Adjusting 4231 facing better/bigger teams

[ultrAslan]

Hi All,

I want some feedback on my 4231 wide. I want to play posession based football with some great attacking movement to create goal scoring opportunities. In the league I'm a top tier team and everything I do works great home and away games I have some tactical preset/shouts for different events. inspired by @Rashidi from watching vids and read the guides. 

In the Champions League I'm getting demolished when I'm playing away games. For example the last game was against Lyon, we need to win from lyon with 3 goal difference so I wanted to attack them from the beginning agressively. I've canghed my DL and LOE to play a high block from the beginning. add instruction tight marking. This was the report from the scouts:

I've lost the game 4-1. The first goal of Lyon was a long shot from 30 meters and my dreams fade away. We had control of possession, but didnt manage to create a goal scoring opportunities. My conclusion is should I approach this game with a different formation, because the lack of quality when you compare their players to us? or is their team far more supprior no matter what I do will not work against Lyon or better teams? My question is how would you approach this away game? How would you play against better teams like madrid, manutd, barcelona, bayern?

[Rashidi]

Send me a message with a link to your save, upload it to Dropbox or any cloud service and I will feature it on GameChanger.

I can see some obvious challenges with your system most notably keeping the ball, and working the ball up when you actually have it.  Most of your transitions seem to favour the keeper or defence clearing the ball but I want to confirm this by looking at your save in a bit more detail.

[Tom8983]

One of the problems with the 4231 is the huge amount of space that you give the opposition in front of the centre backs. The two CMs are meant to be your defensive shield and with the tactics that you've posted, that's failing. You're probably getting away with it in your league due to a lack of quality compared to the CL.

First, you've got a BWM on support who's just going to run around like a headless chicken trying to win the ball back, rather than holding his position and being a shield. I'd recommend changing that to a role that has 'Hold Position' either already selected, or at least not blanked out so that you can select it. At the very least, don't use a role with 'Roam from Position'. Against bigger teams it might even be an idea to use two defend duties too, rather than the normal defend and support.

Second, look on the DL and LOE screen and just look at the huge gap between your CBs and CMs. You've got to reduce that by upping your DL, reducing your LOE, reducing your mentality, or a mixture of all three.

Third, maybe think about using a CB on Stopper duty, again to try to shrink that huge gap.

Fourth, you're playing counter press. In a 4321 that encourages your defensive shield CMs to go running off trying to close the ball down, as the graphic suggests. Your best bet, at least against better teams, may be to turn off the counter press and just have the 'Press More' Player Instructions as high as you can for your front 4.

Fifth, you're asking your team to play wider, and therefore further apart, but at the same time asking them to pass shorter and therefore be closer together...

If I were you, I'd take Rashidi up on his offer. Hell, I'd take him up on his offer if he asked me and I don't even think I need any help lol! But really, sometimes there's just nothing you can do, especially when facing teams much better than yourself.

[ultrAslan]

5 hours ago, Rashidi said:

Send me a message with a link to your save, upload it to Dropbox or any cloud service and I will feature it on GameChanger.

I can see some obvious challenges with your system most notably keeping the ball, and working the ball up when you actually have it.  Most of your transitions seem to favour the keeper or defence clearing the ball but I want to confirm this by looking at your save in a bit more detail.

I've send you a PM.

4 hours ago, Tom8983 said:

One of the problems with the 4231 is the huge amount of space that you give the opposition in front of the centre backs. The two CMs are meant to be your defensive shield and with the tactics that you've posted, that's failing. You're probably getting away with it in your league due to a lack of quality compared to the CL.

First, you've got a BWM on support who's just going to run around like a headless chicken trying to win the ball back, rather than holding his position and being a shield. I'd recommend changing that to a role that has 'Hold Position' either already selected, or at least not blanked out so that you can select it. At the very least, don't use a role with 'Roam from Position'. Against bigger teams it might even be an idea to use two defend duties too, rather than the normal defend and support.

Second, look on the DL and LOE screen and just look at the huge gap between your CBs and CMs. You've got to reduce that by upping your DL, reducing your LOE, reducing your mentality, or a mixture of all three.

