4-1-3-1-1 Narrow Feedback

[JoeLapira]

I've asked for advice before and it turned out i wasnt asking the right questions or giving enough information about the type of football i was trying to play. So i'll give it another try.

Basically a couple of weeks ago I was watching Monday Night Football and former Liverpool Manager Brendan Rodgers was on as a guest analyst. They started to talk about his 4-4-2 diamond formation, which intrigued me as I use the diamond quite a bit in FM, so i was interested to hear his take on it. Eventually he spoke about how he evolved the diamond into a 4-1-3-1-1, which I liked the sound of, this is how it would look:

---------------------Gk----------------------

Rb---------Cd----------Cd------------Lb

--------------------Dm----------------------

----------Cm-----Cm-----Cm-----------

--------------------Am----------------------

--------------------Cf------------------------

Rodgers spoke about a high pressing, high tempo and quick possession based game plan with the full backs providing the width. The Dm was Gerrard, who pretty much played as a DLP, the midfield trio consisted of:

Henderson------Couthinho--------Allen

Couthinho was given complete freedom and Henderson and Allen were tasked with both helping out in defence and supporting attacks. Sterling played in the Am position and his objective was to use his pace to run at defenders when he had the ball or to make runs in behind from deep without it. When the opponets were in possession he was asked to press high up the pitch. Suarez was the striker and he had a similar role to Sterling but he was the main goal threat.

So i'm looking to create this type of tactic in FM and its still just in the theroy stage as im a few weeks away from my first friendly. But i'd love some feedback on it just so I can make sure i can get it to work as well as I can because there still some things tactically I'm so sure on with this game. So here's my starting point:

-------------------------------GK(D)-----------------------------

WB(S)---------CD(D)----------CD(D)------------WB(S)

----------------------------DLP(D)------------------------------

-----------B2B(S)-----RPM(S)-----CM(S)---------------

-----------------------------SS(A)-------------------------------

-----------------------------CF(A)-------------------------------

TI's will include; High Tempo and Press More. And to start i will use Standard and Flexible. These will probably change as the tactic progresses but i need to have a starting point. Any feedback would be more than welcome. Cheers in advance.

[MacLooch]

I use a similar formation on occasion, but push the SS up to a deep lying forward. It works really great against narrow, middle heavy teams, but can struggle on teams that play wide.

The only concern I have with your role selections is if the DLP and RPM will get in each others way. I haven't tried it and it might work great, but you should keep an eye on it and make sure they aren't playing in the same space a lot. Otherwise it's a great formation and is really fun to play.

[JoeLapira]

Cheers for the info, the RPM and DLP are a concern of mine but i'll have to wait until I see them operate in a game before I decide on what to do with them. I'm a big fan of the SS and the guy i had in there was my top scorer last season. As for playing narrow, i'm managing in S.Africa where nearly every team plays narrow so this wont be too much of a concern. Will post up updates on how the tactic progresses and evolves as the season goes on.

[SUAREZ 7]

Hope it goes well I'll look forward to see how you do with lfc

[JoeLapira]

Hope it goes well I'll look forward to see how you do with lfc

I'm afraid i'm not managing Liverpool, i'm just looking to recreate and tweak to my liking a formation that Rodgers spoke of. I'm in the middle of a journeyman save and am currently managing Swallows in S.Africa.