.

[Marsupian]

As others have said your main problem seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding of how team instructions and team mentality work together.

With an attacking mentality you will play wider, with a higher tempo, more closing down, a higher defensive line and more risk taking in general which is good as that is how you want to play.

Then you take a look at the team instructions and see a bunch of things that sound like what you want and add them but you already gave most of those instructions when you told your team to play with an attacking mentality so you get a more extreme version of an attacking tactic with a really high D-line, very aggressive closing down, super wide and an extremely high tempo. Also the short passing (reduces passing length/directness) and retain possession (reduces passing further and reduces a bunch) don't really work well with the super high tempo, expansive, wide attacking game you tell your team to play.

In the end you will probably achieve what you want better if you just tell them to play with an attacking mentality with "shorter passing" and "work ball into the box"without any further instructions. That gives you the high energy attacking football you want while being a bit more conservative with the ball in favor of more possession (shorter passing, work ball into the box).

[yaşar]

GK D

FBS CD D CD D FBA

CMD DLPD

W A TREQ IF A

DLF S

which mentality ,instructions and philosophy work with this tactic ? Actually is this tactic work ? thanks. playing with MC's .

[Carles Alena]

It can work.DLP doesnt need to be set to a defensive role and ur left back doesnt need to be attacking either.Probably set those 2 in support duty both.Never tried treq behind the lone striker in a 4-2-3-1 in my life, but i dont see why not.So go for it and experiment for a few games.Like guys said above before me, try to use the Shorter Passing,Work Ball Into Box TI's if u want to be certain at least from the instructions part ur team wont waste possession.You can try the Play Narrower TI as well cuz like Marsupian said Attacking Mentality does set ur width a bit wider.You can try Stay on Feet as well if u dont want ur players to recklessly tackle the opposition players and instead prefer to take their time and decide wisely when to harass,as the 4-2-3-1 is inherently aggresive.And since u got like 4 forward players, even though treq will mostly roam behind ur front 3, you can tick Prevent Short GK distribution to press the enemy goalkeeper and d-line whenn they try to build from the back.Thats all you need without being over the top.