Third, maybe think about using a CB on Stopper duty, again to try to shrink that huge gap.

Fourth, you're playing counter press. In a 4321 that encourages your defensive shield CMs to go running off trying to close the ball down, as the graphic suggests. Your best bet, at least against better teams, may be to turn off the counter press and just have the 'Press More' Player Instructions as high as you can for your front 4.

Fifth, you're asking your team to play wider, and therefore further apart, but at the same time asking them to pass shorter and therefore be closer together...

If I were you, I'd take Rashidi up on his offer. Hell, I'd take him up on his offer if he asked me and I don't even think I need any help lol! But really, sometimes there's just nothing you can do, especially when facing teams much better than yourself.

1 - yeah you're right that I'm using a BWM , but I protect the middfield with Fernando who has hold position and the fullback on support does not go further then the middfield and is also covering the middfield.

2 - DL & LOE changes during games. playing low, middle or high pressing during different kind of games. 

3 - I prefer them to step back, because one step ahead and one fast striker can move around them

4 - Counter-press only with middle-high press

5 - Shorter pass means a safe pass, so they are playing safe football , but myplaymaker and one middfielder has direct pass so he can make the pass to open spaces for my wingers. 

btw thanks for your feedback, maybe you are right so I'm gonna test it with my save.

 

[Rashidi]

So I've gone into your save and featured it on an episode of Gamechanger.

I broke it down in several areas. Financially you need to think about strategies to improve your finances, currently you are operating at 50% of the level top sides are operating at in the ECL, so if you want to challenge these teams in the long run, financially you need to become a powerhouse. If you reach that level you will also dominate the ECL for years to come. So there are two ways to do these and I explain both in the video, loans and transfer market play.

You are also not optimising the use of your coaches, you can sometimes move these coaches assignments around to get higher stars per category. Why is this important? You want the best ratings you can get in training coaches because there is a knock on effect to training and then these also get translated to games on the pitch. My twitch streams usually show me playing like a jackass at the start, and then I "see the light" after I put myself in the hole and then go to deal with such areas. You may not need to 100% involved in training but if you don't assign the right coaches to the right programs then you aren't delegating efficiently either. You can tweak some of your training, just add match preparation training schedules for big upcoming games. Its easy to do and it isn't complicated. 

Your club depends on selling players to do well, so you can tag on "next sale clauses" but you also need to develop them. The issue here is your individual training loads, they are all "light". Personally speaking you can optimise their development along more directed lines by also giving them additional focus to work on weaker areas of the game. You also need players with good jumping reach playing as central defenders in your main squad. One of your main defenders has 13, this becomes a big problem against top sides in the ECL who usually have around 16.  There is also a player in the U23 squad who has good jumping reach and is developing decently with a chance of breaking into the first team. He is also 19 years old. He should be moved to the first team which is something I did for my matches.

The 4231 you started with is fine against maybe 80% of the teams in your league, but you also struggle to make really good shot attempts as well. In one of your games, in spite of having the majority of shots on goal, both sides had around the same amount of shots from inside the dangerous areas in the penalty box. This leads one to think that your biggest issue is quality of chance creation as well.

As far as the tactic you are using is concerned:

1. Sometimes I feel people make too may personalised instructions for their players. When you sub someone else on they can change how your tactic is playing. Personally I recommend trying to play without them so its easier to manage substation changes as these don't lead to large knock on effects to your tactic. You had 5 players with personalised instructions in your main tactic, when I removed them, the tactic also changed with role changes to some positions.It went from a CM(S)/BWM(S) to a CM(S)/DLP(S) which is a huge change in central midfield

2. You also have Tis you don't really need. Against good teams the Prevent Short GK distribution can be an issue. Your midfield isn't world class when they play with this instruction you are actually going to affect their positioning when the opposition has a goal kick, if they do not win the ball they are exposed which ALWAYS happened to your team.

3. You have play out of defence while asking the keeper to distribute quickly to fullbacks in a system that plays with a higher defensive line. Ouch. If the keeper misses the pass, then you are open to an immediate counter. Does your keeper have good kicking, vision to do this? Are your fullbacks always playing well?

These instructions against good sides are a liability because you don't give your side options. If the opposition does a high press against you, you have basically limited your keepers options for reducing the pressure.

