442 - winning due to good tactic or only due to good players?

[CharonJr]

Hi,

I am currently playing Bedford BC, started in Sky Bet League 2 and have just gained promotion to Sky Bet Championship after the second season and am looking for some help.

What has me worried here is that I am not sure if my tactic is good enough for Sky Bet Championship. I have been fairly successful so far (lost 1 game in the first season IIRC and was 34W/8D/4L in the 2nd one with a goal difference of 80. And while this looks quite good I am wondering if the players were good enough to pull this of despite the tactic being not that good at all. And with the new promotion I doubt that I will have a player quality advantage any longer, meaning I have to make sure that my tactic is really working.

additional TIs:

- normal tempo

- fairly wide play

- normal defensive line

- mixed passing (I think my players are not good enough for more direct passing yet)

PIs:

- short GK distribution to the fullbacks

- strikers are ordered to close down more

This is what I have been playing constantly throughout the season with minor variations to tempo and mentality during games.

Essentially I want to play attacking football here and am not that worried about having a fairly vulnerable defense as long as my offense is able to outscore the opposition. In addition I want all of the team to get involved in attacking and defending and support each other.

All players on the flanks have good pace and acceleration (15+ in most cases) and they have no orders to cut inside in order to keep the box from being crowded and allow some space for movement. This is why the central midfielders are set to support and there is a second striker (F9) up front as well. And from what I have seen this seems to work fairly well, with the F9 actually scoring more goals than I had expected.

The main role of the wingers is to provide assists, score the occasional goal and keeping the enemy defense stretched across the field in order to provide additional room for my strikers. From what I saw during the matches this was working as well. Dimarco (ML) has better attacking skills and in order to utilise those Plays as W(A), while Close (MR) plays as a slight more defensive WM(A).

The central midfielders should mainly stay at the edge of the box, draw some defenders and provide options to recycle the ball and either play a pass into the channels or switch it to one of the flanks (actually mostly the later, during the matches the number of assists from the central midfielders is lower than I had expected, but they are switching the flanks fairly nicely). With Murgia's high vision/flair (16/18) and some room for improving his passing I am fairly confident that he will be getting more assists soon as well and grow more into his APM-role.

The fullbacks should mainly join the attack and provide additional options on the flanks, allowing the wingers to play even more aggressively while being fast enough to get back into defense to prevent the enemy wingers from providing unchallenged crosses while the central defenders try to take care of any attacks through the middle. Which is not working that well, they are OK vs. crosses, but they are bad at defending against passes into the channels. And I have no idea who to improve the defense without lowering my attacking ability (short of getting better players which the team is lacking the money for).

The sweeper keeper is mainyl there to provide some additional support against long crosses from the opposition during counter attacks.

Overall all seems to be working pretty much as I want it to, but as mentioned above I am not sure if my settings/tactic is causing this or if the players would behave pretty similary with other settings as well.

And finally even if the settings/tactic is working as I want it to, I would be grateful for any pointers on how to keep improving it since I am afraid that Sky Bet Championship will be brutal.

This is the complete squad with some stats, composure, workrate, pace, first touch and passing are some of the stats I am looking for in most players.

Most of the older players are there as tutors, not as active players.

[herne79]

The best answer to "will my tactic work?" is "try it and see".

I don't mean that to sound funny, it really is the best way.

Sure, people could chip in with generalised observations about potential weaknesses in your system, but that would ignore one key fact: your system works. And not just works - you smashed it. OK, that was in a lower division, and there will probably be a step up in opposition quality now, however you are probably only expected to battle bravely against relegation(?) so as long as you can avoid the drop you can consolidate your position and start to improve the quality of your squad.

And because you did smash the previous season, you've "probably" (generalisation there) got a tactical system and squad of players already capable of beating the drop.

I mentioned generalised observations above, so I'll list them. Just bear in mind you should observe how your team performs before doing anything, as advice given should always be specific to your own team, rather than generalised about a system's potential weaknesses.

- In general it can be very risky to give all 4 wide players an attack duty, especially when combined with such an aggressive mentality. This can expose your flanks unnecessarily to opposition attacks.

- In general it can be useful to give one central midfielder a defend duty in order to provide sufficient cover for your defenders.

- Overall, playing such an aggressive set up, especially with such a potential gulf in player quality, can leave you over exposed and open to attack. Relying on simply outscoring the opposition against (much?) better teams could backfire.

Just remember, those are generalisations which may or may not apply to your system, because your system works. You already watch matches and make adjustments accordingly, which has resulted in back to back promotions. There is no reason why you shouldn't carry on playing as you have been - just remember to adjust your expectations. Anything better than simply avoiding relegation (or whatever your Board's expectations are) and you will be over achieving .

[CharonJr]

Thank you for the reply, actually my squad might be better than I expected, just got the board expectations and they expect at least a mid-table finish up to reaching the playoffs. 4th round in the FA Cup and 3rd in Capital One (lowest expectations) does seem a bit optimistic since I might draw a major team.

[CharonJr]

Played a couple of games in the new season and am fairly surprised by the results:

Essentially I changed nothing except adding offside trap. With my defense not the best anyway I thought that it cant really hurt to try, and while I do not see that many offsides from my opponents at least we are not conceding more goals than before.

Even the last game against ManU was actually much better than what the result is showing, heck, my teams was actually better in most stats, but this shows the better class of players ManU has, they dont need many chances/high possession in order to win.

[Rashidi]

Don't be surprised with the effectiveness of the 442. Firstly in terms of space control, its the most efficient system. Furthermore in this edition of FM16, systems with wide play seem to have the edge

[CharonJr]

Those are the assist locations (after 30 games, no friendlies).

PS: How many posts do I need before the annoying "post has to be cleared by a moderator" stops?