In Turkey maybe you can use this tactic without making any changes, personally though I would still make some changes because the quality of your chances isn't very good, and this will show against defensive sides. In Europe I do feel that your backline needs the extra security of a DM and perhaps playing like this may not be ideal. I switched to a different system away from home and while we were able to beat Lyon that goal difference was just a mountain too high for us to climb.

On 04/07/2019 at 01:21, ultrAslan said:

4 - Counter-press only with middle-high press

I don't understand this, If by press you mean the height of your defensive line. Then you need to understand your LOE is the one defining where your are pressing. Hypothetically speaking you could be playing a high press with a high line of engagement and a standard defensive line. Here the gap between your defence to midfield could be high caused by the DL. Your 4231 can naturally counter press, but you need to ask yourself whether counter pressing is a good strategy to use with your side. Counter pressing affects the positioning of your own players when they are in an attacking transition, lose the ball and they shift up slightly. If they do not win the ball they have more area to cover when they REGROUP, which is what you are doing. So in your particular case, if your players cannot win the ball by counter-pressing then they shouldn't even play like that. In your defeat against Zenit that's what happened, you lost the ball in a counter pressing transition and conceded.

Your challenge is playing in Europe, there were things I was doing that I doubt you were:

Run at Defence : This is a shout I remove/never use if my players are seen losing the ball when I am playing or if they are matched up against an opponent who is much stronger
Pass into Space; Situational shout, used when I see an obvious advantage using it.

There's more that I covered in the video, and I will link that video once its up today.

 

[ultrAslan]

Thanks again Daljit for taking time and look at my save game. You are one of my idols in FM like Cleon and have massive respect for you guys. This is like a dream come true to learn from the guru's to play like them one day. I want to be in that position to develop myself and give tips to the younger fellas later in the future. 

9 hours ago, Rashidi said:

You are also not optimising the use of your coaches, you can sometimes move these coaches assignments around to get higher stars per category. Why is this important? You want the best ratings you can get in training coaches because there is a knock on effect to training and then these also get translated to games on the pitch. My twitch streams usually show me playing like a jackass at the start, and then I "see the light" after I put myself in the hole and then go to deal with such areas. You may not need to 100% involved in training but if you don't assign the right coaches to the right programs then you aren't delegating efficiently either. You can tweak some of your training, just add match preparation training schedules for big upcoming games. Its easy to do and it isn't complicated. 

This FM im still struggling to create good schedules, but for my senior squad I already have great coaches. In my save game you looked at the coaches of my second and third squad. Yes you're right I didnt pay attention to the coaches there. I will build an empire now from the youngsters to sell them for great price or develop them further at senior squad. 

 

9 hours ago, Rashidi said:

Your club depends on selling players to do well, so you can tag on "next sale clauses" but you also need to develop them. The issue here is your individual training loads, they are all "light". Personally speaking you can optimise their development along more directed lines by also giving them additional focus to work on weaker areas of the game. You also need players with good jumping reach playing as central defenders in your main squad. One of your main defenders has 13, this becomes a big problem against top sides in the ECL who usually have around 16.  There is also a player in the U23 squad who has good jumping reach and is developing decently with a chance of breaking into the first team. He is also 19 years old. He should be moved to the first team which is something I did for my matches.

So from here you are saying that when you sign or play a defender it is important that a defender has a high jumping reach? What about fast defenders with great passing and first touch and  very good with other attributes, but they dont have good jumping reach, is he not a good option? 

One final question is: when the season is over, what kind of players do you sign first? Support players? Middfield? Strikers? Defenders? In my 4231 my first priority is to buy strong middfielders who can carry the team, after that the fullbacks are the important for creating goal scoring opportunities from the flanks and for extra support. What would you do first if you where in my shoes? 

Thanks again Daljit! Can't wait to see more content from you.

[Rashidi]

13 hours ago, ultrAslan said:

is he not a good option? 

In the domestic league you have little issues, in the ECL you have issues defending set pieces. You need someone able to win headers in your box. When a season is over, I basically sign players that strengthen my system, so that decision is made after I watch a team to figure out where we are struggling